#highly recommend winter's orbit by everina maxwell for good miscommunication

[sing-you-fools]

i'll be honest, i actually enjoy a good miscommunication trope. humans pretty much suck at communicating, and they tend to double down rather than risk facing either rejection (if their interpretation was correct) or their flaws (often necessary if they were incorrect). it can be painful to read at times but i genuinely believe even the absolute dumbest miscommunication can be perfectly realistic.

the problem is that they're so rarely good. if your pov character comes out of a conversation that i as the reader interpreted as perfectly benign or possibly even pleasant going "so clearly he hates me," then (a) you have failed at the concept of "pov character" and (b) you're fucking up the trope. if your character's getting "he hates me" from an interaction, i should also be picking up on some "oooh, he hates you" vibes from the page. you should be showing me enough, in between the dialogue, for me to be on the same page as the pov character. give me the context. show me the facial expression he's misinterpreting. the history between them that makes this otherwise pleasant comment feel like a slap in the face.

if i can tell it's a misunderstanding as it's happening, it's not done well. i should not be rereading the passage going "how the fuck did he get to that conclusion?" i should only be going "you fucking idiot" from the beginning if i have passages from both characters' pov and even then the reasons they're being fucking idiots should be entirely understandable.