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Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 56: Not NOT a negation episode

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 56: Not NOT a negation episode. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 56 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today we’re getting enthusiastic about negation!

Gretchen: Or “We’re not getting unenthusiastic about negation,” if you will.

Lauren: “We’re not NOT getting enthusiastic about negation.” But first, we just want to say thanks to everyone who became a patron or was already a patron and came to our April liveshow that was part of LingFest.

Gretchen: It was really fun to get to see and hear from you all in the chat and on social media. This show has been edited and put up on our Patreon bonus feed. If you want to listen to it in audio only like a normal podcast, you can listen to it on Patreon if you didn’t catch it live. We’d also like to thank everybody who came to LingFest in general. All of the great events that people put on were really fun! It was really great to see all of the community around that.

Lauren: LingFest came on the back of LingComm21, which was our conference for people doing LingComm, which was also a lovely experience. Thanks to everyone who participated in one or both of those events.

[Music]

Gretchen: “There is nothing to be suspicious about here.”

Lauren: “That’s good because I absolutely did not eat the whole secret stash of chocolate while you weren’t looking.”

Gretchen: “And I definitely didn’t spill water everywhere.”

Lauren: “I totally have not adopted a pet dinosaur.”

Gretchen: “The moon is absolutely in its usual position. No one has blown it up – especially not me.”

Lauren: I am quite dubious, and I’m just gonna wait until I can definitely check that by looking at the moon.

Gretchen: I am also a little bit worried about the status of your dinosaur or dinosaur-free lifestyle.

Lauren: I don’t have a pet dinosaur. I was very clear. No dinosaur.

Gretchen: But if you haven’t had a pet dinosaur the entire time I’ve known you, why are you bringing it up today?

Lauren: Every day I have not had a pet dinosaur, and yet, bringing it up today somehow makes it feel relevant in a way a bit like we talked about in our episode on Gricean maxims where you only talk about things because they are relevant.

Gretchen: Just like I have not been blowing up the moon every single day of my life –

Lauren: Thankfully.

Gretchen: – yet somehow, when I start saying it like that, it also reminds me of a feature of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, which is a delightfully surreal podcast. There’s this bit in Episode 8 that I wrote about back in 2013 when I was first listening to Welcome to Night Vale that also uses negation in a very similar sort of way. Here’s the quote, “We’re receiving word from the City Council that there was absolutely not a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular this weekend at Radon Canyon – there never was a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular ever near Night Vale. ‘Pink Floyd is not even a thing,’ said the Council in a statement,” and at the same time, you’re left with this impression that –

Lauren: That’s a lot of denying.

Gretchen: Yeah. It’s sort of “Methinks thou dost protest too much,” like, “Why are you protesting so much?” Surely, every day, near my house, there is not a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular, and yet no one has felt obliged to inform me of this.

Lauren: It’s because the only times we talk about something not happening is because the absence of something is relevant. Language takes a default positive talking about things that are here or do exist. It’s the lack of something that gets overtly marked in the grammar of languages.

Gretchen: Right. It’s also the lack of something brings in this presupposition that the lack of something is a relevant thing to talk about or that it could have been expected but hasn’t happened. If I say something like, “I haven’t eaten dinner yet today,” that’s not ontologically weird, philosophically weird, in the same way “I don’t have a pet dinosaur” is weird. Because it is still an open question on any given day whether or not I’ve had dinner. Or if I say, “I don’t have a cat,” that is an open question that reasonable people sometimes do have cats, and so it could be reasonably relevant that I might or might not have a cat in the way that it’s not reasonably relevant that I might or might not have a pet dinosaur.

Lauren: This shows up in the grammar where the default is positive. You don’t add anything to a sentence, usually, to indicate that something’s positive. You have to add something to the grammar to show that it’s negative.

Gretchen: If you look at the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures, which is a great set of maps that is available on the internet for free for you to look at, they have over 1,000 languages on their negation map. They have a bunch of different ways that languages can indicate negation, whether you add a different word or whether you change something about the verb or whether you add two things or other things like that. In over 1,000 languages, all of them have something you add to make the sentence negative – not, for example, something you take away.

Lauren: You get to this point with language as a consistent feature of language where the absence of something or the negation of something is indicated by adding something to the grammar whether that’s a word or a morpheme that affixes to a word.

Gretchen: Which is philosophically weird when you think about it, right, because why is the presence of something indicated with the version of the sentence that has less in it, and the absence of something is indicated by the version of the sentence that has more in it.

Lauren: I think it definitely goes back to the initial examples we used where actually talking about the absence of something only happens when absence is relevant because there is not a dinosaur in my house every day, but I absolutely don’t need to point out every day all the things that are not in my house.

Gretchen: You don’t have any zebras either?

Lauren: I just start the day by rattling them off.

Gretchen: Listing every single animal that’s not in my house every day before I do anything else.

Lauren: We tend to only talk about the absence of something when it’s relevant. This is part of why negation is an additive thing to the grammar. We think about the positive version of the utterance as somehow being more default.

Gretchen: It’s actually kind of similar to how we think about numbers. Like, “one” and “two” and “three” were invented a long time before the number “zero” was invented. Even though before you have one of something, you have zero of it, but it wasn’t being commented on in a numerical way. It might’ve been being commented on in a negative way because languages do have negation, but it wasn’t being commented on as “I have zero dinosaurs.”

Lauren: Why negation is something that’s kept mathematicians and philosophers and people doing logic and linguists entertained, and many other people entertained, for such a long time and why we’re giving it its own whole episode.

Gretchen: “We’re not NOT doing a negation episode.”

Lauren: Alongside the strong consistency of having some kind of additional marking to indicate negation, the use of particular gestures to indicate negation seems to be one of the more consistent things that languages do across families.

Gretchen: I love it when you have a gesture tie-in.

Lauren: For a couple of centuries, people have grappled with the fact that shaking the head to indicate “no” is incredibly prevalent across languages – and way more prevalent and consistent than nodding is to indicate “yes.”

Gretchen: Oh! That’s interesting.

Lauren: The generally agreed-upon theory is that shaking your head to indicate “no” starts really early when infants are refusing food because it’s something you have an imperative to do.

Gretchen: “No, don’t want this food. No!”

Lauren: Even Charles Darwin wrote a book that, I think, it was just gonna be a chapter of On the Origin of Species, and he just got way into it looking at gestures looking across humans and other animals and different languages and was like, “The head shake for ‘no’ is really consistent.” How people indicate “yes” is less consistent, and it just seems to be “do something that isn’t ‘no’,” whereas “no” seems to be the starting point.

Gretchen: Hmm. That’s interesting.

Lauren: You have this really consistent pattern with head shaking, and you also have these families of gestural tendencies across languages where people use some kind of away motion for negation with their hands.

Gretchen: Like, “Oh, no, I can’t.” I’m doing some sort of sweeping away from my shoulders.

