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hiii! I wanted to ask you a not-necessarily-ly question, just because I'm curious (and keep in mind I was a very occasional casual fan of D&P pre-2019 and not autistically-invested pre Hard Launch so I'm uneducated of how obvious stuff was) What was your reaction as a phanfic writer as they started revealing stuff? Specifically: 1) "Trying to live my truth" being posted like around the same time you started posting... a fanfic about Dan living his truth (also ft: Dan "wanting to get stuff in and out of his mouth" and "oral fixation" which are real quotes from that vid). 2) the hiatus (*screams*) 3) Basically I'm gay (the stuff on sexuality+ a pretty good LY-like depiction of having all eyes on you in terms of being open about sexuality/ fan speculation) 4) The basically I'm gay stuff on gender + following dan-fucks-around-with-gender-norms era (I was thinking about it when you used all the nail-polish symbolism in LY given the early WAD-era posts with cross-dressing + Dan painting his nails fr) 5) The tit era soft-launches (ejem PLEASE watch this video compilation of kink/ general innuendos, those two are hornier and know more kink vocab than all the fanfic writers I follow combined: https://youtu.be/hYmOzuQ-J04?si=y_doub-DCNz9f_5Y )

6) The hard launch acknowledgement of the impact of phanfic (no shade because you were pretty vague about V-day Vid knowledge but for example, how do you feel in retrospective about adding cherry lube to your fic?) + #Iamnotabottom howell 7) The hard launch in general. Hope you are okay, no hurries on answering these or stuff from my yapping ass in general, I was just super curious as I read because you predicted so many things I thought were post-2019 (protective Dan, gender=formless-blob Dan, "i don't mind waiting" Phil, "wants to separate coming out from hard launch" decision, DAN LIKING FISHNETS... and so much more.)

i've been sitting on this ask for like 2 weeks or whatever, which hopefully now, it's obvious why.

i'll dig more into this in the debrief (coming soon), but i wrote 42 as a way to both process what being in the phandom during that time was sometimes like (both good and bad) and partially as a cautionary reminder of what we were and what we could become again if we aren't careful

i answered your questions to the best that my memory will allow because wow has my world changed a lot in 8 years or whatever and memory is a fickle bitch sometimes. i'm going out of order because the phanfic part is more important (to me) than the others:

6. since I started writing phanfic, it pretty much always felt "permitted" because I (i'm pretty sure) starting writing fic post tabinof. and like! they wrote their own phanfics to go in the book! look! they wouldn't do that if they weren't okay with us writing fic! we're not being creepy or breaking rules! (whether, at the time, it was permission freely or begrudgingly given is a topic for fair debate, and after TBV, i lean much more heavily toward begrudging than i did back then). phanfic had also been totally normalized in the phandom before i ever came into it. i've never been in a fandom with something as cool and comprehensive and organized and helpful as the phanfictioncatalogue. it was hard to challenge the thought of "is phanfic really okay" when it was so heavily the norm. nowadays, my thoughts are mixed (which I know is going to sound incredibly hypocritical as someone with a nearly 400k fanfic under my belt). i look back at the non-ly phanfic i wrote and feel a lot differently about it now than i did then. i think about writing about early 2010s dan being closeted and the 2012 drama, which was "old lore" by the time i joined the phandom, and don't necessarily feel comfortable with those works. writing phanfic is one thing, but those real life struggles weren't mine to write about. in 2026, i don't read a lot of phanfic, largely because writing phanfic takes up 99% of my available fanfic time and if i have to pick between reading and writing, i'm usually going to write. but when i do decide to read something, it's almost always au or, if it's "canon" -- never set pre-coming out, and rarely set pre-hard launch. i talk more about boundaries and how we all have to navigate them for ourselves (and also together) post TBV in the incoming ly42 debrief, but for me, not touching deep speculation on their irl closeted lives, especially their young baby relationship, is a hard line. you mentioned cherry lube specifically: i honestly don't know if cherry lube came from the bad video, and i wish that was a thing i Knew. i wish the contents of that video hadn't become so set in "canon" that it is impossible, in hindsight, for me to know which pieces of "lore" were lifted out of a stolen gift. that's part of why i'm not comfortable with pre-coming out "canon" phanfic. when i think about the content those kinds of fics, mine included, use to have, i get sick wondering which pieces of "lore" came from what kind of forbidden archaeology. which carelessly dropped trivia fact was actually a reference to a formspring answer that was never supposed to see the light of day. which family member's name was discovered through too-invasive internet searching. which cute date was based on something real, something ordinary people weren't supposed to know about. (i hope modern "canon writers have learned from our mistakes) re: #iamnotabottom howell: all i can think about is how vigorously angry a loud subset of people would get at any implication that dan topped. writing top!dan was legitimately kind of taboo. got way less hits and kudos. absolutely no one should have had such viscerally strong feelings about their bedroom positions that they got into legitimate spats with strangers on the internet over suggesting they might be something different. there's a reason this theme showed up over and over in 42.

