#livejournal replacement

[keptin-indy]

Trick or treat!

Happy Halloween! Here is my pumpkin, a work of art I've entitled "Everyone Hated That". I'll let you decide if it's a trick or a treat...

[vardasvapors]

every time i go into the nearby barnes & noble i get macroaggressed by this display going ‘these aren’t your grandma’s romance novels! 🥵’ full of identical pastel covers with colorblocked half-silhouette drawings of well clothed people hugging in front of a bougie cafe. yeah whatever i know, your grandma’s romance novels were gremliny little pulp paperbacks full of hilarious evil bisexuals ruining their lives and the lives of everyone around them with bullshit too hot for any b&n to stock. whatever. i wish there were more weird tiny indie bookstores around.

[semperama]

I brought myself to the edge of tears thinking about tumblr going away. I know I’m just tired and having a bad week (IT’S ONLY TUESDAY) but. Yeah.

[launch-cronch]

i miss yahoo groups so much, there were actual people inside of them who were willing to give up their experience without all the community approval hoops and automods (oh, the Tanya's Feline CKD group was just invaluable when we had elderly cats battling it) . i miss livejournal, too (though i was shocked to learn thee vaginapagina was still up despite all the censorship and purging that happened when livejournal was bought out. It really was the OG resource for figuring out the body horrors as a kid with no sex ed).

quizilla, too. yeah, i even miss yahoo answers.

it's fascinating, in a trainwreck sorta way, how these sort of communities develop into complex networks of human experiences and info and output, only to get taken out back and axed when they fail to lay the golden egg, so to speak. even more compelling is how we keep throwing an unfathomable amount of cash, electricity, and server space at AI, trying to get its string puppet body to even emulate these networks.

minds take up too much space because you can't sell them

[quidcumque]

Part of me says go try Bluesky, you posted over 14k tweets across a decade, you obviously enjoy shortform

And part of me is too tired to invest myself in the current cultural dopamine hit before it's been proven

[sonickitty]

Idk if I have anything meaningful to say about the tiktok ban but lemme try

When I was a kid (10 - 22) I thought of social media like fashion trends. Everybody's doing MySpace. Now Xanga is cool. Now Livejournal. Tumblr is in, Deviantart is out. Instagram is cool, Facebook is old. You'd put yourself on the platform that matched your energy, like putting on clothes.

I was too young to understand that when a fashion trend dies, you can find pieces of it at thrift stores. You can dress retro. The trend will come back in 20 yrs.

Now, I'm old enough that a lot of my favorite restaurants have closed, and That's what losing a social media platform is Actually like. You can NEVER go back. You are never going to have that salsa recipe. You are never going to taste that pie again. You are never going to karaoke with those people again. And it doesn't matter if you moved away, or if the food started to suck so you stopped going years ago, the loss hits different.

We're feeling that now with virtual space (I think we always have, I'm just hyperaware of it today.) It didn't used to bother me when passé platforms bit the dust, but now there's so little to replace them - and nothing that excites me. So it hits different. And regardless if a bunch of toxic people became regulars so you stopped going, the bar was taken over by shitty new management, or the restaurant was dubbed a nation security threat, losing that space you shared with other people fucking hurts.

Anyway I'm sorry there's not more virtual public space for us to share. I'd love to sit a park with you.

[iheartsparklingwater]

The unaired original season 7 House premiere Thunder Roadtrip (and the beach photos)

There’s a lot of conflicting info about the scrapped Season 7 premiere of House MD. As the wiki notes, it is heavily believed that that Thunder Roadtrip never actually existed, and that it was just a decoy created for publicity.

However, Thunder Roadtrip was a real episode that was filmed and later scrapped and replaced with Now What and here is why: 1. The PDF of the script The PDF of the script originally was leaked in around 2011. In the 14 years that have passed, it has been increasingly difficult to get obtain a copy. I found it! Through the magic of live journal sleuthing, (google drive if anybody wants to read). The PDF contains an earlier and later drafts of the script. It's full length and very polished. It is too complete and specific to be a decoy, and not widely circulated enough to serve as one. 2. The beach photos In the widely circulated pics of Hugh and Lisa shooting on the beach (Really the basis of the decoy theory, also - the sunglasses omg) you can see the slate in the background says 37 which corresponds with the beach bonfire scene from the episode.

Filming on a public beach in the middle of summer? That’s not exactly subtle. In 2010, House was the biggest show in the world and Huddy speculation was off the charts. Shooting on location like that was definitely feeding the frenzy. From my livejournal sleuthing, I speculate that once the photos sparked more tabloid Hugh/Lisa affair rumours than they expected, the team walked back the whole thing and claimed it was never real. Not sure why they didn't just say it was a deleted episode instead of leaning into the PR decoy narrative. But I digress. 3. Footage on location This youtube upload shows a fan-captured video of them filming on location in July 2010. There's multiple takes, extras, a full-crew, cameras etc. It would be pretty ott for a pr stunt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WDqgkOSaLQ&t=73s&ab_channel=whatsuplisae 4. Literally, what is the point? The decoy theory falls apart when you actually think about the season 7 premiere we actually received. The only major “reveal” is that House and Cuddy get together. But Thunder Roadtrip also opens with them in bed, after 6x22 Help Me (I think some of this footage is likely reused from the original ep). If the point was to throw off spoilers, this “decoy” does nothing to conceal that. There's no other reveal that needed protecting. So… what would they even be decoying? I guess the real question is why they cut the episode at such a delayed point in production? I have several theories, but am keen to hear yours!

