#I just mean that this is obviously not a super mainstream interest nor are they mainstream creators anymore

[bitchslapblastoids]

Was thinking about how much of a normo I come across as irl, how I’ve felt a lil odd person out at their shows bc of being a bit older (29) and looking so aggressively normal, how generally confused people in my life would be if they knew about my d&p obsession, how thoroughly i mask weirder traits and essentially codeswitch to suit the mainstream, etc.

i feel kind of fish out of water when I imagine how all the people that populate my tumblr phandom ecosystem are likely presenting to the world irl (I.e. more visibly queer, counterculture, and so on). But then I think maybe the most visible phannies are the ones with the most curated, alt, deliberate daytoday lewks/style? So maybe what I’m picturing is off base? But then I’m also basing this off of what audiences look like in audience footage, m&gs, etc.

Sooooooo i would like to know… do you guys feel like you present as someone who may be Deeply Online and obsessed with two gay nerds from the internet? Or do you hide it and fly under the radar, masking as a total normy and living a double life?

(To clarify I don’t mean you’re like out and about wearing the fringes boob sweatshirt lol I more mean vibes and overall lewk yk?)

[garfeildfanpage]

Ok so this may just be a personal pet peeve I have but I can’t STAND when fanfics n such include characters listening to music that makes no sense for them to listen to

To each his own, I know everyone has their own understanding of characters; and self-projection is fun! But it’s just so exhausted and I want something that isn’t just the author using their own taste in music for once

Yes OBVIOUSLY a fictional character listening to mitski in a fan fiction doesn’t matter and I’m upset at nothing but when it’s in every single one, it can really strain the immersion

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some mitski! But variety is important, and can give a character more personality, even in fan works!

So, basically, here are my personal two cents on what I think the tbhk cast would listen to.

(If I come off as a hypocrite I give you the permission to shoot me)

Keep in mind I am not Japanese, nor anything close. My understanding of Japanese music stops at idol-game music and everything after that eludes my little brain. these are just vague ideas, to then be added to by someone more well versed than I, so do as you will. Doesn’t necessarily have to be Japanese music either, music is for everyone! Let teru listen to Rihanna! Have akane listen to one direction! Aoi listens to Belgian death metal! So yeah just take everything I say with a nice, handful of salt.

Yashiro: As shown in a volume extra (I think) Nene plays idol games! So it’s safe to assume that she enjoys J-idol music as well, which makes sense! J-pop fucks. ALSO mentioned in a volume extra, she enjoys jaded-lover-type music, which could encompass music akin to some 90’s J-Rock!

I would put suggestions here! But I am bad at listing artists - SUPER☆GIRLS is like the only J-idol group I listen to don’t hit me. ( 7/10 on the mitski meter: she could, and probably would listen to her, but only lush, only lush.)

Kou: Yeah not gonna lie if someone said he’d listen to weezer I wouldn’t have any reason to disagree, he’s very loser-rock and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Though to me he seems much more like a “I-listen-to-mainstream-rock-because-it-sound-good” type guy, keep in mind tbhk takes place in like 2014-2015 (I think) so whatever band were popular then, he probably listened to just that. Anime openings…fucking….Naruto…also, nightcore….anime openings… live that 2010’s life Kou you deserve it…be cringe…be free. (3/10 on the mitski meter: he wouldn’t, just cause he wouldn’t really encounter her in the wild. Maybe if he was recommended her…but not on his own.)

Hanako: ok look idk what the hell supernatural music sounds like so I’m just going to go off of the time period to which he was alive. Orchestras and Jazz were popular around the 1950s in Japan (along with other more western styles of music) so, that, probably, i don’t know. With Amane’s connection to music (at least vaguely) plays, musicals, and other type performances could’ve been an interest; though for Hanako, I don’t really know if he’d even have any interest in music specifically. So considering that he’d probably just listen to whatever people play around him. (5/10 on the mitski meter: totally possible, but not believable.)

Akane: m starting to blank gimmie a moment. Instrumental. That’s really all I can say. He listens to music when studying, cleaning, or performing any task where he has to focus, so anything rhythmic and calm, something to take up the brain space that isn’t doing the task at hand so he doesn’t get distracted by something else. Video game soundtracks (like Mario or some ambient bullshit), soft pop. He also seems like the kinda guy to just listen to whatever his parents play, so yes most definitely some old shit. Recommendations from Aoi or Nene. Basically just noise, a nice distraction from the horrible horrible world, yknow? (5/10 on the mitski meter: anything goes I s’pose)

Teru: Classical?? I guess?? Dude does not listen to dick, nothing, absolutely fuck all. Old classic, a nice orchestra or quartet. western or eastern it don’t matter, as long as it’s nice, repetitive, and peaceful it’ll do the job just fine. (2/10 on the mitski meter: probably too much for him to handle, man’s constantly on the edge of a mental break mitski’d kill him, maybe if he handled his underlying issues first, but until then no mitski)

Aoi: last one cause I am clocking out. Similar taste to akane, undefined and flexible. probably listens to the same stuff as Nene, though I think she probably enjoys older j-pop, just cause she seems like that, Yknow? Movie soundtracks, Anime soundtracks (shoujou, probably. Precure n such just cause Aoi seems like someone who deserves to heal her inner child, same goes for Akane as well) Similar to Teru she probably also likes the more calmer and downbeat stuff. (8/10 on the mitski meter: totally possible, I’d believe it, but she wouldn’t tell anyone, it’s her special secret.)

Anyway see you next week for more awesome pubg 360 no-scope compilations ninja out

[bloomfish]

I am NOT endorsing or promoting the use of any recreational drugs. Do NOT do drugs, they are bad. Anyway here's why I think ketamine is great

So a pretty common thing I've noticed among casual drug users is that they very often are for some reason TERRIFIED of ketamine. And this includes people who have done like, Ayahuasca or peyote which I personally am extremely apprehensive about. And I don't get it! I think K is a misunderstood old thing :(

Obviously it's not something I would recommend to anyone without experience of psychodelics. However I think even people who do have experience with psychodelics might have had negative experiences with ket simply because they don't know what to expect going in so they're caught off guard. It's NOT a psychodelic and it shouldn't be treated like one. It's NOT a party drug and it shouldn't be treated like one (at least not until you're used to it). It's a dissociative, which can be unfamiliar. But I sincerely find it like... Mild compared to acid?

I think it's about a) being careful with portions. People who are used to railing massive lines of blow assume that they can handle that with ket and rly to start you should be doing the tiniest bumps possible, you do not want to be trying for a K-Hole at first (I never do in general bc i like consciousness). You build tolerance very fast but always err on the side of less. Whatever you think you can handle, take some off.

b) creating the right environment. As I said, it's not a party drug. It's for chilling on the sofa with your favourite music and a good friend. Take all pressure off and make sure there's nothing you need to actually do. Don't combine it with any other drug (ESPECIALLY not acid!!!!)

c) having the right mindset going in. Two things about this, first the effects of ketamine are over fast. It always passes after a short while, and if you're aware of that you can relax and know you'll be okay because even if you don't like it you'll be fine soon, so you might as well just try and enjoy what you can. Second, as with any drug anxiety and overthinking will make it worse- typically in a situation where you feel like you're losing control I'd suggest trying to relax and find something pleasant about the sensation to focus on until you ride it out. That's why you should make absolutely sure you're in a position where nothing can happen to you except being conked out on the sofa for a while.

All this being said, what ARE the benefits? She's a weird one for sure, as I said it's a dissociative– this means that you kind of feel like you're outside your body. At higher doses people see their body from the ceiling and stuff but I don't think it's necessary to get to that level. At lower doses it's just floaty. Like with psychodelics music can sound like the best thing ever and conversations can be super deep/hilarious in a way that makes 0 sense later. Things, especially your body, can feel really cool and the way you see the world is just weird and different and interesting. I've tried a fair amount of "mainstream" drugs and the best/most enjoyable highs I've had have been with ketamine by far.

An interesting thing about ketamine is that there's not really any comedown nor hangover– unlike something like mdma you don't go through days of depression afterwards. Actually it's kind of the opposite, you can actually feel better about life and the world afterwards. The reason for this in my non-scientific opinion is that being momentarily detached from your body gives you a weird kind of outside perspective on life? And then when you're back on earth things just look different. It's honestly been helpful to me for processing specific things on occasion.

Obviously this is a recreational drug, not a cure for depression nor a long term emotional crutch and there ARE risks just like with any substance. I mentioned that you build tolerance quickly– for me this was an incentive to use infrequently because otherwise you start needing bigger doses to achieve the same effects. That doesn't mean it's impossible to create a dependency or that there might not be risks. Like anything, it's about being careful and safe and knowing your personal limits.

I am also not saying that everyone should go out and try ket. Certainly I would not recommend it to the average Tumblr user. I merely think that she's underrated and could potentially be enjoyed (in a responsible way 🥴) by people who have experience with and know they can handle LSD or shrooms or similar (NOT AT THE SAME TIME. DONT COMBINE KETAMINE AND LSD LOL u probably won't die but it won't be fun 😭). I think if you're used to the feeling of surrendering control for a while and Ur reasonable about dosage it's really like... much less extreme than acid. And can be rly rly fun especially with friends but it can also be nice alone!

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Bits & Pieces, Themes & Evidence

Morning Everyone! So, below are just a bunch of bits and pieces that me, my fellow theorists and/or others in the fandom have come up. They don’t really fit into one, cohesive theory, but they’re most about or have come out of 10x18. I keep joking that this is the episode that just keeps on giving. We’re STILL talking about it and figuring things out about it.

Leah as a Hallucination/Daryl’s PTSD:

It’s been suggested that in 10x18, Dog never actually left Daryl. The episode is cut in a way to suggest that Daryl went long periods without seeing Dog (which is symbolic, of course) but maybe that’s not true and Dog was always there. Not only is that super interesting, but it works with one of my first observations. When I first watched the episode, I thought that the second time he sees Dog, first time as a grown dog and not a pup, and meets Leah, he didn't seem surprised to see Dog. So, I thought maybe he'd seen Dog a lot by then. I changed my mind for the sake of the symbolism. If it represents Grady, it makes more sense that Daryl simply recognized him as the pup me once met, but really had been separated from his for awhile. But I’m just saying this hallucination theory and the idea of Dog being there all along, just backs up my first impressions. That's all.

Also, weapon13whitefang left a long comment on my Tumblr post about Leah being a hallucination. It's really not so much about the show as about PTSD because they have some experience with it. I found it really interesting and enlightening, so it might interest some of you. You can read it HERE under the comments.

Why He Got Defensive at the Idea of Leah Leaving Him

A couple of my friends were talking about this, and this is just my contribution to the conversation. I think it's directly because Leah is predicated on his time with Beth. Even if he's not consciously aware of the delusion, some part of his UNconscious brain knows that Leah = Beth. And he knows Beth wouldn't have willingly left him. Not only because she said that, but because when she DID disappear, it wasn't her fault or her choice either time. So, when Carol says, "maybe she just left," Daryl's brain rails against that and he gets really defensive. And the interesting thing is that it's really not about him taking it personally or about his ego. It's about what he knows to be true of Beth. It's actually his brain being really logical in the midst of the delusion.

