My Boy, Kurt
Title: My Boy, Kurt
Author: xlessxthanx3x
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Noah "Puck" Puckerman/Kurt Hummel
Spoilers: Up to and including "Original Song" to be safe
Word Count: 2,630
Author’s Notes: So for the longest time I worked on a ship manifesto for my favorite Glee OTP, Puckurt. People on tumblr, where I posted it, seem to like it, so I'm hoping people on LJ enjoy it as well. Please forgive me if I tagged/posted/did anything else wrong, I'm still trying to understand LJ!
The Puckurt Manifesto: Reasons to Ship Puckurt
1. Just think of the characters themselves
Don’t think about the genders, sex, or their situations, just think about themselves and their personalities. (I’ll be using “him”, though, just so it’s easier to follow)
You have Character A, a person who loves the finer things in life; Character A is more sophisticated, intelligent, and ambitious than most everyone who surrounds A, craving freedom from the small town he has grown up in. A can be a bit of a snob, but it’s easy to see that it’s just a protective cover to spare any hurt feelings/harm to A’s well being. When A falls, he falls hard and will support that person with with all that he can. A has been bullied throughout life just for being true to himself, but has still been-for the most part-a true and loyal friend. A lost a parent early in life, leading A to lean on his dad for everything. Although A is very different from his dad, A and his dad love each other and will take drastic measures to protect the other.
You also have Character B, a rougher, bad boy content with cheaper things like wine coolers and T-shirts. B might not come off as smart at first, but B is actually quite street smart and wise in his own ways, and B’s also ambitious and craves to leave his small town and make it big in his own way. B can be a bit of a jerk, but it is to protect himself since he has been hurt so many times in his life, from people B has dated to B’s own family. When B falls, B falls hard and will support that person with all he can. B was a bully for at least a few years, maybe his whole life, but has since changed his ways and has become one of the most loyal and brave people one could be. B’s father left him and his family when B was still so very young. Although it may seem that B is not family-oriented on first glance, B actually spends time with his family, including his nana, and will protect anyone that can be considered his family, including his daughter.
So these two people might seem very different on the surface, but actually have quite a lot in common: loyalty to friends and family, tendencies to fall in love deeply and swiftly, a mask to hide their true feelings, etc. And where they differ-their pasts, how they lost their parents, their overall personality stereotype-they balance each other out beautifully.
In fact, this type of pairing-the bad one/good but spunky one-can be found in countless of romantic movies and books: A Walk to Remember, Aladdin, Lady and the Tramp, Tangled, 10 Things I Hate About You, Grease, Crybaby, Beauty and the Beast, even Pride and Prejudice.
2. What the romance would mean
Like the Kurtofsky relationship, this would be a relationship very much focused on redemption. We know Puck threw pee balloons at Kurt, nailed his lawn furniture to his roof, threw him in the dumpster, and made fun of him often, so if Kurt could let that go-which, as far as we know, he has-and then have a full blow successful relationship, it would send a powerful message of redemption.
3. Like Mother, Like Son
Burt admitted in his epic lecture to Finn in “Theatricality” that he used to be a homophobic bully and would throw around the f word as an insult, to imply that it was wrong to be gay, to be different.
But what made Burt change?
I think it’s safe to assume that he had become a nicer person by the time he met Kurt’s mom, or else they probably wouldn’t have gotten married/together; in “Sexy”, Blaine calls Kurt “compassionate” and Burt said Kurt got that trait from his mom (even though it’s quite obvious his dad has a large load of it). And nice girls don’t marry/date huge jerks like what it’s implied Burt was. So even though Burt was most likely still slightly homophobic and possibly had jerk tendencies, he had obviously become a nicer guy by then. And when Kurt started showing signs of being effeminante and possibly gay, who, more than likely, helped Burt deal with that and therefore made him go full circle and stop being a homophobe? Kurt’s mother.
Now Puck’s never used the f word on the show, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he had said it at one point or another. But even if he hasn’t, he was a homophobic bully to Kurt and called him many derogatory terms for liking people of the same sex. He torments the entire glee club, including Kurt, for being different, not wanting to accept that he was different, too. And even though he has made tremendous progress since then and wants to protect [his] boy, Kurt”, he still has homophobic tendencies. In “Never Been Kissed” he insults Kurt several times in a row.
