McQ by Alexander McQueen Cap Sleeve Fade Swallow Dress - $284.00 (on sale!)

Santana sure does love itty bitty bodycon dresses! Here are few more graphic frocks:

I've been meaning to take some time to look at Santana's recent wardrobe choices. 

(cut for length)

Bebe Printed Scuba Mini Skirt - No longer available

Printed minis are Santana’s go-to. Here are some cute alternatives:

Paul Smith Slim-Fit Scissors Print Trousers - No longer available

Scissor.  Print.  Kurt and scissors.  Making and severing and mending and ending.

What are you up to in this episode, Kurt?  :)

Those pants are so cool, the way the scissor silhouettes are overlaid to look like feathers and wings and other vaguely skeletal/x-ray like patterns. Mending and ending sounds right. He's had two big tears in the fabric of his life (cancer scare and infidelity) and those are now resolved, so he can trim off the loose threads and check the new fit of the repairs.

[And Santana is wearing leopard print: large predatory cat meshes with some of the Santana meta from last season. Are they getting Sekhmet drunk on red wine to calm her rage? Does she still have rage?]

The Pandora myth is a bit like the Eden myth. Curiosity leads a woman to the unleashing of evils into the world, an end to paradise. Let’s forget the woman part. I’m not interesting in the sexism.

The creatures that spring from the box once Pandora opens it are horrible buzzing moths, bringing...

In the wrong line: Another little bit - Pandora? Moths? Orange?

Hmm, that's really cool. Especially since he's living with Santana the woman with the butterfly dress. So, Kurt is kind of living with hope, but she hasn't left New York. We didn't see her in Lima alongside Kurt and his moth shirt (was he ever wearing it in New York?). New York is where Blaine's hope (Gay marriage. Possibly NYADA) all lie. Where Rachel's hope for a Broadway career, and are Artie's hope of being a filmmaker are. Maybe we're going to need Blaine physically in  New York in order for the Kurt Blaine relationship to have a real shot at continuing?

Santana's butterfly dress! I'd been thinking there'd been some kind of big butterfly symbol in NY recently, but I was totally blanking. Thank you. :) I'm pretty sure this is the first time we see Kurt in the moths shirt.

I keep thinking back to "Pilot" when Finn gives his statistics on how many kids in Lima go to college or leave the state, and the Glee Club is not meeting those numbers at all, but exceeding them--and so many off the Big City (NY, Chicago, LA)--so that is starting to feel even more like something magical and mythological at play within the universe. I guess this is why the seniors are legends and mythological monsters and NY is Heaven?

If Rachel's a little bit Eve, maybe Santana is a little bit Pandora? She rifles through their stuff, forces some uncomfortable things into the light, disrupts the little paradise they've tried to make (though, so does serpent!Brody). She certainly had a lot to do with Rachel's arc recently, but she gave Kurt a push too. More gently, but still significantly. And then she follows her chaos with hugs. Hmm. I'm a little unfocused right now with how it all may tie together, but yeah, I keep half forgetting about Santana's catalyzing presence back in the loft when I think about Kurt.

Santana as Sekhmet

I believe Poemsingreenink was the first to compare Santana and her behavior in “Girls (and Boys) on Film” (4x15) to a cat. And then Diannaagroner posted a gif set of Santana looking out of the window in that episode and a cat doing the same. Then Misqueue connected her with Sekhmet, Callie-quite-contrary made the same connection after “Feud” (4x16) had aired, and Misqueue went on to elaborate on that.

And all of that pinged my interest hard enough to do some research and thinking of my own after being prompted so well with Misqueue’s questions:

Yes, Ra mixed beer with red ochre or hematite so it looked like blood, and Sekhmet got drunk on that. — And Santana just got a job tending bar…

Sekhmet also is a solar deity (we talked about sun symbols before in relation to Kurt) who is associated with both Ra (sun god) and Ma’at (goddess of justice/order). She is a war goddess who protects the pharaos and leads them in battle. She is usually portrayed as a woman with a lioness’s head and wearing red clothes (to symbolize blood) — and Santana is the “Devil in a Red Dress” (I know there is a gif set with that theme somewhere…).

Wikipedia also tells me that

Which is very much Santana whenever she goes up against people who threaten her family (Brittany throughout S2 and S3, Kurt and Blaine in 2x17 and 3x11, Rachel in 4x15 and 4x16).

This also fits with the idea of Sekhmet drinking up the overflowing Nile (which actually turns red with silt each year) to save humankind. — Santana put herself at risk by meeting up alone with Sebastian in 3x11 to protect Kurt, Blaine, and the glee club. We could even argue that she risked her friendship and/or living quarters when she went through everyone’s stuff and when she threatened Brody to protect Rachel.

Of course, Santana still doesn’t always win her fights (because the Glee universe doesn’t do straight archetypes/stereotypes), and narratively she still needs to learn to reign in her wrath (which reminds me of the Strength card in tarot (lots of images at this link), which traditionally also has an image of a woman with a Lion).

But it’s still important (narratively and in real life) to have someone like her, someone who will not take an attack on her people quietly.

(We should also compare Santana’s wrath/agression with that of Finn vs. Will in their imagined brawl ending in a hug and with that of Finn vs. Brody in their real-life encounter that seriously hurts them and pretty much wrecks the hotel room. But that’s another post.)

Awesome! Thank you for putting this all together.

When Santana says things like ‘Don’t apply logic to Lopez*’ or ‘My psychic Mexican third eye is never wrong’ (both lines from 4.16), it’s both funny and in character, but it’s also Santana refusing accountability for her actions.  Which is kind of a problem when your magic is about telling the truth and breaking things…and we saw exactly what kind of problem at the end of the episode.

I think one of the lessons Santana took away from McKinley was that some people can get away with anything.  If they’re the right person, if they manipulate authority the right way, they can do anything they want and never be punished.  And she decided that she wanted to be one of those people, because it was better than being lumped in the other group.

At the University of Louisville she was held accountable, for her actions and her words.  And she ran away from it (running away has been a theme for Santana this season), to New York.  Is all of this with Brody and Rachel displacement activity for stuff about herself and her attitude to life that she doesn’t want to face?

*At this point, despite the ability to get into places where she shouldn’t be, it’s less ‘Santana Lopez Is A Cat’ and more Santana Lopez is Sekhmet.

Pretty much my thoughts too plus good insight about Santana trying to get away with crap and not be accountable. I've been having Sekhmet associations with Santana since "Michael" (but more in her protector role; she's veering more toward destruction presently). She'll learn, but there may be more chaos before she does. I haven't had my coffee yet, but isn't Sekhmet's transformation from primarily a force of destruction to a force for creation, healing, and protection happen after some particularly awful orgy of violence? Ra gets her drunk to stop her, and when she wakes from the drunken stupor, her mindless bloodlust is gone?