#amazonworrier

[tuiyla]

Not that it’s any of my business.

Samchel/Pezberry AU based on x, for (and by??) @amazonworrier

[tuiyla]

So I’m currently having some feels about Santana’s lyrics in “At the Ballet” and can’t decide whether to accept this as canon or not in terms of what her relationship with her Dad was like. On the one hand, beautiful angst. Love that for me. On the other hand, not every glee song lyric was meant to be taken literally in relation to the character singing it, so obviously context is key. Buuuuut the context of that song is that ballet was an escape for them all, so… maybe that is what her Dad was like??

Anyway, I’m stuck in a loop and thought you might have an opinion on that particular performance as it relates to Santana’s family life? Maybe you don’t, but if you do I’d be interested in hearing it!

Oh same, always. And I always have opinions on everything Santana says, does and sings 😌

I'm always on the fence about Mr/Dr Lopez and the general Lopez family dynamic myself. Like yeah, we never see him and Lights Out has a few hints at a more strained relationship, but do I think Glee was just lazy and didn't bother casting him and that's why he wasn't at the wedding for example? Yeah. And even things like him being a doctor were mentioned exactly once, and who knows is the writers even remembered that half as well as the fandom does. I doubt they did. So most of what we have is At the Ballet. Gorgeous beautiful performance btw and deserves more credit. The vocals, the dress, the Pezberry long note? Exquisite.

I'm with you because I'd love the angst and it is the most we have to go on, but I also kinda don't want the lyrics to be entirely representative, to be literal? Like yeah I love angst, but do I want her dad to be like that? :/ My personal interpretation is to not take the words Santana's singing literally but to keep in mind, like, the general vibe of it. Like you say, the context is about ballet being an escape and Santana remembering a time, the first time, when performing was a happy place. So stands to reason it'd be a happy place and escape from something, right?

The way I like to think about At the Ballet and negotiate it with Santana's family life is to take the general feeling it conveys. I also like to think it might be a case of the unreliable narrator? With good reason, because Santana is expressing childhood memories where how she felt might not have 100% reflected reality but was valid nonetheless because that's just how she felt. So what I mean is that maybe Dr Lopez never cheated on Maribel and wasn't as cold and generally a shitty dad as the song would imply. But maybe he was a bit distant. Maybe he didn't know how to best express to Santana, or Maribel for that matter, that he cared about them. Maybe he studied/worked a lot and maybe he wasn't too emotionally open and vulnerable. No surprise, if Alma was indeed Santana's paternal grandmother. That would fit with how I headcanon him anyway.

So I think it's possible for the lyrics not to be taken literally but, simultaneously, for the general feelings to be taken seriously. Maybe he cared more than came across to Santana and I think that matters in the long run because they could have a better relationship once she's an adult. But it also doesn't change the fact that, growing up, Santana didn't exactly feel close to him and that “I was such a tomboy and it really pissed my dad off” comment doesn’t bode well. I’d like to imagine Dr Lopez as someone who wanted to but didn’t know how to even try with his daughter. I think there’s a theme of noncomformity with the Lopez family - how could there not be, what with Santana’s story being a fundamentally queer one.

It’s apparent in the way Alma rejects Santana, not even for being a lesbian as such but for not repressing it. The sin is in the scandal. So I’m side-tracking a bit but I think Dr Lopez didn’t want his daughter to be all that different, to be the Other, as a misguided attempt to protect her from the world and it resulted in a distance between the two. Maybe even in Santana feeling like she couldn’t be herself at home. And then there’s an interesting tension there because it also resulted in ballet and dancing, which Santana says made her feel “not different”. So it reinforces that conformity her family wanted for her, but it’s also an early creative outlet that made her feel safe and like she was a part of something. And that very thing is what later makes Glee special and leads her to become more herself, more open and vulnerable.

But going back to the Lopez family, maybe the parts of the song about her parents’ relationship could also express that Maribel embraced Santana’s nonconformity more from the beginning, as it’s implied during the Breadstix Goodbye scene. And I could see convos about that between the parents coming off to a child in a way that’s expressed in the song. Like her dad thought he was above her mom, stuff like that. It’s not necessarily what happened but kids overhear arguments and misinterpret them all the time, or internalize them in ways that don’t reflect reality. All of this is pure speculation based on the song and what I think of the Lopez family dynamic, of course. Just trying to fit into the non-existent Glee canon. But the bottom line is that I wouldn’t take At the Ballett literally but do think there’s an emotional truth to it. Even if Dr Lopez wasn’t actually like that, it’s how he came across to his daughter and that stuff matters, no matter his intentions.

Glee's non-diegetic songs will always haunt me haha. Because at least when it's a choir room performance or something we can be like, sure, the lyrics are to be interpreted loosely. But when it's in the characters' heads it should feel more like a representation of how they're feeling. I think that works in a non-literal way with At the Ballet but it's also why Every Breath You Take will continue to haunt us both because?? What was the reason there??

[tuiyla]

In the spirit of obsessing even more over Mine, I can’t help but parallel the parent/father lyrics in the song with what Santana sings in At The Ballet. Yes, I am absolutely reading too much into it, and am certain Glee probably did this by accident, but that’s two songs now where Santana paints a not-so-nice picture of her father in song. Then on top of that, we have:

Santana mentioning during Lights Out that her being a tomboy as a kid really pissed her Dad off.