Puck’s bullying and jerk streak run parallel to Burt’s own. So what does Puck need to come full circle from his bullying like Burt did? Someone like Kurt’s mother.
Now little is known about Kurt’s mom, but whenever she is brought up, she tends to be compared to Kurt. For example, after Kurt throws the Diva Off in “Wheels”, Burt sighs and says, “You are your mother, y’know? She was always the strong one.” And as stated before, when Blaine calls Kurt compassionate, Burt insists that Kurt gets that from his mom.
Kurt’s actions and personality echo his mother’s. His mother helped Burt reach full circle, and that’s exactly what Kurt could do with Puck; help him finally reach full circle on his homophobic backstory.
Besides how Kurt acts as Puck’s guide to redemption, he will also be a positive support in Puck’s life. Like the other people Puck has dated, Kurt won’t let Puck get away with his BS; Puck will be forced to recognize when he is in the wrong. He’ll also help motivate him to get out of Lima and make something of himself since it’s Kurt’s number one goal in life at the moment. And since Kurt knows what it’s like to have no one there to listen to you, or to at least feel like that, he would always be there to listen to and care for Puck, something Puck is obviously not used to (remember his freakout in “Never Been Kissed” about no one caring about him?) And Puck would finally have a father figure in the way of the most BAMF-tastic father ever, Burt Hummel.
But the good effects won’t be just used on Puck; Kurt would grow and develop and evolve as a person with this relationship. Kurt would be able to develop his confidence further than before to a point where it was true, blue confidence 24/7 and not a sometimes faked bravado like before. It’s no secret that Kurt is very sexually repressed, most likely due to being brought up in a society where having gay desires is repulsive and frowned upon whereas Puck is sexually realized to a point where he sometimes believes he literally cannot stop having it. He would be able to convince Kurt that he is truly sexy and help him develop sexually, in the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of the act, which, Freud would have us believe, is one of the steps to reaching full maturity. And, like what Kurt would do for him, Puck wouldn’t let Kurt get away with “playing the victim”, as Burt calls it, and will fully make him realize when he’s in the wrong and won’t let him get away with that sort of bull.
4. The sexuality aspect and how it relates to TV
A lot of Puckurtsies and other shippers of Puck/guy tend to use the idea that Puck is just gay for that one person, which is a completely realistic and plausible event that could happen in life, but it’s not something that’s represented often, if at all, in major works. Often times when a girl ends up with another girl all of a sudden, she turns out to be bisexual, and I’m pretty sure a straight guy has never really ended up in a relationship with another guy unless he was actually gay the whole time. So the idea that people could see the fluidity of sexuality in males, something so underrepresented, is quite amazing. And how awesome would it be to see someone who wasn’t flamboyant, geeky, and/or metro but is still not completely straight? Or to see a gay/bi jock who doesn’t hate himself but just accepts himself as is? That would make for some original, exciting TV.
But not all supports of Puck/guy think he’s gay for that one person or just slightly sexually fluid, but rather that he is bisexual, pansexual, etc. Yet again, seeing this in a male on TV would be an amazing message, since bisexuality in males is rarely seen, either.
I’m personally from the camp that Puck is bisexual, or at least heteroflexible, and just sees sexy as sexy. Below are a few reasons why I think so.
1. All the comments about Sam’s lips and balls
2. His slight smile and nod at Sam’s question about having balls in his mouth
3. Various shots where he is looking at guy’s ass as they walk away
4. He cuddled up a bit with Sam whilst drunk
5. The implied M/M/F threesome in "The Rhodes Not Taken"
Above all, the real reason to believe he is not completely straight is because he’s never said that he is straight; it’s a biphobic world where we assume everyone is completely straight just because it’s the norm, but just because he’s not flamboyant like Kurt doesn’t mean he’s completely straight. We shouldn’t assume people are straight or gay or anything until they tell us, and even then an open mind must be kept.
