#of blair trying to fit in at nyu and using dan and vanessa as her means to get there

[terrainofheartfelt]

why is s3 dair so good??? honestly, what is it about them (both as individual characters and relationship-wise) that makes it so... good, for lack of a better word?

it's the Narrative Foils, babe!

no, but really, this plot had EVERYTHING: there's first the setup that they're both at nyu even though they didn't want to be - it's where the ended up after their respective Yale dreams fell through.

then, there's the role reversal of Blair, who's always used to being on top, sure she was caught up in power struggles at Constance but there people still cared who she was, and now, nobody does. she's just another freshman. and Dan, who was used to a certain invisible kind of existence, is noticed on his very first day for being a Writer - and a good one! and he makes friends who actually like him as a person! it's him with the social capital now, and the first thing he spends it on is to help out Blair. (insane. they are insane. they should kiss.)

🪑 aside, this is also the first time in the show ever that Dan is unattached narratively to Serena. I mean, they're friends and on the verge of being family, but they'd been given real romantic closure in s2, so they start off the college arc truly as just friends, which means for the first time in the show, Dan's romantic arc prospects are openended, which in my unexpert opinion, pours a little extra sauce on his loaded interactions with Blair.

also he and Blair's roommate fuck and Blair sees him shirtless in his post woodchuck todd glow up and idk how a girl doesn't have strong feelings about that ya feel me?

AND (I think Nads has touched on this before?) Constance/St. Jude's was pretty...partitioned, I guess you could say, so with the exception of The Essay Contest, I don't think Blair and Dan were put in the position for any competition, but at a fully coed school? And with their similar interests they were bound to end up in classes together, and I swear it is such a CRIME that we didn't get any classroom hijinks with these ding-dongs. competing for top grades and rankings, fighting over a TA position, checking out all the material in the library on a topic to sabotage the other's research, it could have fed us Damien Darko vibes a season and a half earlier and I am BITTER.

I think ultimately it's how the beginning of college presented a twist on their previously perceived social standings (and understandings of each other), and that the sheer potential of starting over in a new place opened up windows of story that didn't/couldn't exist in the high school ecosystem. was it ultimately underexplored and underutilized? absolutely, but at least we have that s3 dair FWB fic on ao3...

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

What do you feel about amandamaryanna’s video on gossip girl and cosplaying poor? It reminds me of those tik tok videos that are about the most insane rich person behavior you’ve experienced. I feel like it’s subjective because the characters Dan Vanessa and Zoya are basing their poor ness around THEIR environment. So yes, there are MANY people who are actually poor but compared to their UES counterparts they would be considered “poor” due to the fact that they do not have the insane amount of disposable wealth that the other characters have and I do not really see that as them trying to cosplay as poor.

Also what are your thoughts on her argument on GG not really talking about class consciousness and POC issues. Even though the characters Ursula, Jane and Raina had short appearances on the show, as a Black person I think that is was great that they added the few POC characters on GG because their identity was not the main focus of their characters. Usually with Black or POC characters they have to go through some racial turmoil as part of the plot and in GG they got to be rich UES-ers simply because they are. Even though GG is very verryy flawed Penelope, Nelly, Kati, Isabelle and Zoe were shown how POC characters can be rich like the white characters in the show as well GG is obviously a fictional show that’s not based on anything so I don’t think that racial income statistics/racial implications need to be talked about 24/7.

so i started watching this video & just ended up reading the transcript instead. anyway. under a read more:

like, yes. i agree with her on one hand - i think gossip girl 2007 messed up by making dan's grievances be connected to financial status, because the humphreys certainly weren't "poor". like i think this point she says makes sense to an extent:

The comparison between outsiders and insiders and gossip girl is all about relativity. To the average viewer it seems absurd that a character like Dan is supposed to represent the outsider when he is so farther in than any of us could get.

But honestly, something i hate is how people who talk about this show act as if everyone who's watching is expected to know the prices of rent in new york city, etc. like i did NOT realise how expensive that loft is until someone else mentioned it to me and i would not have guessed! who is your "average viewer" - is it an American? someone who lives in New York? someone who lives in Brooklyn? you can't just define an average viewer in that way, i feel! like you are making a BIG Assumption there and it's not necessarily accurate. people who aren't american watch american tv! such is the world we are living in.

but keeping that aside, yeah: dan and jenny had stable and secure housing, the guarantee of meals, and were attending expensive private schools, so i think the show's messaging regarding class was a little strange. they definitely weren't in a financially unstable situation.

but also, you're right. like, dan and jenny weren't super duper broke, and at no point do they actually act like they are, tbh. dan is very 'oh my parents sacrificed so much to send me to st jude's' and jenny is very 'damn i wish i was richer' but there isn't really an instance where the humphreys seem to view themselves as being extremely poor, that i remember at least. in s1, jenny says something along the lines of, "we're humphreys; we're not exactly royalty." and like. she is not wrong! they're financially stable kids, but they're ordinary kids living in an environment where everyone else has the safety net of millionnaire parents to fall back on, and however much money rufus has, he isn't that.

