i think to an extent serena felt as though she was never enough for anyone. like she always had to be more and she had to be better. and she felt like once people saw that she wasn’t everything they thought she was, they’d leave. once they saw her for who she really was, they’d leave. and i think that’s why she got in the car with tripp. the inevitable blow up that serena and tripp were always bound for would hurt less than nate seeing her and deciding that he doesn’t want her. and like you said, she thinks really highly of him. she sees him in a really beautiful way. you’re such a good guy, nate archibald. and he thinks so highly of her and she knows that. she knows that he sees her as the most beautiful amazing alive person he’s ever known. but she can’t see herself in the really beautiful way he sees her. and i think that’s part of why she hid so much from him. she doesn’t want him to leave and she’s so convinced that if she shows him everything he will. she sees him as so beautiful but she doesn’t quite see herself in the beautiful way he does, so yeah i think maybe she could feel like she’s not enough for him.

also i think it always comes back to blair&serena and i think there’s something to be said about the fact that nate and blair dated first. everyone, including serena, thought that nate and blair were going to get married someday. she heard everyone talk about how nate and blair were this perfect couple. he was always the golden boy and blair was always so outwardly perfect. and serena sees through blair’s facade but serena also sees blair as the best person there is. blair who was going to go to yale and take the world by storm with the full support of her present family behind her. serena’s not blair. “not everyone wants to be blair waldorf.” “not everyone can be.” serena’s not blair. serena was never going to be blair. serena could never be blair. serena sees blair as the best. serena sees blair as the best person there is. nate dated blair first. serena could never be blair.

i’m obsessed with it <3

on the same day serena finds a letter from her father who left her proving once again that he doesn’t want to know her, serena goes downstairs to find tripp. she’s in so much pain in that moment and all she wants is to be distracted from it and to get away from her mother who lied to her and shamed her in a way serena just found out was incredibly hypocritical. tripp is exactly what she wants in that moment. a whirlwind romance that will sweep her away but also not hurt her too badly when it inevitably fails. also it will piss off her mother. so serena goes downstairs to find tripp. but he’s not the only one waiting for her. nate is there and he’s looking at her and he’s so earnest and he’s asking her to take a chance and to just stay there with him. and he’s nate and she’s loved him, in whatever way, for most of her life. so she runs. she runs alway from the possibility of feeling the pain she felt that day ever again. her father had just broken her heart again. her father who left. and nate is nate and she loves him and he has the potential to hurt her so deeply. he has the ability to break her heart. and that terrifies her. so she reacts. like this scene is so short, none of this is conscious thought. for serena, there is just pain and fear mixed up inside her so she reacts. she gets in the car with tripp. she runs from nate.

and then she’s at the cabin. and she’s calling nate. and she’s slightly tentative at first because she left him out there standing, but then they’re smiling and he’s telling her to stay warm because he’s nate and he always wants to know her.

then she wakes up in the hospital bed and she sees him there and she smiles. he stayed. and then she goes back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that he’ll be there when she wakes up. that he won’t leave.

this is my ultimate fave serenate hug <3

she says you’re the best and she hugs him and he literally has his oh… moment. like this is when he realises that he’s still in love with her <3

also this one. he was waiting for her. she launches herself at him <3

then there’s the dair hugs and they’re all literally soo angsty. they’re about comfort and about blair’s life being so loud but she finds these moments of safety and warmth and quiet with dan. they’re literally all i need you you have me.

serenate:

1. season one - i love their s1 arc!! it’s all just very tragic and angsty and messy and i just think it was interesting and the whole blairenate s1 arc was so well done

2. season three - self-explanatory

3. season six - okay yes i hate s6 in general but it was a good serenate season. they were friends and they interacted throughout the season, nate following through on ‘serena deserves a guy who would sacrifice anything to be with her’, nate’s face at serena’s wedding

4. season two - i don’t actually know how to rank s2 because they literally only interact in the 1st and last episodes but i do love 100% of their interactions so i’m putting it here

5. season five - we see them interact and they’re friends and their stuff in la is so much fun and we see the nate always trusts/choses serena thing when lola believes that serena’s gossip girl.

