Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck ALWAYS
I’m going to cover a lot in this essay. Why I love Chuck and Blair, what I don’t like about them, what I liked and didn’t like about Dair, and the recently developed ridiculous notion that Chuck and Blair are an abusive relationship.
Once Chuck and Blair got together in season one for limo sex, I loved them. With Nate I thought Blair was this insecure little girl sucking up to her parents, constantly looking for love and affection but never really finding any. With Chuck... it was fireworks. There is literally no other way to describe it. It was exciting and different and new and really, really hot. Nate was safe... boring. Kind of like someone else, but I’ll get to that later. Chuck is danger and excitement and passion. It’s everything we want to see in a FICTIONAL couple. That’s what I think some people just don’t grasp. It is a DRAMA television show, it is not real, it is not even pseudo-reality. It is pure fiction, and if you really can’t understand that and separate fiction from real life, you’re not mature enough to be watching it in the first place. But I digress. I continue to love Chair because they aren’t safe, they aren’t boring, they aren’t stagnant. Their relationship grows and evolves as they grow and evolve. Although, I think Chuck has done a lot more in terms of growth than Blair. Blair is still that girl who defines herself by the man she’s with, and I have to wonder if she always will be or if that’s something the writers are finally going to change this season. I think there is only one time we have seen the real Blair: that night dancing on the bar at Victrola. I think that is the real her. No one to define herself by, no one holding her down, just Blair letting loose like she never had before and hasn’t really done since. I loved that Blair. I do think their relationship has toted the line of what is healthy and what isn’t. But most of the things Dair fans bring up that could be considered “abusive” happened when they weren’t even a couple, so it’s hard to judge their romantic relationship with those incidents. Chuck has always and will always love Blair. Time and time again he has sacrificed his happiness for hers. Season 2 when he loved her but she wanted to be with Nate, so he not only didn’t fight for her, he let her go. And he gave her the best prom I could ever imagine (and I met my boyfriend through my mom and he was my prom date and it couldn’t have gone better). He got her into Columbia, he let her go after the Saints and Sinners party because she wanted to be a powerful woman in her own right before she settled down with anyone, he let her be with Louis (at the end of season 4 and beginning of season 5) because he knew Louis could make her happy and fulfill her dream of being a princess. He nearly bankrupted his company to pay off her dowry even though she had already chosen to be with Dan. Chuck grew a lot, especially this season. I think he finally became the man Blair needed him to be, even when he thought they were over and she was with someone else. I think that’s admirable. I don’t like their co-dependence because they are both such strong people, but in a way I think it works for them. And I really do think they support each other and help each other be happy. They are able to overcome everything that gets in their path. How do you fight that?
Now, onto Dan and Blair. I really disliked them at first, but mainly because I love her and Chuck so much that I hated seeing her with someone as random a choice as Dan. I always thought him falling in love with her didn’t make a lot of sense. Blair crossed a pretty serious line with Dan: she attacked and went after his family, and himself. Sure, Blair has also tried to take down Serena but she never went after her family to do that. She certainly never went there with Chuck or Nate or really anyone she really cared about. Blair treated them both like shit for years, and humiliated them over and over culminating in her banishing Jenny from the city. I don’t think Dan, who cares about family and keeping it together more than pretty much anything else, would just be like “oh yeah that’s fine and I royally humiliated you too but now I love you.” It just seemed so forced and fake. I never bought it or thought it was realistic or natural. Chair may have happened out of the blue, but I thought it made sense for them to get together in a way that Dan and Blair never did. But even if you do believe that, there’s something else that was pretty disturbing and I certainly can’t overlook it. Dan said something along the lines of “our relationship is our world” and crap like that. But to me, that seems kind of isolating. Like, when we’re together, you can’t be who you really are and I can’t be who I really am so we have to make our own little world disconnected from everything and everyone else that might threaten us... okay, you sound like a great couple. I watched The Hills (please don’t judge, I was young and it’s a guilty pleasure) and it seemed a lot like what Spencer did to Heidi. He isolated her from her best friend, her other friends, her job, and eventually her family until all she had was him. That’s not a healthy relationship either, folks. That’s an abusive relationship. And it seemed like that’s where Dan and Blair were headed. Like with the whole salon thing, when Blair didn’t want to invite Serena because she knew she had feelings for Dan and she didn’t want her to ruin their big night. Blair, if you have to hide your relationship from your best friend and sneak around behind her back, maybe you shouldn’t be in that relationship. When Serena and Blair fought, Dan just kinda sat back and let it happen because he was kind of whipped and didn’t want to rock the boat. But when they were fighting in season 3, Chuck literally locked them in an elevator with nothing but champagne and macaroons until they worked out their issues and made up. That was the other thing I hated about Dan and Blair’s relationship. Dan enabled her to be weak, as much as he praised her strength (i.e. that one time when he said she’s strong). I don’t think much of that. And I don’t think Chuck ever let Blair be weak. He made her face her problems (Serena, NYU, etc). But I don’t think Dan and Blair were all bad. They had cute moments, and they were a safe couple and had a lot in common. But they were safe in a boring kind of way. Keep in mind this is a TV show, and no one tunes in to watch a boring couple be boring together. Chuck and Blair are never boring. Chair forever!
Now, onto these accusations of abuse. I personally find them absurd. Certainly, Chuck and Blair had times when they weren’t exactly the poster couple for a healthy relationship. But I would never consider them abusive. When they were together, he did everything to make her feel strong and like herself, he didn’t belittle her or put her down or isolate her from her family or blame every argument on her. I have been in a verbally abusive situation more than once and it is nothing like Chuck and Blair. And as for the hotel incident, many Dair fans who bring it up as justification for Chuck being abusive forget Blair did the same thing, except she traded Chuck for a speech at a dinner. Tell me how that’s any better. I believe they are different people now than they were when they were together, or even a year ago. Honestly, if these people really cared about Gossip Girl sending bad messages to teens, why not talk about how it glorifies: drug use, stripping (as much as I love that scene), violence, cheating in relationships, hazing teachers, sleeping with teachers, underage drinking, Dan’s hair, and pretty much dropping out of college because NONE of them go anymore. And secondly, if it was nearly as big an issue as you are making it, why didn’t you bring it up when the only remotely physical incident happened? Or when Blair decided to go back with Chuck after that? Let’s be honest, your attitude is not about glorifying abusive relationships. It is about the fact that your ship sank. It’s done, over, not to be resurrected, finished, broken up, whatever you want to call it. Dair is done and instead of just complaining on Tumblr that it makes no sense for chuck and Blair to be together (imagine how we felt when your sham of a ship was together), you’re making it into something it’s not. Quit being so pissy, nobody likes it. Chuck and Blair are not abusive, and even if they were that’s not what you care about. You care that you lost, and (as Blair said), you’re gonna keep losing. Get over yourselves and seriously grow up. Accept that it is, as I’ve said, a fictional television show, and no one really looks to television to tell them what to do in certain situations. And if they do, they’re too immature to be watching it.
So, to sum up, I love Chuck and Blair together and I’m so glad the finale ended that way and that it’s going to continue in that lovely direction (per Stephanie Savage). CHAIR FOREVER <3
Essay by thefieryphoenix. Thank you!
