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skiimble · 2 months ago

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snooj (it seems sanji is the only thing I can draw these days)

#art #my art #skiimblog #one piece #black leg sanji #zosan #if you squint

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skiimbii · 17 days ago

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> planes passing in the night

I am truly on a roll here, looking at all my hastily written ideas on scraps around the desk. Either way, miscommunication is the topic this time - common trope, but it does get a lot of shit online. Of course I have an opinion on that, haha.

Is the miscommunication trope a good or bad one? Every couple of months, it feels like the internet forgets that they've talked about it before and everyone on Twitter reiterates their thoughts on how much they absolutely despise the trope. Originally, I usually agreed with their sentiments - if these dumbasses simply sat still for two seconds and just listened, 90 percent of the plot would disappear into smoke, so why the hell do I have to continue to be here, frustrated? It's a valid criticism. To a point!

Lately, I've looped back around to thinking about things that I've previously written off ages ago in the writing sphere, to ask myself if my stance has remained stagnant. At some point I was reminded by the internet about this, but it got me thinking about what the miscommunication trope is, and what specifically makes it bad. And thus, we come to a new metaphor: planes passing in the night. (I know the original saying is ships passing in the night, but I can't use boat terminology in all of these. So, planes.)

I know the original idiom talks about people meeting for a moment, only to separate to never see each other again, but I'm changing the meaning here, bear with me.

It's nighttime. Two planes quietly pass each other in the airspace, on their own separate paths. Maybe this could be read as something sad and evitable. But honestly, who's to say that they won't ever end up in the same airport, in the same hangar? How the hell do we know that they weren't both in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and that if they had met in that exact time it wouldn't have gone to shit? It was cloudy; they couldn't spot each other. Neither pilot asked for help; no one picked up their radios. Passenger and helicopter, international and local, taking off and landing ... there are a million reasons why. And that, that fucking convoluted mess of reasons, is why miscommunication is so often so bad. Funnily enough, it's all because of a lack of communication.

It's another relatively straightforward way I've made up to start fixing this problem in writing, but, again, it's shoddy and won't fix everything, so heed that. To make miscommunication work, think about a flight cancellation. To cancel it, you'd want a damn good reason, or else you sit and stare at the terminal and you just get mad. Make the reason why these characters are unable to get their stories straight like a tornado - which is to say, unavoidable and impossible to stop, not something you'd want to get caught up in, not worth the sacrifice to venture into. It doesn't have to be clear to readers right away, that would be boring. But it should be something that will take that extra second of hesitation to get over, because kiddie gates aren't stopping grown adults who have yearning in their hearts. (If you don't want one big wall, a series of kiddie gates is capable of crippling even the strongest athletes.)

And don't just think of these obstacles as one type of wall, especially if you're a visual guy like I am. To get to your flight, there's checkout counters and gates and sliding doors and people, so many people until you can finally sit and rest and wait for boarding. On good days, you'll breeze through and hop on in a timely fashion. Bad days have you being pat down and missing your flight. Miscommunication isn't always standing behind a brick wall and hearing a conversation out of context, just like airports are unpredictable and stupid.

And that's the sinch, isn't it? We all love a version of this dumbass trope, whether we realise it or not. It's just one version of miscommunication that we hate, when the planes are so close, almost touching, nothing stopping them - and they just don't, for no good reason (bad weather? the skies are clear). It can be anything - a fight, a commotion outside the window, a second of hesitation that lets the other character overthink, a bad piece of outside advice, thinking that they actually understood when they didn't, death, life, whatever - but make it a tornado.

Most importantly, make it feel fun. Airports aren't, but this isn't an airport anymore shut up forget the metaphor for this. Frustration is good, but leaving people suspended in that feeling for too long will turn it into genuine frustration, which we don't want. You want these guys to kiss and make up! They keep missing and missing and zooming past each other but it's amusing and maddening and we want them to stop and turn back at some point to land at the same destination. (In fanfic, this is easier. We already like these guys from the canon media, so of course we'll stick with their antics. Still, don't let that keep you from making a good F5 tornado.)

It's still nighttime. Two planes pass each other in the airspace. Maybe someone sees this as a sad inevitability. But tonight, or tomorrow, or next week or month or year, they'll find each other again on the landing strip, or the lot, or the hangar. They just need to avoid the tornadoes until then.

#skiimblog #writing community #creative writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing #ao3 fanfic #tropes #me and my need for metaphors

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skiimble · 2 months ago

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