The X-haired, Y-eyed masses

[The Slovenly Urchin]

The other day I walked into a tavern and found it bustling--five or six PCs in addition to the usual NPC crowd. What struck me was that all of their sdescs followed this format, or something very close to it: all of them were either X-haired or Y-eyed, or both (X and Y usually being some very obscure word for a color.) My question is, can't we be a little more creative than this? The hyphenated construction has always struck me as a little awkward and banal, especially when used more than once in the same sdesc, and I see this everywhere on Arm. Combine that with the fact that in most cases it's just the eyes and hair being described, and you have a bunch of descs that look like they were stamped out of the same assembly line back at the factory. A bunch of thesaurus-eyed, thesaurus-haired men and women walking around. I don't even bother to look up some of these words.

I think I found the source of this nefarious trend, by the way:

http://www.dhorizon.org/characterBuilder/

That's a useful document, but it seems like it's being mined far more for its weird-ass color names than its suggestions about things to describe.

Anyway, the issue of arcane words being used in sdescs has been brought up before and debated to death, so I'll leave that alone. I think you can have unique keywords without resorting to words no one is likely to know (partly because funky keywords seem to be more the rule rather than the exception right now). But aside from that, I think people could stand to variegate the structure of their sdesc more, and make it actually interesting to read. Here are some ideas:

1) Instead of "the green-eyed man", "the man with green eyes". Instead of "the silver-tressed elf", "the elf with long silver tresses". The advantage of using the "with" construction is you can elaborate; try getting in the fact that those tresses are long AND silver using the hyphen construction. Just doesn't work.

2) Describe more than hair and eyes, for the love of Tek. Describe the bulbous nose, the sensual lips, the cleft chin, the pendulous earlobes, the multiple chins, the stooped or upright posture, the enormous or dainty feet, the ample bosom or sunken chest. You can find more examples in that link above. Describe them in the sdesc! Yes, these are all things you would mention in your main desc, but they can also be used in your sdesc! The sdesc should (ok, in my opinion) contain your character's most striking features, be a terse encapsulation of what stands out about them. If she's got some monster knockers, I want to see them, every time she does something!

3) Look for single words that give multiple pieces of information. Case in point: "brunette". Here's a word that communicates two things at once: brown hair, and femaleness. All without a hyphen! Holy crap! Single words that transmit a lot of information are way cool, and you should seek them out. Don't look down your nose at "brunette" just because you knew what it meant before you studied for the SAT. Trust me, your mystique will remain intact.

4) Does your character have a distinct smell? In a place like Zalanthas, where it's perpetually hot and there's no water to shower with, you can bet everyone is gonna have their own special reek. Your character might have particularly bad BO. Maybe they smell like rotten cabbage. Maybe they smell like spice, since they're smoking it all the time.  Maybe they smell of sweat and perfume, because they're a whore. Let's use the other senses a bit.

5) Use poetic license. Not everything has to be literal. You know that "cruel-eyed templar" in the 'nak bazaar? Now, look past the fact that the Lord Templar used a hyphen for a moment (he's a Templar, he's allowed to bend the rules.) What's great about his desc is the use of the word "cruel." It's not a color, it's not any literal characteristic of his eyes; it's the effect he produces, the chill that runs up your back when he looks at you. Words used poetically like this can really make for an eye-popping desc, and project your character's personality.

Well, that's all I can think of right now. Feel free to add more ideas, tear down mine, or vehemently reject the whole premise.

-The Slovenly Urchin

[Anonymous]

I think you can have unique keywords without resorting to words no one is likely to know

I find going bald to be a really neat way to have a unique keyword. MOST people have hair, it's unlikely there'll be too many bald chars in the game at the same time.

Instead of "the green-eyed man", "the man with green eyes".

Not a big fan of those. Mainly because the code sometimes changes the last word in your sdesc, so you'd be "the man with green templar" which makes no sense. I don't know if any items except the templar's robe changes your sdesc that way, but hey. You never know when you'll want/need to pass yourself off as a Templar (I would have done it in one HRPT if only I hadn't been a half-elf).

[Moofassa]

The reason i use puke boring sdescs like the pink-haired, pink-eyed man is that, in my opinion it is how I would think right off the top of my head. I percieve the words in the zalanthas to be my thoughts. That is what my character thinks in his head when he see's their character. When he see's a character with green eyed and shiny dark black hair, he sure as hell isn't going to think "oh hey, there's my forest-tinged, emerald haired friend with the ebony locks tinged with the slightest kiss of grease" haha. no. so i like the bland ones. Even though the overly descripted, THESAURAUSED names, are neat and fun, it's not how I would think.