6. season four - broad shoulders comment, nate not caring that serena overdosed, reason for their breakup being retconned, triangle with dan literally i hate their s4 stuff. the one interesting thing was nate being truly mad at serena to the point where she’s no longer his priority for literally the first time and seeing him being so conflicted over being cold to her and seeing her deal with the fact that she’s no longer his priority for the first time and seeing her jealous of juliet. like that was actually an interesting serenate arc but it was ruined a few episodes later where it’s retconned into nate was only mad at serena because juliet manipulated him and all that complexity is literally gone and it goes back to there was literally nothing good about the s4 serenate arc.

dair:

1. s4 - the perfect dair season <3

2. s1 - literally the hallway scene and the fact they find understanding in the last place they ever expected. also i love their s1 antagonism!! literally cedric <3

3. s3 - i’m literally obsessed with all their nyu stuff. like the play and she sits down and is like here’s what’s going to happen and he just sits there like uhhh.. also ‘humphrey i’m surprised this isn’t horrible’ and ‘don’t get too cocky humphrey, we still have your subpar acting to deal with’ and ‘it’ll be fine, blair’ and ‘did you bozos have a threesome or something?’ they’re so fun in this episode. then there’s 3x18 and it’s again about finding understanding.

4. s2 - i love the art gallery scene so much! like serena thought that dan could help blair be brave and express her feelings and he did!! again it’s about finding complete understanding in the most unexpected place. also dan helping blair seduce chuck was so much fun.

(their s1, s2 and s3 stuff all rank roughly the same for me though. like i have slight preferences but they could still be switched)

5. s5 - i do love a lot of it like literally you just said my name and met steps scene but like idk as a whole i just don’t like their s5 stuff as much as their earlier stuff

ok so i think that the breakup was well done and really in line with their entire s3 arc.

i think a lot of it comes down to serena running and nate staying. serena running away from him but nate staying there for her. and i think there breakup scene subverts that pattern.

serena leaves but she does not breakup with nate. because this time, she's not leaving him. she's not running from him. she's leaving to find a way to stop running. "if we're ever going to have a real chance this is the only way.'' serena in ep22 is becoming aware of her pattern. and she wants to end it. she wants to finally find herself after everything. because she spent the entirety of s3 being incredibly lost. she went looking for her father who didn't want to see her, she deferred brown, she fought with blair, carter left, she ran from nate, she had an affair with a married senator who left her alone injured after a car accident, her mother got sick, her father betrayed her again. we see her at the beginning of the season and she's already been set spinning by her father. she spends the entire season heartbroken and lost and all her decisions stem from the fact that she was heartbroken and lost. she's just very much spinning and spiralling and not in a good place the entire season. and i think when her father leaves again at the end of the season she realises this. and she wants it to stop. she wants to get back on solid ground. she wants to know who she is. and she realises that she needs time alone to do that. and she tells that to nate and she asks him for a break.

serena needs to leave but this time she's not running from nate. she's running towards herself and she wants him to be there she finds who that is. "if we're ever going to have a real chance this is the only way.''

but for him, the situation reads very differently. serena's running away again. something she spent s3 doing. she gets into the car with tripp . she gets into the car with carter. she gets into the car with dan. she spent the season leaving him and hiding things from him. but nate stayed every single time. he jokes with her on the phone and tells her he'll always be there after tripp and stays with her all night at the hospital. after carter, he believes serena and sends jenny away. he wants to work past the kiss with dan. (for her it's not about tripp it's about being scared of her feelings for nate, it's not about carter it's about her father and her struggling to let nate all the way in, it's not about dan it's also about her father and her being mad at nate.) (to be clear i don't mean that it was about nate being jealous of those guys i mean it was about her leaving him.) but yeah nate always stays. he waited so long for this and he fought for her throughout their entire relationship. (and before, you could probably take the serena not choosing him theme back to s1 where he continuously chooses her but she chooses blair.) and then she's looking him in the eye and telling him that she's leaving. she asks him to wait. but he sees every other time she's left him. every time she hasn't chosen him. and it's the breaking point. he tells her that if she's out she's out. he's not going to wait again. he's not going to stay while she leaves. again.

like this time, serena's leaving but she doesn't want to leave nate. serena asks nate to wait. this time unlike all those times before nate says no. if she leaves, he's not going to be there when she comes back.

yeah I agree. like the aftermath of s3 was just not well written. like there’s the retconning and that was a big issue but lack of communication and consequences was another one.

like there was literally zero mention of nate turning in serena’s father in s4. which i think made no sense considering the fact that her father is such a sensitive topic for serena. like i feel like she’d have such complicated feelings about that. so i think it’s kinda insane that it was just.. forgotten about in s4.

and then with nate, i do think it made sense that he didn’t want to talk to her at the beginning. like he was mad at her. he definitely didn’t want to have like emotional conversations with her about like how they hurt each other. so i think the way nate was kinda cold to her in the beginning made sense. my problem with nate’s writing in the aftermath of the breakup was later.

