Santana Lopez (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
burgercraving) wrote2011-07-05 12:08 pm
burgercraving) wrote2011-07-05 12:08 pm
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I decided to write an essay for Santana while I was camping, because there was no way it would change in the time I was away!
Santana, Brittany, the Combination, and Eventual Instability in Camp
On my Santana sexuality essay, I had a section on Brittany, but I didn’t go in depth because I wasn’t altogether decided on how she and Santana matter to one another. Obviously, they are best friends and deeply important to one another—for Santana, it is, at least, a deeply important partner bond that is, at times, vaguely symbiotic—but I had a hard time reconciling it with certain things at the time. I had to think about the relationship a bit and understand it, because it is a deeper part of Santana. Fortunately, for the sake of my playing, I didn’t have to go into depth with it just yet because one, Santana still doesn’t fully understand it and doesn’t have it fully figured out beyond “I am desperately in love with you, why can’t we be together?” and two, she is reluctant to bring it up with anyone in camp. If anything, she has decided that she’ll mention that Brittany exists to people not-canon related because Brittany is a sacred part of her existence. It’s a hard part for her to admit to, talk about, or anything, because she has a hard time covering up how utterly lost she feels as she relates to it.
That said, to talk about how I understand Brittany as she relates to Santana, I need to begin with some headcanon I’ve decided upon.
- Brittany and Santana have been friends since they were little. Santana probably lived next door to her or something and they became incredibly close friends. This is significant because the next closest deep relationship we see for Santana is Quinn, and we know they’ve only known each other since high school … and there’s very little love shared. Santana doesn’t have any other friends. She has fuckbuddies, but Brittany is her sole point of unconditional love. I think, normally, Brittany wouldn’t be someone that Santana would be friends with, but … somehow it happened, and here they are now.
- They probably became sexually active around the same time, but I think not necessarily with each other. My headcanon for Santana is that she lost her virginity rather young (as I pointed out in my essay on her sexuality), but that she started with Brittany either the summer before tenth grade or right at the beginning of it. For them, it was something Santana played off as natural, and she did everything she could not to make it about the gay thing. The Gay Thing was never a question. It couldn’t be.
- When Brittany outed them to the club in that one scene about the sex-is-not-dating, Santana was mortified. It goes without saying that on multiple occasions, Santana looks outright confused or flabbergasted at the things that come out of Brittany’s mouth. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her, but that means she loves her in spite of the weird shit instead of, at times, because of it. Though she probably loves her because of it, too. As I said in my other essay, Santana has probably called Brittany stupid before, and I would go as far as saying that Santana has probably been pretty mean to her, but Brittany sees the best in her. Santana is very bad at “I’m sorry” and I think Brittany doesn’t make her do it. We know from what Brittany tells Artie is that she sees a different side of Santana in private. But we know from two private scenes is that Santana is ever the control-freak in private if things aren’t going her way.
- Which is to say, as a very solid point, that Santana is just as much of a manipulative, controlling asshole when it comes to Brittany as she is with everyone else. Doubly so, at times, but I think Brittany willingly goes along with it a little more. Santana is the one who devises plans to keep close to Brittany (though Brittany, I think, came up with the thing about the plumbing being different), she’s the one who doesn’t hurt Artie because she realizes how it would work against her, and she decides to run for prom queen to trick her into dating her instead of going the easier route. And even when the easier route presents itself to her after she and Artie break up, Santana is too stuck on her own issues to go for Brittany.
I think it goes without saying that with all this kept in mind, Santana is someone who is conscious of the fact that she isn’t the nicest person. She doesn’t really attempt to be—she’s hypercritical, cruel, and cuts people down because she’s lonely herself. She keeps pieces of information and builds them up to use them in specific scenarios. It’s how she functions; on a regular basis, she is seeking a means to hurt someone else to keep herself on top. This is how she functions. She is self-aware enough that her “born this way” t-shirt says “bitch” instead of something else; more importantly: she’s proud of this identity and owns up to it. Now, it also goes without saying that her “bitchy” exterior, the one she’s so proud of, is due to her incredibly low sense of self, incapability to deal with herself, the fact that she’s lonely, and that people generally just accept what’s there at face value.