The Talk Dead to Me Podcast with Lynn Collins

I listened to the Talk Dead to me Podcast and this week’s guest was—no surprise—Lynn Collins. No huge TD smoking guns or anything, but it was interesting nonetheless. First of all, one of the really big C@ryl accounts was pretty much called out for being a toxic troll.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Lynn Collins gave a different interview a few days back (not this podcast; just a different one) in which she mentioned that Daryl and Carol’s relationship is very mother/son. Just after that, I won’t say the name but one of the most well known C@ryl accounts who can be REALLY nasty to…well…I was gonna say other shippers but pretty much anyone in the fandom who dares disagree with her, called Lynn an ageist for saying that Carol was mothering Daryl.

So, when the podcast began, Johnny O’Dell, who is the host, said that most TWD fans are super cool but a lot of the shippers can be toxic. He doesn't mention any particular ships in accordance to that (I actually think he briefly mentions all of them, saying people ship Daryl with Carol, Beth, Connie, and Rosita the most) but then after saying SOME of the shippers can be toxic, he talked about the post she made calling Lynn Collins ageist and said that was ridiculous and toxic and that we need to be cool to the actors. So, it's very obvious it was her comment he was talking about.

And of course, the ageist thing she accused Lynn Collins of is ridiculous. Not only is it true that Carol and Daryl’s relationship can be very mother/son at times, but saying so is not an insult to Carol. It’s a comment on the nature of the relationship, not on anyone’s actual age. Of course Carol isn’t old enough to be Daryl’s mom. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t mother him.

Then when Lynn Collins came onto the podcast, she addressed the ageist comment. She basically said everything I said above in more detail. She talked about how she was taken aback by being called that because, being a woman over 40 in Hollywood, she actually deals with a lot of ageism. And about how she's a mother, but became one a little later in life (in her thirties, rather than her twenties) and she was shocked that being called a mother can actually be derogatory to some people. It REALLY shouldn’t be. It’s really sad that people would take that as an insult. And then she went on to say that any character can be maternal, even if they're not the biological mother of the person they're mothering. She even said Daryl is somewhat paternal to Carol, teaching her how to gut a fish and everything.

Now, maybe this is neither here nor there when it comes to TD stuff. But one thing I thought was really interesting was that Lynn Collins said when she first started watching the show in S2 or S3, she was actually a Caryler. She wanted them together originally. She also said that eventually she realized that's not where they were going with it and kind of moved on. 

But the thing is, it just proves to me even more that she's being told to talk about it in a particular way. If everything she's said is true: that she was a raging fan and has been in the tags and talking about it a ton (and she says that on the podcast again; that she would get really excited about it and watch with friends and they would tell her to chill, lol) then why on earth would you talk about Daryl and Carol as a mother/son relationship...unless you were instructed to. 

She knows how passionate and sometimes toxic the Caryl ship is because she used to be one of them. So that just drove home for me that this isn't something she would just come up with on her own. And I did like what she said and how she said it. I honestly think she's trying to help the Carylers feel better about things, but also let them down gently. And of course there are some hardcore Carylers, like that account that said the ageist thing, that are just never going to give it up. Not much anyone can do about that.

The only other thing that struck me about the podcast, and also brought to mind stuff said on TTD, is that I'm more and more sure that everyone knows what's up with Leah's character. If she's an illusion (and I'll assume she is until we know different) I think everyone knows that. I think Lynn knows it, Norman, Melissa, all of them. 

For one thing, she said in this podcast that she didn't know if or when she'd be back. That was kind of a slip of the tongue, I think, because we already know she's signed on for S11, and she's announced it. And they're filming. So that's just untrue. And I thought that about Melissa on TTD, too. She said she didn't know what the Leah story line would be, they only told her a little bit back in Bonds when she had to say "her dog." But Melissa is a long time, mainstream cast member. I just don't believe that she doesn't know where the story is going. Again, just something they're instructed to say. But something else occurred to me, too.

When Melissa talked about the "her dog" line on TTD, she said, "there was a line that became a thing." From that, I have to assume she meant that people started to obsess about it online and wonder what the "her" was about. I honestly don't know if anyone other than TD picked out that line, but they might have. Either way, between this, and their reaction to the Caryler's "ageist" comment, it proves that they read the online theories. And of course we all already know that, but there's proof. That ageist comment was posted like 24 hours ago. And already they're addressing it and obviously don't like it and don't want people thinking the show or its actors are associated with that sort of thing.

Which is exactly why I think they HAVE to know about our Leah-is-a-hallucination theory. Even others outside our fandom suspect it. But the writers aren't addressing that. And don't get me wrong: I don't think they will. The Bonds line was literally MONTHS ago, and they waited until the Leah episode to address it. Because otherwise, they'd have to give spoilers and they weren't going to do that. But my point is, if the hallucination theory was not a thing (kind of like Rick being on TWB was not a thing and Lynn Collins being an ageist is not a thing and Beth not being BBQed at Terminus was not a thing) they would be addressing and discrediting it. They aren't. I’m definitely side-eyeing that.

Daryl’s Search for Rick/Beth’s Search for Liquor

This is something my fellow theorists and I were discussing back and forth for a few days. I’m not going to give you the entire conversation, but someone said something about Beth searching for liquor in Still and couldn’t that be a foreshadow? See—you’ll probably hear more about this in coming weeks—but we’ve been rewatching old episodes like Still, Alone, and others, with an eye toward what we’ve learned from S10 and especially the bonus episodes. And we’re realizing there’s a lot more foreshadowing in them than we ever realized before. Most of what’s in them we’ve looked at in terms of the Bethyl romance and of course Beth’s return, but I for one have never thought to go beyond that. Yeah, I REALLY should have.

So here’s the thing. We always talk about Daryl searching for people, but Beth was searching for liquor in that episode. I've never really thought to connect those two things. It either represents the same template of Daryl's search for her, or it might represent her searching for him. But then, those two templates may be one and the same. I need to think on it more and make more connections.

One thing it did make me think of, though, is that there's a theme about not accepting the first and only thing that comes your way, because there's something bigger, better, happier, more fulfilling down the road. So, Daryl didn't want Beth to drink the peach schnapps because that's a weak drink. He wanted her to have a REAL drink. And of course we've talked about this theme in terms of the peach schnapps before.

But we kind of see it everywhere, including in relationships. The small, short term relationships all follow this pattern. Maybe it’s not a terrible relationship, but it’s not true love, either. So they need to move on from it and find the more perfect relationship for them. The locations or homes do, too. So, in 4b, we saw each of the groups stop somewhere and try to stay. And it wasn't so much that they chose not to. More often than not, circumstances forced them to leave. But still. The theme is that it was better that they moved on so a bigger reunion could take place.

And on that note, Leah really still does fit the short-term relationship pattern. If the point was to always show short term relationships that weren't ideal and something better coming down the road, that's why they wanted to do something like this for Daryl. Beth is obviously going to be the much better, more fitting, more fulfilling relationship, where he belongs, etc. But I think they knew they couldn't do that without doing a disservice to Daryl's character. The only way to satisfy both criteria was to make her a hallucination. So the pattern is still there, but for him, it's not a real or literal relationship.

Find Me Theme

So, @wdway​ is the one who reminded me of this. Back in 9x05, Rick gets hurt and starts hallucinating right before blowing up the bridge and being taken to the CRM by Jadis, right? All on the same page? Well, in that episode, there’s a huge theme about Rick finding his family. In every hallucination, he tells the people he sees—Shane, Hershel, etc—that he’s looking for his family and needs to find them. Near the end, he hallucinates Michonne and the others being with him on the bridge, and Michonne tells him that they’re his family and he did find them. Then, just before he shoots the dynamite, he says, “I found them.”

And now we have this episode called “Find Me” where Daryl is obsessively searching for Rick, and there’s a ridiculous amount of Beth symbolism thrown in. Are we seeing the over-arching theme?

So, what does this mean? I don’t think I’ve really pinned it all down, yet. But I do think this is an over-arching theme for the entire show. I think in some ways, “home” and “family” are synonymous, because home is wherever your family is. It’s not a physical location.

But we started out with Rick looking for Carl and Lori. Then Merle went missing, and Daryl searched for him. Everyone searched for Sophia when she disappeared. And the list goes on and on. So it’s a big theme. I’ve always said Andy didn’t leave the show just to spend more time with his family. That’s a happy bonus, I’m sure. But this was always a planned part of the story. Now Michonne is actively looking for Rick, we see Daryl searching for his body. And the reason Beth symbolism is thrown in is because he searched for her, but they didn’t show us that and won’t because it would be spoilery. And Beth is alive, even if Daryl doesn’t know it. And yeah, I could go on and on. Just wanted to point out this theme and how important it is. Which leads me to….

The Three Spikes

The last thing I’ll mention is the grouping of the three spikes he sees both by the door and on the outside of the house that we’ve all been trying to interpret. I kind of had a breakthrough the other night. But the thing is, it’s not just a breakthrough on the three spikes.

It’s kind of a breakthrough on the ENTIRE rule of threes theme. It’s actually kind of epic.

So here’s how I came to this. I was going over the template in my head, yet again, that I mentioned is shown both here, in 6x03, and that will be in the spinoff. So let’s run through it. We’ll use this episode, 10x18, as the example. So, Daryl is searching for Rick, right? And Carol wants him to stop and come back with her to where Zeke and Henry are. Those are two possible choices for him. But there’s also a third: staying with Leah.

Similarly, in 6x03, Daryl goes searching for Rick, rather than staying with Sasha and Abraham. Those are the two things he’s trying to decide between, and he eventually goes back to Sashraham. 

Now, there is actually a third choice there. It’s just that Daryl doesn’t seriously consider it. The third choice is going back to Alexandria to help them. And this IS addressed in the episode because they talk about how they don’t know what happened, but some loud noise pulled half the herd off the road. We, the viewers, know it’s the Wolves, but Daryl, Sasha, and Abe really didn’t know what was going on there. And who is back in Alexandria, spear-heading the defensive against the wolves? Carol!

So you see what I mean. There are three possible choices there: find Rick, go with Carol, or stay with Sashraham. And I’ve said forever that Sashraham = Beth/Bethyl. And of course so does Leah. So the third choice is always the one that represents Beth.

Do you see where I’m going with this? If not, I’ll just tell you. This represents three different paths for Daryl. They’ll diverge at some point and he’ll have to make a choice about which one to take. And then I realized—duh!—they’re all actually represented for us here in this episode. Not only because of what I said above, but because Leah lays them out in her ultimatum. Where do you belong 1) out looking endlessly for your brother 2) back at the communities with your family (i.e. Carol) or 3) here with me.

So those are the three paths that he’ll have to choose between during the spinoff. That’s what the spikes are about, because they specifically dealt with his three choices in this episode. But that may even be the reason they used the rule of threes around Beth to begin with. She’s the third and correct path.

Want more proof this is a thing? @wdway​ sent me this pic after I first told her about it:

And guys, go back and watch this. When he gets to the crossroads, the camera pans around him, showing him being unsure about which path to take.

Then, while writing this up, I remembered that this did this in 6x03 as well:

On the left is Daryl on his bike, rejoining Sasha and Abraham who are coming down from the top.

