thedemonsadvocate

[thedemonsadvocate]

talking about how dan and phil are cute together ≠ fetishising them

- queer people happy and excited over other queer people in loving relationships is not bad or something to discourage. it’s all about how you go about it. it’s also not inherently sexual and if the first thing you think of when looking at a queer couple is sex that’s your personal problem.

seeing personal information and old deleted content that others have made public ≠ actively digging into their private lives and trying to find things that are none of your business

- people simply knowing details from dnp’s lives does not necessarily mean they’ve been creepy about it, certain people have been digging up information for years and others seeing and discussing it is bound to happen

writing/reading fan fiction and partaking in fandom speculation (within reason) ≠ bothering dan and phil and publicly asking them about their sexuality and relationship

- dnp have said they’re okay with fan fiction (yes that includes smut), even actively encouraged it. it’s fictional, creative writing. they don’t mind. bothering them about their sexuality or relationship has never been okay, but the majority of people who do this aren’t even part of the fandom it’s largely casual viewers who don’t know how people will straight up hunt you down for it

every fandom has bad seeds but proclaiming all dan and phil fans are gross fetishists who bother dan and phil about their sexualities and relationship just isn’t fair. sometimes you have to just accept that maybe, just maybe, the people who’ve kept up with dnp for years may know more about what they’ve said about all of this than an outsider does. please stop taking things out of context and for the love of god have some fucking respect and don’t use someone’s emotional coming out - and the heartfelt response to that from his community - as an excuse to tell everyone how right and smart and big brained you are for “not shipping real people”. there’s a huge difference between shipping people who’ve clearly expressed it makes them uncomfortable and shipping someone who’s not only said they’re fine with it but will actively joke along with people about it. and for the love of god stop using dan’s statements years ago to prove he’s not fine with it, literally all he expressed was discomfort over people Asking and Bothering him about it. in the same time he told people to stop bothering him about it he made an entire video where he said he’s totally fine with fan fiction about him and read out a smut fic featuring him and phil.

not everything is black and white, stop shaming fans, a large amount of whom are lgbtq+, teenage girls or both, for fucking breathing. let people be happy for and proud of dan and phil without making it about your goddamn fucking moral superiority complex

[thedemonsadvocate]

Dan and Phil wrote fanfiction in TABINOF, acted it out in TATINOF, and have read it humorously in several videos. They have never once stated or given any indication that they are uncomfortable with it - they have only stated discomfort when people directly harass them about their real-life relationship (invasive questions, asking them to show more than they're comfortable with, etc.) Please don't confuse the two.

x

[thedemonsadvocate]

I may lose followers for this but it's actually really insulting to Dan's intelligence to excuse his disappearance and neglect of the phandom with "he has depression" exclusively. Not only did he explicitly ask us not to allow knowledge of his disorder to affect our impression of him, but it also minimizes him to his mental illness and perpetuates the idea that people with depression need coddling and never get any work done.

[thedemonsadvocate]

i can’t believe this is a Radical Opinion but you can simultaneously support/stan/love dan and phil and understand that what they’re currently doing to their fans is not okay

[thedemonsadvocate]

A genuine question: do you have an idea of why the phandom as a whole is so reactive and easily stressed out about everything, and I mean everything? I fully understand that the “hiatus” is making people feel extra tense, but it was the case even before this year - has been the whole time I’ve been following it, at least. It is a bit unsettling to always feel like everyone is walking on eggshells and the tiniest things can set people off.

I think Dan and Phil being very private people and the fact that some mild - hold onto your socks, I’m gonna use the word - gaslighting has been the basis of the fandom makes people distrust Dan and Phil, and each other’s perceptions. 

They met. They fell for each other. They were pretty public about it. They came out. Those were things people knew, and trusted, because they saw it unfold. 

They got more famous. They (for lack of better term) went back in the closet, re: their relationship. They put walls up where there hadn’t been before. 

They got outed. Through no malicious action of any one person but still against their will, against their wishes. People saw that video. They heard those words. They trusted what they heard. Fans weren’t wrong for that. 

And Dan and Phil weren’t wrong for doing what they felt like they needed to do in order to protect themselves from exposure they weren’t prepared to deal with. So they said the things that they felt like they needed to say, and they weren’t wrong for that either. I use gaslighting because I think it’s the term that fits - but I don’t have any ill will against them for it. They were young, and scared, and felt vulnerable, and they did what they thought was good damage control. 

That damage control paved the way for a solid 2-3 years of doubt cast on everything, and that’s not something easily undone. There are people who want to trust their own instinct and perception above everything else, there are people who want to believe Dan and Phil above everything else, and there are people who just feel anxious at the fact that they’re caught somewhere in between. The fact is that a good portion of the fanbase spent years staring at Dan and Phil in their glass closets and going: I think you’re lying to me. From Dan’s customer service blog to the lies about how they met to the lies of omission and mild misleads, things accumulated. There are people now who still feel like it’s their obligation to not have opinions on their relationship because they (Dan) drove that home so hard. But either way ‘catch Dan and Phil in the lie’ has been a phandom past time since the first time they uttered the first mistruth about themselves. 

