Blaine Anderson

Blaine Anderson is a character taken from the hit TV show Glee. He is from the episode Sexy the fifteenth episode of the second season. He is played by the amazing and beautiful Darren Criss. He arrived in the city on July 4, 2012.

He currently resides in the Delta Chi Pi House and is dating David Posner.

=History=

Blaine Anderson is a young American boy from the Midwestern state Ohio. He has no supernatural abilities to speak of but he does possess a musically inclined mind and excels at musical performance. He was the captain of his show choir at the private academy he attended in Ohio. He arrived at Bete Noire completely unequipped to handle the news that he was in a new reality, but through the help of the various people he's met here he's begun to find a place to fit in.

Youth
Blaine comes from a fairly well-to-do family. He was raised in an environment where his parents could afford to give him the best but wasn’t so spoiled as to take that for granted. He has an older brother named Cooper, but the age gap between them is pretty big. While Blaine was in high school Cooper was an adult. Blaine’s family has done well but it’s because of the hard work of his parents. Both of them had careers that provided well for the family but also took them out of the home. While Blaine was never neglected he was left with his brother, who was a teenager by then, a lot of the time when he was young. The way that his parents were dedicated to their work meant that Blaine learned a good work ethic at a young age, but also opened him up to feeling like he had to do a lot to get attention from his parents. Cooper was never outright abusive of Blaine but he was always critical of his younger brother's abilities. Cooper thought that he was pushing Blaine to be better, but it really affected Blaine and made him feel like he had to work extra hard for approval.

Blaine focused on doing well at school and on really honing his talents. He participated in extracurricular activities and learned how to be likable. His teachers all thought he was a joy and he got along well enough with his classmates. He was always a neat child, always concerned with maintaining a good appearance. Even at a young age, he learned that when you are pleasant people react well to you. He went out of his way to be friendly and likeable.

He also learned at a very young age that performing was the thing that he wanted to do with his life. He used to use popular music to put on “shows” for friends and family. His parents, realizing his potential, got him piano lessons and went to all of his school plays. After all, despite the focus they had on their careers they weren’t bad parents. They were loving and supportive. Having them away from the house also taught Blaine how to be self-reliant and competent when it came to things like cleaning up his own room and maintaining his appearance.

As he got older he showed interest in things like fencing, and his parents supported that as well, even going to the competitions where he earned trophies. He had a wide range of interests, from fashion to football, and managed to keep up his grades. He also learned how important friends were as he always felt more accepted by them than anyone else. He excelled at what he put his mind to, earning trophies and awards at competitions. For most of his childhood, Blaine was a poster boy for a well-adjusted, successful child. The entire time, though, he was hiding something.

He knew from a young age that he was gay.

Coming Out and Bullying
In high school, while going to public schools, Blaine finally came out of the closet... and that’s when things started to change for him. He thought being honest with who he was would make life easier, but what he found instead was a world of hostility.

No matter how much he tried to be perfect, he couldn’t beat the homophobia or the way that his father was suddenly uncomfortable around him. There were times after he came out where his dad would go out of his way to “bond” with him, but they always ended up doing something overtly masculine. Those attempts at male bonding always leave Blaine feeling that his dad was more concerned with him getting his hands dirty in a misguided attempt to "straighten him out" than he was with reconnecting with his son. Blaine's sexuality brought in an element in which people were always judging him and looking down at him. It was the first time that he really had to encounter that type of treatment and it left him confused and furious.

Even worse, he started to be bullied in school. When he would go to teachers to report the students who were attacking him, they just shrugged it off as something he would always have to deal with because he was gay. This would upset Blaine even more. One day he asked his male friend, the only other out kid at school, to the Sadie Hawkins dance. He thought that they would be able to fight the ignorance that caused the bullying at his school. After the dance, while they were waiting for the friend’s dad to come pick them up, they were attacked by three jocks and beaten.

This act of shocking violence was enough to make Blaine’s parents seek out a private school.

Dalton
There were plenty of good private schools in Ohio, but the Andersons settled on Dalton Academy. Dalton had an amazing Glee club and a zero tolerance for bullying. It seemed perfect for Blaine.

In a lot of ways it was perfect. Blaine really shined there. He was an instant success with the Warblers, the amazing Glee club, and became their lead singer and captain. It was nothing like public school and Blaine fell in love with Dalton's gleaming halls. The classes were more challenging and he felt completely accepted and adored. The Dalton uniform was like a shield that protected him from the world.

Dalton is also the place where Blaine earned his first real friend, a boy named Kurt Hummel. Kurt transferred from his school where he was also being bullied and joined the Warblers. It was during the time the team was preparing for their competition against Kurt's old Glee Club that Blaine found himself wandering into Bete Noire...

=Personality=

A lot about Blaine can be summed up by taking into consideration that deep down he’s really just a kid with all the same issues and concerns as other kids. He's also really very good at pretending that he's not. This isn't done to really trick anyone, he's just built this armor around himself that protects the insecurity nestled inside of him. His armor of choice happens to be the face of a confident and charismatic (and dapper) young man.

