Dan & Phil Part 63: hitting you with our gay agenda

[relatablemood]

@relatablemood Fish = meat, that should clear things up.

That's something I've never heard, or my vegetarian come vegan sister, my pescetarian nan or my vegetarian grandad have ever heard, or my vegetarian friends have ever said, but I guess you've seen and heard differently. Fish is meat, true, but it's generally treated as a whole other category. So no one would think that because a pescetarian eats salmon, they would then eat chicken, because they're not seen on the same level. Ergo I wouldn't think that pescetarians are contributing to discrimination against vegetarians or whatever. When you think of meat, you think of burgers and steaks, not cod or haddock. Maybe because fish are considered to have better lives than cows. pigs or because one comes from the water, the other from land, I don't know. That's what I was told growing up. But I guess that's my vs your perception, my vs your experiences. Both are valid. Agree to disagree.

Ok but... if a “vegan” eats fish... they’re by definition.. not vegan. Considering fish a vegan meal item is not valid.

(And I’d argue the same for vegetarians but this seems like a fruitless (heh) conversation so I’m stepping out of it here. Like I already said yesterday. Uh, but this time I mean it.)

Edit: actually, what are you even saying we’re agreeing to disagree on? That fish is meat? You even say in your post that’s true. I literally don’t understand what this conversation is or why it’s happening? I don’t even know if we’re still speaking English?

I'm tearing out my hair and I'm sure you are too. My point! Was always that people who eat fish aren't vegetarian or vegan, but that they can still use those labels for convenience and they're not hurting anyone by doing so.I'm saying agree to disagree because you think they shouldn't use those labels even for con - wait, you do. But you... omg what are we arguing over??!! I'm dead. Let's not speak about this again.

Oh, crap, my first top of the page post. Um, let me think of something. Do Dan and Phil groom their eyebrows?

[fancybum]

In my experience as a vegetarian, fish is meat because it's the flesh of an animal that you had to kill in order to eat it. If you are a vegetarian for ethical reasons, it's generally distasteful when people who are eating any sort of animal say they are vegetarians--why should some animals be privileged and others treated as plants? It muddies the ethical concept at best.

If someone wants to be a pescetarian, that's great! But as a vegetarian, I do object to them calling themselves vegetarians. As the name implies, vegetarians eat from the vegetable (plant) kingdom. And generally speaking, animals and plants are distinctly different organisms; whereas fish, for example, are in fact animals (not plants!).

I hope this helps explain fancybum's (and my) perspective. I understand your family's perspective, and have heard it before, even if I don't agree with it.

I wanted them and they were great :thanks:

@relatablemood Fish = meat, that should clear things up.

That's something I've never heard, or my vegetarian come vegan sister, my pescetarian nan or my vegetarian grandad have ever heard, or my vegetarian friends have ever said, but I guess you've seen and heard differently. Fish is meat, true, but it's generally treated as a whole other category. So no one would think that because a pescetarian eats salmon, they would then eat chicken, because they're not seen on the same level. Ergo I wouldn't think that pescetarians are contributing to discrimination against vegetarians or whatever. When you think of meat, you think of burgers and steaks, not cod or haddock. Maybe because fish are considered to have better lives than cows. pigs or because one comes from the water, the other from land, I don't know. That's what I was told growing up. But I guess that's my vs your perception, my vs your experiences. Both are valid. Agree to disagree.

Ok but... if a “vegan” eats fish... they’re by definition.. not vegan. Considering fish a vegan meal item is not valid.

(And I’d argue the same for vegetarians but this seems like a fruitless (heh) conversation so I’m stepping out of it here. Like I already said yesterday. Uh, but this time I mean it.)

Edit: actually, what are you even saying we’re agreeing to disagree on? That fish is meat? You even say in your post that’s true. I literally don’t understand what this conversation is or why it’s happening? I don’t even know if we’re still speaking English?

I'm tearing out my hair and I'm sure you are too. My point! Was always that people who eat fish aren't vegetarian or vegan, but that they can still use those labels for convenience and they're not hurting anyone by doing so.I'm saying agree to disagree because you think they shouldn't use those labels even for con - wait, you do. But you... omg what are we arguing over??!! I'm dead. Let's not speak about this again.

Oh, crap, my first top of the page post. Um, let me think of something. Do Dan and Phil groom their eyebrows?

