Honestly??? Truly? My feelings on this?alittledizzy wrote: ↑Wed Oct 07, 2020 7:53 pm Oh Dan I both love you and I hate you lmao.... but god i mostly LOVE the firm boundary drawing but also the word "husbands" jesus christ.
FUCK.
Dan & Phil Part 96: AmazingPhil (and his cameraman)
FUCK.
Reading the word husbands knowing full well Dan himself used it, even if in a sassy cover up way? Good shit man, good fucking shit. Gotta find myself the full article. God the money I would pay to have a full, candor interview about their relationship with the both of them. I would probably sell my own soul tbh
Will probably never be over the BONCAS and the beauty of Phil Lester.
Official Moving Hill Mayor
He keeps setting those boundaries and I love that for him. I also love that photoshoot just because he looks so comfy and natural? There's nothing left of that awkward "what am I doing?" vibe from earlier photoshoots, i also love that for him, I might not like all (or most) of his recent career decisions but you can tell that he's happy with them and I'm honestly just happy for him that he's in that place now.
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alittledizzy
- actual demon phannie
- Posts: 7101
- Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2016 3:09 pm
- Pronouns: she/her
Full article text, because I took one for the team and purchased it:
BASICALLY, I’M GAY
YouTube star and selfdescribed “sad, gay clown” Daniel Howell tells us why sharing really is caring when it comes to mental health and sexuality
Words Thomas Stichbury
Random acts of kindness often flutter into existence when you least expect them. I am in the middle of telling Dan Howell about a homophobic encounter I recently had with a guy, who was mid-pee, in a pub toilet — no, I wasn’t cruising, how very dare you! — when a woman walks over and interrupts our conversation.
“Missing anything, boys?” she asks, eyebrow playfully arched, brandishing a mobile phone in her hand.
“Oh, my fucking phone!” Dan shrieks, having left it on a bench we’d briefly parked our behinds on. “You’re a good human being. Do you want some money?”
After wafting away any suggestion of payment, the bleach blonde-haired, tattooed stranger strolls off.
“We’re literally having a conversation about having no faith in humanity,” Dan says. “Is she an angel? Did we manifest her? I feel like we’re having a moment.”
The YouTube star and I had agreed to meet for a socially distanced sit-down at an outdoor café in Finsbury Park. Turns out that, at the time of our interview, Dan, 29, hadn’t left his house since lockdown was enforced and he is understandably anxious. My preposterously sized vat of hand sanitiser settles some of his nerves.
“My self-destructive comedy persona is obviously complete bullshit, because here I am desperately hand-sanitising every five minutes,” he smiles.
Dan’s winning schtick is his ability to funnel the funny from his trials and tribulations. Not that Dan is flippant about what he has been through; he simply dissects his personal dramas with a dollop of dark humour. It is highly relatable stuff that has seen him amass millions of followers online.
“My niche has always been making fun of myself and it’s crazy to think that I uploaded a YouTube video 10 years ago for no reason, just trying to be funny on the internet, talking about the fact [that] I’m a butterfingers and drop things all the time,” he recalls.
“As the years went on, that continued and then one day I realised I was struggling with depression and I thought for a long time, am I going to share this? I didn’t want to be judged… Are people going to want to work with me? Are friends going to ice me out?
“I SAID OUT LOUD TO MYSELF: ‘I’M GAY’… I’D BEEN RUNNING AWAY FROM THAT TWO-WORD ADMISSION MY ENTIRE LIFE”
“I was terrified, but then I put it out there into the world. It wasn’t even that I was surprised by how accepting people were… it [was] just the fact that people liked it more. They were like, ‘This is funnier because you’re talking about real shit.’
“Then I became the ‘mental health guy’. Great, I’m not just the relatable clown, now I’m the sad clown, which was the natural journey to me becoming the sad, gay clown a year later.”
Lifting the lid on his battle with mental health led Dan to address the other elephant in the room — or, rather, the “giant Babadook in the darkness — gay icon, by the way”.
In June last year — Pride month, appropriately — Dan posted a video entitled Basically, I’m Gay, in which he confronted his sexuality for the first time, both personally and publicly.
“I knew I was obviously not straight my whole life… [but] it was for the first time acknowledging this truth about myself and, in working out what my own story was, I had to confront all of these aspects of my life that I just hadn’t dealt with before,” he begins.
“I was sat quietly by myself thinking, OK, I want to talk about this publicly, I want to get this out of the way, I don’t want a skeleton in my closet… I just said out loud to myself: ‘I’m gay.’ It was really profound, [because] I’d been running away from that two-word admission my entire life.