Congrats to the X-haired, Y-eyed clan. Here's to you being as lazy as I am, because Does it really matter? nope.

[The Dude]

I agree on most points, but I don't have anything against "the hyphen" in general, other than that yes, it's overused.

Your run-of-the-mill blank-haired, blank-eyed sdescs tend to throw me, not because they're so standard, but because I really have no clue what sort of individual I'm looking at. Is he young or old, big or small, tall or short, wide or thin, clean or dirty, at all unusual, standout, impressive, or unimpressive in any way whatsoever? I don't know man, all I know is that his eyes are pink and his hair is pink. He could be anything else in the world that I'd notice long before his eye color, but that's all I have to describe him by until I get up all nice and close-like and drop a big fat "LOOK" command on his ass.

I personally dislike the use of eye color in an sdesc, because it's been brought up time and again that when you're looking east through several leagues of rocky desert, the last thing you're going to notice about that hazy figure in the distance is what color his eyes are. Though upclose, those flashing neon-green eyes with red and white polkadots may stand out to me if I'm right in your face looking right at you, they won't from behind and they won't if I'm three city blocks away looking into a tavern.

What might actually stand out is the relative size of your individual. One sorely overused word I'm sure we've all seen is "muscular", but it is a good example of something you'll notice about a character WAY before their eye color, and anything of this variety I think will fit the bill - skinny, slender, chubby, pudgy, shapely, petite, dainty, stout, stocky, short, tall, double ginka-chested, yada yada, etc etc.

3) Look for single words that give multiple pieces of information. Case in point: "brunette". Here's a word that communicates two things at once: brown hair, and femaleness. All without a hyphen! Holy crap! Single words that transmit a lot of information are way cool, and you should seek them out. Don't look down your nose at "brunette" just because you knew what it meant before you studied for the SAT. Trust me, your mystique will remain intact.

I LOVE this point. I agree wholeheartedly, and will note that we are in desperate need of more ragamuffins.

[moab]

As someone who is not currently playing a an x-haired, y-eyed character at the moment, I like having a lot of sameness in character sdescs.

Face it - we all look pretty much alike, don't we?

Very often my elves are the dark-haired or the dark-eyed not because it's easy, but because I want to show a racial similiarity.  Oh - he's an elf.  Period.

Not - oh, he's a a gangly elf, ugly elf, muscular elf.  Just an elf.  Joe Average.  That's all.

When I play character like "the weathered dark-haired man" I want you to think - 'oh, an average commoner - spends a lot of time outdoors."

When I want to stand out as a PC I'll go with something more extreme.

I think when choosing a short-description rather than worrying about unique keywords we need to worry about what we are presenting.

The "gem-eyed, water-haired elf" is not going to come across like some 'rinith rat.

[Maybe42or54]

I for one don't want people to be as creative as humanly possible when it is me, who has to find out what the hell that shit means.

I personally like The X-haired, Y-bodied gender

It tell me as much as I think it can.
For instance, The black haired, wiry man

It tells me he has black hair, skinny and strong, a male, and a little more on the T'zai Byn hiring style.

I never see a noble with Wiry, they all have to have fancy words.
So that is just my thoughts.

[Tamarin]

So you'd rather see bland sdescs, and go through your time here with a crappy vocabulary?

We have dictionary.com for a reason, people.  How long does it take to look up a word?  A second and a half on the long side?

[Maybe42or54]

I'd rather people not look up the strangest word they can for a simple color.
My pc won't see Cherubic. So why do I want to?

[Malifaxis]

"The Slovenly Urchin"

I don't really have a problem with x-haired people.  Hair is easy to spot.  y-eyed kinda piss me off when it's something extraordinarily stupid like 'the brown eyed' or 'the blue-eyed'.  What the hell is so damn special about your eyes that I can see them 3 rooms away?  Hair color, sure, you can pick that out of a crowd no problem.  Those eyes better freakin glow, though.  Just my opinion.

Further in my opinion is the clever use of the word 'urchin.'  I have seen several players use 'nifty' names.  Ragamuffin.  Imp.  Giantess.  Titan.  Wretch.  IMHO, there should be many more of these people, but instead, the ability to use such keywords seems restricted in the extreme, except in certain cases.  

I very much prefer to not see eye color, but hey, if it happens, it happens.  It's not a strangling offense.  It does get extremely tedious when dealing with 8 'eyed' individuals, all of which are 'haired' as well.  Why not 'maned'  or 'coiffed' or 'tressed' or 'braided' or some such?  Great, you have hair.  Fucking kudos to you... mind giving it a bit more of an explanitory twist?