Yeah, 3 paths. 3 spikes. Rule of 3s. Who’s excited for the spinoff? 🙋

Now, just one more thing not add to this I think you all will like. In re-watching 9x05, there’s the part where Rick hallucinates Shane, right? Well, part of their conversation there is about the “third man.” And I’ve talked about this before, but probably not nearly enough, because it’s more important than most of us give it credit for. Rick and Shane talk about when Rick was shot in 1x01 before the apocalypse hit. They say they thought there was only 2 men, but there was a third they didn’t know about and “that changed everything.”

I always saw that as perhaps a statement about Grady. Because they should have had three prisoners for the hostage exchange, where Dawn only had two (Carol and Beth). But after Rick killed Lambson, they only had two. If they’d had three, Dawn wouldn’t have been able to demand Noah back, because it would have been an even exchange. So the third man would have changed everything.

Another way to think about it is that, if the shot that hit Beth didn’t come from Dawn—and it REALLY didn’t, y’all) then there was another threat somewhere that they couldn’t see and didn’t know about. If they had, they might have been able to guard against it. See what I mean? I genuinely believe they used Rick’s arc in 1x01 as a jumping off point for planning what happened at Grady.

So, when I rewatched 9x05 and heard this conversation between Rick and Shane yet again, it made me think of the three spikes and Daryl’s 3 paths. So what if he only knows about the two paths he can take: look for Rick or go with Carol. But there’s a third path he’s not aware of, yet. But the third path changes everything. Because that’s where/how he’ll find Beth.

Eh, eh?

Okay, well, I’ve given you enough to chew on today. These are just some things we’ve been discussing from the episode that just keeps on giving. ;D Meanwhile, episode 19 will be airing in a few days, and it will be fabulous, too. Probably not quite as epic as 10x18, but still fabulous. ;D Thoughts?

[bisluthq]

Hi! Where can I get some solid proof of Toe being genuinely true? Not just timelines but "Kaylor-level" proofs, if there's any? 😅 I'm a "converted" one due to the realistic timeline. I do believe now that Kaylor is dead (but it WAS real). I'm open to the idea that maybe Toe IS real but I just can't convince myself 😅 TIA! (tho I also really like my own idea that KaylorIsDead but Toe is still PR but maybe their friends or good acquaintances xD)

Ummmm well I assume you’ve read the timeline at @youareinlovees - it rounds up the huge number of times they’ve been sighted organically which was what sold me on Joe x Tay. But here are some additional times they were spotted across Insta, Reddit, Twitter, and FB. Like I’m not even delving into fandom spaces, it’s literally just randos on the internet posting about seeing them. That’s what sold me. Like tons of this kind of thing exists:

Do we think Tree is running a billion sock puppet accounts to convince people of something that’s... um... pretty easy to believe for the average heteronormative person? “Planting” sightings that absolutely no mainstream publication ever picks up? That only obsessive bitches on the internet like us look for at all? It seems super unlikely.

So we know they spend a loooot of time together, off camera, literally just because they want to. This is actually, to me, much stronger proof than anything Kaylor have ever gotten since the majority - not all, obviously, I admit that just like not all of Toe’s have been organic - of their spottings were orchestrated pap walks. It’s weird for a PR situation if they’ve been spotted more times randomly than they have been by paps.

Then we have the fact that Joe is Tree’s only other client (this wasn’t always the case, he was signed to a firm when he did Billy Lynn, but he is now repped by Tree). Given he essentially does no press that’s a... choice. And it doesn’t fit with a contracted situation at all because it would mean there’s nobody looking out for his interests.

Their families and close friends know each other, follow each other and interact and spend holidays together. One of his random college friends, Eleanor Henderson, received a cardigan and posted about it (even tho she isn’t like... famous). Karlie’s close friends - people like Derek Blasberg and Lauren Santo Domingo - have never ever been close to Taylor. (Lowkey, that’s weird for if they were just... super tight platonic besties, tho too like it’s fucking odd).

We also know at the end of 2016 she ran away to London based on things like the bakery that made her cake that year and her early Joe love songs - Delicate and CIWYW especially - feature British slang which fits that as well. So there are hints in her music. She has hidden clues like their birth years (89 and 91) in the End Game MV and “Joe’s Deli” in the Delicate MV. Those are off the top of my head, but there’ve been other hints and clues as well.

And most recently there was this nonsense:

And finally, we have WB. William = his great-grandfather who was a very famous music composer and Bowery = Bowery Hotel where they allegedly had one of their first dates. So the name is easy enough to track back to him, he is provably musical and has a degree in English lit (“Whether weather be the frost” 🙄), and Taylor would not lie about music ownership/credit because artists’ rights are her biggest fucking issue. So whoever he is, he collaborated with her on 5 songs. One of which legit sounds like a deep dive into their relationship issues.

Now, do I know for a fact that they’re fucking? No, I do not because I am neither Joe nor Taylor. But they’re not PR.

He clearly matters a lot to her, she creates tons of Joe themed Easter Eggs, they worked together on something extremely special to her, and they spend a looooot of time together. I am open to the idea of platonic soulmates because again lmao it would be impossible for us to debunk that lmao. But we cannot ignore the reaaaams of evidence for Joe being a very central presence in her life.

[yourfandomfriend]

It’s Not About You|The Incredibles Meta

So, has it been a long while since I’ve posted meta? ‘Cause seeing meta for  The Incredibles on my dash has awakened something.

You remember back a few years ago when everyone was saying the movie -- whether intentionally or accidentally -- had an objectivist moral? That the secret message we were all expected to take away from the film was “if everyone is special, no one is”?

Some people have tried to refute the claim as well they should. It doesn’t really mesh with the actual events in the story -- how could a movie promoting ruthless self-interest involve so much altruism and heroism? But I haven’t yet seen anyone talk about what the movie is actually about, what it’s real values are.

So here I go a-doing that.

**SPOILERS** For The Incredibles **SPOILERS** 

One of my biggest pet peeves with the modern, mainstream movie-goer is the tendency to just accept everything every character says, including heinous villains with their heads up their asses, because it’s easier than putting two and two together by themselves. And when they get the wrong idea as a result, they blame the movie for being badly written or having a bad moral.

Some people used the sentiment, “If everyone is special, no one is” and “it’s in your blood” to build the case that Brad Bird wants your kids to be Ayn Rand, never stopping to consider the sources of this sentiment, it’s context, nor the consequences the movie presents for it.

The story begins with Bob Parr, aka Mr. Incredible, a well-meaning but egocentric superhero who literally runs around with a big “i” on his chest. (This movie isn’t subtle.)

Despite claiming he’d like to settle down with a family, he makes it painfully clear to everyone that he doesn’t play well with others. He fights evil for the glory and makes decisions that affect other people completely on his own, on a whim, without a thought to the consequences.

But as he’s arguing with his fiancee (Elastigril, aka Helen Truax) for being very late to his own wedding, she says some theme-expressing words to him that no one writing a thinkpiece for Buzzfeed or whatever seems to remember:

“[...]If we’re going to make this work, you have to be more than Mr. Incredible. You know that, don’t you?”

Almost immediately afterward, we're shown an infuriating montage of the fall of “Supers,” forced to give up their crime-fighting due to a bunch of litigious jackasses finding out that you can totally sue a vigilante for saving your life.

But that’s the operative word here, isn’t it? The one that never occurs to Bob when he’s tearing around town saving the day, or the audience as steam shoots out of our ears: vigilante. Bob assumes the rules shouldn’t apply to him because he’s special.

Cut to 15 years later and, weirdly, in a world full of comic book villains and supposedly Randian morals, the result of Supers being forced into hiding isn’t the world ending or being taken over by evil. It’s almost as if superheroes beget supervillains and not the other way around...

Anyway, when we see Bob again, he’s working a demeaning cubicle job denying insurance claims to sweet little old ladies. This naturally depresses Bob, but at least part of his dissatisfaction is frustration that he has to follow the rules instead of doing whatever he thinks is best.

Then we move on to Dash, Bob’s pre-teen son. He has super speed and his father’s attitude problem, and he’s so resentful of his inability to show off that he uses his powers to hurt people instead of helping them. 

Dash doesn’t believe that “everybody is special” because he has super speed and no one else does. The very idea that someone gifted like him is forced to follow the rules that everyone else has to follow and only have exactly as much as everyone else has seems unfair to him.

Later that day, when Helen tries to get Bob to care that Dash got in trouble, he isn’t even remotely interested until he finds out his son is so fast that his teacher couldn’t prove Dash abused him. And Bob is thrilled. He completely undermines Helen and then lies to his family so he can run off to fight crime for kicks with his old pal, Frozone aka Lucius Best.

Listening to their police scanner, Lucius tries to talk Bob into going bowling with him instead. Vigilantism isn’t fun for him anymore and he’s worried it’s all going to catch up with them. Then they hear about a burning building and Bob can’t stop cheering. A fire nearby is just a chance to relive his glory days.

Meanwhile, Lucius is right. The villain, Syndrome, had been hunting and killing every Super he could find. Tracking Frozone that very night leads him to Mr. Incredible, who Syndrome hates with every fiber of his being. So let’s talk about him for a mo’.

Syndrome, aka Buddy, aka “Indrediboy,” used to be Mr. Incredible’s number one fan when he was a child, pestering him for autographs and attention until finally, he decides that he’s going to be his sidekick. 

Like Bob, Buddy is enamored with the glamour of being a Super but unlike him, he’s not interested in helping people. Worse, he actually prevents Bob from catching a bomber and almost gets himself blown up because of his massive ego. He’s like Bob but dialed to eleven.

After his hero tells him off and sends him home, Buddy loses his little mind and becomes a villain. Syndrome, the evil genius, the fake super, he plans to use technology to trick people into thinking he’s a super and his plan involves a whole bunch of murder. 

The irony is, he could’ve had an amazing career as an inventor and even built tech for heroes but anything short of being “incredible” wasn’t enough for him.

Later, we’ll meet Syndrome’s opposite number, Edna Mode. She’s a regular human, no powers or anything, but her vast knowledge in the fields of science, engineering, and fashion design makes her the only designer Bob would trust with their super-suit. If the moral of this movie was “you’re only special if you’re born special,” Edna wouldn’t exist.

Back to the plot: Bob loses his cool with his boss, an actually Randian little business turd who only cares about money and knowingly stops him from preventing a mugging. Bob is understandably disgusted, but does something that should be inexcusable for a hero: he uses his super strength to throw the tiny man through at least four walls, putting him in traction.

Bob is obviously fired and government agents have to come in and clean his mess up. Meanwhile, Syndrome sends his henchwoman to give Bob a message. Pretending to rep a tech company whose walking eye got uppity, she recruits him to fight it on a remote island in exchange for big bucks. Bob accepts the offer and proceeds to lie to his family about where he’s going every day...

Okay, maybe it’s because I’ve been up for twenty-two hours, but I’m getting tired of stating the obvious every way I can. Maybe I’ll make this a part one of two, but guys. Do we really need a part two?

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 1 Review, Part I: Welcome to Maljardin

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Synopses: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

What to write about the pilot? How should I begin the introduction to the first real post on this blog? I don’t wish to write a detailed synopsis, because other people have already done so, and I feel neither the need nor the desire to comment on everything in this episode (or, indeed, in any episode). Also, funnier writers than I have already written detailed reviews of it, and I don’t feel I can compete with them, especially if I focus too hard on trying to be funny. So this will be a different kind of review series, focusing on analysis of what I think is important/interesting instead of recapping everything. And I promise that my other posts won’t be as long as this one. There’s just a lot to cover in this first post.

