Character Tics / Literature

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• 1Q84: Aomamae is described as having beautiful facial features that change so drastically whenever she frowns or grimaces that her new expression will terrify anyone who sees it. She uses this trait as a psychological weapon against men whom she wants to leave her alone.
• Noa from Afrotistic walks on her toes or tugs on her hair when she's stressed or nervous.
• Inverted in Animorphs: After so long Shapeshifter Mode Locked in hawk form Tobias no longer emotes much when in human form. This saves his life upon learning that Elfangor was his father—he's freaking out internally, but to the villains he looks like that name doesn't mean anything to him.
• Jason from Anything but Typical blinks his eyes, sometimes one at a time, and flaps his hands.
• Bad Mermaids: Zelda Swish's left eye twitches when she's about to say something negative.
• Bat flaps his hands when he's nervous, excited, or thinking about something.
• Robin from Bewilderment pinwheels his arms when he can't find words and rubs the cleft of his chin when he's thinking hard.
• In The Big Sleep, Carmen sucks her thumb, despite being about 20 years old, showing that she's got some screws loose.
• Fi from The Black Fox of Beckham taps each finger with her thumb, usually when she's nervous.
• Joe from Blue Iguana taps his leg when he's really upset.
• In The Bluest Eye, Pecola has a habit of scratching her calf with her toe, which she seemingly inherited from her mother. This is what triggers her father into raping her.
• Bounders:
  • Mira sometimes twirls when she walks.
  • Cole sits ramrod straight, even when he's in a beanbag chair.
• Brandon Sanderson:
  • Elantris: Sarene taps her cheek with her index finger when she is deep in thought.
  • Wax and Wayne: Marasi has a tendency to blush furiously. She is well aware of it and feels this does not fit her image of a constable. And then there comes a moment when she realises she did not blush, which she takes as a sign that she's changed.
• Tally from Can You See Me? flaps her hands when she's excited or stressed. In the first book, she tries not to do it in front of her classmates, who don't know she's autistic.
• The Cat Who... Series: Qwill tends to finger his luxuriant mustache when he's thinking. Apparently this can sometimes get a little violent, as he's occasionally described as "pounding" the mustache.
• Brandon Aubuchon from Cemetery Bird rocks and flicks his fingers against his cheek.
• Charlotte's Web:
  • The entire goose family has a habit of repeating things twice or three times.
  • Wilbur has a tendency towards Fainting when he's scared.
• Children of Dune: The late Baron used to tap his fingers in a certain way. This is not genetic, and when one of his descendants does it, it's significant.
• Yetu from The Deep (2019) has a distinctive, twisting swimming style, leaving a wake that any wajinru who know her can easily identify.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • Greg and Rodrick frown a lot.
  • Rowley and Fregley have their mouths open a lot.
• In Dinosaur Vs, Dinosaur roars a lot.
• In the Discworld novels, Lord Vetinari raises one eyebrow when he's faced with something particularly stupid, usually in conjunction with a deeply ironic remark. Lampshaded in Making Money, where Vetinari-wannabe Cosmo Lavish practices his eyebrow raising.
• Johnny from Dogs Don't Talk grunts, flaps his arms, rocks back and forth to music, and jumps when he's happy.
• Cotton from The Easy Part of Impossible flutters his fingers against his leg, and also rubs his chin and works his mouth when he's thinking.
• Every Shiny Thing:
  • Ryan rubs his T-shirt and flicks his fingers. When he was in seventh grade, he went to a horrible school that tried to suppress his movements and force him to make eye contact, but Lauren's parents assure her that his new school is more progressive.
  • Audrey sticks her chin out when she's angry.
• Evidence of Things Not Seen: At the end of the class, when the teacher was droning on about due dates and the final, Tommy used to tap his pencil and jerk his legs to try to make time pass faster.
• Eye Contact:
  • Adam's hands "dance," as Amelia once put it.
  • Chris develops a habit of leaning forward and stepping on his hands when he's sitting down.
• "Fairest of All": Siofra likes rolling round things in her hands, like buttons. If she doesn't have one, her arms flap and flail around. Mahon stares into space and repeats what other people say.
