Talk:Jossed

The page description includes this paragraph as of November 1, 2017:

Note: In some circles, the term "Jossed" refers to a gutwrenching main character death, which Joss Whedon is also famous for. This definition entered the populace when during a Q&A session at an Australian university, a young Aussie girl noted his tendency to do horrible things to on-screen couples, and to much laughter, said "We call it getting 'Jossed'".

There is at least one instance in Real Life where "Jossed" means "Anyone Can Die". That is not this trope.

Thus, this trope needs a better name. Any suggestions as to what to rename this to?

(For now, I've added the Esoteric Trope Names category to the page.)

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How about "Null Fanon", seeing as the Trope is when a Fan Theory is debunked and thus "rendered null".

"Jossed" meaning "Word Of God and/or the new season premiere debunked all the speculation fans did until this new revelation came to light" is still in current fandom lexicon, even more now that in certain circles Joss Whedon has lost any respect he could have had and has gained a fame of "franchise ruiner" on top of "fanon ruiner". And his tendency to ruin couples on his works also ruined shipping, who by definition tend to run in fanon (even with canonical pairings).

If you really, really want to change the trope name, change it to Debunking of God/Debunking by God, to play with Word of God and other trope names where God=Author

ETA: The article about this trope in Fanlore can add light on whenever we maintain the name, or decide what new name use for the phenomenon: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Jossed

I would prefer to not rename the trope. Joss Whedon is still the main reason why we are here today, TvTropes have been spawned from a Buffy fan site, and we spawned from them, most of the content here being written by users of that site, and that way it will stay for a long time. I do not care about unproven allegations, if he cheated on his wife, or what fans of Zack Snyder's DCCU thinks he ruined.

The term is not something obscure or hard to understand, it's basically a fan theory about a future work or season being de-confirmed when it is released.

We would not rename Oedipus Complex even if Freud was proven to be a mass murderer tomorrow. Whedon's reputation is not what is being judged here, remember this Lequinni .It is his importance to the creation of the concept, which is easy to be proven.

But HornyLikeIAmA14YearOldGirl, I'm also against the renaming of the trope! And my comment about Joss Whedon reputation isn't about his personal life or his backstage antics, for whom I don't care one iota, but about the man having a long and illustrious career of fucking with fans' expectations, whenever dismounting fan theories or delivering terrible (but legitimately unexpected) twists on every work he had a hand on. The man's reputation gave a name to a trope, and just because some other people used the same term for other trope relevant to his writing tics doesn't mean that we must have to rename it, in the same way we don't redefine "pedophilia" as "any relationship with a large age gap or where one member looks significantly younger than the other" just because some fandom kids use it in social media to refer to May-December/Mayfly-December Romance ships they don't like.

I didn't raise this because of the person whose name has become a fan term.

I raised this because the term is being applied to two different tropes. That means we have a disambiguation situation.

We can - and should - keep "Jossed" for the name of the disambiguation page that points to both tropes. But before we can post that disambiguation page, we need to rename this particular trope. The other trope already has a perfectly good name.

To actually address the intended subject matter: I think "being Jossed" may or may not refer to destroying a popular ship/couple - which "popularly" tends to include main characters, wouldn't ya know - by killing off one of the characters involved.

That... makes sense, in a Fridge Logic way.

Of course, that means this trope needs a new name because its scope is much larger than what the current name indicates - it would be like using "The President" to refer to all heads of government, ignoring all of the Prime Ministers out there.

Oh no, I don't necessarily disagree that there's been a change in scope - gonna need a lot more time on the chair to puzzle out where exactly I sit on this, though.

Not gonna lie, I'm... very concerned that discussion around renaming this somehow took this turn and got read as a "punishment" for someone being a reputable piece of shit, which:

1) How would changing a trope name away from his on a troping site - that currently, most people barely know exists - even work as a "punishment"?

2) Freud is a terrible example even for this """cancellation""" angle, given that most modern impressions I've seen tend to consider him a projecting hack.

