#quirks of writing

[akanemnon]

I thought this game didn't have random encounters!

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[homepic6]

[saturnzlv]

coffee

— parings: todoroki touya x reader

— notes: mature language

— synopsis: when you’ve never given your barista your actual name, so you make a mini game out of it

[unicornpopcorn14]

So we all know by now that Dazai is comfortable enough around Chuuya to show nervousness/worry.

Enough times for Chuuya to pick up on that pattern. The pattern, may I remind you, that doesn't have evident correlation to either nervousness or worry to most people. One that can even be interpreted as misplaced given the situation.

Which means that Dazai has done this in front of Chuuya so often, that Chuuya at first was hella confused, before he finally made a connection between when and why it happens. And still remembered that connection after four years of separation. Which gets us to my point:

What if this isn't the only emotion Dazai displays weirdly?

What if he has multiple unconventional patterns he displays for sadness, frustration, content, or disgust? The times he really feels them, and they become too strong for him to just deal with normally? What if these are the only times he's actually being genuine with his emotions?

And Chuuya is the only one who is familiar with them all?

Dazai would be jumping rope and Chuuya would be like, "quit sulking, let's get icecream"

Dazai hanging upside down on the couch and Chuuya going, "It's okay, mackerel. You can cry."

Dazai actually crying, full on heart-wrenching sobs, and Chuuya unironically going, "What, good news?"

It's just... comforting, for one person in Dazai's life to read him like a book. Everyone else would look at him like he's crazy, displaying wrong emotions/behaviors at the wrong time, but Chuuya knows that it's just how he processes feeling properly, and thus he's the only one Dazai can count on to put things into context and understand, which makes him display them even more openly.

Because Chuuya never shamed him for his quirks, as much as Dazai never did his.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

I'd like to add more cool quirks/traits to my ocs but I'm afraid I can't think of any. Happen to have a list of some I can use?

Writing References: Character Traits & Quirks

5 Personality Traits (OCEAN) ⚜ 16 Personality Traits (16PF)

170 Character Quirks ⚜ 200+ Character Quirks

600+ Personality Traits ⚜ Behavioural & Emotional Adjectives

Character Quirks Worksheet ⚜ Character Traits (Virtues)

East vs. West Personalities ⚜ Markers for the "Big Five"

Positive & Negative Characteristics ⚜ Trait Theories

Aspects of Humility ⚜ Ambiverts ⚜ Extroverts ⚜ Introverts

Some Traits of ...Serial Killers ⚜ ...Unempathetic Characters ⚜ ...Creepy Characters ⚜ ...Curious Characters ⚜ ...Dangerous Characters ⚜ Perfectionists ⚜ Toxic Characters

Here's a compilation of some previous posts. Choose which ones make sense for your characters. All the best with your writing!

[pudding-way]

“fiddauthor is one-sided/ford doesn’t reciprocate fidd’s feelings” i’m exploding you with my mind

[baura-bear]

Babe took care of the stray cats in his neighborhood

We here in South Philly live in what is called a "row house" so this one day I was out feeding my wild cats in my yard, when the next door neighbor leaned over the fence and said "Babe (my nickname) you must put all your spending money into feeding those cats." My retort was "Mrs. Valetine have you ever been hungry?" That is when my mind went right back to Bastogne, and it was during the time that we were surrounded that they had dropped our supplies from an aircraft if they finally got a couple up, as weather kept them grounded. Well I was given two boxes of "K" rations and I opened one package up, and I threw the little pack of brown crackers in an old shell hole, about a 1/2hr later the squad leader comes over to us after we had walked about a 1/2mile to retake our defensive positions to tell us to hold on to your food eat it wisely as we may not get any for a few days. So I walked back to that shell hole found it in the dark of nite, and picked up the brown crackers that I hated so much, well as you know I did eat them as a last resort, and when your hungry they ain't bad, of course I didn't tell my neighbor that story, but I think that she could see me going into a trance

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I ABSOLUTELY ADORE YOUR SQQ HE LOOKS SO FUCKINH DONE WITH LIFE

The recipe for SQQ is: calm on the outside, screaming on the inside.

[takami-takami]

Like Animals.

kinktober day 4: sex pollen.

includes— hawks x reader. minors dni. smut

warnings— afab!reader. dubcon (sex pollen/heats, but both have been pining like idiots). breeding if you squint.

keigo's beloved crush sidekick gets hit with the unluckiest quirk possible. he quickly discovers his rut suppressants ain't shit.

Through all the horrors and adverse life events Keigo has endured in this line of work— brutal near-assassinations, negotiations with international crime syndicates, purchasing sugar-free canned coffee with Splenda substitute by mistake before his morning shift— he has always been able to find a silver lining in the darkest of moments. 

Which makes it infinitely more concerning that for the first time in his life, he nearly whines through his teeth the words, "why me?" 

A palm drags once down his face, thumb and index finger pulling down his darkened eye bags. His hand collects the beads of sweat and stops to rest over his mouth. 

He supposes this must be his penance for taking a risk and trusting faulty intel. 

Keigo's informant told him the villain he and his darling sidekick were meeting would have a limited-ranged fire quirk, so the diligent hero stuffed ointment and cold packs in his pockets before leaving just in case. 

If he had known the villain was a plant heteromorph and possessed a heat-inducing mist quirk instead, and that the person he was hopelessly in love with had a bit of a crush on would be caught in the direct line of fire? 

He would have brought a paper bag to hyperventilate into instead. And some prayer beads. The god to which the prayer is delivered doesn't necessarily matter, he thinks. He'd simply pick one and drop to his knees in a bid for mercy.