• In The Famous Five book Five go to Smuggler's Top, the hot-tempered Mr Lenoir has a unique angry tic: the tip of his nose turns white, which happens many times.
• Fifty Shades of Grey: Anastasia is prone to flushing and blushing.
• In Firefighter Ted, Principal Bigham blushes whenever he's angry.
• Flight of the Intruder gives us Lt. Cool Hand Grafton, who suffers from stress-related palsy when he's not flying.
• Garrett, P.I.: Garrett does a Spock-like eyebrow trick when interviewing clients.
• Vivy from Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen! flaps her hands when she's excited, despite her mother's and therapist's disapproval.
• Gloves Of Virtue: Abigail has a habit of scratching her ankle with her toes when she's thinking over something. And that's just a small part of her weirdness.
• Tilly from Harmony (2016) taps her cheeks when she's excited or nervous.
• Horatio Hornblower:
  • As a young man (from Midshipman to Hotspur) Hornblower's body language is always described with words like awkward or gangling. At one point Bush recognizes him from the back because of the ungainly way Hornblower is walking into the wind.
  • Bush tends to rub his hands together when pleased.
  • In Commodore Hornblower, Mound has his hands in his pockets. Rather, he keeps starting to put his hands in his pockets, remembers he's in the presence of the Commodore, and desists. Hornblower is distracted enough by this that he eventually orders the kid to just do it and quit fidgeting.
• Hoshi and the Red City Circuit:
  • Martin Ho rubs his palms over his pant legs when he broods.
  • Ursula, a woman Hoshi interviews, makes complicated gestures to illustrate what she says. Most people find it distracting, but Hoshi appreciates it, because visual processing takes less effort for her than language processing.
• Willem from How to Fly with Broken Wings jiggles his fingers when he's uncomfortable.
• I Did NOT Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence!: Goodnight jokes that the way Neon Rider rubs his chin is patented.
• Diane Cardiel from If I Fall, If I Die snaps her blue elastic band against the inside of her wrist to distract herself from her anxiety.
• Anthony from In Two Worlds flaps his hands to express emotion. Adults respond by saying "Hands quiet" without trying to understand why he's doing it.
• John Buchan:
  • In the climactic scene of The Thirty-Nine Steps, Hannay has to decide whether a man he's watching is the master spy behind the plot (who is also a Master Actor) or just an innocent bystander. He's almost convinced the man is just an innocent bystander when the man makes a finger-tapping gesture that Hannay recognises from when he was a captive of the spy ring earlier in the book.
  • Similarly, near the climax of The Island of Sheep, Hannay begins to penetrate the facade of that novel's master of disguise when he recognises the way he's standing.
• Charlotte from The Key to Charlotte rocks back and forth to relieve stress.
• Keedie and Addie from A Kind of Spark both flap when they're happy or overwhelmed. They go to great effort to suppress it in public.
• Language Arts:
  • Dana McGucken has a lot: he sways back and forth, stares at the ceiling or out the window, picks his nose, sticks pencils in his ears, kicks his feet, and gesticulates while grunting.
  • Emmy yanks her mouth sideways when she thinks.
  • Cory's default position involves holding his arms raised and bent at right angles, with his forearms framing his face and his fingers clenched.
• Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan (who's just slightly self-conscious about his height) tends to lift his chin defensively when under stress, especially in the earlier books.
• The Mad Scientists' Club: When Henry Mulligan has a brainstorm, he tilts his stool back, looks at the rafters, and scratches his chin.
• Malediction Trilogy: Cecile has a tendency to bite the inside of her cheeks when she is thinking, especially if she's conflicted about an issue. Lara from The Bridge Kingdom Archives by the same author also does that from time to time.
• In Marcelo in the Real World, Marcelo and his father Arturo both open and close their hands when they can't find the right words to say.
• Val from The Mer has a lifelong habit of tousling her hair with her hands.
• Levi from The Mermaid clears his throat when he's uncomfortable, a habit Amelia finds first annoying and later endearing.
