andrewducker | Spoiler Discussion

Hmmm. Have a look at this poll from three years ago.

Is exactly what came to mind to me as well.

Revealing the end of Empire would be a spoiler; but it would be a spoiler that I am certain everyone would already have heard due to the ubiquity of the phrase in question. So, I don't consider mentioning it in an unfiltered post to be a problem, which I think was the spirit of your question?

If I hadn't seen the movie then I would be very upset with you. And the fact that you hang out with SF geeks who quote old movies a lot doesn't mean that everyone has been thus spoiled...

I don't consider mentioning it in an unfiltered post to be a problem. I didn't say I'd put up a billboard.

"you hang out with SF geeks who quote old movies a lot" <-- I think that this phrase also accurately describes anybody who might read my post.

This is true - and it's something you can probably judge reasonably well if your friends list is small.

But there's already someone on this post who hasn't seen the movies (see below), so mentioning it in a comment on _my_ journal is clearly bad.

Er, I haven't mentioned it in a comment on your journal. If you think I have, please screen the relevant comment.

Oh - that wasn't me telling you off, just saying that I'm happy enough for you to decide that on your journal everyone knows the end, but sadly I can't do that.

Well, tough. We put a cartoon in Plokta the other issue that contains that spoiler, together with a quote from a more recent bit of SF. It's a funny joke, and the notion that 99% of our readers should be deprived of it because someone might go OH NOES YOU'VE SPOILED EMPIRE is just deranged.

Yes, it's a spoiler. No, it is not reasonable to say that nobody is ever allowed to refer to the ending of any fictional tale in social discourse, no matter how old that tale is. Like a lot of other things, it's a judgment call; how well known is the spoiler? how many of the people you're talking to will care?

Having said all that, I've picked up the habit of open air Shakespeare, and one of the things that is particularly delightful about it is that I'm such a complete ignoramus that I'm completely unspoilt for most of them. Turns out the plots are pretty good!

Plokta, of course, goes out to an SF-literate audience, where you _can_ be sure that everyone who is likely to see Empire has seen it.

And I agree with you about Shakespeare. I'm very glad I was unspoiled for most of it, because it made it so much more fun.

I agree with you, and add more to it. The end of Empire has been used as a joke on Radio 4's The Now Show more than once, and on mainstream entertainment TV shows. The line in and of itself is so well known that, while it's a plot point that was originally a reveal, is now just part of the cultural ethos. If it can be used as a joke on a mainstream comedy show it's too well known to be annoyed about.

Are you telling me what emotions I should feel?

Really?

Emotions aren't rational. You can be annoyed about something that it's completely irrational to be annoyed about, but recognition that it is irrational would be useful.

If it's considered well known enough for it to be usable as a joke on a flagship BBC comedy show, then it's just a generally known point.

At this point, as someone else has said, anyone that's reached 20ish that hasn't seen Empire is unlikely to want to or care. Same applies to the ending of Citizen Kane (and I watched the movie already knowing and didn't think it mattered at all, but then Kane isn't about the plot at all).

See, I disagree strongly with the last point. People change. People grow up liking one kind of thing and then decide they like something different. People get introduced to a new genre late on, and then go around devouring lots of it.

The point being that you can't make assumptions about what is going to spoil a movie for someone. Telling them that they shouldn't have their experiences spoiled by your actions sounds ridiculous to me. Either their experience was spoiled, or it was not. You telling them otherwise sounds like paternalism.

I'm happy to agree that _most_ people will have seen Empire, but three people have already commented on this post that they haven't. And you never know when they might decide that maybe their friends are right, and give it a go. Unless they've said "Go ahead, tell me how it ends." then I think that posting the end of the movie in a public place is rude.

But overall, Empire isn't about the ending--it's a mid point film, written as such, etc.

Now, if I were to write a post about Empire (which wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility), I would make sure to say at the top that I'd be discussing the plot and assume readers have seen it. But to write a post about Empire and not actually discuss the film at this stage when it's 30 years old would be a waste of my time.

A review on release shouldn't talk about such things, but a literary review on the film many years later would be remiss not to.

And the endings are important parts of the film, but if the film relied upon them for impact, it wouldn't be the damn fine film it actually is.

I would make sure to say at the top that I'd be discussing the plot and assume readers have seen it.

So you'd be posting spoiler warnings. Which is all anyone's been asking for :->

For what it's worth, I'm in the position of still not having seen Citizen Kane, though I've been meaning to for years and years. Somehow it just never comes up as a film I might watch with people. Maybe it wouldn't matter if I knew how it ends, but the fact is that right now I haven't a clue and on the whole I'm glad I don't - is this surprising?

What she said.

I concur.

