#BUT IN 2016 THEY CAME TO MY CITY. SO MAYBE THEY'D COME AGAIN........

[blessyouhawkeye]

in shinee's dms like

[james-a-b]

W!

!!!!! getting one ask for this game surprised me tbh, two is incredible and you need to know that if i were a golden retriever i would be wagging my tail SO fast

anyway, they've done a fair number of things that have surprised and delighted me, but my favourite is and always will be the moment they broke out in song during TATINOF.

To provide some context there- at the time, youtubers doing a show the way Dan and Phil did was absolutely UNHEARD of. No one had ever done anything like it before, and no one really knew what to expect. The show I saw was in Seattle, near the end of the US leg of the tour, but Dan and Phil had asked everyone to avoid spoiling the show for others, and I'd managed to avoid any spoilers that WERE out there pretty much entirely. I went in blind.

That day was the best day of my life. Not solely because I was seeing TATINOF; Seattle is my favourite city and we went on the underground tour and ate a pizza that was almost bigger than our table and went to the pop culture museum, where they had a Dalek and a Cyberman and a bunch of other really cool movie/show props, but seeing Dan and Phil was definitely the highlight of the day.

I'd been depressed for almost a decade and actively suicidal for going on six years at that point, but when I first discovered Dan and Phil in the fall of 2015, I realized for the first time that the way I was feeling and had been feeling wasn't just a natural part of growing up. They seemed so alive and so so happy in a way I'd never seen from an adult before, and it gave me hope that maybe I could feel that way again, too. So they meant and still mean a great deal to me. They saved my life.

TATINOF had just begun touring the UK when I started watching, and then in early 2016 they announced they were coming to America. Now, I'm Canadian, and I was living in Kelowna, BC, so I was understandably disappointed when the nearest show was in Phoenix, Arizona, too far to travel to. But then, a month later, they announced more dates, and Seattle was among them. So I begged my parents to get me to Seattle for the show.

Mom bought my ticket, and Dad arranged a Seattle trip. Mom offered to buy me a VIP ticket, by the way, but I thought about it and then decided I'd rather have a regular ticket in part because I was such a new fan and in part because the thought of standing in front of them and being seen made me want to spontaneously combust. (I did get a VIP ticket to II, and then I ended up spending the first half of the show hyperventilating bc I got too excited/overwhelmed lmao)

I remember specifically choosing a balcony seat because while I knew Dan didn't enjoy audience participation from an audience perspective, I wanted to play it safe. Just in case. And Dan did make some jokes about asking for audience participation, so I'm actually glad I did. My heart could barely handle things as is!

The show was... indescribable. I'd taken art to submit to crafty corner, and while it wasn't chosen, I was absolutely beside myself just knowing they'd seen it. And during the show, they took things so much farther than anyone ever expected them to, with the suggestive themes of the fanfiction part (brokeback montain references?? only one tent??? this was YEARS before they came out, mind, and they'd NEVER really leaned into or encouraged that sort of thing before) and then Dil being revealed as the entity causing everything, and then, on top of literally every amazing incredible thing they'd already done in the show, they started SINGING??

We knew they did little songs for things like baking videos, but that was a FAR cry from performing onstage, and they were hardly professional singers, so a musical number was absolutely the last thing I expected to actually happen. I absolutely screamed myself hoarse during the course of that show, as did most everyone else in that theatre, but I don't think I've ever screamed so loud as I did when they started singing.

So... yeah. That's my answer.

(ask game here)