• No One Needed to Know: Donald's upper lip never closes completely, and he's always fluttering his hands or fingers around.
• Erin from The Nowhere Girls rubs her hands together to relieve anxiety. Her mother nags her to have quiet hands, but Erin knows that if she didn't have that pressure relief valve, she'd have a lot more meltdowns.
• Clara from On the Spectrum twirls her hair around her finger when she's uncomfortable.
• In The Outside, Elu fidgets with his long hair, and Yasira taps her fingers.
• Peta from Peta Lyre's Rating Normal jiggles her leg and shakes her hands. She does her best to suppress these movements.
• The Phantom Tollbooth has a lot of these due to the book's quirky sense of humour:
  • The Whether Man says things three times.
  • The Earl of Essence often acts out the literal meanings of idioms (e.g. literally biting off more than he can chew).
  • When the King's Cabinet says their list of synonyms, the Undersecretary of Understanding will be the one to say the simplest synonym.
  • The Spelling Bee, as her name suggests, randomly spells out words.
  • The Senses Taker likes to polish his glasses, straighten his tie, and blow his nose.
• Dana from Pilgrennon's Children walks with a shuffling gait, which her classmates make fun of.
• Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe Her: Penny's character tic of shrugging becomes plot significant when one of the recurring annoyances of her getting trapped in a robot body is that it cannot shrug.
• In Post-High School Reality Quest: Buffy's high school frenemy repeatedly tucks her hair behind her ears, which Buffy thinks is a mannerism calculated to attract boys.
• Cassius from the Prudence Penderhaus books snaps his fingers next to his ears, especially when he's stressed out or overwhelmed.
• In Queens of Geek, Taylor pushes up her glasses.
• The Roosevelt:
  • Emmet usually stands with his hands bent in front of him. He also rocks, flaps, and hums, especially during emotional moments.
  • Jeremey fidgets with his hands, which Emmet thinks of as the neurotypical equivalent of flapping.
• Roys Bedoys: Mr. Master points to the sky very often, for no apparent reason.
• David from Rules flickers his fingers like he's playing piano, shakes his arms when he's excited, and flaps his hands when he's upset.
• P.F. Greenawalt from Save the Enemy runs his finger along the outside of his nostril and picks his ears, to Zoey's disgust.
• Jonas from Saving Max mutters to himself and twitches like he's doing the flamenco sitting down. Danielle recognizes this as his attempts to communicate.
• In Savvy, Lester twitches his shoulders and stammers when he's afraid.
• Kitty from The Secret Life of Kitty Granger flicks her fingers and brushes them against her wool skirt to calm herself.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events, Violet always ties back her hair when she's inventing something.
• Shtum:
  • Jonah loves twiddling things in front of his eyes, like a feather or a blade of grass. He also has a habit of jumping up and down when he's excited.
  • Valentine has a habit of kissing his teeth, which he's passed on to his teenage son.
• Jeremy from The Silence of Murder rocks and fidgets rapidly under stress.
• Philoctetes from Sirena pulls on his beard.
• Sister Pelagia: In Pelagia and the Red Rooster, the eccentric prophet Emmanuel aka Manuila probably has a habit of scratching his leg (it is mentioned twice: once he "scratched his calf", and at another time he "was standing on one leg, scratching his ankle with the other foot").
• In Slug Days Stories, Lauren's mom huffs like a bear when she's annoyed.
• Charlie and Ludmila from The Someday Birds both flap their hands when they're upset.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Arya often chews on her lip, a habit the Faceless Men try to stop her doing, as it's distinctive.
  • Stannis Baratheon keeps his jaw clenched and grinds his teeth.
  • After an incident in the first book, Jon frequently flexes his wounded hand. This was advised by the maester who treated the injury, to stop his tendons binding up.
• In The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Captain has a tic where he constantly, whenever he thinks that nobody's watching, checks if his head scarf is still in place and as tight fitting as always, showing not one strand of hair. It drives Demane mad, who thinks the scarf sits tighter than a virgin's drawers and besides, the repetition is likely to draw more attention to the gesture than Captain would ever want.