Skin color (blotched, sunburned, pale(?!?), baobab-skinned), body build (wiry, skeletal, buff, collossal, awesome, miniscule), and even age (older, young, ancient, methusalean) provide a hellacious amount of ways to spruce up your desc and keep you from being rank and file in the 'eyed, haired' collective.

I may have had more to say, but I lost my train of thought.

[Malifaxis]

I'd rather people not look up the strangest word they can for a simple color.
My pc won't see Cherubic. So why do I want to?

There was never an Earl of Sandwich in Zalanthas, and yet I've seen multiple sandwiches in my time here.  If they called it a marillo, would you have *ANY* idea of what was being referred to?  Would a newbie?

I'd much rather seen 'Cherubic' than "Isahnian" or even 'Borsailian."  Yet if Isahn had been a pleasantly plump, red cheeked fellow, it's sure be the word that the world would use, wouldn't it?

[flurry]

I'd rather people not look up the strangest word they can for a simple color.
My pc won't see Cherubic. So why do I want to?

Sometimes it's nice to have uncommon adjectives so that you don't get keyword mixups.  

I haven't seen "cherubic" in game, but actually I think it's a really good word for a short description.     Along with the original poster's comment about the word "brunette", "cherubic" conveys multiple things in one word.   Sometimes it takes a certain word to say exactly what you mean.

And also I think we need to remember everyone here is working with a different vocabulary, so there are always going to be words that send people to the dictionary, even if the person who wrote the description thinks they're all well-known words.

[mansa]

I got a character rejected for using something other than man.

[Ali]

There are plenty of interesting words in the English language to describe a character without getting so obscure that EVERYONE you meet needs to use a dictionary. With the 'X-haired, Y-eyed' formula, thesaurus use can get absurd as everyone tries to find a kreativ word for 'green' so their character can have a unique keyword - or, you get a bunch of people who all look alike because they all use the most common descriptors for those attributes.

I always thought having eye-color in an sdesc was a bit odd - specific eye-color especially, rather than 'dark' or 'light'. What if someone is miles away? Asleep? Facing away from you? Obviously, other features could be hidden in those situations, but unless your eye color is REALLY spectacular, I'd hardly notice it. The only people I can rattle off eye color for IRL are my immediate family members and my boyfriend. Other sorts of eyes (beady, sunken, squinty) are nice, because that usually IS something people would notice about the character, and it's more obvious than that precise shade of hazel.

I like words describing the body as a whole - the most common sdesc pattern I've seen in-game so far is 'the X, Y-eyed/haired race/gender', where X describes the body type (wiry, short, muscular) and Y is your obligatory kreativ color name. Seeing the exact same pattern everywhere can get old after a bit, but it's better than the plain hair-and-eyes the OP mentioned.

Loaded words are good - even if different people associate slightly different connotations with a word, it'll lodge a firm image of the character in their heads. 'Slovenly urchin' pulls up a wealth of sight, smell, and sound for me, that'd be a fun one to run into in-game.

[amoeba]

I find posts like this both amusing and bit irksome.  When I put together a description I use what feels best at the time. If the green-haired, red-eyed man works, then so be it. It does not enter into my mind as to if there are too many hypnenated names at any given time, nor do I really care.  In terms of if I put my eyes into my description, I describe my characters most promiment features, It could be they are the eyes.  I describe for people in the same room.  It is an artifact of the code that shows the sdesc from three leagues away.  Ideally, it would be nice to see different descriptions that are distance based, with outside being different than inside, but that is a different discussion.   I take little stock in these "my use of the english language is better than all you unwashed masses" threads.  Oddly enough I agree with Moofasa, it doesn't matter.

[lazycritic]

I never use eyes in my sdescs. In my experience, the people who use a creative and descriptive sdescs are a class above the masses. I'm not a fan of obscure gems that happen to be brown-colored either.

Even the common "lithe, brown-haired man" is better than "brown-haired, blue-eyed man". Seriously.

That character builder is great if you skip past the eye colors.

[Elgiva]

I do not mind. Seriously. If you want to be the brown-haired, brown-eyed man, it is up to you. The player is the one who decides what is the most noticeable feature and if he wants to add a colour of his eyes, I want to believe he has some reason for it. I kind of dislike when sdesc hints you to read mdesc just to understand what is the other player trying to describe, but even in that cases, it's that player's decision.

