Wait Ivy I don’t think I ever realized you liked Carter and Serena?? I don’t even have a specific question, I just want to see you expand on that haha.
Haha, yes, it's my top Serena ship!! (out of the ones we got canonically, anyway.) The way I understand Serena, I don't feel like a Serenate endgame OR a Derena endgame would be very fulfilling for her (unpopular opinion, I know.) Both Dan and Nate are different genres of "let's settle down and lay roots here and have a white picket fence kind of stability together" and I feel like Serena is not the kind of person who wants to settle down, at any point, especially not in the sense that D or N do. I feel like Carter has the same sort of energy to him, like, if Carter really loved you he wouldn't buy you a nice house with a pretty garden near the sea and ask you to live there with him- Carter moves around and is never still and I think there's something about Serena that is just so suited for living like that, not running away from anything, but living the sort of life where every new day can be an adventure.
There's also just- the way Carter understands her. I talk a lot about Dan driving down with her to see her dad off in 3x21 I think it is, and the trust/intimacy of that. Carter and Serena actually talk about her dad at a time when she isn't able to talk about him to anybody else. And he says, "Who is he not to want you" which - I know Blair has a similar sentiment later ("not knowing you is your father's loss") but - Carter is genuinely annoyed on Serena's behalf. I feel like he would hit William VDW in the face if she let him. "Who is he not to want you" is a question NOBODY else is really asking her. It's a question that's actually saying, WHY does he matter. Who IS he to decide you're not worth knowing. Why is he an authority on that. At least, that's how I've always interpreted it.
There was also something really natural and organic about them together, idk. Serena wasn't like, ✨Carter's girlfriend Serena✨ around him, she was just Serena, you know? - they both felt like they could be each other around each other and it wasn't a performance. There's an ease she had with him which she didn't have with anyone else. It's kind of the same thing I like about Dan and Blair? I feel like Carter really SAW her. The good parts, and the bad. And he didn't expect anything from her that she couldn't give or idolise her or make her his dream girl (which tbh, are things I feel d&n both did, albeit in different ways.) I think the kind of love he would've given her would've been very liberating. And I think he would've understood her desire to get out of the UES and helped her actually do it.