One of the main questions that I intend to explore in this post series is what makes a TV show “bad.” Obviously, this is purely subjective, and most of what I write will be my silly personal opinion, but we are dealing with a show that many people consider “bad” and that, arguably, is “bad” by most mainstream TV watchers’ standards nowadays. Today, we live in an era where TV dramas have increasingly higher budgets and production values, where viewers expect realistic acting and special effects, where streaming and binge-watching are increasingly the norm, and where making a single continuity error or retcon will inspire scorn from your entire fanbase (and God forbid one of the actors forgets to throw out their Starbucks cup). TV today is almost the polar opposite of TV in 1969, when shows were much lower budget, special effect failures were far more acceptable, and streaming on demand probably sounded more absurd than using science to bring a frozen woman’s body back to life. As such, people today expect different things from television from the soap opera viewers of fifty years ago, and are quick to dismiss a show as bad.

I agree that continuity errors and retcons are signs of mediocre writing, but do high production values and good special effects really matter? Is realistic acting necessary for drama, or can drama be just as effective with artificial, stylized, hammy or campy acting? How do we separate a genuinely bad show from one that is merely dated, or that has a few minor problems? If you ask me, the answer lies in the writing and the effectiveness of the acting--and it is the writing that will be the primary focus of this blog.

The pilot, like the 43 episodes that follow, was written by Ian Martin, an actor-turned-writer for soap operas and later Gothic romance and horror. He is most famous for writing over two hundred episodes of CBS Radio Mystery Theater in the 1970s. (While I only recently discovered CBSRMT and therefore haven’t listened to most of the episodes yet, I can say that those of his that I’ve listened to are very good. I particularly recommend “And Death Makes Even Steven” and “Time and Again.”) For the plot of Strange Paradise, Martin seems to have drawn on his own life experiences: namely, the tragic early death of his first wife, the actress Inge Adams. According to Curt Ladnier, “Though no one can claim to know what was going through Ian Martin’s mind as he wrote the scripts laying the groundwork for Strange Paradise‘s basic plot, it’s not hard to conceive he may have felt some familiarity with the story of a man who lost the love of his life to an untimely death.” His grief shines through every speech that he has Jean Paul give to Erica. Indeed, his episodes have far more heart in them than later Maljardin episodes or Desmond Hall, and most of my favorite episodes were his work. They also have a lot of snarky humor and better dialogue than most of the later episodes, so, if you imagine a sliding scale going from “good” to “slightly so-bad-it’s-good” to “David Wells,” most would be on the “good” side. (Most of Desmond Hall, in contrast, is decidedly on the other--which is a given, considering that David Wells plays a prominent role in that arc, and most of the time he’s hilariously bad.)

This is not to say that Martin’s writing is perfect. Some of his episodes drag and he is not exactly subtle about many things. He has characters (especially Raxl) repeat themselves perhaps more than is necessary. Also, many of his episodes contain a certain subplot that I find boring and pointless and that the show could have done without. (More on all these things when we get to them.) The early Maljardin episodes are not masterpieces, but they’re a hell of a lot better than most of what came after. And it’s clear that Martin was trying to do its own thing, rather than copy off Dark Shadows.

So, anyway, enough about Ian Martin and onto my thoughts about Episode 1, which is what you presumably came here for:

The obligatory first-episode title card screencap

The show opens on the fictional Caribbean island of Maljardin, which roughly translates to “garden of evil.” Jardin is French for “garden” and mal for “evil (noun).” Mal can also be used as an adverb to mean “badly,” but it is not an adjective. “Evil (adjective) garden” would be Mauvaisjardin, which doesn’t sound half as cool. The exterior shots are of Casa Loma, a mansion in Toronto surrounded by trees that look nothing like anything in the Caribbean, but I can forgive them because the Château de Maljardin is awesome both inside and out. I would say I want to live on Maljardin, but I don’t like the heat and I’m sure the air conditioning costs for the château are extravagant--and, although they never mention it on the show, you know that filthy rich and frequently overdressed Jean Paul Desmond would have had air conditioning installed.

Jean Paul Desmond (Colin Fox) is the master of Maljardin and he is grieving the death of his wife Erica (Lara Cochrane), whose body he is preparing to freeze in order to bring her back to life at some point in the future. Erica has apparently only just died, and he is already having his servant Quito (Kurt Schiegl) carry huge blocks of dry ice--with his bare hands (WTF?)--to line her coffin. Jean Paul must have spent a while preparing for this, and one wonders how far in advance he had to decide to do this, especially since he has already arranged for the Cryonics Society to professionally freeze her and they state in the first episode that he does not have a phone on his island. I’ve watched this episode three times and, each time I watch it, the whole situation seems a little more suspicious. But maybe he and/or Dr. Menkin (Joe Austin) predicted her death far in advance and planned accordingly? Surely a man as besotted with his wife as Jean Paul couldn’t have murdered her, right?

I love the scene where he makes his grand entrance carrying Erica. It's so extra. He's so extra.

I’m not speculating about all this because I don’t like Jean Paul, but rather because of certain clues in the narrative that might reflect a once-planned plot twist that writers after Martin ignored. (The keyword is might; I have no evidence that Martin was planning one, but one can always speculate.) In fact, I adore Jean Paul. His actor, Colin Fox, is the main reason why I’m obsessed with this show and can’t stop watching it. I have a huge crush on him thanks to this show, even bigger than my previous #1 crush, which was on King Henri III of France. Jean Paul is exactly my type: super-tall (he looks about 6′6″/2 meters), dark, handsome (more so when he’s not brooding), graceful, elegant, and very, very extra. He also has a beautiful voice, and I love listening to him talk. Yes, I know I’m attracted to him for mostly superficial reasons, but Jean Paul’s a fictional character, so does it matter? There are only a few problems with him, most notably some megalomaniacal tendencies:

I suppose, though, that it’s inevitable to become somewhat of a megalomaniac when you own not just an isolated private island, but “a brokerage house, a department store, three newspapers, a football franchise, motion picture and television interests, and real estate holdings,” to quote another character. Jean Paul thinks that he can bring Erica back to life by spending millions of dollars on cryonics, which other characters--most notably his housekeeper Raxl (Cosette Lee)--insist is playing God. Only one other character approves, and he even applauds him for it:

This is Jacques Eloi des Mondes, Jean Paul’s identical ancestor from the 17th century and my favorite character on this show. His surname literally means “of the worlds,” which I think is an awesome name for a character in an urban fantasy/horror series. According to Raxl, who is highly knowledgeable about both the des Mondes family history and the supernatural, Jacques Eloi des Mondes was THE DEVIL. (It is never clear whether she means this literally or figuratively.) He is also, in my not-so-humble opinion, the single hottest male character in the history of television. No exceptions. If you gave me the choice between Jacques and the entire cast of every other show in existence, I would choose him. He is charming, charismatic, seductive, and hilarious, at least in Ian Martin’s episodes. Most of the writers after Martin, however, ignore his superficial charm and focus instead on his evil, which Martin mostly only hints at. Anyway, Jacques talks through this portrait--a surprisingly good one compared to other “period” portraits from other shows and movies--which glows when his spirit talks to Jean Paul in this episode and which disappears when he (mild spoiler alert)

possesses him.

Jean Paul realizes that he and Jacques have a lot in common, including both having lost their wives at a young age. It is implied that he may even be a reincarnation of Jacques, who calls him “the man you are, the man you might have been,” before making him have a flashback to Jacques’ wedding reception three hundred years earlier. I will cover the flashback in another post, because, despite being only a minute and a half long, there is a lot to unpack and I want to critique the costumes in addition to analyzing the content. But I will say this now: Martin has Jacques mention “the cliff heights at sunset” in a rather ominous way, followed by a glance at the camera that suggests a much darker intent than just showing them to his bride:

This is the face of a very handsome man who is contemplating murder.

After this flashback, Jean Paul finds a glass of brandy in his hand that wasn’t there before: something which only Debby Graham’s synopsis mentions, but which is the first of many instances of Jacques literally making him drink. Jacques offers to resurrect Erica in return for Jean Paul setting him free, which involves finding his effigy in the crypt in the basement and removing a silver pin from its head. Jean Paul does this in a scene interspersed with clips of a singer performing a bad cover of “That Old Black Magic” (somewhere between slightly so-bad-it’s-good and David Wells on the sliding scale), and, as soon as he removes the pin from the doll’s head, Raxl freaks out because she senses what has just happened:

Jacques: *bows* “Bonjour!” *smirks as show cuts to brief shot of blank portrait* “The voodoo spell is broken.” *taps on doll’s head with pin* “I no longer have any need for you. Now...”

Raxl: "YOU DEVIL OUT OF HELL! OH! YOU FOOL! HOW DID YOU EVER BREAK THE SPELL THAT BOUND YOU TO-" *stops in archway and gasps*

Jacques: *in both Jean Paul’’s body and clothes now* "Why, what's the matter with you, Raxl?"

Jacques Eloi des Mondes, THE DEVIL, has possessed Jean Paul and is loose on Maljardin! And the episode ends shortly after.

While not one of the best episodes, the pilot is definitely interesting. The acting is somewhat campy and cheesy, especially in the flashback and in all of Raxl’s scenes, so this episode is definitely so bad it’s good. If you have read any of the synopses I linked to earlier in this article, it will be obvious that I didn’t write about everyone and everything in this episode (notably, I didn’t cover Alison and Dan’s scenes), but that is out of a desire to focus on Jean Paul and Jacques rather than a lack of interest. I do wonder, though: is this the first time that Jacques has spoken to Jean Paul? And just what is the true, original story behind Erica’s death?

{ <-- Previous: Introduction   ||   Next: Episode 1, Part II --> }

[xladymalice]

Swapfell Stuff - Topic “Swapfell/Fellswap” Movement - My opinion - My stuff

This is going to be a long ass post. Like really.

If you don’t bother about this movement, it’s ok. Scroll down, ignore this.

For everyone else who wants to know my opinion and statement.

I hope I don’t offend anyone. And this doesn’t got against the ones who set up the Swapfell/Fellswap Movement and their attempt on bringing back the original design.

I maybe sound somewhat pissy, my grammar is shit but I honestly don’t care.

I want to get this off my soul, so I can continue working on my beloved shit: Swapfell.

Here we go.

So.... this there is this movement around "Swapfell" and "Fellswap" going on and since I already had disputes and discussions with some of my followers, I decided to put my statement here for once and for all.

I kind of feel that I must state something about this matter, since my blog is all about Swapfell right now and this probably won't change in a long while.

As you should've noticed by now, my Swapfell design was somewhat different from the start and is now entirely different from the "popular" version that - thanks to this movement- is called Fellswap now. Since I chose Eli's design, it probably reminds of Fellswap, but it is not. That's why I am actually super annoyed by this distinction. At first I thought it's a good idea, but now I think it's kind of unnecessary to part this into two halves. It's probably causing confusion, worry and a war between fanatics and ppl with their own idea. Also... a personal reason: My fucking design is both in some way and it is still SWAPFELL.