"I'm taking you to a medic," Keigo puts his foot down for the fourth time this evening. 

"Fuck no," you groan from the couch, shifting to squeeze your thighs together. It offers not even a modicum of relief from the incessant throb. "Do you want my cause of death to be humiliation? Is that your plan, genius? 'S bad enough as it is that you're here." 

The subtext is unspoken, but clear to him through your adorable pout: I only trust you to see me like this.

It's unlucky that the man you've had the most innapropriate-for-work crush on for the better part of two years happened to be the one beside you that day. And it's just your sorry luck, you lament, that Keigo would also be the one to catch you, to fly you home cradled in his painfully capable arms, to refuse to leave your side and insist on making his favorite chicken soup for you in a desperate flail of support. 

He'd respect your decision and leave, should you ask him to. You know that. And yet the humbling truth gnaws at your pride: doing so wouldn't do much to save your image at this point. He’s already seen you like this, you grumble. The proverbial cat has long since escaped the bag, waltzing its way over to rub its purring body against Keigo’s leg to your abject horror.

If you close your eyes, you can attempt to trick your brain into thinking this affliction is a flu of some kind. 

Yes, this is just some common cold. You're wearing nothing but your work partner's shirt (your clothes were contaminated by the quirk's dust, Keigo explained, speaking in that strict work mode voice that makes you picture your mouth stuffed and drooling somewhere beneath his desk and between his spread legs). You pull the damned fabric down over your core as you try your hardest to not writhe in fits of pleasure underneath the blankets, rubbing your thighs together for any friction against your swollen clit.

All symptoms of an affliction of the flu, of course. 

You don't need to reach down and touch to know the slick would string those thighs together, should you attempt to pull them apart. 

Keigo knows that, too. But he doesn't say anything about it. 

You would be mortified if you were aware of the truth. 

That he knows everything.

Keigo knows exactly how you ache; like you're constantly on the precipice of an orgasm, perpetually ablaze from the heavy heat scorching your body from its surface to the boiling core. 

You try to suppress your glee as he spoon feeds you the broth, reminding yourself that this is just what good friends do for each other.

Friends coo praises at each other when they swallow, friends tilt each other's chins up with one finger and mutter things like that’s a good dove and you can take another as they watch their throat bob in tandem. 

Friends shiver from their wingtips down their spine when they pull the spoon back. They let their gaze linger for just a second on those lips that open wide, aching to touch with their own.

Ever the gentleman, Keigo stays lowered to his haunches and places one hand over your forehead to check for a fever, redirecting his focus toward taking inventory of your vitals. He doesn't wince when he hears your moan at the contact, even though the pitiful sound pings at his weak points. His avian instincts remind him he needs to protect you, please you, take care of you; to make it go away, to fix that feeling he knows better than anyone is aching like a bruise between your thighs. 

He doesn't allow his eyes to wander astray or trail their way downwards, especially when you're in such a vulnerable state; but his professional assessment is that if he could only wet his appetite, the flat of his tongue alone could— 

He shakes his head and blows a puff to cool the soup, raising another spoonful to your lips. 

"Here. Another. You need to keep your energy up," he reminds you, voice stern. It's nearly clinical and achieves the opposite of its desired effect.

Your heart rate picks up to thump at a steady, thrumming beat at the innocuous gesture of domesticity. 

How have you never noticed how capable of a mate Keigo would be…? He’s all musculature and sincerity, sharp ridges at his knuckles and soft curves at the small of his waist where he only trusts you to touch.

You huff an involuntary moan. 

He picks another god to praise that the couch you're laying on obscures his lower half. 

Today, Keigo discovers his suppressants are only designed to reduce the chance of a rut being triggered. It brings the possibility of it starting in the first place to a comfortable near-zero, allowing him to carry out the spring and fall seasons as if he were entirely quirkless.

But if that rut passes through the blockers' biochemistry in, say, the event Keigo's luck rears its ugly head, for example… It does fuck all to reduce the actual symptoms. 

More importantly than his own anguish, however, is this: his mate work partner got hurt because of him— hurt being a stretch, he'd know if he weren't overthinking so much, given the blissed out panting just two feet away from him; but you’re probably suffering and it's all his fault. It’s all because of an unlucky, once in a lifetime slip up from Keigo Takami himself, and he can't detangle himself from the guilt.

If drowning in the unexpected whirlpool that is his first rut in half a decade is his penance for the crime, then Keigo will hang his head and take it.

The huff he lets out is your last straw.

"I'm going to my room," you state, moving to leave like you left the stove on and are trying to avoid an upcoming house fire.

When his hand darts out to stop you, the touch against your shoulder sends shockwaves down your stomach.

He's touching you. He's taking such good care of you, feeding you, providing for you in his nest and now he's touching you?

It sends your hormones into overdrive. 

You'd do well to conceal it, if his heightened instincts couldn't smell your desperation. 

"I'm afraid it ain't that easy, dove," Keigo warns, eye contact averted. "I'd avoid doing that, if I were you." 

He schools his expression, but not before you catch a flash of something hungry. 

There's no chance in hell he's letting you out of his sight. Not like this. You're confined to the couch while he keeps an eye on you. Attempting to fix it yourself will only make the feeling unfathomably worse, something he tries to communicate to you with a look that only ends up making him look like a kicked puppy.

You squint right back when you process the implication of his words, eyes raking down his form in suspicion. 

"How do you know all this, anyway," you ask.

Keigo goes silent, hand concealing his mouth. 