So, basically, Santana lives a life continually trying to prove herself to be the awful person that she is but hates that people buy into it. Only Brittany sees anything past this exterior, and it’s probably because it took a lot of work … and a lot of Brittany-style-patience. Santana pretty much believes that the only person who could believe or genuinely like her in the world is Brittany, because she sees herself as such a loathsome human being. She’s jealous of other people’s functional relationships, though she does like some (she seems particularly fond of the pairing of Kurt and Blaine in canon, or at least, she doesn’t show outright animosity toward them). Then again, that might be because she wants her own homosexual relationship to work out, even if it’s very clearly not.
A lot of her inability to get Brittany ties into her dislike for herself. Santana is the type of character who lashes out instead of stepping back, assessing the situation, and realizing that she might just need to apologize and suck it up. When it comes to something she deeply can stand by—the club, for example—she’ll stand up for it, but instead, she sticks to her guns and keeps up the shields. Brittany can tell this; this much is clear in “Rumours” after Santana sings “Songbird” to her, in “Prom Queen” after Santana loses queen, and at the end of the season. More than anything, Brittany recognizes that if she and Santana are together, it’s just going to allow Santana to perpetuate her own internal difficulties. It’s the one thing where Brittany is smart. She doesn’t entirely understand Santana, I think, but she does know what’s best for her. At this point, Santana is too caught up in her own issues to focus on another person, and she’s too stuck on her own issues to really … move past them. In some ways, Santana is very good at perpetuating her own problems instead of seeking a solution, because she always finds a way to blame someone else.
This is where Santana’s lack of self-awareness comes in. Because as much as she owns up to being a bitch, and as much as she understands that this is about coming out and owning up to who she really is, that means dropping a lot of carefully crafted walls. It’s like dropping the Great Wall of China, only it’s the Great Wall of Santana. It’s not just admitting there’s a chink in her armor, it’s literally riding into a jousting battle without any armor on. She’s seen Kurt get hurt, she’s seen the ramifications of that, and even more than that, it’s admitting that there might be more to her than the identity she’s carefully crafted for herself. That frightens her, and even if Brittany can see it there, it doesn’t mean, in her mind, that anyone else can know it’s there. On top of that, she doesn’t entirely know what’s there; she’s lived so much of her life being this other person that she doesn’t entirely know who she is. Brittany knows what’s there, but Santana doesn’t, and she doesn’t like having to basically walk out in front of everyone naked. It’s more than being gay, and it’s more than just hurting people with her words. It’s something that’s out of her control, something that she can’t conduct the way she wants it to. None of this was meant to be how it is, but it’s that way, anyway.
What she does know is that she loves Brittany. Brittany is someone she’s deeply dependent upon, and even if they have issues in “Sexy” and “Original Song,” Santana can’t keep away from her. Everything about Santana and Brittany, in Santana’s mind, is SantanaandBrittany. They’re meant to be a unit, and Brittany is the only person who needs to see inside. But Brittany wants to show her off to the world, which concerns and disconcerts her because that wasn’t what she ever wanted. That’s what Brittany wants, of course, but in Santana’s mind that is just going to work against her in the long run. That makes her weak, and Santana can only own up to little things—loving Glee Club, for example, is a given, and she loves Glee Club enough that people can’t make her feel guilty for it—but more than Brittany, trusting and letting more people in than that, is a little much. She is an incredibly sensitive and vulnerable person.
Mind you, this isn’t to say that the “real” Santana is all sunshine and daisies underneath, but she is … better, nicer, and she shows it here and there, and she’s been showing it in camp, but as usual, the moment someone breaches security in the wrong way, she shuts down. She’s still mean, crude, kind of irritable, and so forth, but she is capable of loving and loving a lot. And when she loves something, she gives it her all, and it makes her feel miserable because of how weak she feels in the process. (This goes for both Brittany and the general club. They are her chinks in her armor.)
And now: CAMP!
Camp is a miserable place for Santana.