Lauren: A pushing away or a sweeping away or a throwing away are all part of this family that have been looked at across languages. I’ve just published a paper in a journal, Semiotica, about this flicking away, rolling away, gesture that you get in Syuba narratives when people are talking about the absence or the lack of something in a story. All of these types of away negation seem to also tap into this human conceptualisation of negation as something pushed away from or held away from the body – “away” and negation seems to fit together in our –

Gretchen: “It’s not near me.” That actually ties into this idea that the affirmative, the positive, the non-negative form is the default because if you’re pushing it away from your body that implies that it was near your body in the first place.

Lauren: We have a very bodily lived experience of existing and things being here or not being here. Although, that is a good point. I’ve been just talking about the positive, but there is a technical linguist term for “not negative” which is “affirmative” – probably should mention that.

Gretchen: I feel like people have encountered “affirmative” in a very robot voice, you know, [imitates computer voice] “Affirmative. Destroy all the humans” – or something like that.

Lauren: It’s one of those times where you’re like, “Oh, good. A technical term that’s already part of my vocabulary.” That’s a win.

Gretchen: It’s interesting because you could imagine a language where the default beginning is actually negative and, instead, you add something to make it affirmative.

Lauren: This is a hard-to-wrap-your-head-around constructed language experiment.

Gretchen: None of the languages in WALS do this, apparently, but you have English, which has “I don’t have a pet dino,” which is the negative, and “I have a pet dino,” which is the affirmative. English Prime, which is what linguists do when they’re trying to make up a language that is very similar to English but different except one thing so we don’t have to make up new words the whole way through, where you could say something like, “I have a pet dino,” meaning “I don’t have one” because that’s the default form of the sentence, and then if you have like, “I AFF have a pet dino,” which means “I do have one,” where the “AFF” is a fake word that means “affirmative.” That’s just not a thing you see grammatically.

Lauren: I have learnt many languages, I have encountered complex grammars of many languages, and this actually hurts my brain to conceptualise as a way of speaking. In English we have a variety of ways of expressing negation in the grammar. We have separate words like “no” or “not” that we can use to make a whole sentence negative, or we also have affixes that we can use to make a particular word negative. “Unenthusiastic” would be an example from the top of the show – or “unhappy,” “unexciting,” “uninteresting,” “hopeless.” There’re a variety of strategies that English has to do negating; it’s not just one particular thing.

Gretchen: The word formation side of negation often brings up the question of the fossilised words that English has in its vocabulary that look like they have a negative part to them, but we don’t have the positive version of them anymore. You have things like, “ruthless” or “feckless” or “unkempt,” but we don’t have like, “ruthful” or “feckful” or “kempt.”

Lauren: “Kempt.” Yes.

Gretchen: There’s a great poem about this which we can link to. What’s interesting is that I’ve actually been – this is a shameless bragging moment here – I was reading an advance copy of Arika Okrent’s upcoming book.

Lauren: I will be jealous of this on behalf of everyone because Arika Okrent wrote an amazing book about conlanging called In the Land of Invented Languages probably a decade ago now and has a new book about English grammar and its wonderful weirdnesses coming out in the middle of 2021.

Gretchen: Her book is called Highly Irregular. It’s coming out on July 1st, 2021. She makes this really interesting point in the advance copy which is, “We joke about the missing flipsides of ‘hapless,’ ‘ruthless,’ and ‘feckless,’ but not what we should be able to form but don’t from ‘bashful,’ ‘grateful,’ and ‘wistful.’”

Lauren: Huh! I feel like this is a reaction I have when I read Arika’s work a lot. I’m just like, “Ah, yeah. I hadn’t thought about that before.

Gretchen: There’s no “bashless,” “grateless,” or “wistless,” even though it feels natural that there should be a missing positive form of forms that have a negative. We don’t have the same reaction of the missing negative form of things that have a positive, which also gets into that positive-as-default form.

Lauren: These things always seem so consistent on the surface. Then you look at how people actually use them and what gets actively used and what becomes fossils, and you realise that applying negation is a little more complicated.

Gretchen: Then on the flipside of affirmative is no negation at all. There’s also this thing of like, “What if you have extra negation? What if you wanna make something even more emphatically negated?” “I absolutely did not get a baby dinosaur. Nope. No siree. Nah-uh. Didn’t happen.”

Lauren: Some languages can put in more than one negating word to really emphasise that something is negated, which is a strategy you might be familiar with as “double negation,” which occurs in about 10% of the world’s languages.

Gretchen: This is the strategy that I’m really familiar with in French because that’s the default way of doing negation. In formal, written French you have at least two negative words. Sometimes, you can put in more. The default way of doing that is a “ne” before the verb and a “pas” after the verb. Sometimes the “pas” can change into something else. So, “ne VERB pas” is “not,” but if you have “ne VERB personne,” that’s “no one,” or “ne VERB rien,” that’s “nothing.” Even if I just want to say, like, “I did not receive a baby dinosaur,” it would be, “Je n'ai pas reçu un dinosaure,” which is “dinosaur” in French, in case that wasn’t clear. You have the “ne” and the “pas” there. Although, in spoken French, a lot of times the “ne” gets dropped, and so you just have the “pas” indicating negation.

Lauren: The “ne” is the older part, right?

Gretchen: Yeah. English actually, historically, had a second negative particle that was before the verb. If you have “I cannot,” it was more something like, “I ne cannot.” They were both there and then the earlier one gets dropped. This happens sometimes you get negatives reinforcing each other and then “Oh, now we don’t need this one.”

Lauren: If we revisited those 120 languages with double negation in the WALS map in a century – because languages are constantly changing and moving around in their grammar some of them might’ve dropped one of those negative elements and gone back to being a single negation language, and some languages might add a second one and become a language that has double negation. French is kind of in the middle of doing that at the moment.

Gretchen: This process in linguistic research is called “negative concord” rather than “double negation” because it’s not just two of them necessarily. A language that has negative concord can continue stacking negative elements like “nothing” and “no one” and all of these on top. Like, “I didn’t give nothing to no one,” that’s totally the expected way of saying it in French.

Lauren: It’s interesting that that gloss works as the expected form in French because it is totally grammatically viable for some dialects of English, but it’s often stigmatised as being not acceptable or not part of standard English.

Gretchen: The thing that drives me up the wall about the logic for doing that is that the logic for stigmatising it is quote-unquote “two negatives form a positive,” but what this logic doesn’t realise is that it’s extremely spurious logic. It’s a misuse of how logic works.

Lauren: Do you wanna unpack that for us? Because I personally find joy in the fact that language is more interesting than logic, but if people have encountered this argument, where does it fall down for you?

Gretchen: First of all, languages like French exist.

Lauren: I do wonder how much more milage double negation or negative concord in English would get if we called it the “French negation.”

Gretchen: Right! “Oh, it’s like French toast!” Everyone likes things that are French. The “French toast” negation style. There were plenty of early logicians who were French who were surely not making this argument that doesn’t even work for their language in the only way that they were doing things in Descartes’s time.

Lauren: Language is not just numbers.

Gretchen: Also, in English, nobody is confused about the difference between “I didn’t give nothing to nobody” and “I’m not NOT excited.” Those both use multiple negations. In one of them, the negation is trying cancel out the negation, and in the other one, it’s reinforcing the negation. We do know what people mean. It’s not actually confusing.

