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View Full Version : What's the biggest thing the forums have spoilt for you? [Spoilers, obviously]



Socksy
2014-08-14, 10:46 AM
Someone mentioned on another thread that spoilering things from the comic probably isn't necessary, which made me wonder if these particular forums HAD spoilt anything for anyone.

I didn't look at them much before I finished the comic, but I learnt in here that Redcloak was the high priest of the Dark One.
I also saw some Pirates of the Caribbean spoilers, although that's not really relevant to the comic. :smalltongue::smallbiggrin:

pacovf
2014-08-14, 11:19 AM
I didn't read the forums before catching up with the up-to-date comic. But a lot of people have correctly predicted plot twists before they were revealed. The link between familicide and Girard's gate being the one that marked me the most.

Jaxzan Proditor
2014-08-14, 12:17 PM
I didn't realize the forums existed until a few months after I finished the online comic, so I was spared any spoilers of that. I was spoilered on a few things about SoD and OtOoPCs, but not a whole lot.

Keltest
2014-08-14, 12:39 PM
pretty much all of the prequel books, not that im complaining. Id rather understand the discussion than continue the suspense of the unknown.

The DeathKnight
2014-08-14, 12:41 PM
The two i remember is; 1) remember reading ages before 930: Overshadowed, that Elan's sending was to contact Julio and that a fight between the two father figures would ensue, which happened, just was surprised at the earliness of it.

2) when Durkon first became Durkula, I remember someone saying he was being controlled an evil entity, and that he was working for Hel, hence why the Giant showed us the cut to Hel and Thor in 874: Allies like this.

There are others, but too long ago to remember them.

Koo Rehtorb
2014-08-14, 01:01 PM
I guess learning stuff about why the Giant writes some of the things he does? It certainly adds a lot of context to the comic, some of which I'm not certain improves the reading of it.

Peelee
2014-08-14, 03:11 PM
My notion of Internet civility. ZING!

orrion
2014-08-14, 03:24 PM
The two i remember is; 1) remember reading ages before 930: Overshadowed, that Elan's sending was to contact Julio and that a fight between the two father figures would ensue, which happened, just was surprised at the earliness of it.

2) when Durkon first became Durkula, I remember someone saying he was being controlled an evil entity, and that he was working for Hel, hence why the Giant showed us the cut to Hel and Thor in 874: Allies like this.

There are others, but too long ago to remember them.

Those aren't examples of spoilers.

Spoiling something means you tell someone something that actually happened before they get a chance to see it for themselves.

Spoilers are not people managing to correctly guess what happens before it does.

The DeathKnight
2014-08-14, 03:39 PM
Those aren't examples of spoilers.

Spoiling something means you tell someone something that actually happened before they get a chance to see it for themselves.

Spoilers are not people managing to correctly guess what happens before it does.

oh well then, in that case, it would only be the Haleo and Julean comic, as well as the SSaDT content (excluding dragon mag strips), since i have yet to procure a copy of the latter mentioned book.

DaggerPen
2014-08-14, 03:44 PM
Basically everything in the prequel books, though it's hard to decide if "the ritual doesn't do what Xykon thinks it does" or "Redcloak killed his brother for nothing" was the bigger spoiler.

Jaxzan Proditor
2014-08-14, 04:06 PM
Those aren't examples of spoilers.

Spoiling something means you tell someone something that actually happened before they get a chance to see it for themselves.

Spoilers are not people managing to correctly guess what happens before it does.

Some people do tend to spoil their speculations, and I believe speculation is disliked by several people precisely because it can spoil the reveal, in a different sense. I don't think it counts here, though.

ORione
2014-08-14, 05:17 PM
Yeah, I read the comic all the way through before I looked at the forum. That was because I only went to the forums in the first place to get an OotS fix once I ran out of comics, but it was also good for avoiding spoilers. However, I did get many SoD spoilers. The number of events that I didn't know before I read the book can be counted on one hand. One hand with four fingers missing.

That was partly because of inconsiderate people on the forum, but mostly because I looked under spoiler tags out of curiosity.

Mrc.
2014-08-14, 05:41 PM
Ever heard of this thing called 'One Piece'? No?

How about 'Attack on Titan'? No to that as well?

Oh, maybe 'Naruto'? None of these ringing a bell?

This was how I entered this forum. I can now no longer watch these properly. This makes me a sad Mrc. :smallfrown:



Also, I find speculation that turns out to be right slightly annoying, as it makes the work look like it was copied when it clearly wasn't. Just my two pence.

Jay R
2014-08-14, 06:06 PM
Those aren't examples of spoilers.

Spoiling something means you tell someone something that actually happened before they get a chance to see it for themselves.

Spoilers are not people managing to correctly guess what happens before it does.

That is certainly the most common use of the term "spoiler". But English words rarely have only one meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary has over 30 separate definitions and sub-definitions for the word "the".

