#typical gg fuckery you know how it is

[terrainofheartfelt]

hey! I know the little dair fandom has talked about blair's decision to run back to chuck as something that could technically make sense for her character (if executed better as a decision of fear that her happiness with dan could never last)... but what do you think about dan sleeping with serena after hearing he "lost blair"? please keep in mind i get watched the last part of s5/6 so if i missed something here sorry lol

aha another softball! lol. I so appreciate you asking this question and I do have a lot of thoughts about it, so many that this response is long, and there is discussion of the dubious situations of consent and sexual coercion that happens in the show so for safety I'm putting the rest of this under a read more. Please read responsibly <333

simply put....yes, unfortunately I do think it fits the MO of Dan Humphrey, Self-Saboteur. the specifics of the situation are more complex than that -- which I'll get to in a sec -- but yes, I think it makes sense for his character. he does have this pattern. when he and Vanessa were having problems at the end of s3 and beginning of s4 (again. complex!) he turned to Serena, and in s2 when he and Serena were on the ropes (again) his crush on She Who Will Not Be Named got wayyyy too out of hand, and in s1 when he felt that Serena was withholding and on the verge of breaking up with him, he spent the night with Georgina.

Actually, come to think of it, there's intricate complications to all these events that exacerbates the abandonment issues Dan already has - complications that aren't necessarily within his control (His grief over Milo; stress of Vanessa's summer abroad/his father's marriage/Jenny's depression; being led on by an adult that should have known better; Georgina's manipulation of Serena's attachment to him). That being said, he does have this pattern, ever since his mother leaves and Vanessa leaves him for the first time, that when he sees trouble coming, when he sees the fall out of being left coming, he acts out, almost as if to do something egregious enough to justify being left. something to make himself deserve it.

So, with all of that character stuff at play, it makes sense that Dan would try to...numb the pain of Blair leaving him for someone else with Serena. BUT. I would be remiss if I were to talk about this and not address the truly fucked up behavior Serena exhibits in the episode (and arguably - I'll get to it in a minute - she kind of didn't need to?):

She knows of Dan's ultimatum to Blair to show up for him at this party, and therefore conspires to keep Blair away as long as possible, she gets Dan drunk and vulnerable and alone, and disrobed (I think she spills a drink on them? it's been a while since I've watched because it Upsets Me and furthermore it is Fake), and when she has enough circumstantial evidence to prove Blair is currently with Chuck, she makes her move, and Dan, drunk, alone, and vulnerable, falls into his pattern of self-sabotage. AND - Serena films their whole encounter without his prior knowledge or consent, as....blackmail material? I think she was planning to show Blair as some twisted revenge thing?

The cracks of Dair's breakup were already there, but not irreparable: Blair was afraid of this new future, Dan was a bunch of raw nerve endings stacked up together wearing a trenchcoat after falling in love so hard for someone every damn time for the last five years, and they were both fragile from that. But what Serena did, to manipulate the situation and spin it to her advantage, she did because she is perhaps one of the few people in the world who knows blair and dan so well to prey upon their vulnerabilities like this, and because she's serena, they both trust her, and she exploits that trust, and violates Dan in an...irreparable kind of way.

and, as I've been writing this response I've been thinking....she really did not have to go that far. and to what end? gossip!serena as we know is #notmyserena, but the...the extent of the troubles she took to orchestrate how everything went down, using the minions (or maybe just Penelope?), the revenge porn (BOOO BAD NO GOOD VERY BAD), all the manipulations, she didn't have to. Or, at least, the writing of the show could have executed the circumstance better, without the cost to serena's character or dan and serena's relationship.

I joke about Gossip Girl's original sin being pivoting Chuck Bass into being the romantic male lead without actually trying, but maybe the real original sin, before they tried that, was the compulsion to always be upping the stakes, to make the character's actions escalate to the most salacious things they could think of in that moment, without considering what living out those situations would do to a real person. You could throw a dart at any plot point really and see this, but it becomes more blatant as the show goes on, and you can sort of...well, like this post, see the stitching on the back of the canvas. the gaps are more gaping and harder to explain away. having two characters break up wasn't enough, they had to make it as dramatic as possible, without the consideration of the toll that it would take on the characters involved. Blair sure, Serena yes, but especially Dan.

ummmmmmm also I talk about this a lot in my longform post s5 au Mouthful of Forevers available on an ao3 near you xoxo