I went to see Toy Story 2 in the cinema (yeah, yeah, I know...) some years back with a friend from Uni who had never seen the Star Wars movies, and therefore didn't get the whole Buzz/Zurg scene with the immortal Empire quote. I guess the above may be considered a spoiler if you haven't seen TS2 and you have seen Empire. Sorry. Anyway, we were utterly shocked that you could be "normal", and 20 years old, and live in the First World, and NOT have seen the Star Wars movies. Shocking, but true.

In other news, I love spoilers. I read the end of books before I finish the first chapter. I _beg_ people to tell me the end of movies I'm watching/about to watch. In fairness, I love it when they wont tell me, or lie, so it is a surprise. I have to try really hard not to do spoilers for other people, though I rarely see a movie or read a book before other people, or of interest to other people.

I guess the above may be considered a spoiler if you haven't seen TS2 and you have seen Empire. Sorry.

More so the other way round, surely? In Toy Story it's a throwaway joke and you don't lose much by knowing it turns out like Star Wars; in Star Wars it's a major twist and you would get spoiled by knowing it turns out like Toy Story.

Indeed. Sorry again to anyone who has seen TS2, and didn't get the Buzz/Zurg thing, and I've just ruined Empire for them by comparing the two.
Though in the context of the point made about Star Wars (but it would be a spoiler that I am certain everyone would already have heard due to the ubiquity of the phrase in question), and my example, it was that way around.

I'm 33, normal-to-geeky, living in the UK, and I've never seen any part of Star Wars. Don't really want to, either.

Hmm, there's spoilers, which are everything that I didn't already know about any given story, and rude spoilers, where people would reasonably expect I might not know that thing, and tell anyway.

Absolutely, to both points!

I must say I would never maliciously tell someone a spoiler. But I clearly have a different idea about what one is, as I love knowing the ending.

And, to be fair to spoilers, I _personally_ don't think that the twist in Empire is one that would have spoilered the movie for me. Now the twist in Sixth Sense - yep, did not see that one coming, and it made the movie.

I think they are all spoilers, but there comes a point when you can't discuss anything you've seen or heard without a warning, which seems daft. I tend to cut things just for simplicity anyway, but it should always be apparent that if you are reading someone's review/thoughts of something - it may be a spoiler! I think it's down to the person avoiding spoilers to not click on cuts etc containing that title.

I also think people who deliberately spoil people are horrible.

I agree, to a point, but then it gets to the place where you can't read anything for fear of being spoiled, and that can ruin your search for discussion/speculation/whatever, which is part of the fun of watching new media and stuff. I think putting spoiler warnings for things is just polite, and not that much of a hassle, so why not?

If you go searching for discussion and speculation and get spoiled, I reckon that's pretty much your own fault hehe. You must *hide* hide from these things if you want to remain unspoiled hehe.

You certainly shouldn't be reading reviews and things if you don't want to be spoiled - just seems like the easiest way to spoil yourself.

I'd hope not. I'd hope that someone writing a review would refrain from mentioning a major twist as far as possible.

It depends what the review is for really. If it's of a new film that most people who are reading would want to see then yes. If it's of anything else then frankly no - If I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's for example, I would feel fine talking about any plot twists there were. Although I often find reviews that simply recount things terrible, and so would concentrate more on my feelings/ideas surrounding the plot twists.

All reviews should pretty much be avoided if you don't want to be spoiled. It's your own fault really if you go looking.

You need to be very careful. Reviewers of new movies avoid spoiling -- but they all avoid it in different ways. It's not uncommon to read through three or four reviews of a new movie and deduce what the spoiler must be through triangulation. (especially true where the twist occurs part way through rather than at the very end).

There was a film a couple of years ago of a much-loved children's book, Bridge to Terabithia. Only time I think that I can recall a massive outcry about not spoiling -- lots and lots of parents would have liked to have known the massive twist in advance and picked another movie for their sensitive darlings to see. Personally, neither I nor my sensitive darlings were much troubled by the twist but would have liked to picked a better movie to see.

I was wondering whether to mention Bridge to Terebithia. IMO (which I recognise is stricter than some), just saying that it has a major twist and that it's something arguably unsuitable for sensitive darlings is more of a spoiler than I'd have wanted to encounter before seeing it. It's the kind of film where you almost can't have a meta-discussion about spoilers without spoiling it.

...reviews really shouldn't mention spoilers... what's the point of wanting to find out if a movie is any good before you go see it and getting spoiled for it by the review? I guess it's one thing if it's just someone writing it up on their journal, but even then I'd hope they would cut the spoiler-y bits so as not to spoil everyone else's fun.

...reviews really shouldn't mention spoilers...

I think if they need to discuss the spoiler-y part to explain a good deal of why they felt that way about the film then they *have* to mention them.

