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

[ellenel13.livejournal.com]

Her descriptions of eyes always annoyed me.

[lannamichaels]

Semi OT: but do people notice eyes that much? This bothers me in Harry Potter as well. "He looks exactly like James, but he has Lily's eyes." I mean, wtf? Do people really notice and remember people's eyes that much? I do not understand this.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Maybe if someone has really, REALLY

[easol.livejournal.com]

Shit. Let me try again. Damn "enter" button.

Maybe if someone has really, REALLY pretty eyes that are large or unusual in some way. My brother used to always get comments on how gorgeous his eyes were. And occasionally you have someone like Jackie O.

But normally I don't think so....

[lannamichaels]

Yeah. The one person's eye color I've ever noticed was the girl I had a massive crush on. And I noticed it and still remember it because I spent long periods of time staring at her face. Very light blue... *pines*

[moonsinger.livejournal.com]

Depends on the person. I notice eyes and eye color is a very important physical feature for me. If an author doesn't tell me the eye color; I hate it.

[clover-elf-kin.livejournal.com]

A friend asked me what color my at-the-time-girlfriend's eyes are, once. Me: (LONG pause) "...gray." Next time I saw her I had to check to make sure I was right... XD Miraculously, yes I was.

-clicks through address book to test self- As for other friends, I have no clue on most of them. My default guess is "brown", for some reason, second to "gray". Oh noes, my friends have boring eye colors!

Although come to think of it, ask me about the eye color of one of my characters, and I'll probably know the answer without thinking too hard. Mind, the answer is almost never more than one word...

[lannamichaels]

I know my BFF has hazel eyes because there was a big drama when she had to put it down and she wasn't sure they were brown.

My eyes change color depending on lighting/what I'm wearing. Maybe I don't notice it because my eyes can't make up their fricking minds and so I don't consider it that important? *ponders* I honestly do not know what color my eyes are. I just know that my driver's license is wrong half the time.

My characters are easy. Most have black eyes. Then again, they are mostly vampires and the black eyes thing for vampires is part of the universe, so... oh, wow, I should just delete this entire reply. I completely lose at life. :p

[othellia.livejournal.com]

My eyes change color depending on lighting/what I'm wearing.

Perhaps you have hazel eyes too. Then again, to me hazel is synonymous with "other." How else do you explain eyes that are blue when you're little, mostly green, brown, or green/brown now, but occasionally change back to gray and slate blue from time to time.

And a bit more random, but I thought most stereotypical vampires had red eyes... (Mine have a high chance of having blue eyes, but I don't think they really count as "vampires" anymore.)

[easol.livejournal.com]

Sounds hazel to me. My brother change from greenish to brownish when he changes clothes, and depending on the light.

I used to have hazel eyes, and I just put down "brown." Nobody really checks that stuff unless you're buying coloured contacts. :)

[lannamichaels]

Nope, mine hang out in the blue to green spectrum.

As for the vamps, no, not red eyes. This thing came about after I had to walk home for a half hour on a very sunny day after getting my pupils dilated. Oh, the pain, and that was with sunglasses. I decided to explain the vampires' aversion to sunlight is that they have huge pupils and black irises. So, you know, they won't look like freaks who just got their pupils dilated even in the middle of the night. Although I suppose I could give them light eyes and have people go "oh my fucking god, their pupils are huge! o.O"

[othellia.livejournal.com]

Haha. I thought the same thing when I got my pupils dilated a few years ago. Of course, as soon as I realized I felt like a vampire, I decided to make the most out of the situation. Except, even though they have big pupils, they still maintain their original iris color. And then this other subrace, with an entirely different set of complications, can adjust to light somewhat. Their pupils just contract over a hundred times slower than a human's, and they'd still probably only be able to tolerate a partly-cloudy day before they had to switch to sunglasses... but they can re-dilate and adjust to sudden darkness extremely fast. And then there's this other race, but their pupils are extremely small instead of...

... I'll just stop now. XD

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

I just recently realized that my friend of eight years has brown eyes. (She's a redhead; I assumed they were blue.) I also realized, I think this year, that my MOTHER of, uh, more than thirty years has eyes that are slightly lighter than mine.

In my defense, I am black -- in my whole entire childhood and youth, it was an issue maybe twice. (I have a baby cousin with blue eyes. Go fig. ^___^)

I notice cheekbones, shape of facial features, and stride/body carriage.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

I find that really interesting, because the one group of people I can categorically state the eye colours of are my family - I have so many recessive genes (blue eyes, left-handed) that I spent a lot of time as a kid categorising "where I got [trait] from".

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

LOL -- we did some trait categorizing too. I know I've got my mom's face shape, but my dad's nose and magically disappearing upper lip (when I smile), that sort of thing. There is a particular butt that only one segment of my family has... :-D It's just the color analysis never goes very far.

[sandit.livejournal.com]

I notice eyes a lot because I've been four-eyed in one capacity or another for 22 years, and I think eyes become that much more important to a lot of us folks who've had to wear glasses.

[electra310.livejournal.com]

I think in the Harry case, the people who had known his parents were specifically looking for family resemblances. When you really look at the child of someone you know, you can usually pick out a couple of features that remind you of the parents, even if it's more a creative re-envisioning.

But the "tri-colored rings of smoke and ice and smoke-covered ice with little sparkly lightning bolts in them and big long eyelashes and just a touch of pretty, pretty eyeshadow" thing that LKH does makes me wanna hurl.

[easol.livejournal.com]

You forgot the dancing unicorns in her pupils and gold-plated tear ducts.

Seriously, "tri-coloured"? Did she see someone who has a darker ring in their iris (I have one, so do lots of people) and decide that she could do better?

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

God, yes, especially in the Merry Gentry books. By the end of one, the phrase "tri-colored" has lost all meaning for me.