So besides the cute title, what am I getting at in an article about spoilers?

Part of me wants to try and define a set of rules for when something is still a spoiler or not. When has it been around long enough that it’s fair game and when should you talk in hushed tones about something.

This comes up with Avengers: Endgame coming out in a week basically and people, for good reason, not wanting to be spoiled on what happens. It also comes up right now because there have been massive spoilers posted on Twitter, including leaked footage at this point time, and it’s still just over a week away.

I’ve defined a little bit of what a spoiler is, but let’s nail down a definition.

A spoiler is an element of a disseminated summary or description of any piece of fiction that reveals any plot elements which threaten to give away important details. Typically, the details of the conclusion of the plot, including the climax and ending, are especially regarded as spoiler material. It can also be used to refer to any piece of information regarding any part of a given media that a potential consumer was not intended to know beforehand. Because enjoyment of fiction depends a great deal upon the suspense of revealing plot details through standard narrative progression, the prior revelation of how things will turn out can “spoil” the enjoyment that some consumers of the narrative would otherwise have experienced.

Wikipedia

That’s a pretty long definition from Wikipedia there, but I think it covers it really well. To cut that down, it is spoiling anything related to the plot that is shared with the consumer of the plot by an outside point prior to the consumer getting to that point of the plot. Generally, I think that does spoil the anticipation for something knowing information about it head of time.

By that definition, technically any time someone is consuming that plot for the first time, no matter when the plot was created, you can spoil it for the person. However, in order for people to be able to converse and discuss the book, movie, show, audio drama, whatever it might be, you can’t worry indefinitely about spoiling the plot for people. I think that is where the tricky point in setting up rules around spoilers is, because, the joke of Bruce Willis seeing dead people in The Sixth Sense is actually a spoiler for me, but I don’t care, and probably a spoiler for some others, but because of how long ago that movie came out, that has to be fair game at some point in time to discuss.

Let’s talk about two upcoming/ongoing things and what sort of time frame they have on spoilers. The two things are Avengers: Endgame and then Game of Thrones. Both of these have a massive focus in the public eye, and because of that there will be spoilers but more so, there will be a ton of people wanting to talk about them. So how do you handle talking about things like that?

Firstly, I would always ask if everyone is caught up on Game of Thrones (or any sort of show) or has seen the movie before diving into the discussion. And this is talking about the immediate time frame. Especially close to when the episode or movie has come out, because some people aren’t able to see it immediately, even if they do really care about the story. And then respect that if people haven’t seen it or read it yet.

Next, I would set aside space and time when you can talk about it. You won’t be able to talk about it with everyone, but create a time, with people who have seen it at a mainly private location to talk about it. There’s always the temptation to go out after watching a movie and grab drinks and talk about it, you will spoil something for someone one. It is important to discuss and talk about pieces of media, but be considerate of where you do that, even if everyone in your group is up for talking about it, those around you might not be, and in that short time frame, it’s very possible that you will spoil something for someone else.

This one is especially true in movie theaters. I haven’t had it happen, but I have heard of it happening. Someone coming in for the next showing has the end of the movie spoiled by someone leaving. Wait until you are in your car before talking about it. If you can’t contain your excitement with the movie, talk about it generally. “That was amazing.” or “That was underwhelming” are fine, but saying that Captain America kissed Wonder Woman as they flew the Millennium Falcon into at the Reaver ship and just escaped the explosion by hopping into the TARDIS and going to Vulcan, just a bit too detailed. However, if I heard someone saying that when leaving Avengers: Endgame, that would be hilarious.

Finally, do give it some time before talking about it freely. Something like Game of Thrones and Avengers: Endgame, I would say when the DVD/Blu-Ray’s come out for each of them respectively, then they are fair game to talk about. At that point in time, someone who couldn’t make it to the theater, for whatever reason, is going to have more options to watch it and less excuses for having not watched it. Even then, I would still be respectful and keep an eye out for people who might not have seen it yet, because there are plenty of reasons why someone might not have seen a movie yet.

What I didn’t talk about in here was social media and online. How do you deal with spoilers then? For social media, I’d say it’s simple, don’t post spoilers publicly for the movie/show until it’s after the DVD/Blu-Ray is out. There isn’t a good way to really tag them as spoilers so that people can avoid them. On forums, I know one that I’m on will have two threads. One for general thoughts on the movie, and another for spoiler filled thoughts. I even, in my review of Avengers: Infinity War, did a non-spoiler and spoiler review, and I’ll be doing the same for Avengers: Endgame. And one important thing will be for me to remember to put enough header section at the top so that in article blurbs, spoilers aren’t shown.

