I Am Not Hopeful. I Am Not Optimistic. I AM Sure.

"The lengthy time from having the initial idea to seeing the final product has not been without its stresses. At one point Lewis thought the plug may well have been pulled but the intervention of arguably the most high-profile Rovers fan, musician Louis Tomlinson, ensured it got the financial boost it needed to get completed: "We ended up bringing in Louis Tomlinson and that gave the film a second wind when it really looked like we were in a bit of trouble.

"Louis is the executive producer and he helped finance the rest of the film when we didn't have the rest of the budget.

YAY OKAYYY so in 2015 dan and phil were given an ampersand sign by their book publishers to celebrate tabinof/tatinof. now this was a big thing in the phandom because it was like. this was SOLIDIFYING the joint branding but also the fact that dan and phil were DANANDPHIL not dan phil. bc now they're stuck together forever, who would get the & sign if one of them moved out? it was a symbol that we officially were in the joint area and that dan and phil were a unit (keep in mind this is a whole year before the boncas comment about the universe ripping in half if they were apart)

the first time we saw it was when phil talks about it in this live show at 27:55. he even says at first the publishers were gonna give them a "D" sign and a "P" sign, but decided instead to just give them the ampersand bc they could just hold it together <333

you can see the sign behind phil in the live:

and then it stayed in the lounge after that. the sign also followed them to the two flats, but this is where this story takes a dark turn that I will never forgive d&p for :/

in the moving out keep or yeet video phil mentions that they had a friend who liked it so they just... gave it away. which personally I find SICK and TWISTED like wdym you are giving away a gift to commemorate your first major project that also symbolizes you two as a duo and the commitment you have made to each other??? and you're only giving it 3 seconds of the video instead of a proper funeral?

I was genuinely so upset the first time I watched that video and saw this, and as you can see I'm still salty about it now 😭 so anyway, that's the ampersand lore and I do expect to see someone giving them a new ampersand sign at the vegas courthouse phwedding

ty for letting me yap about the sign it's my roman empire <3

also, since we are talking about this in the context of research, I thought I would write down my process for how I found the live where they first mentioned this sign (I couldn't remember how we knew about the sign, just that they had it and we freaked, but I wanted to provide the source to answer this):

I have also gathered that the phandom basically already “knew” they were buying/building a home as early as 2017-2018. How did people know? Did they say something, or was there some other evidence, or was it lucky speculation?

yeah it was incredibly obvious what was going on and they weren't really being secretive about it asdafsdggskj

basically they spent the end of 2016/early 2017 complaining about the apartment, specifically the lack of storage. dan in january 2017 saying they were gonna do some "life things" soon and that storage was "literally on the agenda" (x) and they were going to "find out if there's a better way to live" (x)

and then the were just generally weird (in a good way) and seemed excited about the future before moving into the 2 secret flats/announcing they moved out of the first london apartment

BUT THEY WERE ALSO WEIRD ABOUT THE 2 SECRET FLATS!

dan said in the first liveshow in the filming flat that it was not a "forever home" (x) and that they still couldn't get a dog because they were still renting but "when a house is bought" (x) and even after they settled into the living/filming flats that they pretended was one flat dan constantly complained about renting and how you should buy if you can (x) also him talking about how terrifying it is to get a mortgage

they didn't really decorate either flat the first year or so (because the phouse was slated to be done in 2018 (x) so they really thought they'd only be in the weird double flat limbo for a year tops) and they kept the furniture that came with the flats which felt Weird for them

may i suggest

"bet dan doesn't even KNOW ____"

"i'm sure you guys won't know but ____"