[keptin-indy]

How the heck does one find a Habitica/HabitRPG party now that they took the tavern chat down? Does anyone here still use it? I have a ton of quest scrolls and I want to use them with other people for outside accountability.

[abyssalmermaiden]

...You've been leading me beside strange waters...

(this song was the "Suteki Da Ne" replacement on The Best fanmix I've ever found- called "Dreams of Our Fathers". It was made by user ladysisyphus on livejournal and also on 8tracks so no trace of it exists on the internet anymore TToTT I did my best to recreate it on spotify (ew) but its not the same, and missing the excellent commentary on the original )

[homosexual-work-account]

Jason Todd’s “Replacement” nickname for Tim Drake, Origins and Popularisation

So, making a 2500-word essay on how a fanon nickname that only me and like two other people care about is not how I expected to spend my time in between exams.

A lot of Batfam fans are very, very much aware of the fanon “Replacement” nickname Jason has for Tim, and a lot of us very, very much hate it due to the connotations of fanon characterisation that it has. I don’t personally, I think it’s an alright enough one that fits into the established canon ones – but to be fair, I haven’t read the comics in a hot minute, so my memory could be screwy.

I got curious one day on where the nickname came from when a user on TikTok mentioned that it might’ve originated from a Batfam incest fic (They weren’t too sure and told me to take it with a grain of salt) – so shout out to them for starting me down this rabbit hole! I looked over on here and saw that notion repeated, though no one could pinpoint me to a specific fic beyond “It was popularised from a Batfam incest fic.”. I also saw a few people say that it was derived from canon, which piqued my interest further so I decided to go down a rabbit hole of fandom history purely for some fun.

The aim of this essay is just to clear up some misconceptions around the origin of the name, all fun and no harm. Don’t send harassment to people referenced in this either over a silly nickname, it's been well over a decade since they wrote the works used here.

Preface

Alright, first things first – all sources are going to be ones that were published after August 2005, the official date the first issue of Batman: Under the Red Hood was published, where Jason was established to be alive again.

While there could be a chance that the nickname was derived from a website/fanfiction before 2005, it’s highly unlikely due to the fact it was only popularised in the early 2010’s, and well, because Jason was dead and no one gave a shit about him. Also good to remember that most websites that ran before 2005 are defunct and purged from the internet now, particularly fanfiction websites (such as Quidzillia) due to various issues (taboo, copyright, costs to run ect).

Small note to make again – the Batfam fandom was fairly small at the time, the more fandom-y part of the DC community usually sticking to their own websites like Quotev, Quidzilla (again, defunct now), AO3, Fanfiction.net, LiveJournal and independent websites (again, defunct) while the rest stuck to discussion sites, so the entire fandom functioned more as a insular community from what I could tell. I will be working with the assumption that the nickname was created on one of the larger platforms, as any other platform didn’t have large enough influence to popularise the nickname.

The nicknames that I specifically looked for was simply Jason calling Tim Replacement in place of his actual name. Something like “Replacement Robin” was on very thin ice, but still counted as an offshoot. Anything else was off bets.

This whole thing will be split into a few sections to make some things for myself easier. Preface, Sources, Pre-cursor Fanfiction, Fandom Opinion and Language, First usage, Popularisation, Conclusion, Questions, Final Notes.

Sources

Fanfic.net – Created 1998, was and remains one of the larger fanfiction sites. Note; Fanfiction.net had various periods of time where there were large scale purges of fanfictions that held more mature content. Most notable instances were in 2002 and 2012.

Archive Of Our Own – The holy grail for my research. Created in 2008. For the information I got from there I used the search filter Date Updated, tagged Jason’s and Tim’s individual tags and followed from there.

Live Journal – Created 1999 and was used as one of the larger sites for fandom and fanfiction. Was used by DC fandom goers regularly so I used it to get an idea of the fandom at the time.

Tumblr – Created 2007. Theres various people on here who have compilations on DC timelines and comic sourcing that helped me correlate fandom growth with specific comic releases (Shout out to @ectonurites for their meta posts and timeline posts, they were a major source for this!). Dogshit filtering system, so I couldn’t find posts pre 2012 about DC.

Note; Quotev and Wattpad weren’t used in this as their filtering systems don’t account for searching for older fanfictions, so sadly had to be discarded as most fanfictions between 2006-2010 on those websites are now very difficult to find.