so i think it's a grey area, like, YES, the humphreys have wealth related privilege (i don't know if this can be said for v, because honestly we don't know much about her living situation, but we do know that she works as a waitress for a bit in s1, and also that she's homeschooled, so she isn't shelling out big $$ for school fees.) but also dan and jenny are treated as 'less than' because they are considered nobodies.

and i feel like THAT is the angle the show should have taken. not "i am oppressed because i am not rich" but rather, "everyone at school alienates me and treats me different and it's making things so difficult for me." whenever people say that dan and jenny acted like they were more oppressed than they actually were i'm like. they were both, in different ways, made to feel small and insecure and hopeless, at school? like of COURSE they're gonna feel victimised. dan is treated like he doesn't exist, and jenny is treated so horribly that i don't even have an adjective. like. i think the writing of the show would've been much stronger if it had focused on THAT and not made it a class thing.

i haven't watched the reboot beyond ep02, so i'm not gonna comment on that.

so yeah, i don't think it was 'cosplaying poor' as much as it was 'showing wealth related stuff extremely inaccurately.' like an anon told me, portraying nyu as community college is super inaccurate, as well. and it makes no sense? like i don't know why they had to do this and why they couldn't just... shoot at a regular community college. gossip girl 2007 did not care for representing poor people at all, like, if you watch the show you can tell that it just luxuriates in this aesthetic of like: more food than anybody can eat at every meal. so many luxuries. unnecessarily expensive things everywhere. like the show was very much luxury porn. to me it felt like it wasn't cosplaying poor as much as it was offering people a chance to wank off to the rich. & maybe because of that, the humphreys weren't allowed to be poorer. gg 2007 wasn't supposed to represent all of NY, it was supposed to represent the uber rich elite. and then you have dan and jenny humphrey, and vanessa abrams. they weren't allowed to be rich, because we needed a class conflict. but they weren't allowed to be poor, either, because this show was all about rich people aesthetics. so we got something weird & in the middle instead.

people forget that chuck was canonically a billionnaire - like, that is a LOT of money. and he is dan & jenny's peer! sadly, i think solely because of THAT, a lot of the oppression the humphreys face... checks out. like chuck being shitty to both dan and jenny - he' has an unethical, absurd, uncomparable-to-whatever-the-humphreys-have amount of money. he can do whatever he wants & buy his way out of there. rufus humphrey's ten thousand dollars or whatever amount he mentions are like pocket change to that guy. if jenny is gonna be treated like a commodity by everyone around her, do her upper middle class roots and expensive loft really matter? well, not do they matter as much as like. can they protect her? (we've watched the show. we know the answer is no.)

re: the characters of colour... i think it's subjective. i ADORE raina, and honestly, if we'd had a NJBC that was nate, serena, blair & raina, the show would've actually been AMAZING. like raina was such a cool character to me - i liked that she was driven, passionate, intelligent, sensitive, caring, fun-loving, thoughtful.... she wasn't on the show for long, but her character felt really solid and fleshed out. i remember a review (idk who wrote this one) in which someone felt that raina's character was "lazy" because a lot of her traits and her backstory paralleled chuck, but i strongly disagree. on raina, those traits were interesting. on chuck, any backstory and larger motive felt like a carpet to cover the dust that was his predatory nature, and to me, felt forced and off. like. this dude assaulted people, i don't care about his daddy issues. but raina seemed SO amazing. her backstory actually fit her personality and gave her depth, and to me, didn't feel forced.

i liked ursula, too! she was a really minor character, but she had a whole arc, and i liked that a LOT. her friendship with serena was very cute! i sadly do not remember jane. i think she was... someone's assistant? but i don't remember who. but i agree with you about raina and ursula, their arcs were very interesting and did not end up being about racial trauma & all that, which, like you said, is refreshing when done right.

that said, i think blair's minions were, uh, an example of blair's racism, and i think it would've been cool if the show unpacked that. blair uses her minions as a status symbol - her 17th birthday at kati's place which is anime themed (?) leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it feels very tokenising of a culture that blair isn't a part of? it would be different if blair treated her minions with respect and dignity and like they were her equals and peers, but she doesn't. the word "minions" itself makes me flinch because it's such a "oh you're inferior" kind of word. it felt to me very much like - they never got to be characters in their own right. they solely existed to prop up blair. and i think that is racist. there was a sense of "Oh, I can't be racist! I have a Black friend and an Asian friend" from Blair - like that's what kati & is were to her. and i think that is a big problem, especially glossed over like that.

i also do think that racial stuff doesn't always need to be the focus! but i don't think it can ever be completely ignored, either. an example of something that is maybe unintentionally racist, but racist nonetheless, is how dan cuts vanessa out of his life entirely but forgives his white friends for treating him farrrr worse. it's an inherent double standard, because dan kind of went "oh yeah. my threshold for white people fucking me over is really high, but if my Black best friend who's so close we're practically family does something even slightly wrong i'm going to cut her out of my life 4ever." did the writers realise this? i don't know. maybe they just didn't think about it. but this is exactly the sort of double standards and racist bullshit that woc, especially Black women, have to face irl (though of course i don't need to tell you that at all), except here, the narrative doesn't even address that, hey, maybe dan's being a dick by reacting this way. and i think that's a problem, too.