#i admit the last one i posted is kinda niche and messy but this happens with my better fanarts made of popular media too

[hiveswap]

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

What are your favorite episodes of gossip girl? And why are they your favorites? I love your blog btw!

ahhh i wanted to like, do a really thoughtful response to this, so i sat on it for a while. i'm thinking i'll just give you the ones off the top of my head, and whenever i think of more i'll add them! i have episodes that i love and are kind of the heart of the show, to me, and then i have episodes that i really really like, so making a list like this feels complicated, LKHDFLKG. more under the cut! <3

to begin with, i actually do have a favourite gg episode! it's 2x06. like if i could only ever watch one episode of gg for the rest of my life, it'd be that one. it has everything i vibe with! jenny being happy! blairena fight + conflict resolution! dan and nate becoming friends after a series of mishaps that are extremely ridiculous! chuck brooding while he watches dan and nate flirt with each other! like this episode was written for me. there's no other way to say it.

i loved 2x07 as a follow-up to this, but the portrayal of chuck in this one was very.... what's the right word. like if you like chuck you'll like it, kind of thing, i think. but i loved dan navigating being nate's friend, figuring out boundaries, talking to serena about nate, etc. and i loved the van der bass family drama, and eric giving lily a talk on how to be a mom. like - it's sad, and i know it's sad - but it's also real, you know?

i also really like 3x09 - i'm guessing you sent me this ask after seeing the tags on that post i reblogged. i know this is not a popular fandom opinion but i actually really liked the danlivessa triad & hoped (naively) that they would become a polycule. in fact, i made the mistake of watching 3x09 for the first time right before a 2 hour lecture and i could think of nothing else but that polycule, i even wrote a fic about the three of them (which canon very cheerfully demolished with 3x10, RIP). but that polycule aside, i loved the blairena conversation in there. this is one of those episodes where you can really truly ABSOLUTELY see why blair and serena are best friends, and how much they love each other. also!!!! all the jenny and eric cotillion drama was fascinating. like - there was a Lot happening this episode and i loved it.

@mysteriesofloves has spoken on 1x04 here - i fully agree with everything she's said so i'm not going to write my own explanation. it's an episode with so much heart!!

i adore 4x16 mostly because sometimes, when uni work gets too overwhelming, i find blair in that episode extremely relatable. that's my shallow reason KLHFDLKGKL. nads has this meta here, but for me it's not even the dair of it all, it's just the thing of like- being a perfectionist! being ambitious!!! and then biting off more than you can chew and needing to admit that you fucked up - this is something i struggle with irl with tasks / duties / responsibilites, so this is kinda a comfort episode for me in that sense!

i also like 2x21 mostly because everyone is being a disaster and cyrus is just being the best! he wants things to go well! and nobody intends to cause drama, it just happens. serena's whole "dan i think i got married to some random guy!" really sends me, like, the whole episode has this vibe of surreality which is interesting to watch.

oh, i cannot neglect to mention 2x18. i love so much about that episode. the serenessa arc is so funny (there is flirting! i mean. of course there is.) nate & vanessa's fight + conflict resolution!!! blair realising that her actions have consequences & that she needs to be more mindful of that /that there are things her privilege cannot shield her from!! ngl i was really hoping that the narrative of the show would develop blair's character from there, give her some of that sweet sweet character growth.

i also, uh. i was trying to think of how i could tell you which s1 episodes i like, but the truth is the first half of s1 - i think from e01 to e12 or e13 - was just so perfect. like it really set the tone for the show, told us who these kids were, and what their messy world was like. it was so strongly done and i think for me at least, that's probably a big part of what made me actually watch the rest of the show! i wasn't planning on it. i had 40 min to kill one day and thought, why not watch the pilot of gossip girl just to kill time. clearly, as you can see, that is not what happened.

honourable mentions go to 1x09, because we really see what blair, serena & nate were like, pre-series, and 1x03, because i think that episode did a really good job at like - showing that blair was hurting serena because she was hurt while at the same time not excusing blair's actions but ALSO it's the first proper glimpse we get into blair & serena's dynamic as a whole. i also love 1x12 because we get derena talking about privilege + serena acknowledging/ understanding what that really means to some extent (the writers did them so dirty, like, they resolved this conflict already) and we ALSO get blairnessa friendship! i really wish blair & vanessa had been allies, they're both so determined in such similar ways.

the s4 dair arc esp from 4x10 to i think 4x17 (? or 4x16?) is a lot of fun. when it comes to s5, i liked 5x13 the first time i watched it (idk how it'll hold up on rewatch), 5x15, 5x16 and 5x21 (despicable b my beloved!!)

s6 sucks, but if you watch the last 5 or so minutes of 6x10 you will see nate eye-fucking dan at the derena wedding, which just goes to show that sometimes your niche gay otp CAN be canon.......people just haven't recognised it yet.