When I joined this beautiful fandom I didn't like Swapfell at all. (Like Underswap and also Underfell, yes. I was very sceptic and annoyed by AUs first) Swapfell was just about kinky shit, "master and slave" with no character but smut issues. Underfell was the same shit, but with much more abuse, rape and some Red-fucktoy. This impression still haunts me and disturbs my image of him. Underswap issues... I've explained them to you. It was mostly that childish Blue that didn't resemble UT!Papyrus at all.

However, I've seen quite some great fanarts that got me hooked. Especially after meeting Eli's design, comics and pictures I got really, really interested in them. (It's probably thanks to them that I am Swapfell Trash rn) I wanted to know more about them, understand why they were the way they were. I really had no desire to follow the mainstream route. Why? Because I rarely do. I've avoided Undertale for a good reason when it was hyped like devil's shit.

So... on my long way of reasoning that weird behaviour (like wtf... I didn't understand why a Papyrus was this subby, weak and all "I'm so sorry!" for no reason) I had started to develop my own theories until I stumbled over "Flipping the Script" by @Angelia-Dark. The Swapfell Script is a masterpiece, trust me on this. She's a very talented writer that thinks complex, deep and has a choice of words that can make your heart break by her will. I've come to love the Swapfell Bro's finally understanding how they are supposed to work. At least for me. And I love complex, deep and especially dark shit. Even if it wouldn't have been fontcest, I would've read it. It explains a lot of shit.

So falling in love with Swapfell, I've created my own story and explanation for it. No matter how much I love Angelia's interpretation, it didn't satisfy my thirst and need for this one special AU. I wanted another Swapfell Pap, I wanted another Swapfell Sans. Basing on the origin on Swap but starting in Fell, so I can show the world how Swap turns Fell. It is, no matter how it looks like: SWAPfell.

I'll explain you why. So no one will have the fucking idea to call this Fellswap for design reasons.

Let's start with Pup. He's obviously not that guy you've seen most of the time in the fandom. My interpretation of him is a lot different and it has another reasoning which I show in SWAPFELL DAWN. It's most likely a spin-off AU... it's MY story, MY idea for them and MY interpretation of the original idea of the "name Swapfell". I didn't know the original creator (I didn't see the designs and concepts at all) at that point and I wonder, why that design was abandoned. (I'll talk  about this matter later). So yeah... I liked the design I saw by Eli and some other artists, but I wanted to do my own thing... since Pup is so different, he had to look different and it should support his general idea.

Which is a complete, dark asshole version of Honey (SwapPap). In my AU I'm showing their origin, how they live and change. So yeah, this should explain alot. And yes, I am not very fond of that "Fellswap" Papyrus, since he's too subby and boring for me. There's a lot of cute fanart, that I like very much. I'm Swapfell trash, so I cannot resist it. Still... I prefer my Pup over them.

Now Black:

This Swapfell Sans is MOST LIKELY Blue as a darker version and some different character. He has been Blue at some point in my AU. They are alike, their eyes are alike and they even behave alike.

They've been the fucking same person. It's just that Black's the fallen, dark version who survived tons of shit to stand where he is right now. I don't have to say all that much about it. I've just uploaded my colorscheme and design for my Swapfell-Bros... take a look at it, I've explained some other things about it.

As you can see... they were Swaps before, but they have this "Fell touch" on them. Especially with their lookings. It's somehow mixed. Swapfell and Fellswap were for me one thing and probably will remain one thing for me. Everyone can see it as they want. The swapfell concept is for me simply this: two Au's got mixed. It doesn't matter all that much how  and when. At first I thought it might be a good idea to distinct it, but now I think it's a hassle and probably will cause war and worry. My version looks like both and it is both.

Black is alike to Fell, but he was Blue. Pup was Honey, but now he has some Red AND Edge vibes. I don't fucking care, if someone wants to argue with me. When I joined this fandom, I basically didn't see all that much about Swapfell (more or less "Fellswap" like this movement wanna tell me) so I kind of focused on them after reading Angelia's fic. I've worked hard on them and wanted to create another impression on them and so far I've been successful.

But then... suddenly... Swapfell shot out of the ground like mushrooms and I was positively surprised how much it's loved.

And

I'm kind of annoyed that NOW everyone focuses on it, like it's been all popular and shit. 'cause I felt like it wasn't and I got told ALOT that it wasn't all that popular. Some of my followers even told me that they see me "as the creator" of it, because I give them life and a story. I'm not the creator, but I still felt honored that they started to like Swapfell. 

So... back to the point: suddenly everyone focuses on it and dig up the very first concept of it. You've probably seen it flying around... it's been there from the start and it was FORGOTTEN. Which is honestly shit, since someone worked with it quite some time. And It's always a sign of respect to state that it was there.

However. This doesn't mean that I MUST like it. I don't have to do shit. I've seen it, but I didn't feel attached to it nor did I feel like I had to mess with it. It's the creators thing, I won't touch it. Especially because the blog got deleted and who the hell knows if the creator even wants this. (Not to mention that I probably would delete all of my stuff, if it was a concept, so no one toys around with my ideas and rather does something new from this point on)

I'm seeing this from different perspectives. Like... I have also no idea how the original Underswap is supposed to look like. How they actually should behave... the same for Underfell. The fontcest part of the fandom changed tons of things. TONS. And it got also out of hand. How different both AU's would be without the R18 part. The same for Swapfell.

Also, I really have no idea, if the original creator even bothers with it. If they want to be mentioned or if they deleted their blog so no one would use their work and do shit with it. People wouldn't care in any way, I know that. I've seen it alot with Flowerfell. And this probably happens to the most AU's. I think it's good to show the concept, but I wouldn't force anyone to adapt it. I don't like it and I honestly don't want to mess with it. I've got my own idea that I'm working on. In addition to the concept and idea part.... I know this creator left the fandom for a long while now... the fandom matures and gets more and more AU's... why would you try to name something different now just because there seem to be two ideas? Looking at the name's alone there a tons of possibilities to interprete it.

So please don't restrict the freedom and fantasy of one's mind. Some people approached me all scared that their stuff will be now labeled in the wrong way or get hated for not following the mainstream mass. This is not even a joke, I really had discussions like that.

Feel free to do whatever you want, but respect other's opinions please. It's no fucking reason to start a war for this.

So... there is this other version of Swapfell Papyrus that I met a while ago already:

The first time I saw it, I didn't come to like it. I don't even start with Swapfell Sans. I mean.. hey... if you like it, draw it. I don't. I don't want to. And I don't feel like I have to follow anyone but myself. I looked at the concept and drawings alot, but feeling nothing, I ignored them. As I said, I don't even know if Kkoppang wants us to mess with that thing. Like Au it got out of hand, even forgotten to some degree and there as tons more reasons why I could argue now. Why am I saying this? Because I feel like this movement could be understood wrong. Or maybe I understood it wrong and get all offended suddenly. You see, I think it's a fantastic idea to tell the people "Hey, this is the original Swapfell. Try to look at it and play with the idea!". It would be nice to see some fanart to this, it would also be a sign of respect and maybe this (STRANGELY) forgotten design comes to life again. But I truly hope there won't follow this "Only this is Swapfell and the rest is not", because this is bullshit. If my and some other ideas aren't considered Swapfell anymore then no one can claim their shit as "Underswap" or "Underfell" too, since it got abstracted from the original idea alot.

Like...

TONS.

Even not looking at fontcest here that fucked up alot. And we're all sinners. I'm one of the big ones.

So, I don't know if I'm being disrespectful or not, I'm not doing that great seperation between Swapfell and Fellswap due to the reason, that it can be mixed and that everyone has their own means, ideas and beliefs like I do. I'd like to see more of the original art, but welp. I'm not doing it. I'll stick to the AU I'm working on and if this is not Swapfell, it's "Fallen Swapfell" (aka Swapfell Dawn). I am toying with dark content and shit. I'm making Swap fall. End of story.

So being an individual with my own opinion and being mostly anti-mainstream, I've decided to follow Zed into the wide, scary sea and look out for people who also share the opinion that it should be valued, if you have your own ideas and don't take part of the general hype. I'm not against it, I'm just not supporting it. And I wanted to point out a lot longer that my Swapfells are different from the rest. So I used this opportunity to make this clear.

I know this movement doesn't force anyone to do anything. I believe it's mostly to revive and honor the original design and creator... still.. it bugs me. You can’t just go there and say “THIS IS SWAPFELL AND THE REST IS NOT”, because this fucks up every other AU too, if you take it strictly. Especially with the gone creator.

But Ursik stated a important thing, so I want to name it once more for everyone: "[...] the most important thing for all fandoms: Diversity. Different people are freely to have different views/opinions aka different creations, and everyone’s work should never be limited by which is more “”popular””. "

That's why I stick to my shit.

And.

THIS is also Swapfell.

I'm quoting Zed here: "And I’m not gonna tell people who are into the fellswap swapfell distinction that they’re wrong either. I’m so happy they have another thing to get into. I’m happy the first design is getting more attention. There’s a lot about it that i do like. And that’s that."

I'm sharing the same opinion. I really, really like Zed's SwapfellPap concept, he's totally cool and he's unique. I've always been weak for unique stuff since it's something you'll remember even ages ago.

And I believe my version is also a special case. So yeah. Deal with it.

Also.... taking a look at my Swapfell version and Angelia's one... this is the perfect example of wonderful diversity in the fandom. One name: tons of stories. How different Swapfell is with Pup being the older brother and not Sans. Pup being most likely the dominant part in the relationship instead of the big brother Sans, who takes good care of Pup. We share a lot of ideas, we think alike and our Swapfell Bro's are damn alike. And yet they are so different that you would feel the difference if they stood next to each other. (Not only considering looks.)

So... never limit one's freedom on an idea and opinion. Every idea has been used somewhere before.

But...

I respect the person who started it. And if that person was still active in the fandom, I would respect their wishes and not work with their idea without their approval. That's why I won't allow anyone to write their part to the Swapfell Dawn universe except for "fan-fanart" and shit. 'cause that's nice as hell.

Oh well.... stated everything, I'm out.

[entergamingxp]

Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] Review — Choose a Path That’s Clear

February 21, 2020 2:45 PM EST

French Bread and Arc System Works’ fighting game Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] is brilliant, but may deter some with its high learning curve.

We are in a new golden age for fighting games. For at least the past five years, there have been so many great fighting games that get a ton of support even years after initially releasing. However, some of those great games get overlooked or don’t get the same love that franchises like Street Fighter, Tekken, or Mortal Kombat receive. Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] (abbreviated as UNICLR) falls in that category.

I can think of a few reasons why UNICLR doesn’t have the same amount of fandom. Obviously, it has to do with how long the series has been around. The previously mentioned games are staples; we know what they are, and in a way, they represent this era of fighting games. It’s hard to compete in the same space with these giant franchises that are arguably at their peak.

But I really think UNICLR has fallen under the radar because of its learning curve. It’s hard. Like, really hard. Especially as a newcomer, it is daunting. If you have an understanding of the basics of fighting games, you can probably “mash” your way to victory against CPU and beginner players. But face someone who has put the time in, you will fall fast. I would know. I’m a terrible UNICLR player.

“But I really think UNICLR has fallen under the radar because of its learning curve. It’s hard. Like, really hard.”

Luckily, UNICLR has a really in-depth tutorial that teaches you the fundamentals, as well as some of the more advanced techniques. Similarly to the tutorial in Mortal Kombat 11 (which I believe is the best tutorial in a fighting game), it teaches you the basics in a way that can be used in other fighting games. Although some of the terminology used is unique to UNICLR, you can easily use the information given in just about any fighting game.