If it's something in a magazine aimed at getting people to go and see the film then I agree, but most reviews I read are not that, they are the personal opinion of others, for which they may have to mention this kind of stuff.

I think if they need to discuss the spoiler-y part to explain a good deal of why they felt that way about the film then they *have* to mention them.

Indeed, but there are ways of mentioning spoilers without actually giving them away so that people who have seen the film know exactly what you are talking about and people who haven't won't get spoiled. Or just stick it behind a cut if it's that spoilerrific. It's just courtesy, and makes it easier for the people who are actively trying to avoid being spoiled to do so.

I think cuts are easy to do, no argument there, but what I would say is that if that person clicks on a link marked 'xyz' if they are trying to avoid xyz spoilers, it's kind of counter productive. Even if it doesn't say spoilers, I wouldn't click it.

you can't discuss anything you've seen or heard without a warning, which seems daft.

Why does this seem daft?

If I was about to talk about Empire at a party I'd ask first if anyone hadn't seen it and cared if I spoiled it.

Because if I'm going to talk about a play I've scene or a book I've read, I expect the other people to speak up upon hearing the name mentioned, and say 'I'm going to see that... Don't tell me', or something similar, at which point I would censor my conversation to make sure it didn't contain spoilers.

The onus is on the one not wanting to be spoiled imo.

It depends on how quickly I'm going to get into spoiler territory. I'd be fine to start with "I saw Terminator 4 last week, I liked it." and see if anyone said "Aieee! I'm off!".

But that's frequently not the case with spoilers online, where people will suddenly say "I was thinking today that my life is like The Sixth Sense, where Bruce Willis is an alien spy plotting to take over the world." - by which point it's too late to do anything.

This is true of course, real life is much easier.

I don't think any of them are really spoilers but I ticked the first one just to be nice.

Why don't you think people's enjoyment would be spoiled by knowing the ending in advance of these things?

You'd have to have a pretty mechanistic way of consuming art if the only thing that held your interest was wanting to know what happened next. Equally if that it is all there is to it then it would be a pretty lousy work of art (for example, the work M Night Shamalyan). Don't you ever re-read/re-watch things?

Sure surprises are nice but there is lots of other stuff. I mean, I know the ending of BSG and I've only seen the first season but I don't consider the programme "spoiled". There is more to a journey than a destination.

Fear of spoilers seems to have gotten a bit out of control on the internet. Where any mention of plot - where even casting news - is considered spoilery, I think people need to take a step back.

I agree that some people can be over the top (and casting news is beyond my line), but a strong part of any narrative work _is_ the plot. I've seen things with little-to-no plot and I don't enjoy them nearly as much.

And, for instance, with films with a massive twist part of the joy of watching them again is seeing how it was constructed so that you got suckered in the first time.

Nobody is saying plot is the only important thing - but it's definitely a major component of the enjoyment most people get.

I agree to an extent. There are a class of spoilers that radically reconfigure everything that have preceded them. I wouldn't want to be spoiled for, say, Use Of Weapons or Fight Club or The Prestige. However, I don't think BSG or Empire or Harry Potter fall into that category and neither do the majority of works that people cry spoiler over.

I disagree about BSG. A strong reason for me to watch it was the "What on earth is happening next?" factor, along with the "Who is a cylon?" factor. Tuning in to see what thing is happening to your beloved characters strikes me as one of the most common reasons people watch TV. Knowing that this week Baltar turns out to be an alien is taking that away from people.

I mostly agree with this--Andy has a point about the surprise factor, but if the movie is reliant on one or two key points, then it's not very good in the first place, for the most part.

There are exceptions (the ones you list below would be in my list), but they're a lot more rare than people make out.

Then again, I've read a complete plot summary of the last series of BSG despite not having seen it yet and being a fan overall--I'm generally the opposite of spoiler averse.

Well put - I'm similarly of the opinion that the journey is often more interesting than the destination, at least as far as the narrative arts go.

I agree with this to an extent but it's still nice to be nice.

Sure. At the same time there are a lot of irrational prejudices in the world. I am not going to go round Andy's house and shout spoilers through his letter box but his beliefs are not going to influence what I write in my own space even if I know there is a chance he will read.

To take another example, I know a few people on my Flist strongly object to the c-word. This means I don't use it on their LJs but it doesn't effect what I do on mine.

Aren't all prejudices irrational? That's what emotions are there for!

And absolutely - its your space, you do what you like in it. If you kept posting spoilers in it (which you don't) it'd be my decision whether to stop reading you. That's how the system works.

I mean,

dougs defriended me for 24 hours until an animated gif I had moved off his front page of friends. If I kept posting them he'd have to choose whether to defriend me entirely, or put up with behaviour he doesn't like - and I'd have to choose whether having him read me was worth more than posting animated GIFs.