Ah, it hits you. 

Bird things.

Your head falls back against one of the numerous pillows your partner propped up behind you.

"The couch is soft," you murmur, situating yourself against the cushions and throw blankets he so carefully arranged. You trail your fingertips along a silk pillow. Keigo slams his eyes shut.

"Please don't say it like that." 

"Why not?" Your lids droop, heat overtaking your better judgement. Tentatively, you play along the bounds. You allow your hands to run along the soft divots of the blanket covering your body, squeezing your chest and pinching the peaks. "It's like a little nest, isn't it?" 

His hand drags down his face before pinching his nose bridge, suppressing a whine. "Baby, please—" 

"You don't wanna join me?"

"You don't know what you're talking about. It's just the heat," Keigo tells himself more than you. "For the love of God, dove, stop talking—"

"But it hurts, Kei'." It’s a low blow, judging by the protective coo that escapes his lips. 

Fed up, he leans forward and swings his right leg over your hip, crawling atop you as if his body has a mind of its own, utterly bogged by desire and yanked like puppet strings.

With Keigo kneeling tall above you, the bodysuit of his hero costume hides absolutely nothing. The musculature is quite impressive, actually. Proof of his viability as a mate— all dominant and masculine and gorgeous.

And at this angle, you can see the most painful erection straining against his pants. 

"I need you, Kei'. I need— mmph!" 

A palm silences you; slapped down, hot, imposing, and heavy like a weight against your mouth. 

The authority of the action makes your cunt clench; and Keigo would die before he lets that feeling go to waste, so his hips drop down to grind once against it. 

Your eyes go wide, doughy and stunned, darting down in haste, following the trail of his thick bicep up toward the disciplinary scowl on his face. 

His nostrils flare with the heaving in his chest, eyes screwed shut with his last slivers of patience holding its grip on his psyche.

"One more word," he says, pulling his hand away. "One more word and I'm ripping this blanket off and fucking you raw." 

After a moment of silence, you speak.

"Please." 

Keigo is wordless when he unbuckles his belt and lets it— and his inhibitions— drop with a satisfying clink.

The reality of what you've gotten yourself into comes crashing down as it hits you how utterly fucked you are. The scaffolding of years of sexual tension comes crumbling down like bricks to rubble, a city of restraint reduced to pure, animalistic desire. 

Years of Keigo's eyes darting away when you nonchalantly change into your uniform in front of him, even though he never seemed bothered by any of his other peers doing the same; years of you both curling in on yourselves at the furthest edges of the bed you had to share, cramped close in those under-the-radar motels on stealth missions; years of the words "idiot, can I kiss you," held back by your lips as you watch Keigo moan when he sinks his teeth into his comfort restaurant's chicken teriyaki every stupid Friday night, sitting cross-legged and at home on the carpet of your apartment floor. 

Not a single word is exchanged as he pulls his cock free from its confines, nearly too thick for his fingers to meet when they wrap around it. He tosses the blanket to the side with haste, dragging your shirt (his shirt) up to your collar, exposing your chest when he lines his cock with your entrance. 

"Please, Kei'," you sniffle. "Hurts." 

"Oh, I know, baby... I know." His lips are pursed when he shushes you, tracing your cheek with his palm. "I'll make it go away."

When your lips meet, it's like static electricity; and it's entirely remorseless.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he groans against your mouth, dragging his length along your sticky thighs before plopping the thick of it atop your soaked cunt. 

"You're so wet for me," he reveres in awe, dragging the plump tip through your mess to get it slick enough to rub against your clit. 

Your rutting hips buck with impatience in an attempt to glide his length against your swollen pussy, but that only serves to fuel his desire; and those desperate little whines only feed into his insatiable need to fuck, to breed you until you're silent. 

Until you shut the fuck up. 

Those pathetic little sounds are music to his ears, a siren's song that used to play only in his most shameful fantasies; the ones that kept his fist tight around his cock the moment he returned home after missions, the sight of you panting and spitting blood after battle with a smile on your face still fresh in his memory. 

Keigo wants to hear you moan. 

But his rut needs to fuck you wordless with satisfaction. 

"Oh, fuck," he hitches, shifting his hips back and forth to the tune of the audible shlicks below. Unable to stay upright any longer, his chest falls flush into yours in a rut-afflicted haze, rutting against you like animals. 

When he slips his cock inside, it's with a kiss to muffle his voice.

And he wastes no time setting a punishing pace, aided nicely by the slickness that coats the sides of his cock. The legs of the couch surely must be scraping indents into the floorboards, judging by the creaks that mingle with the sounds of his belt buckle at every thrust. You'd notice if either of you were lucid enough to care. 

It's a brief consideration of a possibility of an afterthought, like a sheepish voice behind a roaring crowd. 

Pulling out, that is. 

Yeah, if he were a stronger man, he could probably will his hips to stall. There's a chance someone far stronger than him would hiss when he does it. His cock would weep in denial of that sweet, velvet entanglement, dripping out in the cold when he fists himself to completion mere inches away from what might as well be the center of his goddamn universe.

But when it comes to you, when it comes to his rut, Keigo is not a strong man.

He allows his cock to throb in the vice of your cunt, instead.

"God, baby," he moans into your neck, wings flapping once, twice with each thrust, shedding a few feathers before straightening out and grazing the ceiling behind his back. "Baby. Oh, baby. You're so tight. You're so— fuck!"

He's babbling, but so are you. Legs hooked across the small of his back, you bump your hips as best you can to aid in his efforts; and with your last shreds of lucidity, you decide for the both of you how things will end. 

