#and how they have a sorta healthy dynamic?? in spite of everything

[stillthesunkenstars]

The thot of brax romanticships,,, vexes me

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

So I have a curious question: as both a writer and someone who genuinely seems to care about Dan Humphrey and his character arc, how would you handle the concept of a "dark!Dan" arc, given the chance? As much as I HATE Dan's season 6 storyline and Sara Goodman's handling of the "dark!Dan" thing, I can't help but feel that there's a small nugget of something interesting there. S6!Dan was clearly written just to prop up Chuck, but I wonder what might have been if the writers still cared about Dan.

this is actually a difficult one to answer, mostly because i have too many thoughts. well, here’s to trying! (to the surprise of Nobody, this got pretty long!) 

uh so, the thing i noticed about dan on first watch but became even more clear while i was rewatching certain episodes is that he’s very... passive isn’t the right word, nor is tolerant, but at the same time, something along those lines? dan keeps quiet when people hurt him or disappoint him - he doesn’t really do anything with that hurt. notable example is vanessa’s coming back? vanessa tries to pick up where they left off, and dan sorta goes along with it to the extent where both jenny and rufus need to tell vanessa that things aren’t how they were before when she left + that she actually really hurt dan - because dan isn’t telling her this himself. 

basically, dan seems to be, by nature, VERY non-confrontational.

given this, i feel like dan’s whole exposé thing in s6 is very out of character  - being like “oh yeah i’m going to actively ruin the lives of the people around me and show no remorse!” feels super uncharacteristic to dan, especially out of the blue like that. 

when it comes to “tolerance” - i don’t know what better word to use,  but throughout the show we see a few instances in which dan spends time with people he doesn’t like, for his own benefit or simply because it’s easier than getting out of that situation. for example, him hanging out with chuck for the charlie trout story, despite regarding chuck with the highest distaste - he puts all that aside because he needs that story, and he’s determined to get it, because he wants to succeed so badly. to some extent, i think that is bad writing (i don’t see dan forgiving someone who hurt jenny that easily or that casually) but at the same time it does fit in with the rest of dan’s character - imo he forgives georgina too easily in the s3 arc, which. does he really believe that she’s changed? maybe! but it feels weird to me because it’s like, while dan seems to have such high morals for himself he doesn’t really care what his friends are like, which i think is INTERESTING. 

based on how you interpret the show canon, dan i think has had somewhere between 1 and 5 friends before the whole thing with serena, & most of these friends are his family (which is sad, i mean. rufus is rufus, alison LEFT, and jenny’s his little sister so there’s definitely things he can’t possibly talk to her about) or vanessa, who left pretty abruptly and hurt him pretty badly. i think given this, it makes sense that he would get into really weird and unhealthy friendships, because he doesn’t have much experience with healthy friendships and ends up just settling. 

when we’re talking about dark!dan, these two things become super essential to me - dan’s non-confrontational slightly passive attitude to his friends, and the fact that he, potentially, could get in unhealthy friend groups and not realise it. i joke a lot about how the dan & georgina dynamic in s6 was my favourite part of the season, but it’s not actually a joke!! i can see how like. dan is still “friends” with georgina, and georgina loves to call the shots, and dan doesn’t mind doing what he’s being told. georgina for the most part seems sympathetic to dan’s problems, and dan, enabled by that friendship and her being there with him, goes and causes absolute havoc. sounds right! like, not the exposés themselves, but just the fact that someone needed to Be There Encouraging Dan to be Bad - i think That’s how it’d start. 

i can imagine dan getting in with the wrong group of people, or whatever - like, dan having friends like s1 carter baizen. and it’d start innocently enough, like “oh these kids who are millionaires and billionaires don’t ever face any consequences for their actions and end up treating people from other class brackets like shit” and evolve into something like dan scamming nate at poker out of spite, and then realising that he’s in this group wayyy too deep, because, yes, he hates the rich kids as a matter of principle, and he’s been bitter about it for a long time, but “isn’t this going a bit too far, guys?” at this point though, much like jenny surrounded by her clique of mean girls, he doesn’t have an easy escape. “no,” carter will say. “we’ve only just begun. do you trust me?” and dan’s friendship is just Like That, which is not great, but he says yes and he means it. 