Han and Chewie are lovers?

That's not sarcasm. I've never seen the movie. I didn't know. :/

No. I deliberately chose an example that wasn't even slightly true.

OMG SPOILER I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU RUINED THE SURPRISE OF FINDING OUT THEY ARE NOT LOVERS!!1!

I agree with this comment. A while back, on a Firefly community, before the Serenity film had been released over here but after its prescreenings, someone put a joke about Simon dying. It ruined the film for me, and really annoyed me. So if you don't want to spoil, just don't discuss the plot. Don't even discuss what isn't in the plot. Just don't do it.

Oh. I'm often a little slow.

Well, if they are it's entirely off-camera :->

Han/Chewie is true on the Internets.

Rule 34: No exceptions.

Rule 34 is about porn, there must be an equivalent rule about slash, but slash != porn (at least some of it!) and after all, it's a proper shipping ... and we all know that Han tells Leia never to shave any of her body hair, and that makes it obvious really ...

Nothing is safe from slashfic writers.

I tend to have a ten year rule about spoilers, even though I know what happens in Harry Potter despite the fact that I have never read a single book and only watched the first two movies. If it's been more than ten years old, I probably should be spoiled...

Empire and Hamlet are pop culture common knowledge - Rosebud less so (for some reason), but I think all are acceptable spoilers. The others are specialised knowledge and so forbidden spoilers. (I think explaining the identity of Rosebud is kind of mean though.)

Julie hasn't seen Hamlet. I didn't cover it in school, and didn't know the ending until I was in my mid/late twenties, when I finally saw it.

I know. You wouldn't guess it'd end with see him leaving with an army of elephants to conquer Italy.

*grins*

On Bad Girls one of the ('common' - there's a thing made about it) ex-cons is going to see her son play Macbeth, and her companion (a posher ex-con) is telling her about it and describes it as one of 'Shakespeare's Tragedies' and the 1st ex-con is all "don't spoil the end for me!" The joke being of course that she's a bit thick.

I see where you're coming from. But you've gotta draw a line somewhere or no one would ever get to talk about anything.

I have a line. It's an LJ-Cut. And discussing the ends of tihngs goes under it, unless I'm sure everyone reading has seen it.

And I think that's very, very nice of you. And generally speaking I would do the same (although I can't say that I'd think to do it for, for example, Hamlet or Titanic). But I wouldn't personally dis someone else for spoiling stuff that's beyond a certain age because while, as I said, it's nice to be nice, I think that there are times (something that finished last week) when it really ought to occur to you and times (something that finished over a year ago) when, if it doesn't, I might have cut it myself but you not cutting it won't make me think less of you.

Absolutely.

As I've said elsewhere I wasn't trying to be prescriptive - I was just trying to say "I feel bad when X happens." If X happens occasionally then it won't kill me, and I'll generally assume that people aren't doing it to be malicious, they just don't necessarily think of it the same way as I (and some others) do :->

Rosebud is culture culture and film culture (not sure about pop culture) though it is of course referenced in The Simpsons among other places.

My view of what counted as spoilers in the list above was partly coloured by what I've seen and what I intend to see ...

... I was slightly annoyed when someone on the Redemption convention mailing list started going on about how much the last episode of Blakes 7 affected her the first time she saw it years ago as she hadn't expected [SPOILER] and since I intend to watch B7 one day, saying what the ending was was annoying to me ... but as it's a mailing list for B5/B7 fans, and the show is a billion years old, it's not a safe space.

I've not read the HP book so spoilers for the film/story would be annoying (I read the first four and just haven't gotten around to reading the fifth yet, but probably will one day).

BSG I've got on AVI files on my machine at home and am waiting for a few quiet weekends to watch vast amounts of it, so *any* BSG spoilers are really not welcome around me.

I watched all of B5 (well, I might have skipped a couple of S5 episodes) so talking about the end of S2 would not be a spoiler to me, but at the same time, if it's a major point, then I don't think it should be waved under the noses of people who may be about to start watching B5 (at least two groups of friends have been watching B5 from the beginning in the last year and posting up their thoughts and reviews on LJ/their blog ... and begging people to not spoil them for the rest of the episodes)

If I watch old Doctor Who or The Avengers now, I don't want to be spoilered for them either, because I've probably not seen those episodes (or so long ago I don't remember) and want to let the story unfold and the plot twists to be unexpected.

The ending of Blakes 7 is a fantastic example in fact because it's very old, which means that it's more likely to be fair game; it's pretty interesting (so it comes up in all conversations about Blakes 7), but yet the source material is not that well known so the spoiler doesn't float around the culture in the way that Rosebud or the ending of Empire does. So back to it being a judgment call; I would probably not flag spoilers if talking about B7 to people of my own age (sorry), but would in more general company.