The exact question we were asked was, "What's the biggest thing the forums have spoilt for you?" Whether you want to call it a spoiler or not, the only revelation that the forums have spoiled for me was in fact a speculation - the only time I remember that a speculative answer was clearly right, and not drowned out by a morass of other equally likely but false speculations. When the Order first found the dead bodies in the pyramid, people speculated that Vaarsuvius had done it with the familicide spell.

Whether you want to "count" it or not, that's the only time I knew what was coming in advance because of the forums.

grandpheonix
2014-08-14, 06:40 PM
A bigger question here is this: do you think The Giant ever reads through these comments on whats happening next and sees what is really about to happen in detail and goes "damn, now i gotta redo thos part so they dont see it coming?"

Peelee
2014-08-14, 06:53 PM
A bigger question here is this: do you think The Giant ever reads through these comments on whats happening next and sees what is really about to happen in detail and goes "damn, now i gotta redo thos part so they dont see it coming?"

I think preserving 100% surprise for every single person reading the comic takes a backseat to things like "not having to replot how the entire rest of the story will go."

The DeathKnight
2014-08-15, 02:07 AM
A bigger question here is this: do you think The Giant ever reads through these comments on whats happening next and sees what is really about to happen in detail and goes "damn, now i gotta redo thos part so they dont see it coming?"

I don't think he would, as George R R Martin has said, people have predicted what will happen in the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series almost to the dot, and although he considered changing it, since he likes to surprise his audiance, he has not because he has left clues in the books that, if he changes it, these clues will now lead up to nothing. So i, personally, feel the same would happen for the Giant.

Porthos
2014-08-15, 02:18 AM
A bigger question here is this: do you think The Giant ever reads through these comments on whats happening next and sees what is really about to happen in detail and goes "damn, now i gotta redo thos part so they dont see it coming?"

Before someone quotes the almost 10 year out of date FAQ, Rich is now on record as saying he doesn't change the content of the strip because (lots of) someone(s) guess things correctly. He may change things because of reactions, but that's not the same thing.

While in the past, he used to say he got annoyed when people guessed things, I think he should take it as a compliment that he has literally hundreds of thousands of people interested in his work. With that many people reading, someone is going to figure things out by sheer random chance.

...

Plus its his own fault for engaging in the occasional bit of foreshadowing. :smalltongue:

DaggerPen
2014-08-15, 02:29 AM
Before someone quotes the almost 10 year out of date FAQ, Rich is now on record as saying he doesn't change the content of the strip because (lots of) someone(s) guess things correctly. He may change things because of reactions, but that's not the same thing.

While in the past, he used to say he got annoyed when people guessed things, I think he should take it as a compliment that he has literally hundreds of thousands of people interested in his work. With that many people reading, someone is going to figure things out by sheer random chance.

...

Plus its his own fault for engaging in the occasional bit of foreshadowing. :smalltongue:

Like the forum needs foreshadowing to get the occasional uncannily accurate guess mixed in with the epileptic trees.

Seriously, HOW did so many people get that the Champion was going to be Thog? To this day it baffles me.

factotum
2014-08-15, 02:51 AM
If I see there's a new comic (or I see there's a new comic *thread* while browsing the forums) then I'll read it first before reading the thread titles or any threads in the OotS subforum--that way, stuff can't get spoilt. If we're talking about people making predictions that later turn out to be true, I don't consider those spoilers because they're just one among many guesses about how things will turn out.

Jaxzan Proditor
2014-08-15, 06:13 AM
Seriously, HOW did so many people get that the Champion was going to be Thog? To this day it baffles me.

Wait, they did?

*goes back and checks*

Huh, that's interesting. Not many people, but still several. Of course, there were many more incorrect predictions. And, amusingly in hindsight, someone who said it couldn't be Thog.

Jay R
2014-08-15, 11:09 AM
If we're talking about people making predictions that later turn out to be true, I don't consider those spoilers because they're just one among many guesses about how things will turn out.

Most of the time this is correct. But when the party entered the pyramid and saw all the dead Draketooths (Draketeeth?), people speculated that they died to V's familicide. In that one case, I was absolutely certain that the speculation was true. Therefore I was not surprised when the revelation occurred in the comic.

It did in fact spoil the surprise.

Snails
2014-08-16, 12:10 AM
Like the forum needs foreshadowing to get the occasional uncannily accurate guess mixed in with the epileptic trees.

Seriously, HOW did so many people get that the Champion was going to be Thog? To this day it baffles me.

The process of employing "Bardic Knowledge" can be explained easily enough for this case...

1) When a detail grabs your attention as being interesting or peculiar, is it because it is (A) important or because it is (B) texture that just tickled the writers fancy to fill space that needed some kind of random detail?

A is definitely the winner because it was a deftly executed twist and Roy's duel cannot be a yawner after we thought he was going to fight Enor..

2) So is the Champion (A) someone we have never met or (B) someone we have met?

Hard to say. It is a plausible place to introduce a completely new important character, but let us guess B to see if that is fun.

3) Is the combat going to be stupid or not stupid?