5. Tale as Old as Time
I’m all for letting the Kurtofsky shippers use this for their ship defenses, but Beauty and the Beast, at least at the Disney level (I’m not sure how the original French story differs), has a lot of parallels to Puckurt. Let me quote my sister Vicki on this:
"...in Beauty and the Beast, Beast/Person B is not hiding a deep dark secret, or huge-ass claws and teeth. The beast makes no attempt to hide his personality; he is proud of his utter dickishness. He is an asshole not because he is scared of showing his true personality, but because he can get away with it; he is a spoiled brat. Beast was cursed to be a beast so that his outside would be as horrible as his inside. He does not have a heart of gold; he is a douchebag through and through. Beauty does not inspire Beast 'to redeem and reveal himself.' She inspires him to redeem and improve himself.
Puck totally fits the role of the Beast. He was an asshole not because he was afraid that people would learn his deep, dark secret, but because he can get away with it, because he’s Puckzilla/Puckasuarus/Puck. But, through spending time with the glee club (and Kurt), Puck has started to redeem and improve himself."
6. Puck cares about Kurt
Some people might not like the Puckurt ship because Puck hasn’t seemed to have redeemed himself for his tormenting of Kurt, but he definitely has. Despite making fun of Kurt in “Never Been Kissed”, season two Puck has shown that he cares about Kurt quite a lot.
Obviously there is the Puckurtsie’s favorite line in “Special Education”, “…my boy, Kurt,” and one of the best moments of “Furt”, “We could build a perimeter around you, like the secret service.” Although at the beginning of the show Puck and Kurt did not like each other at all, Puck and Kurt have grown close enough that Puck genuinely is going to miss him and wants to protect him so he can stay with him.
We also know that even though Puck has probably never had an interaction with Burt, he went to temple to pray for Burt’s health after his heart attack. It was something he was doing out of the goodness of his heart for a friend because he didn’t want someone he cared about to have to live without a father like he did. Obviously Puck cares for Kurt and has redeemed himself several times over.
7. Puckurt moments on Glee
Here's a list of some amazing, if little, Puckurt moments that have happened in canon. If the picture doesn't have a watermark, I have the url of the tumblr I found it on.
First off, when we first see Puck and Kurt during “Showmance”, Puck has his arm around Kurt with a chill look on his face, not worrying about how gay he looks. Obviously it’s just to throw Kurt in the dumpster, but one has to notice there is arainbow leading to them in the background.
The two have also had numerous amounts of eyesex on the show, particularly in the background of “It’s My Life/Confession, Pt. II” and, of course, the scene that follows “What It Feels Like for a Girl” in “The Power of Madonna”.
When Mister Schuester hallucinates the glee club as little kids, the young Puck holds up his arms shows off his guns, and the young Kurt sits next to him and inspects them. Yes, little kids can’t be controlled, but it’s hard not to add more to the Puckurt puzzle with obvious crush the young Kurt seems to have on the young Puck.
One of my favorite Puckurt interactions is in the background of “Sectionals” when Emma is telling Mr. Schue about their set list being leaked. Kurt is consistently being poked by someone, who turns out to be Puck. Kurt keeps telling him to stop but Puck keeps doing it. Now Kurt could’ve just moved or really yelled at him, but instead he stood there and let it happen. And Puck hardly seems to be trying to be malicious. I’d say there’s hints of flirting in that.
Now let’s look at Puck’s face while watching the performances at sectionals in “Special Education”. When the Hipsters sing their emotional, powerful song, he’s in tears and enjoying it. But when the Warblers take stage, he’s glaring. From what he said in that episode, it seems most likely that he is upset that Kurt is away from him, or, at the very least, that Kurt is not up and center.
To use an image made by Vanessa, here's how much Puck cares:
And I’ll end this segment with what has to be the best moment for Puckurt shippers. During “Britney/Brittany”, Santana and Brittany have a combined fantasy performance of “Me Against the Music”. The two, especially Brittany, are dancing in the foreground of the shot, but when one looks closely, it’s easy to find many, if not all of, the other glee clubbers. They’re in couples, with Finn and Rachel grouped together and Tina and Mike together, two canon ships together. Then you have Puck at the bar. Now, one would expect Quinn to be with him, but who’s sitting on the bar in his sexy outfit, sipping a drink? None other than Kurt Hummel.
Yes, that’s right; one of the most beloved Glee ships, Brittana, ships Puckurt.