The general impression that he’s an absent Father, given Santana seems to have spent a lot of time with her Abuela growing up.

The Pezberry bathroom scene in 5x13 where Rachel offers Santana the lead in 10 FG shows as a peace offering. She says something like “your Mom can come, or your Abuela.” Why not “your parents?” Rachel lived with Santana for months. Does she know something we don’t?

His absence from the wedding (definitely a casting issue, but also technically canon, so…)

I’m adding two and two together and coming up with twenty eight here, but that’s pretty much what all of us do when it comes to Glee, so I don’t care. The pieces kind of fit together to indicate quite a rocky childhood for Santana, and her Dad maybe being the cause of a lot of that? He clearly accepted her sexuality when she came out though, so I don’t think he was evil or anything. Just maybe a little careless, (to borrow from Taylor lol)?

Honestly, this isn’t even an ask I just ended up rambling haha. But if you have any thoughts on how Mine might relate to Santana’s family life at all (which I suspect you do), I’d enjoy reading them, as always.

Tumblr just deleted half my answer which... this hellsite underestimates my willingness to go on and on about Santana Lopez, I shall not be stopped. So here we go again!

Mr/Dr Lopez is an interesting case because Glee never cared to actually give him anything but there's much to speculate. I think, we had to choose, I'd read more in At the Ballet just on the basis of diegesis but at the same time there isn't a single second in the Mine scene I'm not obsessed with so of course we can also take that into consideration.

There's no reason we couldn't put two and two together and come up with twenty eight. Based on what canon gives us, Santana's relationship with her dad could easily be quite strained and distant. I think his absence from the wedding is something I can't quite, like, take at face value, just because his only(? lmao) daughter's wedding is such a huge thing to miss when even his homophobic mother was there and he's supposedly cool with the lesbian daughter thing. So I think just for me personally I'll elect to ignore the fact that he was nowhere to be seen the same way that I don't accept the absence of Quinn. We could make it work logically but every variation makes me sad lol.

When it comes to Mine, there are two bits that are relevant here: “careless man’s careful daughter”, of course, and this:

You learn my secrets and you figure out why I'm guarded You say we'll never make my parents' mistakes

I love this first line from a Brittana perspective (and the way Naya sings it, forever sobbing) but Brittana aside, “parents’ mistakes” implies a lot here. If we put it into the context of the implied cheating in At the Ballet and what Santana says right after singing Mine, there’s a case to be made here. Based on everything, it’s not wild to assume Dr. Lopez cheated on Maribel and they might still be married and technically together because that’s how they roll but not actually a couple anymore. I think Santana’s breakup speech substantiates that, what with her letting Brittany go only to prevent an even bigger heartbreak “when someone eventually cheats” - telling words here. And yes, we can also contextualize this within the episode because she’s talking about long-distance relationships here and possibly talking about the other two breakups but the Mine and At the Ballet lyrics both support this.

Not to turn this into a “Santana’s complicated relationship with the concept of cheating” post (which I’ll inevitably write anyway as soon as someone reminds me to) but her mature decision in Mine could easily be interpreted as a lesson she learned from her parents’ mistakes. So she breaks both her and Brittany’s hearts now in order to protect themselves from an even bigger potential pain in the future, perhaps one she experienced as a kid when Dr. Lopez cheated. Honestly this would just add yet another layer to the Mine scene which I already adore every second of. It fits with careless man’s careful daughter, too, because like you say maybe Dr. Lopez isn’t evil or anything but careless with how his actions affected his family and so Santana grew to become careful in the sense that she keeps her heart guarded. And affected her own attitudes towards cheating but, another post. I’ve also read interpretations where Mine is a narrative switcharoo and it’s actually referring to Brittany and Pierce, him being the careless man. But that’s just a btw and a whole other interpretation.

So the thing is, I fully went into this post wanting to say that there is a reading of Mine (and everything else) where Dr. Lopez cheated but stating that I personally choose not to look at it that way. But then I wrote all this down twice so now I’m like, maybe I convinced myself? Him being sorta distant but also trying and not actually a bad guy has always been reading of Dr. Lopez and even in the At the Ballet post I said that the cheating could just be an emotional truth rather than what actually happened. But now that you made me think about Mine I’m gonna run with yeah, he probably had an affair or two and it caused him to have a strained relationship with both Maribel and, inevitably, Santana. But I still maintain that in her young adult years/twenties they reconnect and find a way to make their dynamic work because Dr. Lopez might be a careless man in some ways but, and this really is just a HC, I think he’d learn to make an effort with his daughter. They stay together with Maribel and he as well as Alma do a lot of growing.

The main reason I believe he was fundamentally trying with Santana and would make an effort is because of, all things, IKAG (derogatory) and that one line about both of Santana’s parents being okay with her sexuality. It’s not much but after the implications of him having disliked her tomboy phase, I think it implies that he does actually accept her but has his own growing to do. But maybe that’s just me not wanting Santana to have much more baggage than she already does.

[galactic-general]

nonbinarybb-8 -- amazonworrier