“I started this wild process that involved coming out to my family, coming out to my friends, burning some bridges… I put it out there into the world in the most huge way possible [and] if I thought it was intimidating opening up about my mental health, the day I uploaded that was a whole other thing. “I don’t know if it’s just cynicism from having [had] a traumatising queer childhood, but I was shocked by how nice the reception was.”
In the video – which has clocked up more than 11 million views – Dan details the difficulties he faced growing up, from his dad’s flippant references to Aids as “bum cancer” to being badly bullied at school; he describes one incident where a boy put a hand around his throat, pushed his head against a coat peg and slapped him for five minutes.
At his lowest point, Dan attempted to take his own life. “I felt like I knew the world and I knew my place in it, and I felt like I had nowhere else to go and it was my only option to escape. I was so wrong because every single minute of my life that passed as I got older, the world got so big and so open,” he explains.
“The one thing to say to anybody that feels like they’re stuck in any kind of situation is, ‘You are never stuck, you might think you know everything, that there’s nothing left, but there is a whole world out there, full of love and opportunity.’
“I feel like my whole life for the past 10 years has been me climbing up a wall to get to a point where I feel like I finally have a space to exist and be in peace. You have to try.”
Dan adds that it was his fans who gave him the courage to peel off the proverbial plaster and upload the video.
“I would meet them [at my shows] and they would come out to me in front of their friends and family: ‘Dan, because you talk about being authentic and you opened up about your mental health, you gave me the strength to do this,’” he continues.
“But I was still in the closet [at the time]. I was stood there as people were telling me these amazing things and I felt like a hack.
“If it wasn’t for seeing these people and them telling me these positive, encouraging stories, there is no way that I would ever have had the courage to go on this journey.”
Although coming out has been a liberating experience, it also cranked open a Pandora’s box of issues Dan had yet to wrestle with.
“It didn’t cure all of my problems, magically,” he says. “I looked back at my childhood. I’d always thought, ah, well, you know, everyone has a shitty childhood; people get bullied, that’s fine. Then I thought about everything that happened to me and was like, oh my god, that was fucked up, that shit was deeply traumatic. All of this got unearthed for me.
“So, I’m in this weird state of feeling happy and free, but between thinking of what I went through and the years of speculation online, I’m pissed off.
“YOU MIGHT THINK THERE’S NOTHING LEFT, BUT THERE IS A WHOLE WORLD OUT THERE, FULL OF LOVE AND OPPORTUNITY”
“Everyone’s like, ‘Congrats, you’re over it, good, we’re done talking about you,’ and I’m sat here with all of this anger. What do I do with all this rage? Go for a wank, I guess,” he grins.
As for how his family reacted to the news, Dan says he let them know via an email, which began “Basically, I’m gay”, a few weeks before the video went live.
“I thought I’d come out to them at Christmas. It was Boxing Day and I was like, this is the moment, but I just couldn’t do it. I don’t want to make Boxing Day all about me; everyone’s having a nice time watching Chicken Run, so I’m not going to spoil it.
“Then I went out for lunch with my mum for her birthday and I thought I’d tell her and she can tell everyone. [Again] I just couldn’t do it… Instead, I emailed them, ‘Hi, basically, I’m gay,’ hit ‘send’, throwing the grenade and seeing what happens.
“My family gave me these greeting-card responses: ‘It’s amazing, we just love you for who you are,’ blah blah blah. [But] I’ve had another Christmas with the grandma and the problematic slips out. I’m like, ‘That’s not how that works, but I love you, I think, maybe…’
“You just have to deal with it, I guess, take the high road all the time, accept that people are going to say the wrong thing with the best intentions,” he shrugs.
Although Dan is a self-proclaimed oversharer, he has drawn a line between what he will and won’t talk about. Like? “Feet pictures. It opens a door. It really does, there’s whole blogs, people get rated out of 10. I’m not comfortable with my feet.”
On a slightly more serious note, he makes it clear that he isn’t comfortable about people probing the ins and outs of his love life. “People are like, ‘Dan, who are you fucking? When did you fuck? How hard did you fuck? When are you next going to do it?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know the answer to that question,’” he sighs.
Another source of speculation is his relationship with fellow YouTuber Phil Lester, who came out in a video the same month as Dan, and lives with him in north London.
“I don’t want to speak for him too much,” he says. “[We’re] best friends, arch enemies, husbands, business partners, partners in crime, soul mates, just mates, who the fuck knows?… Honestly, we’re very thankful that the world is in a place right now where we both could have been so vulnerable and it was accepting. We’re in different places. He had already come out to a few people, [but] like I said, I don’t want to speak for him or tell his story.”