it’s that ep where nate finds out that juliet was screwing with him and then nate and dan both go out with serena. like i just think it was batshit that he was so deeply hurt but then he’s randomly like i forgive you let’s get back together. and it bugs me because it presents the reason for them not being together being juliet manipulates nate into being mad instead of like, acknowledging the fact that nate was deeply upset by serena leaving. because he was and before this ep, i actually think the show did a pretty good job in showing this. like he doesn’t answer when she calls. he ignores her when she tries to talk to him. he walks straight past serena to juliet. and then when he tells her that she is no longer his priority, juliet is. and that was such an impactful moment because serena had always previously been nate’s priority. he answered whenever she called, even after she left with tripp. he never ignored her, even when it was the one thing blair (who he had betrayed and lied to) asked him to do to earn her forgiveness. he always wanted to see her, even when she left and didn’t talk to him for a year. (side note: i’m obsessed with the contrast of his reactions when she returns in s1 vs s4) like serena was always his priority before. even when she probably shouldn’t have been. so him telling her that she isn’t his priority anymore really does showcase the extent of his hurt. nothing she had done before had made stopped him from making her his priority. no circumstance had ever shaken the fact that serena was nate’s priority. but this did. she had always had his heart, but this time she gave it back. she told him that she loved him and then she left. again. and nate was completely heartbroken. and he was angry. so i think it was literally insane to be like actually juliet was the problem, she’s gone so nate’s over it??? like no??? what?? nate’s feelings towards serena in s4 had nothing to do with juliet and i think it was such stupid writing to claim that it did. especially since i think his reactions before this were really interesting and contrasted so well with earlier serenate moments.

so this is without changing any major plot points, just relationship dynamics.

okay so first just no dan-serena-nate triangle. literally just no. so instead when serena gets back from paris, she and dan run into each other at the van der humphrey’s and they’re like heyyy and they’re both really awkward and they’re like so we’re cool right that kids didn’t mean anything we’re friends and they call each other buddy for some reason and serena’s like thank you for being there for me and dan’s like yeah always and then serena has a holy shit you’re a dad now moment and she’s like omg i want to meet your son!! so yeah that’s dan&serena they’re both super awkward but they’re smiling through the interaction and saying that they value each other’s friendship. (their friendship will still blow up later with the dan&blair stuff though)

and then nate and serena don’t see each other at the loft, the first time is at columbia.

and then the nate is dating juliet stuff remains the same. nate’s deeply hurt that she left. serena is jealous of juliet. they’re both trying to deal with the fact that serena isn’t nate’s priority anymore.

and then the change comes when nate finds out that juliet was screwing with him. he still breaks up with juliet but his and serena’s dynamic does not change. like they don’t go on that date. he’s still hurt and kind of mad at her.

also somewhere close to the beginning of the season i’d add a conversation where nate makes some kind of snarky comment about people leaving when they’re at a party or something and then serena drags him somewhere and is like nate i had to go i didn’t know who i was or what i was doing and honestly i still don’t and then nate’s like serena even if you had to go you didn’t have to leave me behind. i would’ve done anything to help you. and then she looks at him sadly and says i know you would have. and then she leaves. like it wouldn’t change their dynamic it’s just them having a real conversation about their breakup.

when juliet tries to destroy serena’s life nate she just doesn’t do anything to serena&nate’s relationship because they’re already not on speaking terms.

and then when serena overdoses nate immediately goes to the hospital. like he can talk about his different priorities and freezing her out as much as he wants to but when it comes down to it he’ll always be there for her. everything has changed between the s3 hospital scene and the s4 but the fact that she can count on him never will.

sometime after the whole juliet drugging serena thing has come to light nate seeks out serena. he says something about how he feels so stupid he never should have brought juliet into their lives. serena says that the only person to blame is her mother but she’s not really wanting to talk about her mother so she says something about how she she had flashbacks to the last time he visited her in the hospital. he says something about how her being in the hospital once was already too much. she says playfully but also serious something like well bright side we’re talking again. and he kind of just looks at her for a while. he doesn’t match her playfulness and he says something like i’m sorry i might’ve taken the silent treatment thing too far. but serena you just left. again. you left me again. and i get it. i think i get it now. when you said you had to go. you had to get away from it all. believe me i know what it’s like to have to figure out what you want. i guess i just couldn’t see it at the time. the only thing i could think about was you leaving. (or you know that general sentiment but phrases in a way that sounds like nate) and then serena looks at him and just says his name. and the he stands up and starts to leave but he turns back and says hey if you ever want to try and figure it out alone together give me a call (like you know that scene at the end of s1 where she asks if he ever wants to be alone together) and she just beams at him.