Blaine cares a lot about people and what they think of him. He just has a hard time letting them really in. When he’s at Dalton, he wears his school uniform as a way to hide his insecurity and tames his natural curls with a lot of gel so that he can keep up his carefully constructed appearance. The time he really shines is when he's on stage performing. He has amusing and heartfelt stage faces and can jump around and just let everything go. Performing and music have become important parts of his life because the release he feels when he's singing and when he's on stage. Even he admits that he only really knows how to express his feelings when he's performing.

When it comes to his interactions with people he tends to be a go with the flow kind of guy, because he likes it when people are at ease around him he’ll let them have control of where the conversation goes. Unless he senses that they need him to take control, in which cause he’ll try to step in and give them advice or help them out. Sometimes his advice isn't the best (he was the one who told Kurt to confront his bully) but it's always heart felt and always meant to help out. He wants to be there for people. He even tolerates them being outright hostile towards him if he thinks it will help the team. Later in his canon, Blaine is forced to swallow his pride and take it when Finn constantly acts threatened by him, even yelling at him to sit down every time he tries to speak up to help out their Glee club.

That doesn't mean that Blaine can stand to be around someone doing something hateful or intolerant, he can't handle any sort of injustice or bigotry. He’ll always stand up for things that he things are right and will let people know when he disapproves of what they are doing. It usually has to be something extreme though, he doesn’t like preaching so much as standing up for people (any kind of bullying will make react, for example, but he won’t be lecturing people for just having a different opinion.) The perfect example of that is when Dave confronted Kurt and Blaine for going to a New Directions fundraiser. When Dave started to bully them, Blaine reacted by lashing out and shoving him. That same night when a man in the audience was heckling his friends his response was to call him a "horrible person."

Blaine has his own sense of humor, which he uses to try to defuse tense situations or to make people smile. He also uses it to make fun of himself when he needs to. He uses humor when needed to help people feel comfortable. While he loves performing, his interests range from politics to fashion to football. His room also has trophies for fencing and other sports.

While Blaine tires to be aware of others so that he can put them at ease there are times when he can be completely oblivious about how they feel. The prime example in canon of this is how he treated Kurt when Kurt started developing a massive crush on him. Unaware of his friend's feelings for him, Blaine kept doing things to make Kurt think they were becoming a couple. It wasn't until Kurt admitted that he thought there was more than friendship that Blaine finally exposed some of the truth of who he is--a scared, insecure youth who has a bad habit of throwing himself so completely into things that he messes them up without meaning to.

Blaine wants to be there for people, to be what they need him to be, to the point of putting his own needs second. At the same time he can be completely clueless as to what they really want from him. He tends to do things without thinking them through and knows that if he doesn't watch it he can get carried away. It's a lot like how he is on stage. If he doesn't control himself, if he doesn't keep a tight leash on his emotions and actions, then he'll jump around all over the place. The only problem is that when it comes to his life that means people will get hurt. At least on stage his biggest problem is that some of his stage faces are ridiculous.

Basically, this means that with most people he's reserved with the appearance of being friendly, open and relaxed. He doesn't want them to catch on to how he's really second-guessing himself. That's not to say that he's insincere. He is just as earnest about other people's emotions as he seems to be. He wants the people around him to be happy and comfortable.

Blaine's insecurities may also stem from a less than perfect relationship with his father, who tends to spend his summers doing manly things in an attempt to "straighten him out" and by his relationship with his brother, Cooper, who constantly criticizes his performances. While Blaine does know that his family loves him and is there for him, he just doesn’t feel entirely accepted by them. That drives him to seek acceptance from other people and places and means he goes out of his way to make people comfortable.

Underneath all of this is someone who can be very angry. He admits to being very frustrated and pissed off over how things went at his old school. Blaine really doesn't like injustice, or how unfair the world can be at times and his anger over it can come in waves. He usually does a good job of keeping his frustration (especially when he's in his element) and anger hidden and at bay (and can cool off quickly if given the right circumstance), but it's something that could be exploited if put in the right hands.

Weaknesses and Vulnerabilities
While Blaine tries to maintain a picture perfect demeanor, he has several key weaknesses that can be exploited by the City of Sin. These are the traits that the City's influence will be picking at. The corruption will be focusing on the buried issues that Blaine tries to pretend do not exist.

Anger
Darren Criss once said that Blaine was “kind of an angry guy”. Blaine keeps it hidden under his calm exterior but there is a real anger under the surface that he feels about his family and his circumstances. He’s a young gay male who knows how difficult the world is on people in his community. He knows there are people out there who literally hate him just for being who he is and that reality just seems so unfair. When he was bullied at his old school the teachers there made him feel like it was something that he would just have to put up with. “You’re gay, of course you’re going to be bullied.” It would piss him off so much to know that there were people out there who will always reduce him to this one aspect of his personality and always judge him for it. It’s even worse because his own dad can’t really embrace that part of him.