So how do you deal with spoilers? Do you have any additional rules that I haven’t talked about? Do you think you should always ask before spoiling something no matter how long ago it was?

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I think the biggest reason that there aren’t more of them is because publishers and writers want something that feels familiar. A writer can feel like it’s their own unique twist on something that is familiar and safe, and a publisher can look and see how well things have sold. Now there is plenty of variety within the standard epic fantasy that we often think of and that we see published most often, but there’s always some medieval feel to it that feels normal and allows us to jump into a world quickly and pick up the edge cases about the world that are different from others.

What are some of the tropes of fantasy that are used often?

While it’s less the case now, it often feels like fantasy is the clear good versus evil. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are both clear examples of this where there is clearly a good side and there is an evil side, and there really isn’t ground in between. Sometimes you really want that delineation, but fantasy can lean too much so into the good versus evil and it simply being that and nothing more.

Also there is the medieval feel, or what we attribute to a medieval feel. There are going to be knights most likely, though they might be called something else, a king, either good striving against the evil forces coming to the lands or evil keeping the people oppressed so a rebellion must rise up and there’s not all that much in between. Lots of castles, sprawling forests, and generally a lot of what you’d expect from Robin Hood shows up in your standard epic fantasy. Even in urban fantasy, there is often some leftover feel of the medieval period. In the Dresden Files, the wizarding council holds old traditions, in Harry Potter, Hogwarts is literally a giant castle.

Finally, while it’s not in all fantasy, there is very often some form of magic. This is often where fantasy diverges the most as different people use different things for magic. It could be that the magic comes from the divine, it could be that magic is steeped heavily in ritual and must be done at ritual locations, or it could be a quicker and dirtier magic that can be done on the fly. Magic can be fine and precise wielded like a scalpel or it can be swung around like a club, bludgeoning everything. So there’s plenty of leeway for magic, but it is something that is commonly found in fantasy.

That’s epic fantasy, is all fantasy like that or are there different types of fantasy?

While that might be the type that people think of when they think of fantasy thanks to Lord of the Rings, it certainly isn’t the only type of fantasy out there. There’s paranormal fantasy, urban fantasy, low fantasy, dark fantasy, or even steampunk would qualify as a different type of fantasy. Probably the biggest growing type of fantasy falls into that area of urban fantasy. The Dresden Files series is one of the biggest or Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman are two of the better known. But TV shows like Grimm also fall into that Urban Fantasy sub-genre of fantasy.

There are a few that I really want to call out, though, the first being Urban Fantasy. This is one of my favorite genres of fantasy as taking a modern world and putting magic not just into the world as a whole, but a densely populated area and really focusing the story down into that world can be done so well. In all of Neverwhere, Grimm, and The Dresden Files, there’s a grittier side of the world that you don’t a lot in fantasy. That grittier side of things is what sets it apart from contemporary fantasy which would qualify as something like Harry Potter where it’s in a modern setting, but doesn’t deal as directly with the modern nature of the world.

Another one can either be modern or not, but it’s a non-standard medieval fantasy. That’s a long name, but basically, it’s looking at fantasy that really goes outside of the normal sword and sorcery that you can see and takes us to another world or part of our world than London or the medieval European equivalent. An example of this is the Daughter of Smoke and Bones trilogy. Those books are set in Prague, so different location than normal, but they also deal with a very different subset fantasy with how they talk about a number of fantasy tropes, which you can see from above, and the creatures that you see. You don’t really have your standard goblins, trolls, and faeries. It’s often a bit jarring not to have your standard fantasy tropes, but it’s also refreshing to see fantasy step away from it’s roots and branch out into new areas.

Finally is a sub genre of fantasy that I want more from, and that’s the Weird West. But this can also fall somewhat into historical fantasy as well, so I’ll use that genre so I can talk about  more things. But in the Weird West genre, you’re getting something that we’re familiar with, because of westerns, and adding in some mix of magic, steampunk or advanced technology, aliens, or monsters. The movie, Wild Wild West is an example of what Weird West can be. But when you expand it to look at other parts of history, you see it around WWI and WWII, even something like Wonder Woman which falls under the umbrella of Superheroes, but the movie was as much an alternative history fantasy movie as it was a superhero movie because of Wonder Woman’s backstory and Ares being a Greek god.