With watery lashes, you open your eyes enough to blink away some tears and clear your vision just enough. Your gaze crawls up his legs that are still clothed to the thighs, peeking over the curvature of his ass and up his shuddering spine— all to mark onto your scarlet red prize.

When you entangle your fingers into the downy feathers at the base of his wings, it shoots straight to his cock and he spills.

With eyes wide open and a strangled choke at the back of his throat, Keigo's hips stutter when he empties himself. With every throb comes another rope from the tip, sticky and excessive from the rut, mixing with your wetness as you crash over the edge soon after.

When the ringing in your ears ceases and you finally come to, it's to the sight of your now probably-more-than-a-work-partner pulling out and staring between your legs as if under a trance, eyes glimmering.

"Kei', you okay?"

"Uh huh," he answers absentmindedly, utterly transfixed on the mess he made. 

It's strange, he thinks. Whatever urges his rut transcribed into cravings, every instinct that tugged at the avian etched in his DNA and called him to fill you pales in comparison to the satisfaction of having indulged himself at last.

His eyes flick back to meet yours.

"Does this mean I can kiss you at work now?" 

You snort. So that's where his mind goes in the end.

"It means a whole lot more than that," you say, rolling you both over so he lands square on his back.

[punchablelunchable]

Harry takes the steps two at a time, but Draco takes them one at a time at lightning speed

Draco gets tattoos but Harry gets piercings (Luna does most of them)

Draco says babe and baby but Harry says love

Draco loves when Harry wears crop tops but Harry loves it when Draco wears Muggle suits

Draco has to be practically forced to share his trauma but Harry brings his up casually bc he thinks it's normal

Tall Draco and top Harry

Draco becomes the potions professor and Harry becomes the DADA professor

Draco can't stay asleep but Harry can't fall asleep

Draco's love language is acts of service (followed by words of affirmation) but Harry's is gift giving (followed by physical touch)

Draco runs but Harry weight lifts (both think the others build and ability is extremely hot)

[revasserium]

had me at hello

todoroki shouto; 4,082 words; fluff, tiny sprinkle of angst, no "y/n", summer camp, canon-divergent, domestic fluff, teeth-rotting fluff, summer-time romance, self-indulgent as all living fuck

summary: nothing lasts forever, not even goodbye. or, in which todoroki shouto discovers that summer flings really aren't his thing

a/n: chat we are SO back. back on this todoroki brain rot GRIND!!! and as opposed to posting at the last possible second for @pixelcafe-network's challenge friday like i did last time, i'm posting mine first this time to make up for it! the theme was "saying goodbye to a summer love" ♡⸜(˶˃ ᵕ ˂˶)⸝♡

It was to be a whirlwind summer, one that’s different from every one that came before it. Todoroki had thought, naively, that summer training camp would end up being just that — just another summer thing.

And he’d never been fond of the heat.

But you — you’d swept in like the rain, all bluster and brilliant, summer-thunder laughter. You struck across his storm-ridden skies like a spark of lightning, setting all his forests ablaze.

At first, he didn’t think much of it. Didn’t think much of the volunteers that the Pussycats had brought along to help around camp. Groupies, he’d dismissed, and thought of it no more. But the first night everyone came back, exhausted and sore and sweating in places they’d never thought could produce sweat, you’d been there along with the others (he doesn’t remember their names now, but he remembers yours), passing around cold water and setting up the food for dinner.

“Here,” you hand him a water bottle; he dips his head, his chest still heaving from exertion. He twists off the cap and gulps down half the bottle, feeling a cool trickle escape the corner of his mouth to run down his chin. He wipes at it with the back of his hand just as you cast him a grin before turning around to hand another water bottle to Kirishima.

Todoroki swallows, his palms warm, watching as you laugh at something someone says. He lingers on the gloss in your hair and the ease of your smile. He wonders what kind of quirk you might have; he catches himself wondering, and then proceeds to wonder why he’s wondering at all.

He thinks it’s the heat — fanning himself, he looks away — glancing up at the smoldering sky before sighing and capping his water bottle.

“They must love you at school, huh?” you ask, your voice jolting him out of one reverie and into another. Dinner’s almost done, and he’d wandered toward the edge of the wood for a moment of quiet, of peace or sanctity. He hadn’t noticed you following him, and that in and of itself should have set his senses on high. But, the air is tepid and the humidity heavy, and Todoroki only has time to cock a single eyebrow before you smile and continue —

“Your quirk — keeps you cool in the summer, and warm in the winter. Useful, no?”

He watches you watching him, your eyes huge and full of the dancing flames. He looks back towards the rest of his classmates, all chatting and laughing, grouped loosely with one another, Ashido flitting from one group to the other like the social butterfly she is.

“It’s alright,” Todoroki answers, surprising even himself. He drops his eyes, fixing his gaze on a point just above his own feet before you laugh, the sound drawing his attention back towards you.

“You’re not a very good liar, but that’s okay. It’s not a bad thing.”

You shoot him another grin.

“Your quirk,” he says, clearing his throat slightly as he feels a distinct heat prickling up the sides of his neck, “can I ask what it is?”

You list your head to one side, your expression curiously blank. Before you shoot him a smile that can only be called devious.

You nudge him with an arm before dancing away, but that momentary contact is all you’d needed. Todoroki feels his whole body relax, feels some of the tension drop from his shoulders, the strange nervousness that had been coiling in his stomach unclench.

“Guess!”

Someone calls your name from over your shoulder.

“Coming!”

You give him one final wink before dashing off, leaving him dazed, head reverberating as if someone had rung him through like a bell on a Sunday morning.