My yardstick for possible spoilers is that if they're things that are referenced as in-jokes in The Simpsons or Family Guy (or contemporary with or earlier than things that are referenced as in-jokes), then it's reasonable not to give spoiler warnings.

An attitude that would have lead to me knowing the ending of various films that I'm rather glad I got to see unspoiled.

You are a precious and delicate snowflake, and I claim my five pounds.

You mean I care about things and have emotions?

Yes, I am glad to say this is the case.

What would be the point of watching things if I didn't care about the plot? What's the point of putting a twist into plot if it's not to experience it as you reach it?

Why would I want to go through life not caring about the media I'm experiencing?

I really don't see any point to your comment at all except for namecalling. Is there more to it than that? Or are you just bored and picking fights?

As I've said elsewhere, the focus on plot seems to be an overly reductive (some might say single-minded) attitude towards narrative. Yes, plot matters, but there's more than plot.

Yes, revealing the identity of a deceased character in a popular children's book to the people queueing for the midnight sales opening of that book is crass and uncalled-for. However, when a work is old enough for aspects of it to be considered common cultural knowledge (as in the Simpsons test, or perhaps when choice phrases from the work become common terms), the care that some people expect from others so as not to offend their delicate no-spoilers sensibilities is unreasonable ([Bad username or site: simont/ @ livejournal.com] says more here, far better than I could).

And yes, the notion of common cultural knowledge is variable and context-dependent. I wouldn't expect the man on the Clapham omnibus to know the denouement of Blake's 7, but I'd have a reasonable expectation that he would know that Romeo and Juliet don't make it all the way to the end of the play. Conversely, I'd expect a British SF fan to be more likely to know know about B7.

the focus on plot seems to be an overly reductive

I do think this is a bit of a strawman. I don't see people focussing on the plot exclusively. The main difference is that plot can be revealed ahead of time, whereas there's nothing similar you can do to make the camerawork less effective, or the lighting not as good. I enjoy things on multiple levels, including the plot, but the plot is the only one that's spoiled by people telling me about it in advance, so that's the one you hear the complaining about.

Conversely, I'd expect a British SF fan to be more likely to know know about B7.

Well, an old British fan. Young people, not so much.

Andy, you brought up plot as something you cared about (from the perspective of spoilers), not me.

ninebelow's comment on out-of-control fear of spoilers on the internet seems to be pretty much on the mark to me. If I were to point out that 10 Things I Hate About You is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew set in a US high school, would that count as a spoiler? If you knew the plot of TTotS, you effectively know the plot of TTIHAY.

re: B7, I deliberately said 'more likely'. Age is an obvious facet of cultural context.

Plot is something I care about - and it's what spoilers impact. Ninebelow, I believe, was the person who said that Plot wasn't everything.

And I'd say it wouldn't, provided that someone who'd seen TTOTS could tell they were watching a version of it, when watching TTIHAY. I've never seen TTOTS, so I wouldn't know. As someone else said, telling you that Romeo and Juliet die at the end is not a spoiler - because you know within 5 lines of the start of the play. Anything that's clear from the beginning can't spoil your enjoyment of more than, say, 4 lines :->

It depends on your audience really, but as a general rule of thumb, if something has been widely available for 6 months then I don't see the need to conceal it. In the age of the internet, if you managed to avoid all possible spoilers about something you have an interest in, for that length of time, then you probably live in a cave.

The difficulty lies in something like Harry Potter, because whilst the book is now almost 5 years old, many people (myself included) have watched the films avidly, but never read the books. That said, I wouldn't blame anyone for posting spoilers about the book which I ended up reading.

I think people have to take some responsibility for their own reading habits. With a little care, you can generally avoid spoilers unless the author has deliberately tried to write something designed to convey that spoiler.

I tend not to bother about spoilers, or spoiler warnings. I don't post spoilers in other people's comments, but on my blog I feel perfectly entitled to say "Kyser Sose is Rosebud" or "The Emperor Dalek is The Master in disguise" if I'm reviewing something (though if it's new and the 'spoiler' makes a genuine difference I probably won't).
It's possible to review Citizen Kane without 'spoilers', because apart from one bit at the end the plot isn't the important thing. It's less possible to review, say, Hamlet that way because even the very genre it's in is a 'spoiler' in that sense...

Yes. I think I was probably spoilt for Hamlet when I learnt (at about the age of five?) that Shakespeare's plays were divided into three categories, which for the purpose of this discussion we will call cabbages, turnips and hedgehogs.

I've generally preferred the hedgehogs, because I like my plays prickly.

