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jackSTOP PRESS: In other news, it turns out she's actually a man. (Don't ask. I can't even remember which film this is in.)
1. Romeo and Juliet
They die at the end. This is not a spoiler because since (a) the play has been extant for four hundred years (b) it's such a famous work and (c) "Romeo and Juliet" as a phrase has entered the langauge to mean doomed lovers, so there's no way you should be ignorant of the ending. OK, admitedly, this won't apply to people outside britain, but it's still not a spoiler because SHAKESPEARE TELLS YOU WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE FIRST SENTENCE. It's a feature of the tragedy that you know what's going to happen.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
2. Titanic
ICEBERG! This is related to the knowing-what's-going-to-happen above. Most people have heard of the titanic. They know it hit an iceberg. This means that the film is made on that assumption, so you experience it as intended when you *do* know, as much as you experience a mystery as intended when you *don't*.
3. Troy
It's been out for THREE THOUSAND YEARS. That's enough time to reach even Australia. For gods' [sic] sake, part of your foot is named after it.
OK, actually, I'm being hyperbolic (sp?) here. I think everyone should know that bit, but needn't have read the Illiad. I haven't...
4. Star Wars
OK, it's just possible you won't have seen the end to Return of the Jedi. I won't actually tell you what happens. But approximately 12% of non-porn email on the internet is devoted to making jokes about people not knowing this, so it's a lost cause. The same goes for what was written on the sled, what Soylent Green is made of, who the white wizard is, etc.
5. Harry Potter.
Don't panic, I'm not talking about what actually happens, but it's a good example of innapropriate warnings imho, specifically that if you're *speculating* what happens in the next book, you don't need a spoiler warning. If it's based on something Rowling said then, yes, that's reasonable[1], or if you happen to know the latin for 'wolf' or something, but if it's just your theory it's a bit overprotective to assume it's completely correct. A 'speculation warning' would be appropriate, but I wonder how someone can read anything whilst avoiding speculation.
[1] Though it's sort of related to 4: good luck keeping that a secret. And also to 2, she said it for a reason: I found the many teasing near-deaths in the latest book more exciting because I knew one of them could be true. (And it was unlikely someone would die mid-book, but the casualness of Cedric's demise seemed to make it possible.)
6. "Origin of the Species" and "Decent of Man"
We evolved from apes. OK, I'm veering off topic now, but since there was no reason for the topic to start with that doesn't really matter. Spoiler warnings be damned, I'm amazed how ignorant some people seem of the punchline here, regardless of how hard everyone tries to tell them. Look around you, people! Look at yourself.
7. The Gospel of John
He comes back from the dead. To be frank, only the first five have I actually heard people advocating spoiler warnings for. I just thought it was funny to imagine someone saying "Jesus does WHAT?" when it's probably the most important event since the start of history, and for a thousand years a third of the world's population have put telling other people about it ahead of their own lives.
1. Romeo and Juliet
They die at the end. This is not a spoiler because since (a) the play has been extant for four hundred years (b) it's such a famous work and (c) "Romeo and Juliet" as a phrase has entered the langauge to mean doomed lovers, so there's no way you should be ignorant of the ending. OK, admitedly, this won't apply to people outside britain, but it's still not a spoiler because SHAKESPEARE TELLS YOU WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE FIRST SENTENCE. It's a feature of the tragedy that you know what's going to happen.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
2. Titanic
ICEBERG! This is related to the knowing-what's-going-to-happen above. Most people have heard of the titanic. They know it hit an iceberg. This means that the film is made on that assumption, so you experience it as intended when you *do* know, as much as you experience a mystery as intended when you *don't*.
3. Troy
It's been out for THREE THOUSAND YEARS. That's enough time to reach even Australia. For gods' [sic] sake, part of your foot is named after it.
OK, actually, I'm being hyperbolic (sp?) here. I think everyone should know that bit, but needn't have read the Illiad. I haven't...
4. Star Wars
OK, it's just possible you won't have seen the end to Return of the Jedi. I won't actually tell you what happens. But approximately 12% of non-porn email on the internet is devoted to making jokes about people not knowing this, so it's a lost cause. The same goes for what was written on the sled, what Soylent Green is made of, who the white wizard is, etc.
5. Harry Potter.
Don't panic, I'm not talking about what actually happens, but it's a good example of innapropriate warnings imho, specifically that if you're *speculating* what happens in the next book, you don't need a spoiler warning. If it's based on something Rowling said then, yes, that's reasonable[1], or if you happen to know the latin for 'wolf' or something, but if it's just your theory it's a bit overprotective to assume it's completely correct. A 'speculation warning' would be appropriate, but I wonder how someone can read anything whilst avoiding speculation.
[1] Though it's sort of related to 4: good luck keeping that a secret. And also to 2, she said it for a reason: I found the many teasing near-deaths in the latest book more exciting because I knew one of them could be true. (And it was unlikely someone would die mid-book, but the casualness of Cedric's demise seemed to make it possible.)
6. "Origin of the Species" and "Decent of Man"
We evolved from apes. OK, I'm veering off topic now, but since there was no reason for the topic to start with that doesn't really matter. Spoiler warnings be damned, I'm amazed how ignorant some people seem of the punchline here, regardless of how hard everyone tries to tell them. Look around you, people! Look at yourself.
