You Might Have Post-Traumatic Joss Syndrome...

[shipperx]

:
::tongue firmly planted in cheek while burnishing the sheen of old-school BtVS fandom nostalgia::

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.

Of course these aren't the only factors in developing PTJS. 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! How could I forget poor Cordy and AtS Season 3-4 Cordelia trauma resulting in its own strain of PTJS??

Comments

[shapinglight]

Heh! Very amusing. I've obviously been suffering from it for years and then made a reasonable recovery.

I hope whatever Joss does with Spike in the comic doesn't cause a complete relapse, though have to admit that my euphoria over what Joss said about Spike being 'like Angel, incredibly important to Buffy' has given way to a slight feeling of unease.

[rahirah]

Slight? Lucky you!

[paratti.livejournal.com]

Raises hands.

*twitches*

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Take to fluffy fanfics and call me tomorrow.

[sp23.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the second part of Joss's interview yet.

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.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Basically all he said was "Spike is very important, but I won't tell you how."

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Oww! So that's why my head has been hurting for all these years...

I hate to tell you how many of these I've actually had happen to me.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Pain was somewhat ubiquitous to the whole "spike fan" phenomenon. :)

[sueworld2003.livejournal.com]

*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

*Sets to memories*

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Hee! We walked to fandom in the three feet of snow every day. Up hill. Both ways! ;)

[quinara]

I was nowhere near the centre of fandom in those days and I still felt the shockwaves... *looks over shoulder*

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Let me tell you, it was not fun being a Spike fan back then.

[deird1]

David Fury's "Spike will never be a good person" interview given post-"Lies My Parents Told Me"

It happened THAT late in the game? I'd heard about it, but I'd always thought it was during season six...

[rahirah]

Oh, yeah. Fury didn't convert until way late in S7, maybe not even to Spike moved to AtS. Though IIRC, there was some confusion because an interview he'd given during his Spike=BAD! phase didn't get printed until after he'd decided that maybe souled Spike was OK, which muddled things some.

[ubi4soft.livejournal.com]

I discovered Spike's fandom in 2008. I don't think I would survived all the things you mentioned in your post.

Survivors, like you, of the PTJS, made me be more skeptical in my expectations and I am forever grateful for that.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I hope that my skepticism doesn't infect anyone's enjoyment!

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, or rather ouch. That actually explains a lot. Me being a latecommer to fandom (converted by Firefly not by Buffy initially)I only knew a few of the old war stories.

And having my own experience with the militant quarters of the bangel crowd, yup, I can understand how one could get traumatized by this.

[sueworld2003.livejournal.com]

God they're nothing to what used to go on back then. I only got online during late in season 5 and hell some places were rough.

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

"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.livejournal.com]

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.

@@@@@@@@@@@@

[elisi]

See I missed all of this (didn't discover fandom proper until post-NFA), but I seem to have absorbed knowledge of most of it by osmosis. I even know what "arf, fucking, arf" refers to.

Which is why, despite loving DW/TW like pancakes, I stay far, far away from the fandom. Fans can be insane, writers can be morons, and I'm not interested in any kind of trauma. (Esp not in a fandom with 40 years' worth of grudges... *g*)

I wonder why fans are like this though. Esp in regards to Spike... Which reminds me! (I'm sure you're familiar with this one):

The Educated Fangirl's Guide To The Spike Wars.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah. I think I've seen that guide before. And somewhere there was an eerily accurate one for all fandoms. There seems to be a pattern. :)

And my experience with DW fandom is all from Fandom_Wank. As a general rule, I think keeping a safe distance from fandom tends to help one's enjoyment of a series. These days I basically stick to LJ.

[chloris67.livejournal.com]

Oh god. I remember almost all of this. *rocks back and forth* I didn't discover online fandom until after Crush, so I missed the formation of BAPS. But the Spike-fan bannings, the Seeing Red spoiler meltdown, the rewrite of Beneath You. I still can't deal with David Fury. *shudder*

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

David Fury's interactions with Fandom leave a great deal to be desired. He did have his own weird sort of code that he was consistent to. But he could also be incredibly rude.

[ladypeyton.livejournal.com]

I remember a good deal of it, but I became a spoilerphobe after Seeing Red aired so I intentionally missed out on several.

The "arf" thing is niggling my brain but I can't retrieve the information. What does it mean?

Do you remember the name of the podcast where Fury finally admitted he'd been a boob all along?

[deannab.livejournal.com]

This.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

I discovered Buffy Fandom in season 6, on TWOP. It made me wonder if I was totally crazy for liking Spike, and pretty much ensured that I only lurked for quite a while. Until I discovered LJ several years later!

But I clearly have PTJS.

[zanthinegirl.livejournal.com]

this is all bringing back so many wacky memories. it does make me wonder though-- are the bangel boards still around? I haven't heard anything about them in ages. Maybe they just defaulted to sane?

[sarian71]

Wow... That's one awe-inspiring list. *shudders*

All you brave and seasoned Spike/Spuffy veterans, I salute you for all your sacrifices! I'm glad you're still among us to tell the tales. :)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

There are still a few fandom dinosaurs creaking around. :)

[jerrymcl89.livejournal.com]

I've apparently avoided PTJS (at least with regard to Spike), although I do remember most of the things on that list. The treatment of Cordelia in S4 of Angel was really the only thing that made me lastingly angry.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I should totally add Cordy as a variant of PTJS. That's some hard-earned PTJS there.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Ouch, that hurts just to read it. I'm glad to have come on board at a time when the fandom was not nearly so vicous.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Most people have mellowed with time. But back in its heyday? Hoo-boy. I prefer the climate now too.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating. I admit that I've always wondered what happened. I can see the scars left on Spike/Spuffy fandom, but I didn't know how bad it had truly gotten.

