It’s really just not a good thing when my night to post coincides with Downton Abbey. My tendency to have a one-track mind means that about the only thing I’m mentally capable of is gushing like a pre-teen at, well, whatever flavor-of-the-week-shit-music is en vogue.
So let’s just get on with this, eh?
Please note, spoilers (or potential spoilers, depending on how much you can get out of Cammy’s bizarre rambling comments) beyond this point!
While we’re discussing important social issues on this blog, here’s another one which has been on my mind for a while: Do spoilers have an expiration date?
Yesterday on that great voyeurism enabler Twitter I noticed a certain actor being scolded by the internet for dropping a spoiler for a television show he’s on. For an episode that had already aired. Now (I don’t watch this particular show) my understanding is the episode had just aired the night before and hadn’t aired in Canada yet. And if it had been me, and I had been thinking about it, I wouldn’t’ have dropped said spoiler. But I don’t think he did it deliberately and the show had already aired in the country in which it’s made, so I feel like the internet overreacted a little (shocking, I know).
It brought to mind a time several years ago when I was yelled at for spoiling the end of Farscape. More than a year after the show ended. I didn’t do it on purpose—I was unaware that there were two people in the room (who I wasn’t even talking to) who were in the process of working their way through the show. If I had been, I wouldn’t have said it. But it seems like, watching a show that long after it’s been broadcast, you should expect the possibility of being spoiled.
Maybe I just don’t understand because I’ve never been a purist in that regard. I’m not someone who insists on watching television shows in order. I don’t seek out spoilers, but I don’t get upset if they find me. I used to have a policy of wanting to know if any characters died so I could emotionally prepare myself. Battlestar Galactica cured me of that by letting me know there was no way to be emotionally prepared for what they were going to throw at me. Sometimes I like to not be spoiled. I started reading the Harry Potter books when the fifth book came out because I knew it was only a matter of time before one of my friends unintentionally spoiled the death in that book and I didn’t want it to happen. (My plan had been to read them once they were all out so I didn’t have to wait for them anxiously like the rest of you suckers.)
But, for example, I’m currently working my way through Buffy the Vampire Slayer with some friends. All of said friends have seen the show before, but not me. But I know most of the major stuff that happens. I know who dies, who gets involved, who breaks up, who loses/gains a soul. Because I’ve had a lot of BTVS fans as friends and people say things. Sometimes now when we’re watching someone will reference an upcoming episode then look at me guiltily, but I always assure them I don’t care. This stuff is about a decade old, I think the spoilers are past their expiration date.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we should ever deliberately spoil shows (or books) for people who don’t want them spoiled. But I do think there’s a point at which you lose your right to get mad at someone who accidentally says something. Let’s say a week after an episode has been broadcast?
And those who don’t want to be spoiled can also take reasonable precautions of their own. For example, if I haven’t watched So You Think You Can Dance live (which I haven’t for several years) I’m careful on Twitter on Wednesday and Thursday nights. It’s just practical. If someone is to see the results and have a spontaneous reaction, I can’t blame them for doing so. If I didn’t want to know, I shouldn’t be reading.
And don’t deliberately spoil things for people. That’s just douchey.
It seems like just yesterday (or maybe more like just last week) that I was posting about the impending end of the TV season. And yet, here we are on the cusp of a new fall season. As usual we take stock of which of our favorites survived the cut, although, unlike the pre-net days, we all pretty well know who’s dead long before they start firing up the season premiere previews.
My favorites fared quite well. No losses. And while I’m glad for the comeback of Castle on Monday, and new Big Bang Theory (though I HATE its new time-slot), I’m most stoked about Bones returning on Thursday (hence my hating the Big Bang Theory move–I still don’t have a DVR and now I have to figure out how to handle this).
I’ve already been spoiled for the big stuff coming into the new Bones season. I’m no spoiler-phobe (and fear not, I’m not actually revealing the spoiler here if you ARE a spoiler-phobe), but I actually decided at the end of last season I wasn’t going to actively go out and seek hints as I so often do. Unfortunately, I finally realized that my method of coping with the summer hiatus is directly linked to the reason I always wind up caving and reading spoiler blogs: fanfiction.
Yes, my Secret Heresy is my primary coping mechanism for the lack of new episodes. It’s particularly comforting right after those cliff-hangery finales. Seeing how other people write characters out of those corners they were placed in by show creators is enjoyable as hell to me. But–and this has gotten worse as spoiler blogs have become more prevalent–by about a month after the finale, you start to notice a pattern to all the post-finale fic. Certain ideas and themes show up in one too many fics to be a coinky-dink. At first you try to write it off as The Universal Unconscious working at peak efficiency. But then you realize that none of the other indicators of The Universal Unconscious are showing up (like mentions of Little Richard). If you’re really dense, you can skim past it, but most of us start to realize there’s a grain of truth out there somewhere. A spoilerly grain of truth. , I usually find myself driven to go out to my favorite purveyor of spoiler goodness and pick up the fix I know is waiting for me.
And so it went with Bones. By July I knew at least the highlights of what is going to hit me Thursday. And even if I hadn’t gone out to that spoiler blog, the dearth of fics on the subject would have been enough. It’s a good thing that I don’t get hives over spoilers like some folks. But I feel for them. What do you do on a hiatus when you are allergic to spoilers? How can you get your fanfic-fix?
Of course, the soothing effects of that fix have diminished. By this point in the summer break we have hit the wall. The spoiler topic has saturated everything, and it’s not even being handled well anymore. You’re left with the trite, fluffy, shippery drivel which has extended out to chapter 37 with that Dickensian desperation to milk just one more chapter out of a story that should have been put out of its misery in the first paragraph.
It no longer matters that I know something of what will hit me on Thursday–because at least it won’t be another bad fic…..or will it be?
