See, the thing is? What *does* happen a lot is that people *perceive* a change in the color of someone's eyes when *their* mood changes. Like in that moment where the vaguely-cute-but-forgettable person you've been interacting with says or does something so heart-stoppingly wonderful that you wonder how you ever failed to notice... etc.
Nothing has actually *changed*, and we know that, but... we're seeing them differently.
The stuff you describe is one of the things fanfic picked up from romance novel conventions, and I can't help but think the romance novelists picked it up from, well, *that*. And it's a shorthand which has been useful, I suppose, but it means that we, as readers, miss out on a lot of perfectly good schmoopiness.
And all we get in return is "wait, wtf? Weren't his eyes BROWN a second ago?"
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See, the thing is? What *does* happen a lot is that people *perceive* a change in the color of someone's eyes when *their* mood changes. Like in that moment where the vaguely-cute-but-forgettable person you've been interacting with says or does something so heart-stoppingly wonderful that you wonder how you ever failed to notice... etc.
Nothing has actually *changed*, and we know that, but... we're seeing them differently.
The stuff you describe is one of the things fanfic picked up from romance novel conventions, and I can't help but think the romance novelists picked it up from, well, *that*. And it's a shorthand which has been useful, I suppose, but it means that we, as readers, miss out on a lot of perfectly good schmoopiness.
And all we get in return is "wait, wtf? Weren't his eyes BROWN a second ago?"