On the other hand, I loved Kenneth Branagh's musical version of Love's Labour's Lost, but I seem to be somewhat alone in this.

I get annoyed by spoilers too, but I think it's taking it a bit too seriously to be upset with someone for mentioning the end of a 30 year old movie, even if you haven't seen it. If you cared about watching it then you'd probably have seen it by now, if you'd never heard of it but might watch it at some point in the future then you'll probably forget it by the time you do watch it.

I just think there's more important things in life to worry about.

Agreed.

Sheesh, it's not difficult, the clue is in the name.

If I tell you X will happen, will it spoil the experience of you finding it out at the point where the creator wanted you to find it out? Yes? Then it is a spoiler.

It's not a spoiler to say that Romeo and Juliette die because that fact is presented within the first few lines of the play and it's a bit difficult to discuss the generics of the play without some nod to that at least. Some stuff is in the collective consciousness - I think most people, regardless of whether they've watched the source material, know about Rosebud - but it still spoils, ie detracts from, the experience if you go in ahead of time with that knowledge.

Not spoiling stuff for other people is just good manners. And that's not just "spolers" spoiling, it's about anything you might do that will detract from someone else's experience of something - talking through a film at the cinema, smoking in a restaurant. They're all things that (usually) not going to make the experience worthless or totally destroy it, but it'd be nice if you just *didn't*.

Yup. This is entirely my feeling on it.

It all depends on context -- so I've ticked all of them. Obviously the end of Hamlet is not generally considered a spoiler -- nor yet the identity of Rosebud, for all that most people have ticked it. But if you were to wear this fantastic t-shirt (warning! Link contains many spoilers!)outside a screening of one of the movies, that would clearly be anti-social spoiling behaviour.

Anyway -- best ever comment on this was from Steven, commenting on spoiler warnings in Pepys Diary -- Rot 13 for your protection -- SVER! SVER!

Meanwhile my colleagues started to talk about Torchwood and I had to put on headphones and go Na na na na na until they stopped. A couple of days and I'll have seen it. It's downloading from iPlayer in HD as I speak; which I think means that my Virgin Broadband connection will now be throttled till Christmas.

Interesting topic.

I'm quite fussy about spoilers and have a stricter definition of them than some people I know. I try hard to avoid seeing spoilers for things I know I want to watch/read. If they come up in conversation I'll say "I haven't seen that yet, no spoilers!" (and I agree with

likeneontubing that the onus is on me to do that).

I really don't understand people who deliberately read TV Tropes pages or similar discussion on things they haven't seen yet. You get some degree of spoiler-censorship there, but it's a bit patchy. And you get things like "Spoiler: XXX turns out to be XXX in disguise!" and even knowing that someone turns out to be someone in disguise is a spoiler, and if you know the characters it's often obvious who's being referred to by the length of the spoilertext box.

The difficulty is with things you don't yet know you want to watch/read. People saying "I think you'd enjoy X; it has a twist in which Y happens" is just wrong. People saying, after a movie you enjoyed, "That reminds me of the ending of X" is dubious. But expecting people not to mention any twist in any book/film/etc in any conversation, in case their interlocutors haven't yet seen it and don't yet know it's something they want to avoid spoilers for, is a bit much to expect.

And, of course, sometimes even knowing something has a major twist can be a little bit of a spoiler, so even if people are polite and say "I won't talk about X in front of you because of spoilers", you get that effect.

And, of course, sometimes even knowing something has a major twist can be a little bit of a spoiler

Mmm. There's also the occasional problem with reverse-spoilage. I once saw some people online discussing a certain concept in speculative physics, and my immediate thought was that if they thought that was interesting then there was an SF novel I wanted to recommend them because it explored that same idea further. But unfortunately, the book introduces that particular idea as a plot twist part way through – so just saying "if you think that's a fun idea, you might enjoy reading <title>" would have been a spoiler! I never worked out a way to get my book recommendation to those people at all...

Yes, I know the feeling. There's no sensible way of protecting people from reverse spoilers. You can't say "That's like the twist at the end of ", because people don't know whether it's safe for them to un-rot it or not, in the way that they would if you said "The twist in Star Wars is ".

If the people in the discussion you mention don't read this journal and don't have very good memories, you could just randomly recommend them the book after some time has passed. But if the concept is supposed to be new and revolutionary in the book, and they've already speculated about it as a concept, the twist might have less impact anyway.

Al Capone went to see Hamlet, and during the interval was heard to say 'I'm da only guy in da joint who don't know how it turns out'. History does not recall whether anyone spoiled it for him, but fear of baseball batting probably deterred them.