In my eyes, tutorials kind of make or break my experience with any fighting game. Sure, there are some I can just go into training mode, pick the game’s most basic character (like Ryu in Street Fighter or Haohmaru in Samurai Shodown), go into the training room, and instantly understand the game and its rules and limitations. But UNICLR is not that game. If it did not have a good tutorial, I would have fallen off instantly.

So, what makes this game so difficult? It does play like any other fighting game, after all. You have a light, medium, and heavy attack, along with a few special moves. These can be strung together to form combos. You also have a meter (called the EXS gauge) that fills throughout a match, which can be used to enhance special moves or execute super special moves called Infinite Worth and Infinite Worth EXS (which can only be used if your health is under 30%). It really isn’t unlike anything you haven’t played. What sets UNICLR apart from other fighting games, however, is the pace of battle, the reliance on combos, and how combos are executed.

A lot of fighting games now have somewhat simplified their gameplay. For example, let’s talk about Dragon Ball FighterZ. While there is certainly depth to the team fighter, and it is incredibly fast-paced in comparison to Street Fighter or Tekken, the fact you can auto-combo makes it so easy to get into. Simply mashing a button gives you a string of attacks and could be the base of how you approach every moment in a fight. Sure, there are a ton of variables, but they are pretty easy to get the hang of.

“When a newcomer picks this game up and quickly realizes it’s on a whole other level than any of the other fighting games many know and love, I could see a ton of people falling off, just like myself.”

For UNICLR, it is not that easy. Sure, there is one auto-combo you can do (called Smart Steer), but it isn’t going to be your bread and butter. What will help you tremendously is understanding the game’s Passing Link system. Each normal can be canceled with another normal and can be done from weakest to strongest attack or vice versa. You can also mix in crouching, standing, or aerial moves into this Passing Link, which makes up your combo. You can also cancel with a special move or Infinite Worth to maximize your damage.

It is an easy system to understand, but executing a solid combo is tough since it involves memorizing a number of rather long button sequences. And even if it seems easy to execute in training, doing it during an actual match, which is ridiculously fast-paced, will prove to be a challenge.

This is why UNICLR may have a hard time truly finding itself a mainstream audience. Yes, the game will be at EVO, arguably the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, and yes, it is incredibly entertaining to watch. But when a newcomer picks this game up and quickly realizes it’s on a whole other level than any of the other fighting games many know and love, I could see a ton of people falling off, just like myself.

If you have been a fan of previous iterations of Under Night In-Birth, or you decided to stick with UNICLR, there are a ton of features that are great for both newcomers and veterans. The Arcade mode is pretty standard, telling the story of each character. The Chronicles mode, which is a prequel to the Arcade mode, adds another layer to the narrative. It is purely dialogue-driven and gives a ton of details about the world and the characters that inhabit it.

Honestly, I have no idea what this story is about. Nor was I interested. There is so much dialogue, and a lot of it is in-universe terms that are kind of vague. The Chronicles mode does give you some explanation of what EXS is and what the exact state of the world is, but it didn’t really tell its tale in a way that kept me captivated. In fact, after a few Arcade mode completions, I would just skip all the dialogue because I really didn’t understand what was going on in the first place.

“Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] is so unique.”

That doesn’t mean the design of the world isn’t good. I do really love the art style of the characters and the game’s world. The detailed pixelated anime character models look great, along with the drawn environments. It has a very distinct look, and it stands out because of it.

This is doubly true of UNICLR‘s soundtrack. The music in this game is so good. It’s so melodic and symphonic but has a tinge of rock. It is fantastic. Just listen to the character select music above. The bass slaps.

Like many modern fighting games, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] is so unique. While it has a really steep learning curve that may turn casual fighting game players off, it is incredibly satisfying if you put the time in. If you love fighting games and want a challenge, then look no further.

February 21, 2020 2:45 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/under-night-in-birth-exelatecl-r-review-choose-a-path-thats-clear/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=under-night-in-birth-exelatecl-r-review-choose-a-path-thats-clear

[sheminecrafts]

Muzmatch adds $7M to swipe right on Muslim majority markets

Muzmatch, a matchmaking app for Muslims, has just swiped a $7 million Series A on the back of continued momentum for its community sensitive approach to soulmate searching for people of the Islamic faith.

It now has more than 1.5M users of its apps, across 210 countries, swiping, matching and chatting online as they try to find ‘the one’.

The funding, which Muzmatch says will help fuel growth in key international markets, is jointly led by US hedge fund Luxor Capital, and Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator — the latter having previously selected Muzmatch for its summer 2017 batch of startups. 

Last year the team also took in a $1.75M seed, led by Fabrice Grinda’s FJ Labs, YC and others.

We first covered the startup two years ago when its founders were just graduating from YC. At that time there were two of them building the business: Shahzad Younas and Ryan Brodie — a perhaps unlikely pairing in this context, given Brodie’s lack of a Muslim background. He joined after meeting Younas, who had earlier quit his job as an investment banker to launch Muzmatch. Brodie got excited by the idea and early traction for the MVP. The pair went on to ship a relaunch of the app in mid 2016 which helped snag them a place at YC.

So why did Younas and Brodie unmatch? All the remaining founder can say publicly is that its investors are buying Brodie’s stake. (While, in a note on LinkedIn — celebrating what he dubs the “bittersweet” news of Muzmatch’s Series A — Brodie writes: “Separate to this raise I decided to sell my stake in the company. This is not from a lack of faith — on the contrary — it’s simply the right time for me to move on to startup number 4 now with the capital to take big risks.”)

Asked what’s harder, finding a steady co-founder or finding a life partner, Younas responds with a laugh. “With myself and Ryan, full credit, when we first joined together we did commit to each other, I guess, a period of time of really going for it,” he ventures, reaching for the phrase “conscious uncoupling” to sum up how things went down. “We both literally put blood sweat and tears into the app, into growing what it is. And for sure without him we wouldn’t be as far as we are now, that’s definitely true.”

“For me it’s a fantastic outcome for him. I’m genuinely super happy for him. For someone of his age and at that time of his life — now he’s got the ability to start another startup and back himself, which is amazing. Not many people have that opportunity,” he adds.

Younas says he isn’t looking for another co-founder at this stage of the business. Though he notes they have just hired a CTO — “purely because there’s so much to do that I want to make sure I’ve got a few people in certain areas”.

The team has grown from just four people seven months ago to 17 now. With the Series A the plan is to further expand headcount to almost 30.

“In terms of a co-founder, I don’t think, necessarily, at this point it’s needed,” Younas tells TechCrunch. “I obviously understand this community a lot. I’ve equally grown in terms of my role in the company and understanding various parts of the company. You get this experience by doing — so now I think definitely it helps having the simplicity of a single founder and really guiding it along.”

Despite the co-founders parting ways that’s no doubting Muzmatch’s momentum. Aside from solid growth of its user base (it was reporting ~200k two years ago), its press release touts 30,000+ “successes” worldwide — which Younas says translates to people who have left the app and told it they did so because they met someone on Muzmatch.

He reckons at least half of those left in order to get married — and for a matchmaking app that is the ultimate measure of success.

“Everywhere I go I’m meeting people who have met on Muzmatch. It has been really transformative for the Muslim community where we’ve taken off — and it is amazing to see, genuinely,” he says, suggesting the real success metric is “much higher because so many people don’t tell us”.

Nor is he worried about being too successful, despite 100 people a day leaving because they met someone on the app. “For us that’s literally the best thing that can happen because we’ve grown mostly by word of mouth — people telling their friends I met someone on your app. Muslim weddings are quite big, a lot of people attend and word does spread,” he says.

Muzmatch was already profitable two years ago (and still is, for “some” months, though that’s not been a focus), which has given it leverage to focus on growing at a pace it’s comfortable with as a young startup. But the plan with the Series A cash is to accelerate growth by focusing attention internationally on Muslim majority markets vs an early focus on markets, including the UK and the US, with Muslim minority populations.

This suggests potential pitfalls lie ahead for the team to manage growth in a sustainable way — ensuring scaling usage doesn’t outstrip their ability to maintain the ‘safe space’ feel the target users need, while at the same time catering to the needs of an increasingly diverse community of Muslim singles.

“We’re going to be focusing on Muslim majority countries where we feel that they would be more receptive to technology. There’s slightly less of a taboo around finding someone online. There’s culture changes already happening, etc.,” he says, declining to name the specific markets they’ll be fixing on. “That’s definitely what we’re looking for initially. That will obviously allow us to scale in a big way going forward.

“We’ve always done [marketing] in a very data-driven way,” he adds, discussing his approach to growth. “Up til now I’ve led on that. Pretty much everything in this company I’ve self taught. So I learnt, essentially, how to build a growth engine, how to scale an optimize campaigns, digital spend, and these big guys have seen our data and they’re impressed with the progress we’ve made, and the customer acquisition costs that we’ve achieved — considering we really are targeting quite a niche market… Up til now we closed our Series A with more than half our seed round in our accounts.”

Muzmatch has also laid the groundwork for the planned international push, having already fully localized the app — which is live in 14 languages, including right to left languages like Arabic.

“We’re localized and we get a lot of organic users everywhere but obviously once you focus on a particular area — in terms of content, in terms of your brand etc — then it really does start to take off,” adds Younas.

The team’s careful catering to the needs of its target community — via things like manual moderation of every profile and offering an optional chaperoning feature for in-app chats — i.e. rather than just ripping out a ‘Tinder for Muslims’ clone, can surely take some credit for helping to grow the market for Muslim matchmaking apps overall.

“Shahzad has clearly made something that people want. He is a resourceful founder who has been listening to his users and in the process has developed an invaluable service for the Muslim community, in a way that mainstream companies have failed to do,” says YC partner Tim Brady in a supporting statement. 

But the flip side of attracting attention and spotlighting a commercial opportunity means Muzmatch now faces increased competition — such as from the likes of Dubai-based Veil: A rival matchmaking app which has recently turned heads with a ‘digital veil’ feature that applies an opaque filter to all profile photos, male and female, until a mutual match is made.

Muzmatch also lets users hide their photos, if they choose. But it has resisted imposing a one-size-fits-all template on the user experience — exactly in order that it can appeal more broadly, regardless of the user’s level of religious adherence (it has even attracted non-Muslim users with a genuine interest in meeting a life partner).

Younas says he’s not worried about fresh faces entering the same matchmaking app space — couching it as a validation of the market.

He’s also dismissive of gimmicky startups that can often pass through the dating space, usually on a fast burn to nowhere. Though he is expecting more competition from major players, such as Tinder-owner Match, which he notes has been eyeing up some of the same geographical markets.

“We know there’s going to be attention in this area,” he says. “Our goal is to basically continue to be the dominant player but for us to race ahead in terms of the quality of our product offering and obviously our size. That’s the goal. Having this investment definitely gives us that ammo to really go for it. But by the same token I’d never want us to be that silly startup that just burns a tonne of money and ends up nowhere.”

“It’s a very complex population, it’s very diverse in terms of culture, in terms of tradition,” he adds of the target market. “We so far have successfully been able to navigate that — of creating a product that does, to the user, marries technology with respecting the faith.”

