You Might Have Post-Traumatic Joss Syndrome

Meta
Title:	You Might Have Post-Traumatic Joss Syndrome...
Creator:	shipperx
Date(s):	Jan. 14th, 2010
Medium:	Dreamwidth, Essay, Diagnostic tool
Fandom:	BtVS, AtS
Topic:	Fandom nostalgia. Spoilers, Seeing Red, character bashing, ship wars and TPTB.
External Links:	You Might Have Post-Traumatic Joss Syndrome..., archive link page 1, archive link page 2, Livejournal
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

You Might Have Post-Traumatic Joss Syndrome... was a tongue in cheek diagnostic tool written by shipperx. It referenced several incidents in Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom, which could have led to the development of PTJS. This list is not exhaustive, and focuses primarily on the experiences of Spike and Spuffy fans.

"Also, this diagnostic is focused primarily on Spike and/or Spuffy-induced PTJS. There are diagnosable Tara, Xander, and Bangel variants of the condition as well. ETA: Oh! And the Cordelia variant!"

The essay references the prevalence of spoilers in later seasons of Buffy, and the impact these spoilers and comments by TPTB had on fans of the series. It received over 130 comments, discussing different fandom experiences, migration between boards, and ship wars.

The Essay

A Diagnostic Tool for Post-Traumatic Joss Syndrome

• If you can remember "Kitten Jihad", you might have PTJS

• If you can remember Mutant Enemy's intentional 'prank' of releasing a spoiler for "Into the Woods" that Spike would be dusted, it could've upped your chances of developing PTJS.

• If you can remember the mass Spike-fan bannings on forums such as TWOP (going back to when it was MBTV) and/or when it became forbidden to even mention Spike on several forums and Spike-fans being ghettoized on FanForum to a single spoiler thread, you may have been vulnerable to contracting PTJS or a similar disease of 'Spuffy Persecution Complex.'

• If you were personally insulted (as in an intentional insult posted in direct response to you) by one of the show's writers because you thought there could possibly be a path to redemption for a fictional character, you have a high statistical probability of having developed symptoms of PTJS

• If, following the spoilers for "Crush" you remember the creation of sites such as BAPS as refuge from the toxic levels of character hatred within the general fandom, you may have had early exposure to external factors that created a suseptibility to PTJS.

• If you can remember reading the spoilers for "Seeing Red" (and being dismayed, horrified, and heartbroken by them) three months before the episode actually aired and it coloring absolutely everthing that season from February onwards, you stood a chance of contracting PTJS

• If you experienced a prominent and consistently accurate spoiler source completely wigging out then reluctantly revealing that her (always accurate before) source told her that, as per ME's plans, Spike would never be 'redeemed', the result of this announcement being the acrimonious splintering of the Spike fandom into warring negavista/posivista factions, you lived through a statistical spike in reported cases of PTJS.

• If you remember the sudden and inexplicable (though at that time temporary) deletion of the entire BAPS website and archive (which comprised some 5000 members) over a (holiday?) weekend due to the aforementioned spoilers for "Seeing Red," you have witnessed visible effects of PTJS.

• If you can remember letter campaigns and sexual abuse websites put up by Bangels prior to and in the wake of "Seeing Red" and the running joke of 'rappist lover' (yes, with two p's. That's what made it funny) you may have been exposed to conditions that could complicate pre-existing cases of PTJS.

• If you have any idea what "arf, fucking, arf" refers to, you may have experienced optimal fandom conditions under which cases of PTJS were sometimes developed.

• If you have been A) cyber-stalked by a Buffy-fan B) called an 'evil bitch' C) accused of being in 'the wet panty brigade' D) told that you 'must be destroyed' F) told that you should be ashamed of yourself and never allowed to be near children G) Told to go back to 'writing love-letters to serial killers in prison' H) accused of participating in an 'evil cabal' because of being a Spike-fan and I) needed to change your screen name and edit your spam filter so as to decrease fandom stress, you may have experienced the sort of OTT fannish hell that in a handfull of cases has led to PTJS.