Describing himself as a “one-year-old [gay] baby”, Dan was looking forward to living his best life in 2020 – but Miss Rona put the kibosh on those plans.
“People always say that anyone queer who had a closeted adult period has this weird teenage repression moment where they never got to exist. So, I’m here, 29, feeling like a 14-year-old because I never got to have fun or do stuff,” he starts.
“I was like, 2020 is going to be big for me, hot-boy summer. I’ve been working on my physical health, my mental health, working on some things, here we go… and then – BAM! – global pandemic.”
On the plus side, lockdown has given Dan ample opportunity to get cracking on his upcoming mental health book/self-help guide, You Will Get Through This Night.
“When it comes to mental health, everyone should know some basic things about stress and anxiety, so they know how to wake up in the morning with a smile and go about their day successfully, instead of bolting awake with anxiety at 4am,” he maintains.
“We talk about, if you are having a meltdown, what do you do to get yourself out of the mess? Another section is the next day when you go, ‘I want to make a change in my life, what are the things I can do today to really make an impact on my life going forward?’.
“Hopefully, no matter who reads it, wherever they are, whatever journey they’re on, they’ll take something from it, and you know, I’ll be happily airing all my dirty laundry for people to laugh at, because that’s what I do!”
Dan emphasises, too, that he isn’t just another influencer looking to coin it in; he is genuinely invested.
“I don’t want to come for myself when I say that there’s a lot of celebrities, public figures or just funny writers that will share personal stories, and that is so good for breaking the stigma and talking about it… but you don’t necessarily learn about what to do,” he adds.
“WE ALL HAVE THE VOICE THAT SAYS ‘YOU DON’T DESERVE SOMETHING, YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH’”
“I’m learning all of this stuff, I’m pouring myself into the book, so hopefully me and anyone who reads it will go on this journey together.”
Reflecting on the current status of his mental health, Dan says: “It is getting better. The process of really understanding everything that I went through, you know, accepting that I became a survivor because I had to normalise the things I went through just to get by and then saying, ‘Actually, that’s not normal and I don’t have to put up with that.’
“Being fair to yourself [too]. We all have the voice that says, ‘You don’t deserve something, you’re not good enough, this won’t happen for you’. It’s difficult to say, ‘No, I should stand up for myself’, or ‘I should change the situation.’ This is something you have to repeat to yourself like a mantra every single morning,” he urges.
Pointing to the importance of having comfort blankets to cling to during storms of anxiety, Dan will always treasure the day that RuPaul’s Drag Race sashayed into his world.
“I know everyone is like, ‘I’m so tired of it, there have been a million episodes,’ but, honestly, those scenes of people crying and telling their stories while putting on eyeliner, that was my fucking lifeline,” he reveals.
“Every single person who puts anything out there, telling a story, you do not know who might be reading it or watching it or seeing it, who needs to hear that.”
Dan shakes off the notion, though, that he is brave for telling his story. “Bravery is not me sharing the most intimate tragedies of my life to turn them into comedy to help strangers on the internet… it’s agreeing to do an Attitude photo shoot after three months in lockdown. I’m not joking!” he laughs.
Lockdown looks good on him, I assure Dan, and after one last pump of hand sanitiser, we go our separate ways.
YouTube star and selfdescribed “sad, gay clown” Daniel Howell tells us why sharing really is caring when it comes to mental health and sexuality
Words Thomas Stichbury
Random acts of kindness often flutter into existence when you least expect them. I am in the middle of telling Dan Howell about a homophobic encounter I recently had with a guy, who was mid-pee, in a pub toilet — no, I wasn’t cruising, how very dare you! — when a woman walks over and interrupts our conversation.
“Missing anything, boys?” she asks, eyebrow playfully arched, brandishing a mobile phone in her hand.
“Oh, my fucking phone!” Dan shrieks, having left it on a bench we’d briefly parked our behinds on. “You’re a good human being. Do you want some money?”
After wafting away any suggestion of payment, the bleach blonde-haired, tattooed stranger strolls off.
“We’re literally having a conversation about having no faith in humanity,” Dan says. “Is she an angel? Did we manifest her? I feel like we’re having a moment.”
The YouTube star and I had agreed to meet for a socially distanced sit-down at an outdoor café in Finsbury Park. Turns out that, at the time of our interview, Dan, 29, hadn’t left his house since lockdown was enforced and he is understandably anxious. My preposterously sized vat of hand sanitiser settles some of his nerves.
“My self-destructive comedy persona is obviously complete bullshit, because here I am desperately hand-sanitising every five minutes,” he smiles.