Now, there’s so much more you can go with into fantasy. And a lot of what I’ve talked about with world building before for RPG’s or just in writing in general you can pull into fantasy as well and use it to help shape your thoughts around fantasy. I’m going to be doing a follow up article soon on magic and high, medium, and low magic as well as different ways of using magic that I touched on here in this post.

But I’ll leave you with the question, what are some of your favorite genres inside fantasy, and some of your favorite books or TV shows or movies in that genre?

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I think one of the strongest ways you can create an effective villain is to have a character who doesn’t think what they are doing is wrong or to have some more motivation than just being a villainous character. This will be one of the biggest points for Killmonger versus Ares. Ares, as a villain, is the god of war. As a villain, that isn’t that strong a motivator other than that is literally who he is. He wants there to be war. Compare that to Killmonger. Killmonger is also trying to set-up war, but he’s doing it for more reasons than just wanting war. Killmonger is seeking out war as a way of revenge, but also to change the world. There is a piece of him that knows how he’s going about stuff is wrong, but he doesn’t care, as the ends justify the means. He wants to create a world where those he views as oppressed can now rule and likely be the oppressor, but he doesn’t think about it that way, he thinks that he is doing something good.

The best villains often believe that they are doing something good. It’s hard to see a lot of the time, but when twisting it from their perspective, they see something as good. Even the right to rule for a villain is often them seeing it as the good and right thing to do. They’d do better than who is there right now. Granted, it would be worse for everyone else, but they don’t see it that way, they are thinking about what is good for themselves and don’t see what they are doing as evil. It’s an interesting way to look at things, but going back to Killmonger and Ares, it is something that gives Killmonger a lot more depth than Ares.

I’ll give DC some credit though with Ares. I think he’s one of the first DC villains that they could have had an interesting take on and made him someone who really manipulates from the background and only does that. Instead, they tried to make it that first, and then turn him into whom he is in the comics, with his armor and the big battle and basically made him an ineffective villain. Killmonger is instead of a villain who is trying to create some sort of change because they think it will be better and the ends justify the means, and there is also a large piece of hatred and revenge thrown in.

But, beyond those, why does it matter so much to have a villain that thinks they are doing good? I’ve already talked about it some, but it really is the crux to having a great villain. Sure, you can have memorable traits for a villain, like the Joker from The Dark Knight, but when it comes down to it, the Joker is a character who is crazy who does crazy things. His motivations aren’t that strong, but when you have a villain who has strong motivations from a place where they are seeking for something, that makes a great villain. They don’t have to be the muscle, they don’t have to always be on the scene, but someone who has a plan and is looking to complete it for the betterment of themselves or a select group of people or for revenge is a lot of fun to see or read about.

What else is important for a villain? I think one thing that often gets overlooked is having a backstory for the villain. Now, this is something that a lot of writers do well at, but there are a number of times where the villain doesn’t seem to have the background that they should. Even if the whole thing isn’t laid out, as a writer or dungeon master, you should know something about who the villain is. This can tie into them thinking that they are doing the right thing, but another way to look at it is it determines how they do things. A villain who grew up on the streets and is leading their own personal army to get into power might be looking at power as a way to say, I told you so or for riches, versus control over people, because they had nothing, and now they want things and everyone to see that they have things. Other characters might seek power for the ability to rule because they believe they can rule better or deserve to rule.

Keeping with the example of wanting power, it can be broken down in different ways besides the end goal. How someone gets to that end goal can also vary a lot. From the backstory of the villain, you are going to know if they are leading the charge, controlling things from the back of the battlefield, waging a war of mind games, or seeking all the attention that they can get. All of these things make your villain feel unique. Unique is probably the word that I should have started with in terms of backstory and why it  matters. You don’t want your bad guy to feel like just another bad guy.

A great example of someone who creates unique villains is Stephen King. In Under the Dome, the villain is truly horrible in terms of what he does. It’s still probable that he sees himself as a good guy, though it’s hard to know how. He does so many just horrible things to the other people in the town all with his desire to have power and rule and be right. You feel dirty in many ways after reading his character. That character is unique to It where it’s a much greater being that almost toys with people. However, there’s the human villain in It, who is again a horrible character, but he’s driven as a kid as being a bully, and as an adult as trying to relive his glory years in many ways. You can see how the character grows over time.

