A recent wonderful BNHA fandom trope Iâve seen is people giving Hawks extra bird like traits. Talons/Nictitating Membranes/Nesting & Roosting Instincts/etc. All of them are great, but as someone who works with raptors, I would like to introduce you to a lesser known raptor trait: The Stress Grip.
Basically, raptors by and large have really powerful feet/talons. When they are stressed out/highly stimulated, they will attempt to grab/kill things with those talons. The problem is that raptors cannot relax their grip when they are stressed out/highly stimulated. They hold on to whatever they are grabbing until they get less stimulated/calm down enough to let go. Until then, whatever theyâve grabbed onto is theirs and good fucking luck getting it back.
Applying this to Hawks, when he gets really stressed out/really excited/super high stimulus, and something moves in his line of sight/touches him, heâll latch onto whatever it is and he physically cannot let go until he calms down. Doesnât matter what it is, doesnât matter if he wants to hold onto it or not. He cannot let go.
Sometimes, this is handy:
Grabbing people when theyâre falling.
Catching things thrown at him
Itâs really hard for people to wrestle things out of his hands once he has them.
Othertimes, this is The Absolute Worst:
Someone throws a Dangerous Object at him, and he catches it without thinking.
Dabi thought itâd be funny to sneak up on him. Now Hawks has a death grip on him and Cannot Let Go and also someone is about to come in the room.
Hawks gets too excited about something and just fucking latches onto the person next to him with no warning/regard for who that person is
He can pretty much only watch horror movies with Miruko because he needs someone who doesnât mind him death griping them the entire movie.
Hawks was in the LOV base at like 3 AM, tired and stressed out, and Tomura wasnât trying to sneak up on him, but oops. Now Hawks is latched onto the leader of the LOV who could kill him in a moment, which is making him panic more, which means he canât let go. Guess this is something they have to deal with now.