Dan’s winning schtick is his ability to funnel the funny from his trials and tribulations. Not that Dan is flippant about what he has been through; he simply dissects his personal dramas with a dollop of dark humour. It is highly relatable stuff that has seen him amass millions of followers online.
“My niche has always been making fun of myself and it’s crazy to think that I uploaded a YouTube video 10 years ago for no reason, just trying to be funny on the internet, talking about the fact [that] I’m a butterfingers and drop things all the time,” he recalls.
“As the years went on, that continued and then one day I realised I was struggling with depression and I thought for a long time, am I going to share this? I didn’t want to be judged… Are people going to want to work with me? Are friends going to ice me out?
“I SAID OUT LOUD TO MYSELF: ‘I’M GAY’… I’D BEEN RUNNING AWAY FROM THAT TWO-WORD ADMISSION MY ENTIRE LIFE”
“I was terrified, but then I put it out there into the world. It wasn’t even that I was surprised by how accepting people were… it [was] just the fact that people liked it more. They were like, ‘This is funnier because you’re talking about real shit.’
“Then I became the ‘mental health guy’. Great, I’m not just the relatable clown, now I’m the sad clown, which was the natural journey to me becoming the sad, gay clown a year later.”
Lifting the lid on his battle with mental health led Dan to address the other elephant in the room — or, rather, the “giant Babadook in the darkness — gay icon, by the way”.
In June last year — Pride month, appropriately — Dan posted a video entitled Basically, I’m Gay, in which he confronted his sexuality for the first time, both personally and publicly.
“I knew I was obviously not straight my whole life… [but] it was for the first time acknowledging this truth about myself and, in working out what my own story was, I had to confront all of these aspects of my life that I just hadn’t dealt with before,” he begins.
“I was sat quietly by myself thinking, OK, I want to talk about this publicly, I want to get this out of the way, I don’t want a skeleton in my closet… I just said out loud to myself: ‘I’m gay.’ It was really profound, [because] I’d been running away from that two-word admission my entire life.
“I started this wild process that involved coming out to my family, coming out to my friends, burning some bridges… I put it out there into the world in the most huge way possible [and] if I thought it was intimidating opening up about my mental health, the day I uploaded that was a whole other thing. “I don’t know if it’s just cynicism from having [had] a traumatising queer childhood, but I was shocked by how nice the reception was.”
In the video – which has clocked up more than 11 million views – Dan details the difficulties he faced growing up, from his dad’s flippant references to Aids as “bum cancer” to being badly bullied at school; he describes one incident where a boy put a hand around his throat, pushed his head against a coat peg and slapped him for five minutes.
At his lowest point, Dan attempted to take his own life. “I felt like I knew the world and I knew my place in it, and I felt like I had nowhere else to go and it was my only option to escape. I was so wrong because every single minute of my life that passed as I got older, the world got so big and so open,” he explains.
“The one thing to say to anybody that feels like they’re stuck in any kind of situation is, ‘You are never stuck, you might think you know everything, that there’s nothing left, but there is a whole world out there, full of love and opportunity.’
“I feel like my whole life for the past 10 years has been me climbing up a wall to get to a point where I feel like I finally have a space to exist and be in peace. You have to try.”
Dan adds that it was his fans who gave him the courage to peel off the proverbial plaster and upload the video.
“I would meet them [at my shows] and they would come out to me in front of their friends and family: ‘Dan, because you talk about being authentic and you opened up about your mental health, you gave me the strength to do this,’” he continues.
“But I was still in the closet [at the time]. I was stood there as people were telling me these amazing things and I felt like a hack.
“If it wasn’t for seeing these people and them telling me these positive, encouraging stories, there is no way that I would ever have had the courage to go on this journey.”
Although coming out has been a liberating experience, it also cranked open a Pandora’s box of issues Dan had yet to wrestle with.
“It didn’t cure all of my problems, magically,” he says. “I looked back at my childhood. I’d always thought, ah, well, you know, everyone has a shitty childhood; people get bullied, that’s fine. Then I thought about everything that happened to me and was like, oh my god, that was fucked up, that shit was deeply traumatic. All of this got unearthed for me.
“So, I’m in this weird state of feeling happy and free, but between thinking of what I went through and the years of speculation online, I’m pissed off.
“YOU MIGHT THINK THERE’S NOTHING LEFT, BUT THERE IS A WHOLE WORLD OUT THERE, FULL OF LOVE AND OPPORTUNITY”
“Everyone’s like, ‘Congrats, you’re over it, good, we’re done talking about you,’ and I’m sat here with all of this anger. What do I do with all this rage? Go for a wank, I guess,” he grins.
