Month: May 2017

softdans:

is there any moment more soft and pure than when phil said ‘if I had a house, I would make every window glass’ and dan sort of laughed softly 2 himself n then smiled @ phil with fond crinkly eyes until phil realised what he’d said

Sometimes I wonder if poeple don’t take Phil too seriously (and partly it is because Phil himself doesn’t want to show himself too serious) but I mean this is the man who was with Dan when he made the decision to drop out, and somehow had to help him through it (and those were the years where I do believe Dan’s crisis were quite strong ones), he also somehow sticked by Dan’s side when he was in his 2012!period which I’m sure affected (hurt) Phil as well. What do you think?

alittledizzy:

Anyone who doesn’t take Phil seriously isn’t paying very much attention to Phil. 

He’s someone who made an entire career out of something that wasn’t a career, just on the grounds that he wanted to be doing something he liked for a living. That takes a little bit of luck, sure, and he did start out in the fortunate situation of having parents who helped support him. I don’t want to seem like I’m being blind to his advantages, because I’m sure as hell not. 

But luck and rich parents alone can’t make an empire out of nothing. It also takes determination and faith in himself and work. A whole lot of fucking work. I don’t mean at making videos; I mean at building connections, setting goals and seeing them happen, reaching out and finessing the luck he was granted into something sustainable long term. He took an offer to do a segment on BBC radio and turned it into a years long weekly stint on a popular radio show. Dan was part of it, but back when they first started with BBC Phil was by far the more influential name with a bigger subscriber base. 

You can see elements of the same attitude in everything Dan and Phil do, and I don’t want to diminish Dan’s role in it but the pattern of behavior is so strongly Phil: they’re offered a book, they spend a year writing it and make it the best book they could make. They have to do signings, they turn it into a year long stage show. Crunchy Roll and Best Fiends want them to do a sponsored video, they end up sponsoring the entire show. That’s what people underestimate in Phil, I think – the guy who see what he wants, ignores that it shouldn’t really be possible, does it anyway. 

I think you’re right that it isn’t a sign of Phil that we’re really supposed to see, because Phil has such a firm sense of boundary between what is for an audience and what isn’t. Just like we don’t see business-guy-Phil except in the sense that we see the final product that emerges, we also don’t see supportive-partner-Phil except in the final product that emerges: Dan himself, and Dan’s dedication to Phil, his constant almost-awe of everything Phil does despite the more immediate fond mocking we see in actual videos. 

Am I even answering your question? Sorry, I just have strong feelings on the minimization of Phil’s complexity that happens in phandom. Actually, reading it back, it seems like you were asking more about if I thought that Phil was as hurt in 2012 as Dan was; the answer is yes, of course, I totally agree with you, anon. That definitely goes back to Phil having a stronger boundary between what is for an audience and what isn’t. Dan handled his upset by slamming figurative doors and shouting at us across the room, Phil handled it by just quietly locking that door and effectively shutting us out of his mental process for years. But it feels like it should go without saying that just because someone doesn’t want hundreds of thousands of people he doesn’t know to know when he’s hurt or upset, it doesn’t mean those feelings don’t exist.