The bullies that attacked him also left a huge scar in Blaine’s mind. From things that Blaine has said and the fact that he left schools it seems that those bullies didn’t really get very punished, despite the fact that they “beat the crap” out of Blaine and his friend. Instead, Blaine was forced from his school, forced to run, just to get away from those kinds of attacks. After he went to Dalton, Blaine picked up boxing and started his own little fight club to help work off that steam and to protect himself from that ever happening again. He used that and the stage to work out his aggression, but the sense that the world is just sort of a messed up place never really left him. In the episode “Night of Neglect”, we see the first real example of this when Blaine physically lashes out at Kurt’s bully for threatening them. Later, after he transfers to McKinley and is treated unfairly by Kurt’s step-brother Finn he lashes out at another member of the Glee club for implying they should get more seductive on the stage. After the outburst, he is seen punching a punching bag and admits that he’s picturing Finn’s face on the bag. This is important because these are people who don’t have a problem with his sexuality. It proves that Blaine feels angry about any sort of unfair treatment and reacts very poorly toward repeat offenses.

He really wants to be optimistic, to say that things will get better. During his optimistic times he does see all the ways it’s getting better and he can even be hopeful about his future, but that doesn’t completely chase away all of the hurt and outrage over how he has been treated. He took up boxing in an attempt to express some of that anger, but it doesn't always work.

He’s been beaten, tormented, looked down upon and hated. After he and Kurt get together they can’t even openly embrace in the hallways of the school they both attend. That kind of constant rejection really gets to Blaine and has left some deep scars that he can’t full get over. That’s why he took up boxing, why when pushed too hard he lashes out violently. Blaine’s anger can also be applied to things outside of homophobia, to any kind of injustice or bigotry. He can’t handle people getting away with stuff like that because it reminds him of the way it felt to be beaten and abused and then to have that treatment be overlooked by the people who were supposed to be protecting him.

This doesn’t mean that he loses his temper at the drop of the hat though. He tries to push his frustration into productivity before falling into violence, but sometimes that tense string snaps.

Insecurity
Blaine knows that he’s talented and that he’s good at what he does. When he’s on stage, he doesn’t doubt that for a moment, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t constantly wondering if he’s good enough in every other way. When he finally admits to Kurt that he’s really not as put together has he seems he says “I don’t know what I’m doing. I pretend like I do and I know how to act it out in song...” in the same episode Blaine admits that he has trouble expressing himself outside of a performance.

After “Big Brother”, we find out that some of this comes from the constant criticism he faced growing up. When you’re told over and over again that you aren’t good enough, you start to believe it. He doubts that what he thinks will be good enough, that his feelings are valid, and that people will respond well to him being honest without the song and dance. It’s so much easier for him to put himself out there through music because it’s so theatrical and expressive. He doesn’t have to worry about rejection hurting as much.

In “Blame it on the Alcohol”, Blaine also expresses uncertainty about who he is. While he is out and proud, he is easily affected by a drunk kiss with a girl and questions his sexuality (never “am I straight?” though, instead he questions the possibility of being bi). The fight between him and Kurt after that includes a line that implies that Blaine sometimes has doubts and concerns about his identity. Maybe not always his sexuality but Blaine is still trying to figure out who he is. He’s a young man, after all, and part of that growing up experience is figuring those things out.

Blaine just constantly worries about being good enough on top of that. His demeanor is carefully crafted in part to seem like a well put together and sure because he doesn’t want people to catch onto how uncertain he is and judge him for it. He even worries about his appearance because of that, and expresses real fear when he is banned from hair gel, too afraid to show his untamed hair in public. He doesn’t like being exposed, and instead wants to control what people see of him.

That doesn’t mean that he’s nothing but a ball of neuroticism, even though he has those doubts and fears he does also have moments of confidence. He just feels like he has to compensate for those doubts by always appearing perfect.

=At Bete Noire=

While Blaine's first reaction to the city was one of pure shock. He attempted to make a call to his friend back home, Kurt. It was then that he realized that he was stuck here for good, at least for now. He managed to find a job at a downtown restaurant where he is a waiter, except for two nights a week in which he is able to play the piano.

Delta Chi Pi House
Right away, Blaine was invited by Diana Able to move into her home at the Delta Chi Pi House. Blaine took up the offer because he liked the idea of not having to worry about rent or bills. He also finds himself drawn to Diana in part because of her nightly radio broadcasts. When he first arrived, it was her broadcasts that made him feel comforted. Music is something that managed to come with him.

Blaine finds himself surrounded by beautiful men there, which he doesn't complain about at all. Both Orpheus (AU) and Jack Harkness (s2) are of particular note.

David Posner
One of the most important people to Blaine here is a young man named David Posner. The two started to speak over the network and became fast friends. Their relationship was always somewhat flirtatious and those around them assumed the two were dating.

It was after Blaine fooled around with Orpheus that he realized his feelings towards David were stronger than he wanted to admit. He eventually asked David to start dating him and the two have been nurturing their young relationship since then. Blaine is worried due the the nature of the city, but speaking with people such as Diana and Hermione Granger about relationships here have helped him realize that he should relax and enjoy spending time with David while he can.