Gossip Girl

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Fandom
Name: Gossip Girl
Abbreviation(s): GG, GGirl
Creator: Cecily von Ziegesar (bookverse) Josh Schwartz & Stephanie Savage (showverse)
Date(s): 2002 (book) September 14, 2007— (tv series)
Medium: YA novels, TV series, gaming (Second Life), SL webseries and multimedia online franchise
Country of Origin: US
External Links:
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Gossip Girl is a multimedia franchise aimed at the Young Adult (YA) demographic. The TV show follows the social lives of vastly wealthy, teenaged, Upper East Siders as they grapple with life, love, and the moral complexities of designer clothes and nonfat yoghurt. In short, it's hilarious, campy fun.

Gossip Girl is an interesting media product. The show actually debuted on iTunes four days before it was broadcast and it has an extensive interactive online presence, including webisodes produced in Second Life. In effect, it comes with a fandom "out of the box".

Characters

Main Characters

  • Dan Humphrey, played by Penn Badgley, is a Brooklyn boy and a writer. He had an off-and-on relationship with Serena throughout the show. Witty and smart, he works for what he wants, usually fairly although he did scheme if he felt it was necessary. He is the mastermind of Gossip Girl.
  • Serena van der Woodsen, played by Blake Lively, is a glamorous Upper-East Sider. Everyone knows all of her business and they follow her like she’s a celebrity. She breaks the norms of the typical pretentious Upper East-Sider. Even though she is a part of this world, she so badly wants to be normal. She is Blair's best-friend.
  • Blair Waldorf, played by Leighton Meester, is THE pretentious Upper-East Sider. She is queen BEE at her school with a ton of ‘minions’ working to her every wish. She is very preppy and will do anything to get what she wants. The only person that ever stands in her way is Serena.
  • Chuck Bass, played by Ed Westwick, is an Upper-East Side playboy. He is very rich and devilish. Chuck is the bad boy of the friend group but is misunderstood, when he actually has a big heart. Blair and Chuck have a cat-and-mouse type of love.
  • Nate Archibald, played by Chace Crawford, was a star athlete, son of a white-collar criminal, and golden boy. He was the initial wedge between Blair and Serena.
  • Jenny Humphrey, played by Taylor Momsen, is a Brooklyn girl obsessed with the Upper-East Side. Sweet girl turned evil by Blair and her minions. Works her way up through the fashion industry but throws it away to be edgy. Would do anything to be considered an Upper-East Sider.

Reoccurring Characters


Shipping

The most popular ship in Gossip Girl is Blair/Chuck[1] but it's a diverse fandom with lots of popular pairings. Unusually for a LiveJournal media fandom, femslash is very popular, particularly Serena/Blair and Bleighton.

Fanworks

(vids, icons and fanmixes) (RPF popularity--pos something about the show itself being kind of fictional RPF--gossip blog etc)

Pairings

On AO3, the most popular character pairing is Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf. These two have a casual little romance in the series but some believe there is much more to it. Coming in with 235 works on AO3, Chuck Bass/Blair Waldorf are the second most written about character pairings.

Other characters that have been paired include:

Additionally, crossovers create more character pairings such as Harry Potter with Blair Waldorf. Other crossover character pairings come from One Tree Hill, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, and Gilmore Girls.

Communities

Meta/Further Reading

References

  1. ^ gossipgirlnews/October Sampling 275 items of fanac posted to LJ in October 2008, 87 were focused on Blair/Chuck
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