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impossibledial · 8 months
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what i feel a lot of people who say dan and blair should’ve stayed friends don’t understand is that their friendship was always rooted in romance. they went to the movies, they went out for coffee, they went on walks. all things they couldn’t do with their respective love interests. their friendship was never just a friendship. they both needed each other to fill what was missing from their lives; understanding.
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butchjess · 9 months
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Well. hrm. the way they all connect to each other. like it’s all starting to look like a circle of some sort. jess as rory’s mirror/reflection/narrative foil but also jess as he pertains to luke and jess as he pertains to lorelai. luke breaking the church bells luke who says he was troubled but they gave him a chance and just bc a kid has issues doesnt mean they don’t deserve that. luke who is a figure placed against the rest of the town, just in the sense that he is not like them, he does not hold their values, he doesn’t even sound like them. which is of course a result of scott patterson’s new york accent, but adds to this theme anyway. and they use jess to build this picture, because they walk the same and talk the same and they’re stubborn—independent to a near self-endangering degree—and emotionally repressed in the same way and luke himself admits that he spent more time working at his dad’s shop than he did at school, which jess also does. but jess and luke are also. very very different when you get past these similar values that are maybe ingrained into them through different circumstances and same genetic makeup. and in their differences you get a lot of jess and lorelai’s similarities. when it comes to their family dynamics and how it’s affected them in particular. it’s made them independent yes, but it’s also made them hypervigilant, almost paranoid in the way they are allergic to accepting help and especially accepting help from the people who hurt them. jess only goes to his mother’s wedding because luke asks him to, lorelai only asks her parents for money because rory needs it for school. and they, and this is where they differ from luke, don’t know how to trust people and so they don’t know how to talk to people. where luke’s particular brand of emotional constipation comes from a general cluelessness as to how to do it—which is why the tapes helped him so much—lorelai and jess’ come from emotional responses to the situations they grew up in. while it was different—lorelai growing up rich, jess growing up poor—the effect it had on them still resulted in something similar. lorelai with her overbearing manipulative mother and (emotionally) absent father, and jess with his neglecting manipulative mother and (in all senses of the word) absent father. the ways that, despite their effort to distance themselves, they still end up with similar mannerisms to the parent they have the most conflict with (lorelai and her controlling nature + that scene where they have the same nighttime routine, jess and his love for books + tendency to run away). and of course, their romanticism. their big confessions and period drama-esque speeches and, yeah, i do think in a way jess was asking rory to marry him in 4x21. come with me. let’s get married. luke and rory both being the most important people in their lives. literati+javajunkie where they are all melding into each other, and luke is rory and lorelai is jess but on the surface level dynamic luke is jess and lorelai is rory and they are all each other. on accident. by sheer nature of making jess as a character for the sole purpose of interfering with luke and lorelai’s relationship (which means he is important narratively to them both) and by making him rory’s love interest/foil (because ASP casted him before she even had the idea for the character) you have now made an accidental blending of them all together. he is like a skeleton key of a character. Okay. okay.
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gold-onthe-inside · 1 year
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thinking about what makes paris/lane/rory/jess as a quartet so satisfying and it’s that common thread between them and their relationships with their parents. they’re all dealing with the same struggle at their core; the fact that they feel unwanted and like they have to make up for their existence.
paris who uses her academic performance as a way to feel validation because she knows she’s difficult and uptight and that it makes her unlikeable. in all likelihood, she probably blames herself for her parents divorcing (most kids do). she can’t make up for it by changing her personality, so she compensates with academic success. for instance, after her debate with rory at chilton, her idea of ‘celebrating’ is by going over their transcript again. because how else is she supposed to spend time with rory without an excuse like studying?
and much like paris, jess gets handed off by his mother to someone who’s practically a stranger. paris probably had her nanny from a young age, especially if she learned to speak portuguese and spanish so fluently. but to jess, luke is his uncle by blood and nothing else. and it’s not like blood ties have guaranteed any care about his welfare in the past. and his perception of love is so tilted where luke pushing him into a lake is considered a fond memory. just to think about what message that sends to him; that i’m angry at you but i still want you around.
and i imagine lane feels the burden of conditional love just like jess does; she will be loved and taken care of as long as she is the perfect daughter, as long as she is christian, as long as she fulfills her mother’s criteria. jess will be sheltered and cared for as long as he graduates high school, and how many more conditions will luke have if he had graduated anyway? and so they both hide parts of themselves away; his need for financial independence and her love of music. lane’s entire identity gets erased because of her mother, and then zach, and then her kids. she’s so busy trying to balance her own identity against the want of her mother that she never commits to either and then loses everything.