Lauren: In fact, we can throw even more negation into the way that we speak, and people cope with it really fine.

Gretchen: The other thing is, is that – I don’t wanna get completely linguist on the logicians, but languages have been around for a lot longer than logic has.

Lauren: True.

Gretchen: Formal logic has existed for, I dunno, what, Aristotle? So, a couple thousand years, if we’re gonna be generous. Language has been around for somewhere in the tens of thousands of years. We’re not even sure whether it’s tens or hundreds of thousands because we literally don’t have records. Just several orders of magnitude longer than logic has existed, language has been around. If we think that roughly 10% of languages have negative concord now, probably some fraction of languages have always had negative concord because it’s a thing that people could do. It’s a bit rich for logic, this young interloper, to come into language, which has been doing just fine this entire time, and be like, “Sorry, you need to redo your entire system because I don’t like it.” Who are you? It’s so young.

Lauren: With that in mind, should we try squeezing even more negation into a sentence? Because we can do better than just double negatives for negative concord.

Gretchen: Yes. This is where we can do one of my favourite examples which is the Mean Girls approach to negation.

Lauren: Okay, not what I expected to be your favourite example, but let’s go.

Gretchen: I mean, look, any excuse to have a Mean Girls reference. That’s the “She doesn’t even go here” type of negation. When you have several bits in a sentence that are actually negative, you could still take one out, and that’s what makes the logical argument superficially appealing because you could get rid of someone, they’re just reinforcing each other. But in this case, you have “She doesn’t even go here,” and if you try to make that positive – “She does even go here.”

Lauren: “She even goes here.” I’m taking out the “n’t” – “She does even go here.” It doesn’t work for me.

Gretchen: Or you could do it with a different stress like, “She EVEN goes here.”

Lauren: Or I guess the affirmative form of this would just be “She goes here.” The “even” doesn’t turn up at all.

Gretchen: The “even” there is doing something interesting. It’s reinforcing the negation without itself being negative per se in isolation – just sort of not being around at all – without the negative there to help it.

Lauren: I guess it would be like a sentence like, “I don’t like ice cream at all,” which apart from being a fake fact –

Gretchen: [Laughs] Would you say, “I like ice cream at all”?

Lauren: I would just say, “I like ice cream.” The “at all” doesn’t need to be there at all.

Gretchen: Or the “I didn’t eat a crumb of cake,” which you can say, “I ate a crumb of cake,” but it’s not quite the opposite of “I didn’t eat a crumb of cake.”

Lauren: It’s a little bit too literal in the affirmative version.

Gretchen: Or something like, “I didn’t touch a drop of water.”

Lauren: “I touched a drop of water,” I just boop it with my ear.

Gretchen: Just going through the rain booping rain drops.

Lauren: That one absolutely does not work when you keep “a drop of water” in there. That construction only works for me in the negative even though a lot of the words in it that are adding to the negation aren’t necessarily negative in their structure.

Gretchen: Exactly. It’s saying, “I didn’t touch even the smallest amount of water” is what that’s doing there. And there’s that “even” again. Coincidentally, this is also something that Arika Okrent talks about in her book Highly Irregular, which is coming out. It’s not only a book about negation, I promise. I was just thinking about negation because I knew we were doing this episode when I was reading it.

Lauren: Also, as you can tell from the examples, negation is where grammar starts to get particularly interesting, so it’s unsurprisingly that a book like Highly Irregular would have a couple of stories about negation in it.

Gretchen: Yeah, because there’re interesting things to say there. Arika Okrent has this great section which talks about things like “even” and “any” and “at all” and “a drop of” which are called “negative polarity items,” if you want a technical term for it.

Lauren: This is a technical term that I know but hadn’t really thought about until we started putting the show together. I guess that by “items” they just mean things that are words or multiple words because “a crumb of” isn’t a word. We can’t just call them “negative polarity words.”

Gretchen: Some of them are individual words like “any” or “yet” or “even” or “either.” Some of them are longer phrases like “at all” or “a thing” or “an iota,” “a drop.” You can get verbs like “budge.”

Lauren: In a sentence like?

Gretchen: Like, “The boulder won’t budge.” You don’t say, “The bolder will budge.”

Lauren: Hmm. I guess some of these are like, “Huh.” Sorry. I’m just gonna take a moment to consult my intuitions there because, yeah, I guess not.

Gretchen: I might be able to say, “budge over,” or something to a person. Then you have whole phrases like, “breathe a word,” “hold a candle,” “sleep a wink,” “lift a finger.”

Lauren: “I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

Gretchen: “Couldn’t sleep a wink.” “I could sleep a wink.” [Laughter] “I could lift a finger.”

Lauren: When you put them into the affirmative, they don’t work. It also shows why they’re just called “negative polarity” rather than “negation” because they bring this negative sense with them, but they are not doing grammatical negating themselves. There’s no “no” or “not” or “un-” in there.

Gretchen: That’s what distinguishes them from something like, “no one,” “nowhere,” “nothing,” which are themselves already negative words. If you think about the polarity of a phrase as like, I guess, if you go away from the equator – let’s say you go north for negation because they both begin with N. As you head towards the North Pole, your negative polarity gets higher.

Lauren: As someone who lives on a continent that is often called the “antipodes” because we are on the opposite side of the world from the Northern Hemisphere, I appreciate that you’re putting north as your deficit for negation. Thank you.

Gretchen: It just, I dunno, acronyms – they’re nice.

Lauren: N for “north,” N for “negation.” Negative polarity items are just sending you in that direction without necessarily being negative themselves.

Gretchen: What’s interesting about them is that although they’re called “negative polarity items” because of this canonical contrast where you say, “There aren’t any here,” versus “There are any here,” which is weird because it doesn’t have the negation, there are also some other contexts where you can say stuff like this. You can say negative polarity items in questions often. “Do you see any?” Or in if-clauses.

Lauren: And if-clauses are famous for not existing quite in our reality. That’s one of the things they’re doing.

Gretchen: “If you make a peep, you’ll get in trouble.” The “if” part of that, you know, somehow that works for negative polarity. And also contexts with words like “without” or “doubt” or “surprise” or “regret.” That’s something like, “I regret lifting a finger to help.” You’re not gonna say, “I lifted a finger to help,” because that one’s weird, but as soon as you regret lifting a finger, somehow that one works fairly well.

Lauren: So, they’re not just doing straight up negating, there’s something more complicated happening there.

Gretchen: This is something that’s still an active area of research to figure out exactly what all the contexts are because some of the negative polarity items work better in some contexts than others, so there can be a bit of fuzziness around the borders for which ones work when. The theories for the reasons behind those conditions can get fairly complicated. It’s interesting to have this observation of like, here’s this whole class of words. You knew about nouns and verbs, but negative polarity items, they’ve been there this whole time, and yet you didn’t realise they had this unifying characteristic of them.

