The mood ring eyes beloved by so many poorly thought-out Mary Sues out there may sound extremely pretty, eyecatching and OMG-Sooper-Speshul in theory, but in practice having eyes that changed color to suit your moods would be, to employ a suitably rainbowtastical metaphor, all different shades of really, really fucking uncomfortable.

Why so? Well, I know that most Suethors can't imagine that it would ever be inappropriate for the rest of the world to know exactly how their Sue was feeling at any given moment so they could respond 'correctly' to her - too bad that if their Sue actually existed, she would probably disagree.

At some point or another, most (if not all) of us have wanted to hide how they felt about something or someone. Pretty much everyone living has times when they're really glad the people around them can't tell exactly how they feel right now. It's not always considered at all appropriate to blatantly showcase your emotions and mood-ring eyes do just that.

Imagine how disconcerting it would be if the ability to hide your feelings from the rest of the was suddenly taken away because some cosmic author had decided you had color-changing eyes that shifted through the entire damn spectrum depending on how you felt, from pure black at your most miserable, to white-gold when you were ecstatic. The people you knew would pick up on what the color shifts meant very quickly, and the minute they did you'd be waving any emotional privacy you may have had a fond So Long, Farewell.

Imagine how awkward it would be to, say, be unable to hide the fact that you had a crush on your best friend's partner (because your eyes went pink whenever they were around) and consequently were jealous of her (and she'd know it, because your eyes were green whenever she mentioned what she was up to with them). Imagine how awkward it would make working relationships, if everyone in the office knew exactly how you felt about them and you could never bullshit your way through a presentation or an appraisal without your confusion or your panic showing not in your face, but in the color of your eyes. Imagine never being able to tell anybody you felt fine when really, you didn't because they'd instantly know you were lying. Sometimes, fangirl authors, we don't want to be told to cheer up or have someone try to make us feel better.

Imagine how callous a girl with mood-ring eyes would look, if she attended a funeral out of duty and it was obvious to the bereaved family and friends that she didn't really care about their loss.

It's as if authors who do this can't possibly conceive of a single occasion where some other character's emotional reaction might be more important than that of their special OC - so why not give the girl color-changing eyes, when of course everyone present will want to know exactly how she feels about absolutely everything that happens so they can respond appropriately? Her reactions take precedence to everyone else's, even when the tragedy or triumph is someone else's: the story still presumes that the OC's reaction is what truly matters about the situation. It's just another example of the Mary Sue's burning desire to stand center stage all the damn time.

It also allows Suethors a handy get-out clause whereby all comers know exactly how the OC would want to be treated at any given moment: does she need comforting, does she want to be left alone, is she angry? That, of course, means that any character who doesn't react appropriately to the OC's prevailing emotion can be appropriately demonized for, say, callously ignoring her obvious emotional distress. They should have known she was sad regardless of how she's behaving - her eyes were blue, weren't they? If they then fail to comfort her in her time of need, they're obviously a horrible person who deserves to be treated with scorn as opposed to, say, somebody who genuinely didn't realize she was upset. No, they're obviously just selfish and mean.

No other character ever has to wonder how the mood-ring eyed OC is feeling, nor do they have to learn how to read her like they would every other normal human being out there. Nobody ever tells her to cheer up when she's just thinking, or hassles her when she just wants to be alone. Misunderstandings are for normal people - people without magical color-shifting eyes!

Some people out there, usually girls and women, swear that their eyes do just this, of course. The jury still seems to be out on whether or not this is actually physically possible - from what I personally know of physiology, I'm inclined to doubt it - but even assuming it is, the color shifts are nowhere near as dramatic as most of the Suethors make them. Generally speaking this usually reputedly happens to people whose eyes are gray or hazel, and the shifts are usually from one shade of that color to another - light to dark gray, gray to gray-green - and the perceived 'color change' can also be effected by things like light levels, what they happen to be wearing that day, or choice in make-up colors.

When a real person claims their eyes change color with their moods, they're talking about subtle shifts like that. They don't mean that their eye color cycles through every color in the spectrum with every little mood shift like some demented emotional traffic light.

Exactly the same thing, by the by, applies to anything else that supposedly changes color depending on how an OC is feeling - with the exception, of course, of an OC who owns a genuine mood ring which changes color based on the temperature of her skin, not because it's magically attuned to her emotions. There are OCs out there with magical color-shifting streaks in their hair, or equally magical and rainbowish pieces of Speshul Sue Jewellery. Other OCs have color-changing wings. I've seen people create characters whose clothes change color depending on how they feel. If I had a necklace that changed color with my mood - really with my mood, not because my skin was warm - I'd lose it, and if I had mood-ring streaks in my hair, I'd dye it.

Mood-ring eyes may sound pretty in theory, but anyone who actually had to deal with their eyes shifting through the the whole spectrum in accordance with the mood would find them a serious burden, not a speshul and beautiful blessing. There should be actual consequences to having an OC's emotions on display all the time, whether she wants them to be or not - but there almost never is for OCs because that might actually be genuinely interesting, which would get in the way of the wish-fulfilment.