and then rory, oh my beloved rory. rory who has spent her entire life to get to harvard. rory who can’t say no to anyone or anything. rory who spends her life trying to make up for the fact that she was a mistake. trying to be the perfect daughter, the perfect granddaughter, the perfect student, the perfect girlfriend. to live a life that cannot be reproached. so scared of changing her mind to go to yale, to go against everyone’s expectations. to be the opposite of contrarian. to never be accorded the responsibility of her actions. to never be seen as anything other than what people want her to be. and through that lens, the person she is gets completely neglected.
and so it’s such a shame we don’t get more scenes of the four of them together, giving each other that unconditional love they crave. paris and rory and lane and jess are all tied by the same thread, of needing to be free of those conditions and expectations.
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weepynymph · 1 year
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strideofpride · 4 months
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Coming to Terms With Chuck and Blair
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robins-den · 7 months
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i love you wayback machine I'll never forget you exist again (I can't read any of this (guide to unlocking the gallery in ggxxac+r))
plain link jic:
https://web.archive.org/web/ 20110602141331/http//www.arcsystemworks.jp/release/ggxxacp_illustration.pdf
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raeflora · 1 month
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before I start posting the 4x20 chair outfits I wanna discuss the episode. now I know this episode is fairly controversial so I just wanted to give u all my opinion on it and not pretend it didn't happen or gloss over it. so throughout the episode chuck is shown through a tilted camera angle, which is a common way of expressing someone's not in their right state of mind (gg also uses a tilted camera during the dair elevator scene to show the same thing) so we as viewers know he's not in a good place (the beard is also a sign bc he's always clean shaven) now blair doesn't know this bc she's off in princess fairytale fantasy land and isn't thinking hey maybe I should check in on my known to spiral ex to make sure he's doing ok and isn't gonna take this badly. this brings us to the glass scene. I know this is gonna potentially be controversial but I don't think it's anywhere near as horrific as ppl make out. let me explain why. chuck specifically aims away from blair. should he have grabbed her? no, but he very specifically didn't hit her or aim near her. he specifically hits the glass to get his anger out (and actually hurting himself more than her) yes I know that one shard conveniently cuts her cheek, but that's clearly for the drama. gg is a drama show where things happen purely for the drama, and the shard is just that. the way I've seen ppl talk about it u would think he got a shard of glass and cut her face himself, but he obviously didn't. if u can't understand that a shard conveniently flying off and cutting blair's face was unintentional from chuck, but used only to create drama then I'm not sure how else to explain it. yes the scene is still bad to watch, but not bc chuck's some kind of unforgivable violent monster, bc he's so lost and makes a mistake. I think it's been blown up into this huge controversial scene when it's really not. a difficult scene yes, but not one that should be labelled as abuse bc it's clearly not
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terrainofheartfelt · 9 months
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What do you think is the most romantic gift Dan gifts Blair?
mmmmmmmm good question! and actually, very hard. but i'm an overthinker like that.
bc like, blair has had relationships chock full of material gifts that emotionally amounted to Nothing: chuck's necklaces, louis' dresses, even nate seems to follow this standard formula of chocolates and jewelry and apologies.
and we know from watching him, dan is not good at material gifts, it's not his bag. (there's a whole holiday episode about it!). and while in this house we know that the five love languages model is pseudo-science trash, we also know that different people do express affection in varied and different ways. and dan is an act of service person more than a gift-purchasing person.
this is just to say, his gifts to blair in the course of their relationship are things that appear small, but it's the intent and the message behind the gesture that's momentous.
in headcanon land, I like to think that he gets a copy of a book that's significant to the two of them, and annotates it with comments and questions and messages for her. since nads (beloved) brought up Open Me Carefully last night, I can see him doing so with that title. other contenders: Age of Innocence, Breakfast at Tiffany's, any poetry collection: thinking of Rilke, Oliver, Shakespeare, KEATS (iykyk), and knowing Dan, he'd probably try more contemporary/less classic writers just to get a rise out of Blair.
I just like that idea, because dan seems to know that blair doesn't want material gifts with empty gestures behind them anymore. not to bring up the milk and honey route AGAIN, but that thing nads writes about how gifts to blair come to represent the time other men weren't able/willing to give her. So dan always makes a point to give her his time.
