Setting distinctions between TV series and books/source material: what's acceptable?

Question

Do we have a distinct policy towards the separation of TV works, and the details of the books/comics/source material?

I say this not only for 'spolier' purposes, but because books and their developed media content often offer different continuities, which can result in inaccuracy.

The MCU is a good example of this (borrowing certain elements from different books) but perhaps more pertinent is Game of Thrones.

If someone asks a question about the TV show, is it good etiquette to put anything referring to the books in spoilerboxes, or at least draw attention to the distinction between different medium?

I say this because not only do we have cases of people bringing in book continuity details to explain plot points within the series, but they are also liable to create conflicts of information as the TV series develops slightly differently from the narrative of the novels.

As the Sci-Fi stack has plenty of GOT material floating around in it, have we established that our ostensible remit is to discuss the live action series (although referencing the books is at times highly appropriate, if not encouraged), but try to redirect content about the Books over to Sci-Fi?

Do we feel that something like this would in some way impede of limit the M&TV site?

I'm all ears as to what the community thinks, but I think something needs to be codified to separate the distinction between the Series and the Books: they do, after all, have separate Wiki's for this very purpose, should we effectively fall in line?

I think we would need to be careful to ensure questions do not get closed (this shouldn't be manifested as pedantry!), but are modified accordingly and users reminded of this etiquette, if indeed we agree to implement it.

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If anyone is still unclear, I think this is a very good example from SystemDown of striking that balance: he provides an answer that recognizes the difference in continuity, and takes steps to hide spoiler material from the books, also.

Even TylerShads answer is perfectly acceptable, as it includes information from the books that doesn't spoil the TV series, only enhances it. Two successful approaches towards the same problem, but successful because they recognize the difference of orientation between content.

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Personal/Context

Particularly after hearing Keen's response to the Proposition over on Sci-Fi and Fantasy I've realized that people may be misinterpreting the goal of this discussion; perhaps in part due to my unsuccessful clarification.

In order to remedy this, I'm including an anecdote about my own experiences to provide a frame of context. Hopefully, this will render the situation in a relatable way, and explain that this isn't something being pursued for dogmatic or Bureaucratic purposes, but in order to protect a certain experience.

My first exposure to Game of Thrones was the TV series. I tuned in, not expecting a great deal, and (to be honest) it took me a few weeks to really understand how superior it was to any of its contemporaries. I was suitably impressed: not only with the plot details, the political allegories and the existential ruminations on the locality of power, but in the way the series was constructed.

As someone coming from an background of Film Academia, I'm often interested in the construction and craftsmanship involved in such work, and was immediately charmed by the way in with GoT demonstrated not only an awareness of but also a wilingness to manipulate the perspective of the Audience to give momentum to the plot.

It was bold, non-condescending and brilliantly rendered. I was defenseless to its charms.

I had questions about minor plot points, and like so many people who come here, I was directed to the books for answers, which I duly began to read. This was between seasons 2 & 3, overlapping into the start of Season 3.

The books were incredible, I was hooked and fascinated, and they truly did render the world in starker (sorry for the pun) detail. I loved them, and resolved to complete the series...

Then this happened:

I had never experienced anything like my reaction, it was unprecedented. Stunned, with my hand over my mouth, I watched with baited breath as it happened. I wasn't alone. I still remember finding myself stood up in front of the TV, with no memory of actually getting to my feet.

It wasn't neccesarily the revelation contained within the episode (although, lets face it, it was fantastic), but the way it was enacted that caused such an incredibly visceral reaction.

The look on Michelle Fairley face utterly disarmed me; it was such a human reaction to utter despair, total loss. There is something called the 'wow shot', used (particularily by Spielberg) to try and align the reaction to a spectacle of the audience with the characters on screen.

It's often attempted and rarely successful, but I still maintain that this scene was the quintessence of it's purpose.