so that’s one possible dark!dan arc i’d give him - joins a group and his intentions at the time aren’t even Inherently bad, and then just gradually slowly finds himself doing worse and worse things. at first it’d be reasonable stuff - maybe he does the anon call to yale that gets blair’s acceptance rescinded, maybe he’d find some way to mess up chuck’s business deal behind the scenes - things he can rationalise away as things they had coming because blair and chuck did something wrong and if they hadn’t, none of this would be able to affect them. then suddenly he finds himself sabotaging serena and nate and he’s like. holy fuck, what is wrong with me? that would be an interesting thing to explore. 

another thing - i can’t believe i got this far into this response without mentioning jenny. but: jenny.

dan’s canonically not too pissed off about people treating him terribly. it’s what he’s used to, and he doesn’t expect any different! jenny, comparatively, is ready to say ‘fuck it’ to everyone and do whatever she wants to do to get what she wants, even if she hurts everybody around her on the way there - but that’s not what this is about, this is about how dan would never react recklessly and maliciously if someone was bad to him. but if someone hurt jenny??? 

unpopular opinion, but i can see him being gossip girl in THAT very specific context. girls in school are being cruel to his baby sister? he needs to shift the focus away from jenny. he needs to do something to keep his sister safe. so he creates a website, “gossip girl.” he starts blogging about one of the popular girls in his class, serena van der woodsen, because if people are busy sending tips about the girls in his grade, they’ll back off and leave jenny alone. i think if someone hurt jenny really, really badly, dan would basically go, ‘okay, i’m done being a good person’, and running gossip girl or doing something equally big that enables him to hold power over the group of girls who ruined his sister’s life? it could work.

the thing about dan being gossip girl is it makes no sense how the show did it. “a love letter”??? no, no way. dan and serena BOTH know that gossip girl is malicious and cruel and nasty in the early seasons. they both express their distaste/hatred towards the site and whatnot. dan’s “i could just write my way into the story” thing doesn’t sound right to me either, and his whole “i actually secretly wanted to be just like you guys” thing makes me shudder because. hey, whoever wrote s6, did you even watch your own show?

but dan being gossip girl because he’s bitter about the dynamics in high school, the privilege a few groups of people have, because he sees girls like jenny being treated terribly and harassed and pressured and coerced into things they don’t want to do, and he’s like, this is fucked up, why is nobody doing anything about this, what if i did something about this - and he starts gossip girl hoping that it’ll show people how none of their “friends” are really their friends, or that it’ll just form some sort of consequence for kids who never face consequences... like, i can see THAT happening and i think that’d be interesting to explore for a character like dan, especially if at some point jenny gets to like. smack him in the face with a handbag or something and go “you’re so righteous! you only made things worse with your stupid gossip site, dan!” and he’s like oh shit. but he doesn’t know what to do at that point - he’s been running the site for like 3 or 4 years and he doesn’t know who he is without it. 

dan being gossip girl also makes sense given his non-confrontational nature - he can cause conflict without getting involved directly in the conflict, so it’s comfortable for him.

okay, so! wow, this got long, but you must’ve known that it would when you sent me this ask, haha. to summarise: 

dan is very non-confrontational and often tolerant of the wrong people, this could be explored in a certain direction such as if he allied with toxic and dangerous people

dan never really fights for himself, but he’s naturally a protective person, so if something were to happen to jenny, i see that as the most major and natural incentive for a dark!dan arc. 

wow, everything i said fits into 2 bullet points! who would’ve thought.

[kendrixtermina]

Opinion time: Lapidot is Boring

Disclaimer: This is supposed to be a subjective personal opinion, not the Divine Voice of Truth. This is just what I think and I’m aware of that. I’m not demanding that anyone change their opinion.

So: I don’t care if anyone writes in their fanfics or makes fanart about. It’s none of my business. I most certainly have no problem with wlw (I’m bi myself) and neither does this show (Ruphire, Pearl etc.)

