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ultimate otp meme - Dan Humphrey & Blair Waldorf

"Dan is my best friend. When we're together, it's great. I feel strong, and safe."

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very difficult to live your truth when your truth is bone-deep unfinished business with a cw television series

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BLAIR WALDORF IN GOSSIP GIRL | S01E01 "PILOT"

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“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.” Okay I love this take and it makes me sooo curious what the Humphrey family dynamic was actually like before Alison left and Dan stepped into a more parental role with Jenny!! The only Humphrey childhood anecdotes I can specifically remember are the one from 1x06 where Jenny tells Serena the story about 5 year old Dan being terrified of the Ice Capades, and the one from 1x15 that Rufus initially misremembers:

Rufus Humphrey:
[to Jenny] You used to cry when I didn't walk you to school.

Jenny Humphrey:
That wasn't me. That was Dan.

Dan Humphrey:
I was six. It was a very emotional time for me, post T-ball.

And the subtext of the 1x15 bit stands out to me, because in the show’s present it’s obviously Dan who’s afforded all of the autonomy and treated more like an equal by Rufus while Jenny’s just a kid in need of protection, yet in these few glimpses we’re given of the past Jenny’s the one who seems to have been the more independent and self-reliant kid, while Dan comes across as having been a lot more sensitive and delicate when he was a child.

I’m curious what the early/middle childhood sibling relationship was actually like between Dan and Jenny - were they parented more equally back then and did they therefore have a more equal relationship, or was Jenny always treated as the more problematic of the two? Were Rufus and Jenny ever afforded the easier going, buddy-buddyish type of bond that Dan and Rufus have when Alison was around to be The Mom™️, and is that why Rufus kind of sucks as a disciplinarian in the present even though he’s otherwise a decent dad? Or did Rufus and Dan only develop that type of relationship as a direct consequence of Alison’s departure? And at what point did Alison become so fed up with her marriage and her life that she decided moving away and giving up primary custody of her kids was the best thing for everyone, and how long did that tension simmer beneath the surface?

I've kind of always assumed that Alison was doing the bulk of the child rearing. I don't think Rufus was an absent father, but I do think it was the traditional gender role stuff of Rufus focuses on keeping the family afloat by running the gallery while Alison stays home with the kids. So when Alison leaves, Rufus has to become a lot more involved with the day-to-day of raising children than he ever was before.

With what I know of sibling dynamics, I kinda feel like Dan being the sensitive, needy one kinda pushed Jenny into being the more self-reliant one. Like all kids are sensitive and needy but the way they express it is formed by the dynamics of their home. But because Dan was the older one, he did mature first, and you know, being an eldest sibling myself, your parents do start to rely on you at a certain point to help with your younger sibling, which clearly is what happened with Dan.

I think Jenny probably only really became the "problematic" child when she started at Constance immediately prior to season 1. I think a lot of Rufus, Dan, and Alison's reactions to Jenny that season imply that they're not used to her acting like this/that they're seeing a new side to her. Which makes sense if this is Jenny's first year in the prep school system and the Humphrey sibs went to public school K-8.

Rufus does a lot of the typical dad double standard stuff when parenting his son vs his daughter, which makes me think that even though Dan and Rufus weren't as close before Alison left, they could still be buddy-buddy in a father-son way. While with Jenny, I could see her being a daddy's girl when she was younger, but her father didn't look at her like a "buddy" in the same way he did his son, if that makes sense? But like I said, I think Dan and Rufus truly became more like peers when Alison left and Dan stepped up into a parental role.

And then as for Alison...I mean, she gave up her artistic dreams to be a mom. Rufus at least had the gallery to go to during the day, while she was at home with the kids. I think she has a line somewhere about how her entire adult life has been about Rufus, so it sounds like it's the very typical thing that happens in a marriage where the woman kinda ends up giving up her identity to focus on being a wife and a mother and then she wakes up one day and doesn't know who she is anymore. I imagine it's the kind of thing that's "slowly, then all at once" where she slowly loses herself and becomes unhappier as the years go on and then she woke up one day in the spring of 2007 and said "that's it, I'm done" and decided then and there to leave for Hudson for the summer.

And part of me really gets it and another part of me really doesn't, because how could you just give up having custody of your kids like that? Like Rufus and Alison never seem to have a custody battle, my guess is that they have nothing in writing, Rufus has no qualms about her staying in the loft with the kids while he's on tour in between seasons 1 and 2, and it's initially his idea to send Jenny to Alison at the end of season 3. So it's fully her choice to stay in Hudson and rarely visit. Which I know is just cause of how TV production works, but in universe...yeah I don't really fully know how she was able to just...go months and months without seeing her kids like that. Especially because she seems very maternal when we do see her with them. Idk. In my Alison fic, I decided that it's because while she felt strongly she had to be in Hudson, she had moved around a lot herself when she was a kid and didn't want to uproot her own kids like that.