Pre-Cursor FanFiction

So, before we get to the actual first proper use I could find of “Replacement”, I first want to mention a fanfiction that had something very similar that I think would be important purely for archiving reasons around how the nickname came to be. And also because it fits the nickname criteria I mentioned earlier.

Published on the 29th of November 2006, last updated on the 28th of November 2007, was the fanfiction My-Enemy-My-Brother on Fanfiction.net by user theunknownvoice – featuring the first use of Jason referring to Tim with a nickname including replacement, Replacement Robin. Kudos to theunknownvoice, they created the very first nickname that would kickstart the rest.

While Jason doesn’t explicitly refer to Tim as Replacement – the main subject of this essay, it comes very damn close, so I wanted to include it. There is a part where Jason repeats replacement in his head multiple times, and I think he’s supposed to be referring to Tim, but the sentence isn’t very clear on that part, so I won’t count it, but it is important to acknowledge.

Though this isn’t the fanfiction that influenced the development of Replacement. This fic had barely enough reach to influence any future works years later. I couldn’t find any connection with this work and later works that officially did just have Jason call Tim “Replacement”

Fandom Opinion and Language at the time

I promise this is important and that I’m not a pretentious linguistic, English isn’t even my first language.

I like to think we all know how fandom discussion just seeps into fanfiction (See; the nickname green bean for Deku from MHA leaking into fanfiction) so I just want to quickly point this out.

Discussion around the two blew up after Jasons return in late 2005, people going “What does this mean” and “What does that mean for Tim”. Through the few posts I could dig up from this time and up to 2011, it seems people came to the conclusion that Tim was Jason’s replacement, and that their dynamic was Jason dealing with the fact that he had one. You can definitely see that in some of the posts and fanfiction written at the time that usually had Jason dealing with Tim being his replacement.

(Just a few examples from LiveJournal but more like this are still floating around, if they aren’t deleted anyway)

It’s very likely that the authors themselves engaged in similar discussions/had independent thoughts that ended in the same conclusions, seeping into the fanfiction itself later. In the comics pre-New 52 I couldn’t find any major instance of Jason explicitly referring to Tim as his replacement (only implied through speech), so this was mostly contained in fandom discussions from what I can tell. (Note, this was probably similar on comic discussion websites, but I couldn’t find any that still exist pre-2007, so I’m going to assume literacy skills are not any better on those sites. See; Batman dick riders)

The fact that Tim is explicitly described as having replaced Jason, and sometimes as “Being the Replacement” on posts/fanfiction definitely had a hand in the creation and popularisation of the nickname, influencing the fan content made around the two.

First usage of Replacement

Cain! Cain! Is the first use of the nickname Replacement really from a Batfam incest fanfiction?

Nope, thank God.

After filtering their character tags together on AO3, going to the oldest page and clicking through over 10 pages, reading every single fanfiction on each one (yes, even the weird ones, I was dedicated) I found the first instance where Jason explicitly refers to Tim as Replacement, that still exists today anyway.

Published on the 24th of January, 2009 by user shiny_glor_chan, is the fanfiction Four Calling Birds, a fanfiction detailing Stephenie Brown returning from faking her death (a whole headache from the comics that I can't be arsed to explain) and getting to meet Jason and Dick for the first time. Genuinely sweet, and a corner stone of fandom history, officially. Hip hip Hooray! Congratulations shiny_glor_chan.

I tried tracing to see if this person had any other accounts that I could find to see where they got the nickname from, but it seems it’s mostly a nickname they thought up out of the fact that they had consistently wrote Jason explicitly stating that Tim was his replacement

And reading through several more pages of fanfiction again, feeling like I want to bleach my eyes out, I found the second instance of the nickname being used. Published on the 26th of May, 2010 by user axiel-neesan, is the fanfiction The Only Piece You Get, where Jason basically acts as Tim’s cabbie and bonds with him. Another corner stone of fandom history, hooray.

These two authors are completely unrelated and have no connections to each other besides both frequenting LiveJournal, having taken prompts and having friends from that website, despite having no accounts I could find. I personally think they had a similar train of thought of “Huh, that would be a sick ass nickname.”. Chances are that axiel-neesan saw shiny_glor_chans fic and got inspired as the fandom was dead small on AO3 at the time – around 20 pages worth of fanfiction from 2008-2010 (And thats being generous if we’re counting now deleted ones)

These two fanfictions are immensely important because it’s the only early instances I could find of the nickname being used, and for about two years after the nickname pops up occasionally – but by no means was it popular, or even regularly used, I had to look for the fanfictions that used it.

Props to shiny_glor_chan and axiel-neesan! I pray that you two don’t see what the fandom thinks of that nickname now.

Popularisation

Early 2012 saw the proper explosion of fandom for the Batfam, and by extension the nickname.

By this point there were so many fanfictions that I couldn’t read them all, so I started picking random ones that tagged Jason and Tims relationship, platonic or not. Pre-April-ish of 2012 the nickname popped up every other page or so, but sometime after mid-2012 the nickname was in almost every fanfiction that I skimmed through – so that’s its official growth period.