Thank you! I don't even know what happened, but if I came off as harsh at any point, I apologize! It's just a touchy subject and wires get crossed, whoops. And I definitely hope that Dan does whatever he wants without people being judgemental, whether he's choosing to eat meat or not (just in case I didn't say that properly earlier), I wasn't trying to push anything on him, I just think it's an interesting discussion (at least in theory lmao). But I am totally down for never speaking about it again

Eyebrows: Dan does (I think), his eyebrows used to be a bit scruffier at the ends, but I think Phil is just blessed. #archgoals

Wow you can tell we've entered the content dead zone already, oh no

edit: @George What?? Yikes. I.. despair for the world lmao.

[George]

About crickets and veganism:

If somebody I lived with suggested I eat crickets, like literally offering me a bag while laughing, knowing full well I’m vegetarian, I’d be.. unimpressed (probably even offended) to say the least.

I did take a second look at the supermarket yesterday when I saw something called cricket vegetables patties. Like, how is it a vegetable patty if it contains crickets...? There was also a big advertisement next to them saying that they are good for an etnovegan diet, so I guess that's a thing now.

[snokoplasmic]

I think the whole perception thing of how people view dan and phil's relationship with their parents comes down to what we are told. If you watch old live shows Dan says that his parents seemed to generally not give a shit about him, or at least this is how he felt. He said that he felt like he was shoved through life with no real person there to guide him. I'll post video if anyone hasn't seen it.


But the way Phil talks about his parents, or his mom at least, is almost always positive. He watches a show that his mom likes so he has something to talk to her about. If he gets a notification on his phone, in a liveshow or in the gaming video that one time, it's always from his mom.
If he ever does talk about his family in a negative light he casts it off as a joke. His comment in one of his old videos was "I don't think my dad will ever understand I will never be able to fix things, only breaks them." He said this after he showed he got a drill kit and then he laughs and people cast it away because they think it's a relatable joke. But it's essentially Phil saying that Phil won't be a "real man" like his dad wants him to be.
His grandad believed that dying your hair was a feminine thing so who knows how he acted when Phil dyed his hair. But he cast that aside and says that his grandad grew up in a different time. You only know how it effected Phil from off-handed comments about it. It's just all these little things that paint a bigger picture.
I do think that Phil had this idea of masculinity and how men should act shoved on him and it was probably hard for him to shake out of that perception.

here's the video where he says that, if anyone's wondering: (at 1:11)

as well as countless other examples of the masculinity he seems to have grown up with (god bless oqua)

[alittledizzy]

I think the whole perception thing of how people view dan and phil's relationship with their parents comes down to what we are told. If you watch old live shows Dan says that his parents seemed to generally not give a shit about him, or at least this is how he felt. He said that he felt like he was shoved through life with no real person there to guide him. I'll post video if anyone hasn't seen it.

I do believe Dan believed his parents didn't give a shit, but I also have a feeling that Dan in the last year or two might be understanding how much depression impacted his view of everything in his life during the time before he had treatment. A depressed teenager who hasn't told anyone they're depressed (or isn't surrounded by anyone familiar enough with depression to recognize it apart from just 'moody teenager') won't be getting help they desperately need and that's awful for everyone involved - I definitely understand how it would feel like no one cared about him. But I think always think that Dan's general penchant for thinking of everything in his life outside of the moment he's living in as negative should be taken into consideration.

The example I've used before is the radio show - since that's one the audience was along for and we do have more a basis for a well-rounded view of the situation. In their final radio show, Phil was proud of all they accomplished and all the good they'd done and the show that they'd made. But Dan? All Dan ever focused on was stuff he was embarrassed by that they'd done on the radio. If you split them apart and watched just Dan in that last radio show, you'd think the radio show was an awful mess not worth watching by anyone. Dan not only acted like he himself was cringe and embarrassing and there was nothing good from it, but like Phil was too. But if you only watched Phil in that last radio show you'd see someone who acknowledges the negative (that they didn't know what they were doing when they started out) but also the positive (that they grew and learned and the show was a success for a reason).

It's very hard for me to not project that Dan does the same with his family that he did the radio show, which is just that he allows the things that bother him to stand out far, far more starkly than the positives. It doesn't mean that some of the negative stuff about his family isn't true, just that the good and bad are probably more balanced in general than what we are aware of, because Dan is our only narrator in the situation and what Dan walks to focus on aren't the happy warm and fuzzy family fun times, it's the times he felt like crap and wanted them to notice and they didn't.