[amoeba]

Even the common "lithe, brown-haired man" is better than "brown-haired, blue-eyed man". Seriously.

That character builder is great if you skip past the eye colors.

I fail to see the coorelation.  Seriously.  Nitpicking at insignificant details does what to enhance the overall enjoyment of the game?   I don't mind the discussion of people opinions,  what bothers me is the asseration that thier particular opinion is indeed the "better" way to do things,  and that those that do not ascribe to said opionon is beneath them. Seriously.  In *my* opinion, the person who sees past incidental details and just plays the game by leading by example is the superior roleplayer. Seriously.   :twisted:

[Cuusardo]

To me, sdescs are indicitive of a character's most noticeable characteristics.

The thing that bothers me are mdescs.  I once wrote up an mdesc for a new PC I was going to play, and I sent it to someone to proofread.  She pointed out that the character was "all head" because that's what the majority of my desc was describing.  And now, I notice PCs with mdescs like that.  I've seen at least three whose descs described their heads, and nothing else.  I find myself wondering, "What does the rest of this person's body look like?"

[Delirium]

I'm with amoeba, actually.

Y'all need to chill on the eye thing.

I rarely use it myself, but I'll be damned if I give two shits if someone else uses it. It's their character, and I for one am perfectly capable of roleplaying out a scene with full enjoyment without getting all hung up over whether or not I can really see the brown-haired, yellow-eyed man's eyes. I just decide. If I can't, I can't, if I can, I can. Now wasn't that simple?

Seriously. Stress over something more important.

[John]

I got a character rejected for using something other than man.

I wouldn't say that's normal staff policy. I've used red-head before and was quite safe.

I always thought having eye-color in an sdesc was a bit odd - specific eye-color especially, rather than 'dark' or 'light'. What if someone is miles away? Asleep? Facing away from you?

Sdescs don't exist in the game. They're an OOC means for us to identify people. A simple look command will tell you what you need to know. Or should main descs not have eye-colour or any facial features in case they're not facing you?

One good thing about X-haired, Y-eyed is they make you use terms to describe someone that aren't in their sdesc.

And lots of people notice other people's eyes when they talk to them. So to those, the eyes are very prominent. For me, noses are very prominent, however I can't take 2 words to describe a nose, so I can't put it in my sdesc, otherwise I would.

Me, I'm a head-person. So when I write a desc I'll spend 3 lines describing that, one line describing the rest of his body. I just can't find too many ways to concentrate on the rest of his body.

[Bestatte]

The whole eye thing is kinda iffy to me. On the one hand, you can't see someone's eyes a league away. On the other hand, you can't see someone's skin up close and personal unless they're not covered from head to toe, so why does everyone describe their skin in their main descs?

I say, if the eyes are unusual (odd colored, crossed, one blind, cloudy, multi-hued, vacuous), then I see nothing wrong with including them in a sdesc. Even so, the "brown-eyed woman" might be a very boring description but I see nothing wrong with it per se.

I remember a previous thread, or maybe a IM chat with someone, concerning the "with" sdesc.  The man with green hair. That kind of thing. There was some flaw in using it that had to do with code and mechanics, maybe emotes, but I can't remember what.

If the staff lets it in, then unless there's a typo or spelling/grammar mistake they didn't catch, I'm not going to obsess over it just because I personally don't care for the choice of sdescs a given player uses.

[mansa]

I got a character rejected for using something other than man.

I wouldn't say that's normal staff policy. I've used red-head before and was quite safe.

Here's a quote from an email I received.

We're trying to move away from words like "scamp" "maiden" "imp" etc. and going for more neutral terms like "youth" etc.  "Scamp" has too many connotations of personality, which should be evident through roleplay rather than through description.

[/b]

[flurry]

They have a point, though, don't they?   'Scamp' is a good word, but it would imply something about the personality of the character.  It goes beyond a physical description.

That still leaves the door open for plenty of other creative nouns, I think.

[InsertCleverNameHere]

x-haired y-eyes don't bother me, but probably because I've played a good bit of them. In fact, the majority of mine have been. I've done a few different ones as well, but that just happens to be what usually sounds best (and fits in the 35 character alotment) when I'm working on my own. Of course, I don't mind the more elaborate ones, or creative words. But, I dislike, border on -hate-, having some word that is SO obscure and uncommon.. I've never heard it before, and I don't even have a half-assed guess as to what it could possibly mean. That does strike me as a little ridiculous.
And it doesn't mean I just need to expand my vocabulary. :roll:

[Spoon]

[derail]
Has anyone ever had 'the green man'?
[/derail]