ahhhhh genuinely thank you so much, getting a response this details is absolutely thrilling, and was in no way too long to read. glad we are of the same nate hivemind, because he absolutely does not get the attention he deserve, but still has a very special place in my heart. and same absolutely goes for date.
oh nate, he just… he just make me so sad, and yet he is my boy. he’s such a tragic character, yet the narrative and people around him and even nate himself never seems to quite realize exactly how tragic he is. there is so much depth within his character and i think it’s a huge over sight on the writer’s part to left him drift so and not expand more on him, especially since many of the most moving scenes in the entire series focus on him.
im so glad you like the interactions with dan, and serena, and blair sort of interwoven throughout the story, because honestly the way they all mirror each other, indirectly or more obviously, is just so important. i have a lot of anger towards chuck, but he is still such a defining character in all of their lives.
I cannot believe I made it worse, considering how awful it was in canon, but the idea has been haunting me during this rewatch. gossip girl has a lot of truly horribly handled storylines, but the catherine one always felt the most insidious to me I suppose. It’s a really fucking dark storyline , and still nate is consistently blamed and straight up called a whore for something awful which was done to him. he tried to leave her multiple times, and each time she manipulates him back to her, and later literally blackmails him into staying with her. it’s terrifying, and not his fault. i dont care if she was married, I care she’s nearly forty and he’s a child, and if every scene they share together it’s abundantly clear who holds the power, and how much she enjoys exerting it over him. we never even see how they get together, but I cab only assume it’s insanely creepy. really, she makes my skin crawl but is still largely overlook for how predatory and awful she is, and the entire thing is framed as something nate has to atone for rather than the trauma it was.
that was a lot, so ANNE. GODDAMN ANNE ARCHIBALD. I have so many thoughts when it comes to her, but generally it comes down to two wildly conflicting schools of thought I probably cant explain in a fic comment, other than: god someone get this boy better parebtal figures, please someone step up. AND BLAIR!! honestly i think blair has a lot of very fierce protective instincts and would do anything to protect her family, but always hidden under a layer of her the blair waldorf onion of insecurity. canon also didn’t do a great job of touching on her eating disord nearly as much as it must have been affecting her a uggh. blairena is also there become i love them and it’s always there, but here more than anything else I feel like I needed that added element.
DAN!!! Alright, in canon dan handles the entire thing horribly and is a little superior about everything , so I was kind of aiming to fix that. I agonized over tagging it as date because that’s really not the focus, but it is SO there, and idk the people just needed to know. dan and nate generally have one of the most pure relationships built on a mutual love for one another, and honestly they just really both need each other in their lives. just two very sad himbos 😔✋💅
!!! this was in no way too long to read!!! lovely i would have read three times longer. i love the enthusiasm and really i need more nate lovers to interact with because i am dying in my own little corner. also this may inspire my to actually work on the sequel i was considering, because i feel like somehow their is even more with this poor boy.
editing because ao3 somehow ate half my comment :/ but i anticipated that, so i copied it before hitting reply:
haha, i will give you all the details!! i love nate, and i love it when other people love nate. and we really ARE of the same hivemind, there's so many headcanons and dynamics i value and hold dear that you apparently ALSO share? so that's an amazing thing to see in fic.
i know exactly what you mean re: nate & tragedy!! it's such a classic childhood trauma thing, i am always sad he didn't get to break away and go to the west coast like he always wanted, he really needed a change of environment. i loved his friendship with dan and his relationship with vanessa for that reason - around them, he could be just nate, and not Nate Archibald, Golden Boy, etc etc.