Lauren: There might be some times when something that’s listed as a negative polarity item actually works in the affirmative for some people and why intuition checking becomes a big part of thinking about this because I’ve definitely met some people who can use “anymore,” which I can only use in negative like, “I don’t have a dinosaur anymore.”

Gretchen: Oh no! What happened to it?

Lauren: But there are some English speakers who can use “anymore” in a positive sentence. Whenever I hear it, I’m like, “Oh, that works for you,” but I literally can’t even come up with an example in my head because it doesn’t work in my variety of English.

Gretchen: I have a fun story about positive “anymore,” which is, I didn’t have it growing up. I encountered it in grad school in this very like, “Did you know that in some varieties of English people have positive ‘anymore’?” I was reading the examples and being told these examples. It’s something like, “Cake is expensive anymore.”

Lauren: Alas.

Gretchen: Where it means “nowadays.”

Lauren: I can totally understand it functioning when you use it in a sentence like that. It’s not like my brain can’t process the meaning at all. It’s just not something I would say.

Gretchen: I actually went to a linguistics conference, and I went to a workshop by a linguist who had positive “anymore.” The first time I heard him say it in the wild, I was like, “Oh, this is this thing that I read about in the books.” Three days later, I’d heard this linguist on enough occasions say enough tokens of positive “anymore” that I’m like, “Yeah, it’s grammatical for me now.” I acquired it in this week in 2012.

Lauren: Amazing.

Gretchen: Sometimes, the only reason you don’t have positive “anymore” is because you only have negative evidence to suggest that it doesn’t exist.

Lauren: I just haven’t been exposed to it.

Gretchen: Then I have probably, I dunno, probably less than a dozen tokens of positive evidence in this naturalistic setting from this linguist who didn’t realise that he was grammatically teaching me to use positive “anymore.” He thought he was doing a workshop on a perfectly unrelated topic, and yet I walked out of that being like, “Yeah, it’s grammatical for me,” and it has been ever since.

Lauren: You are an inspiration for lifelong grammatical acquisition.

Gretchen: Right! Because I was an adult. It was great.

Lauren: You called it “positive anymore.” So, the fact that we have negative polarity items, can I intuit that there are also positive polarity items?

Gretchen: Yeah. There aren’t as many, but one of them is–

Lauren: Interesting. Again, this obsession with marking negation.

Gretchen: We mark negation a lot more. But one of them is “somewhat.” You can say, “I liked that cake somewhat.”

Lauren: We’re definitely not moving as close to the positive pole with the “somewhat” there.

Gretchen: “I didn’t like that cake somewhat” is just kind of ugh for a lot of people.

Lauren: That doesn’t work for me.

Gretchen: There’re a few positive polarity items as well that move people further towards the South Pole, if you will.

Lauren: I like that talking about positive polarity items has moved us full circle through negation and back into thinking about negation and thinking about negative structures and affirmative structures as all part of this larger, more complicated system of ways that we have of expressing that things exist or they don’t exist and how we go about talking about that.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, esoteric symbol socks, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can get access to 49 bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website.

Patrons also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards, as well as helping keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include reduplication, an AMA with a lexicographer, and the recording of our liveshow. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you could recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic! Don’t stay unlingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#language #linguistics #lingthusiasm #episode 56 #podcasts #transcripts #nagation #no #negative polarity

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adorkablephil · 7 years

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Phan Timeline

For a while now, I’ve been wanting a concise and up-to-date phan timeline to help make my fics as chronologically accurate as possible, but I couldn’t find one, so I decided to make one! I hope other people find it useful, too!

Also, I have linked to relevant YouTube videos wherever possible, so you can check out Dan and Phil looking like cute little babies in Jamaica in 2010, goofing off with PJ and Chris in Italy in 2011, or appearing at various conventions over the years, that sort of thing.

(It’s a bit heavy on the 2009-2010 stuff, because that’s what’s hardest to find & it’s so useful for fetus!phan fics.)

1/30/87 - Phil born in the town of Rawtenstall, in the district (or borough) of Rossendale, in the county of Lancashire, England (17 miles from Manchester)

6/11/91 - Dan born in the town of Wokingham, a historic market town in the county of Berkshire, England (7 miles from Reading)

3/26/06 - Phil uploaded his first video to AmazingPhil on YouTube

??/??/07 - Dan started watching Phil’s videos (probably approximate but mentioned in Dan’s 3/21/17 liveshow)

5/??/08 - Phil created his Twitter account

7/??/08 - Phil received his B.A. in English Language and Linguistics from the University of York (per University of York website)

1/27/09 - first documented tweet between Phil and PJ

2/??/09 - Dan first commented on an AmazingPhil video (I’ve found no actual documentation of this)

5/??/09 - Dan created his Twitter account

5/28/09 - first documented time Dan tweeted Phil (now deleted)

6/2/09 - first documented time Phil replied to Dan on Twitter (now deleted)

6/11/09 - Dan turned 18

6/21/09 - DnP became Facebook friends

6/??/09 - Dan finished school and began his gap year

7/8/09 - Dan tweeted “Just arrived back from a week in Cyprus…” (now deleted)

8/28/09 - Phil finished his final project at the University of York and left university (date estimated based on things he said in his “Burning Walrus” video on 8/24/09)

9/16/09 - Dan created a Dailybooth account and Phil followed it

9/25/09 - Dan posted his first nakedbooth photo (strategically covered in several stuffed animals) to celebrate 100 followers

10/4/09 - Dan posted his second nakedbooth photo with the number 200 (his number of followers) strategically placed

10/7/09 - Phil tweeted “woahh just talked to Dan for 5 hours” (now deleted)

10/10/09 - Dan posted his third nakedbooth photo with a video game controller strategically placed (to celebrate 300 followers)

10/16/09 - Dan posted his first danisnotonfire YouTube video, “Hello Internet.”

10/18/09 - Dan posted his second YouTube video, “Butterfingers”

10/19/09 - DnP first met in Manchester (met at Manchester Piccadilly Station, then went to Starbucks, Apple Store, and the Hilton’s Sky Bar)

10/19/09-10/21/19 - Dan stayed at Phil’s house while his parents were away (including filming of first PINOF on the 20th)

10/23/09 - Dan posted a nakedbooth photo with a lava lamp strategically placed

10/25/09 - first PINOF video posted

10/27/09 - Dan posted his third YouTube video, “Procrastination”

10/31/09 - YouTube Halloween Gathering in London (Dan had posted only 3 videos at this point, starting just a bit more than 2 weeks before the gathering)

11/1/09 - both Dan and Phil headed home after spending the night at an unknown location in London

11/2/09 - Dan uploaded a video which apparently included some of his nakedbooth pics, but it was almost immediately reported and taken down. He replaced it with a “new and improved version” the following day (as mentioned in this tweet), which is clearly this deleted video someone re-uploaded.

11/3/09 - Dan tweeted “just had a biblical-scale arguement with the father. pah, ill find sanctuary on the internet.”

