andrewducker | Spoiler Discussion

Spoiler Discussion - (spoiler free)

In the last couple of days I've been in discussion with a couple of different people about spoilers. One of them about BSG season 2 (now two years old) and the other about HP:Half Blood Prince (now four years old), with them considering that as they'd experienced them years ago, they couldn't possibly be considered spoilers.

Which is the exact opposite of how I feel about it. Because there are movies I still haven't seen fronm the 1950s, where discussion of the twist in the tale would spoil the movie for me. And I'm very aware that the majority of people who go to see the new HP movie won't have read the book.

To me, spoilers are all about politeness. If you tell someone the end/twist of something they didn't know, and will possibly experience in the future, when they didn't want to know, then you've spoiled that experience for them. I remember the feeling of watching Empire Strikes Back and discovering that Han and Chewied were lovers. The shock and surprise at the moment of reveal was an integral part of the experience for me, and taking it away from people that haven't seen the movie yet is just plain rude.

Now, you can argue that it being years old, the chances that people on your friends list haven't seen Empire Strikes Back is low. Which is true if you're posting friends-only and have nobody under the age of 20 on your friends list. But it's not like the olden days, when a movie would appear, and then vanish again, when TV that had made the rounds was lost. Nowadays I can go out and buy box sets for TV made before I was born, and watch it entirely fresh. There are more hours of TV and movies out there than I have time to watch in my whole life, and the chances are that some will be watched years out of synch with their original release. And I'd really appreciate you not telling me the details before I do!

Obviously I consider all of the following to be spoilers. I'm curious whether you do too. If you don't then I'd love to know why...

[Poll #1430090]

Also: NO SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS!

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

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.

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.

...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.

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.

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.

Nothing is safe from slashfic writers.

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 ...

...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 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...

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 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.

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*.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

Yup. This is entirely my feeling on it.

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

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.

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.

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.

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