The weeks had passed in a strange blur after that, as if some vengeful giant had gone stomping through his memories, dragging a large hand across the vivid scenes, smearing the colors and scrambling the timelines. He remembers the ever-present ache in his muscles, the eternal shortness of breath that had accompanied the first few weeks, but he also remembers your presence in the evenings — always in the evenings, the shadow of you flickering around each and every one of his classmates, mostly asking about their days, but sometimes placing a comforting hand here or there.

He remembers your touch well, the gentle anchor of it, the immediate relief.

“Your quirk… it has something to do with feelings, doesn’t it?” he asks one night, a towel draped around his shoulders from a recent shower, his hair still damp in the early evening dark.

You flash him an enigmatic smile, swinging your feet as you turn your head back towards the liquid moonlight casting pale shadows along the edges of the summer-still leaves.

“What makes you say that?”

“Just…” Todoroki joins you, letting his arm brush along yours, his eyes following your gaze as he too sweeps the now empty campgrounds, the remnants of the barbeque fires still smoldering in their pits, the smoke twisting towards the cloudless sky like so many misty-tendrilled streams.

“Had a feeling.”

“A feeling, huh?” you echo, laughing softly, looking back down.

Todoroki doesn’t push you, but you don’t deny it either.

“You’re not wrong,” you say, after a brief moment of silence, “my quirk — it’s not offensive, or even defensive but… if I’m touching someone, I can… siphon their feelings into me,” and as if to demonstrate, you gently press your leg to his, and Todoroki feels the tired wariness drain from him, the feeling of ease trickling through him like hot water cascading down his skin.

He stifles a soft groan, feeling a blush press up against his cheeks.

You move your leg away, leaning back till your head is resting against the back of the park bench, poised at the edge of the large encampment.

“But that’s…” Todoroki searches for the right word — somehow ‘useful’ doesn’t seem quite right.

“No, you’re right,” you say, giggling even as you save him the necessity of finishing his sentence, “it’s a good quirk to have. It’s… necessary.”

But the way you say that word sounds a little too much like heartbreak for Todoroki to ignore.

“You said siphon…” he says, after a brief stretch of quiet, and he tastes the word on his tongue as if saying it for the first time.

“Yeah, that’s right,” you say, and longing is too close a friend of his for him not to notice it threaded through your voice like a secret.

“Which means… whatever you take from the person you’re touching… you have to feel it too, right?”

You lick your lips, your eyes flickering down to your hands, palms open.

“Yes.”

It’s a simple answer, but one that lands with a gut-punch of implication. Todoroki swallows, shifting ever so slightly to let his knee rest against yours. He tries his hardest to focus on calmness, to project relief. You turn to flash him a smile.

“You’re sweet,” and he hadn’t meant to blush, hadn’t meant for his heart to kick up like a drumbeat, but does. And he knows, instinctively, that you’d felt it too — passing through from his skin to yours by some strange glitch of nature.

He makes to pull away, but you reach out to rest a hand on his arm.

And almost instantly, he feels his heartbeat calm, feels the heat receding. But it isn’t like before — it isn’t the feeling of having something leave his body, but rather having something pressed in. Like a warm blanket settling over his shoulders, or a cold hand to ward off unwanted heat. Your calm seeps into him like summer rain, cooling his mind until he’s breathing steady.

He blinks down at you, startled.

“It goes both ways,” you say, and he can see the twin glow of warmth high in your cheeks. He spares a moment wondering if that blush had once belonged to him, if you were just holding onto it for a bit longer before letting it go. You move your hand away and he has to fight down the urge to pull it back.

“Oh,” is the only thing he can think of to say.

You are everywhere after that — perhaps not in the physical sense, but Todoroki seems to have lost the ability to not notice you. Or maybe he’s just gained the ability to — to what? Develop a crush? Is that even what this is? He doesn’t know — he’s never had one before to compare it to.

But he can’t help now how instantly his attention snags on the sound of your voice, like a stray thread on a mesh-wire fence, or how an unshakable shiver traces down his spine whenever you’re near. He feels childish, like he did when he was too little to control his quirk. But he’d learned since then, hadn’t he?

Hadn’t he?

“It’s all just hormones!” he overhears Ashido say to Uraraka one night, the girls all clustered together on a single long sofa, limbs against limbs, cheeks pillowed on shoulders, a careless sort of closeness threading them all together. Todoroki’s never thought himself a jealous person, but watching them now, he wonders what it might be like to be able to touch a person with little to no thought at all, for it all to be second nature.

Uraraka blushes something furious, crinkling her nose.

“I — I don’t know…”

“I’m pretty sure whatever Mineta-chan is feeling can’t just be explained by hormones,” Asui says, her eyes huge and dark even as Ashido rolls her eyes.

“Maybe not just hormones, but that’s a large part of it!” Ashido insists.

Dangling on the side of the sofa, one foot tapping to music only she can hear, Jiro glances over and shrugs.

“Boys are weird.”

The girls all make varying sounds of agreement, and Todoroki forces his feet to move, thankful for the thick slab of shadow that had kept him from view of the general common area. He stares ahead as he walks down the long length of hallway, wondering if hormones really are the culprit behind whatever the hell this is.

The grueling days bleed into sweat-slick weeks, and somehow, he finds himself seeking you out more and more often. Sometimes after a particularly hard training session, under the guise of needing some “help” recovering (it had come out that Recovery Girl couldn’t make it so the Pussycats had volunteered you as the next best thing), sometimes without any reason at all, other than the simple want of your company.