As for how his family reacted to the news, Dan says he let them know via an email, which began “Basically, I’m gay”, a few weeks before the video went live.
“I thought I’d come out to them at Christmas. It was Boxing Day and I was like, this is the moment, but I just couldn’t do it. I don’t want to make Boxing Day all about me; everyone’s having a nice time watching Chicken Run, so I’m not going to spoil it.
“Then I went out for lunch with my mum for her birthday and I thought I’d tell her and she can tell everyone. [Again] I just couldn’t do it… Instead, I emailed them, ‘Hi, basically, I’m gay,’ hit ‘send’, throwing the grenade and seeing what happens.
“My family gave me these greeting-card responses: ‘It’s amazing, we just love you for who you are,’ blah blah blah. [But] I’ve had another Christmas with the grandma and the problematic slips out. I’m like, ‘That’s not how that works, but I love you, I think, maybe…’
“You just have to deal with it, I guess, take the high road all the time, accept that people are going to say the wrong thing with the best intentions,” he shrugs.
Although Dan is a self-proclaimed oversharer, he has drawn a line between what he will and won’t talk about. Like? “Feet pictures. It opens a door. It really does, there’s whole blogs, people get rated out of 10. I’m not comfortable with my feet.”
On a slightly more serious note, he makes it clear that he isn’t comfortable about people probing the ins and outs of his love life. “People are like, ‘Dan, who are you fucking? When did you fuck? How hard did you fuck? When are you next going to do it?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know the answer to that question,’” he sighs.
Another source of speculation is his relationship with fellow YouTuber Phil Lester, who came out in a video the same month as Dan, and lives with him in north London.
“I don’t want to speak for him too much,” he says. “[We’re] best friends, arch enemies, husbands, business partners, partners in crime, soul mates, just mates, who the fuck knows?… Honestly, we’re very thankful that the world is in a place right now where we both could have been so vulnerable and it was accepting. We’re in different places. He had already come out to a few people, [but] like I said, I don’t want to speak for him or tell his story.”
Describing himself as a “one-year-old [gay] baby”, Dan was looking forward to living his best life in 2020 – but Miss Rona put the kibosh on those plans.
“People always say that anyone queer who had a closeted adult period has this weird teenage repression moment where they never got to exist. So, I’m here, 29, feeling like a 14-year-old because I never got to have fun or do stuff,” he starts.
“I was like, 2020 is going to be big for me, hot-boy summer. I’ve been working on my physical health, my mental health, working on some things, here we go… and then – BAM! – global pandemic.”
On the plus side, lockdown has given Dan ample opportunity to get cracking on his upcoming mental health book/self-help guide, You Will Get Through This Night.
“When it comes to mental health, everyone should know some basic things about stress and anxiety, so they know how to wake up in the morning with a smile and go about their day successfully, instead of bolting awake with anxiety at 4am,” he maintains.
“We talk about, if you are having a meltdown, what do you do to get yourself out of the mess? Another section is the next day when you go, ‘I want to make a change in my life, what are the things I can do today to really make an impact on my life going forward?’.
“Hopefully, no matter who reads it, wherever they are, whatever journey they’re on, they’ll take something from it, and you know, I’ll be happily airing all my dirty laundry for people to laugh at, because that’s what I do!”
Dan emphasises, too, that he isn’t just another influencer looking to coin it in; he is genuinely invested.
“I don’t want to come for myself when I say that there’s a lot of celebrities, public figures or just funny writers that will share personal stories, and that is so good for breaking the stigma and talking about it… but you don’t necessarily learn about what to do,” he adds.
“WE ALL HAVE THE VOICE THAT SAYS ‘YOU DON’T DESERVE SOMETHING, YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH’”
“I’m learning all of this stuff, I’m pouring myself into the book, so hopefully me and anyone who reads it will go on this journey together.”
Reflecting on the current status of his mental health, Dan says: “It is getting better. The process of really understanding everything that I went through, you know, accepting that I became a survivor because I had to normalise the things I went through just to get by and then saying, ‘Actually, that’s not normal and I don’t have to put up with that.’
“Being fair to yourself [too]. We all have the voice that says, ‘You don’t deserve something, you’re not good enough, this won’t happen for you’. It’s difficult to say, ‘No, I should stand up for myself’, or ‘I should change the situation.’ This is something you have to repeat to yourself like a mantra every single morning,” he urges.
Pointing to the importance of having comfort blankets to cling to during storms of anxiety, Dan will always treasure the day that RuPaul’s Drag Race sashayed into his world.
