...a new filk. This one came to me recently.

Quick backstory: in the last few years, the waning economy has caused some upheaval in the anime licensing and distribution industry, especially here in the US. A year or two back, Geneon Entertainment shut down its US operations entirely. They're still a major force in Japan, mind. Then, last month or so, A.D. Vision Entertainment, one of the first and biggest US operations for importing, licensing, and distributing anime, sold its assets to five other companies in a complicated deal that sounded like a switcheroo on its creditors (since the five buying companies were ones in which ADV's owners had stakes).

Most of the anime properties licensed by those two companies have seen their licenses bought by another company, Funimation Entertainment. If anybody can be said to be the big winner here, it's Funimation.

Hence, the song. "NGE," for the record, refers to the infamous anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was one of ADV's first and biggest titles...but whose "rebuild" series has been licensed by, who else, Funimation.

"ADV (Now Funimation)"
by Will "scifantasy" Frank
ttto: "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" by Nat Simon (original words by Jimmy Kennedy)

( NGE is now Funimation's... )

In the coming days, expect more actual content (behind the normal friends lock, of course), including an expansion of something I said on Twitter:

"Perfect 10 Magazine is the zombie mine canary of copyright law. When it comes alive (files suit--it's sued Google and Visa), the law is bad."

With the flood of people discussing possible spoilers for Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, I started thinking about spoilers in general.

First, some ground comments. The Darkfriends of my acquaintance have a rule about spoilers: Once you get past maybe a year or two tops, it's no longer feasible to protect against them. Certainly not for old material like Citizen Kane. The rule is summed up best by prince_corwin: "Caesar dies. Frodo lives. Christ does both."

Spoilers are often not the whole story anyway...as in the case of Citizen Kane, the spoiler doesn't destroy the movie, because it's often just as much about the process. Babylon 5 mastered this.

That said, there are some movies (or books, or possibly even video games) that have spoilers, now long since past expiration of course, that qualify as Big Deals, or would have when they came out, or are just ones that people pretty much know or know about. Revelations that really change the equation, or are historically significant. I'm curious what some of you think they are. I'll seed the pot with a few of my own; feel free to leave a comment with more.

Ground rule: If it's still spoiler-protected (read "less than a year or two old," unless you'd have to be living under a rock not to know it), don't post it. This is about more "classic" spoilers. If you complain about spoilers, don't do it here, because you're given plenty of warning. Don't piss me off about that either...you will get no sympathy.

The Current List Of Big Spoilers (last updated Saturday July 16 0215 PDT):
Citizen Kane
The Maltese Falcon
Star Wars
The Usual Suspects
Soylent Green
The Sixth Sense
War Of The Worlds
The Crying Game
Final Fantasy VII
Fight Club
Psycho
Harry Potter
Memento
Vertigo
Babylon 5
Spartacus
Escaflowne
The Third Man
Watchmen
Old Yeller
Planet Of The Apes
Primal Fear
Chinatown

(Those are the ones I really consider spoilers, or recognize. There are some that really don't count in my mind [such as, I kid you not, Kefka being crazy in Final Fantasy VI] or whose source material I am completely unfamiliar with that I've not listed here.)

( Abandon all spoiler-protection, ye who enter here! )

Any more from the peanut gallery? What spoilers are (or were) big?