I do want to talk about one last type of villain. I don’t know how to describe it and it’s a character who is so heavily steeped in doing the right thing that they lose focus but seem like they can regain focus on it. It is really the antihero character, where you’re watching the hero be a villain. In Code Geass, Lelouch is trying to make a safer world for his sister and get revenge on his father, the Emperor of Britannia. His methods can at best be described as suspect and his power to control other people ends up causing as much trouble as you’d expect. His power ends up with characters you like way more than him being killed, and he keeps on going further and further down the villainous pathway. While I have issues with the show, and I’ll likely write a review on that soon, it’s interesting to see someone become a villain and have a level of awareness at times that they are a villain and how that can create an interesting story.

The above example is probably  harder to pull off. By the time Lelouch is really headed down the villainous path, I was too far in to stop watching, I might have. There are certainly plenty of shows, books, and movies with anti-heroes or no clear cut good character, but there’s a balance of weight that you have to go with when making a villainous main character as it’s very easy to drift into something that is too dark or only depressing. I think you could make an argument with the book The Magicians, that the main character is practically a villain and he really doesn’t have redeeming qualities or ever get redeemed, the book ends up just being negativity piled on top of negativity and is a weak book because of that whereas Code Geass does a better job balancing out that weight with some levity and not just having the main character be bad.

What are some examples that you love of a character who is unique and believes that they are doing the right thing? Who are your favorite villains in books/tv shows/movies?

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Superman: The Son of Krypton, and for much of his time, he thought that the last of his race. Sent to earth as a young child, Superman was raised by two human parents before finding out how truly different he was. Superman lives up to his name, in that he is about as powerful as any hero out there. He is the Man of Steel, he can fly, he has X-Ray vision, and is generally pretty immune to most things. So, how do you make an interesting story off of that? I would argue that is where the movies have struggled greatly, it is hard to make that interesting a story when you hero is basically all powerful, but where good Superman stories work isn’t about something being stronger or tougher than him, but someone being able to manipulate him and put him into a situation that isn’t nearly as favorable as he tries to keep make himself appear. As an alien, he just isn’t completely sure of his place in humanity and often anointing himself the protector of humanity he gets himself into troubles because he can’t live up to the level of good that he and society hold him to.

Batman: Probably more famous than Superman, Batman is the terror that flaps in the night… wait, that’s Darkwing Duck, but Batman is the Dark Knight, he considers himself outside the law, seeing governments become corrupt, and he brings justice to the bad guys, often by sending them off to jail, but he is able to operate outside the law. In the real world he is rich kid Bruce Wayne whose parents were killed in front of him as a young kid. He has used that to fuel his desire to clean up the streets of his Gotham and turn it the great city that his father wanted it to be. However, Batman seems to attract villains (it would be boring if he didn’t), and he attracts the real crazy villains. Batman, at times, can be a fairly straightforward character, but his villains are unparalleled in either DC or Marvel.

Wonder Woman: She is a princess on her own island and part of the race of Amazonians. Her race and lineage are based off of that of Greek mythology. She leaves her island after an airplane pilot crashes there and needs help to be taken back to civilization. Once in humanity as a whole, she realizes that she can do good with her lasso of truth and bracelets that can deflect bullets. She strives to provide justice not as much through violence and destruction but through reconciliation, or at least she did originally. My experience with Wonder Woman is primarily based out off Justice League and most interesting when she is part of the group. I’m sure that she has some very good solo adventures, but many of her villains are Justice League villains, or not that great in terms of villains.

Green Lantern/Hal Jordan: I’m specifying which Green Lantern, because there are several of them. Hal Jordan was an airplane pilot and a bit of a thrill junky. His life was a struggle though as he followed in his father’s footsteps as a pilot, facing the demons that came along with that since his father has passed away in a plane crash. That didn’t stop Hal Jordan, but his life changed when an alien crashed onto Earth and was dying. He passed on a green ring to Hal which turned him into the Green Lantern. The Green Lantern is a major player in the whole DC Universe, going far beyond Earth, fighting other alien races, and struggling the skirmishes between the different lantern colors. His stories often are the Earth or Universe shattering events, and a lot of the time in the larger cosmic and DC Universe events that involve all the characters, the Green Lantern is one of the main players.

That is just a start on superheroes from DC. Are you looking forward to the Wonder Woman movie?

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We got the first footage, for a movie that is coming out in 2017. It is interesting looking footage, looks better than Suicide Squad, no doubt.

So, DC puts out a dud and something that looks all right, on the same day, good job DC.