Why though? Several factors probably.

The New-52 was in full swing by this time, DC massively promoting the reboot to get new fans interested, so people picked up comics from there. Young Justice – the more mainstream exposure of DC to surface level fans aired its second season in April of 2012, introducing people to Tim Drake and his story and getting them interested. Fanfiction and fandom as a whole was becoming less taboo and more accepted in fan spaces, so encouragement to write it was much better than it was in the early years of the internet (Example; Teen Wolf’s production team)

As for a specific catalyst for the growth of popularity for the nickname? There might be something worth pointing to.

Kudos for @ectonurites for helping me on this (Hi Sam! I was anon!) and giving me a publishing date on Tim’s and Jason’s first New 52 interaction – Red Hood and the Outlaws #8, published on the 18th of April, 2012. It features an instance of Jason and Tim interacting in a very friendly and familial way, Jason explicitly calling Bruce their Dad. Compared to their last major previous interaction of Jason leaving Tim for dead, fans of the two who enjoyed the more familial potential (and tragically, romantic potential) took it and ran with it.

All of these combined in some way to contribute to the popularity of the nickname in mid to late 2012, and lead to it’s infamy in DC fanfiction.

Conclusion

In conclusion, how do I think the nickname came to be?

I think it’s a combination of factors that led to it’s creation. As already established people very much did see Tim as Jasons replacement at the time, and the language could have shortened down from “Tim replaced Jason” to “Tim is Jason’s replacement” to “Tim is the replacement” which I think could be the train of thought the 2006 author went down to create the nickname Replacement Robin.

This definitely influenced the AO3 writers as shiny_glor_chan was present on LiveJournal at the time (where this language was very prominent), so they were already down the line of thinking this and probably went “Huh, replacement is kinda a funny nickname” and added it. As already stated, I think axiel-neesan probably had a very similar train of thought or may have seen shiny_glor_chan’s fic and was inspired.

And from there people saw it, used it in their own works, getting leaked over onto LiveJournal, which was the main website for prompt sharing, getting used a decent amount there before the explosion of fandom in mid-2012 that lead to it’s regular usage in fan works.

Questions

So, is the nickname from a Batcest fic?

Nope! The nickname mostly makes an appearance in platonic fics between Jason and Tim, it’s actually a chore to find it in their romantic ones, as in I think I found one instance of it being used somewhere in late 2010 but I can't think of it in a fanfiction that predates that. All early uses of the nickname were in platonic fics between the two.

I think this rumour is based around three fanfictions specifically on Ao3 that people are pointing to, I think, no one seems to be wanting to name names. They’re the ones that pop up when you search Replacement in the word search after tagging Tim Drake and Jason Todd together.

Wings to Fly. Published October of 2012. Jason Refers to Tim as Replacement. Jason/Tim

Replacement. Published 2009. The title implies it’s referring to Tim, but Jason never explicitly nicknames Tim replacement, the narrator only calling Tim “His replacement”, him being Jason. Jason/Tim. Non-con

The Replacement. Published 2011. Can't figure out if the title is supposed to refer to Tim or is simply just titled that for the sake of it. Jason talks a few times about Tim being his replacement, but the nickname never makes an appearance. Jason/Tim

Does the nickname have any bases in Canon?

From what I can tell, no. I haven’t read all the Batfamily comics Pre-New 52, or from after Batman: Under The Red Hood, I mostly stray towards Hal Jordans comics lol. I don’t think theres any major instance where Jason talks about Tim replacing him by specifically using replacement or replacing (It can be inferred from his speech sometimes, but Jason’s relationship with Tim was much more complex than that. I’d recommend reading @ectonurites metas about the two to get a better idea) Theres a few instances in 2015 post-New 52 reboot where Jason says explicitly that Tim replaced him, but that was way after the nickname was popularised.

Red Hood and Arsenal #7 (2015)

Final Notes

That’s about it! That’s the result of my month long dive into almost twenty years worth of DC fandom history as a fun side project. Please don’t harass anyone linked here, this was just project to pass the time and not a call out post for anyone that did contribute to the popularisation of the nickname.

Feel free to ask me anything else about this or any other DC fandom history and I’ll try to research it!! This was genuinely a fun thing to do to pass the time and work out my research muscles.

[prettyoddfever]

I've always wondered, where does your profile picture come from? What's the context?

the Hilton sisters’ shirts were a pretty iconic moment & reference

So a fan named Kate photoshopped their shirts to read “Team Jon” in the midst of the Panic fandom’s meltdown over Jon replacing Brent.

Brendon used her edit as his livejournal userpic before he was forced to further distance himself from fans after people were working overtime to twist his comments, attack him online, claim that fame ruined him, turn him into a villain, and just generally hate on him (Ryan & Spencer were getting a ton of hate too, but hating on Brendon really became a cool thing to do for a while). Ryan deleted his lj, became much more private, and even reduced his updates from the band. Brendon shut out anyone who wasn't a close friend.