Neither do I really share common complaints about some of the episodes (I liked that Lapis was allowed to be angsty in a non-pretty way and that everyone understood & tried to make her come around gently; Really, she’s always been the angsty one I don’t get why the fandom turned so viciously on her character as a whole)

Thing is, and again, subjective perception, (though this may be what Non-Lauren writers actually intended, a few vaguely shippy frames) I always read those relationships as platonic friendships, especially Amethyst & Peridot, who had this dynamic where Peridot, always a bit of a suckup, tries to get cool with the highest ranking gem and “hang with the cool kids”, (and Amethyst is cool af but could also really use some validation) and then they actually liked each other & had lots in common, jived with their more ‘rough/ edgy’ humor & forged an actual friendship - Like I love both characters and I liked how they became close friends, and how it added to the group dynamics that the three ‘younger’/post-war gems now have this club of their own where they can feel like they belong?

And well, Lapis & Peridot were those hilarious wacky rommates & sorta spiting the homeworld system by being two former enemies turned friends, living in peace & growing past their functions a techie & an aristocrat living together & so far it’s nice for a few gags here & there at the beginning of the episodes before the plot really starts. 

But I never really saw the appeal as a couple, though I considered that it might happen & was mostly indifferent to it, though I generally trust the writers to do whatever is best.

But with the fans being obnoxious about it, putting it everywhere & making it hard to find any Peridot fics without it that have like, character analysis, the ship wars and the behind-the scenes drama - It’s particularly the hijacking of someone’s carefully planned project that soured it for me, though I generally liked Lauren’s Episodes, at this point I’m glad that it will not actually be cannon. 

 (I frankly never saw this supposed Arc including a supposed lovers-to-friends dynamic with Amethyst and hence had no complaints, but if it was supposed to be there it was very badly handled, barely there & kind of seemed to give Amethyst’s character no agency (does she ever turn ‘Dot down formally?) and it just feels shoehoned. I just really liked the “Amethyst gets a friend who can relate to her” plot because she felt so isolated & unwanted in the early seasons, and that’s what I chose to see it as.)

But mostly, and again, subjective opinion its just not interesting.

I guess with Amedot I could maybe kind of understand as they have some commonalities & participated in each other’s character developement (still meh tho, especially to shoehorned varieties), even so I think the friendship scenario is more interesting because their arcs so far showed a lot more longing for social validation more than intimate closeness atm and already have sources of such closeness (in the family kind of sense) - like, sure, they don’t have love interests as of now, but it’s not like they absolutely need one, and if they did give them one I’d rather they did that properly in a way that adds to their characters rather than just slap  characters together for the heck of it. 

But Lapidot? Frankly, WHY? Queer relationships, yes, but why snatch those particular characters, other than that they are (or well, in Lapis’ case, were) fan favorites? 

Like, for an extreme example - Even Jaspis is more interesting. Not in the sense that I think it will happen or want it to, or remotely think that it resembles anything healthy, but precisely because of the fucked-up-ness and character contrasts involved, it really has potential in an angsty fic kind of way, in things & situations that could be explored. 

Lapidot is boring. Not that angst is necessary for a ship or that happiness & wholesomeness is bad (see Rupphire, which is consistently played for maximum wholesomeness and has this as pretty much the point of them but also has plenty of depht, history & coplimentarity) 

But, it just doesn’t seem to do anything with the characters. Why those two, what’s the selling point of the romance? What character arcs does it serve, what challenges does it lampshape, what traits do complement each other, what would attract them to each other, what relationship arcs could we do with these two together specifically?

I guess you could have them fuse to show how they overcame their bad experiences/ attitudes toward it, but they don’t need to be a couple for that and that’s not the sort of thing you wanna force or shoehorn especially if they’re sort of playing out this slow & gradual trauma recovery thing with Lapis atm. 

The thing is also that it wouldn’t fit with the general style of the show - All the relationships we see, particularly the romantic ones, are planned out from day one and slowly showed to us in tiny bits and puzzle pieces & gradual reveals, and its gradly incorporated into their character arcs. 

Like, Rebecca has repeatedly expressed a “tease everything, ship & let ship, they’re all my favs” but with the cannon ship there’s a lot of slow burn long game going on (as there is, really, with ALL plot elements)

In some stories, characters will get stuck together because “They just look cute” and that’ll work fine for those stories but this is not one where you can just shoehorn in a major ship.