like but... it's not the trope, it's how it's deployed, right. i hate a stupid miscommunication plotline just like the rest of y'all. if a single text message could resolve the situation, i often find it more aggravating than suspenseful. and we have all seen it used lazily! we have all seen a "miscommunication" that relies on all characters involved being suddenly stupid as fuck.
but miscommunication is a fucking incredible plot device, it just needs to be used well. because yeah, maybe it could be resolved with a single hey i just wanted to check in about what you said text.
but why isn't she texting that, actually. what shape do her hands make around the phone. does she open and close the messaging app, does she just doomscroll. maybe she can't even really figure out why she's upset - what she heard broke her heart. too much is happening in her life and she decides it's not her fucking job to constantly fucking be the hey just checking in friend. why can't they do it, for fucking once, she is always fixing things first. she is working with her therapist on her fawn response. and fuck them, honestly.
and they don't know she misunderstood, only that she pulled away suddenly. and the thing is that they didn't realize how familiar she was, how wonderful - and she's suddenly dropped them now, which makes sense, because they're a terrible person. everyone does this, right? once other people see how they really are - a void of a person - they are left alone again. so they don't text, either. they leave the phone at home while they go get drunk again. lights and music and dancing, skating over the frozen lake of their own heart, avoiding it. if they look too hard at it, fuck they miss her, she was the only fucking thing they have left. but it's not fair to her. she's setting a boundary, they need to respect it.
and the distance like a banner between them. her anger at their happy-go-lucky instagram stories; because of course they're out there fucking partying as if she wasn't ever important. their spiral that is the same spiral it always is, self-destructive and vapid, their heart empty in her absence. she pulls back further, they lash out - fucking stay away. neither one comes to their shared friend's birthday. and it's fine, right, people grow apart from each other, that's adulthood. but when she talks to her therapist she finds herself saying yeah, i could talk to them about it, but, like, it's been months. and they stare at her picture and type and retype the same message that they never send: where are you. what have i done. but they leave her alone, because they think it's what she wants.
this is a real thing that happens; and when it happens, it fucking sucks. in the real world, conversations are often not what they could be; they are often weird and painful and messy. we try to talk to the other person, but they're too stressed out to listen. we both try to fix things, but the hurt has just been too great, and it's never the same, no matter the length of the apology. we grow apart. or both people keep trying, but they're just too different (or too much the same), too much keeps getting in the way, they just end up arguing. the conversation was supposed to be small, it ends up spiraling into a massive and bitter breakup. the conversation was supposed to fix the friendship, but it just makes both people realize i don't really get along with you the way i once did.
in romeo and juliet, a pretty famous series of communication errors keep happening. obviously this is not because his writing is lazy. the lack of communication causes and exposes the tragedy. love is about two people trying to reach each other across an impossible barrier. the place where language can't touch - no matter how much i write about it, i will never be able to show you truly what i am feeling - like trying to name which sounds "feel" green. i cannot put you into my body.
barriers to communication are fucking interesting. is it because of the characters' shared history or because they don't have history? is it a generational thing. is it because they've actually talked about it too much, and there's nothing left that can even be said on the subject. is it because he is too attached to tradition, and she has fully forgotten her home country. are they both avoidant, both anxious? does one person accidentally trigger the other; is the other person not practiced enough to even talk about the trauma that surfaced? does one person lie; is another one being manipulative? is one person hell-bent on taking even neutral things personally, does the other person feel purposefully misunderstood and disoriented. maybe one of them just comes from a culture where interrupting is seen as rude, whereas the other learned crosstalk was a form of active listening - now neither feels heard, even though both actually are listening. hell, sometimes what isn't said shows us the real shape of the relationship hanging between them.
what matters is how you use it, truly. how you let it shape your characters and how you let it show us who those characters are. so much of art is communication. so much of being a person is communication. the driving force of love is understanding: and one cannot be understood without communicating.
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
titsay
turnnoffyourmind