I don’t like how some modern Panic fans seem to want me to choose a “side,” as though I can’t like Spencer, Ryan, Jon, and Brendon equally. So I picked this icon because I will forever be Team Jon, but also because it’s recognizable as blatant support of Brendon. It’s both “sides” at the same time.

[shepherds-of-haven]

Hey! I have been a longtime fan of SHOH and I have recently begun writing my own fantasy story. How do you make your vast and rich cast of characters interact with each other in such a natural and consistent manner? I am really inspired by the way you fleshed out relationship dynamics for so many characters and would love to get some insight into that process.

Ah, thanks for the question, and thank you so much for your long support of ShoH, I really appreciate it! 💖

And hmm, this is a great question! I'm a bit chagrined to say that, at this point, I don't really think about it in the moment or apply a particular conscious methodology when it comes to writing the characters' interactions with each other: most of their dialogue and dynamics spring up naturally and seem to be dictated by the characters themselves, as well as my own long experience and familiarity with them. So in a way, it's sort of a "practice + patience = natural results" process! I start with their individual core personalities and then see how such characteristics might naturally react to each other: someone who's a bit more prickly and fiercely independent and assertive like Ayla might have friction with an authority figure as disciplined and military-minded as Blade, or would have more conflict with other members of her team due to her own natural wariness and past, but it also makes sense that she'd be softer around kind, non-threatening people like Shery or someone as naturally disarming and full of easy camaraderie like Trouble. Sometimes they do surprise me, though! But basically I carve out their most distinct personality traits, or what would be most apparent about them to strangers at a glance--(Chase: loose, playful, enigmatic, chaotic, mischievous, informal. Riel: rigid, highly intelligent, ruthless, orderly, neurotic, sophisticated)--and then I throw them together into different scenarios and observe how they might react to each other. Natural compatibilities or dynamics will start to form from there!

In my earliest days as a writer, one thing that I found really useful was switching up the format when writing and fleshing out the characters. Sometimes it's too much work to try and think of a Plot Reason why they're on a mission together or what other things are happening, like a whole short story about a mystery they're solving or whatever, and organically try to dig into their dynamic that way. If I really wanted to focus on exploring their relationship to each other, I would literally write either short screenplay vignettes as they came to me, devoid of any actual plot (like the two characters in a garden, eating lunch together), or interview/Q&A transcripts, LOL. This was a really good way of developing fast, off-the-cuff dialogue between the characters in a way that can deepen your understanding of their relationship. Like imagine they're just trapped in a room and some journalist or invisible speaker is plying them with questions. Sort of like how I imagine the Shepherds' Corner, where a panel of the characters are being polled for different questions!

(This is stirring up ancient memories for me, actually. In the LiveJournal days of like 2005, there would be tons of those OC number replacement questionnaires floating around, where there'd be 3-5 slots at the top; you'd assign each of your characters a number, and then the questionnaire would proceed to ask them questions, like so:

Blade

Briony

Trouble

Character #3, how much do you weigh?

Trouble: "Oh, uh... I actually have no idea. Nobody ever weighs me except the Healers during my annual exams, and I'm usually in a rush to get out of there as soon as I can, so I never asked..."

Blade: [disbelieving snort] "It's sure to be a lot. You eat for three."

Trouble: "Hey, fuck you?"

Briony: "You do eat a lot, Trouble..."

Maybe it seems a bit silly, but you can see how doing enough of these could allow certain character dynamics to emerge and become clearer: Blade and Trouble have a relationship where they take the piss out of each other, Briony is a more moderating influence but is still honest in a group setting (whereas she might be more diplomatic one-on-one LOL), and etc...)

Making character webs like this might also prove helpful!

Finally, one last thing to note is the form and medium that you're writing in. A rule that was often pushed in creative writing classes is that readers of short stories tend to be extremely economical with their time; the medium is already so pared down that readers will immediately notice fluff or filler, which is great for character and relationship-building but not so great for things like short stories, where every word and sentence has to count (or readers will wonder what's the point of including them). (<- Obviously, fanfiction adheres to different principles.) Conventional novels have much more leeway, but there are certainly still some constrictions; scenes often serve to either further the main plot, provide plot exposition or worldbuilding to a reader, progress a character's individual development, or provide momentum to some aspect of their relationship to others. So you don't often see stuff like Halek's witch's bane incident crop up in novels, unless it's something that comes back around in some way later. (Obviously this also varies with the novel and the genre.)