This is not because camp itself is boring or miserable in the least for her. There are people around to fuck with, and while most of them can kick her ass, she can survive enough on shock factor to keep things going for herself. One of her biggest issues with camp is that she’s weak, but she’s overcome it largely since her first few weeks where every conversation she had served to be a constant reminder. Now, she’s less likely to turn a thread into one that’s combative in the blind hope that her rather ineffective fighting style will end up working out in her favor. This makes it a lot easier for her to navigate things, though she is continually on guard when it comes to Jennifer and she doesn’t trust her.
No, it goes without saying that Santana is miserable in camp because Brittany isn’t there. Brittany has history with her, knows her well, and supports her even in some of her stupider moves. More than anything, she wants Brittany to be around, and she hates knowing that Brittany has been in camp but didn’t remember. One, that means Brittany didn’t mention it to her, and another is that she thinks there’s no chance that Brittany is going to return if she’s already been there. But she’s trying to hold on to it, and is, in fact, hurting relationships with people because of it. Talking about Brittany makes her miserable—because for Santana, it’s not about remembering the girl she loves so much, but instead living as a constant reminder that she’s not there. It puts her on edge, but at the same time, she expects people who know about Brittany to respect that she’s important to her (this is especially relevant as it comes to Kurt and the rest of the Glee Club members).
Furthermore, it’s hard without Brittany there to remind her that maybe she’s pushing things a little too far, and Santana is acting out because Brittany isn’t there already. For every little piece of stability she achieves, it’s made on unstable ground because Brittany isn’t there. Attaching or opening up to anyone is something that leads to problems. This isn’t to say she hasn’t, but in a lot of ways, everything she does in camp is thought out. She comes out to people because it’s safe in camp, and so she can use it to her advantage, as she realizes she can. But a lot of people continually scoff at her like she’s nothing.
On top of all this, the club isn’t what it’s meant to be, and she wants to create a good performing group, but it’s not the club back in Lima. It’s not the same people, and honestly, she has a hard time seeing how these people in camp will matter in the long run. Some people are seen as extensions or unnecessary or whatever, and while she can put up with them, she has a hard time applying their existences to her existence. They can say things that are right, but they will always matter a little less than hurt. Jesse and Rachel can say the same thing in the same way, but Rachel’s way of saying it will hurt for months; Jesse’s will get through to her (as it did the other day in their mistletoe thread), but still won’t receive it as well and will be more prone to rationalizing it away. Or irrationalizing it away, which is apparently possible when you’re Santana Lopez.
A lot of this also ties into the fact that Santana does choose who she’s going to deal with, which makes it easier for her to decide everyone is putting up with her because she wanted them to. Maka, Floaty, Roxie, Jennifer (though this is not a relationship anymore and Santana has given up here in trying to make it work), Emily, … and honestly, even Kurt and Blaine fall into this. She doesn’t trust any of them to actually like her, and she is basically waiting for all of them to grow fed up with her, instead of doing the intelligent thing and being a decent friend to them and understand that they actually want to get to know her and find some point to speaking to her on a regular basis. She sabotages and tests people, and when it doesn’t go her way, she shuts them down or plays the victim. It’s a huge way for her to not take responsibility for her actions.
Going down that list …
Maka and Floaty have both expressed wanting to get to know Santana better. Floaty is about half-way there to being tolerable because as flat-lined as he is on a regular basis, he doesn’t fight her and is just furniture. She is kind of her Brad the Pianist in camp, and she enjoys bothering him and fucking with him on a regular basis. Maka is different, and honestly affronted her the other day by suggesting that she would do anything cruel to Soul and asking her to lay off. Not only does that invite her to do exactly that, but it means that Maka is of the opinion that she could do some damage. It’s the image she projects, but she hates when someone believes it, buys into it, or thinks that she’s seriously pursuing it.
Roxie and Jennifer are similar in that they’re closer to one another and confidents. Santana likes Roxie and wanted to like Jennifer, but yeah. Both have rejected her—the former was an advance Santana made only for power, the same way she did with Jennifer, and Jennifer rejected her even after they made out, and given Santana’s crushing insecurity and how that plays into sex, it kind of stripped her of any power in the situation. Honestly, though, Jennifer scares her, and she’s desperate to be on even-footing because she knows Jennifer can tell when she’s afraid, and if they’re, at least, on the same page, then Jennifer won’t be able to use her fear against her. She wouldn’t mind being friends with Jennifer, but it doesn’t work out. Mostly, Jennifer confuses her, because getting Jennifer would mean, to some degree, that she’d understand her own motivations a little. Neither are particularly logical in how they act. And they act a lot based off their own internal fears.