Catelyn's surprise totally mirrored my own, and her eventual fate just felt like it had been numbed by the few minutes preceding it. It was a perfect positive example of 'starting with the head'...

This is, from my experience, perhaps the most effective scene in TV history. The situation is built by aggregate, and actual images of barbarity are unprecedented.

I would give anything to experience something like that again. It was such a unique and devastatingly traumatic (in a good way) encounter; and rare to see it so well done.

I walked into work, and could immediately tell which of my colleagues had anticipated (through reading the books) this episode, and to which it had been (like me) a totally debilitating surprise. The latter were identified easily as the ones climbing the walls and rolling around in agony.

In gauging the different experiences, I resolved not to read any further into the books. I wanted to find myself climbing the walls again, I wanted to see if GoT would ever elicit that incredible "wow" reaction in my gut again, so I made the conscious decision to stop reading.

I recognized the difference, and realized that (while the books were awesome), they would never be able to provoke anything near that reaction. It's an experience exclusive to the Film medium, because it employs imagery in its craftsmanship, and privileges that experience like no other visual medium.

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Although this example just pertains to GoT, I know there are plenty of other examples where this distinction is important.

I value that moment so much, I would do anything to sustain it, and to protect it. I'd like to think I'm not alone, and others are as passionate as this; even if they don't want to come here and vote directly on it.

Answer 1

There is a lot of good discussion here, and I have voted on the posts in the direction that reflects how I feel about these issues.

On reflection my position has not changed a lot from the initial comment that I made yesterday (but please read the closing remarks below). I am firmly against a strict divide between movies and TV and the material that they are sometimes adapted from - be that novels, short-stories, plays, video games, board games. There is a good reason why screenplay awards are often split between 'original' and 'adapted' as its an important factor in the skills required and is often an important part of the viewers appreciation of the content. Yes, some people approach a Movie or TV show unaware of original work, but many people will enjoy that adaptation specifically, or enjoy an answer enriched from details from the original work.

There are examples of questions that are exclusively about the original work, e.g.:

https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/18774/why-didnt-joanna-cersei-jamies-mother-notify-lord-tywin-about-their-illega

This question is about a character that is almost never referred to in Game of Thrones, never named, and she's referred to in the context of her having died giving birth to Tyrion. The question refers to an incident that (to date) is only referenced in the book. It was clearly (to my mind) unanswerable in the context of the TV show - so I migrated it to an appropriate site.

Ok, so on to the issue of spoilers. My policy to date has been (using Star Wars as an occasional example):

• Avoid spoilers in titles and the top of questions (which appear in some summaries)
• Spoiler markup is mildly annoying on a PC, and positively difficult on a tablet, so should be kept at a minimum.
• Spoilers that directly relate to the material being discussed should not require spoiler markup. If you are reading a question clearly about Luke Skywalker's parentage, or about The Return of the Jedi - someone who has not yet seen the movies should simply avoid the question
• Unexpected egregious significant plot spoiling statements - e.g. in a question about "movie fathers", a statement about Luke Skywalker's parentage could be in spoiler markup.
• In terms of TV series, spoilers 'from the future' be that future seasons, or other material such as books, can be added as additional material, but should clearly be called out as such - and if revealing important future details, these should be in spoiler markup. Be sensible here, but I would argue that being polite to readers, this should not just be current series - in the days now of Amazon Prime, Hulu and Netflix be considerate to anyone watching from the beginning.

I am personally not in favor of a spoiler tag - because of that last point. Everything here could have a spoiler tag on it for someone that has not yet watched the material. My advice is to be sensible - use spoiler markup for 'surprise material', but use it judiciously.

As an closing remark - I've been asked to make a comment as a moderator, but I think that shows a bit of a misunderstanding of the role of a moderator of this site. Yes I have an administrative role to deal with flags, and occasionally resolve disputes and deal with the fortunately rare troublemakers - but the primary role is to help ensure the smooth running of the site.