3) Joss's reputation worsening is due to hindsight and nostalgia wearing off, as much as it is domestic turmoil (which very obviously doesn't help anyway).

We're just scrutinizing the trope's name and whether it fits - that's all.

Let's do this again, because we digressed too much and I feel guilty to have deviated the discussion without intention.

The trope is about fans cooking theories/fanon that are debunked by either Word of God or newer installments of the canon. It got the name "Jossed" because Joss Whedon got a reputation of being notorious for squashing whatever theory fans created between seasons back when he produced Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the late 1990s-early 2000s; the term stuck and spread outside Buffy's fandom, and has been used with that meaning for nearly twenty years now. The quote about fans using "jossing" to mean "creator prone to Anyone Can Die antics" emerged around the same time because Whedon liked that trope to deliver twists to the audience but, and this is important, that didn't become the most accepted use.

Just leave the trope name as it is now, and add a clarifying note to that quote on the vein of "back then some people used the same word to refer to other trope before the current association solidified". No matter how down has the reputation of Whedon has gone, the cat has been out of the bag for too long. Maybe when fans create another word to describe the "Creator released a new chapter and negated our headcanons!!1!1" phenomenon we can think on rename the trope. If you still want to change the name, my suggested name is still above.

"No matter how down has the reputation of Whedon has gone"

Why do you keep bringing that up when that's not remotely why this is being discussed in the first place? It's about adjusting the trope name to reflect the change in the scope of its usage.

I never saw the word being used in the secondary meaning outside the example given on the page. I think this is an case of a Robkelk using a magnifying glass to make one portion of Australian fans a big deal than what it is. By what I understand, those people had no idea jossed already existed as a word but with a different meaning.

Words can have multiple meanings but inside this week, as a trope, they have only one. Right can mean a direction or if something is correct or not, but the context gives it meaning. The context of Jossed as a trope has an unique meaning. Context matters.

> Words can have multiple meanings but inside this week, as a trope, they have only one.

That might be the case at TV Tropes, but All The Tropes prefers to look at actual usage and adapt pages accordingly. (This is why "Red Baron" and "Power Trio" have different meanings here than they do at TV Tropes, to name two examples.)

"I never saw the word being used in the secondary meaning outside the example given on the page" - aka, Small Reference Pools. Of course it's gonna seem like something's being magnified if you weren't aware of it previously.

And what Robkelk have to prove this alternate meaning of jossed is so spread around the world that we need to rename the trope? The trope's boundaries are clearly defined. All the page says is "certain circles". It clearly means is a niche thing inside a niche thing, a term only used in certain parts of the Buffy fandom.

The primary meaning has clearly spread well beyond the Buffy fandom because of wikis like this one we're using.

...but the secondary meaning hasn't spread based on... what exactly?

> And what Robkelk have to prove this alternate meaning of jossed is so spread around the world that we need to rename the trope?

We've never needed to do that. There Is No Such Thing as Notability has been a policy here since before I started troping.

It's also been policy since well before the fork, too - though we're obviously not gonna just take any rando's word for things, and it's worth doing a minimum of due diligence into things like the aforementioned Q&A session. It just doesn't have to be "academic"/"Wikipedia" levels of citation.

Well said - we do expect something to actually exist before it's mentioned here.

...I'm going to vote to keep this trope the way it is, and leave it at that.

Here's the way I see it. Let's leave speculation about Whedon's private life out of this, separate art from the artist. That said, here's how I would handle this.

"Jossed" had one meaning, but is more known in troping parlance for another. Note the second take precedence, keeping a notation on the first for historical reasons. I see no reason we need to change names, it's a perfectly good term that is nigh ubiquitous in the troping zeitgeist.

""Jossed" had one meaning, but is more known in troping parlance for another. Note the second take precedence, keeping a notation on the first for historical reasons."

I think that was the rationale Robkelk used for suggesting a disambiguation pointing to both meanings. I'm still on the fence about it myself, really.

I got nuthin', not even a coherent opinion.