11/6/09-11/9/09 - Dan stayed with Phil (whose parents were home)

11/7/09 - Dan and Phil spent the day with Phil’s friend Stephen Byrne (3sixty5days on Twitter) visiting from Ireland

11/10/09 - Dan posted a nakedbooth photo taken at Phil’s house with Lion strategically placed in the foreground

11/22/09 - Dan tweeted “I wonder how biology can explain the physical pain you feel in your chest when all you want to do is be with someone D:” (now deleted)

11/25/09 - Phil tweeted two photos from a Skype call with Dan. In one of them, Dan’s hand is pulling up his shirt, revealing much of his bare torso. Phil tweeted in response to the pic “woof.” (Phil’s tweet remains, but the photos have been deleted.) Dan tweeted, “four and a half hour skype calls are the best,” which Phil retweeted.

11/26/09 - Dan tweeted “wow 5 hours and 42 minutes on skype xD that’s a new record. the best thing before you fall asleep though :) goodnight guys <3″

11/29/09 - on his way to visit Phil, Dan tweeted “on 3 ½ hour train journey with my laptop xD happy times”

11/29/09 - Dan arrived at Phil’s house to stay while Phil’s parents were away & they went to the Sky Bar in Manchester again (full visit 11/29/09-12/4/09)

12/1/09 - Dan mentioned on Dailybooth that he and Phil had watched “Wall-E” together. Both Dan and Phil tweeted (this and this, but Phil’s tweets seem to be deleted) requesting inappropriate questions for a Q+A video for Dan’s channel (but none was uploaded anytime soon after this?) Dan tweeted, “All I can taste is cherry, all I can smell is cherry, all I can hear is cherry and all I can feel is cherry. Can’t really see much though” (no time stamp, tweet now deleted)

12/2/09 - at 2:16 a.m., while staying at Phil’s house, Dan tweeted “Uma Thurman just watched me have sex” (along with a photo of an Uma Thurman “Kill Bill” poster like the one in Phil’s bedroom, tweet now deleted). Later in the day, they went to see “Paranormal Activity” together.

12/3/09 - Dan and Phil both wrote tweets describing a day of “new mario wii + coke” and “watching ‘the cube’”

12/4/09 - Dan returned home from visiting Phil

12/8/09 - Phil tweeted “awake!! o_O fell asleep on skype to dan” (now deleted)

12/10/09-12/12/09 - Dan stayed with Phil (including another visit to the Sky Bar on the 10th)

12/13/09 - DnP traveled together to the YouTube Festive Gathering in London (including a visit to the Apple Store with various friends)—they stayed overnight on the “giant airbed” at the home of Tom Howes (wtftomcoolio on Twitter), one of Dan’s flirty Twitter friends (who is the same age as Dan)

12/14/09 - Dan and Phil visited the Natural History Museum in London before they each headed home

12/21/09 - Phil tweeted “longest skype call ever :]”

12/22/09-12/24/09 - Dan stayed with Phil (including filming for the Interactive Christmas Adventure video)

12/27/09 - Interactive Christmas Adventure video posted

12/30/09 - Dan tweeted that he was recognized by “a gang of hysterical fans” while waiting to meet Phil at the train station (in Reading—Phil was staying overnight with him so they could travel to London together the next day)

12/31/09 - New Years party at the home of Tom Bacon (tom_bacon on Twitter, SuperBaconNation on YouTube) in London (where Dan drank Malibu and looked really drunk in some pictures)

1/??/10 - Phil received his M.A. in Video Postproduction with Specialisation in Visual Effects from the University of York (per University of York website)

1/1/10 - Phil stayed overnight with Dan in Wokingham

¼/10 - Dan started his internship at a London law firm (during his gap year)

1/6/10 - Dan tweeted that he had become a “YouTube Partner”

1/7/10 - Dan tweeted excitedly that Phil had “over 90,000 subscribers”

1/15/10-1/17/10 - Dan stayed with Phil (went to see “Avatar” in 3D at IMAX, failed attempt to go to Sheffield Gathering due to bad weather)

1/23/10 - Dan tweeted “i strongly dislike the video i made earlier this week, but phil keeps telling me its good and wants me to upload it x] itll be up l8r 2night” (in reference to “New Years Resolution Fail”)

1/24/10 - Dan tweeted “coming home from manchester…” (so had been visiting Phil again)—got stranded in London along the way due to train issues

1/29/10 - Dan’s London law firm internship ended (during his gap year)

2/2/10 - Dan tweeted “this is so traumatic ;_; i don’t care how much i fail i just want the pressure to be behind me. i just want to move on” (in reference to revising for exam)

2/3/10 - some big exam for Dan (but this was during his gap year?)

2/4/10 - Dan received his unconditional acceptance to Manchester University

2/13/10 - infamous Valentine’s Day (v-day) video posted privately to LessAmazingPhil while Dan was in India with his family

2/14/10 - Dan tweeted “I’m fed up of India.. there is somewhere else I want to be right now :[ <3″

2/20/10-2/23/10 - Dan visited Phil (directly after his trip to India and before returning home)

3/5/10-3/9/10 - Phil visited Dan

3/16/10-3/21/10 - Phil visited Dan

4/17/10-4/26/10 - trip to Blackpool and filming of PINOF 2

5/19/10-5/21/10 - London and Thorpe Amusement Park together

5/27/10 - AmazingDan video posted

5/27/10-6/3/10 - trip to Portugal (Phil mentions it briefly with some photos in his “World’s Biggest Chip?!” video, showing that they visited the Zoomarine in Guia, drank sangria, and spent time exploring the rocky coastline)

5/28/10 - PINOF 2 video posted (from Portugal, as Phil tweeted “thank you portugal internet ;_; Q+A upload failed after 6 hrs. Video will be up in.. 6hrs 46. x____x sorry”)

6/11/10-6/18/10 - E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in Los Angeles (with Bryony, PJ, and others)

6/27/10-7/6/10?? - Dan visited Phil

7/26/10-8/2/10 - YouTuber Jamaica trip

8/6/10-8/8/10 - Summer in the City convention in London (only Dan attended because Phil was apartment hunting)

8/13/10-8/21/10?? - Dan visited and helped Phil move into his own apartment in Manchester

8/31/10-9/12/10 - at Phil’s place, StickAID collabs (1 & 2), zoo (on the 5th), and Muse concert (on the 11th)

9/16/10 - Dan arrived at Manchester University

11/16/10 - Dan hospitalized in Manchester with Phil’s help

12/23/10 - AmazingDan 2 video posted

2/10/11 - Phil was with Dan in Wokingham on Dan’s mum’s birthday

6/6/11 - Dan’s withdrawal from Manchester University effective (though the letter from the university to that effect was not sent until 10/24/12, so it’s unclear precisely when Dan actually made the decision and officially informed them of his wish to withdraw)

7/27/11 - Phil moved to their new apartment in Manchester

8/10/11?? - Dan moved in with Phil in Manchester

8/12/11-8/14/11 - Summer in the City convention (in London)

8/28/11 - DnP went to a Muse concert together

8/30/11-9/13/11 - DnP went to Italy with PJ & crabstickz

9/17/11 - infamous Valentine’s Day (v-day) video unprivated by YouTube glitch (didn’t circulate widely)

10/17/11 - DnP started The Super Amazing Project

11/1/11 - PINOF 3 video posted

12/22/11 - first baking video posted (“How to make Christmas cookies!”) (Phil says he has never baked anything before and that this will be his first time.)

