#'this isn't as gay as the version in my head... so tragique'

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

tbh you’re probably right that it’s for the best that gossip girl didn’t touch dan/nate given the way the writers did, well... everything lmao. but! rewatching season 2 and i can’t help but want them to be boyfriends. 🥺 their tiny arc was so good!!! which leads me to the question: if the show WAS going to go there but still maintain its same escapist tone, how do you think the storyline might have gone? (best case, and like, realistic case lol)

haha, i KNOW. god, i know. and i think as the later seasons had everyone behaving weirdly, the dan & nate friendship remained pretty healthy and pure, and i also feel like chace and penn added something to the dynamic? forever thinking about that actors on actors interview of them both where they talk about how they enjoyed all the little scenes d&n had together. 

i feel like d/n could never really have been an endgame ship, if they had been canon, just running off the general theme of like. how much this show always disappoints me dhsklkdfhg. ok but jokes aside, i think this is how it’d go...

under the cut! lmao, RIP.

 after the derena/ nate & catherine stuff in the initial bit of s2 (ick) there would be no natessa/derena. once nate moves in with the humphreys, i think they would eventually start dating. there wouldn’t need to be much build up or slow burn. i think it’d be hilarious if chuck somehow was instrumental in this, because i remember nate & chuck fighting/ not being on good terms? 

so, imagine chuck saying to nate, “why humdrum humphrey anyway? i could help you through whatever you’re going through, always have, always will ;) i know you nathaniel, your sense of pride and how you never want anyone to see you in a situation of weakness. what is it about humphrey that makes you want to play damsel in distress, to be saved by him? do you like him or something?” and nate would just be sarcastic/pissed off but the words would stay stuck in his head. meanwhile, jenny would find some of dan’s writing and call him aside and be like, ‘you left this notebook open - i swear i didn’t mean to read it i was looking for something else - and dan, i legit cannot tell if this love poem is for nate or serena?’ and dan would be like, ‘haha, serena, obviously, i’m super heterosexual, i’m the straightest man in all of new york, why would you ask,’ and jenny wouldn’t buy it, and dan also wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. 

they’d get together eventually! it would happen in some hilarious way, i have no idea. they’d try and keep it quiet / off gossip girl, because of nate’s family ,but most of their friends would know. i feel like serena would be annoyed by it, in similar ways that she didn’t like dan/blair but her behaviour wouldn’t be as bad, and she would probably come around. vanessa too i feel would be initially jealous but she would come around quicker. i feel it would be genre wise totally in character to have some sort of chuck & blair try and break up dan & nate nonsense, and i don’t think it’d work. 

rufus, i feel, would not like it, not for homophobic reasons, but, “son. you deserve to be with someone who is willing to be public with you. not someone who is treating you like a dirty little secret.” / “dad, it’s not like that.” / “i’m just worried that you’re making him your family and first priority, and he’s never going to choose you first.” / “nate loves me, dad, i can’t ask him to rock the boat with his family. you don’t understand.” etc etc.

i do think they would either break up in a similar way to the natessa breakup, but i also feel like dan would be more sympathetic to nate’s feeling of owing the family something, and not take it personally (again, i think vanessa was entirely justified in the way she responded to nate’s entire thing, i just feel like dan is a complacent little dude slkahfkldh). i was talking to liz about how im one day going to write a s3 date au  in which nate is telling dan about how he’s going to date a republican to piss off his family and dan is like *judgemental look * you’d date a republican? and then he’s like. nate. if you want to piss off your family that badly, why don’t you just pretend to date me? and yeah, you can see where this is going.

so i think that’d be a fun thing to write re: them getting together, but i think here, this would be a perfect way to get them to break-up. nate is like, dan, what if we went public with my family, and dan is all like ‘omg really bro?’ and then he realises it’s nate’s idea to just cause a scandal, and he’s deeply hurt, because it’s like, ‘you basically just want to use your relationship with me, and well, essentially, use me to solve your problems? i thought we were doing this for us, nate, but clearly we’re doing this for you.’ and nate would be like, ‘that isn’t fair, i have to put my family first,’ and dan’s like ‘sure, you have to. when have they EVER put you first?’ and nate would be like, ‘it’s like how you love jenny more than me. family always comes first’ and dan would be like ‘how dare you compare jenny to those people’ etc etc etc basically it would get very nasty and i see them breaking up in s3. 

s4 is another GAY season like i think it’d make sense if during the d/s/n love triangle nonsense & also just during the milo arc, we have them dating. i feel like the fact that we already have, in canon, dan basically telling nate first (and only nate) that he has a baby is... pretty gay. it’d be cool if juliet’s manipulation of nate (assuming there is a juliet) went along the lines of, ‘you’re still in love with dan humphrey, and you should give dating him another shot.’ so then the whole thing with serena feeling left out and all that is accomplished, and accomplished better than it would be with danessa/ julinate (haha, what a shipname.) 

again, i don’t think they would ever be written as endgame, and i think they would break up again at some point, maybe because of the serena thing. this time wouldn’t be like the other time, because they both know serena is there and is maybe going to date one of them, maybe wants one of them more than the other. and serena was their dream girl at one point (maybe she no longer is.) and dan would definitely be insecure about this i feel because like - why would nate, or anyone really, date him when they could be dating serena? i feel like he’d probably sabotage their relationship on purpose, or something. i really feel like losing milo gives dan, like, the potential for some emotionally terrible life choices.

so, there we go! slots in with show canon reasonably well, i suppose. we still get our dair and everything else. that said! the way i feel about most of these characters most of the time is like. they do not deserve this show. i want to put them in other shows and movies. like. can you imagine serena in some kind of experimental indie coming of age leaving home roadtrip film? that would be SO good. we already talk about the romcom nature of d/b. i just feel like d/n was so... idk. they were such bros, i found it really sweet and fascinating that nate was able to bring out a side of dan that was so... informal? is the best word? 

#anon #date #this is making me yearn for that gay version of gg i wrote up and posted here #where dan gets to keep milo and we have d/n being parents #and all those shenanigans #sometimes i watch the show and im like #'this isn't as gay as the version in my head... so tragique' #im not tagging this long post 'cause it's under a read more #and i think those actually work now? #gg rewrite