So hopefully this is allowed here and makes sense. If it's not allowed, please feel free to take it down. But any comments on this would be great! Thanks so much, guys.
Author: xlessxthanx3x
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Noah "Puck" Puckerman/Kurt Hummel
Spoilers: Up to and including "Original Song" to be safe
Word Count: 2,630
Author’s Notes: So for the longest time I worked on a ship manifesto for my favorite Glee OTP, Puckurt. People on tumblr, where I posted it, seem to like it, so I'm hoping people on LJ enjoy it as well. Please forgive me if I tagged/posted/did anything else wrong, I'm still trying to understand LJ!
The Puckurt Manifesto: Reasons to Ship Puckurt
1. Just think of the characters themselves
Don’t think about the genders, sex, or their situations, just think about themselves and their personalities. (I’ll be using “him”, though, just so it’s easier to follow)
You have Character A, a person who loves the finer things in life; Character A is more sophisticated, intelligent, and ambitious than most everyone who surrounds A, craving freedom from the small town he has grown up in. A can be a bit of a snob, but it’s easy to see that it’s just a protective cover to spare any hurt feelings/harm to A’s well being. When A falls, he falls hard and will support that person with with all that he can. A has been bullied throughout life just for being true to himself, but has still been-for the most part-a true and loyal friend. A lost a parent early in life, leading A to lean on his dad for everything. Although A is very different from his dad, A and his dad love each other and will take drastic measures to protect the other.
You also have Character B, a rougher, bad boy content with cheaper things like wine coolers and T-shirts. B might not come off as smart at first, but B is actually quite street smart and wise in his own ways, and B’s also ambitious and craves to leave his small town and make it big in his own way. B can be a bit of a jerk, but it is to protect himself since he has been hurt so many times in his life, from people B has dated to B’s own family. When B falls, B falls hard and will support that person with all he can. B was a bully for at least a few years, maybe his whole life, but has since changed his ways and has become one of the most loyal and brave people one could be. B’s father left him and his family when B was still so very young. Although it may seem that B is not family-oriented on first glance, B actually spends time with his family, including his nana, and will protect anyone that can be considered his family, including his daughter.
So these two people might seem very different on the surface, but actually have quite a lot in common: loyalty to friends and family, tendencies to fall in love deeply and swiftly, a mask to hide their true feelings, etc. And where they differ-their pasts, how they lost their parents, their overall personality stereotype-they balance each other out beautifully.
In fact, this type of pairing-the bad one/good but spunky one-can be found in countless of romantic movies and books: A Walk to Remember, Aladdin, Lady and the Tramp, Tangled, 10 Things I Hate About You, Grease, Crybaby, Beauty and the Beast, even Pride and Prejudice.
2. What the romance would mean
Like the Kurtofsky relationship, this would be a relationship very much focused on redemption. We know Puck threw pee balloons at Kurt, nailed his lawn furniture to his roof, threw him in the dumpster, and made fun of him often, so if Kurt could let that go-which, as far as we know, he has-and then have a full blow successful relationship, it would send a powerful message of redemption.
3. Like Mother, Like Son
Burt admitted in his epic lecture to Finn in “Theatricality” that he used to be a homophobic bully and would throw around the f word as an insult, to imply that it was wrong to be gay, to be different.
But what made Burt change?
I think it’s safe to assume that he had become a nicer person by the time he met Kurt’s mom, or else they probably wouldn’t have gotten married/together; in “Sexy”, Blaine calls Kurt “compassionate” and Burt said Kurt got that trait from his mom (even though it’s quite obvious his dad has a large load of it). And nice girls don’t marry/date huge jerks like what it’s implied Burt was. So even though Burt was most likely still slightly homophobic and possibly had jerk tendencies, he had obviously become a nicer guy by then. And when Kurt started showing signs of being effeminante and possibly gay, who, more than likely, helped Burt deal with that and therefore made him go full circle and stop being a homophobe? Kurt’s mother.
Now Puck’s never used the f word on the show, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he had said it at one point or another. But even if he hasn’t, he was a homophobic bully to Kurt and called him many derogatory terms for liking people of the same sex. He torments the entire glee club, including Kurt, for being different, not wanting to accept that he was different, too. And even though he has made tremendous progress since then and wants to protect [his] boy, Kurt”, he still has homophobic tendencies. In “Never Been Kissed” he insults Kurt several times in a row.