& agreed on the writers' not utilising him enough. nate's such a compelling character, AND he's so well-cast - chace crawford was such a good choice for nate, and they could've done sooo much with him... yeah. idk. somewhere during s3 nate's storylines became more secondary than ever :(
yes about dan, serena, blair, and chuck (whom i don't like either, but yeah, he was There) being all interwoven. i see them that way too, and it's so cool to see a longer one-shot that really fleshes out the nature of those dynamics, because they're all so different. quality fanficcing right there!
i mean, i do this in fic too, so i totally get the urge. i remember seeing a fic that'd been tagged "this is a fix-it fic but i break it a lot more first" and like... yeah. you did that. i've done that. i think it's a very cathartic thing, especially when gg canon does what it does - i agree with literally everything you said re: the naterine arc + people's responses to it - the fact that the writers just brushed it under the carpet, and if it ever came up, it was either to shame nate or to make fun of him (that dialogue blair has in s4 about "i need you to sleep with epperly! just pretend she's a more flexible lady catherine!" makes me sick)... yeah, we're on the same page here.
ANNE ARCHIBALD!!!! please tell me more about how you feel about her. i love to hate anne. it makes me sad that nate forgives her so easily (or never even allows himself to get angry with her. ouch)
"blair waldorf onion of insecurity" is so good, haha, that's EXACTLY what it is. and yeah! it ties into her queen thing, i feel, the "must not show weakness" - showing kindness is showing weakness -but blair cares about the people she loves soooo much. i'm honestly in 2 minds about blair's ED, i think canon should've gone into it more, but given how shittily canon handles serious topics (like lily's fake cancer) i wonder sometimes if it's better that we got a vague representation than a deep, yet problematic, interpretation. but if it had been done well, it would've been SO impactful. i think about it a lot.
yes, blairena!!! blairena always makes everything better. they're in a lot of ways the heart of the show imo - or at least, they should've been, it would've been SO good.
big yes about dan being shitty about it in canon! though i remember an anon i got on tumblr mentioning that dan being shitty about can be understood as a reflection of the writers' inability to portray consent issues appropriately, which is a take that makes sense to me. sometimes i like to play around with the fucked-upness of dan actually saying that and reacting like that, though, and then being like "what the fuck did i just do holy shit" because i like dan's character a lot, and that includes his flaws. im glad you're not writing dan being like That in this fic though - nate's already been through a lot without his dream boy being unreliable and shitty, so. yay fix-it!
also yes, agreed. dan & nate have one of the most functional relationships on the show also they're both perpetually flirting and checking each other out istg it is CANON. i really hope to see you in the Dan/Nate tag on ao3 again, we need more of them! (no pressure but also. some pressure. as a treat.)
sorry about taking so long to reply! my brain has been full of static, and i wanted to give you a Proper answer, not just a sentence or two sentences. PLEASE write the sequel - no pressure, but like, i've spent an unbelievable amount of time JUST thinking about this fic, ngl, it lives in my head rent free, and while i love the open ending a LOT, i would also love to read date hurt/comfort a lot. D/N is kind of a rarepair, but those of us who love it really do love it, so there IS that.
okay i’ve been insanely busy, but ever speck of free time i’ve had, i have been binging your work and OMG is it fantastic! genuinely we must have a psychic link because wow do we share some of the same thoughts!!! i mean, really, the hivemind is growing!!!
I always have a certain love for Jenny, Dan, and Vanessa (even if the writers clearly didnt. because what is that. why are you writing your only middle class characters to have random moments of insane misogynist and prejudice. you have to know how fandom is, writers, and you were setting them up for failure. some of which was straight racism because ive heard the most insane takes about vanessa, but why did you do this to your privilegless characters?) and love for their individual relationships to nate. as much as i adore the way serena and blair and nate always seem to have a silent care and understand of one another and bond which can go untouched for years yet never disturbed, i also think nate deserves to discover who he is and who he is trying to be in a healthy environment.