12/25/11 - first Dan and Phil Christmas Special on BBC Radio 1

2/14/12 - (Valentine’s Day) Phil tweeted “I want someone to spend the day playing bubble bobble with me! I have reached level 100 but never finished it! ._.”

3/17/12 - DitL in Manchester video posted

3/23/12-3/25/12 - Playlist Live convention (in Orlando, Florida)

4/4/12 - Phil tweeted “At the coolest Thai restaurant ever with @danisnotonfire and family! http://twitpic.com/95mbjx”

5/5/12 - Phil’s first live show on YouNow

6/22/12-6/27/12 - week in Vegas for Dan’s 21st birthday

6/28/12-6/30/12 - VidCon (in southern California)

7/10/12 - Dan’s first live show on YouNow (while flat-hunting in London with Phil)

7/11/12 - Dan’s infamous “fyi i like vagina” tweet in response to @Doctor_Swift’s question about whether he identified as homosexual (I’ve been unable to verify this)

7/23/12 - DnP moved to London

8/17/12-8/19/12 - Summer in the City convention (in London)

9/12/12 - PINOF 4 video posted

10/12/12 - Dan posted his FANDOMS video during a time when he was having difficulty/conflict with ... well ... fans

10/24/12 - Manchester University sent Dan a letter stating that his withdrawal was effective 6/6/11

10/31/12 - infamous Valentine’s Day (v-day) video leaked again and spread wildly on Tumblr (much fan freakage, much Dan freakage)

12/24/12 - DnP ended The Super Amazing Project (though it eventually continued without them)

12/25/12 - second Dan and Phil Christmas Special on BBC Radio 1

1/13/13 - DnP started weekly BBC Radio 1 request show

2/4/13 - Dan hit 1 mil subscribers

3/22/13-3/24/13 - Playlist Live convention (in Orlando, Florida)

5/18/13 - (kinda) DitL in New York video posted

7/6/13 - Phil hit 1 mil subscribers

7/30/13 - Dan hit 2 mil subscribers

8/1/13-8/3/13 - VidCon (in southern California)

8/17/13-8/18/13 - Summer in the City convention (in London)

8/27/13 - DitL in London video posted

11/22/13 - PINOF 5 video posted

12/22/13 - Phil won Sugarscape’s “Hottest Lad 2013” (Dan came in second place, ahead of various members of One Direction, among others)

12/29/13 - Dan hit 3 mil subscribers

2/19/14 - Dan and Phil presented the YouTube livestream of the Brits

3/21/14-3/23/14 - Playlist Live convention (in Orlando, Florida)

6/26/14-6/28/14 - VidCon (in southern California) (when others talked over Phil on the “Guide to Vlogging” panel, Dan grabbed a microphone and asked, “Can Phil express an opinion?”)

8/1/14-8/3/14 - Summer in the City convention (in London)

8/24/14 - DnP ended weekly BBC Radio 1 request show

8/29/14 - Phil hit 2 mil subscribers

9/1/14 - DnP started monthly Internet Takeover on BBC Radio 1

9/11/14 - Dan hit 4 mil subscribers

9/12/14 - DanandPhilGames YouTube channel was created

11/6/14 - PINOF 6 video posted

12/20/14 - Festive DitL video posted

2/6/15-2/8/15 - Playlist Live convention (in Orlando, Florida)

2/13/15 - Dan hosted #NicerInternet special on BBC Radio 1 called “Anti-Social Media Live” featuring various other YouTubers (including Phil)

2/25/15 - Dan and Phil presented the YouTube livestream of the Brits

3/26/15 - TABINOF/TATINOF announced in YouTube trailer

4/9/15-4/20/15 - DnP trip to Japan

4/22/15 - DitL in Japan video posted

7/23/15-7/25/15 - VidCon (in southern California)

8/14/15-8/16/15 - Summer in the City convention (in London)

8/20/15 - Dan hit 5 mil subscribers

10/8/15-11/15/15 - TATINOF UK

10/12/15 - Phil hit 3 mil subscribers

10/13/15 - TABINOF published

11/29/15 - PINOF 7 video posted

2/12/16 - Dan tweeted “i’m off on the family holiday my mum planned for us to spend some quality time with my grandma before she gets too old to travel!”

2/14/16 - Phil tweeted (from his family’s home) “Ahoy! No live show tonight as I’m with family but there will be a rather romantic episode of undertale later!” (So they spent Valentine's Day 2016 apart.)

2/24/16 - Dan and Phil presented the YouTube livestream of the Brits

4/25/16 - last DnP Internet Takeover on BBC1 Radio 1 (pre-recorded episode which aired while they were in the US)

4/22/16-6/23/16 - TATINOF US/Canada

6/23/16-6/25/16 - VidCon (in southern California)

7/29/16 - Dan tweeted “finally @AmazingPhil exposed” along with photo of Phil eating Crunchy Nut out of the box

8/10/16 - Dan hit 6 mil subscribers

8/14/16-8/26/16 - TATINOF Australia (visited Hong Kong on their way there [possibly 8/7/16-8/8/16] and again on their way home [possibly 8/28/16-8/29/16])

8/21/16 - DitL in Australia video posted

8/22/16 - Dan painted his fingernails black

8/28/16?? - went to Ozone sky bar in Hong Kong (on way to Australia)

10/5/16 - TATINOF documentaries released on YouTube Red

10/23/16 - DnP jointly won “Best Vlogger” at the BBC Radio 1 Teen Awards

10/31/16 - “Monster Pops” video posted to danisnotonfire, spawning the “Post-Baking Universe”

11/3/16 - DAPGO published

11/21/16 - TATINOF in Dublin

11/22/16 - BONCAs (TATINOF won Film of the Year, PINOF 7 won Collaboration of the Year, and Phil won British Creator of the Year—Phil called Dan up onstage to share his individual Creator of the Year award)

11/27/16 - TATINOF in Berlin

11/29/16 - PINOF 8 video posted

12/5/16-12/6/16 - TATINOF in Stockholm

1/17/17 - Dan officially stopped straightening his hair, saying in his live show (which he titled “I have ‘Hobbit hair’ now!’), “Wavey Dan is rising.”