But! Good thing is! Things change. Dan and Phil grew. We grew. But I think the attitude phandom adopted, whether you were there during those earlier years or you just absorbed it via osmosis, is to constantly be wary about mistruths and half truths and lies. It sucks for us, because we can’t relax, and it sucks for Dan and Phil because there are things they absolutely should be able to keep to themselves and us understand it’s none of our business. But because our ingrained pattern is to scrutinize everything with an attitude of distrust, and their ingrained pattern is to be wary of us and not trust us, the whole cycle of our overreaction leading to them pulling back goes on and on and on. I’m sure if we were a smaller, chiller audience not so quick to point fingers and say you always lie, you never communicate then they’d probably be a little more clear with us. I’m sure if they were more honest about things, even the struggles or the times when they don’t know what to tell us because it’s out of their hands, them we’d feel a little more secure in everything. But we’re a big group of people that you can’t really control and they’re two human beings just trying to make the best decision when they have no way of knowing the outcome and what kind of backlash they’ll get who are probably (rightfully) terrified of us. It’s hard to unlearn the feeling like you need to protect yourself from something that’s hurt you in the past; I don’t think we, as fans specifically, hurt Dan and Phil. But sharing too much on social media did - both the things outside of their control (like the video leaking) and the things they’d shared before that made it harder to hide themselves away. 

I don’t think there are many people out there in 2019 who would say they’re mad at Dan and Phil for not being honest when the video leaked. But I guess my whole point here is that I think they don’t always trust us and we don’t always trust them and neither side is entirely wrong and I think that’s why we’re always so fucking anxious and why they’re always so fucking secretive. 

[thedemonsadvocate]

case in point

you could just TELL that dan took those pictures even before those insta stories bc phil looked so damn relaxed and confident in those pictures and nothing like the awkward, staged phil we’ve seen from professional photoshoots 

[thedemonsadvocate]

irlmerch: casually reveals that dan took all those sexy phil merch pics at kyoto garden

me, in tears: the Lord is risen today

[thedemonsadvocate]

AU where dan and phils fans respect their privacy and don’t assume things just to fulfill their own fantasies 💕💕✨

best AU 💞✨

[thedemonsadvocate]

"*pulls out decade-old screenshot* idk man dan called phil buddy once in 2009 it's p obvious if you ask me 👀☕"

au where dan and phil are married but their fans are constantly theorizing that they’re actually just really good friends

[thedemonsadvocate]

au where dan and phil are married but their fans are constantly theorizing that they're actually just really good friends

[thedemonsadvocate]

wanna romanticize my own life as much as i romanticize dan and phil’s yfeel

[thedemonsadvocate]

Dan: my antidepressants made me gain lost of weight really quickly and I don’t like that but I’m off them now!

Dan: excercise helped me so much with my mental health!

Dan: i want to start working out again! I will get a personal trainer so I can actually stay motivated to do it!

Dan: i had ABS in last January! Where did they go?

Dan: I’m going kinda vegan!

Dan: i have been running every single day in the new year! Running montage!

Dan: my lips are hydrated and I’m looking for affirmation!

People: sO sKiNnY iS hE oK

[thedemonsadvocate]

hot take but as someone who has struggled with eating disorders it's very disrespectful to try to diagnose dan with one off of a single picture, especially since i doubt any of you doing that have medical degrees. not only is that very hurtful to dan, who has probably been working hard to reach that appearance over the past few months, it also minimizes the experiences of real people who have or have had eating disorders.

it is not your place, nor is it anyone's right to diagnose somebody without having a medical degree. period.

[thedemonsadvocate]

dan's not appearing in photos bc he's working on a massive body transformation so when he comes back he'll be super ripped

[thedemonsadvocate]

what do you honestly think is happening to joint content? do you think the gaming channel is going to come back? do you think they’ll introduce some New Joint Thing? or do you think joint stuff is being put aside to prioritize solo stuff, and we’ll just get joint stuff whenever they feel like it?

I have no idea, honestly, and that’s okay to me. I’m fine with not knowing. It hasn’t been that long. I know people are missing him, but it hasn’t been that long. 

I don’t feel like I need to know right now. This is not an uwu ‘they deserve a break’ attitude, either - I don’t actually think they’re taking an extended vacation. I mean, we know Phil for sure isn’t. And I don’t at all think Dan is just not working. Even if the ‘work’ part of it for him right now is just making decisions he needs to make or writing countless video scripts he just tears up. 

I agree with the hunch some people have that joint content won’t be back until Dan has made a video. But I do certainly believe it will be back. I also don’t believe they’re going to walk away with a channel that has three million subs. And while I deeply miss DAPG and the regular joint videos, I also do think that even if worst case scenario happened and we got like, six joint videos a year - there might even be a bit of secret fun in joint content becoming an event again. People got so apathetic to videos so fast when they were putting out 1-2 a week on the gaming channel. I know it’s a case of ~you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. But save the last handful in December, there was a stretch where the predominant response to joint videos was ‘meh, I probably won’t rewatch it.’ Phil not making videos without Dan became the running joke. So if we get less joint content, we’re gonna be more excited by what we do get. Every joint video might start to get the hype something like pinof did again. 

These are my opinions, not facts, though. Because we have no facts besides that they called DAPG going away a break/hiatus-but-not-like-1D. Which means when you see people unilaterally declaring things like joint content is dead, those are also opinions. Just because someone states an opinion in a strongly confident way doesn’t make it less of an opinion. I’m kind of directing this at a lot of the panic I’m seeing (and response to the panic) moreso than this ask specifically, but I think this fandom would probably feel a lot better if it didn’t keep taking other people’s theories or even just worrying as fact and responding as such. 

[thedemonsadvocate]

Thank you for the reply, my post was more referring to the drama over Dan liking that one tweet, not his lack of uploads (believe me I find that annoying too). I posted this at like 1AM last night and what I was trying to say was that Dan is just one guy who generally wants to do the right thing in the public eye and that we should respect him for that.

at the end of the day let’s remember that dan is a person who was given enormous responsibility and tries his best to entertain and inspire the millions of people who look up to him

[thedemonsadvocate]

pls remember to treat dan with the same respect and kindness we treat phil with