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byoldervine · 11 months

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Something that I’m considering at the moment writing-wise is how miscommunication is used in media. A lot of the time it’s used for angst and can even be the catalyst of an entire plot, yet often it can come across as more frustrating than anything to the point where many people have miscommunication as a writing pet peeve. And don’t worry, I know this post went on for ages longer than even I planned, so there’s a TL;DR for the final paragraph

So what exactly is the challenge with miscommunications that can cause them to fall flat in a frustrating manner? A lot of the time it comes down to realism; is the miscommunication believable, or is it something that ends up being frustrating because you don’t understand why the characters don’t talk it out and get on the same page? Is there a reason why the characters don’t just talk it out? Is it because one character is hiding a secret from the other? And if so, is hiding the secret worth the miscommunication? And the more plot-relevant the miscommunication is, the more important it is to get it right; you can’t have a weak catalyst

One popular example of unrealistic communication driving the story, at least in my opinion, is actually Frozen. Anna is kept out of the loop so badly that they literally alter her memories and have Elsa locked away from everyone except her parents for around a decade without so much as explaining to Anna why she’s no longer allowed to see her sister. And when she finally sees Elsa again for the first time since they were little kids, she’s of course ecstatic to see her again, and for a minute they get along great. But the moment Anna wants more company, be it Elsa’s, Hans’ or anyone else’s, Elsa completely shuts down and abruptly ends the party without any real explanation. There’s one line here that really makes the lack of communication clear in a way that I find frustrating:

Anna: Elsa, please! I can’t live like this anymore!

Elsa: … Then leave…!

I’m sorry, what?! You’d rather tell your sister to leave the only home she’s ever known, in front of the entire kingdom and visiting nobles, than to pull her aside and at least come up with a shitty lie as to why you don’t want more people in the castle? Or, y’know, just tell her the truth now that she’s a grown woman and not a reckless child without any real understanding of the potential dangers of such powers?

And even when Anna and the whole kingdom finally know the truth about Elsa’s powers, Anna climbs the North Mountain (on her own with no experience, to Elsa’s knowledge at this time) and finds Elsa’s ice palace to reassure her sister that she’s not mad and that she’s glad she finally knows the truth and can understand and try to help Elsa… she’s still keeping secrets? I get it, she’s used to keeping everything a secret, so it might be hard, but the secrets are already out at this point, you might as well finally get it all off your chest that the reason she hid her powers and shut herself out was because of a childhood accident that left her scared to hurt others. At this point there’s nothing holding Elsa back aside from, at worst, the worry of ‘what if Anna hates me for hurting her?’, which isn’t likely now that we’ve seen how completely unmad Anna was about literally everything else. If anything, she’s excited to finally know the truth!

But it gets to a point where, even if the lengths Elsa went to to hide her ice powers at the party weren’t bothersome to you, it gets frustrating when Anna goes all this way for her sister to reassure her only for Elsa to continue keeping secrets and sending her away with no clear reason as to why she’d continue after the big secret is already out of the bag. And when it’s getting to the point that shutting Anna out is, by Elsa’s own admission, ‘only mak[ing] it worse’, and Elsa can see with her own eyes that keeping these secrets is hurting Anna just as much as telling her potentially could, she summons Marshmallow to kick her out and ensure she’s gone. I just… why? What’s the point? It’s not creating further tension, it’s just riding the coattails of the tension from the initial reveal and trying to make it last longer than it should, with no reward for either character and not even a clear or satisfying in-character reason for it. It feels contrived for the plot, and that’s frustrating

