Markup View

Author: MorganWick

May 21st 2011 at 4:47:45 AM

"...though you still missed the distinction that would have made its differences from Dramatic Irony evident: "they already knew the major twist(s) of a piece of media '''before''' viewing it". Sorry I buried it in the second sentence."

More like you buried it in the middle of the very long second sentence (arguably, a single word in the middle of it!). Let's not get snippy, here.

In any case, I think you're trying too hard to make this a more unclear case than it is.

If the audience knows the twist because ''in story'' the twist was revealed before the characters learned of it, that's a viable trope with no gray area or audience reaction aspect to it at all.

If, on the other hand, the audience knows the twist because advertising and promotional material gave it away... then we're getting into that fuzzy realm of "intent", with all that that implies, since we can't be sure the right hand really knew what the left was doing unless we get WordOfGod. In that case, I'm not sure even an {{Administrivia}} entry would work, as the most it could say would be "you know, it COULD have been intentional...".

Without knowing details, I would say the Castaway example in your first response post raises another issue, similar to the one that led to the creation of AvertedTrope: spoilers we can see coming because of our existing knowledge of the genre or the tropes used in the work. If the studio didn't do ''anything'' to give away the spoiler, you can't be sure they intended to proof it against TVTropesWillRuinYourLife. That way lies someone trying to explain away the (actual, intended) twist of the story being spoiled in promotional material by claiming it wasn't ''really'' intended to be the twist of the story, we were ''supposed'' to know it all along, and before long all you've accomplished is turning the TrailersAlwaysSpoil page into a natter magnet.