Emily is the other stable thing Santana has in camp apart from Kurt, and it unsettles her how quickly she settled into it. Simply put: Emily sees through Santana’s crap and likes her anyway. Santana did a lot for her, stuff that she didn’t even realize, and while some of it was for the sake of talking big and being obnoxious, some of it also played into the fact that she wanted someone to do that. Santana wasn’t terribly nice to Emily at any point in time, but Emily kept pushing her, kept understanding that there was more, and they build up an understanding fairly quickly. The biggest thing is that Santana let her walls down around Emily, one at a time, to the point that she mentioned Brittany and that because of it, she couldn’t have anyone else in her life. Not like that, anyway, it’s too heavy and it’s too intense and eventually, Emily was going to see her for who she is, and she wasn’t going to like it. During Pride, they got drunk together right after Emily figured out that she was in love with Brittany, and they kissed. In true Santana fashion, she said that would be all they did, and Emily tried to say it was because she couldn’t handle it. (She can’t, it’s true, but.) But even more than that, for Santana, it was like Emily completely missed the part where she laid out that she couldn’t be weak for another person; it was all about Brittany, and it would always be about Brittany. So when they met under mistletoe, it was all about taking control and manipulating Emily to be something less than the person she had the walls down around. She was testing her, and in her mind, Emily failed: Emily said Santana made her feel dirty and kind of used, which in turn made Santana feel like she herself was dirty, and she didn’t focus so much on how Emily felt but more about herself.
The thing is, she’s unable to recognize that Emily got to her in the way that people who matter to her get to her, rather than the way that people who don’t matter do. It hurt her a lot because Emily shut her down. This isn’t to say that as Santana’s player, I think Emily was in the wrong. Santana needs to stop this crap, but in her mind, this just stands up as proof as to why no one should be let in. It’s too much and it’s something she can’t really deal with. She’s immature and selfish, and even worse, she’s without the rock she depends on in camp. She’s pretty damn attracted to Emily, though, which just makes this worse because she wants her—including the feelings stuff—without having to give it in return. She’s a taker, that Santana.
Kurt is the last important person to her, with the extension of Blaine because Blaine is Kurt’s extension at this point in time. Santana likes talking to Blaine because she can get him to do stupid things, and that means he’s a really good person to mess with! But Kurt is clever, cunning, on top of things, but also missed the part where she can’t go and have an attachment/extension of her own because Brittany isn’t there. Right now, she is a little fussy about him, but she’s mostly over it because the Emily thing has taken center stage, and because she isn’t letting him know anything. If he isn’t piecing together things on his own, then she doesn’t need to piece it together for him … which is only going to hurt her in the long run. Santana is nothing if not self-sabotaging in every aspect of her life. She expects people to piece together things without her offering them, but gets mad when they don’t, and then decides that she isn’t going to make it easier.
This isn’t to say that other people don’t matter. She enjoys Dante, but mostly as really strong and impressive protective furniture. Jesse pisses her off, but in the way that she worries that Jesse’s opinions are Rachel’s opinions. Again with the extension thing. Vanya is a person who doesn’t matter to her in the least, but when she’s around, Santana is just mean to her because she doesn’t see why she should be nice to her. Naoto just revealed the Jennifer thing to her, in a manner of speaking, so she’s now on Santana’s radar. Cat’s on her radar, but in that way that she’s useful but otherwise doesn’t matter to her. And obviously, the club members (from Lima) matter, but she doesn’t talk to them as much, but they would be up in the important people section and basically are. I just don’t have a lot to say about them! Annnnd if I left someone off, it’s because I’m working on this essay without internet.
The thing is, it’s a good thing that she’s in camp without Brittany. It’s forcing her to open up and deal in ways that’s outside of her comfort zone. But it also means it’s that much harder because Brittany would be helping her through this, and she’s not. She’s without her other-half, and that makes things difficult for her.
Also, I realize writing this that I don’t portray Santana very sympathetically … even though I sympathize with her … but she is a very problematic teenage girl, and she creates her problems for herself! Nicer for Santana is still not very nice at all, especially if someone doesn’t matter to her.
