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this turned into a weird rant so I'm putting it behind the snip but not taking it down


what does it even mean when people say "you can see it in their eyes" about any personality trait (particularly, but not only, evil. or "deadness" when not literal. or "craziness" of course)

like, it can't be the face structure because that's permanent? but it can't be the pupil dilation because that's involuntary? so I guess it's the contraction of the muscles around the eyes? people just walk around with their eye muscles held in the evil position? dang, I hope I'm not doing that. I'm just trying to see things.

edit: I've thought about it some more and I think "deadness" is when your eyes don't move much, "craziness" is when your eyelids are very wide open, and "evil" is when you've already been caught doing something bad and some dingding wants to claim they "always knew" so they can keep their just world theory propped up on the idea that victims are incompetent at eye magic


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in reply to @pervocracy's post:

It’s microexpressions. “Dead eyed” means disengaged, not making the quick flicks of attention a focus that people normally do, so their eyes are more static. It’s how people look when they are shocked or grieving or checked out. “Crazy eyed” is making socially innapropriate eye movements, too wide as you said, but more holding intimate eye contact with someone who is trying to break off contact or focusing an inch to the right of where the expected eye contact would meet - people feel this is unpredictable and it makes them anxious. And “evil” generally means someone who makes an angry furrowed eyed glare that doesn’t match the rest of their facial expression, and the mismatch again makes people feel uncomfortable.

Like all reading of facial expressions most people aren’t aware of what they are reading, they get a quick impressionistic glance, and of course they are often misinterpreted. Crazy eyed people might have lost a contact lens, the evil glare could be allergies. My husband is faceblind and I have to explain why photos or films are trying to convey a certain emotion and these are just really subtle ones that most people pick up on but don’t really know why. The big thing is the eye expression markers don’t match the expression on the rest of the face, which makes most people uneasy.

I can't see anything in people's eyes but tears. I figured it was just made up by novelists and fanfic writers to sell more eye color descriptions.

But in all seriousness, the only mental states I can perceive in another person from looking at their eyes are "high on molly" and "very high on coke/meth"