But how can we use miscommunication to drive the plot in a realistic, non-frustrating way that doesn’t feel contrived? Well, we’re actually gonna look at something you fellow Tumblr users may be familiar with; @buggachat’s popular Bakery ‘Enemies’ AU, or BEAU for short. For those unfamiliar, BEAU is an AU of the teen superhero romance cartoon Miraculous Ladybug. In this AU, male protagonist and famous model Adrien Agreste never went to school as he does in canon, meaning he and female protagonist Marinette Dupain-Cheng never met - outside of their completely secret alter egos Chat Noir and Ladybug respectively, of course. The AU takes place after Adrien’s father, Gabriel Agreste, is revealed to be the main supervillain the two heroes have been fighting this whole time, Hawkmoth, and as such designer Gabriel’s fashion empire has collapsed, leaving Adrien out of work, as well as considered a terrorist like his father by many people in Paris, until Marinette’s parents allow him to work in their family bakery. The two heroes can’t transform or use their powers after defeating Gabriel/Hawkmoth, so they have no way of finding out the identities of one another or knowing if they’re okay

So what’s the miscommunication here? Well, alongside Hawkmoth, there was another supervillain who in the AU hasn’t been identified and their power source (a magic brooch called the Peacock Miraculous) hasn’t been found. So Marinette is under the impression that Adrien might have been the Peacock Miraculous user and assisted his dad in terrorising Paris, as well as being here in her parents’ bakery because he knows she’s Ladybug and wants to get revenge on her for ruining his life (getting his dad arrested, costing him his home and job, etc)

The thing is, we as the readers are aware that Adrien couldn’t possibly be a supervillain like Marinette thinks; he’s her superhero partner Chat Noir, and he still utterly adores Ladybug and hopes she’s okay and wishes he knew her identity so he could see her again

And it makes sense both in-universe and for Marinette’s character that she wouldn’t be communicating her fears or suspicions; if she says these things and she’s wrong, she’ll come off as horribly insensitive at best or she’ll be revealing her superhero identity for no reason at worst; if she says these things and she’s right, she’ll be letting a supervillain with a vendetta against her know she’s onto him while she’s powerless. There’s no scenario - except for the exact scenario she’s in, which she has no reason to suspect - where telling Adrien will have a good outcome

And unlike the Frozen example I gave before, BEAU actually progresses with the miscommunication rather than remaining stagnant on the same point; Marinette constantly tries to reason with herself, talk her suspicions down as unrealistic and dramatic, etc. She starts to let her guard down around Adrien as the pair bond. She starts to feel sympathetic for him, she starts to find him funny and amusing, she starts to see how sweet and kind he can be, and she tells herself (after screaming at herself for liking a potential villain) that someone that kind can’t possibly just be faking it. She even starts to get a crush on Adrien as they become friends and start hanging out together even outside of work. It appears that the conflict is going to be dismissed as Marinette being paranoid, which would more or less snuff out the need for communication

But then Marinette starts to confuse signs of Adrien being Chat Noir with signs of Adrien being exactly the villain she feared he was. The first example I can remember is Marinette finding an ungodly amount of pictures of Ladybug on Adrien’s phone (which he has canonically btw) and realising his search history includes a concerning number of ‘Ladybug identity theory’ searches or similar. In truth this is Adrien being a simp for Ladybug and wanting to find his lost partner again because he misses her, but of course Marinette doesn’t have this information, so her ‘Adrien is a supervillain’ theory leaps back to the forefront of her mind since that makes more sense to her with the information she has. It doesn’t feel contrived, the contents of Adrien’s phone pairs perfectly with the context Marinette is currently working with to feed the miscommunication while also making complete logical sense to the readers who already have all the pieces of the puzzle, there’s no point where it feels like Marinette has jumped through hoops to come to the conclusion she did, it all makes perfect sense from just a glance

And while, yes, it sucks that she didn’t catch on, it’s no more frustrating than any natural miscommunication inherently is, because the characters are thinking and behaving in ways that make sense and don’t break your immersion to just scream “Oh come on already! Just TALK!”

