[SPOILERS AHEAD]

ly6: i chose to write the scene with isabella because I wanted to explore how every aspect of their relationship was toxic and unhealthy, even the part that dan claimed was good and the reason he was still in the relationship. i also wanted to showcase how biphobic isabella is, in a way that wasn’t just conversations or fighting. plus, i wanted to have it written out so it could serve as a direct contrast to future phan smut

ly21: obviously i was always going to write out their first sexual experience together, we’d all (me included) been dying for that for so fucking long that i’d probably have been burned at the stake by readers, elizajane, and myself if i brushed over it lol. but more than that, i wanted to capture how much they’d been holding back, and how eager they were to give into what they wanted, and how they were too impatient to go as far as they both would have liked, but that’s okay because sex doesn’t have to be penetrative to be wonderful and intimate and fufilling

ly22: i wanted dan really enjoying dick, because he’d been in a girl/boy relationship so long and obvi we all knew he was going to get with phil, but a lot of times in media and in life in general, bi and pan individuals are locked into the box of whoever they are dating at that time, rather than a person who is open to more genders than the one they happen to be committed to. so i really wanted to write that first time really touching and sucking cock from dan’s point of view. also, irl dan basically admitted to loving to suck cock and obviously i needed to write that

ly24: i wanted dan to be spoiled, something he definitely wasn’t with isabella, and arguably never has been with a partner. i want phil to be different than everyone dan has dated in every aspect -- romantically, friendshiply, and sexually. and having phil get dan off without accepting anything in return was such a concrete way of showing this. plus, it felt like an extra powerful way of doing since, again, dan’s main reason for being with isabella was sex and as we saw in earlier chapters, that was actually pretty trash.

ly28: dan’s grown used to fixing fights with sex, and i wanted to have him try to do the same, and then learn that wasn’t healthy. but i didn’t want it to be a shutdown of sex all together, i wanted to look at how sex can still have a place in/after fights, and can be there in a healthy way.

ly33: again, i was obviously going to write the first time they did a big new thing like have penis-butt sex. and i wrote in the way i did (a bit d/s’y) because dan’s been under so much pressure, and been trying so hard to regulate every little thing, that i felt like he really needed to let go. and i wanted to show how safe dan felt with phil, and how he felt like he could hand over that control without being abused or at risk or violated. also, i’m a hoe for d/s, so there’s that.