Puck’s bullying and jerk streak run parallel to Burt’s own. So what does Puck need to come full circle from his bullying like Burt did? Someone like Kurt’s mother.
Now little is known about Kurt’s mom, but whenever she is brought up, she tends to be compared to Kurt. For example, after Kurt throws the Diva Off in “Wheels”, Burt sighs and says, “You are your mother, y’know? She was always the strong one.” And as stated before, when Blaine calls Kurt compassionate, Burt insists that Kurt gets that from his mom.
Kurt’s actions and personality echo his mother’s. His mother helped Burt reach full circle, and that’s exactly what Kurt could do with Puck; help him finally reach full circle on his homophobic backstory.
Besides how Kurt acts as Puck’s guide to redemption, he will also be a positive support in Puck’s life. Like the other people Puck has dated, Kurt won’t let Puck get away with his BS; Puck will be forced to recognize when he is in the wrong. He’ll also help motivate him to get out of Lima and make something of himself since it’s Kurt’s number one goal in life at the moment. And since Kurt knows what it’s like to have no one there to listen to you, or to at least feel like that, he would always be there to listen to and care for Puck, something Puck is obviously not used to (remember his freakout in “Never Been Kissed” about no one caring about him?) And Puck would finally have a father figure in the way of the most BAMF-tastic father ever, Burt Hummel.
But the good effects won’t be just used on Puck; Kurt would grow and develop and evolve as a person with this relationship. Kurt would be able to develop his confidence further than before to a point where it was true, blue confidence 24/7 and not a sometimes faked bravado like before. It’s no secret that Kurt is very sexually repressed, most likely due to being brought up in a society where having gay desires is repulsive and frowned upon whereas Puck is sexually realized to a point where he sometimes believes he literally cannot stop having it. He would be able to convince Kurt that he is truly sexy and help him develop sexually, in the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of the act, which, Freud would have us believe, is one of the steps to reaching full maturity. And, like what Kurt would do for him, Puck wouldn’t let Kurt get away with “playing the victim”, as Burt calls it, and will fully make him realize when he’s in the wrong and won’t let him get away with that sort of bull.
4. The sexuality aspect and how it relates to TV
A lot of Puckurtsies and other shippers of Puck/guy tend to use the idea that Puck is just gay for that one person, which is a completely realistic and plausible event that could happen in life, but it’s not something that’s represented often, if at all, in major works. Often times when a girl ends up with another girl all of a sudden, she turns out to be bisexual, and I’m pretty sure a straight guy has never really ended up in a relationship with another guy unless he was actually gay the whole time. So the idea that people could see the fluidity of sexuality in males, something so underrepresented, is quite amazing. And how awesome would it be to see someone who wasn’t flamboyant, geeky, and/or metro but is still not completely straight? Or to see a gay/bi jock who doesn’t hate himself but just accepts himself as is? That would make for some original, exciting TV.
But not all supports of Puck/guy think he’s gay for that one person or just slightly sexually fluid, but rather that he is bisexual, pansexual, etc. Yet again, seeing this in a male on TV would be an amazing message, since bisexuality in males is rarely seen, either.
I’m personally from the camp that Puck is bisexual, or at least heteroflexible, and just sees sexy as sexy. Below are a few reasons why I think so.
1. All the comments about Sam’s lips and balls
2. His slight smile and nod at Sam’s question about having balls in his mouth
3. Various shots where he is looking at guy’s ass as they walk away
4. He cuddled up a bit with Sam whilst drunk
5. The implied M/M/F threesome in "The Rhodes Not Taken"
Above all, the real reason to believe he is not completely straight is because he’s never said that he is straight; it’s a biphobic world where we assume everyone is completely straight just because it’s the norm, but just because he’s not flamboyant like Kurt doesn’t mean he’s completely straight. We shouldn’t assume people are straight or gay or anything until they tell us, and even then an open mind must be kept.