If he ever does talk about his family in a negative light he casts it off as a joke. His comment in one of his old videos was "I don't think my dad will ever understand I will never be able to fix things, only breaks them." He said this after he showed he got a drill kit and then he laughs and people cast it away because they think it's a relatable joke. But it's essentially Phil saying that Phil won't be a "real man" like his dad wants him to be.

Yeah - Phil's tone definitely sets the path for how people take his comments. If Phil laughs, the audience will laugh too, even if what he's saying actually isn't all that funny. But I don't think Phil really wants us to pay attention and notice things either, I think he views his relationship with the audience so much differently than Dan. Dan almost wants to use us as therapy in a way, as much as he sometimes seems to resent us he also wants to talk to us. I think part of the reason we get so much from Phil but only in certain ways (like - family stories almost every video/livestream, but never unhappy ones) is that Phil wants to keep things surface and shallow. It's almost the opposite of Dan; there surely were things Phil had issues with his family about growing up (and my best guess would be the masculinity issues) but when it comes to things he considers private Phil is only going to skew positive, or at least what he thinks is positive. I'm essentially just paraphrasing other people now so I'll end the rambling.

don't quote me on this as i don't have the receipts (though there was discussion earlier in the year on idb and lists are on gg, tumblr etc in various places), but i think we've heard more anecdotes from dan about his dad than we have from phil about his. it's only been in the last 2 or so years that dan hasn't referred to his father at all, it's a relatively new thing. and we have his stories about his mum and he's referenced his brother (only when he was little), most from old liveshows and the sunday radioshow, so i think again, there's a bit of perception warping and romanticism from the phandom (or it's just a case of newer fans not having the whole history).

one that does stick out however for me is that phil's dad watched buffy with him. as a big buffy stan at the time of it's airing and only a year younger than phil that really resonated with me. my mother would not have sat through it, lol.

Yeah - Dan has told a lot of childhood dad stories, is there a compilation for that somewhere? We need a new generation of radio show archivists and compilation makers in phandom. There are fifty million "Dan looks at Phil" videos on youtube but no one is going back and cataloging the deep dive stuff anymore. (Maybe a project for IDB in the new year? If anyone around likes to be involved in making documents and master lists and stuff.)

[relatablemood]

@fancybum I do love you though haha And I'm sorry people are ignorant bitches

I think there's a lot to be compared with Dan and Phil's family lives. Dan had a lower/middle middle class setting, Phil had an upper middle class setting. Dan was the oldest child, Phil the youngest child. Dan views his experiences as crappy and wrong, whereas Phil hasn't publicly said anything of the sort. But it's safe to say both went through things that children shouldn't go through.

alittledizzy has an interesting point about how Dan has a pessimistic way of looking at things, whereas Phil seems to take the bad with the good. I mean, Phil has gone through things arguably much more traumatising than enforced gender roles growing up, if you think about the deaths of his friends at such a young age, and he still stays afloat and even said that his friend wouldn't want him to be sad. Which is why I don't think we'll ever get a clear picture of their childhoods (not that we're meant to), because Dan seems to narrow in on the bad things in his life, and Phil seems to keep it buried under the surface.

But all the same, Dan wasn't born complaining, and Phil wasn't born laughing (can imagine it though). Dan made a point of saying in his video that his depression might be caused by a whole variety of reasons, not just genetics, such as how he was treated by his family (something along those lines). So that might actually show that Dan's not just complaining for the sake of it, but because he was neglected. I mean, I've been through all kinds of abuse, and neglect is what makes you act out. Turn to others for attention and comfort. So Dan telling people about his neglect and narrowing in on that, and more generally, always faulting things, is actually something that could have come from his childhood, and his maybe subsequent depression.

But Phil on the other hand, has been broken in from a young age not to get too upset over that stuff, because of the toxic masculinity forced on him. So with the deaths in his life, and I'm sure other bad things, he's learnt to push it aside.

Kinda like self-fulfilling prophecies? So their perspectives and how freely they talk about their abuse, is inextricably linked with that abuse? Someone tell me I'm making sense this time.