Feature development is now front of mind for Muzmatch as it moves into the next phase of growth, and as — Younas hopes — it has more time to focus on finessing what its product offers, having bagged investment by proving product market fit and showing traction.

“The first thing that we’re going to be doing is an actual refreshing of our brand,” he says. “A bit of a rebrand, keeping the same name, a bit of a refresh of our brand, tidying that up. Actually refreshing the app, top to bottom. Part of that is looking at changes that have happened in the — call it — ‘dating space’. Because what we’ve always tried to do is look at the good that’s happening, get rid of the bad stuff, and try and package it and make it applicable to a Muslim audience.

“I think that’s what we’ve done really well. And I always wanted to innovate on that — so we’ve got a bunch of ideas around a complete refresh of the app.”

Video is one area they’re experimenting with for future features. TechCrunch’s interview with Younas takes place via a video chat using what looks to be its own videoconferencing platform, though there’s not currently a feature in Muzmatch that lets users chat remotely via video.

Its challenge on this front will be implementing richer comms features in a way that a diverse community of religious users can accept.

“I want to — and we have this firmly on our roadmap, and I hope that it’s within six months — be introducing or bringing ways to connect people on our platform that they’ve never been able to do before. That’s going to be key. Elements of video is going to be really interesting,” says Younas teasing their thinking around video.

“The key for us is how do we do [videochat] in a way that is sensible and equally gives both sides control. That’s the key.”

Nor will it just be “simple video”. He says they’re also looking at how they can use profile data more creatively, especially for helping more private users connect around shared personality traits.

“There’s a lot of things we want to do within the app of really showing the richness of our profiles. One thing that we have that other apps don’t have are profiles that are really rich. So we have about 22 different data points on the profile. There’s a lot that people do and want to share. So the goal for us is how do we really try and show that off?

“We have a segment of profiles where the photos are private, right, people want that anonymity… so the goal for us is then saying how can we really show your personality, what you’re about in a really good way. And right now I would argue we don’t quite do it well enough. We’ve got a tonne of ideas and part of the rebrand and the refresh will be really emphasizing and helping that segment of society who do want to be private but equally want people to understand what they’re about.”

Where does he want the business to be in 12 months’ time? With a more polished product and “a lot of key features in the way of connecting the community around marriage — or just community in general”.

In terms of growth the aim is at least 4x where they are now.

“These are ambitious targets. Especially given the amount that we want to re-engineer and rebuild but now is the time,” he adds. “Now we have the fortune of having a big team, of having the investment. And really focusing and finessing our product… Really give it a lot of love and really give it a lot of the things we’ve always wanted to do and never quite had the time to do. That’s the key.

“I’m personally super excited about some of the stuff coming up because it’s a big enabler — growing the team and having the ability to really execute on this a lot faster.”

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2K3ROfm via IFTTT

[endenogatai]

Muzmatch adds $7M to swipe right on Muslim majority markets

Muzmatch, a matchmaking app for Muslims, has just swiped a $7 million Series A on the back of continued momentum for its community sensitive approach to soulmate searching for people of the Islamic faith.

It now has more than 1.5M users of its apps, across 210 countries, swiping, matching and chatting online as they try to find ‘the one’.

The funding, which Muzmatch says will help fuel growth in key international markets, is jointly led by US hedge fund Luxor Capital, and Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator — the latter having previously selected Muzmatch for its summer 2017 batch of startups. 

Last year the team also took in a $1.75M seed, led by Fabrice Grinda’s FJ Labs, YC and others.

We first covered the startup two years ago when its founders were just graduating from YC. At that time there were two of them building the business: Shahzad Younas and Ryan Brodie — a perhaps unlikely pairing in this context, given Brodie’s lack of a Muslim background. He joined after meeting Younas, who had earlier quit his job as an investment banker to launch Muzmatch. Brodie got excited by the idea and early traction for the MVP. The pair went on to ship a relaunch of the app in mid 2016 which helped snag them a place at YC.

So why did Younas and Brodie unmatch? All the remaining founder can say publicly is that its investors are buying Brodie’s stake. (While, in a note on LinkedIn — celebrating what he dubs the “bittersweet” news of Muzmatch’s Series A — Brodie writes: “Separate to this raise I decided to sell my stake in the company. This is not from a lack of faith — on the contrary — it’s simply the right time for me to move on to startup number 4 now with the capital to take big risks.”)

Asked what’s harder, finding a steady co-founder or finding a life partner, Younas responds with a laugh. “With myself and Ryan, full credit, when we first joined together we did commit to each other, I guess, a period of time of really going for it,” he ventures, reaching for the phrase “conscious uncoupling” to sum up how things went down. “We both literally put blood sweat and tears into the app, into growing what it is. And for sure without him we wouldn’t be as far as we are now, that’s definitely true.”

“For me it’s a fantastic outcome for him. I’m genuinely super happy for him. For someone of his age and at that time of his life — now he’s got the ability to start another startup and back himself, which is amazing. Not many people have that opportunity,” he adds.

Younas says he isn’t looking for another co-founder at this stage of the business. Though he notes they have just hired a CTO — “purely because there’s so much to do that I want to make sure I’ve got a few people in certain areas”.

The team has grown from just four people seven months ago to 17 now. With the Series A the plan is to further expand headcount to almost 30.

“In terms of a co-founder, I don’t think, necessarily, at this point it’s needed,” Younas tells TechCrunch. “I obviously understand this community a lot. I’ve equally grown in terms of my role in the company and understanding various parts of the company. You get this experience by doing — so now I think definitely it helps having the simplicity of a single founder and really guiding it along.”

Despite the co-founders parting ways that’s no doubting Muzmatch’s momentum. Aside from solid growth of its user base (it was reporting ~200k two years ago), its press release touts 30,000+ “successes” worldwide — which Younas says translates to people who have left the app and told it they did so because they met someone on Muzmatch.

He reckons at least half of those left in order to get married — and for a matchmaking app that is the ultimate measure of success.

“Everywhere I go I’m meeting people who have met on Muzmatch. It has been really transformative for the Muslim community where we’ve taken off — and it is amazing to see, genuinely,” he says, suggesting the real success metric is “much higher because so many people don’t tell us”.

Nor is he worried about being too successful, despite 100 people a day leaving because they met someone on the app. “For us that’s literally the best thing that can happen because we’ve grown mostly by word of mouth — people telling their friends I met someone on your app. Muslim weddings are quite big, a lot of people attend and word does spread,” he says.

Muzmatch was already profitable two years ago (and still is, for “some” months, though that’s not been a focus), which has given it leverage to focus on growing at a pace it’s comfortable with as a young startup. But the plan with the Series A cash is to accelerate growth by focusing attention internationally on Muslim majority markets vs an early focus on markets, including the UK and the US, with Muslim minority populations.

This suggests potential pitfalls lie ahead for the team to manage growth in a sustainable way — ensuring scaling usage doesn’t outstrip their ability to maintain the ‘safe space’ feel the target users need, while at the same time catering to the needs of an increasingly diverse community of Muslim singles.

“We’re going to be focusing on Muslim majority countries where we feel that they would be more receptive to technology. There’s slightly less of a taboo around finding someone online. There’s culture changes already happening, etc.,” he says, declining to name the specific markets they’ll be fixing on. “That’s definitely what we’re looking for initially. That will obviously allow us to scale in a big way going forward.

“We’ve always done [marketing] in a very data-driven way,” he adds, discussing his approach to growth. “Up til now I’ve led on that. Pretty much everything in this company I’ve self taught. So I learnt, essentially, how to build a growth engine, how to scale an optimize campaigns, digital spend, and these big guys have seen our data and they’re impressed with the progress we’ve made, and the customer acquisition costs that we’ve achieved — considering we really are targeting quite a niche market… Up til now we closed our Series A with more than half our seed round in our accounts.”

Muzmatch has also laid the groundwork for the planned international push, having already fully localized the app — which is live in 14 languages, including right to left languages like Arabic.

“We’re localized and we get a lot of organic users everywhere but obviously once you focus on a particular area — in terms of content, in terms of your brand etc — then it really does start to take off,” adds Younas.

The team’s careful catering to the needs of its target community — via things like manual moderation of every profile and offering an optional chaperoning feature for in-app chats — i.e. rather than just ripping out a ‘Tinder for Muslims’ clone, can surely take some credit for helping to grow the market for Muslim matchmaking apps overall.

“Shahzad has clearly made something that people want. He is a resourceful founder who has been listening to his users and in the process has developed an invaluable service for the Muslim community, in a way that mainstream companies have failed to do,” says YC partner Tim Brady in a supporting statement. 

But the flip side of attracting attention and spotlighting a commercial opportunity means Muzmatch now faces increased competition — such as from the likes of Dubai-based Veil: A rival matchmaking app which has recently turned heads with a ‘digital veil’ feature that applies an opaque filter to all profile photos, male and female, until a mutual match is made.

Muzmatch also lets users hide their photos, if they choose. But it has resisted imposing a one-size-fits-all template on the user experience — exactly in order that it can appeal more broadly, regardless of the user’s level of religious adherence (it has even attracted non-Muslim users with a genuine interest in meeting a life partner).

Younas says he’s not worried about fresh faces entering the same matchmaking app space — couching it as a validation of the market.

He’s also dismissive of gimmicky startups that can often pass through the dating space, usually on a fast burn to nowhere. Though he is expecting more competition from major players, such as Tinder-owner Match, which he notes has been eyeing up some of the same geographical markets.

“We know there’s going to be attention in this area,” he says. “Our goal is to basically continue to be the dominant player but for us to race ahead in terms of the quality of our product offering and obviously our size. That’s the goal. Having this investment definitely gives us that ammo to really go for it. But by the same token I’d never want us to be that silly startup that just burns a tonne of money and ends up nowhere.”

“It’s a very complex population, it’s very diverse in terms of culture, in terms of tradition,” he adds of the target market. “We so far have successfully been able to navigate that — of creating a product that does, to the user, marries technology with respecting the faith.”

Feature development is now front of mind for Muzmatch as it moves into the next phase of growth, and as — Younas hopes — it has more time to focus on finessing what its product offers, having bagged investment by proving product market fit and showing traction.

“The first thing that we’re going to be doing is an actual refreshing of our brand,” he says. “A bit of a rebrand, keeping the same name, a bit of a refresh of our brand, tidying that up. Actually refreshing the app, top to bottom. Part of that is looking at changes that have happened in the — call it — ‘dating space’. Because what we’ve always tried to do is look at the good that’s happening, get rid of the bad stuff, and try and package it and make it applicable to a Muslim audience.

“I think that’s what we’ve done really well. And I always wanted to innovate on that — so we’ve got a bunch of ideas around a complete refresh of the app.”

Video is one area they’re experimenting with for future features. TechCrunch’s interview with Younas takes place via a video chat using what looks to be its own videoconferencing platform, though there’s not currently a feature in Muzmatch that lets users chat remotely via video.

Its challenge on this front will be implementing richer comms features in a way that a diverse community of religious users can accept.

“I want to — and we have this firmly on our roadmap, and I hope that it’s within six months — be introducing or bringing ways to connect people on our platform that they’ve never been able to do before. That’s going to be key. Elements of video is going to be really interesting,” says Younas teasing their thinking around video.

“The key for us is how do we do [videochat] in a way that is sensible and equally gives both sides control. That’s the key.”