1/30/17 - Phil’s 30th birthday

1/30/17 - while on holiday with Phil’s family on the Isle of Man, Dan tweeted “happy birthday to @AmazingPhil you may be on the road to death but the light and warmth you bring to our lives is as everlasting as the sun”

3/14/17 - Phil hit 4 million subscribers

3/21/17 - Dan mentioned the mysterious “that week in March” in his live show, spawning a million phan theories and constant harassment of him to explain (he later explained that it was about running out of anti-depressants and suffering terrible withdrawal effects for the previous 10 days or so)

3/30/17 - “the pantsless live show” (when Dan and Phil both moved their blanket and camera around in such a way as to hide their lower bodies throughout)

4/10/17 - visited 1-Altitude sky bar in Singapore (on way to Australia)

4/15/17-4/17/17 - Cool for Summer Festival in Australia (visited Singapore on their way there and again on their way home)

4/16/17 - Dan painted his nails sparkly

4/26/17 - moved to second London apartment

5/1/17 - Dan rebranded from danisnotonfire to Daniel Howell, changing the names on all his social media accounts but keeping his YouTube channel name the same

5/5/17-5/7/17 - Playlist Live convention (in Orlando, Florida) (after which they vacationed in Florida with Phil’s family, including a visit to Miami)

6/21/17-6/24/17 - Vidcon (in southern California)

8/26/17 - first livestreamed video from DanAndPhilGAMES, “THE PHAN-PRIX”

9/9/17-9/18/17 - vacation at “an island in the Mediterranean” with friends (most likely Bryony and Wirrow)

9/25/17-9/27/17 - YouTube Creator Summit in Madrid, Spain

10/10/17 - Dan widely publicized World Mental Health Day in his live show, on Instagram, and on Twitter

10/11/17 - Dan posted his widely-praised “Daniel and Depression” video

10/17/17 - Dan was named an official Ambassador for the UK youth mental health charity YoungMinds

10/17/17 - Dan explained “that week in March” in his live show, explaining that it was 2 weeks that he went through withdrawal symptoms from running out of anti-depressants (Note: many phans then extremely contrite for having built up so many conspiracy theories and harassing him over and over again to explain since he first mentioned it in his live show on 3/21/17)

10/19/17 - the release of “Truth Bombs,” Dan and Phil’s party game (on the 8th anniversary of their first meeting), including the upload of a video of them playing the game with Tomska and Hazel Hayes

10/30/17 - the conjoined Halloween baking video basically broke the phandom and trended at #7 on YouTube, despite the amount of swearing and innuendo

11/10/17 - the 2018 Interactive Introverts world tour was announced

11/16/17 - Dan participated (with Prince William) in the announcement of the StopSpeakSupport anti-cyberbullying campaign

11/24/17 - PINOF9 video uploaded

12/??/17-12/??/17 - Dan spent time with the Lesters on the Isle of Man before going home to spend the actual holiday with his family

1/30/18 - Dan posted Phil’s birthday tweet with a photo of a cake that said, “Show me your birthday philussy,” which Phil then had to explain to his parents

2/14/18 - Dan and Phil went out to Valentine’s Day lunch with Martyn and Cornelia to celebrate Cornelia’s birthday

4/28/18 - Interactive Introverts world tour began in Brighton, England

Notes: I tried to include only events and dates that are clearly and readily documented online (mostly on Twitter or YouTube, but also occasionally Instagram, Wikipedia, or news articles), but I did also consult @thephandirectory and danie & felucca’s Dan & Phil Timeline of Early IRL Meetings), both of which include archived social media posts (tweets, Dailybooths, etc.) from 2009 and early 2010, since both Dan and Phil (but especially Dan) have deleted a lot of stuff from the early days (which Dan even jokes about in his Diss Track).

This is not intended to be a comprehensive timeline of everything they’ve done, because that would be ridiculous. I was just trying to include events that are most commonly discussed in the phandom, events that seemed important to their relationship, and events that seemed most important to their careers.

If I list just the name of an event (such as a convention or YouTuber gathering) with no other details, that means that Dan and Phil both attended.

In a few places, I wasn’t sure of exact dates or found conflicting information (such as exactly what date Dan moved into the apartment with Phil in Manchester), and I’ve gone with the source that seemed more reliable and/or included question marks. Also, there may occasionally be a one-day error where I had difficulty translating US time to UK time on an existing Twitter post. I researched long and hard, so I hope I haven’t made any stupid mistakes! If anyone wants to help refine or correct this timeline, feel free to message me with any additional information.

Also, tons and tons of thanks to @alittledizzy for her invaluable help with the early stuff!

Disclaimer: While I do ship phan, I’ve tried to just state facts throughout without adding any speculation.

#phan #phandom #dan and phil #phan timeline project #phan timeline

773 notes · View notes

hello-crafties · 7 years

Text

“Why are you wearing Dan’s shirt?”

Words: 2k ish Summary: Phil wears Dan’s shirt and Dan likes it (also i can’t think of anything better to say) wattpad link soon

„Why are you wearing-I’m wearing the same as usual guys.“ Phil mentally cursed himself. Reading a question out loud before thinking it over in his head was a stupid move and he knew it. Count in the fact that he was wearing Dan’s shirt. „I can’t be here naked! Don’t want you to report me for nudity.“

He did what he could to shift everyone’s attention anywhere but his clothing. The fans still didn’t want to let it go. He tried to talk about a new anime he and Dan started watching and then about how he was excited for the new season of American Horror Story. Thankfully the time to end his liveshow drew near so Phil said his goodbyes and turned it off.