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foxmagpie · 1 year
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In your opinion do you think that Beth likes or loves Rio too and can you tell me why you think so
yeah, she does, for a lot of reasons, which I think the show demonstrated consistently and complexly as it aligned with beth’s characterization and the conflicts in the plot. I think it’s pretty obvious and safe to say how that’s displayed in the beginning of the show, but even at the break-off point where some people doubted her feelings, they were shown when:
she defends him to her husband and calls him for help, thinking he’s someone she can rely on in times of distress (2.07, 2.12, 2.13)
she had to drink to cope with ending their relationship and couldn’t go through with it without an intimate goodbye (2.09)
she had to block his number to stop herself reaching out or responding to reach outs because she needed an extra barrier otherwise she couldn’t help herself (2.10)
she was hungry to learn everything she could about him, even meaningless things like how soft his shirts are (2.11)
she considered them more than work and felt insulted and betrayed by him diminishing it (2.12)
she’s betrayed at the deepest level possible when she believes that their entire relationship was a ruse to use her as a fall guy (2.13)
she grieves his death and tries to take care of his son, whom she knows is the most important person in the world to him (3.01)
she looks up to and wants to emulate him even at their lowest (3.02, 4.05)
she puts herself at-risk and entrusts him not to harm her even when it’s illogical (3.04, 3.10)
she eventually moves past him killing lucy to punish her (3.05)
she’s comfortable being vulnerable and hurt by him in front of him, which is rare for her (3.06)
she’s still turned on by their dynamic even when they’re at their lowest (3.07)
he makes her feel sexy just by being herself; she doesn’t have to perform for him like she does for dean and fitzpatrick (3.08, 3.09)
despite the ways she’s pushed for the hitman plot (even putting herself in danger by being present when she has max meet rio), when she has a gun in her hand and is dared to, she can’t do it (3.09)
she acknowledged to annie and ruby that what they had was more than an insignificant hookup (3.10)
she can’t help but linger on their good memories even when she’s supposed to feel relieved he’s out of her life for good (3.10)
she genuinely cares what he thinks and is flattered by his positive opinions of her (3.11)
she can lie to everybody but not to him (4.04)
she’s anxious and troubled about betraying him until she literally starts feeling haunted about it (4.04, 4.05, 4.06)
her commitment in betraying him is minimal effort at best, even when everything is on the line, and she even drops hints to him (4.05, 4.06, 4.07)
she’s protective over his special name for her (4.06)
she still thinks of them as partners despite a lack of evidence to support it and will declare this to his nearest and dearest (4.06)
the show went to great lengths to show how she’ll hold a line and refuse to get intimate with people she doesn’t want to, even when it offers her protection or freedom (fitzpatrick, troy, nick) but she is intimate with rio which shows a part of her still genuinely feels something for him (4.06)
she flirts with him and is genuinely flattered by his attention (4.07)
she’s thrilled when she thinks she finds a fall guy in exchange for rio and literally only turns on him when it becomes a clear choice between him and the girls; afterward she’s guilty and it weighs heavily on her and she even takes some accountability (4.08)
she denies nick’s offer for a drink because she hasn’t “earned” it showing she likes her dynamic with rio where she feels he makes her earn everything (4.13)
once rio changed his behavior toward her, a flip switched and she reciprocated (4.14)
she’s shocked and overwhelmed by rio returning the money and the furniture—but also deeply touched (4.14)
she protects him against the secret service even when she has good reason to think he may have sent mick to hurt her (4.16)
she chooses to work with him despite their history of betrayal instead of starting fresh in nevada or getting him out of her way; she declares that she trusts him to annie and ruby (4.16)
she was always extremely (and imo logically) guarded and mistrusting of his feelings and intentions, but there was always something there that she tried and failed to compartmentalize or kill that she couldn’t. the end of s4 proved that all she really needed was some sort of proof that it was all real and then she was able to commit to him fully and freely in a way she had been doing despite herself in half-measures (with plenty of backtracking and contradictions and betrayal mixed in).
but he was always important to her, and she was always intensely affected by him.
if you think about the things she was capable of moving forward from with rio versus the things she wasn’t truly capable of moving forward from with her husband of twenty years, I think it’s clear to see she’s deeply committed to entwining her life with rio, and that her feelings for him are absolutely a part of that equation. after all, the only reason she truly guarded them in the first place was because she felt the intensity of her feelings and her loyalty were unreciprocated and betrayed (2.06, 2.13). and while she went through many (many, many, many) motions to extricate him from her life, she continuously displayed gut-instinct trust him in him as well as an inability to quash her fond memories of him.
on top of that, frankly I don’t believe rio would work as hard as he did to keep her in his orbit if he truly believed she didn’t feel as attached to him as he did to her.