Back on to eyebrows aha! Dan definitely does now, my immaculate prince son, but I agree that Phil doesn't, as fancybum said. I just wish Phil would die his eyebrows darker, it would look so striking

[Loafer]

I definitely think Dan’s perception of his parents not caring or supporting him was fed by his depression, but I also think there’s probably some truth to them not being very supportive of his chosen lifestyle, at least initially. I know next to nothing about his family, but from what Dan’s said, both of his parents were creative and musical, right? We know his dad was a dj, mom was a punk, or something similar? He’s also said they were young when they had him. I think it’s likely that they weren’t in the best place financially when Dan was young, likely because of their chosen careers, and probably had to spend a lot of time working. For young depressed Dan, he might have not gotten as much attention as he needed and that probably came across as not caring. (And then years later, his brother might have gotten more attention and things Dan wanted, because his parents were more stable and had the means too, but maybe that cemented Dan’s perception that it was HIM they didn’t care about) And then, as parents, they likely wouldn’t have wanted their son to make the same mistakes they did, and push him towards work and a viable career. I imagine if I had busted my butt working so my kids could have a decent living, I would be pretty furious if my son was lazy and didn’t want to work for himself. (Leading to lots of fights about work and careers, maybe?) Dan seems to think that his parents didn’t get or support him, but maybe his parents just knew all too well where the path he was on leads. And the Dan’s depression would’ve helped him latch onto the perception that his parents don’t care, which would color all of their interactions, and feed the idea that he’s worthless and terrible at everything etc etc. I’m guessing that the idea that his parents don’t care has been such a long lasting and influential one in his life that it’s hard to let go of it, even if he knows it’s not true.

This is all totally a hypothesis, but to me it makes sense given what little we know about Dan’s home life and personality. We’ve heard enough nice stories about his family to make me think the Dan’s perception may be skewed (snow in bedroom story, his dad introducing him to M.I.A, watching movies together, family trips, etc etc)

[realeyesrealize]

cheeky eggplant

[relatablemood]

I like loafer's piece on it too. I also wanted to bring up that there used to be a whole theory about Dan's parents not supporting his relationship with Phil? It was mostly fueled by K's musing on the phan directory, but I saw it on other blogs too in 2013. I think Dan had a string of tweets one night about having a fight with his parents and it was pretty dramatic. He also used to say his friends were being judgemental about things he did online, too.

I know that site is v biased though!

[Loafer]

I like loafer's piece on it too. I also wanted to bring up that there used to be a whole theory about Dan's parents not supporting his relationship with Phil? It was mostly fueled by K's musing on the phan directory, but I saw it on other blogs too in 2013. I think Dan had a string of tweets one night about having a fight with his parents and it was pretty dramatic. He also used to say his friends were being judgemental about things he did online, too.

I know that site is v biased though!

I don’t know if there’s anything to substantiate the theory of them disapproving of this relationship, but if my idea of their early disapproval of his chosen career path is even close to correct, then Phil would’ve been the embodiment of everything they feared would happen to Dan- “useless” degree, no job, lives at home with his parents. And Dan goes running into his arms. I’m probably projecting a lot, but I wouldn’t have been pleased if I were his parents. Even if Phil did have a job, having your son meet, flirt with, and go to meet an older man from the internet would have freaked me tf out.

Good thing everything worked out perfectly in the end! Generally as people get older you understand and relate to your parents as adults, rather than just looking to them as your parents, so I hope that Dan’s relationship with them gets better over time.

[relatablemood]

I like loafer's piece on it too. I also wanted to bring up that there used to be a whole theory about Dan's parents not supporting his relationship with Phil? It was mostly fueled by K's musing on the phan directory, but I saw it on other blogs too in 2013. I think Dan had a string of tweets one night about having a fight with his parents and it was pretty dramatic. He also used to say his friends were being judgemental about things he did online, too.

I know that site is v biased though!

I don’t know if there’s anything to substantiate the theory of them disapproving of this relationship, but if my idea of their early disapproval of his chosen career path is even close to correct, then Phil would’ve been the embodiment of everything they feared would happen to Dan- “useless” degree, no job, lives at home with his parents. And Dan goes running into his arms. I’m probably projecting a lot, but I wouldn’t have been pleased if I were his parents. Even if Phil did have a job, having your son meet, flirt with, and go to meet an older man from the internet would have freaked me tf out.

Good thing everything worked out perfectly in the end! Generally as people get older you understand and relate to your parents as adults, rather than just looking to them as your parents, so I hope that Dan’s relationship with them gets better over time.