7. The Gospel of John
He comes back from the dead. To be frank, only the first five have I actually heard people advocating spoiler warnings for. I just thought it was funny to imagine someone saying "Jesus does WHAT?" when it's probably the most important event since the start of history, and for a thousand years a third of the world's population have put telling other people about it ahead of their own lives.
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Date: 2005-05-11 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 01:12 pm (UTC)Ok, I'm lost. Huh?
*laughes and hugs* Thank you for posting such a lovely long post - I'm headachey and bored. (I am actually doing stuff, but I'm still bored. Typical)
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Date: 2005-05-11 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 01:43 pm (UTC)Or she can google for "spoiler 'written on * sled'", though to be frank knowing the film isn't very interesting without watching it.
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Date: 2005-05-11 01:44 pm (UTC)Mind you, every time I see it (and I have seen it far more times than is strictly speaking good for me), I keep hoping that they'll miss. Just this time. Just for a change...
David.
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Date: 2005-05-11 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 01:46 pm (UTC)Now *that* would be a twist. But it might, gasp, make the movie more boring...
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Date: 2005-05-11 01:48 pm (UTC)*feeds eni chocolate and gay pr0n*
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Date: 2005-05-11 01:50 pm (UTC)Yeah, me too :( *hugfests* I decided going off for a completely non sequitor rant would be a good idea.
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Date: 2005-05-11 02:17 pm (UTC)*facepalm*
We didn't evolve from apes...
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Date: 2005-05-11 02:21 pm (UTC)Cool Runnings through The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe to The Snowman... or is that last one a sort of sled snuff movie?
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Date: 2005-05-11 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 02:33 pm (UTC)Wow. *is flattered*. Thanks, I don't think anyone ever did that before!
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Date: 2005-05-11 02:34 pm (UTC)We and our bananananana-eating, ooking cousins share a common ancestor. As
Cretinism, maybe...
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Date: 2005-05-11 02:40 pm (UTC)Eeeek!
*That's* where the monkey put his nut.
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Date: 2005-05-11 02:44 pm (UTC)Well, some of our friends are, aren't they? I mean, I know *I'm* not, but there's no reason she should...
We and our bananananana-eating, ooking cousins share a common ancestor.
Yeah, I know we and current apes both evolved from something else, which to us would seem ape-like, though would probably be as different from current apes as from us. But so far in my life, everyone seemed to use 'ape' to mean 'large non-human primate' or indeed 'large non-human primatoid'[1], so I never looked it up and discovered it actually means a specific family. I suppose I'll try to be more careful.
[1] Seriously, if we decided $ape actually belonged in a different family, would anyone actually stop calling them apes? That's my standard for what 'ape' means :) If I wanted to be precise I'd say gorilla or something.
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Date: 2005-05-11 02:59 pm (UTC)Big plot points that everyone knows are one thing (though as you're discovering in the comments, your assumptions about what "everyone knows" are a little off so it's probably more polite to play safe than sorry). The route a particular work takes getting there, however, is quite another, and personally I think that discussion of that merits a spoiler warning. You may have derived pleasure from knowing someone was going to die in HP5, but you'd probably have found it less exciting if you knew who died, when and how.
(Troy is a fast and loose adaptation with many differences to Homer's version; you're not expected to know who dies and who survives in Titanic; there's not much warning in the prologue to R&J about how Tybalt, Mercutio or Rosaline fare; etc)
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Date: 2005-05-11 03:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 03:27 pm (UTC)OK, ok, sorry. I tried to avoid an actual discussion on what is a spoiler because I've had it before and it didn't really go anywhere. I try to err on the side of caution wherever possible.
spoilers you've so kindly shared with us.
Was that sarcasm? I tried to be careful to keep out anything that might *actually* be a spoiler. I mentioned some actual but well known spoilers, but deliberately genericly; 'sled' isn't a spoiler if you don't know *what*'s written on it.
ou're saying they don't need spoiler warnings at all, or they just don't need to warn for the spoilers you've so kindly shared with us.
*thinks* I think I meant spoilers for the specific things I mentioned, because those are the things the rationales I gave applied to. You're right that knowing the middle of romeo and juliet *would* be a spoiler for instance.
your assumptions about what "everyone knows" are a little off so it's probably more polite to play safe than sorry
I was perhaps wrong about film endings 'everyone' knows. I shouldn't have said they didn't require a warning, but rather that it's a lost cause, because so many other people do spoil them, so there's little practical point in berating people who don't give a warning.
You may have derived pleasure from knowing someone was going to die in HP5, but you'd probably have found it less exciting if you knew who died, when and how.
True, and notice that I *did* recommend a spoiler warning for that. The footnote was a qualification that there could be a good reason to hear that quote, but I'd still leave it up to the hearer.
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Date: 2005-05-11 04:23 pm (UTC)Apologies.
*nods* Thank you for the clarification. I don't think you posted anything I'd count as a spoiler here, it was just the general tone of "You should know these things, so if you're lucky enough to have avoided doing so I'll tell you them" that prompted the sarcasm.
