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For anyone interested, I've started posting short character pieces about J'onn from Justice League Unlimited at jl_fic under the umbrella title "My Life Among the Apes."

Planet of the Apes
Written Language
I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

There's going to be at least one more installment, mostly because I can't resist the title "In Memory Yet Green," but it hasn't gelled yet.

Spoilers and Life as the Little Mermaid

Hello to everyone who just friended me! *waves* Keep your hands and feet inside my LJ at all times, and enjoy the ride. Please wait until my babblings have come to a complete stop before exiting.

Golly, I'm going to have to figure out how to be entertaining now.

...but not for this entry. Today, I want to bitch about being the little frickin' mermaid and spoilers.

The Little Mermaid
Today I get to be the little mermaid. Not in the young and handsome prince sense (or even the hung and pransom yince version.) Not in the lose my voice, or deal with a witch, or even having Disney-perfect hair sense.

No, I get to be the little mermaid because I sliced the sole of my foot open this morning and now I leave a little trail of blood, like a vampiric Hansel and Gretel. Much as I love those Advanced Healing bandaids, my feet are proving a little much for them. My summer-filthy feet. I'm really not looking forward to finding out what might have gotten in while all my blood was getting out.

I think it's DB who did it; he was overly fascinated with a basket that had wire ribbon on it, and kept doing something really noisy until I took said basket away. The sharp thing was right where the basket had been, and I don't know if it's a shard of wicker or a snip of wire, but either way, I'm hoping that Bozo Boy didn't eat anything. It's one thing to have a cat who eats dust and pastry because he's strange; it's another to have him actively attempting suicide by basket.

Gah.

Spoilers - Why are Fans So Crazy About 'em?
This was prompted by a poll in mtgat's LJ, which was in turn prompted by filkertom asking us to stop quoting Firefly in his f-list because he hasn't seen it yet. Which made me write the first draft of this:

There's a difference between "appropriate" [her wording, as in "is it appropriate to"] and "what I personally do" since I'm a big old spoiler whore, and was chastized for quoting a parody of Harry Potter two weeks after HBP came out. (I figure once it's been around fandom enough to start more than one flame war, it's not a secret anymore.)

However, (taking off the fan hat and putting on the reviewer hat) I Just Don't Get the whole thing about blocking quotes and images as spoilers. What are previews? Quotes and images, used to give you a taste and leave you wanting more. What's on the front of every book? An image from the story, to lure you into picking it up. What's on the back of every softcover and the dustjacket of every hardcover? Quotes to get you to buy the thing.

I have yet to hear someone pick up a book in Barnes and Noble and squeal "OMG, there's three whole lines of dialog on the back. It's ruined! RUINED!! I can never enjoy this now!!!" But fandom is full of this kind of nonsense - even if the quote has nothing to do with the plot, someone's going to plotz. This is not just a hypothetical issue either - someone posted a picture of the front cover of Half Blood Prince somewhere and got an avalanche of "You spoiled it!" and "Oh, that's totally fake and wrong, I don't belieeeeeve you, I'm shutting my eyes and going lalalala" posts.

In the meantime, sane people could go to Amazon and look at the exact same picture. Or go to Amazon.co.uk and compare the "adult" and "child" version pictures. Without so much as a spoiler warning for their tender sensibilities when they ordered the dang thing.

At the same time, fandom is pretty damned schizophrenic on the issue - there's a huge overlap between the subset of fans who are all "Don't tell me, don't tell me, I don't want to know" and the subset of fans who obsessively watch ads and previews. Huh? Why is it not a spoiler to see "I'm unarmed." "Well, I'm not." but a spoiler to have someone describe that scene or post a photo grab?

Yeah, I can see not wanting to know major plot points. (If there is a hell, that stinker who spammed unrelated LJs with a jpg of Half Blood Prince with a huge, late plot point underlined in red deserves his own spot on the griddle, with extra grease.) But the basic plot setup? It's human nature to want to look before you leap, so what's that on every DVD & book cover, in every preview, every review, every blinkin' issue of the TV Guide? A teaser plot synopsis and maybe a quote or image or two. Does it really ruin Stargate to read "Col. O'Neill leads his team to a new planet where they fight Gu'aold"? Or Harry Potter to read "Harry goes to Hogwarts but his studies are interrupted by a fight with Voldemort"?

Hell, quotes are outright expected in the reviewing business. That's why the ARCs warn that quotes should be taken from the final copy, lest text change.

Since that's the way the entire rest of the world works, why is fandom so squiffy about quotes and basic plot descriptions as spoilers?