NATE!!! Sweet boy, oh how you make me want to cry. He just makes me so incredibly sad with how his arc begins with trying to escape the suffocating grasp of his family, but he ends up in exactly the same position by the end of his story, only all the more traumatized. There is so much layering within his character and he is played so well, I wish for a parallel universe in which he was fully explored.
nate genuinely has a terrifying lack of agency and the passivity with which he takes a lot of the horrible things happening to him is so scary. nate doesn’t get mad very often, but still i can only think of a handful of time throughout the entire series he gets genuinely upset over something which happened to him/or has been done to him, rather than on the behalf of someone else. it really is a trauma response, and he seems to consider bad actions less bad if they are done onto him
he and serena really have that in common, along with a vast array of other traits. both of them also seems to get consistently taken advantage of, especially in sexual situations, and it is never well written. the gossip girl writters where unbelievably shitty at consent issues, considering like 95% of the sex nate (and serena too!) are having is in some way disturbing. but regardless nate & serena are really good foils for the other, but i don't think the parallels are drawn on enough.
blairena is just something that can be so personal!! i love them so so much, i just wish they’d been a wee bit kind to each other in canon. because i really want to believe better than blair, blair who cares so deeply about serena and spends so much of her teen years desperately trying to protect serena, would lie back and slutshame serena for the grown (or at least predatory) men who often persue teenage/young serena. and that serena, who knows firsthand how dangerous chuck can be, would continuously push blair back towards him. they’re both a product of their truama, but i just wish they’d sat down and had a conversation. and maybe kissed a little.
and speaking of trauma: fuck anne and howard archibald. fuck them so much. please leave and never come back. no one one gossip girl (or teen dramas in general) is being well parented whatsoever, but it never really come up enough with nate. they are so unbelievably horrible to him, and i cant even.
i have so many thoughts on anne, which should probably better mingle, but really it breaks down into this: on the one hand, she feels sinister. she constantly puts her own family aside in favor of saving grace and protecting herself in the court of public opinion. she’s cold and distant and her utter state ofndenial only makes every issues worse. on the other hand, part of me almost feels bad for her?? she’s sort of an inconsistent character, which probably accounts for some of the conflicting feeling, but in moment she teeters the edge of being some dark world version of what nate could have become. in an universe without dan and where nate and blair got unhappily married and nate never escape his family’s thumb for even a second, it’s concivable he’d look something like his mother. anne always read to me like someone who was married off young and designed to be a socialite, another pawn in the van der Bilt games. her staying married to howard despite him continually fucking up in the same manner over and over and dragging down her beloved social status, howard’s quip in the second episode about bring her flowers and chocolates when he messes up, her willingness to blame nate despite knowing deep down her husband was guility all along, and even the way her own father casts her out when howard’s embezzling leave her and nate broke, almost paints a picture of a deeply unhappy women who’s unwilling to relinquish the dream her family designed for her decades ago, even at the cost of her own son. she’s willing to blame anyone, so long as she’s protected from confronting the true culprit. I think there was meant to be more nuance to her character, but the writers sort of abandoned her dimensions along with nate. i really dont like her, but she makes me sad in an angry sort of way.
i think their was probably a better way to state all that, but im on mobile and haven’t slept and i feel so much rage towards nate’s parents. even howard is a master gaslighter, excelling at making nate feel awful any time he (rightfully) is upset or mistrustful of his father. the whole storyline of him trying to sell nate off to the waldorfs to ensure a deal felt uniquely awful, especially with nate’s later arcs, and him straight up punching nate for confronting him always left an especially sour taste in my mouth. FIND THIS BOY SOME BETTER PARENTS. DO IT. DO IT NOW.
okay that was so so much and far too long, but i am working on a sequel! and again, thank you so much for the love. you are an amazing writer and the interest means so much.
Comment on oh the world is okay (the water runs off your skin and down into the drain)
YourBadKarma Mon 10 Jan 2022 12:14PM UTC
Comment Actions
thestartofnothing Thu 13 Jan 2022 03:11PM UTC
Last Edited Thu 13 Jan 2022 03:15PM UTC
Comment Actions
YourBadKarma Sun 16 Jan 2022 05:31AM UTC
Comment Actions