Verbal annoyances

[easol.livejournal.com]

Y'know, people often talk about LKH's unbelievable metaphors ("evil chocolate in your ice cream" or whatever the hell that was), her smells, her silly "gawth" names, or her tendency to describe in detail what every character is wearing. But I find that there are a lot of verbal tics that bother me just as much.

Edit -- Similes: It feels like LKH cannot go through a paragraph without at least one terrible and/or vague simile, even when a simile is not needed. "... the fire burned us both like a force of nature"? Yeah, way to kill the drama.

Shading: Note to LKH -- I do not care how many shades lighter X's eyes are than Y's, or how many shades darker their shirt is. What are you using, paint chips?

"... Across My Skin": Words cannot express how sick I am of this phrase.

"White Bread": I hate this with a passion. What the hell is wrong with just saying "Hispanic" or "black"?

Rude conversations: If you are going to have people talking about the heroine like she isn't even there, then write books in the third person. It's just annoying to have people dissecting Whorenita's emotions while she sits there and drools.

Well, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Does anyone else have 'em?

Comments

[easol.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, here's one I really hate -- "things."

I really hate this word without another word modifying it, because it's such a fundamentally useless word. That, and my grandma likes to walk into a room and order someone to "get the thing," then get irritable when people just stare.

And LKH uses it instead of REAL words, like "kill things," "things low in my body," etc. Perhaps I'm nitpicking, but it always implies to me that someone is too lazy to think up something even marginally more graceful. And it's kind of hard to decipher -- does she mean she wants to walk into a pet store and murder innocent puppies? Does she mean her butt muscles are tightening?

[bludflower.livejournal.com]

In the case of her being good at "killing things", I think she's just trying to be witty and clever and failing miserably.
*Boos LKH*