Today's Column: Spoiler is Coming

Wrote another column for MovieScene, read it here:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/155411/column_spoiler_is_coming

I struggled for a while coming up with a decent topic (as those who are in the business of writing columns are prone to do), but when I had it, it quickly proved to be easy writing. Of course, I made situations appear more poignant and heartwrenching than they actually are in real life, for dramatic effect and poetic license, reflecting the plight of the many unfortunates who are forced into social silence just for knowing more than others. You might read my column as me saying people who cannot take spoilers are a danger to freedom of speech, but that would maybe be reading a little too much into things (then again... perhaps they are!). I don't have as many friends so highly suspectible to spoilers as you would be inclined to believe from this piece, just one or two who make my case for me. And even though I would love to just let it go and throw the truth all out right at them - these characters are all gonna die, yo! - I know better than to jeopardize friendships like that. Just as people who, unlike myself, are not spoiler proof have to learn to live with their disabilities by accepting that in these digital times they are often unavoidable, the rest of us has to learn to accomodate their shortcomings into our everyday lives and simply take such blatant personality flaws for granted. Pity them for their wilful lack of ignorance, I say.

A funny thing concerns the last paragraph of this column, in which I state that I might stumble unto wholly new plot lines not as yet addressed in Martin's novels at some point in the next season. Boy, did the writers of the show prove me wrong! Mere days after penning this column they already seriously digressed from the source material in wholly unpredictable ways which very likely will leave their marks on the act of reading the upcoming novel(s). Not only did the fourth episode of the fourth season change quite a few things on already existing plot lines, the show's ending was either completely made up by the episode's writer, or contained potentially massive book spoilers. Apparently the showrunners deduced that after the shocking events of last season, the majority of the show's fans would have taken to the books already by now, because they could not take 'not knowing' anymore when a written alternative was within their grasp, so they decided to start surprising that, probably fairly considerable, chunk of the audience sooner than anticipated by adding some true 'terra incognita' to the show. Personally I hope they won't continue that process too often over the course of this season: after all, even if only 10% of the next book is covered this way, I still prefer not to know what's coming my way in the pages of Martin's writing, even though I proved less concerned by such thoughts in the case of the TV show. I guess I'm not as spoiler proof as I initially considered myself to be. It's just the question to what medium these spoilers refer to. Televison spoilers? Whatever. Book spoilers? Shut the fuck up and get out of here!