Mini Fanfic Rant

Everyone feel free to ignore this post. I just need to let off some steam, and my opinion probably does not mirror the opinion of anyone else.

For some reason, the last several days, I've encountered several fics in which one of the characters is shy. Not a big. Shyness is common enough, whether it's the normal state for a person or because they get shy around people they're attracted to.

The thing that annoys me was that in all of those fics the shy person stuttered. Shy does not automatically equal stutter. In my experience, shyness leads to inability to speak or inability to say the right thing (mixing up words or having horrible tactless word vomit). Yes, I'm using my own experience with shyness as a yardstick here, but I don't necessarily think I'm that far off the mark. I've only ever heard one person in my life stutter and it wasn't because of shyness. Writers, please try to come up with some other way to indicate that your character is shy. Kthnx.

(In case you're curious, I rarely blush and I can almost always meet the eye of the person I'm talking to. Maybe I just fail at social awkwardness.)