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I can't help but think about the tragedy of blairena as of lately. Both women want to be individuals so badly and they want to be each other's best friends forever and ever, yet they never give each other the proper space to do that. Serena, as I mentioned earlier today, builds herself in the image of the people she loves to make sure that they won't leave her because if she has learned one thing from the UES is that everybody just views other's as an extention of themselves. So if Serena is this golden sunflower of a person, who is kind to everybody and is good with adults and can brighten up the room with just her smile, then there is no reason for anyone to leave her. because who could ever leave that??
It's almost like Serena had repressed so much of her negative traits for so long that by season three or four it just was.... inevitable, maybe? that the audience would turn on her. Because she is the opposite of Blair. Whereas Blair is cold and cruel to anyone she doesn't find worthy, but becomes kinder and softer the more you know her, Serena is the reverse. It's not that Serena is a bad person, but she has just repressed herself for so long just to make sure that others will see her as "relevant." Blair doesn't cower when she is insulted, she absorbs that power and responds in kind. Blair doesn't care what "lower society" thinks of her because she knows who the important people are in her life l, and she isn't afraid to cut them out if needed.
But I digress. These two have known each other for so long, they were each other's True First Love, and as they got older, they still had the mentality of children, one petty fight after the other, just to make up with a simple I'm sorry. They were the heart of the show, but the writers never gave them time to be anything outside of their relationships with each other and boys. They tried to grow and become independent (Blair in s4, Serena in s5), but they always let their emotional immaturity be their downfall.
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pynkhues · 1 year
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If you could have a choice of seeing just one more brio kiss would you...
Prefer to see an angry kiss? A relieved kiss? A soft kiss? A desperate kiss? Other? And why would you want that choice?
(and I know some overlap but say that there would be ONE underlying emotion under it haha)
Oh my GOD, this is an impossible question!! Mmmm, okay, y'know what, I think I'd say an angry kiss?
Their kiss in 2.09 literally is everything to me and definitely in my top five TV kisses of all time, and it really perfectly balanced that soft, tentative, first kiss intimacy with building need and yearning and hope on Rio's part and grief on Beth's (I've said it before, but I forever love that that kiss was a beginning to Rio and an ending to Beth).
I feel like any sort of soft kiss between them on the show after the fact would've drawn too many comparisons, especially given we got literally just the one kiss across four seasons (even though they, y'know, got intimate three times, haha).
They deserved their hard, toothy, throwdown kiss! The sort that happens halfway through a fight, the sort that comes on like a pot boiling over, a mess of simmering emotion that just can't be contained anymore, that comes after another betrayal or another one-upped moment, where they acknowledge that everything between them turns them on as much as it pisses them off. They deserved that!! And we deserved it too!
What about you? What kiss would you have liked to see?
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mysteriesofloves · 1 year
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even when dair didn’t like eachother, i’m just so obsessed with them being *fascinated* with eachother. i love the vibes of being silently curious and looking out of the side of your eye at someone, so seductive and playful !
no but they are so obsessed with each other for good and for bad……….. something about dan hearing about blair’s insecurities in 1.04 of being overshadowed/not chosen not long after properly meeting her and writing her as the star of the story….. even in high school he saw her as The Lead Role in this narrative they were all playing out she just went from being the antagonist to the protagonist for him. and blair was always obsessed with his Goodness or what she perceived to be his Goodness (in opposition to all of their Badness) and she loved when he would be on their side of things i.e. scheming/lying etc. she took a perverse joy in it but i think she was mostly fascinated with how he could do that but still be Good. i think the same way she battles with the contradictions of her arrogance vs her insecurities she battles with her view of dan pre-friendship — “you’re just like us to the bone” is something of a triumph for her (dan humphrey is not good, he’s as bad as i am) -> “some of them stay good no matter how they’re treated”
anyway yeah you’re right it’s hot. tldr the inherent eroticism of having an enemy
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butchjess · 1 year
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thinks about liz and jess and jess almost grimacing when liz kisses his cheek and jess saying “because THAT’S what family does!” and liz calling him and telling him about the car after luke tells her he stole it and the implication that she and luke are the only ones who had his number in s4 bc he regularly gave it to them and jess saying “i don’t like any of the guys, but she’s gonna do what she’s gonna do.” and “she doesn’t care what we think. she really doesn’t care what i think, i’ve got 19 years of proof to back me up.” and then thinks about jimmy and jess and them sitting together nodding their heads to bowie and jess watching him run away and jess seeing all the books on his shelf and jess begging him to let him stay, “just tell her i’m a dog,” and “you have nothing? i have nothing!” and “i don’t need you to raise me, i’m 18, i’m already raised!” and then my brain blows up inside my own head and i disintegrate into dust. it’s all about family it’s about never ever knowing love ever or not having it in a way you can understand it’s about love that’s complicated and not even good for u! and then becoming better anyway because he wasn’t a lost cause he wasn’t his blood he didn’t have to be like them and
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trashfordair · 1 year
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you’re on your own kid and anti-hero and nothing new…. literally the jenny humphrey anthems. im love her 😭😭😭
ABSOLUTELY YES
jenny starts off the series knowing her worth, to an extent, she knows and understands that she’s a little talented, she has big dreams, she wants to make it in the ues, she outsmarts the best of the best (blair) a few times, she thinks she can do it, it backfires in her face. you’re on your own kid. her dreams aren’t rare, she learns her talent isn’t enough and her hard work is worth nothing. you’re on your own kid. she finds a friend and a shoulder to cry on in nate, she falls in love with him a little, she loses him to blair, to vanessa, to serena, and it’s okay because they’re the best of friends. she finds a friend in serena, in agnes, in eric, in damien, even in chuck (gg writers don’t piss me off seriously), and she loses them all. you’re on your own kid, you always have been.
