Do you have any thoughts on Dan and Blair’s canon relationship on season 3? It seems every interaction they have is very friendly, I wonder when that began

Dan & Blair are actually much more neutral to each other in the early seasons than people tend to remember! (I also think c/hairs like to play into this narrative that Blair "always hated" Dan before the writers "forced them together" which is just completely untrue)

From the end of 1x04 on, Blair is actually pretty decent towards Dan, inviting him to her birthday party, taking him and Serena seriously as a couple because she knows it's what Serena wants, etc. They're not friends by any means, but they've definitely accepted that they're going to have to deal with each other for Serena's sake and are mostly pretty fine around each other (Blair's occasional light-hearted bullying of him aside).

They have this begrudging truce that carries through season 2 up until all the Rachel Carr/Yale stuff which turns them against each other, but even then they seem to get over it quickly enough by 2x24.

Season 3 I think is kind of a reset for both of them. Dan and Serena are done for now and Chuck and Blair's game is only sort of on pause because they're together, and now they're both at NYU together away from everyone else besides Vanessa (and Georgina I guess but she's gone pretty quickly). So I think it's kind of a reset on their relationship too. Dan isn't Serena's boyfriend anymore, he's just Dan, fellow classmate and I think since they're not competing to be Serena's favorite person anymore, that takes some of the edge off. Personally, while I don't think they're actually friends yet (although they should've done that imo!) this is the very beginnings of the friendship that really starts in season 4.

I think the reason people think of Dan and Blair as having hated each other up until the W arc is because of all the Jenny stuff at the end of season 3/beginning of 4. This, imo, is when Dan and Blair get along the worst (other than the second half of season 6 but that doesn't count shh). But again, they never could've turned on a dime from enemies to working together on Serena's behalf to secret friends so quickly if that foundation from seasons 1-3 hadn't been built up, where they set it up that there's trust and honesty and a kinship between them, even before they were actually friends.

So yeah I hope that answered your question sort of lol.

so the other day i saw a 🪑 stan say that dair was out of character because they forced blair to be intellectual in order to give them something in common. like they said that before the dair arc blair was not the kind of girl who spent her time reading and the only old movie she liked was breakfast at tiffany's and that they changed that to make her fit with dan. i wasn't even mad. "dan/blair is a bad ship because blair is illiterate" is actually the funniest take i've ever seen.

Yeah, Blair Waldorf class valedictorian Yale hopeful so into academics she literally sabotaged Nelly Yuki’s SATs was the dumbest character on Gossip Girl before dair actually idk what to tell you 🤷🏻‍♀️

i’m rewatching gilmore girls rn and want to know what your fav lorelai/luke fics are. i forgot how long it takes them to do anything and i'm getting so impatient but i don’t want to skip ahead. fic is the only answer.

Tbh I don't have too many, ao3 seems to belong to the Rory/Jess shippers and fanfic dot net scares me now lol but here's what I got:

The Shower Curtains Have (Hippo) Eyes, Or: Why Interior Designing To Torment Your Spouse Is Never A Good Idea In The Long Run -maybe the single most in character fic of anything I've ever read lol

Kingdom

If You Want More, Then Jump -I read this years ago when it was on dot net so I'm not 100% confident it holds up but I remember LOVING it

Sticks and Stones

I know we only get better

you got that certain something

hope this is a good start lol!

blow up my inbox

how do u feel about the take that chuck & blair r the same person & that it’s more likely for Blair to have sold chuck to a hotel as a natural progression of the times she had asked chuck to sleep with other girls & apparently that would’ve been more ‘intresting’ bc men always abuse women in stories. saw that take today & my brains still melting

Chuck? Is that you?

Not but for real that is suuuuuch a bad take. Chuck trading Blair for his hotel WAS the natural progression to C/hair’s arc like??

Constance Grady spells it out better than I could:

Hey, since it's an older fandom, I was wondering if you have still active dair fic writers you might recommend following on here? I've recently gotten back into this pairing and am overwhelmed by all the talent and good fanfic I'm still seeing. This ship will always bring me so much comfort, and I'm so happy people are still writing for it.

Yes! “Active” is kind of a loose term here tbh but here are some blogs that have written dair in the past few years you should follow:

@terrainofheartfelt

@blairwaldcrf

@mysteriesofloves

@vanderwoodlings

@mrs-nate-humphrey

@himbobisexual

❤️❤️❤️❤️

S, beloved, do you have any Superstore fic recs? I'm having an Amy/Jonah hankerin

Happy to oblige 🙏🏻

Anything different is good

Sunny Side Up

Something complete, yet still growing

i will (not) open myself up this way again

every review I’ve heard of Madame Web so far in my media bubble is essentially “I didn’t say it was good, I said that I liked it” and honestly that makes me really want to see it

and that Dakota Johnson’s nepo baby je ne sais quoi makes the whole movie

No like that’s the perfect way to describe it! People throw the word Camp around a lot lately but Madame Web is really, truly Camp. My brother described it as the opposite of this post with how in your face the 2003 setting is:

And Dakota Johnson is just…the most awkward hot person alive. She’s clearly never interacted with anyone normal maybe ever and now doesn’t know how to be normal herself and I find that really hot idk.