“I know everyone is like, ‘I’m so tired of it, there have been a million episodes,’ but, honestly, those scenes of people crying and telling their stories while putting on eyeliner, that was my fucking lifeline,” he reveals.
“Every single person who puts anything out there, telling a story, you do not know who might be reading it or watching it or seeing it, who needs to hear that.”
Dan shakes off the notion, though, that he is brave for telling his story. “Bravery is not me sharing the most intimate tragedies of my life to turn them into comedy to help strangers on the internet… it’s agreeing to do an Attitude photo shoot after three months in lockdown. I’m not joking!” he laughs.
Lockdown looks good on him, I assure Dan, and after one last pump of hand sanitiser, we go our separate ways.
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moonanonymous
- smol bean
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Sun Mar 29, 2020 9:30 pm
- Pronouns: she/her
- Location: Portland, USA
Thank you for posting that @dizzy !! I usually hate these type of interviews (mostly for the interviewers not rly understanding all the youtube stuff) but that was actually a super pleasant read and it's kinda made me want to reconsider pre-ordering the book lol.
Also just like -- husbands. Just gonna bask in that one for a while
Also just like -- husbands. Just gonna bask in that one for a while
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LadyLackless
- cheeky #spon
- Posts: 200
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- Pronouns: She/Her
- Location: UK
crawling out of retirement to sincerely thank you, @alittledizzy for posting the article. Love to see Dan thriving 
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Megancita75
- ar·tic·u·late
- Posts: 403
- Joined: Thu Jul 11, 2019 6:43 pm
- Pronouns: she/her
- Location: USA
Ok, there's a lot to unpack in that interview. But the things that stood out to me:
- how he was shocked by the positive reaction to BIG and how he connects that to conditioning from childhood trauma
- how he talks about grappling with anger about that trauma, including online speculation
- how as a baby gay he feels like he wants to experience the teenage stuff denied to him
- how coming out didn't magically fix his family issues
- how combating negative voices inside you take everyday work
Bless you Dizzy, you're an actual angel!
Interesting interview, even if nothing groundbreaking in terms of new info (except anger at speculation/'congrats we knew' and continued fam issues but such is life, I guess).
I would give anything to have a recording of the audio for the Phil paragraph and hear him refer to them as husbands...
Interesting interview, even if nothing groundbreaking in terms of new info (except anger at speculation/'congrats we knew' and continued fam issues but such is life, I guess).
I would give anything to have a recording of the audio for the Phil paragraph and hear him refer to them as husbands...
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fairylights
- crusty sponge
- Posts: 26
- Joined: Tue Apr 02, 2019 11:26 pm
does anyone have that phil formspring where someone asked like “what is dan - your boyfriend, brother, enemy, best friend, ect” and phil said (i think) “he is my son”? i’m not making that up am i?
anyways, it has the same energy as this, but this is the grownup and out version
anyways, it has the same energy as this, but this is the grownup and out version
Phil's casual Dan mention, Dan throwing out the word "husbands" like that, new Phil video soon, Dan looking handsome as all get out...it's a good day!
It looks like I'd have to pay 4.99 for an e version of the magazine, is this true and if so, is it worth it? If it has substantial Dan content I am more than willing. I read the few paragraphs on the website, is there more?
It looks like I'd have to pay 4.99 for an e version of the magazine, is this true and if so, is it worth it? If it has substantial Dan content I am more than willing. I read the few paragraphs on the website, is there more?
I have so many thoughts too (outside of that blatant FUCK at the top of the page).
- “My self-destructive comedy persona is obviously complete bullshit, because here I am desperately hand-sanitising every five minutes,” he smiles. I love this quote. I love that he admits he's not all doom and gloom. It makes my heart soar and my soul feel better. He's just our pooh bear at the end of the day and you can fight me on that.
- “But I was still in the closet [at the time]. I was stood there as people were telling me these amazing things and I felt like a hack." I wanna hug him. Desperately. I'm also incredibly shook by how much he was going through at these meet & greets? I think about to that tweet from a girl talking to him about not being able to come out and he quietly said something akin to "Someday." to her and just. I.... have so many emotions.
- Have you heard the word? Phil's his husband.
- “So, I’m in this weird state of feeling happy and free, but between thinking of what I went through and the years of speculation online, I’m pissed off. Everyone’s like, ‘Congrats, you’re over it, good, we’re done talking about you,’ and I’m sat here with all of this anger. What do I do with all this rage? Go for a wank, I guess,” he grins. This is really reminiscent of "I'm gonna go and masturbate and cry into a slice of pizza". But also on a more serious note - so rough. I think he's totally allowed to be angry. What an experience to go through and like - what can we even say in response, ya know?
