Summary: If you want to create an inclusive environment, start by setting an example. Just a particular, tiny thing in S02E13 that really irritated me. One shot.
Spoilers: Mild Season 2 spoilers.
Characters: Rachel, Will, Glee Club.
Pairings: None. Will-bashing, so avoid this if you like him a lot.
"Who can tell us what an anthem is?" asked Will, looking around with supreme confidence at his club, choosing to ignore the only person who didn't have a blank face.
"It's the bottom of an ant's pants," said Brittney, genuinely sure of her answer.
"So close, so close," said Will, "but no." Giving the kids in front of him one more glance and deciding that no one knew the answer, he proceeded to explain to them that it was a big, big epic song, filled with a groundswell of emotion that somehow seemed bigger than itself, even bigger than the person performing it. Somewhat like his ego.
While the others were eagerly absorbing this information, there was one person in the room who was a little dejected and mildly offended. Rachel's hand had, like always, been the first and only one in the air when Will had asked that question. She'd tried not to be too eager, jump around in her seat or knock anyone else's hand out of the air in order to answer, but he'd still passed over her as if she wasn't even there. Just like he'd been doing since Glee Club had started to grow.
At first, Rachel had understood this behavior completely. She had a vastly superior knowledge of music, and it was only natural for him to try to encourage her peers so as not to make them feel inferior. He'd done this many times, ignoring her song suggestions, not looking at her whenever he asked a question, and while he made it a point to discourage comments against Kurt or Finn or any of the others, really, the snide comments they passed about her never seemed to reach his ears. And now it was starting to get to her.
Rachel could take bullying from her fellow Glee Club members and from the rest of the school. As her dads had explained to her, they were still immature kids, and many of them harbored prejudices ingrained into their minds by their parents. Plus, Kurt and Mercedes had pointed out to her that she was different, a type of different that no one understood and hence opposed. They'd been very helpful in explaining to her that while her intentions were good, her behavior was more than a little forceful, and people listened to reason, not to things being shoved down their throats. That was just likely to make them puke.
So she'd changed. A lot. She'd mellowed down and tried so hard to not be different, to support others more even when she knew that what they were doing was bad for Glee Club. The only reason they'd tied with the Warblers was because Mr. Shue had made Sam and Quinn sing that duet together. Although she'd said nothing at the time, she had seriously been contemplating taking Mr. Shue to a ENT specialist. Did the man not understand that Quinn's voice was simply not powerful enough for a solo performance? She'd done well in Lucky because Sam had been strumming a guitar, but the music in 'Time of My Life' had completely drowned out her voice and left them with more pressure for Regionals.
Even then, she'd said nothing. She hadn't bitten their throats off, or tried to get Mr. Shue fired. At the end of the day, Rachel needed to be accepted, just like everyone else. She had wanted to fit in somewhere, find a place where people would laugh at her jokes, trust her judgement and give her a damn chance.
It had taken Finn toying around with her and finally leaving her for her to understand that McKinley High just wasn't the place where that would happen. He'd trampled all over her self-esteem, behaved like a two-year-old over her making out with another guy while he'd gone and lost his virginity to Santana because he was jealous of Jesse. And it wasn't as if he was some virtuous saint, encouraging Quinn to cheat on her boyfriend. Again. But her cheating was okay, because he wasn't the one getting hurt. Selfish twit.
Although the whole thing was fairly messed up, Rachel had emerged from the ordeal a wiser person. Suppressing the person that she really was wasn't going to stop the bullying or the taunts, it was just going to make her depressed and insecure. She wasn't the girl who was nothing more than the quarterback's girlfriend, and she wasn't the girl who let her entire team suffer just to encourage the individual members. Rachel Berry was better than that, and she was smarter than being fooled into believing otherwise.
But she still let Will ignore her just so that he could go on believing that he was the most intelligent person in the room. An anthem wasn't just something bigger than the person singing it. It was something so big, so energetic and so true, that it could bind together and represent a group of people, and Rachel understood that in a way that he never could. Music may be his passion, but it was her reason for living.