Nor will it just be “simple video”. He says they’re also looking at how they can use profile data more creatively, especially for helping more private users connect around shared personality traits.

“There’s a lot of things we want to do within the app of really showing the richness of our profiles. One thing that we have that other apps don’t have are profiles that are really rich. So we have about 22 different data points on the profile. There’s a lot that people do and want to share. So the goal for us is how do we really try and show that off?

“We have a segment of profiles where the photos are private, right, people want that anonymity… so the goal for us is then saying how can we really show your personality, what you’re about in a really good way. And right now I would argue we don’t quite do it well enough. We’ve got a tonne of ideas and part of the rebrand and the refresh will be really emphasizing and helping that segment of society who do want to be private but equally want people to understand what they’re about.”

Where does he want the business to be in 12 months’ time? With a more polished product and “a lot of key features in the way of connecting the community around marriage — or just community in general”.

In terms of growth the aim is at least 4x where they are now.

“These are ambitious targets. Especially given the amount that we want to re-engineer and rebuild but now is the time,” he adds. “Now we have the fortune of having a big team, of having the investment. And really focusing and finessing our product… Really give it a lot of love and really give it a lot of the things we’ve always wanted to do and never quite had the time to do. That’s the key.

“I’m personally super excited about some of the stuff coming up because it’s a big enabler — growing the team and having the ability to really execute on this a lot faster.”

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/2K3ROfm via IFTTT

[technicalsolutions88]

Muzmatch, a matchmaking app for Muslims, has just swiped a $7 million Series A on the back of continued momentum for its community sensitive approach to soulmate searching for people of the Islamic faith.

It now has more than 1.5M users of its apps, across 210 countries, swiping, matching and chatting online as they try to find ‘the one’.

The funding, which Muzmatch says will help fuel growth in key international markets, is jointly led by US hedge fund Luxor Capital, and Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator — the latter having previously selected Muzmatch for its summer 2017 batch of startups. 

Last year the team also took in a $1.75M seed, led by Fabrice Grinda’s FJ Labs, YC and others.

We first covered the startup two years ago when its founders were just graduating from YC. At that time there were two of them building the business: Shahzad Younas and Ryan Brodie — a perhaps unlikely pairing in this context, given Brodie’s lack of a Muslim background. He joined after meeting Younas, who had earlier quit his job as an investment banker to launch Muzmatch. Brodie got excited by the idea and early traction for the MVP. The pair went on to ship a relaunch of the app in mid 2016 which helped snag them a place at YC.

So why did Younas and Brodie unmatch? All the remaining founder can say publicly is that its investors are buying Brodie’s stake. (While, in a note on LinkedIn — celebrating what he dubs the “bittersweet” news of Muzmatch’s Series A — Brodie writes: “Separate to this raise I decided to sell my stake in the company. This is not from a lack of faith — on the contrary — it’s simply the right time for me to move on to startup number 4 now with the capital to take big risks.”)

Asked what’s harder, finding a steady co-founder or finding a life partner, Younas responds with a laugh. “With myself and Ryan, full credit, when we first joined together we did commit to each other, I guess, a period of time of really going for it,” he ventures, reaching for the phrase “conscious uncoupling” to sum up how things went down. “We both literally put blood sweat and tears into the app, into growing what it is. And for sure without him we wouldn’t be as far as we are now, that’s definitely true.”

“For me it’s a fantastic outcome for him. I’m genuinely super happy for him. For someone of his age and at that time of his life — now he’s got the ability to start another startup and back himself, which is amazing. Not many people have that opportunity,” he adds.

Younas says he isn’t looking for another co-founder at this stage of the business. Though he notes they have just hired a CTO — “purely because there’s so much to do that I want to make sure I’ve got a few people in certain areas”.

The team has grown from just four people seven months ago to 17 now. With the Series A the plan is to further expand headcount to almost 30.

“In terms of a co-founder, I don’t think, necessarily, at this point it’s needed,” Younas tells TechCrunch. “I obviously understand this community a lot. I’ve equally grown in terms of my role in the company and understanding various parts of the company. You get this experience by doing — so now I think definitely it helps having the simplicity of a single founder and really guiding it along.”

Despite the co-founders parting ways that’s no doubting Muzmatch’s momentum. Aside from solid growth of its user base (it was reporting ~200k two years ago), its press release touts 30,000+ “successes” worldwide — which Younas says translates to people who have left the app and told it they did so because they met someone on Muzmatch.

He reckons at least half of those left in order to get married — and for a matchmaking app that is the ultimate measure of success.

“Everywhere I go I’m meeting people who have met on Muzmatch. It has been really transformative for the Muslim community where we’ve taken off — and it is amazing to see, genuinely,” he says, suggesting the real success metric is “much higher because so many people don’t tell us”.

Nor is he worried about being too successful, despite 100 people a day leaving because they met someone on the app. “For us that’s literally the best thing that can happen because we’ve grown mostly by word of mouth — people telling their friends I met someone on your app. Muslim weddings are quite big, a lot of people attend and word does spread,” he says.

Muzmatch was already profitable two years ago (and still is, for “some” months, though that’s not been a focus), which has given it leverage to focus on growing at a pace it’s comfortable with as a young startup. But the plan with the Series A cash is to accelerate growth by focusing attention internationally on Muslim majority markets vs an early focus on markets, including the UK and the US, with Muslim minority populations.

This suggests potential pitfalls lie ahead for the team to manage growth in a sustainable way — ensuring scaling usage doesn’t outstrip their ability to maintain the ‘safe space’ feel the target users need, while at the same time catering to the needs of an increasingly diverse community of Muslim singles.

“We’re going to be focusing on Muslim majority countries where we feel that they would be more receptive to technology. There’s slightly less of a taboo around finding someone online. There’s culture changes already happening, etc.,” he says, declining to name the specific markets they’ll be fixing on. “That’s definitely what we’re looking for initially. That will obviously allow us to scale in a big way going forward.

“We’ve always done [marketing] in a very data-driven way,” he adds, discussing his approach to growth. “Up til now I’ve led on that. Pretty much everything in this company I’ve self taught. So I learnt, essentially, how to build a growth engine, how to scale an optimize campaigns, digital spend, and these big guys have seen our data and they’re impressed with the progress we’ve made, and the customer acquisition costs that we’ve achieved — considering we really are targeting quite a niche market… Up til now we closed our Series A with more than half our seed round in our accounts.”

Muzmatch has also laid the groundwork for the planned international push, having already fully localized the app — which is live in 14 languages, including right to left languages like Arabic.

“We’re localized and we get a lot of organic users everywhere but obviously once you focus on a particular area — in terms of content, in terms of your brand etc — then it really does start to take off,” adds Younas.

The team’s careful catering to the needs of its target community — via things like manual moderation of every profile and offering an optional chaperoning feature for in-app chats — i.e. rather than just ripping out a ‘Tinder for Muslims’ clone, can surely take some credit for helping to grow the market for Muslim matchmaking apps overall.

“Shahzad has clearly made something that people want. He is a resourceful founder who has been listening to his users and in the process has developed an invaluable service for the Muslim community, in a way that mainstream companies have failed to do,” says YC partner Tim Brady in a supporting statement. 

But the flip side of attracting attention and spotlighting a commercial opportunity means Muzmatch now faces increased competition — such as from the likes of Dubai-based Veil: A rival matchmaking app which has recently turned heads with a ‘digital veil’ feature that applies an opaque filter to all profile photos, male and female, until a mutual match is made.

Muzmatch also lets users hide their photos, if they choose. But it has resisted imposing a one-size-fits-all template on the user experience — exactly in order that it can appeal more broadly, regardless of the user’s level of religious adherence (it has even attracted non-Muslim users with a genuine interest in meeting a life partner).

Younas says he’s not worried about fresh faces entering the same matchmaking app space — couching it as a validation of the market.

He’s also dismissive of gimmicky startups that can often pass through the dating space, usually on a fast burn to nowhere. Though he is expecting more competition from major players, such as Tinder-owner Match, which he notes has been eyeing up some of the same geographical markets.

“We know there’s going to be attention in this area,” he says. “Our goal is to basically continue to be the dominant player but for us to race ahead in terms of the quality of our product offering and obviously our size. That’s the goal. Having this investment definitely gives us that ammo to really go for it. But by the same token I’d never want us to be that silly startup that just burns a tonne of money and ends up nowhere.”

“It’s a very complex population, it’s very diverse in terms of culture, in terms of tradition,” he adds of the target market. “We so far have successfully been able to navigate that — of creating a product that does, to the user, marries technology with respecting the faith.”

Feature development is now front of mind for Muzmatch as it moves into the next phase of growth, and as — Younas hopes — it has more time to focus on finessing what its product offers, having bagged investment by proving product market fit and showing traction.

“The first thing that we’re going to be doing is an actual refreshing of our brand,” he says. “A bit of a rebrand, keeping the same name, a bit of a refresh of our brand, tidying that up. Actually refreshing the app, top to bottom. Part of that is looking at changes that have happened in the — call it — ‘dating space’. Because what we’ve always tried to do is look at the good that’s happening, get rid of the bad stuff, and try and package it and make it applicable to a Muslim audience.

“I think that’s what we’ve done really well. And I always wanted to innovate on that — so we’ve got a bunch of ideas around a complete refresh of the app.”

Video is one area they’re experimenting with for future features. TechCrunch’s interview with Younas takes place via a video chat using what looks to be its own videoconferencing platform, though there’s not currently a feature in Muzmatch that lets users chat remotely via video.

Its challenge on this front will be implementing richer comms features in a way that a diverse community of religious users can accept.

“I want to — and we have this firmly on our roadmap, and I hope that it’s within six months — be introducing or bringing ways to connect people on our platform that they’ve never been able to do before. That’s going to be key. Elements of video is going to be really interesting,” says Younas teasing their thinking around video.

“The key for us is how do we do [videochat] in a way that is sensible and equally gives both sides control. That’s the key.”

Nor will it just be “simple video”. He says they’re also looking at how they can use profile data more creatively, especially for helping more private users connect around shared personality traits.

“There’s a lot of things we want to do within the app of really showing the richness of our profiles. One thing that we have that other apps don’t have are profiles that are really rich. So we have about 22 different data points on the profile. There’s a lot that people do and want to share. So the goal for us is how do we really try and show that off?

“We have a segment of profiles where the photos are private, right, people want that anonymity… so the goal for us is then saying how can we really show your personality, what you’re about in a really good way. And right now I would argue we don’t quite do it well enough. We’ve got a tonne of ideas and part of the rebrand and the refresh will be really emphasizing and helping that segment of society who do want to be private but equally want people to understand what they’re about.”

Where does he want the business to be in 12 months’ time? With a more polished product and “a lot of key features in the way of connecting the community around marriage — or just community in general”.

In terms of growth the aim is at least 4x where they are now.

“These are ambitious targets. Especially given the amount that we want to re-engineer and rebuild but now is the time,” he adds. “Now we have the fortune of having a big team, of having the investment. And really focusing and finessing our product… Really give it a lot of love and really give it a lot of the things we’ve always wanted to do and never quite had the time to do. That’s the key.

“I’m personally super excited about some of the stuff coming up because it’s a big enabler — growing the team and having the ability to really execute on this a lot faster.”

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