Part of the reason why I chose interactive fiction is because its conventions inherently allow more freedom with this kind of thing; you can eavesdrop on your companions drinking together, or play a card game with them, or have input as they argue about Caine's education or the state of current politics or what have you, because games are immersive and players are already primed to expect that kind of immersion, and so it's very easy to showcase the characters' interactions with each other. You don't have to worry about justifying the purpose of an interaction or a scene in relation to the overall story, especially because readers can often skip and ignore these interactions altogether. This isn't me trying to steer anyone towards a specific medium, btw: I'm just saying I have an inherently easier time showcasing these character dynamics and relationships because I'm making a game with them, whereas it might be harder to have an organic reason for Briony, Ayla, and Tallys to get drunk and start beating the shit out of some farmers in a tavern and then have a sleepover where they talk about their feelings in a typical novel? Hopefully that makes sense! The short of it is, it's absolutely possible to have the same kind of character beats and relationship-building in a novel, but if mine seem particularly rich and immersive, it's also because the genre I'm working in lends itself to that and provides a lot of opportunities!

Anyway, hopefully something in there was helpful! Thanks again for the question, and good luck with your own writing, that's so exciting! 🌟

[is-the-fire-real]

Hello! I've recently realized (through blogs like yours) that I've been casually absorbing a lot of antisemitism, and I've been trying to learn more so as to counteract it, at least in my own head. I've seen the horseshoe theory mentioned a few times, but never explained what it actually is. Would you be able to link me to some reading on the subject? Regardless of whether you answer, I'd like to say thank you for your time, and I'm glad you exist!

Hello there! Thank you for stopping by and for asking important questions like this. It's very difficult to admit to, and confront, the bad messages we've absorbed from society. The cool thing is that you'll have some difficult work at first, but it gets way easier with time. You are going to be fine so long as you persevere.

I will let you know that I'm not an expert in anything--I only ever graduated high school in the US! So I can tell you what horseshoe theory is thanks to a lot of auto-didactic reading on the subject, but I don't have sources in front of me. I invite anybody in Jumblr to tweak or correct anything I'm about to say.

"Horseshoe theory" isn't just about antisemitism, but about extremism--but we'll come back to antisemitism. It is summarized by the image of the horseshoe: the two ends of the horseshoe should, by all rights, be far away from each other--they're the opposite ends! But when you look at a horseshoe, the two end points are very close to each other. Closer to each other than either one, on its own, is to the middle.

When one maps out political or social beliefs, it is common to place them on an X/Y axis, or a straight line. One extremist position takes up the X, the opposite takes up the Y, and the moderate position marks the center. This gives the impression that both forms of extremism are naturally opposed to each other, and are farther from each other than they are the middle.

Horseshoe theory suggests that this X/Y axis is inadequate. What we see in actual human behavior is that extremists have more in common with other extremists than they do with moderates, even if their beliefs appear to contradict.

So, take an X/Y axis about leftism. One end is marked "anarchism", one end is marked "authoritarian communism", and the middle is marked "liberalism". One would think that anarchists would be the polar opposite of authoritarian communists, and that anarchists and ACs would fight to get liberals on their respective sides--since liberals are closer to them than they are to each other. But we don't see that. We see anarchists and ACs spatting online about who is the Real Leftist, but in real life, regarding real-world action, both groups agree that their real enemies are not each other, but liberals.

This is because, while both groups have very different ideas about how leftism should be implemented, they agree on the most immediate "problem" of overthrowing liberal democracy.

The meme on the left is that liberals will invariably ally with fascists, so don't trust liberals. The reality, over and over again, is that leftists ally with fascists and try to undermine liberals. They do this because they all agree that modern democracy, the greatest achievement of liberalism, must be destroyed in order for their preferred replacement utopia to arise.

I saw this, among many, many other examples, when leftists voted for Trump, or voted for Stein or Sanders knowing it would lead to Trump's election. Leftists joined right-wingers in going to liberal blogs and laughing at them on election night 2016; both groups openly salivating at the suffering they saw, both groups opining on the future collapse of democracy, both agreeing with each other. I saw it also during the 2004 election, when I ran a couple of LiveJournals that talked about politics--I had both leftists and right-wingers mocking my pain at that electoral loss, both blaming me for being gay and asking for rights at The Wrong Time, both agreeing with each other.

This is obvious in a variety of extremist belief systems, which is why I didn't even restrain it to politics. Flat Earthers largely do not agree with one another on a flat-earth map or model; they don't agree on whether or not they are Christians; they don't agree on what it would take to prove or disprove their ideas. They constantly infight over these details. But these are all window-dressing. It's tiny details they battle it out over, because the point of Flat Earth is to create a massive conspiracy among politicians, scientists, militaries, and religions to Suppress The Truth and Dupe The Masses. In that, all the extremists are closer to each other than they are to those who accept the globe earth as fact.

The phrase folks throw around on Jumblr, which I agree with, is that "the forge that bends the horseshoe is antisemitism". In less illustrative language, the thing on which all extremists agree is that the Jews are responsible for their pet conspiracy.