However even in that role I don't think it is correct for me to set the policy of the community, it is my role to accurately reflect the policy that's been set by all of 'us' - and in that I am only one voice in many.

Answer 2

To be succinct: I think we all know what a spoiler is, and I think by-and-large we can distinguish between when it is likely to poison an ongoing narrative for a user, and when it is simply drawing reference material to support an answer.

iandotkelly has already made the distinction that questions referring exclusively to the books are automatically migrated to Sci-Fi and Fantasy, so we're all clear that our own remit is under A-Game-of-Thrones, and not A-Song-Of-Ice-And-Fire.

I would propose we simply agree to Spoiler-Box any text drawing on the book to deploy information not yet revealed by the TV series: especially plot elements, rather than context explanation and analysis.

If we agree to remain vigilant and proactive at simply editing posts which breach this etiquette by 'Spoiler-boxing' (not close-voting) content, and leaving a comment directing here explaining the edit, I don't see this as any epochal shift in what we're already naturally doing here.

There will be room for discretion in this, and it will ultimately lay in the hands of moderators as to whether an answer/reference is in some way 'poisoning' or 'looking ahead' within the TV Narrative, but I think most users would be obliging and (with a little common sense and discussion) we could be respectful and accommodating to Users who come here for help, and not force them into exile like Wandang.

The reason SpoilerBoxes are vital to this site's operation are, I feel, demonstrated by the particularities of Wandang's original predicament:

If the solution proposed by Andrew Martin is implemented (that users who don't wish to incur spoilers from the within the book they remove GOT from their feed) sets up a hierarchy that excludes any user from participating in questions around the GOT TV series unless they have read the books/don't mind having the plot 'spoiled'. Considering we are a M&TV Q+A, this seems counterproductive to me.

The situation itself proves that there are distinctly separate fan bases for respective TV series and Novels, and whilst information can be freely exchanged between the two, it should not automatically be assumed that a user is participating in both: especially as the narrative of one directly informs the plot of another.

It's just, as I see it, common courtesy to not 'ruin' the plot of a TV series unless the user specifically asks for it: the best way to give users this choice is, in my opinion, through the deployment of Spoiler Boxes.

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Richard Tingle has summed up the need for 'discretion' and variation excellently:

There are 3 different things to consider: (1) Things which have already happened (timewise) in the book and series but are simply not mentioned in the series (aka background), (2) things which would have already happened in both book and series but which didn't happen in the series (aka divergence between the two) and (3) things which have happened in the book but haven't yet happened in the series due to the books being "ahead of the series" (aka the uncertain future). All 3 need different answer [with the latter requiring spoiler-boxes].

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So I posted a propostion over at S&F to understand if they had a similar problem, and the result was a un-animous "we don't care", largely in cadence to our size and status within SE.

It's useful to know that A: they won't co-operate and have no interest, so anything we instigate will only be monitored from this side, and B: they consider themselves in direct competetion with us, as M&TV are on topic for S&F.

I'm a user of both, but didn't expect this level of dismissal, but as I've said it's still useful information moving forward with a decision on this.

Our mandate to protect our Users interests is unchanged, however, so it doesn't directly affect anything said here. Just something to be mindful of.

Answer 3

I think any separation between TV series/movies and their source material would be difficult to maintain and damaging. Here are some reasons why:

Firstly, there are events in movies that may be cryptic, but can only be answered at the current time with reference to source material. For example, at the end of The Avengers movie, a character appeared (see this question). Many people quite obviously wondered who it was. Going purely on the movies, i.e. the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this question was impossible to answer. We didn't know. But to anyone who has read the comics, the answer was simple. Whilst I'd be happy with an answer pointing out this knowledge comes from the comics, not the movies, it's not really essential. Ultimately however, it's silly to pretend we don't have knowledge as to who the character is, when any knowledge of the comic books immediately lends the answer.

