you know you love me. xoxo

[pocochina]

Watching the first few episodes of Gossip Girl, all I knew about it were very vague descriptions of a couple of the characters, and the identity of Gossip Girl. I’m not sure if it’s going to be a thing for me, but if I’d watched it without the big reveal I’d be really curious what it looked like to someone watching with that information, so.

Comments

[frelling_tralk]

Apparently Dan being GG was controversial at the time, and the EPs swore up and down that they had always intended it to be him? Which, as much as there’s pressure for creators to lie assure fans that they had the same firm handle on the whole thing all along, particularly post-Lost and BSG, I kind of buy. This whole setup has aspiring male novelist/future English professor written all over it.

Hmm yeah I find it a little frustrating because in retrospect Dan being GG and wanting to be on the inside could have made a lot of sense, but then by season 2 there is way too much logic fail there for me to switch off and believe that it was Dan all along, there are just too many instances where it will never make sense that Dan could have been behind certain blasts

[pocochina]

ahah, yeah, my own preference is strongly toward the tonal sense it makes, but that is easier to say without having 100+ episodes of events that need to make sense.

a lot of people took the GG reveal as Dan having some kind of multiple personality disorder, or even saw it as him being a complete sociopath playing around with his friends lifes, but I never saw it as all THAT devious?

I don't think GG would come off any better ethically if it wasn't Dan, though? The focus on Serena specifically becomes a little bit darker from this perspective, but spying on and publishing private information about people he's identifying, for apparently no reason other than it's fun, is pretty fucked up. He's definitely the most interesting character for that reason, though I doubt I'd have felt that way without knowing.

[frelling_tralk]

I guess that the issues come up more from the later seasons where GG kind of becomes more of a character in her own right and is sometimes driving the plot forward so, when you rewatch with the knowledge that Dan was GG, it can occasionally make Dan look really messed-up. I don't want to spoil you too much, but like there's episodes in season 4 when Serena is in a really bad place and Dan is the only person that she can rely on, he's helping her hide out, and then there's a GG blast exposing Serena and making light of her issues. Or in other episodes there's Dan genuinely trying to keep something quiet, only for GG to expose him and he's really appalled and embarrassed by it. Those are the moments that bother me more on rewatch, not minor continuity issues, but with Dan's actual motives in those episodes. If it wasn't for those moments, I would have been able to buy Dan as GG more

[heavenly44]

yeah i don't see it that way at all. It makes him very manipulative imo. But, they all were. They all fed into this thing that he designed. I guess its because I never really saw dan as friends with any of them bar serena.

[frelling_tralk]

Perhaps saying that I didn't see Dan as all that devious was the wrong choice of words. I was thinking more of the opinions at places like GG anon that Dan being Gossip Girl = him having some kind of multiple personality disorder and toying with everyone's life's out of sheer cruelty, whereas IMO it does make sense that Dan would have fun playing around with the POV of that kind of character and see it as him just ~reporting the tips that other people send in~. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't necessarily have to change that much of how we understand Dan before

It was very manipulative and two-faced of Dan no question, but I disagree with the reading of Dan's secret alter-ego being a sign of real mental issues and being impossible to tie in with the Dan from the show. Because a lot of people do have that view that the Dan that they were following for six seasons must have been a complete fabrication if he was also GG, and that he was a full-blown sociopath all along, which seems...extreme to me

[heavenly44]

I agree with you 100%. But, I also take certain segments of gg fandom with a grain of salt. I thought Dan being GG was a last minute ass pull and didn't really make sense in terms of plot but it doesn't make him a sociopath in anyway shape or form. I think the extreme reaction is more a case of sour grapes.