Dragaera

Agyar (Agyar?/Sixth Sense Spoilers) (Was Re: Brokedown Palace)

Mon May 15 21:19:59 PDT 2006

Philip Hart wrote:
> On Mon, 15 May 2006, Jon Lincicum wrote:
>   
>> Did Steve really intend for the reader not to catch on to what he was
>> doing until the very end?
>>     
>
> Part of your problem here is not quite understanding what a spoiler is -
> "info about a final twist" is overspecific.  If I were to travel back in
> time from this fall and force you to hear the entire plot of _Dzur_ this
> evening - for example that beloved character Z is permanently killed at
> the end of chapter 3 - would you not be unhappy?
>   
This is not at all what was happening here.

I suppose this really gets into how you choose to define "spoiler".

You said, '"info about a final twist" is overspecific', and I tend to agree with this assessment.

By the same token, saying a spoiler is "any information about any of the 
characters, plot, or setting of a story" I would consider overly broad.

"Giving away" extremely general facts about a story that do not impinge 
on any of the major plot twists or character developments doesn't really 
earn a "spoiler" tag in my view. For example:

Saying "Master and Commander" is about sailing ships in the early 19th 
century I would not consider a spoiler.
Saying Star Wars is about rebels fighting an Evil Galactic Empire I 
would not consider a spoiler.
Saying "Citizen Kane" is about the life of someone resembling William 
Randolph Hearst I would not consider a spoiler.

Saying /Agyar/ is about [...] falls into the same category. It may be a 
very slight giveaway, but I have trouble believing anyone who's read 
very much of this list would be surprised by it. The book is 13 years 
old, for goodness sake. This "spoiler" also in no way detracts from the 
more important character developments and "twists" that make that book a 
very good read.

If I were giving away that X is really X's father, or X gets frozen in 
carbonite, or Rosebud is really X, then I'd agree with you.
> And again, SKZB clearly made a choice not to blatantly present a bit of
> info in the text and has I believe praised the back-cover precis writer
> for not revealing it.  Bandying about that info is disrespectful to Him
> and to His audience.
>   
In general I very much support the use of spoiler warning tags, and in 
future I will be careful to do so in regards to this specific bit of 
info. (For the record, I'm not even the one who introduced the V-word 
into the conversation, but I certainly could have edited it out of the 
quoted text of my reply, if I'd honestly thought it would annoy anyone.)

I think my point here is that it's very difficult to discuss topics that 
come up in any of these books if anytime anything is revealed, even 
extremely general information that is widely known by the readers of the 
list, we have to stop and shout WARNING!!! SPOILER! DANGER WILL 
ROBINSON! in the event that one or two folks might have missed 
something. People would not be subscribing to this list if they didn't 
expect at least some slippage of plot points.

At some point you just have to draw the line.

Majikjon