Are You Spoil(er)ed?

I have a love/hate relationship with spoilers.

Up until a year ago, I was an avoid-at-all-costs type of person, someone who'd go see a movie without reading reviews because I didn't want to accidentally find out the ending, who couldn't comprehend how someone could read the last page of the book first. I wanted the discovery, the real-time experience of seeing/reading/hearing something for the first time without prior knowledge.

Then Torchwood season 3 came along. I was absolutely pumped for it - I read the articles, I lurked on message boards, I speculated about the storyline. But as soon as it was released in the UK, I stayed away from any and all discussion of the show. The US broadcast was three weeks after the UK broadcast, and I didn't want to know what was going to happen before I could see it for myself.

But an innocuous post on a blog, purportedly about the radio plays that were running at the same time, blew my happy little bubble to shreds.

Someone on the blog posted a major spoiler, the death of my favorite character.

I clicked out of the site as fast as humanly possible, but the damage was done. I fought with myself for a couple of days, but finally went to IMDB to check, and sure enough, the actor had only four episodes (out of five) listed on his vitae.

I was crushed. I watched the show, but with an aching heart as I anticipated his demise with each episode that aired. And when it did finally happen - I was gutted.

So you'd think I'd go back to avoiding spoilers even more after that, right?

You'd be wrong.

I've become a total spoiler hound, anxiously awaiting each week's posting on the message boards for my favorite shows. I read the spoilers to reassure myself that things are going to turn out the way I want them to, or to prepare myself for situations that won't go the way I hoped.

But sometimes, as with the Torchwood spoiler, I wish I could rewind and erase what I've just found out.

For the past few days, my Twitter feed has been blowing up with news of another character death - again, one of my favorites, and half of a pairing that I was hoping against hope would end up together at the end of the show. Now, however, with this news, I'm facing the prospect of watching another favorite die, and spending the next three months knowing everything that happens on the show will end with this result.

It's not official, of course; I can't imagine the powers that be wanted to have details of how this storyline ends being blabbed all over the internet three months before the show goes off the air. There could very well have been multiple endings filmed, or dummy scripts created, in an attempt to keep the true conclusion under wraps. But signs do seem to be pointing in that direction.

So now I have to make a decision. Do I keep watching, with this knowledge in the back of my head, coloring every interaction I see between this character and the people around him? Or do I stop now, to avoid another Torchwood situation?

I still haven't decided. And as much as I wish I didn't know this particular rumor, I know I'll be back reading the spoilers tomorrow, if only in the hopes that I may find out the rumor isn't true!

So how about you? Do you read spoilers? Are you a last-page-of-the-book reader, or do you want the surprise of discovery?