Another example building on to the above is Game of Thrones. It seems illogical to pretend that we don't know the answers to certain questions in the TV series whenever the book series is beyond it and has already covered many of the answers. I agree whole-heartedly that differences between the series and the books should be highlighted, but often these differences are minor and don't detract from the overall purpose of the question. Nevertheless, giving an answer about both the series AND any differences in the books is perfectly acceptable to me. For example, this question, asking about the location of an army during the events of one of the episodes. I provided one of the answers to the question, referencing both the books and series.

Secondly, many questions are intrinsically linked between both the movie/series and the books. For example, any question regarding Katniss' motives for a particular action in The Hunger Games, or why Bella felt as she did in Twilight, or who the family of Jon Snow is in Game of Thrones - any of these questions can be given some form of an answer based on the TV series, but far more heavily supplemented by the books. I dislike the idea of giving a "half answer" to a question, with the expectation it should be revised later when the TV series catches up, when the knowledge is already known. This site should be a straight forward question and answer page where this isn't an issue. I don't mind putting content in spoilers (as some have said, for "current" shows) - but what happens when the show is no longer current? I've answered hundreds of questions. I don't want to have to go back and edit them all to take out the spoiler tags. Of course, you could argue that these tags should be left in permanently then, but again that seems to run contrary to the purpose of a simple question and answer site, such as this.

I should point out that if someone asks a question about the meaning of a line in the first Hunger Games book, or what the description of the character of Tyrion in Game of Thrones means, I consider it totally off topic. Those questions are related to the books and nothing else. They should be migrated to the Sci Fi site. But any question regarding the series surely must have some reference to the books. It's commonly accepted that books for a series/movie (if created first) are canon and due to the narrative structure of novels will often provide much more explanation as to why characters act and think as they do (as a character's thoughts are much harder to portray in film).

Finally, I will comment that this site has changed my views on a lot of things. When I first came here, I found the spoilerific content infuriating. I'm not sure when things changed, but now I actually both accept and like it, as it seems more fitting for a Q and A site. Introducing a need for spoiler tags creates issues such as how long after a movie/series release they're necessary for? If, for example, someone had asked about the fate of Gandalf after the Fellowship of the Ring, would the answer (known since the books had been released half a century earlier) really need to be spoiler-tagged? How long would it need to remain so?

The question that appeared to spark this meta question off was this question. I provided the accepted answer and a debate ensued about whether it was appropriate. Although I've now enclosed it in spoiler tags, I still don't really see what they add or why they in any way provide spoilers. Anyone asking a question like that must surely expect these sorts of answers. At least in my opinion :)

Ultimately, to wind this rather long answer up, I think there are very few questions where this issue of spoilers has come up and caused any sort of issue. I am happy to spoiler-tag events that have not yet happened, but there are very few questions this applies to. Largely, most questions on the topic ask about already known events (e.g. Red Wedding/Purple Wedding in GoT) and simply ask for more explanation, which the books can supplement.

Conclusion:

1. Books are essential when answering questions regarding movies/series based on them, but if their content differs that should be made clear.
2. Spoiler tags have some use and I will use them if questions are asked about events that haven't yet transpired in film - but I honestly think this is quite a rare occurrence. Can anyone point me to questions where this is a serious issue?!
3. All other questions I'm simply going to continue to answer without spoiler tags and in keeping with the Q and A model of the site.

Answer 4

I cannot speak for Game of Thrones, knowing nothing about it, but in general I would not go as far as Wandang's kind of "total separation". If the question is in any way explicitly about the movie, there is absolutely no need to migrate it to "that other SE movie site".

Of course we should clearly distinguish between the book/comic/whatever and the movie/TV-show and questions concentrating only on the book are off-topic, but questions explicitly acknowledging the difference and asking for e.g.

• Is ... different from the book?
• Why did they not include ... from the comic?
• Who is ...? Is there any further information about him in the source material?

are perfectly acceptable and we already have very good examples leading to insightful answers.

And in the same way as migrating questions relating to the movie would not be helpful, deliberately ignoring the source material when answering a movie question (even a movie-only question) wouldn't either (even if maybe not required for a good answer).

