#but I 10000% believe dan and blair get back together. see: my au on ao3

[terrainofheartfelt]

I see a lot of people’s problem with dair is lack of reciprocity but like wouldn’t be odd for Blair was going the mile the way dan was when he wasn’t going through a whole ass divorce and for the most part grew up in a stable home. My problem is that dan and Blair were actually getting to a place of reciprocity and then the writer ripped it all away

yeah I don't buy the lack of reciprocity because look at her!!! girl is glowing!!! (x)

Meester really did so much. Blair was clearly smitten.

I do think, that it can read that she's less invested because she was going through a LOT. Blair basically does not get a break for the entirety of the season, and what she goes through is heavy. What I said before, about her being the one in crisis - I think Dan senses that too, he's had a front row seat to the all the traumatic shit she undergoes since the fall. And we see, after the divorce, Blair trying to come back to herself (re: "OGB"), and do things that are for herself and not for anybody else.

(she also lowkey gets that chance in 4b, but on a less highstakes dramatic scale, during the Secret Friendship arc. She. Found. Her. Center. Is. All.)

But the enormity of that, of not being beholden to anyone else, Blair's never really had that before. She built her life around Serena and Nate, and then Chuck, and then Louis, and being with Dan is the first time she ever allows herself to make room for herself, and that's scary as hell. (and Dan, I think, who's been secretly and silently in love with her for so long is extremely conscious of not taking up too much space).

So, when chip wiskers falls into crisis again at the end of the season, it's easier for Blair to take up that old mantle of his savior than facing the unknown of being someone else. Being herself. Which, even from an exclusively Blair character analysis standpoint, makes her arc at the tail end of season 5 very upsetting.