Spoilers, Sweetie -Embracing My Inner Geek

The week off has been so useful! I have written a few reviews and read and come up with some story ideas. I have also been using Memrise, a website that is stupidly useful for learning vocabulary and things, to a point of addiction, mainly because there's a leaderboard feature and I plan to beat Katy at all of it. And she plans to beat me. It's excellent motivation!

I'll do a post or two a week while my heavy revision happens. Email replies will be slow but
will happen in time.  I'm planning the Rainbow Reads (LGBTQIAetc) event, and have some ideas-if you have any or would like to be included when I email things out, please share them in comments/emails. 


Anyway, it's Lucy the Reader/Queen of Contemporary's blogoversary week, and she asked us all to make an Embracing My Inner Geek post. I am totally in favour of this being a full on meme, by the way. It might actually make me write a discussion post. So, for the first feature, I'm talking about...well, you can tell. This was totally not an excuse for having a picture of River Song on my blog. Ok, maybe. Onwards.

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Stories are great. They should grip you from the beginning and hold you until the end. And often they do. And so your friend wants to share their love of this thing, and you're listening and thinking "this is rather good" and getting into it and.... ARGH. They've given away an important plot twist! SPOILERS!!!

So, what's the problem with spoilers? There's a difference between knowing and ending to a story because you've read it and loved it, and knowing the the ending to a story because someone told you. Going into a story knowing what happens, who survives, who doesn't, takes away a little of the thrill of the ride, the suspense, the terror, the anticipation. 

I try and avoid sharing spoilers as much as possible. I think it's a simple courteousy to anyone who hasn't enjoyed the story and  wants to. If I enjoyed it for it's twists and turns, and then told someone all these twists and turns, then they can't enjoy the story for its twists and turns because they won't be a surprise.


I know some people like knowing endings to books. There's a feature,  Happily Ever Endings by Down the Rabbit Hole, devoted to them-more for the purpose of  refreshing before book 2, but if you stumble across it by accident, you may ruin a book (I'm NOT saying there's anything wrong with this feature. It's extremely useful. Go check it out. But be careful). And  some things are just so well known that it's not a spoiler, more common knowledge.


Sometimes, spoilers are really really hard to keep. Or hard to determine whether or not they're a spoiler. Or are from older sources so more people may have heard of them. Marking a spoiler is tricky in certain cases, and I for one feel bad if I accidentally spill  a plot twist.

What if it's the catalyst for the main events? For example, something in Will Grayson Will Grayson regarding Will's boyfriend that he has been chatting to online. Does it count if it gets the rest of the plot going?  I'd say yes, particularly in this example as it was kind of important to Will's self esteem/mental health/happiness and marked a kind of turn for him.

Plot twists- if it happens early enough, I'd say that it isn't a spoiler.  For example, I found an angry person complaining about being told about someone's death in Supernatural. Said death happened in the first few minutes of the first ever episode. It was not a spoiler in any way, and was really amusing seeing that person getting worked up about it. My general feeling is if it happens within the first 10% of the novel/story, it's fair game, if it's an addition to the plot such as a character or subplot opening, say it, if it's something that made you go "whoa. What. That was unexpected", it's a spoiler.

Age of source comes into it aswell. Aiden Turner was being interviewed about his role in the Hobbit as Kili, and someone asked him "have you got any spoilers for film two, that you're filming now?" His response went along the lines of "It was written in 1937. There'
s not much to spoil." And I get where he's coming from. Things that have been around for such a long time may have seeped into common knowledge, and if they havent, have existed long enough for you to get your hands on it. Sarah and I have a rule- no spoilers on anything that's older than 50 years.

The only rule that I think everyone should keep is TAG YOUR SPOILERS. That way, you can say what you want, and those who want to know things can, and those who don't want to know can walk away. That way everyone's happy.  

So, yeah.  That's a basic sum up of my spoiler rules. If it's old, early, or not that surprising, then it's not a spoiler. If it's something surprising to you,  it is  a spoiler, so either keep it quiet or tag it.  I hope that helped, Sweetie.

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