So I was recently watching a show where the potential “alternate lives” of a rich family were being explored in relation to the people they would have become if they were never rich, and that naturally got me thinking about Gossip Girl, and more specifically Serena van der Woodsen. Whereas there are a number of wonderful Brooklyn!Blair role-swap fics that explore what her life might have looked life had she not been born wealthy, and canon actually gives us a tidbit of what that scenario could look like for Nate, it occurred to me that not only were there no stories exploring that in relation to Serena, but that I… honestly could barely even picture it. It struck me how much it felt like the bulk of Serena’s worldview, traumas, and even basic personality were tied up in her privilege, and made me really wonder - how would a Serena brought up in a working or middle class upbringing potentially turn out? How similar or different do you imagine she might be?

I also really have no idea what that would be like tbh. I think she would be a completely and totally different person tbh. Everything about her is a reaction to her upbringing - her absent parenting, the privilege that makes everything numb to her, the spotlight constantly shining on her. She's still blonde and white and pretty so I imagine she would still attract attention but the expectations on her would be so different and even if her parents were still absent in a different scenario, she wouldn't have all the same sort of privilege she has so. But yeah, Serena to me is a character you just can't divorce from her background. It's shaped her in every possible way.

On that note, can you imagine how INSANE the media circus would be if it did come out publicly that Chuck and Blair illegally backdated their marriage certificate and the case against them was actually re-opened? Especially in 2023, at a time when anti-billionaire “eat the rich” sentiment has become very mainstream, and true crime is one of the most popular and profitable genres of entertainment?

Like, the events of season six happen so fast that we don’t really get to appreciate just how wild they are from the outside looking in. Imagine if Michael Bloomberg or pre-presidency Donald Trump died in a car crash, and their then-teenage progeny took over their real estate empires. Everyone just gets used to the idea of a little boy real estate mogul, I guess, and a few years pass, and then - surprise! They were faking their death all along!! Yes there was a funeral, yes they were legally declared dead, but who cares! They’re back baby, and ready to go back to being the same shitbags they were before!

Except, a mere handful of months later, they’re dead again - this time having gone careening off the side of one of their company’s most famous buildings (imagine if Donald Trump died falling off of Trump Tower lmaoooo). Did they fake it again? Was it foul play? By the time rumors start to swirl of the alleged involvement of their recently deposed nepotism baby, the cops close the case and rule it an accident. Their heir, still barely an adult, retakes the reigns of leadership - newly married, a detail no one realizes is suspicious because they likely have no idea that the spouse was at the scene of the crime.

Years pass. YouTubers and online conspiracy theorists periodically bring up the case, but the public at large once again more or less accepts the public narrative. Another piece of shit real-estate mogul gets elected president, and the attitude of the general public towards the uber wealthy turns increasingly hostile. Then there’s 2020, and 2021, and 2022, and- And then. “Billionaire boy and family linked to father’s mysterious death after discovery of faked marriage license”.

Even though we, the audience, knows Chuck didn’t actually kill his father, do you think in a world where this was an actual case involving actual public figures anyone would believe that? The coverup is so ridiculously suspicious that the general public almost definitely assumes they really did do the crime.

And consider the players in this case - a terrible billionaire who died a deliciously ironic death, his somehow worse son who in a post-#MeToo world is already a PR nightmare waiting to happen, and the ex-princess of Monaco (?!) who just so happens to already be tabloid fodder. If they get especially unlucky, Dan (a pretty famous novelist, at least according to the reboot), Serena (a 2000s era “it girl” and semi-celebrity), and Nate (an ex-NYC mayoral candidate, media mogul, and in universe Kennedy equivalent) might just find themselves implicated too - or at least forced to testify - given they were at the very much in public wedding where any rando could have snapped a picture.

There is just soooo much fucked up entertainment value in a case like this I can’t imagine it being anything less than a public fucking spectacle, and not the kind Chuck or Blair could just shake off. I genuinely do not know how they could absolve themselves in the court of public opinion if it actually went to trial, even if they managed to prevail legally.

Oh my god. Okay well, first of all, I really want the fake Serial podcast that unpacks all of this lol. Someone should make that lmao.

