Spoilers!

[mrissa]

I'm in the middle of two fiction series I'm gobbling down with great huge spoilers for the plots. On DVD I'm watching the seventh season of The West Wing, and in print I'm reading Reginald Hill's Dalziel/Pascoe series.

The major spoiler for The West Wing came from the IMDB. I went to see what my favorite actors from it are doing now, to see if they had other projects that I should add to my list of things to try. Richard Schiff, who played Toby, is filming a new series, so that's good, and I'm amused at the prospect of Allison Janney (C.J.) doing voice acting for a kids' cartoon, and...John Spencer (Leo) had a death date listed. John Spencer had a death date listed that was before the end of the series. I don't keep track of actors mostly. I didn't know. But I did know that there was no way they could write Leo out of the series while keeping the character alive. So I've got this sort of hanging over me, this major spoiler that the character's death not only happens but goes hand in hand with the actor's sudden and unexpected death.

I also know who wins the Presidential election in that series, which is not the whole of the season's plot but is a major chunk of the middle of it.

And it turns out that those things are not making me less eager to see the rest of this season. Rather, they're making me more eager. (Granted, in the matter of Leo's death it's more of an "I know this is ahead of me and would like to get it over with" sort of eager.) Clearly they know it can work that way sometimes, that knowing how things will go will make people interested in how they got there--it's a trick as old as epics, starting in the middle, and Season 7 exploits it a bit in the first episode by showing a few minutes of the dedication of the Presidential library a few years later. (I am simply glad, for their sake, that they didn't have to re-frame that season beginning as a dream or a wish: John Spencer wasn't in that part.) Showing C.J. with Danny, making reference to their baby, having Toby there and thanking Jed for the invitation: these things would be spoilers if they came from outside the show, but they're there as hooks, and they work as hooks.

And in a lot of ways I think we don't have any business, as creators in the 21st century, in the internet culture we've got, assuming that our readers or viewers or listeners will be able to be tabula rasa when they come to our works. I don't think we've got any business assuming that their friends won't say, "You HAVE to read this book, it is SO GOOD, particularly the part where the MAJOR PLOT POINT HAPPENS," or that they won't stumbled upon a blog post that was cut-tagged for spoilers but linked without the cut, or something like that. I think it's better, if we can possibly manage it, to tell stories that are robust enough that people still want them even if they know how they end.

Which seems to be what Reginald Hill is doing with the Dalziel/Pascoe mysteries, whether he meant to or not. Unlike pretty much every other mystery series I've read lately, I've been reading these in nearly random order. It is pure luck I didn't get Death's Jest Book before Dialogues of the Dead, or something else that wouldn't have worked as well. But if I'd waited for the first one, I'd still be waiting. wshaffer said it was all right to read them out of order, and I believed her, and she was right. And I think part of that comes in the nature of my reaction to these particular characters. The thing is, I like them. I don't just like to read about them, I like them. And when you make friends with somebody, you don't make them back up and tell you all their good preschool anecdotes first and stop them from telling you whether or not they are a grandparent until you hear how their college romance(s) worked out.

So I met Wield, for example, as an out and happily partnered gay man. And recently I read the one where he meets his partner, and I didn't think, "Oh, dammit, I know how this comes out already," I thought, "Oh, this is the one where they meet!" I met the Pascoes as a couple who had survived some personal crises together. I met Dalziel as someone who has a romantic relationship, or at least a sexual one, and that was misleading, because the course of etc. never did etc. etc. But getting there is more than half the fun. It's the overwhelming majority of the fun.

I have the feeling that at some point I'll want to go back through and reread these in order, just to see how it unfolds. I know that Ellie's Odysseus thing will read differently when I have much more experience of Dalziel. I know that the appearance of Shirley Novello will look different when I've gone through books and books of the women police officers being referred to as WPCs and treated like jumped-up chaperones, useful mostly for patting down and calming down women suspects than it did the first time, when I had "Ivor" for one of the characters right away. It'll be different--but I don't think it's wrong this way. Some series would be. But not this one.

