Well, that's oddly relevant.... · 1:07pm Nov 19th, 2017
Are these a bad thing? Also, warning, rant incoming.
Spoilers, that is. Well, I was bumming around on my 'puter, looking for something to listen to as I type (the next chapter should be up in the next few days, there abouts) when I came across this video. For some reason, it drew me in, stopping from writing, and forced me to pay attention, and it wasn't until near the end where I figured out why.
The main point of Super's video wasn't if spoilers were bad, I feel, but the context of if they are bad. And that is highly subjective. On the one hand, a spoiler does give away key plot twists (You were the tomato in the mirror!) that may ruin the plot. On the other, they almost allow one to view new material in a different context, one that can only be gained through rereading or re-watching the material in question.
And that is something that speaks to me on a surprisingly core level. I actually don't mind getting spoilers, because of the second point. Every time one of my friends stops talking about something because it might "ruin the story" frustrates me. Thank you for telling me that it was Pr. Plum with the wrench in the kitchen, but that still doesn't tell me why or how!
This is why, I think, that people can go back and reread the old Sherlock books, or watch the new Mystery on the Orient Express (that last of which I haven't seen yet) and still be able to enjoy it. They remember who the culprit was, they even may remember how the crime was committed, but now they can dig deeper into the reasons behind the crime.
Or, if you're like me and completely forgot how things actually happened, get to have a series of small epiphanies as they remember why that damn duck the author spent two pages talking about was so damn important.
That last sentence wasn't referencing anything, just something I pulled out of my ass.
And if you read that "spoiler", then congratulations, you are the subject of my next point. Something that Super Eyepatch Wolf didn't talk about in his video is human curiosity. I'm no psychologist, but I'm fairly sure that people, on a whole, are naturally curious. We always want to know more, know what's over the horizon, know how that slasher horror ends. And that includes spoilers.
We don't have the time or the money to read/see/do everything, but it doesn't take every long for someone to tell us that Lea is Luke's sister. (If you didn't know that by now, what glorious rock did you crawl out from under) Now you know the big thing about the book/game/movie/whatever, and you didn't spend time away from the things you normally enjoy. And, if you found that out from reading a wiki or watching a let's play, then you don't have to spend the money to find it out the "normal" or the "fun" way, and the odds are you were only slightly interested in the thing anyways.
If you were highly interested or invested in something, you'd have bought it instead of looking it up.
There are games, webcomics, even fan fics on this very site I've put down or stopped following because it just wasn't "fun" anymore, and then picked back up and enjoyed because I found out that the duck was the killer the whole fucking time, which put everything into new context.
And, I guess that's my whole point. It can be argued that spoilers ruin plot, yes. But plot isn't everything a story is. Spoilers allow for a plot to be seen in a new light, a new context. And, sometimes, some people may find that new context to be more enjoyable then if they experienced it without that spoiler.
All in all, I don't care if someone spoils something in the comments of my story or uses the spoiler feature to hide it (all save one, you'll know it when you get to it). Spoilers are, after all, contextual to the person reading the spoiler itself, not the person giving it.
And I could leave that there, but then you would be wondering on why I've tagged my story to this blog post. For those who want that to be a mystery, or just don't care, you can leave now.
The reason I've tagged my story, and the reason why Super Eyepatch Wolf's video drew me in, is because Equestrian Eeveelution started out as a failed experiment.
Yes, a failure.
I wanted to see if I could write something completely spur of the moment, spanning multiple chapters, and not look like garbage. Equestrian Eeveelution was going to just be something fun and light-hearted, maintaining almost Pinkie pie levels of random, while Timeline Sparkle would remain my main epic story.
I haven't even touched TS since I've started EE. The reasons for this are many and varied, but the relevant one here is that I struggled to get any ideas for TS, but I don't have a day go by where something comes to me for EE, some of which I'll never use. It's been like that since I wrote EE's summary!
My experiment failed before it could even begin. Instead of a random, happy-go-lucky, every chapter a joke, and every joke a pun/reference, I started to write a proper story. One, I hope, with ups and downs, tears and joy. One with adventure and the daily life mixed together. One that has even surprised me with how popular it has become.
And that scares me.
This story has changed to a different type of experiment, that ties everything I've ranted about so far together.
The experiment is thus: Can I write a story that can be enjoyed differently when reread?
I know what the big reveal, the big twist, is. Some of you may even be able to guess at it. If I've written the story right, when I've hit that reveal, everyone whose read the story to that point will have a collective "oh, shit!" moment, and be able to reread the story with that lens only a spoiler can give.
That's right. If I've written this right, you'll need to read this twice to get the full enjoyment, the first time requiring you to read it blind.
And I'm well aware that it could blow up in my face. If it does, I only hope that I at least write an enjoyable story in the attempt.
It wasn't until the linked video that that click for me. Amazing what you can discover half asleep at 2 am....
I just realized that I rant like Yahtzee. Gotta cut back on the Zero Punctuation....
Hey, I feel like this is a pretty rare opinion, but it's one that makes a lot of sense. It made me think of this one quote by Vladimir Nabokov:
I think part of the argument for / against spoilers is whether the story is an experience, for the audience to enjoy piece by piece as it is told, or whether the story is a piece of art, to be enjoyed as a whole, with all its pieces meshing together as one.
Either way, it's important to remember that after the plot twist finally happens, the audience needs to understand where it came from and accept it as part of the story. Otherwise, their suspension of disbelief will start failing. Using Star Wars, the prequel trilogy banked on the audience already having the big spoilers - Palpatine is the Sith Lord and Anakin will turn to the Dark Side. There's potential for a great story even though the audience already knows the plot twist. In execution, the success of the story is debatable, but I'm gonna say that the prequels substituted special effects for good writing / acting. The story should have built up the audience's emotional investment in Anakin's motives, but ... well, the "spoiler" that Anakin becomes Darth Vader is meaningless because the audience stopped caring about Anakin.
Coincidentally (or not), this has a lot to do with MLP. In the first couple seasons, Hasbro's writers just made individual episodes that didn't require much additional context to watch, but gradually they built up enough backstory that they could make multi-episode epics. They can do this because each episode is enjoyable on its own, but contributes information and events to a story outside of itself.
So I do enjoy EE. I like each chapter, and I also like that you're building something bigger. I'm gonna guess the spoiler has to do with Discord / the entity responsible for the pack being in Equestria. I actually just binge reread this story today. I'm reluctant to check out Timeline Sparkle, although it sounds like to me, maybe it focused too much on the epic and too little on the small things that make EE fun. If that's true, it's an understandable mistake that I've seen elsewhere on this site and that I might have also made myself. All part of growing as a writer.