"little boy real estate mogul" took me out lololololol

also like...faking your death is a crime right??? how was Bart just able to re-enter society so easily??? did they ever say???

i'd also like to point out that it's actually much vaguer whether or not Chuck killed his father. They cut away during their fight and then next thing you see is Bart hanging onto the edge. Chuck himself says that he isn't sure whether or not he pushed him or Bart fell over. but also Chuck and Blair both just stood there and did nothing to help Bart before he fell, which is involuntary manslaughter I believe

But seriously though, you're so right anon that all of this was made for true crime. In 2030, someone makes a "Jinx" style doc about Chuck I bet

I also found Blair and Dan’s relationship interesting and realistic , even cute. However…How can anyone describe this relationship as “healthy” on both sides? Blair refused to tell Dan she loved him (because she DID NOT) while it was obvious she was still in love with Chuck (which she later admits). How can a relationship be healthy if one party is longing for another? There was a clear imbalance of feelings. Also, I know this isn’t a popular opinion but I really do think Blair never stopped l

really do think Blair never stopped looking down on Jenny and Dan because of their origins .

she didn't love him bitch

Go girl, give us nothing!

For real though, I have no idea if this ask was genuine or you're just a troll, but I think there is a big difference between love and in love, and while I do think Blair still loved Chuck, I don't think she was actually in love with him anymore (and what is "I told him he didn't have my heart anymore, it belongs to someone else" if not a quasi declaration of love before Blair was actually ready to say the words) I think she was in love with Dan actually and was scared, I think she went back to Chuck because of the narrative she told herself in her head, if she doesn't win the "prize" of Chuck's commitment than what were all the years of pain for etc. etc.

s4/5 Blair absolutely did slowly stop looking down on Dan, that was like...a huge part of her arc those seasons (re: Jenny, I always felt it was less that she looked down on Jenny but more that she saw a lot of her own cunning in Jenny and was very threatened by that) but you know s6 pulled an uno reverse card and c/hair fan girls got to claim that Blair being a mean girl bully again was somehow her returning to herself rather than a character regression so fine whatever

Season 3 of Gossip Girl was so aggressively mediocre tbh, like people bitch a lot about season 5, but at least that had some interesting drama interspersed into the poorly written storylines! The Serenate romance arc and the Dan/Blair popular kid/loser role reversal plots were fun, and the parts of Jenny’s arc that didn’t feel like character assassination were compelling, but outside of that…

Honestly I think the biggest issue was shifting things from being a Serena-centered school drama to a Chuck-centered business drama. The Bass Industries plot ended up dominating the season, and it wasn’t even conceptually interesting. Like the writers were trying to do their own pseudo-pre-Succession thing with Chuck, but they just slapped it right in the middle of a CW teen drama without any of the scaffolding to support it. “Will Chuck live up to his dead father’s expectations? Can he build his own empire, or will he squander his legacy?? Who’s his real mom, and what does she want?!” I don’t care, I really don’t care, and I wish she had wanted an abortion so I didn’t have to sit through 22 episodes of this. What the fuck is going on with Serena and why is Nate dating a republican???

(Okay also, if I’m being completely fair, the S3 Thanksgiving episode really did deliver. And I genuinely enjoyed the Dan/Nate friendship moments sprinkled throughout, as well as the periodic Dan/Blair and Dan/Georgina hijinks whenever they popped up. But those parts of the season got way less screen time than the Chuck/Chair angst, Serena’s suddenly urgent and all-consuming daddy issues, the weirdly bad Dan/Vanessa plot, or all of the nothing they were doing with Nate. The writers consistently prioritized the least interesting storylines that season.)

Yes, exactly! S3 had pockets of interesting stuff, like S5, but it was largely so dull and yeah, it *is* cause of all the “Chuck the teenage businessman stuff” (technically his only business is The Empire in s3, he doesn’t actually take over Bass Industries until Lily tries to sell it in s4). Plus, I always find Chuck boring when he’s in romantic hero mode, so the one-two of that is soooo. Ugh.

Also like…do c/hair fans actually like where they took that relationship in season 3? Cause I feel like the whole season was just a good case study of why they’re a horrible couple. Like they start off the season already doing sex games to spice things up after three months, then Chuck gets all mad at Blair for meddling with The Empire (they even say at one point they only make a good team when they have an enemy to scheme against like??? That sounds unhealthy bro). Then there’s all of Chuck’s mommy & Uncle Jack drama, where he basically shuts Blair out. Then he trades her for a hotel and then he tries to control her dating life after they break up and then he can’t even wait an hour and has dubious consent sex with Jenny like. Their dating season is so Bad for them actually.

And I don’t even get some schadenfreude from it cause once again: it’s all so fucking boring.

what is the trait you value the most in each gilmore girl? it could even be a flaw you find the most compelling.