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.

I'm so glad Joss re-wrote that scene! I'm so glad Joss re-wrote a lot of Spike scenes. Like the sweet scene in Hell's Bells - Spike: "You glow." Buffy: "That's because the dress is radioactive." I firmly believe we wouldn't have gotten any sympathetic Spike stories/arcs if not for Joss Whedon and Jane Espenson (Goddard, too, latecomer though he is) - because they are the only ones who appear sympathetic to me. I bet if it were up to Fury, Spike would have died in Chosen and never been brought over to AtS.


* If you can remember David Fury's "Spike will never be a good person" interview given post-"Lies My Parents Told Me" that was released just days after the spoiler was released that Spike would die in the series finale, it could possibly have triggered a reaction quite similar to PTJS.

Um, what the fuck, David Fury? WHAT. THE. FUCK. Jeez, he said that about Spike post-soul? I repeat - WHAT. THE. FUCK.


Grrrr. Fury is pissing me off. I now officially hate his understanding of Spike's character.

[rahirah]

To be fair to Fury, he did eventually come around, and was a pretty staunch defended of the character on AtS. I don't defend his interactions with fans at all, as they were completely unprofessional, but he was, for example, the one who tried to argue against Spike shagging Harmony the moment he had a solid peen again.

[rahirah]

Man, that brings back the memories. And here I thought I'd drunk them into oblivion...

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

There isn't enough liquor for that.

[tnmisery.livejournal.com]

AHAHAHAHAAAAA, YEAAAAHHH! GOOD TIMES.

I swear I was daydreaming the other day and thought about Fan Forums. If not for that dive, I wouldn't know 99% of my most awesome friends online. Isn't it strange that the funniest and most articulate seemed to congregate at that lonely little spoiler thread...hmmm...weird...heh.

If Fury isn't running his mouth off, it means he's become Pod!Fury. I bet he misses Spike fans. Getting an entire group of people to enrage for personal chuckles doesn't come around too often. He needs a job on Fox News.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Heh. If I were brave enough, I'd poke around the 24 fandom and see whether he's been into torturing them. Y'know, when he was done for the day after writing about torture. There was pretty good shit-stirring fodder with the "brought Tony back from the dead then turned him evil' plot.

...although, Fury might be afraid of being waterboarded with that crowd.

[sockmonkeyhere.livejournal.com]

Of course these aren't the only factors in developing PTJS. 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! How could I forget poor Cordy and AtS Season 3-4 Cordelia trauma resulting in its own strain of PTJS??

And don't forget the AtS Season 5 obliteration of Fred's soul. Completely ruined the entire series for me, and I will never ever forgive Whedon or ever support anything he does again.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I always had a fanwank that would bring Fred back too (it's one of those plot bunnies that I never wrote but I've always had it).

It mostly involved Fred's time in Pylea when she kept opening portals and a theory of multiple universes and how there's a universe that explored every possibility. So technically, she'd be an alternative_universe Fred, but she'd still be Fred (and then there'd be Fred vs. Illyria strangeness. Fred seeing herself but it not actually being herself would've been very strange for her).

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

I unfortunately came into the 'verse after Buffy. But I remember rushing upstairs at about 6pm on Wednesday to read the Angel's Acolyte wildfeed lol. And going nuts when the big announcement was made after Smile Time aired. Oh yeah and there was my going into mourning after Fred's death...I still bawl if I watch Shells. And refuse to accept Wesley's death.

Now I'm on edge about the new spoilers and still hoping for my Bangel happily ever after.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Wesley isn't dead. I refuse to believe it. If Lilah was still working for W&H after her head was chopped off, then Wesley is too. Working for W&H might not be the optimal position to be in, but I can fanwank it and fanfic it. And Wesley's not dead! :)

[bobthemole.livejournal.com]

That must have been, um, exciting to live through :)

I've seen barely a hint of anti-spuffy rhetoric and it's enough to make me avoid certain venues. I feel like toasting all the people who made it through all that and are still fans.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It was something, anyway.

And what's really weird is that we enough time and distance, it's possible to even remember it a bit nostalgically. (Weird, I know).

And, yeah, the old lines between the BtVS factions are so well drawn that there are areas where I still fear to tread. It's not worth the grief.

[http://users.livejournal.com/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.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I can definitely see how steering clear of the spoilers and the angst that went with them would reduce the amount of crazy experienced. However, I've never quite understood why Spike/Buffy was considered a greater threat to the Bangels that Spike/Angel. I guess it was primarily the belief that Spangel couldn't pose a canonical threat... and yet somehow, now, I almost consider in any post-Chosen / Post-NFA that some form of Spangel is the far more likely option. (Though for fic purposes, I tend to still sway Spuffy).

[menomegirl.livejournal.com]

Good Lord, it's scary how much of that I remember being a witness to. But I especially recall this one:

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.

That one made my jaw almost come unhinged in utter shock at such stupidity.

But the only time I think I ever "had" PTJS was for a short time after I unintentionally walked into a spoiler about Lindsey's death a month or so before NFA aired. I was so horrified at what I'd read that I posted a very long public rant that I later apologized for.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I know [/Friends Monica Gellar]

I could never quite wrap my mind around the argument that even when she was dead that everything Spike did was predicated upon 'getting in her pants.' Exactly how was that supposed to work?!