Santana, Brittany, the Combination, and Eventual Instability in Camp
On my Santana sexuality essay, I had a section on Brittany, but I didn’t go in depth because I wasn’t altogether decided on how she and Santana matter to one another. Obviously, they are best friends and deeply important to one another—for Santana, it is, at least, a deeply important partner bond that is, at times, vaguely symbiotic—but I had a hard time reconciling it with certain things at the time. I had to think about the relationship a bit and understand it, because it is a deeper part of Santana. Fortunately, for the sake of my playing, I didn’t have to go into depth with it just yet because one, Santana still doesn’t fully understand it and doesn’t have it fully figured out beyond “I am desperately in love with you, why can’t we be together?” and two, she is reluctant to bring it up with anyone in camp. If anything, she has decided that she’ll mention that Brittany exists to people not-canon related because Brittany is a sacred part of her existence. It’s a hard part for her to admit to, talk about, or anything, because she has a hard time covering up how utterly lost she feels as she relates to it.
That said, to talk about how I understand Brittany as she relates to Santana, I need to begin with some headcanon I’ve decided upon.
- Brittany and Santana have been friends since they were little. Santana probably lived next door to her or something and they became incredibly close friends. This is significant because the next closest deep relationship we see for Santana is Quinn, and we know they’ve only known each other since high school … and there’s very little love shared. Santana doesn’t have any other friends. She has fuckbuddies, but Brittany is her sole point of unconditional love. I think, normally, Brittany wouldn’t be someone that Santana would be friends with, but … somehow it happened, and here they are now.
- They probably became sexually active around the same time, but I think not necessarily with each other. My headcanon for Santana is that she lost her virginity rather young (as I pointed out in my essay on her sexuality), but that she started with Brittany either the summer before tenth grade or right at the beginning of it. For them, it was something Santana played off as natural, and she did everything she could not to make it about the gay thing. The Gay Thing was never a question. It couldn’t be.
- When Brittany outed them to the club in that one scene about the sex-is-not-dating, Santana was mortified. It goes without saying that on multiple occasions, Santana looks outright confused or flabbergasted at the things that come out of Brittany’s mouth. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her, but that means she loves her in spite of the weird shit instead of, at times, because of it. Though she probably loves her because of it, too. As I said in my other essay, Santana has probably called Brittany stupid before, and I would go as far as saying that Santana has probably been pretty mean to her, but Brittany sees the best in her. Santana is very bad at “I’m sorry” and I think Brittany doesn’t make her do it. We know from what Brittany tells Artie is that she sees a different side of Santana in private. But we know from two private scenes is that Santana is ever the control-freak in private if things aren’t going her way.
- Which is to say, as a very solid point, that Santana is just as much of a manipulative, controlling asshole when it comes to Brittany as she is with everyone else. Doubly so, at times, but I think Brittany willingly goes along with it a little more. Santana is the one who devises plans to keep close to Brittany (though Brittany, I think, came up with the thing about the plumbing being different), she’s the one who doesn’t hurt Artie because she realizes how it would work against her, and she decides to run for prom queen to trick her into dating her instead of going the easier route. And even when the easier route presents itself to her after she and Artie break up, Santana is too stuck on her own issues to go for Brittany.
I think it goes without saying that with all this kept in mind, Santana is someone who is conscious of the fact that she isn’t the nicest person. She doesn’t really attempt to be—she’s hypercritical, cruel, and cuts people down because she’s lonely herself. She keeps pieces of information and builds them up to use them in specific scenarios. It’s how she functions; on a regular basis, she is seeking a means to hurt someone else to keep herself on top. This is how she functions. She is self-aware enough that her “born this way” t-shirt says “bitch” instead of something else; more importantly: she’s proud of this identity and owns up to it. Now, it also goes without saying that her “bitchy” exterior, the one she’s so proud of, is due to her incredibly low sense of self, incapability to deal with herself, the fact that she’s lonely, and that people generally just accept what’s there at face value.
