For a long time, I've drawn my main characters with little arcs around the eyes. In comic vocabulary, these mean "overwhelmed".

I never did the eye parenthesis on purpose, but now I'm sort of stuck with them. It makes it impossible, or harder, to color. It makes every person look like they're scared or wary of the coamera.

And I guess that's ok. My characters are wary. The world is overwhelming. And coloring is over-rated anyway.