He finds himself laughing, finds himself reaching for you — and he blames it on the weather, blames it on the tiredness now eternally sunk into his muscles, the soreness that won’t ever quite go away. He tells himself that it’s just a summer thing, to feel so hot that he gets lightheaded, to laugh until his stomach hurts, to feel the inexplicable itch to graze your hand with his when you’re sitting too close and not nearly close enough.

Thinking back, he’d known it would never last. You’d told him early on that you don’t live in the city. But that it’s not too far, if ever he wanted to visit.

“Camp’ll be over in a few weeks,” you say, lying back on a patch of sun-dried grass, beneath a swirling canopy of stars, Todoroki sitting beside you, his arms propping up his torso as he stares up at the sky alongside you.

“Yeah. I’m surprised it’s been so peaceful,” he says.

You laugh, shooting him a curious look.

“Used to getting in trouble?”

“There… seem to be a few of my classmates that attract trouble. Of all kinds.”

“I don’t mind a bit of trouble.”

“Don’t you?”

You grin up at him as he glances down at you.

“Not one bit.”

You feel him shifting as he lies down next to you, your elbows brushing in the grass. He feels a jolt of electricity snake up his arm, coiling in the base of his belly. For a second, he wonders if its a him-feeling, or a you-feeling. And then, he realizes that it doesn’t really matter — and before he knows it, he’s twisting to his side, leaning over just far enough to press his lips to yours.

In the grand scheme of kisses, Todoroki thinks that it might not have been the most well-positioned kiss, or the most well thought-out. And for all everyone calls him genius, this is one thing he’s never really had the chance to practice. Still, by the time he realizes that he’s kissing you, he barely has the chance to reconcile with the fact that you’re kissing him too. You, pressing up against him and pulling him down all at once.

His lips on yours, and yours on his — an endless echo of this kiss, and this kiss, and just this kiss. He feels his heartbeat like a reverberation, because he thinks he can feel yours too. He loses feeling in all his limbs, and wonders briefly if this is what free-falling might be like — to feel weightless, to be lifted outside of yourself.

You reach up to press a hand to his cheek, and he feels himself being shunted back into his body. He feels each of his limbs like discovering them for the very first time — his fingers tangled in your hair, his other arm wrapped tightly around your waist, pulling you in, holding you close. He does not remember pulling away. But he must have, because he remembers gasping for a breath he’s long since lost to the heave of your lungs.

He feels fire, and ice, and the spinning song of a million overhead stars.

“Is this — are you —” he struggles for words but you just smile.

“I don’t know — sometimes when I’m too —” you swallow, a bit breathless yourself, the head-thrumming heat of it all passing between the pair of you like a whisper, or a secret, “when I’m too excited I — I’ll accidentally make someone else feel it too but —”

You look back up to catch his eyes, and he finds himself smiling.

“It’s not just you,” he says, quiet and sure. Because this, whatever this is, is more than just a quirk — more than just the accidental bleeding of feelings from one body to another. More than simple empathy — it’s entropy.

A chaos of feelings.

Because he’d felt it bubbling inside him, alone at night, staring up at the moon-slatted ceiling. Wondering what it might be like to hold your hand.

And maybe this is what Ashido had been talking about — with hormones and urges and all the woes that come with being a teenage boy. But he doesn’t care; there’s time to worry about that later. For now, he thinks he’d just like to kiss you again.

And so, he does.

Time passes by strangely after that — and though neither of you had intended on it, the budding relationship between the pair of you had become a known secret. No one had ever called it out by name, but no one questions Todoroki either when he wanders off after dinner. No one blinks twice when you press a hand to the back of his neck after morning drills, smiling when he lets out a soft, pleased sigh.

Even years later, Todoroki can’t quite piece together the exact timeline of things. He remembers the late nights, staying up just to talk to you, wandering through the woods, you jumping at a rabbit or a squirrel, and him slipping his hand through yours with a silent reassurance. He remembers telling you about himself — even though he doesn’t remember you asking. About his father, his mother, his siblings, his scar.

He remembers how you’d reached out and held his anger and sorrow and resentment in your upturned palms, how you cradled them like bruised fruit, with delicate fingers and a smile that looked not one bit like pity. How you did not run.

He remembers you telling him about your childhood too, of your quirk being used and abused by careless adults and ruthless children alike. Of how your parents had used you as one might use a bad therapist, like a dumping ground for unwanted emotions. Of how you learnt to deal with the unbearable weight of all those feelings — things that a little girl should never have to learn how to deal with on her own.

He remembers how you held him and he held you, and how you both had allowed yourselves to hold and be held by each other.

But what he remembers most is the ending — the last night of camp, when he knew he’d be leaving the next morning. All the bags are packed, and they’d all come out stronger. It had been an uneventful, tiring sort of camp, where nothing happened except daily training, but for a class full of teens with super-human powers and the uncanny ability to attract life-threatening situations, it could be called a resounding success.

“Excited to be going back to school?” you ask.

He watches you drag a pale pink nail polish over your fingers, one by one, blowing on each finger as you smooth out the color with steady swipes.

“I guess so. We have provisional license exams coming up, so I doubt we’ll get much rest after this.”

“Aww… but I guess no one ever said becoming a hero was an easy thing, right?” you laugh, tossing him a good-natured wink.

He sighs, leaning back against the wall of your camp room.

“Nothing worth having is ever easy.”

“Hm…” you hum, finishing off your manicure and carefully screwing the brush back into the nail polish bottle.

Todoroki turns to find you frowning slightly at your nails.

