An Open Letter to the World At Large Regarding Mockingjay

Dear Everyone in the Universe,

Mockingjay's release is today, and a handful of my Twitter-people are reading it now, in the spare days before my copy arrives, and so it becomes of utmost importance that I hear not a breath of a spoiler.

Oh, you say, my telling you *psstpsstpsst* won't make a difference. Not really.

YES, IT WILL.

Here's why: I am an insanely good guesser. Pretty much the only person who really knows and understands the extent of my good-guessing is Bryan (he should, after eleven years of marriage), so people are always dropping hints I DON'T WANT TO KNOW about books and movies. Guess what? Those hints ruin it for me.

Remember The Sixth Sense? Remember the puffickly huh-yooge plot twist? (That's a Stephen King reference, by the way. Love that book.) My sister -- yes, I'm calling her out a dozen years later -- made the ginourmous mistake of telling me there was a "crazy twist" before I went into the theater to see it. I spent the entire movie waiting for it, watching for it, to such an extent that I figured it out before the reveal, thus lessening the shock. But the shock is the fun of the whole twist! Where's the fun if you figure it out before the shock? There's isn't any!

Lost. The entire world has been talking about Lost. Guess what? I don't have to watch it now BECAUSE I ALREADY KNOW WHAT HAPPENS. The world ruined the shock for me.

Inception. I wanted to see it so badly, and now I don't, because everyone and their bff has been talking about it, and now I'm pretty sure all the shock has been blown out of it for me. I hate that.

It's more than the hints, so I can't blame the rest of the world for it. I really am a good guesser. Chalk it up to having read a million and a half books in my lifetime; there are only so many turns a plot can make. Remember that movie The DaVinci Code? I happened to be sitting in the living room while Bryan was watching it (I think I was reading a book), and I predicted every plot turn. It was actually pretty funny.  Or remember some months back when I talked about The City of Bones books? I saw all the twists coming not just ahead of time, but entire books ahead of time. You know what that makes a story? Predictable. Boring. Why do I keep reading if I know what's going to happen?

So, here's the entire point of this long-winded rant: SSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH...

Love,
Punk