So, basically, Santana lives a life continually trying to prove herself to be the awful person that she is but hates that people buy into it. Only Brittany sees anything past this exterior, and it’s probably because it took a lot of work … and a lot of Brittany-style-patience. Santana pretty much believes that the only person who could believe or genuinely like her in the world is Brittany, because she sees herself as such a loathsome human being. She’s jealous of other people’s functional relationships, though she does like some (she seems particularly fond of the pairing of Kurt and Blaine in canon, or at least, she doesn’t show outright animosity toward them). Then again, that might be because she wants her own homosexual relationship to work out, even if it’s very clearly not.
A lot of her inability to get Brittany ties into her dislike for herself. Santana is the type of character who lashes out instead of stepping back, assessing the situation, and realizing that she might just need to apologize and suck it up. When it comes to something she deeply can stand by—the club, for example—she’ll stand up for it, but instead, she sticks to her guns and keeps up the shields. Brittany can tell this; this much is clear in “Rumours” after Santana sings “Songbird” to her, in “Prom Queen” after Santana loses queen, and at the end of the season. More than anything, Brittany recognizes that if she and Santana are together, it’s just going to allow Santana to perpetuate her own internal difficulties. It’s the one thing where Brittany is smart. She doesn’t entirely understand Santana, I think, but she does know what’s best for her. At this point, Santana is too caught up in her own issues to focus on another person, and she’s too stuck on her own issues to really … move past them. In some ways, Santana is very good at perpetuating her own problems instead of seeking a solution, because she always finds a way to blame someone else.
This is where Santana’s lack of self-awareness comes in. Because as much as she owns up to being a bitch, and as much as she understands that this is about coming out and owning up to who she really is, that means dropping a lot of carefully crafted walls. It’s like dropping the Great Wall of China, only it’s the Great Wall of Santana. It’s not just admitting there’s a chink in her armor, it’s literally riding into a jousting battle without any armor on. She’s seen Kurt get hurt, she’s seen the ramifications of that, and even more than that, it’s admitting that there might be more to her than the identity she’s carefully crafted for herself. That frightens her, and even if Brittany can see it there, it doesn’t mean, in her mind, that anyone else can know it’s there. On top of that, she doesn’t entirely know what’s there; she’s lived so much of her life being this other person that she doesn’t entirely know who she is. Brittany knows what’s there, but Santana doesn’t, and she doesn’t like having to basically walk out in front of everyone naked. It’s more than being gay, and it’s more than just hurting people with her words. It’s something that’s out of her control, something that she can’t conduct the way she wants it to. None of this was meant to be how it is, but it’s that way, anyway.
What she does know is that she loves Brittany. Brittany is someone she’s deeply dependent upon, and even if they have issues in “Sexy” and “Original Song,” Santana can’t keep away from her. Everything about Santana and Brittany, in Santana’s mind, is SantanaandBrittany. They’re meant to be a unit, and Brittany is the only person who needs to see inside. But Brittany wants to show her off to the world, which concerns and disconcerts her because that wasn’t what she ever wanted. That’s what Brittany wants, of course, but in Santana’s mind that is just going to work against her in the long run. That makes her weak, and Santana can only own up to little things—loving Glee Club, for example, is a given, and she loves Glee Club enough that people can’t make her feel guilty for it—but more than Brittany, trusting and letting more people in than that, is a little much. She is an incredibly sensitive and vulnerable person.
Mind you, this isn’t to say that the “real” Santana is all sunshine and daisies underneath, but she is … better, nicer, and she shows it here and there, and she’s been showing it in camp, but as usual, the moment someone breaches security in the wrong way, she shuts down. She’s still mean, crude, kind of irritable, and so forth, but she is capable of loving and loving a lot. And when she loves something, she gives it her all, and it makes her feel miserable because of how weak she feels in the process. (This goes for both Brittany and the general club. They are her chinks in her armor.)
And now: CAMP!
Camp is a miserable place for Santana.
This is not because camp itself is boring or miserable in the least for her. There are people around to fuck with, and while most of them can kick her ass, she can survive enough on shock factor to keep things going for herself. One of her biggest issues with camp is that she’s weak, but she’s overcome it largely since her first few weeks where every conversation she had served to be a constant reminder. Now, she’s less likely to turn a thread into one that’s combative in the blind hope that her rather ineffective fighting style will end up working out in her favor. This makes it a lot easier for her to navigate things, though she is continually on guard when it comes to Jennifer and she doesn’t trust her.