I think I'm doing all right with this on the Carter Hall stories, because people have shown an interest in the first story, the story that goes with the Tam Lin ballad, even though it's pretty clear Janet does save Tam or he wouldn't be in the others. And I wonder if series survive heavy spoilers better if they rely a lot on voice. The West Wing is not interesting because there's a US President and his staff trying to avert a war in Kazakhstan in it, it's interesting because of how they act towards each other and what they say while doing so. The same with the Dalziel/Pascoe mysteries: yes, people get murdered, and often those cases even get solved, but in the meantime they do things and talk to each other, and that matters. The texture of the detail matters. So that's part of what I'm trying to do there myself.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I think you're on to something. Exempli gratia: the first Lord Peter I ever read was Have His Carcase. I'm pretty sure the next one was Busman's Honeymoon. This didn't stop me from enjoying Strong Poison and Gaudy Night. In fact I'd have fallen into a decline when Harriet said, "I'll live with you, but I won't marry you," if I hadn't known it would be all right. (Yes. I am a giant dork who doesn't believe that people in books aren't real.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I gave my mother all the Lord Peter books at once, and she picked up the first one on the stack. I alphabetize. So she got Busman's Honeymoon first. Aighhhh.

But she seems to have liked Strong Poison and Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night all right anyway, too.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Aaaagh. As bad as my first O'Brian being Treason's Harbour. Sigh. But, again, knowing a BIG SPOILER didn't stop me from running right out and memorizing the rest of them.

[carbonel]

The first Lord Peter book I read was Gaudy Night, which is entirely atypical in its point of view, and of course contains huge spoilers for the others. It's all the fault of the publisher; there was a list in the front of the book, and GN was listed first.

It worked out just fine, though when I started at the beginning, Whose Body? was rather a shock, because Sayers had improved so much between those books.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

The first two I read were Busman's Honeymoon and Clouds of Witness, because that was what the used bookstore had - both the same week I joined the LordPeter YahooGroup (which was not then a YahooGroup or even an eGroup but whatever came before that). The only effect it seems to have had is to have me take the pseudonym Air Pilot Grant on the LP list (and later its spinoff, piffle). I was so new to LP while I knew some people on the list used pseudodyms from the books, I thoght others were people's actual names until I got to e.g. Sylvia Marriott and Marjorie Phelps as characters.

But honestly, I think I'd have eventually read the whole series if I started with Whose Body? but it would have taken much longer and I don't think I'd have been nearly so eager to discuss them. And it was actually life-changing for me; I have friends I met on that list, and it was those friends who introduced me to blogging, way back on Diaryland in early 2001, sine qua non as far as my life onling goes.

[ellarien]

We always used to say, in my family, that the best books were the ones that could be read over and over. That may be part of why I've never been terribly purist about the sanctity of the first linear reading. (The bit where I used to secretly read ahead when I was supposed to be asleep, and then move the bookmark back so my mother wouldn't know, may have had something to do with it as well.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I used to read the last page of things, particularly if I was worried what would happen. Bridge to Terabithia cured me of that, because I had a very different idea of what might go Horribly Wrong, and the last page showed that it had not gone Horribly Wrong, and I read on, much reassured, and then...yah. Well. And then.

It's a very good thing I read that before Silver on the Tree and thus broke the habit, or I might have given up on Silver on the Tree completely.

[stfg.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of spoilers myself. It gives me a feeling of solidity to know where things are going. I will frequently read the first third of the book and then start skipping around, reading a couple pages here and there, maybe reading the last 30 pages or so of the book, before going back and reading the body of the book in order. I have a low tolerance for increasing tension in a story, and I just like to know what is going to happen in advance. The joy in the story, for me, is, like you said, in the texture of the details. I love small interactions that reveal character. I'm a re-reader too, for many of the same reasons that I read ahead the first time through.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

This is precisely what I do, with the small change that though I might read a bit of the end it wouldn't be 30 pages - I like to make sure we get somewhere good, but I'm OK with letting the author lead me there.

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

I love the IMDB but use it with caution for current seasons of things or stuff I'm catching up on.

John Spencers death was hard on me at the time. I won't go into details but it struck a nerve in real life and as Leo on the show. Also, I disliked having to cheer against Alan Alda even if he was portraying a Republican. I can see past his history as Hawkeye Pierce but my heart will never change.:)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See, I love that about The West Wing: not only is Alan Alda Hawkeye Pierce in our hearts, he's also a person who does a fair amount with Scientific American and hosted their Frontiers show and so on--so I think he's a person with a lot of appeal to exactly the sort of person who wanted Jed Bartlet for President in the first place. So it wasn't as skewed as it could have been. They played fair with the elections in S7 in that you couldn't say, "Oh, it's Jimmy Smits vs. Satan Himself so of course Smits will win, or if he doesn't at least we will feel righteous in our loss." The people who want Arnie Vinick to win are not, to my way of thinking, shown as wrong or unreasonable. And I like it very much that they did it that way when it would have been easy to have Our Guy vs. Their Guy and no question about it.