trying to live my truth (specifically the oral fixation) line rocked our fucking words. like, there was this understanding amongst the phandom that *yeah probably*. i remember the wave of other youtubers (tyler oakley, connor franta, ingrid nilsen, hannah hart...) coming out and dnp not saying anything and coming to terms with okay *if we're right* then this is just how it's going to be. like a funhouse mirror that distorts, but doesn't truly hide, part of reality. and then dan made the queerest coded video and made a very obvious reference to sucking cock and everything shifted. i'm pretty sure i cried the first time i watched that video (i am not a big crier, for context). i felt like that was probably all we were ever going to get, but it felt like so much, was such an honest video, that it never felt lacking

hiatus sucked (for me). it mapped really well onto when i was going through my own Dropout Crisis and pandemic and i drifted away from the phandom for a long time (there was also the ly of it all -- enjoying their content was hard when i was reminded of this big unfinished project that i didn't actually want to leave unfinished). i remember being (in hindsight) unfairly frustrated with them, esp dan, for scaling back on content so much after ii. (this is my perception) there was a lot of resentment in the phandom around that time. people had spent a lot of time and money and effort going to ii and supporting them in general and then dan starting quietly ghosting and people felt like they were owed more, owed an explanation, owed something. and i'm not going to lie to you and tell you i was any different. that i was magically unproblematic when my dash was filled with post after post ranting about the same things. the attitude around the beginning of the hiatus is part of what drove me away. it's extra terrible because we, in hindsight, know more about what was going on with dan in that time and i am so mad that we weren't more forgiving. that we, at least initially, probably contributed to burnout through our demanding and whiny little posts that, yes, came from a place of love, but also weren't appropriate. i spent october - jan catching up on hiatus content though, and there was so much great content there. i'm sad i didn't engage with it in real time.

i remember where i was when basically i'm gay dropped (i was vacation at the beach, literally on the beach) and remember again crying because it felt so important. i remember trying to explain to the people i was with how important this person coming out was, how hard it must have been for him and how amazing it was that he did it anyway. i remember a few weeks later when phil came out, it didn't have the same emotional impact (don't think it was intended to), but it was just as important and revolutionary.

in hindsight, i'm pretty sure the first time i saw dan in nail polish, my world was shifted way more than a cis girl watching her favorite youtuber play with "gendered" fashion should have been, but i wasn't ready for that conversation. LOTS of people lost their shit (/positive) right along with me, so it was easy to overlook how it made me, personally, feel (also, given how much "dan changed my gender" has become a meme, in hindsight, at least some of that shit-losing around me was other people having their own trans experience with it). i do not remember if irl dan wearing nail polish preceded ly!dan wearing polish and some women's clothes, but they were definitely an ouroboros in my mind and baby trans thoughts

i wasn't around for tit era in real time :( can't wait to watch that video later though

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thank you hard launch. i'm not sure if we deserved you, but i am so so so grateful for you.

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