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Megancita75
- ar·tic·u·late
- Posts: 403
- Joined: Thu Jul 11, 2019 6:43 pm
- Pronouns: she/her
- Location: USA
I'm a fan of the "arch enemies" line. There was a nice rhythm to that whole description that gives me hope for Dan as writer pulling off some eloquent stuff.
Ah, bless you dizzy. This was one of my favorite interviews, I really liked it a lot! Resonated with Dan's descriptions of feeling belatedly angry while others think you should have moved on by now.
First of all, thank you to dizzy for putting all this stuff on here and taking one for the team 
Phil really knew we've been starving and decided to throw us a bone with that single sentence of domestic joint content in his members post, huh. You know what? I'll fucking take it. Also I can absolutely imagine Dan buying and liking kombucha and Phil being like 'wtf is this gross shit??'
The Dan article. Good shit. We love to see it. I am also a sad, gay clown.
Pieces that stuck out to me:
“My self-destructive comedy persona is obviously complete bullshit, because here I am desperately hand-sanitising every five minutes,” he smiles.
I love hearing Dan acknowledge this. I mean, obviously his humor does stem from his personality, but it's nice to hear him mention how it isn't his all-encompassing reality.
“I was like, 2020 is going to be big for me, hot-boy summer. I’ve been working on my physical health, my mental health, working on some things, here we go… and then – BAM! – global pandemic.”
I'm so glad Dan got to go to London pride last year. I really wonder if Phil had considered going this year and if he was, it makes me sad that he didn't get to have that experience (yet). While pride is very intense and I do have my qualms with many events, it is such a magical experience the first time to be around so many people and such celebration of something you've kept quiet. Also I feel like things like that thirst trappy instagram post may relate to feelings like this- finally feeling confident in sexuality and life, just needing to get it out of his system a bit. Even though I know Dan isn't much of a going out/party person (neither am I) I hope that if he wants to, once it's safe he and a bunch of friends can go to a gay bar and just have a fun, queer night. Or things like that that his younger self may have watched from afar and pined over that he was never able to do.
Reading this, I really am more interested to hear his thoughts and anecdotes in This Night.
And obviously, throwing husbands into a bunch of other descriptions is a great move. It slides in subtly and also highlights that regardless of how they categorize the more romantic part of their relationship, they are so much and so many different things to each other and that's what matters.
Lastly, Phil saying he's uploading before the weekend? I'm going to take that he means Friday. Since Saturday would be the weekend and Thursday is literally tomorrow. Shame that I will be at work then. I'll have to wait until late to watch it.
tldr:
Phil really knew we've been starving and decided to throw us a bone with that single sentence of domestic joint content in his members post, huh. You know what? I'll fucking take it. Also I can absolutely imagine Dan buying and liking kombucha and Phil being like 'wtf is this gross shit??'
The Dan article. Good shit. We love to see it. I am also a sad, gay clown.
Pieces that stuck out to me:
“My self-destructive comedy persona is obviously complete bullshit, because here I am desperately hand-sanitising every five minutes,” he smiles.
I love hearing Dan acknowledge this. I mean, obviously his humor does stem from his personality, but it's nice to hear him mention how it isn't his all-encompassing reality.
“I was like, 2020 is going to be big for me, hot-boy summer. I’ve been working on my physical health, my mental health, working on some things, here we go… and then – BAM! – global pandemic.”
I'm so glad Dan got to go to London pride last year. I really wonder if Phil had considered going this year and if he was, it makes me sad that he didn't get to have that experience (yet). While pride is very intense and I do have my qualms with many events, it is such a magical experience the first time to be around so many people and such celebration of something you've kept quiet. Also I feel like things like that thirst trappy instagram post may relate to feelings like this- finally feeling confident in sexuality and life, just needing to get it out of his system a bit. Even though I know Dan isn't much of a going out/party person (neither am I) I hope that if he wants to, once it's safe he and a bunch of friends can go to a gay bar and just have a fun, queer night. Or things like that that his younger self may have watched from afar and pined over that he was never able to do.
Reading this, I really am more interested to hear his thoughts and anecdotes in This Night.
And obviously, throwing husbands into a bunch of other descriptions is a great move. It slides in subtly and also highlights that regardless of how they categorize the more romantic part of their relationship, they are so much and so many different things to each other and that's what matters.