“What’s wrong?”

“Just…” you press your hands carefully into your lap, “it got me thinking — this was… easy, wasn’t it?”

And he doesn’t have to ask what you’d meant by this. Because he knows. And with a jolt, he realizes that yes. This was easy. It was so easy, being with you, in this secluded place. So easy to laugh without worrying about the outside world, to forget, if only for a while.

Easy to kiss you, to hold you, to push away the thoughts of tomorrows and endings until — well.

“Yeah…” Todoroki breathes, “I guess… I guess it was.”

Silence blooms between you like a plume of smoke.

“But… I mean,” you say, waving your hands through the air to help your nails along, before slumping back into your pillows, “it was never going to be forever, right?”

And this time, Todoroki can’t quite tell if you’re talking about this or perhaps — he can’t help the tiny bead of hope coalescing in his chest — a future where your goodbye is the thing that doesn’t last forever.

“No,” he answers, allowing himself a small smile as he looks down at his own hands, “nothing really ever is.”

You giggle, rolling over to peer at him from your stomach, “You’re so serious.”

But by the time he lifts his head, you’d already crawled over to press your lips to his. It’s a sweet kiss, a simple kiss, and Todoroki feels his chest seize inside him, his arms going heavy with a liquid weight. When you pull away, he notices your eyes are fractured with tears. You wipe them away with a laugh.

“Look at me — I’m so silly.”

Todoroki shakes his head, reaching out to cup your cheeks gently between his hands, the way you’d taught him to with his own jagged emotions. And he feels it then, your sadness, your uncertainty, the stomach-twisting knowledge of endings.

“The beginning might’ve been easy but… this isn’t.”

You hiccup, going still as he holds you.

“So… I guess we were worth it after all, huh,” you say, looking down at the space between you.

Todoroki nods, leaning forward just enough to press his forehead to yours, nudging your nose with his for a second before bringing you in for yet another kiss. He pulls away and tastes salt on his lips.

“That’s how we know — because the ending is hard. That’s how we know it was worth it.”

When the next morning comes, you don’t cry when you wave them all off, though many of the girls are. You catch his gaze and hold it for just a second longer than you’d done with anyone else. Beside him on the bus, Aoyama makes a soft, knowing kind of noise.

“Ah… first love is always such sweet despair,” he says, twinkling in his usual way.

Todoroki clears his throat, leaning back in his seat, a strange stillness settling over him as he thinks about the days ahead.

“Yeah, I suppose it is,” Todoroki says, to Aoyama’s dramatic surprise. But he recovers quickly and begins a soliloquy about something or other that carries them all the way back into the city, and to their assigned dorms.

He never forgets you, though there are moments when he’d wonder if that summer had really happened. Years later, when the memories have all gone watercolor-pale, and the edges blurred with time, he’ll still find himself reaching into the part of his mind that feels like the soft, steady weight of your hand on the back of his neck to calm him down, the smooth of your skin as you’d pressed against him and held him close.

And then, the year that he turns 24, it happens — he’d been called out into a small town just outside Shizuoka, for some kind of event that Fuyumi swears would be good for his publicity (as if he needed any more). Even after all these years, it still unsettles him to travel alone to these places, and he subconsciously reaches for the feeling of your palm pressing to his skin.

“Shouto?”

He turns at the sound of his name, and though a part of him assumes it’s yet another adoring fan, the deepest, most honest part of him whispers that it isn’t — that he knows this voice.

“Oh… its you,” the words slip from him like pebbles into a thawing stream.

And there you are, standing feet from him, your arms full of groceries, a red and white muffler strung around your shoulders, looking every bit as brilliant as the you from his memories.

The smile that splits your face is beautiful as heartbreak.

“Well, someone very wise once did tell me that nothing lasts forever… not even goodbyes.”

Todoroki takes half a step closer to you, a smile spreading across his own lips as he reaches out to help you with your groceries, taking the bags into his arms. The movement as natural as coming home.

“Yes but… I was thinking about it the other day and —”

“Oh? Just the other day?” you tease, bumping him slightly with your elbow was you set off down the half-empty street. It’s almost sundown, and the days are getting shorter again. Your breath fogs up the air before you and Todoroki suddenly thinks that winter looks good on you.

Even better than summer had.

“Yeah, but I realized…” he says, casting his eyes up at the cloud-strewn sky, the colors fading fast, the thick velvet of night inching up across the world like a curtain being drawn.

He turns his eyes back towards you, only to find you watching him with an indulgent smile on your face.

Todoroki blushes, feeling suddenly bashful, like the teenage boy he was when you two first met.

“I realized,” he says again, determined to finish his thought this time, “that when we first met… we never really said hello.”

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[artuurle]

"who knows if i draw them like this again" - says the person who immediately draws them like this even more (and a godpoke as a treat) . shut upppppp

[cowsabungus]

Quirks/personality traits to give ur OCs based on my parents

Step mum:

- fills out every survey form after a flight, hotel stay, restaurant, even getting her windshield wipers changed

- wears sandals, even when it's pouring with rain

- cries at every single gift she gets on Mother's Day, xmas and birthdays

- washes the dishes just to put them in the dishwasher

- collects magnets from every place she's ever been

- what isn't in her purse?