But answers have to clearly distinguish between the movie and the source material and if they give answers based on the book, then they have to acknowledge that it is from the book and the answer still has to relate to the movie in some way (be it only by saying that it wasn't answered in the movie at all) and the book answer should not contradict the movie (here are two very bad examples failing to make a connection to the movie or downright contradicting it). Even as a complete GoT-ignoramus I agree with you that SystemDown's and TylerShads's answers you give as positive examples are exactly that.

As far as spoiler blocks, I haven't thought much about those, especially since I have a clear "don't care"-attitude towards movie spoilers. But I agree that the book can offer quite a bunch of additional information that people having seen the movie might not know (and not want to know yet). But I guess I would still go with the current "do as you like"-approach on spoiler blocks (which to me are rather a technicality), even if only because I don't know any better.

Answer 5

There are four answers already to this question (including my own) and as the constant upvoting/downvoting shows, none of them really have overwhelming support. This seems to be a fairly divisive issue.

To succinctly suggest what I THINK is the most common consensus (vote this answer up if correct, down if not):

1. For current series, spoiler tag any content from books not yet revealed in movies/series.
2. For completed series, post as normal.
3. For any series/movies, make distinction clear when providing answers drawn from books as opposed to the series/movies.

Possible problems:

1. At what point do spoiler tags get removed, if ever? If they are removed who does this? Moderators? Individual users? (I don't feel I have the time).
2. Whilst there is a lot of interest in this question, it's only been viewed 61 times to date and this site apparently has over 15,000 unique hits a day - therefore, will the solutions above really be workable? Or will the majority of users continue to post spoilers which, even if moderated and corrected, will spoil knowledge for the OP.
3. There could still be problems if the answerer hasn't kept up to date in the series (for example, in the GoT question that started this, I didn't realise that the content I posted in the answer hadn't been shown in the series yet (and I realise I haven't said it yet - I am very sorry to the OP for any possible spoilers that were revealed). I know I'm not the only one to answer questions on movies/series without having seen them, so this could be an issue.

Largely though, the above are minor points and if the community feels it is workable, the three suggestions above could be implemented (by regular users at least, and hopefully in time by more casual visitors).

On a final note, it would be good to see a moderator's comment/answer on this.

Answer 6

Total separation

I am for separation of both worlds. Questions on this Q&A are normally directed towards the movie and not the book (or any other non film source).

Edit: I mean the book that a movie is literally based upon (filmization of a book). If a movie takes symbols or context from literature then the literature should be mentioned and explained. For example greek mythology or the bible.

Assuming mixing

If we continue mixing both up there might be many wrong answers (if both worlds differentiate in unreleased content) and therefore speculation at some point.

Furthermore there is no real reason to ask for the TV-Series/Movie anymore if we put the different sources into it as well. We could instead just ask for the entire work in the first place. This would be better fitting to SciFi&Fantasy stackexchange in my opinion.

Under these (mixing both worlds, questions about the entire work/art on SciFi-SE) circumstances the only valid questions for this site would be "What/Why is the movie different from the book in this part?" which i think are valid but we would lose a lot of good questions specifically for the series (since people are allowed to throw other sources in).

Edit: not even those questions would then fit Movie&TV-SE.

Alternative

An tolerable alternative would be to link to the SciFi-SE for more information, keeping both worlds separated and linked at the same time. Users with fear of spoilers will be thankful and people who want the deeper answer can get a lot more information on SciFi.

Additionally

To be clear: My approach would remove the need for spoilers. People who ask about a series that they did not watch fully/up to date should expect spoiling content.

Positive example

The Game Of Thrones Wiki does a great job informing on the newest content up to the newest episode. They do however include book info that does not spoiler for additional information.(Differences to the book for the most part). Here is an example of the Purple Wedding Article (Spoiler for those who did not watch up to date GoT-TV-Series)