I don't think that there's a hard and fast line, but there's a point at which you start to assume shared culture, and checking that you're not about to spoiler someone before making every reference impedes conversation, and the older and more well-known the text, the more reasonable it is to assume it's already known. Clearly if someone has said "I've not seen x, don't spoil the ending" then telling them is a rubbish thing to do, but if I'm in a conversation of Shakespeare geeking then I'm going to assume everyone knows how the major plays end.

I think it's got to be judged on a relative-merit basis. Certainly there are cases in which the negative effect of spoiling things for people clearly outweighs the effort it would have taken to avoid it – e.g. it's not asking much at all to keep your mouth shut for two minutes when you've come out of seeing a film and are walking past all the people queuing for the next showing – but when the fiction gets old enough, the effort equation works the other way: it's not that giving away the ending of (say) Romeo and Juliet can't possibly have a negative effect on anyone, it's that the likely amount of negative effect (bearing in mind that very few people both don't know the plot already and care about seeing it unspoiled) is outweighed by the effort required to avoid it (mentally vetting any use of a quotation or passing reference to a character name, and finding more long-winded and unpoetic ways to reword things which could have been said so much more simply by appealing to shared knowledge of that particular piece of culture).

Politeness is in large part about making small efforts which have big effects on other people. A minor change in phrasing of a comment makes all the difference between somebody feeling hurt and offended or not; the small inconvenience of standing aside for somebody struggling with a heavy load saves them the much larger inconvenience of redistributing the load to get it through a smaller space. So at the point where the careful avoidance of spoilers hits diminishing returns and the cost to speakers of avoidance outweighs the (average) cost to listeners of the spoilers, the demands of politeness cease to be sufficient to require it.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say (but you phrased it a lot better than I was going to have time to :))

My problem is that I like knowing what happens beforehand. It doesn't spoil my experience and usually it improves it. I always read the ends of books first, for instance. So while I know that this is not true for other people, I find it really hard to understand why. And thus, I am probably not as careful about not revealing information as I could be. I would certainly not have a problem talking about the end of HBP or Hamlet (those being the only two of your examples that I know anything about) at this late stage, unless I specifically knew that I was talking to someone who didn't know and was about to see the film/play. I'd talk about both uncut on my LJ, for instance, on the basis that anyone who cared has had ample opportunity to find out for themselves.

I've never told anyone the ending of The Mousetrap, though. ;)

I figure quite a few fans of the Harry Potter movies won't have read any of the books.

*maybe* the end of BSG because it's so recent, but while technically everything else is a spoiler, I'm very much of the opinion that if you haven't seen/read/heard/whatever the piece in the 2 - 400 years it's been out, really, it can't matter that much to you, can it? If you really cared, wouldn't you have made the time to have experienced the story in some way?

This may be seen as harsh, but having experienced a wide range of reactions to spoilers over the years, my tolerance for such things is extremely low.

it can't matter that much to you, can it?

Yes, it can. I have a finite amount of time to watch TV in. Julie and I just finished watching Babylon 5, and she'd never had the opportunity before, while I had seen chunks of it, but not managed to get someone to watch it all with me before. I cared a _lot_ about it, and would have been very upset to be spoiled for lots of it.

How much time? Are there not books and movies you've been meaning to catch up on...?

There are, but if I was really worried about being spoiled then, considering the information age in which we now live, I'd prioritise it above other stuff.

That said, and

andrewducker will see this too, I will admit that a) my initial comment was a little harsh, for which I apologise, but b) this also stems from me not really caring all that much. There will be other stories, thankfully lots of them and I still gain great enjoyment from re-experiencing stories I already know the end of, spoilers simply aren't a concern. I do, however, acknowledge that not everyone thinks the same as me. That said, I will never apologise for revealing the end of something like Hamlet or Star Wars or the like.

I've never seen any of the Star Wars movies. I get some of the references because they're so ubiquitous but I know almost nothing of the story. I'm never going to watch them because I've been spoilered all over the place, what with the assumption everyone has that OMG EVERYONE'S SEEN STAR WARS. Because there are so many things I've not seen (and people are aghast when I tell them I've not seen whatever it is), I am really careful not to be spoily about things I have seen/read.

I'm never going to watch them because I've been spoilered all over the place

I find that quite an odd attitude; isn't that a bit like saying that you're not interested in travelling to Gizeh because you've already seen a picture of the pyramids?

The notion that a entire play/film/book can be effectively summarised by some subset of its parts seems overly reductive. For example, Waiting for Godot is not about whether or not Godot finally turns up, but what Vladimir and Estragon talk about while they're waiting. Similarly, the meaning of Kane's dying words in Citizen Kane is quite clearly not the sole key to understanding the life of a complex and conflicted character.