- pronounces only the word "restaurant" like french people do (we're English)

- has a shelf full of books she hasn't read and doesn't plan on reading

Dad:

- is mildly allergic to the sun

- loves kids cartoons (SpongeBob) and religiously quotes them

- sarcastically says "oh how we laughed" when reminiscing on negative experiences

- feeds the dogs at the dinner table despite being told again and again not to do that

- randomly has scratches on his arms all the time

- hates polo shirts

- left the army because they were "too bossy"

- doesn't like most vegetables

Hope that helps

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Quirks, Habits & Mannerisms

Character Quirks - the memorable little things about a character’s personality that make them charming, endearing, weird, or unique. A quirk is anything worth describing about a character that makes them stand out, like certain speech patterns (a character who mumbles), or behavioral tics (someone who can’t make eye contact). Quirks can also be a character’s clothing, the way they smell, or whether they use their left hand or if they’re ambidextrous. Little quirks or idiosyncrasies can humanize a character—or at the very least, make them interesting.

Character Habits - the patterns of behavior exhibited by characters either involuntarily or in response to other stimuli. For example, a character who can’t stop winking when they get nervous, or someone who always smokes a cigarette with their morning coffee. Habits are often repeated under specific circumstances, or in some cases incorporated into a character’s routine. Good habits can reveal things about your character, like someone who always cleans their house before company arrives can be a stickler for neatness and presentation. However, bad habits can also be especially powerful, as they expose certain flaws about your characters, paving the way for growth and development.

Character Mannerisms - a character’s unconscious individual gestures, affectations, or other distinctive behavioral traits. Characters’ mannerisms can indicate particular aspects about them. For example, someone who is always slouching may perpetually lack confidence, or a character is always squinting because they’re too prideful to admit they need glasses. Mannerisms can help your audience tell your fictional characters apart from one another, giving them their own identity. They can also help your characters feel more three-dimensional, like people you’ve met in real life.

Tips for Using Quirks, Habits, and Mannerisms for Writing Realistic Characters

Quirks, habits, and mannerisms can be so useful for writers to incorporate during the character creation process. Whether your focus is writing a novel or short stories, little aspects of a character’s personality can help make them feel layered and real, strengthening the connection and empathy your audience has with them.

Make a list. Write your own list of quirks, habits, and mannerisms. Think about the people you know. Which family members are introverts? Who is always the life of the party? Do they say any specific things or behave in a particular way that indicates these aspects of their personalities? Think of a character you’ve read about in a book or seen in a TV show or movie—what were their strengths? What were their foibles? Also, consider complete strangers you’ve passed on the street. Which ones do you remember, and why?

Ask yourself why. If you’ve thought of a list of character traits you find interesting, consider why those particular ones stood out to you. Why do you want to give your character a weird sneeze? Why is it important that they’re vegan? Why you want to use a trait and its effect on personality are two important things to be cognizant of when building your own characters.

Show, don’t tell. Use quirks, habits, and mannerisms to say more about your characters than words can. You don’t have to tell your readers that your protagonist always feels awkward when he enters a crowded room—show them he feels that way by putting it into his movement. Instead of normally walking into the room, the character always shuffles meekly, or has to give themselves a pep-talk before entering. Descriptions like these can paint a more vivid picture of both the scene and your character for audiences.

Consider your setting. If you’re writing a piece that takes place in the 1990s, your main character isn’t going to check their cell phone constantly, or use certain types of modern slang. Make sure the behaviors and habits you incorporate into your character development line up with the time period or setting you’ve established.

Don’t overdo it. In fiction writing, a good combination of quirks can help create more memorable characters by including small things that make them charming, endearing, weird, or unique. However, overloading your character descriptions with these traits will have the opposite effect, and make them feel ungrounded and unrelatable. Quirks, habits, and mannerisms should be used sparingly, and only to enhance the character as a whole. If your character walks with a limp, has a catchphrase, wears ugly clothes, speaks with a stutter, and considers their stuffed animal their best friend, they will seem like a complete caricature to your audience. Characters shouldn’t need an overload of gimmicks to be memorable, just a few specific details that help bring them to life in a natural and interesting way.

Avoid clichés. Nothing makes a character feel less realistic than an adherence to unbelievable and tired tropes. If you want to develop unique characters, go against the grain. The gruff character with the eyepatch might be the nicest person in the neighborhood, or the clumsy girl-next-door might actually be a serial killer. Even if you’re experiencing writer’s block, don’t rely on clichés. Instead, think of all the basic ways characters have been portrayed throughout and go in the opposite direction.

Try writing prompts. Character writing prompts can help you imagine new combinations of traits to give to your characters. A prompt can force you to think outside the box you’ve built for your character, putting them in other situations and seeing how they behave. This can help draw out features of the character that you hadn’t thought of yet, while also expanding your character writing skills.

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[szilverer]

y'know... for a setting that places so much importance in Language and does so many ice cool things playing with it (Correspondence/Discordance, Parabola & Irem, etc) i think there's a bit of a missed opportunity when it comes to the terms and words people use in their day to day life... like for example:

do you think radical revolutionaries would avoid words like "enlightening" in their vocabulary and flip them for LON-appropriate counterparts to signal their beliefs?

like substituting the word "light" with "blight". lol

similarly, pet names relating to light like "sunshine" kinda have a whole extra flavour tied to them, leaning into nostalgia, melancholy and/or danger depending on the people using it. irony, even

"honey" as a pet name also has extra connotations now and might actually bother some people instead due to the association with the drug...

do you think SMEN, taboo as it is, and seeking being a recognizable phenomenon even to the common londoner, would spawn swear words and insults? (imagine the weight of telling someone to Go Seek or Fall Down a Well)

the word "well" itself. well as an adverb, interjection, adjective. just. think about it. think about what it represents. idk something is happening to this word for sure

[flowerbloom-arts]

The Helen brainrot is real.......