Why You Can Never Fully Spoil a Story

Warning: this post contains spoilers about spoilers

I can come to you while you are sitting on the living room couch, book or popcorn in hand, in the midst of a dramatic sequence of a piece of romantic media, and I can tell you that the two main characters hook up in the end. And you can turn to me, contempt and disgust on your face paired with a ‘how could you’ expression, maybe throw the popcorn at me that you were absentmindedly munching on a moment before while being immersed in the story, and you could tell me that I spoiled it for you.

And to that I would say, but have I really?

When I was young, I would read many tales of fiction and fantasy in my spare time. While I would be only part-way through the book, I would flip to the final page. I could never seem to help myself. I would read the entire last page of the book. Many of my friends would stare in horror and shock at the story sacrilege I was committing. ‘You’re spoiling the story!’ They would shout. ‘You can’t read the ending first. That’s like eating dessert before dinner. You’re ruining all the parts in between. They’re not going to taste good once you go back to them.’ I would shrug and continue reading, happy to inform them that I was not, in fact, bothered by spoilers.

Friends would be recounting tales and summaries, plot twists and dips with excited glee. Then they would stop mid-sentence before pushing out the line we all know too well:

‘But I don’t want to spoil it for you’.

‘I won’t say any more’, they say. ‘You’ll have to go see/read it for yourself.’ Although you see the twinkle of mischief in their eye, that burning desire to burst forth an entire stream of thought-to-words they are barely holding in. They want to tell you so badly.

So they resort to asking ‘what part are you on now?’ and ‘have you reached that point yet?’, not simply out of curiosity but as a bookmark for how much they are allowed to speak.

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