[seabream.livejournal.com]

As far as reading goes, my appreciation of a story, or a series of stories as a whole isn't hugely affected by the order in which I read, so long as I eventually read the entire thing so that I can see it as such. It's kind of like fabric, or a garment - appreciated as a whole and for how all the bits and pieces work as an object. I mean yes, there is the thing where with some series or for that matter, authors, it's possible to start in a place that is sufficiently not one's thing and never touch the rest, and if the starting point is that SPOILER happened then that's an issue. And of course the singular article has an extended meaning in the context of other objects like it which it may be in dialogue with that if one has/n't seen affect appreciation in terms of what one may or may not consider a big deal of a spoiler.

As to distinctions between stories where plot spoilers matter vs. don't, therefore, I don't directly have much comment. I will say that when I've read books that look like the intent was that the plot, the sequence of events and time pressure, be the main force to pull the reader through, I get through and, saved the town/country/world/galaxy/cheerleader/whatever or not, I'm occasionally left with the feeling that nothing really happened in the book. They can be perfectly enjoyable reads, but of lesser interest than say, a story in which people talk over dinner and in the process show something about how things work and why they do (or don't), or speak to the times of the setting, or something with some insight. That matters regardless of how things end. Like, the scene in Mirror Dance, in the library when Mark overhears Aral and Cordelia, for example.

I've said this before, but in person, so here in writing: In terms of reading approach, I do read more comfortably out of order. A bit of the beginning to situate myself, and then skip around as needed for sketching out, then going around to fill in until I've read it all, then maybe do a complete beginning to end read. This, by the way, is one of the reasons why I don't watch television almost at all anymore. That approach is much more difficult with a remote and a DVD.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I think there's a lot of power in the "OH HOLY SHIT" moment of revelation, arrived at unspoiled -- and the good ones keep some of that power even on re-reads, when you know it's coming, because they summon an echo of the original impact.

But that's hardly the only kind of story-power out there. The Shakespearean "here's a prologue about how it's all going to go wrong, now here's your story" is also incredibly potent, because you're dreading (and yet loving) the slide into the abyss. I read the third of Daniel Keys Moran's Continuing Time books first, and then the second, and then the first, and the effect was peculiarly awesome: events that were distant history for #3 were recounted by an eyewitness in #2, and then by the time I read #1 I was primed to see just how it was all going to go down in flames.

Or, y'know, Apollo 13. I've seen the movie a dozen times, it's based on REAL HISTORY for chrissake, and yet I'm still on the edge of my seat every. bloody. time., wondering if they're going to make it down okay. My theory is that this effect hinges on character: I know how it's going to end, but the people in the story don't, and so I feel suspense on their behalf. Big Reveals that lose their power if spoiled are Big Reveals whose effect is based solely on surprise; take that away, and they've got nothing left.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Often when I have re-watched a favorite movie or re-read a favorite book, I will report back in to markgritter and timprov that, "X did Y again this time"--"they saved the astronauts again this time," would be the Apollo 13 example, or "Westley intimidated Humperdink into getting tied up without a swordfight again this time," or whatever.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Hee. :-)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Well said!

It's a rare pleasure for me to read a book knowing Nothing At All about it - but beyond that, I do sometimes wonder what the fuss about spoilers is all about.

[talimena.livejournal.com]

Yes! I love going back through a series (plural of series is series? Like moose?) and seeing how things develop. As you say, liking the people is central.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

Just don't be so anxious to get past Leo's death that you don't enjoy the last few episodes with him. The episode "The Wedding" has a few really good bits and they're mostly (buy not all) involving Leo.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, "The Wedding" was good. I just watched "Welcome to Wherever You Are" or something like that, and so I have the two election day ones ahead of me for tomorrow. There was a moment in this one where I was pretty sure Josh had picked up a particular mannerism from Leo, which works with the characters as well as with the actors--people do that with their friends and mentors, the people they're around all the time. It would be amazing if none of the characters had picked up any of the other characters' mannerisms.

Also they gave me another bit with Toby and his kids, so that made me happy.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

I loved the look on Leo's face when he realized what he was about to be asked to do. Like it made him feel physically ill just to consider it.