No, it goes without saying that Santana is miserable in camp because Brittany isn’t there. Brittany has history with her, knows her well, and supports her even in some of her stupider moves. More than anything, she wants Brittany to be around, and she hates knowing that Brittany has been in camp but didn’t remember. One, that means Brittany didn’t mention it to her, and another is that she thinks there’s no chance that Brittany is going to return if she’s already been there. But she’s trying to hold on to it, and is, in fact, hurting relationships with people because of it. Talking about Brittany makes her miserable—because for Santana, it’s not about remembering the girl she loves so much, but instead living as a constant reminder that she’s not there. It puts her on edge, but at the same time, she expects people who know about Brittany to respect that she’s important to her (this is especially relevant as it comes to Kurt and the rest of the Glee Club members).
Furthermore, it’s hard without Brittany there to remind her that maybe she’s pushing things a little too far, and Santana is acting out because Brittany isn’t there already. For every little piece of stability she achieves, it’s made on unstable ground because Brittany isn’t there. Attaching or opening up to anyone is something that leads to problems. This isn’t to say she hasn’t, but in a lot of ways, everything she does in camp is thought out. She comes out to people because it’s safe in camp, and so she can use it to her advantage, as she realizes she can. But a lot of people continually scoff at her like she’s nothing.
On top of all this, the club isn’t what it’s meant to be, and she wants to create a good performing group, but it’s not the club back in Lima. It’s not the same people, and honestly, she has a hard time seeing how these people in camp will matter in the long run. Some people are seen as extensions or unnecessary or whatever, and while she can put up with them, she has a hard time applying their existences to her existence. They can say things that are right, but they will always matter a little less than hurt. Jesse and Rachel can say the same thing in the same way, but Rachel’s way of saying it will hurt for months; Jesse’s will get through to her (as it did the other day in their mistletoe thread), but still won’t receive it as well and will be more prone to rationalizing it away. Or irrationalizing it away, which is apparently possible when you’re Santana Lopez.
A lot of this also ties into the fact that Santana does choose who she’s going to deal with, which makes it easier for her to decide everyone is putting up with her because she wanted them to. Maka, Floaty, Roxie, Jennifer (though this is not a relationship anymore and Santana has given up here in trying to make it work), Emily, … and honestly, even Kurt and Blaine fall into this. She doesn’t trust any of them to actually like her, and she is basically waiting for all of them to grow fed up with her, instead of doing the intelligent thing and being a decent friend to them and understand that they actually want to get to know her and find some point to speaking to her on a regular basis. She sabotages and tests people, and when it doesn’t go her way, she shuts them down or plays the victim. It’s a huge way for her to not take responsibility for her actions.
Going down that list …
Maka and Floaty have both expressed wanting to get to know Santana better. Floaty is about half-way there to being tolerable because as flat-lined as he is on a regular basis, he doesn’t fight her and is just furniture. She is kind of her Brad the Pianist in camp, and she enjoys bothering him and fucking with him on a regular basis. Maka is different, and honestly affronted her the other day by suggesting that she would do anything cruel to Soul and asking her to lay off. Not only does that invite her to do exactly that, but it means that Maka is of the opinion that she could do some damage. It’s the image she projects, but she hates when someone believes it, buys into it, or thinks that she’s seriously pursuing it.
Roxie and Jennifer are similar in that they’re closer to one another and confidents. Santana likes Roxie and wanted to like Jennifer, but yeah. Both have rejected her—the former was an advance Santana made only for power, the same way she did with Jennifer, and Jennifer rejected her even after they made out, and given Santana’s crushing insecurity and how that plays into sex, it kind of stripped her of any power in the situation. Honestly, though, Jennifer scares her, and she’s desperate to be on even-footing because she knows Jennifer can tell when she’s afraid, and if they’re, at least, on the same page, then Jennifer won’t be able to use her fear against her. She wouldn’t mind being friends with Jennifer, but it doesn’t work out. Mostly, Jennifer confuses her, because getting Jennifer would mean, to some degree, that she’d understand her own motivations a little. Neither are particularly logical in how they act. And they act a lot based off their own internal fears.
