hello i am nosy and also i'm fascinated by "old to lore, newer to the content" - would love to hear your dan and phil story!!
Hello! No worries. I definitely went about it backwards. And it's a very strange story. (I'm working on doing an intro post, but it's taking some time). Basically, I've been on tumblr since like 2010 and Dan and Phil were everywhere back then and a lot of people I followed were into them. I wasn't super into youtube at the time, so for awhile I just thought they were from something I didn't have access to - some show or something (and a couple on the show or something especially since around that time Glee was super popular and also huge online) and didn't think too deeply about it. I also thought "phan" was one of those tumblerified words where people changed the word slightly like bird became birb etc. so thought phan was fan. I actually remember seeing at least one or two videos back then, but never really went beyond that. Just kept seeing everything happen on my dash in real time while I was so consumed by other fandoms I was into at the time (I've learned a lot about so many fandoms I was never part of this way, but having context does make all the difference) that I wasn't that invested. In a way, I'm glad it happened the way it did because I don't think I would've appreciated them and their content then the way I do now (and I wasn't really into RPF either. Tried a few times but it wasn't my thing. Still isn't in a lot of ways, but they're kind of the exception to all my rules). But I was here for all of it - the early speculation and interactions (I remember the really early days with the trip to Portugal and the stuffed animals they got each other, Jamaica (and actually watching those now I recognized so many people it was wild) Interactive Christmas Adventure, Lion and Lioness...) the leaks of the video that shall not be named (I remember both of the leaks vividly), the tours (specifically TATINOF) and the hiatus announcement and their coming out videos and moving video. It's so strange knowing the story just by osmosis, but I didn't really actively think about it all, so when TBV came around and I actively started getting into the content and reading all kind of things from various blogs, I was like... "why do I know all of this", or "oh! I remember this!" and having a freakout about it. And then I decided to actually check things out more and so much was resonating with me and started helping me unwind years of things I've been trying to unwind myself and I fell down the rabbit hole and now I'm here (even though this blog is new, I still have my other blog that's more or less mulitfandom and I do post Dan and Phil things there, but thought having a blog actually dedicated to them would be better, hence all of the backlogged things you keep seeing - I'm transferring things over because I'm just like that). As I said, a strange and backwards story (lowkey part of my branding at times), but I'm glad I made it here.