Oooooh interesting

Lorelai - Her confidence in herself. Lorelai is so unapologetically herself. She talks and talks and makes jokes no matter the situation and wears bright colors and funky patterns and never tries to hide any part of her outward persona. Even when she makes compromises in her relationships (some good, some bad imo) she never changes her core personality of who she really is. Her style becomes more professional when she opens the Dragonfly but she still wears bright colors and funky patterns. She still talks everyone's ears off. She still makes her jokes. And no one ever (seriously) suggests that part of Lorelai needs to change. Except maybe Emily, but we know she's wrong. Idk I wish I had that in myself and wasn't afraid of standing out the way she clearly does.

Rory - Her indecisiveness!! I think a lot of the hate Rory gets can be chalked up to "hating a teenage girl for being a teenage girl". It's so so important to me how Rory changes her mind. From boyfriends to colleges to life paths, even in her friendships (growing to love Paris). Because that's real!! Teens/20s is for that, it's for self-discovery and exploration. It's for trying to figure out who you want to be. It's for changing your mind and changing it again. It's for dating different types of people and getting something out of each relationship, even if it doesn't last (and they often don't when you're that young), because it opened up a new part of yourself. I am a big proponent of Rory ending up with no one, I am a big proponent of "each boyfriend was the right boyfriend at that time in her life". Because at the end of the day she was still figuring it out. She thought her dream was to be at the New York Times and when she didn't get her dream job (as one often doesn't) she found something that opened up her world in ways she couldn't imagine (going on the campaign trail). Idk I'm just really glad we got to see a teenage girl who feels like a real teenage girl on TV in an era where the rest of the teenage girls felt more like adults.

Emily - Her strength. I am not one of the "Lorelai was so selfish, Emily was practically a perfect mother" people. I think Emily had a lot of flaws as a mother. But one thing that's indisputable to me is that Emily genuinely loved Lorelai very, very much. And I think a part of Emily died the day Lorelai ran away from home and took Rory with her. But she found the strength to go on. She found the strength to go on when she lost Richard and made a new life for herself (no matter what you thought of AYITL, I think we can all agree Emily's arc was fucking awesome). She is a very smart woman and I often wonder if she had dreams bigger than being a housewife but society said that was her place in the world and she listened. But she still got up every day and kept up the strength to keep her mind sharp and her days full (I love love when we see Emily with her friends and she's clearly the Lorelai of the group btw). Idk, she's just very inspiring to me. It's never too late to create the life you want.

fill my inbox ❣️

tell me about your favourite hart of dixie episode <333333

That would be season 4, episode 7 “The Butterstick Tab”!

Most importantly (to me) it’s the conclusion to Lemon’s series long arc dealing with her mother’s abandonment. We get Lemon telling off her mother and the show makes it very clear that what Alice did is unforgivable and Lemon in no uncertain terms does not have to forgive her. And she doesn’t! And it’s awesome to see as someone with a shitty parent cause a lot of the time the prevailing attitude in media is you must forgive your shitty parent no matter how shitty they were because you can’t make peace otherwise. And Hart of Dixie completely rejects that! And instead, Lemon makes peace by welcoming her half sister Scarlett into her life ❤️

We also get so much other great Breeland stuff. Shelby being welcomed into the family, Magnolia admitting that Lemon was the closest thing she ever had as a mother (which is very sad but we don’t need to get into that rn) - also the way Zoe is practically an honorary Breeland in this episode, Brick’s confidant, Scarlett’s protector, and of course Lemon’s unlikely sounding board…*chef’s kiss*

Oh also the way Lavon promises to wait for Lemon. Swoon.

Second most importantly is George & AB’s first date. I don’t have an essay to write about that, I just think it’s all very sweet and cute and I love them so so much

Also Wade’s plot of learning how to stop flirting is silly and fun but that’s when I like Wade the best! (See also: that very silly plot in s1 when he had to figure out Hangover style what happened to him the night before)

Anyway I love every single part of this episode very very much, it’s a perfect episode and satisfies all of my hart of Dixie tastes so yeah 🫶🏻

fill my inbox ❣️

“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.

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.

if you were serious about that ask game, here's a headcanon from someone who has only seen five episodes of gossip girl and only cares about serena x blair. This could be good or it could suck ass:

As little kids, Serena and Blair planned for Blair to someday marry Eric so that they could be sisters for real. And then when they found out that girls could get married in some European countries, they planned to cut out the middle man, move to Europe, and marry each other.

When they grow up, Serena looks back on that "plan" like "hahaha, kids are so weird."

Blair looks back on it like "😳😳😳🤨🤨😳😳"

Ooooh I could totally see that

send me a gossip girl headcanon and I’ll tell you which quadrant it falls in