spoilers, and the art of avoiding them

I've been doing really well this year. Not reading any sites which contain spoilers for future, as yet unseen, episodes. It's cut into my options for discussing the series somewhat but if you're spoilerphobic, you know that's one of the side-effects of the affliction. I never read any livejournals for a start, as even assuming the journaler you're reading doesn't mention any spoilers there's no way of being sure someone answering them will be so considerate. I don't visit the usenet groups or the ezboards either. I'm cautious on general sites, making sure not to click on anything I'm not sure about and having my spoiler-defenses up and ready to deflect my eyes if I see something suspicious. Obviously, on mailing lists it's easy to avoid any emails which contain a spoiler warning in the subject line, or an episode title for something I've not seen yet. Like all good spoilerphobics, I do pretty much everything, short of unplugging the modem, to avoid being spoiled.

So I've been good this year: pretty much all I know is a casting detail for the final few episodes of Buffy.

Today, I though I'd spend the afternoon checking the fanfiction WIPs I've been following. My first port of call was Annie Sewell Jenning's Waking the Dead which, sadly, has not been updated. So next I headed over to Barb C's site, to check on the progress of Necessary Evils. It's a great story, continuing the alternate season 6 started in A Raising in the Sun. It's got good characterisation, including a wonderful Dark Willow, a enjoyable plot and, did I mention, hot sex. It's one of the few WIPs that I follow.

Now maybe you could say it's my own fault for having the shortcut pointing to the main page instead of directly to the index page of the story but, when scrolling down to see if new chapters have been added, I didn't expect to find a bloody great big spoiler for episode 7.17. No warning, no flagging that a spoiler was there, just the spoiler. Thanks. Thanks a bunch.

OK, I appreciate Barb C is hacked off because she may have been Jossed by the series but I'm pretty damn mad that all my spoilerphobic habits have been wrecked when all I wanted to do was read an alternate season 6 story.