• In The Speed of Dark, everyone in Lou's section is autistic, so all his coworkers have at least one.
  • Eric doodles colorful geometric patterns.
  • Dale winks his left eye.
  • Cameron twitches his arm, bounces, and plays with dice in his pocket.
  • Linda bounces her fingers in complex mathematical patterns and flaps her hands when she's excited.
  • Chuy twists his neck back and forth and grunts when he eats.
  • Bailey bites his lip and makes noises with his tongue.
  • Lou himself tries to avert this by sitting perfectly still. It doesn't work, as Cameron tells him he looks like a block of wood.
  • Lou notes that his neurotypical crush Marjory flaps her hands sometimes, but nobody seems to notice because she's otherwise normal.
• Grace from The State of Grace taps her fingers to calm herself.
• Sword of Truth: In the first book, both Richard and Darken Rahl have their tics. Richard runs his hands through his hair when gets nervous or exasperated, while Rahl licks his fingers and runs them over his lips and eyebrows habitually. Richard's tic clues Zedd in that the "Darken Rahl" they see is not, in fact, Darken Rahl, but he realizes it a moment too late.
• Jack from There's More Than One Way Home repeats the last word of each sentence in a sing-songy whisper. He also flaps his hands when excited or upset.
• Ivy from Things I Should Have Known bangs her hands against her thighs or hips when she's upset.
• Narrator Huckleberry Finn remarks that Tom Sawyer, in the lesser-known Mark Twain novel Tom Sawyer, Detective, has a habit of tracing the letter V on his cheek or chin when he's thinking deeply.
• Tornado Brain: Frankie flaps her hands when she's stressed. Tess constantly bites her nails so there's no white area, and used to have a habit of ripping up things like napkins and movie tickets.
• In The Trumpet of the Swan, the main human character walks "Indian-style", i.e. very deliberately.
• The Twilight Saga: Bella Swan often bites her lower lip, a trait she shares with Kristen Stewart.
• Underdogs:
  • Jack Hopper rubs his thumb and fingers together.
  • Gracie Freeman spends much of her time twirling her hair between her fingers.
• Aster from An Unkindness of Ghosts bangs or taps against things as she moves to synchronize herself with the ship's rhythms, which calms her.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • Nynaeve often tugs her braid when she's agitated. And she is often agitated. About halfway through the series she decides this habit isn't dignified enough for someone who is supposed to be a Yellow Aes Sedai and Queen of Malkier. So now, whenever she's annoyed, she pauses and makes a visible effort to not tug her braid.
  • Thom knuckles his mustaches while thinking, Balwer dry washes his hands, Perrin scratches his beard, Julin removes his cap, crumples it, then puts it back on again. The series is rather swamped with character tics.
• Alvie from When My Heart Joins the Thousand tugs on her braids, a habit she's had since childhood.
• Rory from Wicked Good paces exactly five steps before he turns around. Archer finds herself pacing the same way while she waits to pick him up from the police station.
• Wild Orchid: Danny from the first book keeps running his hands through his hair. Taylor hates it because he has slimy hair and she pictures him getting oil on everything he touches. Danny also usually says exactly nine words at a time, but no one notices that one except Taylor, no matter how many times she points it out.
• In Winnie the Pooh, Pooh puts his head between his paws when he has to mull something over.
• The Witchlands:
  • Safi: She taps either her fingers or her heels when she's stressed, upset, or just impatient. This might be the tell Caden warned her about.
  • Iseult: She stutters when she's nervous and wiggles her nose when she's thinking. Her mother tried to train her out of having any tics, but she didn't have much success. She also picked up a few of Aeduan's mannerisms (such as tapping her fingers on the pommel of her sword) after travelling with him for a while.
  • Aeduan: Rolling his wrists, flexing his fingers, and tapping a rhythm with his fingers on his knives and on the pommel of his sword. He can keep an impenetrable pokerface, but he has to fold his hands behind his back when he needs to feign indifference or lie to someone.
• Leo from You Have a Match has a habit of tilting his head to one side.

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