Roy gaining a trivial victory might make for a funny joke (Rich gave that win to the cat), but Roy is the main PC so the opposing combatant should be martially competent (i.e. butchering a lawyer or flumph would not make sense).

4) Who do we know who is alive and could possibly fit the bill?

O'Chul -- Possible, but does not really make sense to accidentally run into O'Chul here.
Hinjo -- ditto
Julio -- Possible. As his airship could come to the rescue, too.
Miko -- Not possible. But could have been interesting.
Nale -- Possible. On the the plus side, he is both an adequate swordsman and has specifically crossed swords with Roy. Furthermore, this introduces a potentially useful family triangle. On the downside, he is rather too close to Tarquin to be employed in this manner.
Thog -- Very possible. Has all the positives of Nale and none of the negatives, because his appearance implies Nale is not far away.

Once you go with #2B, the list of reasonable candidates is pretty short and Thog floats towards the top.

I am not saying Thog is obvious, but if ten people start thinking this through carefully, three or more will surely pick Thog.

factotum
2014-08-16, 04:08 AM
Most of the time this is correct. But when the party entered the pyramid and saw all the dead Draketooths (Draketeeth?), people speculated that they died to V's familicide. In that one case, I was absolutely certain that the speculation was true. Therefore I was not surprised when the revelation occurred in the comic.

It did in fact spoil the surprise.

But that's just because you agreed with the speculation. If you hadn't agreed with it--or if the reason they'd died had turned out to be something else--then it wouldn't have been such a spoiler, would it?

Jay R
2014-08-16, 07:18 AM
But that's just because you agreed with the speculation. If you hadn't agreed with it--or if the reason they'd died had turned out to be something else--then it wouldn't have been such a spoiler, would it?

"Agreed" is such an incredibly weak word here that it gives a completely false impression. I'd read many speculations in the past that I agreed with. In this one case, I saw immediately that it must be true. It made several otherwise unrelated things make sense.

If the reason had turned to to be something else? I didn't believe there was any possibility of that. It would be the equivalent of learning that the authors always thought Clark Kent was somebody other than Superman.

You aren't in my head, so I probably cannot communicate this to you, but it was a true spoiler - for me - when it happened.

Rodin
2014-08-16, 10:08 PM
Biggest thing for me is Durkon's prophecy. I managed to read SoD almost totally unspoiled somehow, though I'm sure I knew a couple things going in. A lot of the surprises in SoD were mitigated by the fact that I read it after the main comic had revealed some of that information anyway.

Edit: On authors reading their own forums/fanfiction, I know that there are at least some who outright refuse to read because that way they cannot be accused of "stealing" a reader's idea. If they have a blanket "I do not exist on the Internet" statement it insulates them from the crazy.

Jaxzan Proditor
2014-08-17, 08:25 AM
Edit: On authors reading their own forums/fanfiction, I know that there are at least some who outright refuse to read because that way they cannot be accused of "stealing" a reader's idea. If they have a blanket "I do not exist on the Internet" statement it insulates them from the crazy.

I know there was at least one author, whose name I don't quite recall, that had troubles with a fan who claimed that they stole the idea for one of their novels from the fan's fic. This lead to the author declaring a ban on fanfiction for that fandom. I think that at one point, George Lucas said that he doesn't read Star Wars fanfiction, protecting him from that, but his lawyers did in case there was something he didn't like (this may have changed over time).

veti
2014-08-18, 12:38 AM
A bigger question here is this: do you think The Giant ever reads through these comments on whats happening next and sees what is really about to happen in detail and goes "damn, now i gotta redo thos part so they dont see it coming?"

No.

But I do think he writes things into the strip specifically to answer questions that get raised here. For instance, at one point a lot of people were arguing about whether Tarquin had signalled to Malack that he'd eventually allow him to have his way with Nale, and whether he'd feel obliged to keep that implied promise... and (I think) that persuaded Rich to add extra dialogue to 906 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0906.html) and 913 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0913.html) to settle those speculations.

zinycor
2014-08-19, 11:08 AM
Like the forum needs foreshadowing to get the occasional uncannily accurate guess mixed in with the epileptic trees.

Seriously, HOW did so many people get that the Champion was going to be Thog? To this day it baffles me.

Looking at the discussion thread people seemed to think it would be Thog's dad rather than Thog himself

zinycor
2014-08-19, 11:18 AM
I didn't read the forums before catching into the comic so i didn't get any spoilers, and since then, i don't think speculation can be qualified as spoiler really, so many times have the forums been proved wrong and it is so much fun to find that you just guessed something right (not that it has happened to me, am bad at guessing xD), that i wouldn't worry about getting spoiled.

besides it isn't the big reveals that make me like the comic, is the brilliant execution and the funny jokes. Personally i have never been too upset by spoilers in any media, ¿what can i say? am easily impressed

Jaxzan Proditor
2014-08-19, 03:21 PM
Looking at the discussion thread people seemed to think it would be Thog's dad rather than Thog himself

I think it was a little bit of both, mixed in with all the other hypotheses.