Emily is the other stable thing Santana has in camp apart from Kurt, and it unsettles her how quickly she settled into it. Simply put: Emily sees through Santana’s crap and likes her anyway. Santana did a lot for her, stuff that she didn’t even realize, and while some of it was for the sake of talking big and being obnoxious, some of it also played into the fact that she wanted someone to do that. Santana wasn’t terribly nice to Emily at any point in time, but Emily kept pushing her, kept understanding that there was more, and they build up an understanding fairly quickly. The biggest thing is that Santana let her walls down around Emily, one at a time, to the point that she mentioned Brittany and that because of it, she couldn’t have anyone else in her life. Not like that, anyway, it’s too heavy and it’s too intense and eventually, Emily was going to see her for who she is, and she wasn’t going to like it. During Pride, they got drunk together right after Emily figured out that she was in love with Brittany, and they kissed. In true Santana fashion, she said that would be all they did, and Emily tried to say it was because she couldn’t handle it. (She can’t, it’s true, but.) But even more than that, for Santana, it was like Emily completely missed the part where she laid out that she couldn’t be weak for another person; it was all about Brittany, and it would always be about Brittany. So when they met under mistletoe, it was all about taking control and manipulating Emily to be something less than the person she had the walls down around. She was testing her, and in her mind, Emily failed: Emily said Santana made her feel dirty and kind of used, which in turn made Santana feel like she herself was dirty, and she didn’t focus so much on how Emily felt but more about herself.
The thing is, she’s unable to recognize that Emily got to her in the way that people who matter to her get to her, rather than the way that people who don’t matter do. It hurt her a lot because Emily shut her down. This isn’t to say that as Santana’s player, I think Emily was in the wrong. Santana needs to stop this crap, but in her mind, this just stands up as proof as to why no one should be let in. It’s too much and it’s something she can’t really deal with. She’s immature and selfish, and even worse, she’s without the rock she depends on in camp. She’s pretty damn attracted to Emily, though, which just makes this worse because she wants her—including the feelings stuff—without having to give it in return. She’s a taker, that Santana.
Kurt is the last important person to her, with the extension of Blaine because Blaine is Kurt’s extension at this point in time. Santana likes talking to Blaine because she can get him to do stupid things, and that means he’s a really good person to mess with! But Kurt is clever, cunning, on top of things, but also missed the part where she can’t go and have an attachment/extension of her own because Brittany isn’t there. Right now, she is a little fussy about him, but she’s mostly over it because the Emily thing has taken center stage, and because she isn’t letting him know anything. If he isn’t piecing together things on his own, then she doesn’t need to piece it together for him … which is only going to hurt her in the long run. Santana is nothing if not self-sabotaging in every aspect of her life. She expects people to piece together things without her offering them, but gets mad when they don’t, and then decides that she isn’t going to make it easier.
This isn’t to say that other people don’t matter. She enjoys Dante, but mostly as really strong and impressive protective furniture. Jesse pisses her off, but in the way that she worries that Jesse’s opinions are Rachel’s opinions. Again with the extension thing. Vanya is a person who doesn’t matter to her in the least, but when she’s around, Santana is just mean to her because she doesn’t see why she should be nice to her. Naoto just revealed the Jennifer thing to her, in a manner of speaking, so she’s now on Santana’s radar. Cat’s on her radar, but in that way that she’s useful but otherwise doesn’t matter to her. And obviously, the club members (from Lima) matter, but she doesn’t talk to them as much, but they would be up in the important people section and basically are. I just don’t have a lot to say about them! Annnnd if I left someone off, it’s because I’m working on this essay without internet.
The thing is, it’s a good thing that she’s in camp without Brittany. It’s forcing her to open up and deal in ways that’s outside of her comfort zone. But it also means it’s that much harder because Brittany would be helping her through this, and she’s not. She’s without her other-half, and that makes things difficult for her.
Also, I realize writing this that I don’t portray Santana very sympathetically … even though I sympathize with her … but she is a very problematic teenage girl, and she creates her problems for herself! Nicer for Santana is still not very nice at all, especially if someone doesn’t matter to her.
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also, lol attention span.