Yeah, I was thinking that too, that your theory of them disproving of Dan's forage into the internet links into their disapproval of Dan's relationship with Phil I don't think it's projecting; it can be thought that they didn't care that much or that they actually cared a lot, but no matter how much I don't think Dan's parents would have been happy about the whole thing.

Maybe Dan's relationship with them didn't start getting better, and things didn't work out perfectly, until around 2013? Because Dan still wasn't getting treatment for his depression at that point, and people were being invasive and harassing his brother, and having a career on the Internet was still relatively new and unstable, so I can imagine relations pretty much stayed the same. Hence why you can still pick up on Dan's hurt when he talks about his experiences with his family sometimes, because it's kinda recent. But I still agree that it did and has gotten better, and that's something I'm happy about.

Need the fam there at the secret 2018 wedding and all

[liola]

I also agree on @Loafer's take on Dan's projecting vs Phil, I think recently Dan has tried to show a lighter side of his relationship with his family, the first thing that comes to mind is his tweets about his mum thinking about his christmas gifts. To me it just looks like they're just not on the same page on a lot of things, which..it happens. Some families are closer than others and some aren't.

I also agree that a career choice like Dan's might have been judged as useless and dangerous, especially by people who were very artistic and saw their own dreams probably fall apart. I know that, for example, my dad didn't accept my carreer until i found a job, and mine isn't an artistic field at all, but for someone that wanted me to do medicine like he did, it was sure useless. And he sure as hell scoffed whenever i mentioned my dream of writing a book, so I can see Dan's parents reacting the same way. And i wouldn't be surprised if they weren't thrilled about his relationship with Phil at first, after all he was older, lived on the opposite side of the country and Dan had met him on the internet. I don't think it was that serious though, since Dan went to visit him basically every 10 days and Phil stayed at Dan's a few times. I don't think that would've happened if they were that against it.

One thing that also makes me think Dan's relationship with his parents was just distant but not bad is that he mentioned in his Daniel and depression video how during his teen years he went to doctors who diagnosed him early on. Now I don't know if it works the same everywhere else but when I was a minor I always went to the doctor with my mom, and if I was diagnosed with something, she knew since she was my main caretaker. It makes me think that his parents must have known about his mental health struggles, at least to some degree, and if he saw more than one doctor for it, they might have tried to help him. Bitter betty over here thinks that would already be a good healthy relationship sign rather than the opposite since i can't talk about my own mental health issues with my parents because they don't believe in it

In the end, it comes down to how Dan and Phil talk about things: Dan always casted a negative light on his relationship with his parents up to more recently, so obviously the phandom has picked up this headcanon that they must be horrible, while Phil seems to have a traditional christmas-cards-happy family, even though we know there are things that sure didn't sit well with him while growing up, for example the expectations of masculinity and gender roles. No relationship with family is perfect, so I think it's safe to say they both had good and bad experiences with their families while growing up, and the way they decide to talk about it just influence our view on them.

[lilabet]

One thing that also makes me think Dan's relationship with his parents was just distant but not bad is that he mentioned in his Daniel and depression video how during his teen years he went to doctors who diagnosed him early on. Now I don't know if it works the same everywhere else but when I was a minor I always went to the doctor with my mom, and if I was diagnosed with something, she knew since she was my main caretaker. It makes me think that his parents must have known about his mental health struggles, at least to some degree, and if he saw more than one doctor for it, they might have tried to help him. Bitter betty over here thinks that would already be a good healthy relationship sign rather than the opposite.

I agree with pretty much everything people are saying. Just one point though- children can consent and visit the doctor alone. Anyone 16+ can consent fully and even younger than that is still allowed without parental approval as long as they meet criteria. As the NHS is free there wouldn’t be a bill to tip a parent off either. I agree with you that they probably knew but they may not have. Also I found it interesting.

[liola]

One thing that also makes me think Dan's relationship with his parents was just distant but not bad is that he mentioned in his Daniel and depression video how during his teen years he went to doctors who diagnosed him early on. Now I don't know if it works the same everywhere else but when I was a minor I always went to the doctor with my mom, and if I was diagnosed with something, she knew since she was my main caretaker. It makes me think that his parents must have known about his mental health struggles, at least to some degree, and if he saw more than one doctor for it, they might have tried to help him. Bitter betty over here thinks that would already be a good healthy relationship sign rather than the opposite.

