i don't even go here.
07 | the ship where the writers are DOING IT WRONG
I can't believe this is an actual post I'm making.
Who else could love me after what I've become?
[Disclaimer: This post isn't pretty. If you're very emotionally attached to the Blair/Chuck relationship you'll probably want to skip. Also, take your wank elsewhere.]
So, full disclosure: I despise this ship. I loathe it like I loathe few TV pairings and I wrestled with myself for literally days about including them here (I'm STILL feeling weird about it tbh) -- especially since Gossip Girl is a show I stopped casually watching after season two. But honestly, it's unavoidable. There is no pairing that fits this category better than Blair/Chuck.
At this point you'd probably want to ask -- if I hate them so much -- why I'd even bother, but the thing of it is that I used to love this shit like pancakes. I can honestly say that S1 Blair/Chuck was some of the most compelling teen drama I'd ever witnessed. Not even stretching. (DO YOU EVEN KNOW MY NOSTALGIA PUTTING CAPS TOGETHER.) They were trashy, manipulative, mired in power games, not at all conventionally romantic and, most significantly, the show was totally aware of just how awful they were as people and just how much they brought out the worst in each other. And I think that may have been down to the fact that, as far as I'm aware, they were never supposed to be an epic love. It was a "dark horse" pairing, which worked out well because it meant that (for the most part) the show didn't try to romanticize the relationship.
Then something weird happened in S2. By this point the ship had become so popular that it got elevated to straightforward OTP status -- and therein lay the root of all its subsequent problems. I admit I didn't actually stick around to see how bad things got, but I did manage to keep tabs on events through fandom and my flist, and everything I heard was horrifying.
And you know what? I love dark!ships. I love terrible, abusive fictional people. Anyone who knows me knows THAT. But the one crucial condition for my canon wrong!ships is that the narrative acknowledges that it is in fact a WRONG!ship. And you'd think that after one half of a pairing essentially sells the other half for a hotel and then victim-blames them for it there couldn't possibly be any way the narrative could paint the two as romantic soulmates, AND YET.
This is the exact reason I abhor Epic Love (TM). This is the exact reason I lead an Epic Love hatred existence. Because it doesn't matter what kind of shit your abusive bf pulls -- your love is "epic", and it must be preserved at all costs. And it should never have gotten to that point. Blair/Chuck should never have been an "epic love". They shouldn't have ever been a romance, full stop.
Which is a real shame, because once upon a time they were magnificent. I wish this had been a better show. Alternatively, I wish it had ended after S2. I wanted more for you, Blair Waldorf.