Leftists often misattribute a saying to Marx: "antisemitism is the socialism of fools". In this view, socialism teaches the exact structure of most baseline antisemitic beliefs. A semi-secret group of bloodsuckers hoarding all the wealth, puppeting and manipulating world events from behind the scenes, sneaking and sliming their way into Real Power--the power no one ever sees? Yeah, those are all antisemitic canards. But leftists thought they could avoid falling for antisemitism by simply putting words like "the wealthy" or "landlords" and "the bourgeois" in place of "the Jews", and that they'd be fine.

I would argue the last year (and many other years, but that's beside the point) has proven that they are not fine. It turns out that when you have an entire belief system based on Jew Hating Without Jews, it's extremely easy to start hating Jews! All you have to do is redefine your terms so that "the wealthy", "landlords", or "the bourgeois" are the Jews.

A specific example, and one I've discussed recently: the term "Zionist". Not what it means, but how it is used and what it is understood to mean.

Far-right extremist antisemites have used "Zionist" to mean "Jew" for decades. And they have tried, for decades, to make alliances. They have done this by saying things that sound good to leftists, but which give the right-wingers plausible deniability regarding their antisemitism (what we call "dogwhistling"). This bait did not work on liberals. It did work on leftists. And now, we see that liberals generally use "Jewish" to mean "Jewish" and "Zionist" to mean "Zionist", but that leftists use "Jewish" to mean "Jew I like" and "Zionist" to mean "Jew I want to kill".

Once again, leftists agree with Nazis and the extreme right. Once again, leftists make it clear by word and deed that they care more about the socialism of fools than they do about socialism. Once again, they validate that Hating Jews Without Jews only lasts until there's any reason whatsoever to plug Jews back into the system of hate, and then...

This is the hypothesis of horseshoe theory as I understand it. Again, if anyone has corrections or scholarly sources they'd like to share, please do so! I like to learn and I am often inside my own head, so I admit that I could be wrong in some details or missing nuance.

[frottana-sims]

I changed my neighborhood tree defaults! :3 Autumn is starting in Purple River, and I was no longer happy with the old one.

Before: For a long time I used the silent-dragons tree default replacement. (I'm not sure anymore which one exactly, as there are three versions on their LiveJournal. Unfortunately the pictures are no longer available but I found this post on GOS, and this one too).

Now: With some suggestions from other simmers who were kind enough to reply to me very quickly, I've now changed it to Honeywell's default replacement. 🧡 I also use some of the silent-dragons default replacements that are not included in Honeywell's pack. I also liked silent-dragons' GinkoTree better, so that's stayed too. And I use the single birch from @sixfootsims as it wasn't in Honeywell's pack either. I also considered using criquette's Basic Linden Trees default-replacement, but honestly I'm not a fan of the TS4 trees. 😅

Since my own resource page is gathering dust and will probably bite me when I get closer, I'm posting it here. Mainly for my own reference. But you might be interested too. :3

I also use saramkirk's (smk) mod which allows you to place neighborhood trees wherever you want. And have put them in the same folder as the sixfootsims files as the trees only appear when you load the trees after the mod. (this is why the file is called zzSFBlue_DEFAULT_Beaut_Birches_Single)

And as last thing to say, I use @tvickiesims scrub oak fix. 😊

[letteredlettered]

Related to your last post: For me tumblr would work better as a community site if there was a function that would hide reblogs of the same posts. I get overwhelmed if I follow more than ten people in the same fandom because of the repeating posts. With work and everything else, I don't have the hours to find the original things people are saying. Reddit works better sometimes except the subreddits often have very surface level discussions with high amount of newcomers asking the same questions and the topics are quite limited. Maybe I should just try if there is life on Dreamwidth :P

This ask is a response to this post I made about feedback to fic and fandom community.

Anon, I agree 100% regarding the difficulties of tumblr for discussion that builds community. If you're following this discussion, than you may have already seen these follow-ups:

@eleadore added their thoughts about preserving reader spaces in a reblog here

@yiiiiiiiikes25 added thoughts similar to yours re tumblr's poor functionality as a community space here

@thehoneybeet added to the post that sparked my post here, about how to foster the kind of community we're all saying we want.

I'm linking these posts because I want to call attention to them; I think they're great. But I'm linking them in response to you specifically because yes there are multiple vectors to this problem--the web enshittification I described in my post, the splintering of fandom after the death of livejournal, and the difficulty of tumblr as a venue.

But it's that last, the difficulty of tumblr as a venue, that means that even like-minded people who want the community we're discussing can't really have it. Some went to, and are still on, dreamwidth. Frankly, I still find myself deeply irritated that fandom didn't move there, that it accepted AO3 and not DW. But I think a large factor in that particular exodus actually has to do with the fact that AO3 is closer to the direction the enshittified web went than DW ever could be. AO3 has a "like" button and is not built for deep, meaningful interaction. Again, this is because it was meant to be a limb of the fandom community, not replace community entirely. I'm not claiming that AO3 is enshittified but rather that it bears more similarity to current social media sites because it's only one part of a community that was at the time, thriving (yes, in spite of strikethrough and everything that was happening on LJ at the time).

