#the less said about dan's s6 villain era the better

[strideofpride]

How do you feel about the Rufus-Dan parent-child relationship, particularly as it evolved throughout the show? I know there have been a lot of discussions about Rufus and Jenny, which makes sense given how overtly fucked that relationship became, but Rufus and Dan are equally fascinating to me in the way they start out with probably the strongest of parental bonds on the show, yet end up where they are post-Inside. At some point it feels like the show writers started writing the Dan-Rufus relationship as if they were friends or peers more than father and son, and the in-universe implications of that are really interesting I think.

Yeah! I think it's complicated by a lot of different things.

1) Rufus and Alison were clearly very young parents when they had kids, like early to mid 20s young. I personally have always headcanoned that they got married because Alison was pregnant with Dan and Rufus pretty much says at one point that he gave up his music career to be a dad. So I think the fact that the age difference between Dan & Rufus is pretty slim is definitely a contributing factor to how that dynamic operates.

2) I personally headcanon, and I think there's enough to go off in canon to support it, that Dan was closer to Alison than Rufus before she left. And I think Alison leaving put Dan into the mother role for Jenny, which makes Dan and Rufus almost seem like partners parenting Jenny rather than father & son. I think Dan taking on a more parental role towards Jenny after Alison left was entirely his choice, maybe one he didn't even consciously make, but Rufus certainly doesn't seem to do anything about it, and goes on treating Dan like a co-parent when issues with Jenny come up rather than treating him like he's her brother (how Breeland coded of them).

3) I think another big change in Dan & Rufus' dynamic occurs when Dan starts dating Serena, and Rufus starts reliving his past with Lily through Dan. Like I personally think Dan is more like Alison and Jenny takes after Rufus, but with this, Dan is now acting like Rufus (in Rufus' eyes at least).

Anyway all of that contributes to where they are in season 1. Throughout season 1, Rufus constantly gives Dan advice about Serena, but a lot of it feels less like father/son advice and more like advice from a peer. In the Thanksgiving episode, Dan makes a comment to Rufus about how finding out that he and Lily used to date has probably set Dan back months from having sex with Serena for the first time and it's so...It's just such a weird thing to say to your father. Like that feels like a comment Dan would make to Nate. So the fact that he feels comfortable being so blunt about his sex life like that with his own father is very telling of how their relationship is more like two friends.

Honestly, I feel like Rufus almost forgets he still needs to parent Dan until all the Rachel Carr stuff in s2. And the way the show handles that is uh, bad. And it paints Rufus as irrationally angry for being upset that his son is sleeping with a grown woman when he's really being the only sane one. (linking this fic now for reasons)

That might be the first moment when their relationship really starts to turn, because I think Rufus kinda has been going along like "Dan's gonna be fine, Dan's a good kid with no serious issues, the worst thing that ever happens to him is he's not popular at school, I don't need to worry about Dan" and then the Carr stuff happens and he realizes Dan is Not Fine, but at this point Dan is 18 and about to be off to college and Rufus is Too Late (he's not but you know...that's certainly how the show acts sometimes, that these kids don't need to be parented anymore once they're off at college).

And then all the Inside stuff...I think a lot of tension between Dan & Rufus, and also Jenny & Rufus, comes from the fact that Dan & Jenny grew up in a home where their parents' artistic dreams remained unfulfilled. Both Rufus and Alison gave up their dreams/careers to focus on being parents. And I think Jenny and Dan are both very conscious of that and while they love their parents, they both have big dreams and lots of ambition and don't want to see that squandered like their parents.

But while Rufus maybe isn't creatively fulfilled, I think he doesn't regret his decision of choosing being a dad over music. (I think his only real regret in life is not fighting for Lily back then) But when Dan implies in his book that all Rufus has amounted to is being Lily's house husband, I think he's rightfully insulted. He gave up his music career to be Dan's dad. He sold his art gallery to fund Dan's college tuition. He finally got to marry the love of his life, the one thing he's probably done that's entirely for him and not his kids in 20 years, and now Dan's publicly giving him shit for that? Fuck that.

And of course, Dan doesn't really see any of that. He might be ungenerous in his reading of his father, but he's not wrong either, that all Rufus is doing is being a house husband now (minus the whole brief thing with Panic, but the writers were entirely uninterested in exploring that anyway). To Dan, this is a cautionary tale. To Rufus, this is just how life goes sometimes.

Neither of them is wrong. But they're not on the same page anymore.