Picking collective brains

[neadods]

This is probably cheating,* but I'm hung up and need the gestalt to help rattle me loose.

Am trying to write a story that hinges on a form of communication, although not necessarily *about* that form of communication. Just as Blink isn't about the messages on the DVD or the wallpaper so much as it's *about* having to communicate through time to defeat the angels.

Having failed utterly at taking the form of communication approach - "I have a brilliant idea about Navaho Codetalkers!" or something, I'm trying to take it from a different angle to see if inspiration strikes that way.

What major, life-impacting message could go astray, either through a bad connection in a game of "telephone" or letters lost or (best yet) letters/messages delivered, but not understood? "I'll marry you." "The British are coming"** "Get home, your father is dying." "You are the heir to..." I'm thinking of some sort of "for want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost... the battle was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail" plotline.


*Nah, if muskratjohn can thank people for coming up for ideas for his games, I'm not going to apologize for taking whatever I can use for my pro pitches.

**Sorry UKers reading this, that's a bit woven into our culture. Blame Paul Revere, who didn't even make his famous ride.

Comments

[mlewys.livejournal.com]

The first that comes immediately to mind is Alexander Graham Bell's big moment, "Mr. Watson, come here. I need you."

What if the crew of the Titantic spotted the iceberg sooner?

What if Thomas Payne's Common Sense never left the printers?

What if the South tried to surrender to Sherman before his March - and the messenger made it to Sherman with the terms?

What if Maria Antionette said, "I give all my money to the poor!" but word spread that she said, "Let them eat cake!"

What if the Egyptians never used Hieroglyphics?

Pick any great work from the Greeks and decide it was never written. What impact would that have?

For that matter, choose any of the Eastern Philosophers and do the same.

What if Roman hadn't build roads? Or the Pony Express never started?

What if the printing press never caught on?

I could do this all day.

[xwingace]

Message that could (very easily) be misinterpreted:

.... was wounded during ...

Actual message; implied but not mentioned: but survived.
Understood message; and died of his injuries.

Or of course the other way around

XWA
(Hope you don't mind me popping around... I'm wandering around, randomly checking other people's flists.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Hope you don't mind me popping around... I'm wandering around, randomly checking other people's flists

Not at all, the more the merrier around here!

[fyrdrakken]

I'm reminded of the family story about my grandfather getting shot down in WWII, smuggled to safety by the French Resistance, and sending a telegram to his mother to tell her he was okay. Which puzzled her mightily, since his message reached her before the war department notified her that he was MIA -- but she was able to reassure them when they got hold of her.

[scarlettgirl.livejournal.com]

Are you looking for a scenario in which the message is important or an actual message?

Your post reminded me of that scened in "Deep Impact" where the astrologer discovers the comet that will destroy earth and rushes from his lair to fedex the information to the Feds and his car crashes on the way and he dies so no one ever gets the message. And since, apparently, he is the astrologist worth a damn in the entire world, no one realizes their asses have been stamped with an expiration date until the high school kid notices the comet while on school field trip with the geek club.

[cedara]

"Stille Post" (as we say in Germany)? You tell a message a person who tells it another person, who tells it another person etc. etc. etc? The result is a very garbled message, which isn't what you started with.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

That's our "telephone" or, in older days, "telegraph" game.

[cedara]

Interesting. Now I have the fitting translation for it. *G*

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Just to confuse the issue, it's also known as "Whisper down the alley."

[wendymr.livejournal.com]

In the UK/Ireland, it's 'Chinese Whispers'. And don't ask me why - I'm sure the etymology is racist in some way... :/

[beledibabe.livejournal.com]

What if the Rosetta stone was never discovered? I could certainly see the course of European/Middle Eastern dynamics changing.

[nycdeb.livejournal.com]

what if a message like "When the sun returns" is delivered verbally by someone who was told the message but not the context. The message recieved might then be understood to be "When the son returns."

Quite a different thing and could cause all SORTS of havoc.

[nycdeb.livejournal.com]

actually, you could really screw with it by doing something like having the message "Urgent! Once sun returns, review the facts which I've left in the folder behind the flour." be misunderstood to be "Urgent! Once son returns, review the fax which I've left in the folder behind the flower."

[inamac.livejournal.com]

There's an incredibly famous SF story (whose title and author escape me entirely at the moment) where the plot reveal hinges on a mix-up between worshipping 'The Sun' and the 'Son of God'.

Other homophones are available.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

That's a big reveal at the end of the Star Trek TOS episode "Bread and Circuses;" it's probably been used elsewhere as well.

[fyrdrakken]

Having recently reread OotP, I am reminded of how much of the plot of the book past Xmas hinged on attempts to make contact (and how at the very end Harry discovered that his refusal to open an Xmas present in a snit led to him not learning he'd been gifted with an easy communication device until too late). I have a special hatred for plots that make use of the "people not communicating with each other" device if they wind up with a series of scenes of characters having the chance to divulge and refraining because they fear the reaction or think the other person is better off not knowing -- especially if they give us multiple POVs so we get to be fuming at so-and-so for not mentioning such-and-such when we know damn well from other scenes that whomever really needs to hear it -- but it's definitely easier to take if we don't get given multiple missed opportunities for the message to be passed on. Also if the problem comes down to technical difficulties or bad timing rather than people sitting there deliberately not saying what they need to. Because non-disclosure is a major peeve of mine. But anyway.

I'm reminded of Connie Willis' Lincoln's Dreams, in which a character died trying to find out what a ghost had been trying to tell her, and the narrator learned too late that the message had been for her to stop trying to make contact and go see a doctor because she had a heart problem. In Willis' Passage I can't recall how exactly it happened but I remember the book ending with the main character (a doctor researching near-death experiences) during her own protracted dying hallucinations somehow managed to pass a message on to her research partner that wound up saving a child patient at the end of the book. And Bellwether was about chaos and inspiration and one of the supporting characters was the Most Incompetent and Aggravating Assistant in the World, who spent the whole book ruining others' work in attempts to be "helpful," misdelivering packages and messages, and giving the viewpoint character misleading observations that sent her in several wrong directions but eventually led to a vital clue. (I'm sure To Say Nothing of the Dog had multiple occasions of info going awry or being misinterpreted, because Willis seemed to enjoy that so much and because it was just a fantastic book. Go read it, if you haven't. Oh, and Doomsday Book had part of the plot hinging on a technician collapsing with the flu after sending a grad student back in time and not being able to explain to her mentor until weeks later that he'd been sickening when he checked the coordinates and sent her to the wrong year, stranding her during the Black Death.)

[maypanic.livejournal.com]

There's a series of wireless commercials out lately that remind me of this theme. Caller on one side says something very important, line goes dead and they think the other caller is upset. I don't remember exactly but this is the gist of it-

For instance, guy and girl are talking, he stutters around and finally manages to say "I love you." We see her reacting enthusiastically, but he hears only silence, and takes that to mean she's shocked. Boy then overcompensates "I mean, in a totally friend like way, or like I love broccoli."

Man is talking to his future father-in law, somewhat nervously. Debates what to call him, calls him "Dad."
Dad smiles and replies, but line is dead, so future son in law thinks he's upset. "Erm, I mean, John. Mr Smith. Sir?"