Actually, I think that’s the main trick to making miscommunications as a plot-driving force work; make it so that the conflict isn’t avoided with one single conversation, or at least ensure that the character continues to have a clear, legitimate reason as to why they believe that keeping secrets or otherwise avoiding communicating would be the overall better outcome as opposed to having that conversation

A lot of the time there are clichés that coincide with the plot-relevant miscommunication trope that are used to explain why proper communication would be less desirable than continuing to hurt yourself and/or others by not doing so. What I’d say is likely the most popular one is the ‘I’m just trying to protect you’ cliché, in which the entire conflict of the plot - or at least a plot in the story - occurs because one character didn’t tell another character something very important, usually resulting in the main character now being completely unprepared for the central conflict of the story that they’re now being thrust into. This cliché is usually very unpopular because it tends to be a rather wishy-washy explanation at best; if you really wanted to protect the person you kept this from, why wouldn’t you prepare them in case it comes back to bite one of you in the ass? It tends to be a case of Character A wanting to move on from a tragic past by forgetting about it rather than confronting it as opposed to actually trying to protect Character B from it, only for Character B to then have to either get involved in or actively take over the confrontation of Character A’s secret when it catches up to Character A and/or Character B

A recent example of this would be Ant-Man: Quantumania, in which the catalyst of the plot is Cassie sending signals into the Quantum Realm to their ants, but also unknowingly to the villains. Janet is aware that the villains are down there, but hasn’t told anyone that the Quantum Realm is inhabited by intelligent life forms. Throughout the movie, Hope and Hank grow increasingly frustrated with Janet for still not telling them about what kind of danger they’re all in, even while they’re all in the Quantum Realm themselves. Keeping Hank and Hope in the dark wasn’t protecting them by that point, if anything it was only putting them in more danger, so when Janet pulled out the ‘I was trying to protect you’ line it was very hard for me to take that as anything more than a lazy excuse. Everyone needs to have a certain level of understanding of things in order to truly be protected from them, that’s why we have warning stories like the boy who cried wolf

If Janet had been honest from the beginning, the plot would fall flat, but even giving the other characters a minimal amount of warning only for the pursuit of scientific discovery or whatever else leading them into the Quantum Realm regardless would work so long as you don’t continue to have her not provide information ‘for the protection’ of the people that are about to die due to a lack of information on their environment and/or situation!

Another pair of clichés in this area are ‘I’m just waiting for the right moment’ and ‘I didn’t want to hurt you’, which can often coincide. For the former, Character A does intend to have the important conversation with Character B, but they’re waiting for some kind of perfect moment in which to reveal information that they know that Character B potentially and/or definitely won’t take well. Now this one can be slightly more forgivable considering it’s realistic to want to wait for the ‘right moment’ and everyone’s put off being the bearer of bad news before. It’s also easier to accept it when there is an actual intention to have effective communication, and since there are indeed bad times to drop these things sometimes holding off is necessary

But the miscommunication becomes frustrating when Character A continuously finds themself with an opportunity to communicate with Character B, but they frequently don’t. Bonus points when it’s a really important and time-sensitive issue; it’s not the end of the world if you repeatedly chicken out of confessing to your crush, but if you’re consistently refusing to mention that doomsday device you planned to try and get to to stop tomorrow morning is going to go off at midnight, you’re maybe in a position where it needs to be vocalised. I think the best way I’ve personally seen it phrased in writing was one of the books in the series Time Riders (I haven’t read it in donkey’s years so I’m paraphrasing like hell here) where Maddy, who has kept a secret from her friend and coworker Liam since the final line of the previous book, realises that ‘there isn’t ever going to be a good time to tell him, just a time’. I think that’s brilliant because it denounces the idea of there being ideal conditions to deliver bad or otherwise hard-to-swallow news; you’ll dampen the mood whether they’re the happiest or saddest they’ve ever been. You’re not looking for the perfect time, you’re just waiting for the first appropriate time