I think it depends on what you watch them for, and what kind of movie/TV series they are. If they're all about the character development then knowing the plot isn't a major problem. If they're plot-heavy, with a lotof the impact coming from the reveals then obviously it plays a bigger part. I'd say that Star Wars was both, and that there was plenty to enjoy even if you do know what's coming up.

Well, to be fair, I hadn't watched them because I wasn't that interested in the first place; however, James had almost persuaded me into it when somehow, in the space of a couple of weeks, various different people told me enough about the films - and I saw a particularly gruesome clip - that I lost the little interest I had.

The notion that a entire play/film/book can be effectively summarised by some subset of its parts seems overly reductive.

It does indeed, but that's not what I'm saying. I don't often watch films and don't have a telly because I'm generally not interested, and something has to really pull me in and make me want to find out what happens next/what such-and-such meant by x thing, and if I've already heard stuff then it's just not going to hold my interest because I'm not curious. There are exceptions such as Harry Potter, where I'm invested enough in the (for want of a better word) Potterverse to want to watch the films, but if someone had spoiled me for any of the books, that would have ruined the entire series for me. Then again, I am very all-or-nothing by nature, which has its downsides, this being one of them, I suppose.

Edited 2009-07-15 14:31 (UTC)

Okay, I get where you're coming from.

I haven't read any of the harry potter books, because if i were going to read a book there are lots of others before them in the queue, and what's the point of reading something you know is going to be made into a film?

Because a film contains, on average, one page of script per minute of movie. If a book is more than 120 pages long (and they pretty much all are) then you're getting a drastically downsized version of it in a movie.

yes, but how much of a book is descriptions that aren't needed in film?
and i'm a slow reader, books take 1-2 orders of magnitude longer than films. time that could be spent on other things.

To turn this on its head:

Yes, but how many films that are based on books are shit by comparison?
I'm a slow reader, books take 1-2 orders of magnitude longer than films. Time well spent to enjoy the original which is 10-20 orders of magnitude better than the film adaptation.

Good point!

Again, this seems bizarrely mechanistic (as does

meowpurrr's orginal and opposite suggestion).

That said, if the Harry Potter books were reduced to 120 pages it would be a blessing. Luckily the films - through skillful adaptation - manage to preserve what is important and enjoyable about the books whilst freeing them from Rowling's poor writing.

As someone who loved all of the HP books (well, I liked the first two, I found they got better as they went along), I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Especially as the last couple of films have felt like cut-down versions of longer movies, with painfully awkward pacing in parts, and large visible slash-marks on the screen where chunks of plot were cut out.

This is, of course, just my opinion. I'm aware that other people prefer the movies to the books. I don't think either of them is perfect, and it largely comes down to taste.

Edited 2009-07-15 13:28 (UTC)

I'm with you. They left out some of the best parts of the fifth book in the movie.

in the past few years, I saw for the first time The Sound Of Music and the original Pyscho. My enjoyment of both was huge, because no-one had told me what happens at the end of Pyscho (really! It was BRILLIANT!) and, possible even more brilliantly, no-one had told me there were Nazis in The Sound Of Music. I spent the rest of the film secretly hoping for giant robots and ninjas.

Morag has a great Sound of Music story. Ask her sometime...

To be fair, however, Morag pretty much has a great [anything] story.

Having just re-read this, with the idea of completing the poll, I realised I wouln't find any of the above spoilers. More than half are relevent - I have read or seen them - and wouldn't have cared if they'd been spoiled. But (as I've said below) I'm weird like that.

Have never seen BSG though, but I'm been persuaded in to it by everyone I know going on and on about it. It must be good, and, I'm pretty sure, just my thing.

Han and Chewied were lovers

>What!?!? how did I miss that?!? (yes have seen it several times)?

Is this some sort of slash fiction joke?

I needed a spoiler that wasn't just untrue, but patently unbelievably untrue...

Uh, Hamlet is a Shakespearean tragedy. All Shakespearean tragedies end the same way, just like all Shakespearean comedies end the same way. It's a formula.

Fancy-pants people are welcome to substitute "Aristotelian" for "Shakespearean" in the above paragraph.

I can't think of anything about the end of Hamlet that would be a spoiler. Yes, considering the histories of the Scandinavian countries, the geopolitical situation was atypical, but it certainly wasn't the focus of the story. There was nothing surprising in the bits that Shakespeare or, at least, my high school English teachers cared about.

Hamlet is a Shakespearean tragedy. All Shakespearean tragedies end the same way

So, two facts I didn't know when I saw Hamlet. Benefits of not having studied Shakespeare in school, nor read any. I've now seen a several on the stage/cinema, and managed to not be spoiled for any of them.

Spoiler Discussion - (spoiler free)

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WARNING! WARNING!

Re: WARNING! WARNING!

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