In my opinion, tumblr straddles the divide between that old style of community website and the new one. Like livejournal and DW, you can view tumblr chronologically, without an algorithm feeding you content. You can remain anonymous, and everyone can see anything you post. But like other more modern social media sites, you can reblog and like, which you couldn't do on LJ and DW. The fact that tumblr is sort of both--and that it wasn't sold to the Russians and torn apart, like LJ--is why fandom fled here and why scattered pieces of it remain here, despite so many others moving on.

One thing I wanted to talk about in my original post, but couldn't find a place for, was how so much of the "community" aspects of fandom are now private. I think that's happened partly because tumblr isn't a great place to hold a conversation, so the conversation quickly gets moved elsewhere--but instead of somewhere where everyone is still welcome (ahem, like Dreamwidth), it gets moved to private spaces. Or the conversation never starts and exists only in the kinds of spaces meant for such things.

@thehoneybeet makes great points about this in the post I linked above. They mention "the invite-only server, the private ao3 challenge, groups and experiences that you need to be in-the-know about to even begin to participate in. that, essentially, require an invitation."

@eleadore mentions it at the beginning of their reblog (also linked above), saying, "i feel discussions of this nature have been severely crippled over the yrs, and people prefer to take to private group chats and such instead of engaging [...]" But they go on to mention "private discord book club servers."

To be clear, I'm 100% with @eleadore about the necessity for spaces for readers, and also 100% with them at the idea that there can be spaces authors don't have to touch. Writers don't "deserve" to hear every single thing anyone's ever said about their fic, positive or negative. Earlier this year I in fact made an impassioned post about the fact that I believe that bookmarks are for readers, not writers, and that making them a space purely for an author's comfort limits the functionality of bookmarks for readers, both in terms of finding fic but also in terms of finding friends.

So, yes, I agree that it's okay to have private discord book club servers. But the mention of discord did make me do a double-take, because in my opinion, discord is a huge part of what I perceive as the problem. You can't find a discord for your chosen fandom by searching discord. You have to have the link. Even if the discord isn't invite-only--which many of them are, you can usually only get the link by knowing someone.

There are all kinds of reasons for why discord is so private. Discords are run by mods, who feel responsible for what happens to people in spaces for which they are responsible. And mods who take a laissez-faire "everyone just do what they want" approach often have servers dominated by people who make the environment difficult, sometimes through racism, sometimes through bullying, sometimes by constantly bringing up traumatic or triggering content, sometimes just by making everything about them all the time. It's not like lj or even tumblr, where you can just unfollow. You're kind of stuck, unless you've got a mod who is policing vigorously, which is a huge job and impossible to do in ways that will make everyone happy. It's just easier if you don't have anyone and everyone wandering through.

I hate that. It makes me want to throw things. To me, fandom is about a space that's for anyone and everyone. You shouldn't have to know someone to get to have discussions about the thing you love. That's not why I'm here. In fact, in some ways I'm in fandom to get away from that kind of bullshit, so I don't have to construct some kind of social persona that is palatable enough to be accepted. I'm hear to talk about blorbos and read porn, maybe write a thing or two. A private discord book club made intentionally as a safe space for readers is a great use for discord. But discord as a place for fandom actually makes me feel a little ill.

I don't have a good suggestion of where fandom community should be built. To me, the best place is dreamwidth, and I think that after fifteen years, I really need to give up on the idea that enough people will move there (in this economy????) to really get the numbers you need to be able to find the people with whom you really click and connect. When tumblr tried to ban nudes, a lot of people talked up other possibilities--and some people went, to Mastadon, to pillowfort, even to twitter and IG. But those spaces all have their downsides, and none of them have the critical mass to be a real fandom home. As before, I have no conclusions about this. I just wanted to highlight some other aspects of this problem and describe some other food for thought.

[mzminola]

Over a third of my life. I did the math and I'd known Colton over a third of my life. Since getting into Glee, not even on Tumblr yet but on Livejournal. Four_tens, a Superdictionary joke, an Inception icon, seeing each other commenting on the same meta posts. Fandom friends living on opposite coasts.

We never met in person and now we never will! That fraction up there is never getting any bigger. It fucking sucks. But knowing each other online was so fucking worth it. Knowing all of you online has been so fucking worth it and I love you.

There's too much for my brain to focus on right now (and so much my brain will grab onto at the slightest reminder) so I looked at /tagged/penroseparticle/chrono on my blog and now you all get Snarky Dune Sand Worm Cat.

Way back in 2012 when I was doing Glee screencaps Colton made a sarcastic comment about the lighting across seasons, that made me laugh and admit I'd never read Dune but knew a little from memes.

So of course I had to go find it, and then edit out "spice" to replace with "snark" and then do happy flailing when Colton said this was going in his repertoire of reaction images.

To quote Sir Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man,

"They believe that no one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away—until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life, they say, is only the core of their actual existence."

I'm gonna be reminded of you in thousands of ways and think Don't be a meatball, Colton, and thousands of more things.