And while we’re not too far from the example of a crush, miscommunication through the ‘I didn’t want to hurt you’ cliché is used a lot to break people up or show a struggling relationship; one or both characters will be left in the dark by their partner, their concerns and questions will be brushed off or they’ll even be straight-up lied to. This can often make the relationship appear one-sided or toxic, however, so if you’re intending to have the couple stay/get back together at the end then it needs to be handled carefully to have these issues addressed and actively worked on by the characters. Instead of making the plot look bad (outside of any romance plots going on here) you’ll instead make the couple look toxic and unhealthy, and it’ll be harder for people to root for them. Not to mention having that talk with your partner is usually way less hurtful to them than putting them in a shitty situation this whole time where they’re worried about you and your relationship. It’s like choosing not to apply a plaster to a cut because you know it’ll hurt when it comes time to rip it off; bleeding out isn’t a solution that’s any less painful, and it can often have worse outcomes

Alternatively, there is one plot in a media I love that relies on unhealthy miscommunication in the plot that I think is done wonderfully; the ship Stolitz in Helluva Boss is built on an unhealthy foundation of, as Blitzø himself said; a ‘transactional fucking’, or as Stolas more eloquently put it; ‘what’s between [Blitzø and Stolas], just a comfortable lie’. Blitzø starts out completely irritated with Stolas and only indulging in their situationship in order to get Stolas’ Grimoire, whereas Stolas is completely emotionally invested from the start but is trying way too hard and completely overlooks Blitzø’s abundantly expressed lack of initial interest and the obvious fact that he starts out only using Stolas for his own benefit. Despite being the main ship of the show, as well as one of the two main plots, the ship is toxic from the start, with the show pulling no punches to show this

The pair are currently in a strange state where Blitzø is starting to develop genuine feelings for Stolas while Stolas is becoming increasingly aware of Blitzø’s disinterest and lack of work being put into their relationship. Stolas is now looking to secure a way out of this situationship without hurting Blitzø’s business (which requires Stolas’ Grimoire to function) though he hasn’t said this to Blitzø, as well as not outright admitting that he wants more to the relationship than sexual favours in return for the Grimoire. Blitzø is also not communicating well with Stolas, he’s a character with a lot of trauma that causes him to push others away as a defence mechanism, yet he also craves that kind of intimacy a relationship brings. Both characters want the same thing, but both struggle to communicate this

We’ve seen that Stolas at least has put in the effort to try and offer Blitzø an in or an out as he desires, which in turn scares Blitzø into thinking that Stolas wants him to take the out and that Stolas doesn’t care about him further than sexual favours. Both of their traumas and communication styles are working against them and fuelling each other to perpetuate the miscommunication further

But what makes this a good use of miscommunication is that that’s the point - the relationship is built on unhealthy foundations and the characters both need individual development in order to move past their traumas. The way the show is set up, the relationship seems to be on its way to ending before they get back together with a more healthy foundation to build off of. Both characters are already showing individual progress and development with being more open despite their traumas, so they’re well on their way to a healthier end. The miscommunication works because it’s acknowledged to be unhealthy and is treated as such, with the consequences being real and understandable and expected. There’s a real psychological reason for both of the characters to be struggling with this, both traumas are explored frequently and the characters are shown actively working on this. And it’s not going to be resolved just like that, there’s a lot going into it. It isn’t frustrating because it’s a feature and not a bug, and they take the time to address every side of this in a way that doesn’t feel contrived or out of character

So in conclusion to this MUCH longer than expected ramble, miscommunication is easy to do wrong, but there are lots of great ways to do it so long as you ensure that the miscommunication comes from realistic sources without being contrived or out of character, and if your characters have no in-character or in-universe reason to withhold certain information, you generally should let them open up, especially if the reasons to share outweigh the reasons to withhold. Holding back information to ‘protect’ others or to ‘not hurt them’ tends to put them in more hurt or danger in the long run where it counts, so be sure to try and tell them at the next appropriate time that comes up. Other than that, you should be good to go

#writing #bookblr #writers #writeblr #tropes #miscommunication #miscommunication in writing #clichés #rambles

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