I agree with pretty much everything people are saying. Just one point though- children can consent and visit the doctor alone. Anyone 16+ can consent fully and even younger than that is still allowed without parental approval as long as they meet criteria. As the NHS is free there wouldn’t be a bill to tip a parent off either. I agree with you that they probably knew but they may not have. Also I found it interesting.

Thank you, I didn't know for sure how it worked which is why I worded it that way. It still makes me think they might have known about it though, which maybe I'm projecting but to me that really is a positive thing? Way too many families aren't surpportive of their children' mental health issues. Dan's mom also seemed supportive of him taking a gap year from uni, or so he said in his video about it, so I think on some degree they did care about his happiness. Maybe they weren't the best at showing it at the time and he wasn't in the best state to see it. It's all speculation, really. It makes me wonder how much Dan's family has looked into the phandom and what they must think of the way Dan used to speak about it and the headcanon the phandom has spread

[nerdysporks]

Yeah - Dan has told a lot of childhood dad stories, is there a compilation for that somewhere? We need a new generation of radio show archivists and compilation makers in phandom. There are fifty million "Dan looks at Phil" videos on youtube but no one is going back and cataloging the deep dive stuff anymore. (Maybe a project for IDB in the new year? If anyone around likes to be involved in making documents and master lists and stuff.)

I dont know if there's a specific one for dad mentions but there's this playlist of "Dan's parents/childhood" made by oqua:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfd9hrJ ... 7t&index=1

[droopy]

Wasn't there a fairly recent gaming video where Dan made a passing comment about his parents? I've been doing some serious catching up so all the videos between now and... say, September are kind of muddled in my head, but it was something along the lines of Phil saying, "bye son, we're off to work, enjoy fending for yourself," and Dan under his breath was like, "my parents tbh". Was it the recent Sims video? I'm gonna go investigate this, I'm invested in finding this now.

Aside from that, I agree a 100% with everyone's comments, dizzy's and Loafer's especially. I remember in middle school having a friend who always complained to me about her parents, to the point where I thought they were awful people. Then I met them, and they were lovely, and now, years later, her relationship with them seems a lot better. I just had that perception because all she ever did was vent about them, so I never got the good side (and I imagine most kids don't think to clarify when they're venting that their parents are actually really great most of the time, especially if they themselves don't see it). So, like others have said, we as the audience get an extremely limited view of who D&P's parents are. Plus, the teenage years bring about conflict between parents and children, regardless how great the parent/child relationship is, because of hormones, a desire to be one's own person, over-protectiveness (or maybe completely valid protectiveness) and misunderstandings, etc. etc. I for one had an abnormally fantastic relationship with my parents growing up, and we still butted heads over things.

[greenergrass]

Just wanted to say that I loved reading the discussion on Dan and Phil's parents! Everyone's already said stuff that I would have said, so I won't add anything now, but it was a great discussion to come home and read. (Damn work for getting in the way of idb discussion contribution. Btw any other suckers out there only get Christmas and Boxing Day off, and were back today? Most of my friends/family got the week off, and I'm not bitter or anything... hahah)

Also, I want to say thank you to the mods for putting on the IDB Forum Awards again! I was just a lurker last year when they happened, but I still loved voting in them. I get a weird extreme joy out of filling out surveys in general, and this is one of my favs to do. Can't wait to see the results

[nigel ratburn]

okay so several people i follow on twitter (including simone biles) who definitely don't know who dan is liked this tweet:

and i am LAUGHING at all of the replies talking about how disgusting the cake looks (i still do not understand all of the people who said it looked delicious, are you guys okay?????). i always love seeing when something dan and phil does gets attention from outside the phandom for weird reasons, but this one is particularly hilarious to me-- one of the replies i saw described the cake as "some white nonsense," which should honestly just be dan's youtube description

[alch]

okay so several people i follow on twitter (including simone biles) who definitely don't know who dan is liked this tweet:

and i am LAUGHING at all of the replies talking about how disgusting the cake looks (i still do not understand all of the people who said it looked delicious, are you guys okay?????). i always love seeing when something dan and phil does gets attention from outside the phandom for weird reasons, but this one is particularly hilarious to me-- one of the replies i saw described the cake as "some white nonsense," which should honestly just be dan's youtube description

honestly who says simone biles isn't secretly a phannie though

I love that people outside of the deppy following are seeing this monstrosity. When i first saw the cake I thought someone dropped a bunch of cereal and sawdust in a pile

[katemko]

"some white nonsense" should be both of deppy's twitter bios.