anti-hero, i mean what is there to say. it’s season 4 jenny. im older now, im trying to be more mature, be better, learn from my mistakes. she doesn’t. the one thing with her is she self-sabotages. she doesn’t really mean to, she kinda just does. she’s screaming for help, but she’s pushing people away. nobody loves her, they’re all going to leave anyway, like alison, rufus, like eric, they’ll all turn their backs on her, they already have. nobody loves you, jenny humphrey. and she’s the problem, she has to be.
nothing new is… nothing new is jenny humphrey burnt out, it’s jenny tired of constantly trying so hard, it’s jenny who’s sick of being thrown away when she’s not needed anymore. it’s jenny when she’s much older, it’s jenny who has tried and worked so hard for her entire life, and she’s got everything she wants, but how long will she have it? how long before they move on to the next new thing? how long before they decide she’s not enough, again?
so yeah, absolutely perfect for jenny. I’ve found a lot of taylor’s more introspective stuff to be very jenny, especially alot of the tracks on midnights.
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blairwaldcrf · 11 months
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do u think theres was any way for derena to have a happy endgame? or how would u write it for them to have a happy endgame?
i don't know if you planned this, since I'm in the middle of writing a post-derena divorce fic lol, but I'll try and summarize briefly what I'm exploring there.
i wish i could say yes they could be happy (surprising, i know) but no, I don't think they could make it work in any truly fulfilling way. and honestly, people more fond of derena might be able to write a convincing happy ending for them, but to me they just don't have a foundation I'd write to begin with?
let's say you only watch season one, when they have most of their high points. still, by the course of a few months, they have the constant argument of not being able to accept each other for who they are. Serena wants a white knight, Dan wants a golden construct he created in his head before he ever met her, and neither can seem to admit to themselves that the other isn't fit for that role in a black and white way.
in 1x18 when they break up, serena says "so we're back to where we started. I'm not who you thought I was".... but neither is Dan for her? she wants to look past him and georgina because she doesn't want to be abandoned, but his hooking up with georgina doesn't exactly fit her narrative where he's "always the good guy"
in 2x03 when they break up for the second time, for literally the same reasons (their words!) as 1x18, Serena says "I'm scared, when we step out of here [the elevator] it's over" and Dan says "I think it already was, it just took us this long to get used to the idea"
in the same season, serena admits verbatim that at this point in their relationship, she wants to believe the worst of him, because she wants them to be over and that they try and forgive each other for things they can't actually get over too often.
in s4 Serena tells him, "I think that maybe sometimes I test you. You know, I keep thinking that if things get too hard, you'll give up on me but you never do." which just. isn't completely true? there's merit in that he'll always try to be there for her and he'll always love her. it's why they circle back to each other.... but he's almost always the one who's ready to leave their romantic periods behind first.
and i guess maybe with therapy, and I mean LOTS of therapy, they could work past those particular issues, but I just don't think they're compatible outside of that in the first place?
Serena loves travel, adventure, didn't seem to show an interest in settling down or having kids when she was at her happiest. I think when she does mention having kids of her own, usually it's in opposition to Lily and how she would fix whatever Lily had done to her and Eric vs an actual inherent desire for them?
Dan, on the other hand, has always been shown to want a more muted private life, or at least the option to not attend so many parties, rather... After milo he still talks fondly to a pregnant blair about becoming a parent, when he should arguably be jaded whether or not he's trying to comfort her.
so while I think they could have maybe a year or two of happiness as a married couple if I'm being generous, with how Serena could travel when Dan can write from almost anywhere, there's an expiration date on how long that could last.
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strideofpride · 10 months
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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.
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