What are spoilers?
Spoilers are a necessary warning that someone posting to a forum is about to give something away about a novel or gaming product. The idea behind their necessity can best be illustrated by an actual event that occurred many years ago at GenCon. Like many other products, Dragons of Winter Night debuted on the first day of GenCon. Enthusiasm for the novel was very high, and many people waited in line to get their hands on the sequel to Dragons of Autumn Twilight. One enterprising fan bought his copy of the book, found a quiet corner and proceeded to read it cover to cover within a day’s time. The next evening, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman held a question and answer to talk with fans about their first novel, and the just-released Dragons of Winter Night, which most of the audience had not had the chance to read yet. Our enterprising fan raised his hand, was called on, and blurted out: “Why did you kill Sturm at the end of the book?” You can probably imagine the crowd’s irate reaction.
A spoiler is anything which gives away a plot point (or any other detail) of a work before the entire work is publicly available. Some people don’t care about spoilers, but others would prefer to know nothing about a work until they can read the whole thing. Properly indentifying messages which contain spoilers is a list courtesy for those who dislike them.
Many web sites and internet lists mention ‘spoilers.’ That is usually detailed information regarding plots of episodes. Fans use that word as a courtesy to alert others that they are discussing an episode that other fans may not yet have seen. This is so the surprise is not ‘spoiled’ for the other fan. 29. What is “Friends of due SOUTH”? The name ‘Friends of due SOUTH’ has been used in several instances. It was adopted by a few fans when a letter-writing campaign to bring the series back for a second season was formed. The name has also used to incorporate some fan-run conventions (RCW 139); those incorporations consisted of about half a dozen people on the convention staff. The DUESOUTH discussion list was mistakenly referred to as the Friends of due SOUTH list (or fan club) in at least one press article as well as in ‘due SOUTH: the Official Companion’ by Geoff Tibballs. 30. Did Fraser and Victoria sleep together before “Victoria’s Secret”? Although it was said (at a 1998 convention)