[mysterylovescompany]

As a vegan cake it can't be expected to look (or taste) delicious...
I thought it looked interesting and probably wouldn't have minded eating it but it also seems quite dry and crumbly. I would have it with raspberry sauce or cream lol. is vegan cream a thing? Too bad only Colin knows how it tastes... and he's too busy cowering in shame. I know it's only a joke but I always feel like rolling my eyes when someone uses the phrase "white nonsense". To each their own?

[Ablissa]

I am back from a horrid day affected by insomnia (11 hours at work after 30 minutes of sleep). The post-Gamingmas drought must be hitting the Phandom hard if that cake is still being discussed
Honestly, I feel attacked (spoiler: I don't feel attacked). That cake looks fine to me. When I cook or bake, it's usually a mess, but it tastes super good. Who cares what the cake looks like? Clearly, Colin enjoyed it I've seen way uglier cakes in my own kitchen and never felt inadequate.

That's my entirely useless contribution for the day. #CakeDefenseSquad

[droopy]

The cake looks like a kid's arts and crafts project, but Ablissa's right, it probably tasted fine. Maybe even delicious! Although it had berries in it, and I'm not a fan of combining my dessert with my fruits. But I'm not Colin so my opinion is irrelevant.

[whelpkeeper]

lol "some white nonsense" killed me I always love seeing what people outside of the phantom have to say about the boys

...and I am here for Simone Biles being a secret fan, I know she was/is obsessed with Zac Efron so it seems plausible she would stab other celebrities/public figures too. Plus I love her so much, she's literally the happiest, nicest, most talented and hardworking person ever- just thought I'd say it

...and I'm sorry, but I'm definitely Team #Dan'sCakeIsOverParty. Objectively speaking, I just can't support this. Any good cake can be judged on the basis of...

1.) taste
2.) presentation
3.) originality

ahem While only Colin can ultimately attest to the first factor, I feel as though coconut, raspberry, and praline isn't the tastiest, most amazing combination out there- but I'm also not a fan of mixing "health" and desserts so I may be biased. It also seemed to be sorely lacking in moisture, a common problem for vegan baking. But seeing as how we can't know the taste, I'll say this category is a wash ???/10

Now presentation is, by any standard, abhorrent- I'm inclined to say the Howells didn't even try. There's a lack of any cohesive theme, and the decoration was too poorly executed to amend for it. There's a strange amalgamation of both the rustic and high-end, with the use of both cornflakes and gold glitter/pearls to decorate; this leaves both an underwhelming and overwhelming effect, which is off-putting and confusing. The winter-esque candies are also half-heartedly placed, with no regard for the frosting cracking underneath. The cake itself is slightly uneven, indicating that it was not properly leveled off before frosting. And apropos of the frosting, it is poorly spread; it appears that there wasn't a crumb coat applied first to improve the look and texture of the frosting. The fact that it seems to be slipping off means they frosted while the cake was still warm, a grave error that can't be ignored. ...but to be fair, there was an attempt made, and I'll always award effort so instead of 0/10, they get a +1 for trying, for a score of 1/10

The only category this cake succeeds in is originality. This cake falls outside of the norm, attempting to bake sans animal products and incorporating an array of themes and flavors. Though the end result was less than ideal, there was an unprecedented level of innovation most bakers steer clear of- and for this uniqueness, I will award 9/10 (a point was lost because I doubt they came up with the recipe themselves, and following the pre-established directions of a cookbook detracts from the originality a bit). :bigthumbsup:

...damn we really are running out of content this concludes a sleepless night with whelpkeeper, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more late-night content

[liola]

@whelpkeeper I'd love a YouTube channel or blog of cake reviews from you oh my god

We are indeed running out of content, I've found myself looking for old radio shows. Man I miss them so much, they were so excited for that :rip:

I wonder when Derpy and Preppy will be reunited? It's a given for me that they'll spend NYE together like every year, but I wonder if they're back at the apartment? Considering Dan seems to have left by the 24th, it's already been 4 full days of being apart, is this the longest they've gone this year? The idea is both funny and cute

I've reached the point of holiday/non holiday dread, I miss gamingmas already and I need something to distinguish the days lmao