Lastly, Phil saying he's uploading before the weekend? I'm going to take that he means Friday. Since Saturday would be the weekend and Thursday is literally tomorrow. Shame that I will be at work then. I'll have to wait until late to watch it.
tldr:
I love the Dan in the interview and how honest and raw about coming out not fixing everything,. especially toxic family situations, it makes me sad and so mad after everything he's been through he's still having to deal with this shit.
On a happier note he looks so god in those photos and I'm smiling so much it hurts at Dan's use of husband's.
On a happier note he looks so god in those photos and I'm smiling so much it hurts at Dan's use of husband's.
HUSBANDS.
HUSBANDS?
HUSBANDS!
OH MY GOD THEY WERE HUSBANDS.
I currently have fake nails on so as much as I wish I could type a whole essay on that great interview, these nails took me a long ass time and I don't wanna ruin them. But it really was good read and I'm v proud of him for being so open and having come this far.
Also he looks great in those pictures
HUSBANDS?
HUSBANDS!
OH MY GOD THEY WERE HUSBANDS.
I currently have fake nails on so as much as I wish I could type a whole essay on that great interview, these nails took me a long ass time and I don't wanna ruin them. But it really was good read and I'm v proud of him for being so open and having come this far.
Also he looks great in those pictures
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Tornbetweenfandoms
- glabella
- Posts: 74
- Joined: Sat Jul 27, 2019 3:29 pm
- Pronouns: She/her
- Location: Yorkshire
Is it new name time yet? I vote "sad gay clown and his partner in crime"
sadgayclown.tumblr.com 
do we think press is gonna take this and run with it?
i can see it now: "daniel howell, alongside husband phil lester, blahblahblah... blahblahblah media blah internet blahblah."
yes, this is exactly how articles are written. don't @ me.
i can see it now: "daniel howell, alongside husband phil lester, blahblahblah... blahblahblah media blah internet blahblah."
yes, this is exactly how articles are written. don't @ me.
Oof. I really, really hope not, but I could see it happening. I feel like saying it the way he did was the perfect level, where we would obviously notice and have our hearts explode because of it, but it wasn't super serious and hopefully isn't something that would be taken up by other actual publications and stuff. idk.
Although, if you're reading an article in a gay magazine about a queer guy and you have no idea who he is but he refers to his husband, I would probably assume they were actual husbands so
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yellowsubmarine
- hobbit hair
- Posts: 263
- Joined: Thu Jul 06, 2017 2:27 pm
- Pronouns: she/her
I feel like I'm being dramatic but I just wanna say, in that photoshoot, and in all the years I have known Dan, that is the absolute HAPPIEST he's ever looked!
Look at that huge smile!
Seriously, he is glowing!!!!
Look at that huge smile!
Seriously, he is glowing!!!!
"Treat yourself, because you're special and you're worth it."
I think this provides a bit more clarity than BIG, but I’m struck by: “just said out loud to myself: ‘I’m gay.’ It was really profound, [because] I’d been running away from that two-word admission my entire life.”
In other words, did he only accept and come out to himself in those preceding weeks before BIG or was it more about labels and less about denial? I’m trying so hard to understand what kind of toll that must have played on one’s psyche, not to mention a long term relationship.
And I’m perplexed by his saying “I don’t know the answer to that question” regarding boundaries on who/what/where of who he fucks—does he mean to say, I don’t know, or I don’t know what to say, or I know, but the question is intrusive so fuck off.
I’m genuinely okay not knowing (boundaries!), but I’m still endlessly fascinated by their relationship dynamic—I’d just love to know how they survived and made it work through the years and settle I guess that one last great mystery and know if the are romantic partners in the everyday sense or just platonic husbands/ soulmates and perhaps are open to experiencing romance elsewhere... I don’t know why that question feels unresolved to me (maybe I’m just a pervy nosey-body), but I guess I’ll have to hope for a tell-all book one day.
In other words, did he only accept and come out to himself in those preceding weeks before BIG or was it more about labels and less about denial? I’m trying so hard to understand what kind of toll that must have played on one’s psyche, not to mention a long term relationship.
And I’m perplexed by his saying “I don’t know the answer to that question” regarding boundaries on who/what/where of who he fucks—does he mean to say, I don’t know, or I don’t know what to say, or I know, but the question is intrusive so fuck off.
I’m genuinely okay not knowing (boundaries!), but I’m still endlessly fascinated by their relationship dynamic—I’d just love to know how they survived and made it work through the years and settle I guess that one last great mystery and know if the are romantic partners in the everyday sense or just platonic husbands/ soulmates and perhaps are open to experiencing romance elsewhere... I don’t know why that question feels unresolved to me (maybe I’m just a pervy nosey-body), but I guess I’ll have to hope for a tell-all book one day.
