#. a collection of little personality quirks i find endearing, intriguing, or strange. inspiration taken from life, other stories, and myself. for ideas for my ocs

• finding silence to be deeply unsettling & uncomfortable
• stealing & shoplifting things from gas stations, little corner stores, antique shops, etc for others
• giving everybody they meet a weird nickname
• wearing clothing with vulgar (or strange) insults on them
• always wearing mismatched socks or shoes
• making spotify playlists with uber-specific, long titles
• knows how to pick all sorts of locks
• writing notes or poems on their skin or an item of clothing
• keeping a collection of all the fortunes they get from fortune cookies
• using internet jargon & slang in everyday speech
• always having a pencil/pen behind their ear
• bedroom walls full of sticky note reminders they forgot to take down
• wearing their earbud strings weirdly (twisting around their ear?)
• tying slipknots with their earbuds as a nervous habit
• speaks in fonts and formatting and other typography shit. like just deadass says “LET’S GO FUCK SHIT UP helvetica size 64 semi-bold”
• swearing in ice cream flavors
• tasting the chapstick on their lips immediately after applying it
• leaves just one specific fingernail untrimmed
• constantly speaks in psychology jargon. bursts out at the worst times. like hears someone say something in a Very Tense Situation (the tension could literally be cut with a knife) and interrupts, “omg wait that’s your tertiary Fe!!! or maybe that could be shadow Fi-Ne. oh but maybe - are you in a Ne-Fe loop? haven’t considered the aux Ti... HOLD ON LET ME GET OUT MY NOTES”
• naming their clothes, belongings, etc
• having lucky clothing (underwear is a good one)
• has pockets of their coat stuffed to the brim in random shit. you’ll probably find a whole mini book in there.
• describes colors in intense detail (will never just say “red”)
• speaking in haiku
• always keeps a pack of tic tacs on them to share with others
• randomly dyes their hair with kool-aid
• owning 20 of the same item of clothing; never wearing anything else - it’s almost like they never change
• always tying their scarf a certain way
• walking up/down stairs two at a time
• rather specific but this touched my heart: whispering to your sister, in the dark, right before you fall asleep, “take off your mask.” you don’t need to wear it anymore around me. rest.
• sitting in chairs weirdly: backwards with both legs around the back of the chair, etc etc
• keeping a collection of something (preferably strange, or just cute): like having a charm from everyplace they’ve been.... or socks, why not socks? seashells? ...a napkin from every restaurant?
• skips instead of walking
• always has a ketchup packet or some shit in their pocket
• balances things on their head to hold them
• creating fictional lives for random passersby on the street
• taking photos of everything they find pretty
• always looks slightly annoyed (rbf)
• using dark mode on every website
• has stickers all over their laptop cover
• interrupts themselves when they speak
• opens the same few tabs every time they open the computer
• has 30 tabs open on their computer at once
• knowing the etymology of every single word ever
• quoting philosophers constantly in everyday speech
• speaking in riddles.... literally
• always giving either very short or very long answers to questions; nothing in between
• always falling into daydreams
• lots of doodling on their hand
• makes references to nerdy things in their speech
• mindlessly writing song lyrics on their school handouts
• giving valentines to everybody, every year
• always ordering the same dessert/food/etc
• never is seen without chewing gum
• always picks truth/dare
• lists/ranks everything ever
• taking leadership as quickly as possible because everyone else is incompetent lmao
• working for 15 hours straight... productivity paralysis
• computer is full of detailed, well-organized spreadsheets about literally anything & everything
• doesn’t know how to tie their shoelaces
• bites into their ice cream (noooo)
• collecting sea glass or seashells or something... has jars of sand from every beach they’ve ever been to?
• always drinking hot or cold water
• making their hot cocoa with water/milk (one or the other)
• eating shrimp a certain way . . . like a v specific way that shows their personality (do they eat the whole thing, do they peel the skin-ish part off or do they just eat it whole lmao... etc)
• speaks in a certain musical note/can identify musical notes in others’ speaking
• identifies musical notes in random everyday sounds (like the shaver, or the hairdryer, or the whirring of the computer...)
• handwriting is in comic sans
• writing speech in the air (or like. extra notes to somebody, tone tags (i do this by accident), subtext, etc)
• creating punctuation with their hands
• wearing socks with math equations on them
• says “sorry excuse me” when they bump into a chair
• draws stickmen in the condensation all over car windows
• bites hard candy and/or doesn’t bite soft candy (why)
• washes their hands way too often (haha calling me out)
• hoards random pieces of food in a mini backpack and has no idea when they expire (safety hazard)
• utterly specific - but: sets up an entire chess board outside on the city streets (at a public sitting area, or in the park); all day, they sit there & wait for someone to come up & challenge them. they offer “a huge prize” to whoever can defeat them. of course, they always win. Until. ???!!!! (insert story) (also this person is either ENTP or INTJ, nothing in-between. major 1L energy as well - LVEF?)
• makes little dishes with acorn cups & catches little bugs as the ingredients (@ my sister)
• actually pays for the premium gas
• speaks in anastrophes (reversing sentence structure: for ex, adjective after noun)
• aspiring plant mom but can’t keep their plants alive (@ me)
• collects paint samples from the department store
• collects white plastic knives from the school cafeteria
• buys strawberry-dip breadstick snacks and uses them as sugary lip gloss (aka: @ my childhood)
• collects a specific color of crayon. yellow dandelion, wild strawberry, cerulean
• organizes the shopping cart in a specific way so that all the fresh produce are in one section and leave just the right amount of space for the milk…