But yeah, the show never really takes the time to explore why she went all the way up to Hudson, instead of just getting her own place in the city, or write throwaway lines about her calling or visiting beyond season 1 so it's all just up to your own interpretation.

[waldorfhistoria]

au: private detectives

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if dan blair serena and nate were given a riverdale-esque polyamorous quad endgame, how would you envision the relationship working out? assuming unlike riverdale the guys were also allowed to date and the relationship didn’t have a strict deadline, and excluding chip because gross

Hahahahaha yessss love this ask, tailor made for me.

I mean you said endgame, but I see this happening more with Nate/Blair and Dan/Serena as the couples on the surface, that everyone knows are together, that frequently go on "double dates" together.

And then I think it would be Serena who would first kind of initiate it. Like she sees that Dan and Blair have a spark and things between her and Nate have always been complicated and Dan and Nate get along great and also things with Blair are...different than they've ever been with everyone else. And then the other three love her so much, they'd do anything for her so...

I think they'd all be on one of those "double dates", hanging out at the loft maybe, and Serena would get them to do tequila shots or something and then she would just...go for it and kiss Blair. And that would kick it all off.

Dan & Blair do all the same pretentious movie and museum dates that they did in the show together. Nate & Serena work out and play sports and go sailing and hang around the beach for hours, all the stuff those summer children love. Blair & Serena spend their weekend mornings watching Breakfast at Tiffany's and eating pastries as always, while Dan & Nate play soccer. For fancy UES events, Blair & Nate always go with each other, while Dan & Serena never show up and go play pool in dive bars and listen to cool, up & coming bands.

And of course, all four of them hang out together all the time. And they're all having sex with each other. It's great.

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Okay but I love the idea that everyone who was originally supposed to be Gossip Girl before they switched showrunners in season 6 actually was lmao. It’s like the material version of the season 2 “I guess the real Gossip Girl was the friends we betrayed along the way <3” ending.

Fun fact to that end, the *original* Gossip Girl pick before Nate or Dan was actually Eric, but the writers apparently scrapped that idea after the NYPost came out and publicly theorized that that’s who they thought it was (because you know, the best way to write a mystery is to make sure it’s impossible for the audience to solve it by making it logically incoherent!) So maybe after starting the Gossip Girl blog in the flashback, Dan and Jenny passed it off to Eric after Dan achieved his original goal of writing himself into Serena’s narrative. And then maybe after Jenny and Eric both left the show, Nate seized control of the blog because he ran out of plot and had nothing better to do. Then he shuts it down in 5x10, only for Georgina to take over and bring it back - then Georgie of course passes it along to Serena. Dan regains control in season 6 with his morality and mental health on the decline, officially bringing things full circle.

(This is also serves to explain why Blair was the only one actually mad at Dan by the show’s end - no one ever included her in the Gossip Girl conspiracy gang! 😔)

Dan: I started GG Everyone: omg how dare you? You know how much that site has ruined our lifes!!!!!! Dan: i was only GG for a semester then Jenny and I gave it to Eric. Serena: so it was Eric this whole time? 😡 Chuck: no, I stole it for a few weeks, but then I got bored and gave it to Nate Nate: ......but only for a year, and then I shut it down! Georgina: and then I stole it from him and gave it to Serena 😌 Serena: .... Everyone: .... Blair: wait, anyone else want to admit to being GG? Everyone:

Blair: .......Dorota. put. your. hand. down.

ok but it would have been really fun if everybody had been it at some point. They always get on their high horse about hating GG and keep sending tips, and at the end it's revealed that they were all IT at some point, and they just have to shut up about being better about it lol

they all have their reasons and justifications to want to do it at least shortly, and it would solve a lot of the logic issues (at least partially in theory since the writers could just pick whoever makes the most sense at the moment), and this way GG kinda keeps that point of GG being and "idea", Dan might have created it but everybody else made it grow and kept it alive

Also love the idea that Nate became GG because he was bored shjdshfdjhs

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.......

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dear lord antis hating dair give reasons like "he may have been nicer to her, she may have been her true self around him but they were not meant to be like chuck and blair" like can you even hear yourself say that- 💀

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there is no doubt in my mind that dan and blair are having an affair post-series.

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semicolons are not only for formal essays and anyone who tells you otherwise wants to deprive you of the second most satisfying punctuation mark; do NOT believe them. i promise they get no bitches

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not to post about gossip girl but out of the many terrible writing decisions on that show the number one fuck up they ever did was reveal who was gossip girl. I understand why they felt like they needed to but genuinely I think the show would have benefited so much if they never dropped the dan is gossip girl bomb & instead had left gossip girl an unexplained internet mystery. because no matter who they decided gossip girl was it would cause so much unexplained and un needed retconning and characterization problems, including gg being dan.

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BLAIR WALDORF GOSSIP GIRL 2x16 | “You’ve Got Yale!”