Or is it that in fandom it's about characters we know and love and have more emotions invested in than in your average fictional character?
Yes. That. Movies and novels that aren't part of a series usually don't rate enough emotional investment for suspense over the characters' fates to become stresful enough that it destroys my ability to enjoy anything. Book series, television shows, and comics, on the other hand, give you more time and space to know and love the characters. For a lot of things, even ongoing series I enjoy, I don't get that sickening-dread-and-terror reaction any time it looks like something incurably bad might happen to someone, but for anything I'm truly fannish about, I can't handle more than a given amount of suspense and definately loathe unpleasant surprises.
Just out of pure curiosity, how do you deal with this problem when it comes to novels/TV/movies?
With novels, I flip to the ending, and with television shows, I avoid watching things when they're first run and watch everything on DVD -- at which point fandom will already have spoiled me for any traumatic events (commercial-free television on DVD that you can watch whenever you want is one of the best developments in the entertainment industry in recent years, IMO).
It doesn't matter so much with movies, like I said, because they're only 2 hours long, so my level of emotional investment is lower -- I'm watching for the script and cinematography and pretty people.
God, I want more than anything in the world for professional things I'm fannish about to carry character-specific character death warnings. Character death in fic can trash a fic for me, but it's something I can often shrug off, unless I'm having a very bad day. Character death in canon, not so much (I know, I know -- if I'm capable of being that traumatised over fictional people dying, there's something wrong with me). I want warnings to be there on fic because I can't have them for canon, and I need someplace non-stressful to read about my OTPs.
The one place I can't make sure to spoil myself in advance is comics (because they come out every Wednesday and are interconnected, so you have to be caught up to understand what's going on) and reading an issue of something I care about for the first time (like Iron Man, for example) can make me feel physically ill, if the ongoing storyline is stressful enough/contains enough uncertainty (but I read anyway because Marvel is like the abusive boyfriend comics fans can't walk away from).
no subject
Yes. That. Movies and novels that aren't part of a series usually don't rate enough emotional investment for suspense over the characters' fates to become stresful enough that it destroys my ability to enjoy anything. Book series, television shows, and comics, on the other hand, give you more time and space to know and love the characters. For a lot of things, even ongoing series I enjoy, I don't get that sickening-dread-and-terror reaction any time it looks like something incurably bad might happen to someone, but for anything I'm truly fannish about, I can't handle more than a given amount of suspense and definately loathe unpleasant surprises.
Just out of pure curiosity, how do you deal with this problem when it comes to novels/TV/movies?
With novels, I flip to the ending, and with television shows, I avoid watching things when they're first run and watch everything on DVD -- at which point fandom will already have spoiled me for any traumatic events (commercial-free television on DVD that you can watch whenever you want is one of the best developments in the entertainment industry in recent years, IMO).
It doesn't matter so much with movies, like I said, because they're only 2 hours long, so my level of emotional investment is lower -- I'm watching for the script and cinematography and pretty people.
God, I want more than anything in the world for professional things I'm fannish about to carry character-specific character death warnings. Character death in fic can trash a fic for me, but it's something I can often shrug off, unless I'm having a very bad day. Character death in canon, not so much (I know, I know -- if I'm capable of being that traumatised over fictional people dying, there's something wrong with me). I want warnings to be there on fic because I can't have them for canon, and I need someplace non-stressful to read about my OTPs.
The one place I can't make sure to spoil myself in advance is comics (because they come out every Wednesday and are interconnected, so you have to be caught up to understand what's going on) and reading an issue of something I care about for the first time (like Iron Man, for example) can make me feel physically ill, if the ongoing storyline is stressful enough/contains enough uncertainty (but I read anyway because Marvel is like the abusive boyfriend comics fans can't walk away from).