• If you immediately recognize (and groan) at the mention of the screen name silveragent you have had contact with a sufferer of Anti-Spike Derangement Syndrome. Repeated exposure to carriers of Anti-Spike Derangement Syndrome can, in some cases, produce PTJS-like effects (as well as a hypersensitivity to fanboy misogyny).

• If you were repeatedly told that every positive action a character took was entirely predicated on his "trying to get into Buffy's pants" ... even when Buffy's pants were dead and in rapid decay in a coffin underground, you may have experienced the kind of cognitive dissonance that upon prolonged exposure could lead PTJS.

• If you had been told for three years that hoping for storyline redemption of a fictional character rendered you morally repugnant because that character had no 'soul,' only to find when the character got a soul that virtually everything pertaining to it (either prior or post soulage) took place off screen or was reduced to a comparison with wet towels, you may have been at risk of developing PTJS

• If you can remember waking up a 5am to read the live feed of "Beneath You" because you knew that the soul-reveal had been re-written and re-filmed at the last moment and you were anxious that the final version might somehow be more traumatizing than the original script... you probably already had PTJS.

• If you can remember David Fury's "Spike will never be a good person" interview given post-"Lies My Parents Told Me" and released just days after the spoiler that Spike would die in the series finale went out (but prior to the furious Fundy LMPTM backlash that excoriated Fury's fandom shit-stirring ass and which resulted his 11th hour 180 to spite them), it could possibly have triggered a reaction quite similar to PTJS.

• If you read the NYDBTFSI demise while AtS was still in renewal limbo (and it not having yet been rumored that JM might crossover) while also having read the Bangel snogging in EoD, that could be an exacerbating condition if one had previously developed PTJS

• If you can remember the purple prose brouhaha and Amazon review spat over Holder's novelization of "Chosen" you may have been exposed to a PTJS irritant.

• If you remember Fury explaining how Harm-snogging came about in "Destiny", you may have experienced an aggravation of PTJS.

Comments

[sueworld2003]:

*Raises hand* OMG I must be so stressed and mores to the point so old!!
To paraphrase Monty Python "And If you tell the fans today, they won't believe ya!" :0

[deannab]:

I got online early enough to catch the end of Bangels demanding during Season 2 that the term "shipper" only apply to B/A, and NOT to B/X, W/X, or any other pairing. That was the first thing that made me go "What???" And that was quickly followed by months of "Xander lied!!!" wank. I should have ran away when I had the chance, ;-)

[sp23]:

As for the PTJS, I'm a happy little spoilerphobe, so I missed a lot of that. However, I didn't miss getting eviscerated by Bangles and Spike-haters on TWoP, especially after Seeing Red. Ah, fun times.

[txvoodoo]:

"Spike-fans being ghettoized on FanForum to a single spoiler thread"

And that's when Sparklies started!

My biggest Chosen memory is when we read the spoilers aloud in yahoo chat, and laughing hysterically because "cookie dough" was so absurd, we were sure it was a foiler.

[tnmisery]:

I remember my exiting post on Fan Forums being something along the lines of 'i'm leaving this shithole and going over to Sparklies where it's cool'. Maybe not exactly, but pretty damn close. :D Cookie dough. I still can't believe it. @@@@@@@@@@@@

[peasant]:

What's weird for me is I've been in fandom since 2001 yet only been aware of the slightest distant ripples of most of this. I guess it shows how balkanised the fandom used to be along shipper lines, because over in A/S country none of this was even slightly relevant even though we nominally had Spike in common with the Spuffies. In fact as an A/S shipper the whole concept of Spike-hate being a problem has always seemed rather extreme. (We did have some trouble with Redemptionists sometimes, but looking back that was mostly individual personalities rather than the ship as a whole.) Mind you, I was also a spoilerphobe, which definitely helps avoid this sort of thing.

Mind you, is there ever much warring between slash and het ships in any fandom? There is the ongoing generalised kerfuffle between slashers and those who find it squicky, but in terms of actual pairing wars I'm not sure it really happens because they tend to appeal to distinct audiences so they aren't really fighting for the same ground.

[shipperx[:

Hee! Seriously, it's amazing that we slogged through it all. What the hell were we thinking?! :)