Oddly controversial statements

[womzilla]

Here's one I still consider to be innocuous: "I like to encounter stories in the order that their authors intended them to be told." When I said this in the comics shop yesterday, everyone laughed and agreed.

Okay, phrased that way, it doesn't seem particularly controversial. But if you rephrase it as "I don't like spoilers", it apparently attracts the type of asshole who then reels off as many spoilers as possible before you shut them up. Back in Usenet days, I killfiled at least one person whose posts I otherwise enjoyed once he made it clear that he actively enjoyed spoiling stories for people who hate spoilers.

You can re-read a work many times. But you can only read it the first time, once. And surprise is a valid reaction to artistic works that, unlike most responses, can be taken away.

(Have I mentioned recently that I have seen Kevin Spacey more times on stage than on film? By which I mean, I've never seen The Usual Suspects, but I've had it spoiled for me at least a dozen times. Which reminds me of the time I was talking with supergee and he revealed that he knew that Spacey was gay but didn't know he was an actor. Now that's a different way of slicing the information of the world.)

Comments

[avram]

Have you seen the movie version of Stephen King's The Mist? (I haven't.)

I had little desire to see it, until I heard people ranting about how much they hated the ending, which involved describing the ending, behind spoiler warnings, which I of course ignored because I wasn't planning to see it. So I read about the ending, which actually sounded pretty cool, leaving me wishing I could have seen it without advance knowledge the ending. But lacking advance knowledge of the ending, I wouldn't have gone to see it. It's like a movie review written by Kurt Gödel.

Anyway, "I like to have casual conversations about movies, books, comics, and TV shows with other people" sounds innocuous, too.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I can think of at least one movie that can be spoiled merely by commenting on whether or not it is faithful to the work from which it is adapted. (Imposter, based on the PKD story; the film is made in such a way that whether it is faithful or not is indeterminate until the very last scene, and I won't say which it is.)

"Casual conversations" is not the same as "careless conversations". More directly related to my point, I can think of very few people who would respond to a statement like "I like to have casual conversations about movies, books, comics, and TV shows with other people" with a flurry of sentences designed to make the conversation as anti-casual as possible.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I agree about spoilers. I regret having found out what Focus is before I read the relevant book, and I'm very glad I read Un Lun Dun without knowing anything about it.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

When I was writing jacket copy for Tor, I would deliberately stop reading the book once I had enough of a sense of it to write enough copy, so that I couldn't accidentally spoil anything. (The catalog copy for one of the books gave away the hidden nature of one of the minor characters, which is a delightful surprise when encountered in the proper sequence.)

The hardest book to not spoil was Karl Schroeder's Lady of Mazes, because *every* detail of the setting from the beginning to the end is something of a puzzle to be decoded. I was happy with the job I did, and then they ended up using almost none of it.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I once read an SF novel which had a spoiler delivered by the cover illustration.

I've found that people who don't believe in spoiler warnings are really scornful and abusive of those who do.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

As I recall, Jumping off the Planet had a blurb that was simultaneously a spoiler and inaccurate, a difficult thing to achieve, but that I had seen done once before by the blurb on the back of Daggerspell.

[drelmo.livejournal.com]

It is probably indicative of the depth to which we are storytelling creatures that beliefs about spoilers are as fanatically held as any religion, and as passionately crusaded for.

Even moderate opinions like mine -- clearly, anyone who disagrees with my personal spoiler policy is a big jerk.

As I recall, a lot of Usenet groups had specific spoiler policies just because discussing spoiler policies was itself toxic to the conversation.

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

I insist on reading a book series in order, too. One of my best finds is the site Stop, You're Killing Me! (http://www.stopyourekillingme.com), which provides the order of books in mystery series - you can search by author or by character, and the author listings are divided internally by character. (I know other sites do this as well but I like SYKM's interface the best.)

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I don't have the spoiler thing, and I barely understand it, but I do understand that people do have it, and I do try to be polite about it. I do worry though, that not having the thing about spoilers, I won't be sensitive to exactly what constitutes a spoiler. On Usenet I used to warn people that I wasn't sure what was a spoiler and what wasn't, so if they were really put off by them, they could skip my whole post.

Actually, I have the opposite feeling -- I would really like to know how the thing is going to end up, at least some of the way, so I canstop wondering as I pass through it, and enjoy the journey more. I realize that it's a quirk of mine, though.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I hate spoilers and am very careful to put such behind a cut or couch in vagueness. This was hard when reviewing movies/etc. on Shockwave Radio, but we were careful.

Too many movie trailers tell the whole story. "Well, here's another movie we don't have to see" is a common comment. I've given up reading the back jacket of any book, since the probability is high that it will give away important plot points up to and including the ending. Sometimes, after I've finished the book I'll read the blurbs and am very happy I waited. (Sometimes I'm merely confused; the blurbs have little or no relation to the story.)

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I killfile based on comments like "It's been out for weeks already, so everybody should already know how it ends." I thought of a movie critic of my acquaintance when reading a big collection of Roger Ebert and noting how carefully he avoids trying to look cool by blabbing the endings that creators have so carefully set up. If I haven't experienced it, it's new to me, and I extend the same courtesy to others. If all you can do is blurt, maybe you're in the wrong arena.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Mmm... I think I don't mind if it's "I'm at a filk about to sing a song about X" where saying "X has been out long enough" is itself a spoiler warning.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I guess it would depend. If it was something I thought I might want to experience myself some day, I might duck out for a while. It seems kind of weird to me that prefaces to works of literature feel free to disclose every plot twist. "New to me."

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Yah. I will often skip introductions to anthologies for just that reason, including ones the author of a single-author anthology wrote.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Yes. Some day, I will learn.