What kicks you out of a story.

Yeah but Hemingway would write:

“I dreamed I killed my father. More than once. It was bad.”

Em
You, young miss, are getting a little too big for your boots. I've a good mind to put you over my knee and teach you a lesson. *Colin breathes rapidly and his nostrils flare like the bull in Death in the Afternoon*
 
This is a perfect example of the COT-CAUGHT merger. Originally separate vowel sounds (which remain distinct in many dialects) have merged into one phoneme in some dialects, particularly Western US and Canadian, so that certain words have become homophones for those speakers. Two decades ago it was estimated that about 40% of US speakers had lost the distinction; it's probably a bit higher today.
Oh that's hilarious. I speak an unmerged dialect! No idea why I didn't get it.
 
This is a perfect example of the COT-CAUGHT merger. Originally separate vowel sounds (which remain distinct in many dialects) have merged into one phoneme in some dialects, particularly Western US and Canadian, so that certain words have become homophones for those speakers. Two decades ago it was estimated that about 40% of US speakers had lost the distinction; it's probably a bit higher today.
I'm totally post-merger. I pronounce cot-caught the same and I pronounce pin-pen the same. It's a lazy way of pronouncing things, but it's easy.
 
I'm totally post-merger. I pronounce cot-caught the same and I pronounce pin-pen the same. It's a lazy way of pronouncing things, but it's easy.
*I* think I pronounce "cot" differently than "caught", but it's so subtle I'm not sure anyone listening to me can hear it.
"Pin", however, is decidedly different from "pen" (to the point that I have to keep myself from correcting my officemate, who says them alike.

One weird thing I picked up, and I don't know how, is saying "aunt" differently depending on who it refers to. She's my 'ant' Sally, but she's your 'awnt' Mabel, even if you only ever say 'ant'. It's one of two verbal glitches I have that amuse me every time.
 
Now that you mention it, I do hear the unmerged cot and caught sometimes and can tell them apart. I myself don't speak that way but I could if I tried.

What's weird about it is that unmerged "cot" is more high and fronted and less round than "caught" is, at least in the American Northeast dialects where I've heard it. You'd think something with an "o" in it would be less high and fronted and more rounded.
 
I've had similar reactions. Seeing someone smoking turns off any attraction instantly. Saying this as a former smoker, it's a dirty, smelly, disgusting addiction.
That I mother fucking love to partake in. Mmm... it's so delicious.
 
Of all the atrocities one could commit against the English language, this is the one I irrationally hate the most.
Don't ever go to New Zealand. You will die.

(I'm in NZ right now, as a matter of fact. The local Kiwi accent is no stranger than any other - and the place is full of people who aren't locals at all, so it really doesn't matter).
 
Not as weird as pin pen. You should have seen the look on my face the first time someone asked me to lend him my "ink pin".

It's so much simpler when you say it all the same way.

It's the Okie in me. Flatten all the vowels and make everything sound the same.

I'd merry Merry, but she's too merry for my taste. She cot my attention but not I'm lying in a cot with a pin and paper scribbling my thoughts, and nobody can pin that responsibility on me.
 
To be fair, if I'm ever in New Zealand the odds of me trying to pet something that will kill me are pretty high. I'm thinking the most likely culprit there would be a shark as I think most of New Zealand's land-based wildlife is relatively safe?
I was alluding to the Kiwi accent!

But you're right, their critters are mostly harmless. Although today there was a sign saying "Don't Feed the Stags or Bison or Cattle with Horns" - and the site where Legolas killed the warg...
 
To be fair, if I'm ever in New Zealand the odds of me trying to pet something that will kill me are pretty high. I'm thinking the most likely culprit there would be a shark as I think most of New Zealand's land-based wildlife is relatively safe?
They would would immediately need to call emergency services and say, "Aw noi, I've bun button by a shark!"
 
They would would immediately need to call emergency services and say, "Aw noi, I've bun button by a shark!"
I love watching Viva La Dirt League (a NZ comedy skit group), and it's sometimes even more fun watching the automatic captions fail miserably at capturing their words.
 
As a reader, I nope out of stories with realistic pain or anguish, any story where the characters don't feel like they're making their own decisions, and anal.
My list would be these three plus incest. When your mother and sister happen to be religious fanatics, you don't necessarily correlate 'family' with 'sexy.'

I have no exceptions for the first two (to put it mildly) but I do have one very, very, very, very rare exception for certain cases of anal and incest: when it's a means to an end, not the end in and of itself.
In my case, I had maybe 1/8th of a page with really short paragraphs mention anal for the story purpose of contrasting to establish trustworthiness by showing the reader that one character took care not to hurt his companion when she was clearly nervous about it.
 
Any title ending in an exclamation point or a question mark. (Or all caps.)

Any description that basically repeats the title.

None of these 'kicks me out,' I just don't open the door in the first place. There are a surprising number of them...
 
Something that I'm finding increasingly breaks my immersion is a total lack of descriptions of the characters in any given work. I just don't have the ability to insert physical looks myself, unless the characters literally have the same name of a person I know. I need hair colors, eye colors, body shapes and sizes to be described in order for me to be immersed in the story. Not in an exact measurement way, as that doesn't help me imagine them at all, but just with some well-placed adjectives. It's done better if it's not all dumped into the first few paragraphs of the story, too.
 
And for Heinline's sake remind me, what the characters look like, their hair color and skin tone, what their how they groom their hair, and not just their heads and pubes. Eyes, nipples, lips, 99% of peoples lips, nipples are close to the same color. Especially if they tan.
 
To be fair, if I'm ever in New Zealand the odds of me trying to pet something that will kill me are pretty high. I'm thinking the most likely culprit there would be a shark as I think most of New Zealand's land-based wildlife is relatively safe?
Yeah, only thing I can think of is the katipō and you'd be pretty unlucky to get bitten by one.
 
Virgin men with good stamina.
On another site, I have an older woman who has her young lover come first by using her mouth or hands on him. Then, some time later, they will have intercourse and he will have more stamina for the second time. He may also give her an orgasm too either orally or manually to start with. May be good advice for real life too? It probably works the other way around for a virgin or inexperienced woman.

I know that kind of thing - truly significant foreplay - was never mentioned in the sex ed ("health") course I had in school years ago.
 
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