I love it when a plot comes together
Dec. 30th, 2010 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liriThere's more than one kind of spoiler. I don't have a detailed list, really, but I've thought about it a fair bit, mostly when I was simmering with impatience to talk about WoW's new expansion, and my husband was refusing to let me because he didn't want spoilers.
There's the sucker-punch spoiler - an event that you didn't see coming until it happens. George R.R. Martin does a lot of them. Character deaths are typically like this, and this is the kind a lot of people think of when discussing spoilers.
There's the un-spoiler: "In this episode, something terrible happens." Or "....well, if you want something happy, maybe you shouldn't watch that one." "There's a twist ending." If you know it's coming, you're waiting for it the whole time, looking for it, which may well ruin the experience, depending on how you feel about the work in question, but mileage varies.
There's the puzzle-piece spoiler: You're reading, or watching, and suddenly something clicks and you realize that's where this was going all along. These are the kind I least want ruined for me, and the kind a lot of people don't even recognize as spoilers.
Which is to say, Connie Willis did pull it all together in the end.
There's the sucker-punch spoiler - an event that you didn't see coming until it happens. George R.R. Martin does a lot of them. Character deaths are typically like this, and this is the kind a lot of people think of when discussing spoilers.
There's the un-spoiler: "In this episode, something terrible happens." Or "....well, if you want something happy, maybe you shouldn't watch that one." "There's a twist ending." If you know it's coming, you're waiting for it the whole time, looking for it, which may well ruin the experience, depending on how you feel about the work in question, but mileage varies.
There's the puzzle-piece spoiler: You're reading, or watching, and suddenly something clicks and you realize that's where this was going all along. These are the kind I least want ruined for me, and the kind a lot of people don't even recognize as spoilers.
Which is to say, Connie Willis did pull it all together in the end.