Don't get me wrong, I'm not with Sean on all casting spoilers.

Cindy is dead to me.

Except where she says this...

People are presuming that knowing about a departure or arrival tells them something about the plot. At the very worst, it tells them there may be something to speculate about. That's it.

We now return you to the dead woman speaking for me in all things.

I personally like the promo limitation because it's so clear and easy to follow, you know? There's no grey area. Promo has been shown including X fact or it hasn't. Plus, it's the rule I "grew up with" when I went spoilerfree after S4 Buffy, so it's what I'm used to.

(Posting this to answer Cindy's question, not to argue the point.)

So the answer to ita's question is now that if Time Out New York announced over the summer that AA was leaving Angel - whether in the first episode or the fifteenth - then yes, we could discuss that in the NAFDA threads. If Joss announced it at Comicon, we still wouldn't be able to discuss it outside of Spoilers. Yes?

It eats Sean, starting with his bottom.

Okay, seriously, because I keep bouncing off of this:

How is "Giles isn't going to be in Sunnydale for most of the year" not a plot point?

How is "Giles isn't going to be in Sunnydale for most of the year" not a plot point?

How is it a spoiler? What does it spoil? What surprise does it give away? Does it tell you how they'll handle it? Does it tell you where he'll be or why he'll be wherever? Does it tell you why he won't be around? Does it tell you what he'll do when he is around? Does it tell you his fate? Does it tell you if he'll have sex, get decapitated, sing again, step through the screen and take me away from all this?

What surprise does it give away?

The fact that Giles isn't going to be in Sunnydale. Which otherwise would've been a surprise, since he'd been a regular for five years.

How is "Giles isn't going to be in Sunnydale for most of the year" not a plot point?

Because we can't say Giles won't be in Sunnydale from knowing ASH won't be on the show. We can infer it, but they could have handled his absence as they did Kristine Sutherland's in S4, where the character was referred to but not seen.

Because we can't say Giles won't be in Sunnydale from knowing ASH won't be on the show. We can infer it, but they could have handled his absence as they did Kristine Sutherland's in S4, where the character was referred to but not seen.

Ah, okay, that's an argument that makes sense to me. Thanks.

Okay. The ASH casting news did not spoil that Giles wasn't going to be in Sunnydale. It only told you he wouldn't be in every show. For all we knew, they were going to start using ASH the way they used Kristine Sutherland.

In the case of someone leaving a cast in general, however, we never know if they'll come back as day players or not, so the "will he/won't he" surprise is still there. The only surprise broken is the "he won't be in every episode" surprise, but, as people pointed out earlier, that's a false promise anyhow. After a certain point, AB was in every episode until Tara was killed, despite the fact that she was never a contracted regular. JM was not in The Body, and EC and NB were not in CwDP, despite the fact that they were all contracted regulars.

edit - Xpost with Lyra Jane

Both positive and negative regular cast changes have been announced over summers past, and have not been treated as spoilers as recently as 1 year ago. (SEE: Firefly cast list, Giles, Fred, Gunn.) Now, they are considered spoilers.

I have not yet seen an argument that explains why the policy was allowed to change without consulting precedent. Therefore, I want to see the policy return to the precedent that worked for us (really! There didn't used to be complaints!) for 2-3 years before it was summarily changed.

Elephants in the room aren't at issue, in my mind, or they're only a side effect. The issue is that we pulled a 180 over the course of a year, very gradually and without enough discussion/resolution. Was the former policy so bad? Did it desperately need to change? I don't remember talking about it enough (at all), it just seemed to happen.

I think the non-spoiler-averse are feeling like we've been slowly, quietly marginalized, and that the marginalization is continuing to extreme, illogical results (i.e. "anti-spoilers"), which is why the anger. I'm pretty much middle-of-the-road on spoilers, and even I am feeling that anger, because it's moved into the realm of what feels really silly -- and paranoia-making -- to me.

I feel like mentioning anything about any ME actor is going to get me stomped on for anti-spoiling. I have no idea where the line is anymore, and it's frustrating.

Yes, this. The line keeps moving, and it feels like it keeps moving in only the one direction, and faster than I can keep track of it. Daniel was really hurt when people jumped on his post -- he had no idea he was posting wha some people would call a spoiler.