„How did I not realize? So dumb, oh my god.“ Phil muttered to himself as he got up to make some dinner. „Dan?“ he yelled at the younger boy who was holed up in their office. Probably editing another video they made the day prior. „Yeah?“ came a muffled reply. „Have you eaten anything? I was going to start making dinner. Mexican maybe?“ It was quiet for a few seconds and then Phil heard loud footsteps almost running to him. Dan stopped himself mere centimeters before the glass door. „Whoah. That was close. Anyway.“ he opened the door and skipped to Phil. „I wanna help youu.“ Dan’s smile was too infectious. Soon, Phil was smiling too and nodding. „Okay, can you get the ingredients from the fridge?“ „On it Philly.“ Phil’s smile grew wider at Dan’s childish behaviour. He was too adorable for his own good. No, he couldn’t think about his friend like that. It could only end in a disaster. „Uh, Phil? U okay there? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.“ A hand was moving in front of Phil’s face. He blinked a few times and then laughed. „Sorry, spaced out for a bit.“ He clasped his hand on Dan’s shoulder and moved towards the stove. He felt the younger’s suspicious stare but didn’t turn around. What was wrong with him? He thought those feelings were buried deep in his heart, so deep they wouldn’t be able to get back at all. But they did, in full strength and when he didn’t expect it. Taking out a pan he started putting in the ingredients, then turned around to ask Dan something. „How much-oh my god!“ Dan stood right behind him. Phil put his hand on his chest in an attempt to calm down. „You scared me! I was going to ask how much spice you wanted in it.“ he said handing Dan the jar. Dan took it with a small smile and then proceeded to pour some into the mixture, bumphing into Phil’s side and humming a random tune while doing it. Phil, as expected, laughed and joined in with a somewhat similar tune. What neither of them expected was the amount of spice that ould pour out at once. Suddenly there wasn’t just a little bit of spice in the pan. No, there was a not-so-small pile that they wouldn’t be able to remove from their food. There was a moment of silence before Dan broke it. „Shit.“ That sent the both of them into a fit of giggles. After a few minutes, when they’ve calmed down, Phil looked at Dan with amusement in his eyes. „Takeout?“ „Takeout.“ Dan grinned. But before he took his phone out of the pocket of his hoodie he scanned Phil with a curious look. „Is that my shirt?“ The older boy blushed. „Err, maybe?“ Dan laughed at this. „You’re unbelievable. Chinese or pizza?“ „Pizza, maybe?“ Phil muttered. The brown eyed boy then took out his phone. „If you ruin it…“ „Should I take it off then?“ Feeling bold, Phil lifted up the hem of Dan’s shirt, showing a bit of his bare stomach. Dan gulped. „Maybe later.“ He winked and left the kitchen. Phil was confused. What was happening? Did they just flirt with each other? That wasn’t something they did. It was all friendly banter, but not this. This made Phil blush. Of course this whole thing was mostly Phil’s fault. It was him who was wearing Dan’s shirt. It was just really comfortable and smelled like Dan. Phil found it lying in front of his bedroom and instead of just throwing it into Dan’s room he put it on. The younger boy was out for the day and Phil was feeling a bit lonely. The sofa crease was empty and no one was humming some random tune that would get stuck in his head later. Wearing the shirt made him feel like Dan was right next to him. It was weird how he couldn’t go a day without his best friend. He took his personal space and heart and didn’t even realize it. This was the point where Phil would admit he was in love with his best friend. The thought appeared in his head but as it came so did a big red light, as if screaming how wrong that thought was. He knew it was wrong. He couldn’t be in love with Dan. He couldn’t lose his best friend. But that suggestion Dan made felt more sincere and sexual than anything. It didn’t feel like a joke. Phil decided not to get his hopes up or think much of it. He started cleaning up the mess they made, needed to take his mind of this kind of stuff. He was done soon and with a clearer head made his way to the lounge. Dan sat there in his sofa crease scrolling through tumblr with a bored look. Phil smiled lightly and went to go sit on the other side of their sofa. When he was reaching for his laptop, already too comfortable to move more than necessary, the bell rang. Probably the pizza. „Dan? Can you go get that? I just made myself comfortable.“ „But Phillll. I’m in my browsing position! And you just sat down, it will be easier for you to get up! C'mon, please! Phiww…“ Dan started whining. „Dan! Stop being so lazy!“ The bell rang again. „I hate you.“ Phil murmured and got up to go open the door and pay for the pizza. When he got back to the lounge Dan was still sitting on the sofa but now without hs laptop. He actually sat up and was looking for something they could watch while eating their dinner. „What were we watching the last time?“ Phil put the boxes on the table and threw himself on the sofa with a sigh. He didn’t answer Dan’s question, instead just reached for one of the boxes. The younger boy swatted his arm. „Why did you do that?“ Phil was rubbing his hand with a hurt look on his face. „Because I know how you eat pizza. You’re going to ruin my shirt!“ „So should I go change or what? Stop with that nonsense Dan, I’m really hungry.“ Phil tried to get the boy again but was stopped by Dan’s hand that held his own. „It’s simple. No need to change. Just take the shirt off.“ Phil looked more than surprised but quickly collected himself. „You want to see me shirtless, Howell? You should’ve just asked.“ To make it even better he added a suggestive wink. To his surprise Dan just shook his head. „I don’t want you ruining my shirt. Just take it off, jeez.“ Phil nodded and took it off, shivering at the sudden loss of warmth. To hide his confused face he finally got his box and bit into a piece of pizza. Up until now it seemed like Dan was flirting with him and Phil let his hopes get too high. Dan chuckled at his friend’s eagerness and took a slice too. In reality he didn’t care if his shirt got ruined, he could wash it later. But this was the only way he would get to see Phil shirtless for longer than a few seconds. When they were in the kitchen and he realized that it was his shirt Phil was wearing, his heart almost stopped. The blush that spread on Phil’s cheeks when Dan brought up that it was his shirt was the most adorable thing ever. Then he got a preview of the older’s bare stomach and his breath hitched. His only hope was that his face was as unreadable as always so their friendship wouldn’t get ruined because of a crush. Dan thought that if he played everything off as a joke they would be safe. Only now he sat next to a shirtless Phil whose nipples were beginning to get hard because he was cold. And it was torture. Dan tried to eat as fast as possible to distract himself so he didn’t have to look at his friend. Just the thought of Phil half-naked was driving him (and his dick) crazy and now he was presented with an irl version of his fantasies sitting right next to him. When they finished their food and put away the boxes they settled back into the sofa. Dan went right back to his laptop and Phil proceeded watching the anime they put on while they were eating, still shirtless. Dan’s shirt he was wearing before was no lying next to Dan where he couldn’t reach. He could have to stretch over the younger boy and that would be kinda awkward. At least Dan thought of it that way since he was pretty sure he would get a boner if that happened. He was already halfway there anyway. Phil’s sudden movement took him out of his thoughts. The older boy shivered. “Are you cold, Philly?” Dan chuckled, putting his laptop away. “Of course I am. It’s freezing!” Phil shuffled and got up to go find himself some clothing. Dan’s time was coming to an end so he braved himself and reached for Phil as he was walking past him. He grabbed Phil’s hand and pulled. This caused the older boy to stumble and fall squealing right into his lap. “Dan!” “Shh. I’m gonna warm you up in no time.” Dan whispered hugging Phil tightly so he wouldn’t run away. Trying to ignore the tightness in his pants he pulled Phil more into him so he could provide as much warmth as possible. Dan put his head on Phil’s shoulder and closed his eyes trying to enjoy this before it ended. He knew he was being selfish but he couldn’t help it. To his surprise Phil relaxed and leaned further into Dan. They stayed like this for what felt like hours. Neither of them said anything, afraid they would ruin the moment. Phil decided to break the stillness by turning around in Dan’s lap so their eyes met, studying each other’s expressions for a few seconds. Dan’s brown eyes searched Phil’s blue-green-ish for something, anything that would mean the feelings were mutual. At the same time he tried to project a bit of his love and lust for the older boy. He hoped that if it was just one sided his friend wouldn’t hate him too much. Dan would miss someone so kind and beautiful in his life. But apparently this wouldn’t be the case because Phil was suddenly reaching out to cup Dan’s cheek and then leaning forward to smash their lips together with a soft groan. Dan immediately kissed back, tightening his grip on Phil’s waist. He bit back a small moan. They continued making out before they needed to come up for air. “Whoah. That was..” Dan struggled to find the right words. “Amazing?” Phil winked and laughed. “Yes, it was. But now.. I think we should continue like this..” With this Phil grabbed Dan and turned them both so they would lie on the sofa, Phil on top of Dan. Before Phil could say anything more, Dan kissed him again with full force. At the same time he bucked his hips up, trying to feel a little more of Phil and his excitement. The older boy let out a frustrated growl and bit Dan’s lip so hard he tasted blood. “Do you wanna know how amazing I really am?” he whispered into Dan’s ear hoarsely. “Phil, are you-ohmygod.”

Much later, when they were lying in Dan’s bed with Dan curled up next to Phil, he whispered “You weren’t kidding, y'know. They really call you AmazingPhil for a reason.”

#phan #phanfiction

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