As far as lost causes go, you seem to agree with me that that's no reason not to spoiler-warn - from which I think it's reasonable to try to encourage people to do so.
And as far as HP5 goes, I was trying to indicate that I think the same thing applies in the other cases, too.
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Date: 2005-05-11 04:31 pm (UTC)No need, I *should* really try to not be inflammatory... :)
As far as lost causes go, you seem to agree with me that that's no reason not to spoiler-warn - from which I think it's reasonable to try to encourage people to do so.
Yes... Except there generally is *some* effort, as gratuitous spoilers breaks up the flow of reading, especially if you're thorough: sometimes even letting on that a film has a twist is a spoiler, so you have to nest spoilers, and you need to be specific, because it's ever so annoying when someone posts minor unimportant spoilers without making that clear and you don't dare read.
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Date: 2005-05-11 05:14 pm (UTC)This makes me want to say... "That'll never work. He's gay and she's an alien." I'm just not quite sure why :)
3. Troy
It's been out for THREE THOUSAND YEARS. That's enough time to reach even Australia. For gods' [sic] sake, part of your foot is named after it.
OK, actually, I'm being hyperbolic (sp?) here. I think everyone should know that bit, but needn't have read the Illiad. I haven't...
Sp. good. But you have no idea how many *Classicists* don't know what happens in the Iliad, so I wouldn't expect laytypes to know :) Plus, Troy the movie killed off characters who don't die, etc., etc....
He comes back from the dead.
*rofl* (even more *rofl*ing than for the rest of the post, that is). Reminds me of a joke...
Some Irish Catholic guy goes up to a Jew and says "You bastard, you killed Jesus!" and beats him up. When the police pick him up, they ask him why he did it. He says, "But I only found out yesterday!"
(NB this is funnier if you hear it, and from someone who does the accents, which I *don't* in public)
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Date: 2005-05-11 05:20 pm (UTC)Is that a quote, it sounds awfully familiar... It makes me think of monkey island: "Stop! The groom isn't a gentleman! Or a man!"
"*rofl* (even more *rofl*ing than for the rest of the post, that is). Reminds me of a joke..."
rofl at joke :) Reminds me of a joke about catholics and jews. A man's in a dark alley in Ireland, and someone comes up behind him and holds a knife to his throat and asks "Are you a catholic or protestant?" and the man thinks "I'm doomed. Whatever I say, he's bound to be the other," and suddenly seized with inspiration says "I'm a jew," whereupon his assailant says "Begorrah! I must be the luckiest arab in all of ireland!"
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Date: 2005-05-11 05:56 pm (UTC)However, AIUI the common ancestor we share with chimps is more recent than the one either species share with the other surviving ape species. I'm not sure what you'd call that ancestor if not an ape.
(It's presumably not a modern ape species, but there are plenty of now extinct species predating humans and chimps that still seem to get called apes.)
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Date: 2005-05-12 07:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 05:45 pm (UTC)But I can't believe you didn't recognise the Wholine! :)
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Date: 2005-05-12 10:04 pm (UTC)I wouldn't want to spoil it for another 6 and 1/2 days but apparently Anankin goes evil and lots of people die. I hope that nice Senator Palpatine survives.
What sled?
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Date: 2005-05-13 11:42 am (UTC)Dammit, I meant empire. Whoops. Though there *do* seem to be lunar autoauralsertion troglodytes with respect to revenge of the sith: "it's just coincidence they're all three played by Ian McDiarmid. No, I don't know why Lucas photoshopped him into jedi, then..."
I wouldn't want to spoil it for another 6 and 1/2 days but apparently Anankin goes evil and lots of people die. I hope that nice Senator Palpatine survives.
Survives? I hear he even kills Darth Siddious! I wonder if there'll be a middle trilogy about the rise of the empire, or if they'll leave everything happy?
sn't really a surprise ending, unless it happens in the next one.
LOL. But I bet they *do*. Not totally, but the big takeover will be 3/4 of the way through, and it'll end with the founding of some sort of resisitance, or Vader Jr.s surviving, or something.
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Date: 2005-05-13 12:11 pm (UTC)I'm sure I know that joke... *lol*
I've probably told it before? I've never heard anyone but me or dad tell it; I don't know where he gets his jokes :)
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Date: 2005-05-13 08:45 pm (UTC)There won't be a middle trilogy, just the usual bad novels and a 100 episode TV series (no, I'm not joking), hey I wonder if they'll be a Christmas special...
Indeed, I'm expecting *some* sort of happy ending, but with critics saying it's a "bloodbath" I'm ever hopeful.
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Date: 2005-05-13 08:52 pm (UTC)Oops. *also hangs head in shame*
There won't be a middle trilogy
I meant it as a joke, as in, Sith might end *without* an empire when the noble Palpitane kills the evil Siddious :)
critics saying it's a "bloodbath" I'm ever hopeful.
Wooo! Taste lightsabre, all but six jedi! I've been disappointed so often I've stopped hoping: everyone deserved to die in, say, Core, but only one did :(
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Date: 2005-05-13 09:18 pm (UTC)