I know I haven’t posted any story stuff on here in a long time and this is not story related, but I hope that, given the circumstances, you’ll forgive me.
I came to Glee late. Season three had already completed in the US and, IIRC, was about half way through being broadcast here in the UK and I had missed the Glee Live tours, which I regret to this day. I had dismissed it as a silly little show about singing american teenagers but then I heard about Santana and Brittany.
Representation like that back then, even here in the UK, was pretty much non-existant. Glee is the first show I can remember that did treat a token lesbian or lesbian couple as either some sort of joke or target. What Santana and Brittany became may not have been the intent when Glee started, but it became so much more than just a tv show. Santana’s struggle to accept herself, to be accepted, her sometimes shaky growth as a person, the occassional back-sliding and then the eventual happiness with the love of her life, reflected and touched the lives of so many viewers and showed them that they too could be happy. And Naya’s portrail of Santana just made the character more believable and relatable.
It changed my life.
I’m not going to go into personal details because that’s not what this blog or this post is for.
But I absorbed Glee. In the matter of just a few weeks, the best I could do because of real life obligations, I watched every episode that had been broadcast. Season 3 first, then 2 then 1 for some reason. I discovered fan fiction, Brittana and Faberry and devoured that too, I read something pretty much every day, sometimes for hours, and still do.
And I wrote too, the equivalent of a couple of good sided books so far, one of the stories even got finnished (and I even got a copy of The Reluctant Cheerio professionally bound). These wern’t Brittana stories for the main, but Santana played a part, and sometimes a leading role, in each one.
I spent way too much money at the official Glee auctions. I got Cherrio’s uniforms (both the Season 1 and later season designs) and a Cheerio jacket. From various ebay auctions I have outfits that are (or at least claim to be) from Glee Live including one of Santana’s outfits.
I travelled to London when Dianna Agron was staring in McQueen to see the show and actually got a chance to meet her. I bought Naya’s book, watched her movies and tv shows (along with those of Heather, Dianna and Lea), I helped out with the website for the last Brittanacon and set up a website collecting pictures of the four of them.
None of this (and many other things) would have have happend if it wasn’t for Naya’s portrail of Santana. I never met her but I feel like I know her just as well as any of my friends and her passing hurts just as much as loosing someone you love. I remember a line from a fanfiction I read where Rachel is talking to one of her fathers and is scared to put her heart on the line, she asks what will happen if it goes wrong and her father replies (something along the lines of) “Then you get to find out what it feels like to be shot in the chest and survive.” That’s what this feels like to me right now.
They says it’s possible that Naya and her son got caught by a rip tide and Naya used what little strength she had left to save her son. That doesn’t surprise me one little bit and just goes to show what Naya was, a wonderful mother, a caring woman and an amazing actor.
I’m not a religious person, but if there is a God and heaven, then I hope Naya is up there looking down at us and is at peace. My thoughts are with her family and friends.