She had a better, more vast base of knowledge than he did, and she was also far more in touch with what people really wanted to do and hear, which was more important that anything else when it came to winning something like Regionals. Not to mention the fact that Rachel could gauge which song would suit which voice, and what background vocals would enhance the performance.
Will knew all that, even if he refused to acknowledge it. Rachel had been a very enthusiastic, very useful kid at first, always willing to go that extra step for the Club, even if she was a bit possessive concerning the solos. But later he'd come to realize that she was also the only one of them who had a keen enough sense of the stage to be able to pick out all the flaws in what he suggested. She knew when the sync was off, which steps needed work, at what places people weren't hitting the right notes. She had the gift to be able to analyse every different part and aspect of a performance, as well as to visualize it as a whole.
He couldn't do that, and soon her constant suggestions had started to get to him. Glee Club was the only place he had where everyone looked up to him, respected his opinion and didn't constantly challenge him. And she was steadily destroying that by pointing out the errors in everything he did. Kurt had done that too, but then he couldn't possibly have ignored the gay slurs that were being thrown at him. Because gay slurs were more visible than non-gay slurs, being rainbow-colored and all. And anyway, Kurt wasn't an issue anymore.
Will reasoned to himself that he was just getting annoyed of her know-it-all attitude, just like the rest of the world. Everyone knew that Rachel Berry could get on your nerves, and despite his very best efforts to understand the girl, even his patience was wearing thin. That was all, he always told himself. It wasn't as if he purposely ignored the way his Glee students put her down in the hope that she might get fed up of it one day. He didn't ignore her voice because he wanted her to just stop trying and shut the hell up so that he could showcase his brilliance.
He wasn't going to make her fail so that he could succeed. But then he wasn't going to stop others if they tried, either. It was easy for him to ease his conscience by thinking that Rachel was bringing that upon herself by being so abrasive. They were just being kids, and his interfering would only make it worse, right? He didn't give her solos so others would get a chance, and they were grateful to him for that. He didn't let her answer when he asked a question, because she would explain it better than anyone, including himself, and that would make the other kids feel they didn't know things. Rachel Berry was musical expression personified, and no one could hope to compete with that, so he didn't give them a reason to.
Will wanted to be accepted by the world, he wanted his club to be accepted by their peers. He wanted that respect, that acknowledgement of doing a good thing, being part of the something special that made you special. And because he wanted others to accept them, he encouraged them to accept others for the way they were; encouraged them to look beyond race and color and sexuality in order to see only a person's intentions and their feelings.
But for all his preaching, he couldn't get the fact that if he wanted those kids to perform as one, to get that spark in them, he was the one who needed to set an example. He was the one who needed to take a stand and make them see that bullying Rachel for being who she was was just as bad as bullying Kurt for being gay, or Mercedes for being African, or Lauren for being overweight. But the only thing he could do was make it worse.
They may have been involved in themselves, and some of them may have been very stupid, but all of them sub-consciously registered the way in which he treated Rachel, and the way he allowed her to be treated in front of him. They looked up to Will, and if he was doing it too, it couldn't be wrong, could it? Ignoring Rachel Berry, always thinking that whatever she said was for her own benefit, never even trying to see the girl beneath the big words. That was okay, because Mr. Shue did it as well and Mr. Shue was a good guy.
He was a good guy, who stood up for the underdog, who actually cared about what happened to the kids. Of course, he sometimes accused them of doing drugs for his betterment, and he tried to get a woman to cheat on the man who was successfully helping her overcome her problems. And he went deaf when someone opposed his song suggestions. But that could be overlooked, because he was one of the good guys. Then why couldn't he be any different?
Okay, that turned out way more critical of Will than I thought it would. But I suppose that I really was bothered by his double standard.
I haven't actually re-watched the episodes to reference any particular scene, so please point out discrepancies.
Reviews are love, and feedback's the best way for me to improve:)