5. Tale as Old as Time
I’m all for letting the Kurtofsky shippers use this for their ship defenses, but Beauty and the Beast, at least at the Disney level (I’m not sure how the original French story differs), has a lot of parallels to Puckurt. Let me quote my sister Vicki on this:
"...in Beauty and the Beast, Beast/Person B is not hiding a deep dark secret, or huge-ass claws and teeth. The beast makes no attempt to hide his personality; he is proud of his utter dickishness. He is an asshole not because he is scared of showing his true personality, but because he can get away with it; he is a spoiled brat. Beast was cursed to be a beast so that his outside would be as horrible as his inside. He does not have a heart of gold; he is a douchebag through and through. Beauty does not inspire Beast 'to redeem and reveal himself.' She inspires him to redeem and improve himself.
Puck totally fits the role of the Beast. He was an asshole not because he was afraid that people would learn his deep, dark secret, but because he can get away with it, because he’s Puckzilla/Puckasuarus/Puck. But, through spending time with the glee club (and Kurt), Puck has started to redeem and improve himself."
6. Puck cares about Kurt
Some people might not like the Puckurt ship because Puck hasn’t seemed to have redeemed himself for his tormenting of Kurt, but he definitely has. Despite making fun of Kurt in “Never Been Kissed”, season two Puck has shown that he cares about Kurt quite a lot.
Obviously there is the Puckurtsie’s favorite line in “Special Education”, “…my boy, Kurt,” and one of the best moments of “Furt”, “We could build a perimeter around you, like the secret service.” Although at the beginning of the show Puck and Kurt did not like each other at all, Puck and Kurt have grown close enough that Puck genuinely is going to miss him and wants to protect him so he can stay with him.
We also know that even though Puck has probably never had an interaction with Burt, he went to temple to pray for Burt’s health after his heart attack. It was something he was doing out of the goodness of his heart for a friend because he didn’t want someone he cared about to have to live without a father like he did. Obviously Puck cares for Kurt and has redeemed himself several times over.
7. Puckurt moments on Glee
Here's a list of some amazing, if little, Puckurt moments that have happened in canon. If the picture doesn't have a watermark, I have the url of the tumblr I found it on.
First off, when we first see Puck and Kurt during “Showmance”, Puck has his arm around Kurt with a chill look on his face, not worrying about how gay he looks. Obviously it’s just to throw Kurt in the dumpster, but one has to notice there is arainbow leading to them in the background.
The two have also had numerous amounts of eyesex on the show, particularly in the background of “It’s My Life/Confession, Pt. II” and, of course, the scene that follows “What It Feels Like for a Girl” in “The Power of Madonna”.
When Mister Schuester hallucinates the glee club as little kids, the young Puck holds up his arms shows off his guns, and the young Kurt sits next to him and inspects them. Yes, little kids can’t be controlled, but it’s hard not to add more to the Puckurt puzzle with obvious crush the young Kurt seems to have on the young Puck.
One of my favorite Puckurt interactions is in the background of “Sectionals” when Emma is telling Mr. Schue about their set list being leaked. Kurt is consistently being poked by someone, who turns out to be Puck. Kurt keeps telling him to stop but Puck keeps doing it. Now Kurt could’ve just moved or really yelled at him, but instead he stood there and let it happen. And Puck hardly seems to be trying to be malicious. I’d say there’s hints of flirting in that.
Now let’s look at Puck’s face while watching the performances at sectionals in “Special Education”. When the Hipsters sing their emotional, powerful song, he’s in tears and enjoying it. But when the Warblers take stage, he’s glaring. From what he said in that episode, it seems most likely that he is upset that Kurt is away from him, or, at the very least, that Kurt is not up and center.
To use an image made by Vanessa, here's how much Puck cares:
And I’ll end this segment with what has to be the best moment for Puckurt shippers. During “Britney/Brittany”, Santana and Brittany have a combined fantasy performance of “Me Against the Music”. The two, especially Brittany, are dancing in the foreground of the shot, but when one looks closely, it’s easy to find many, if not all of, the other glee clubbers. They’re in couples, with Finn and Rachel grouped together and Tina and Mike together, two canon ships together. Then you have Puck at the bar. Now, one would expect Quinn to be with him, but who’s sitting on the bar in his sexy outfit, sipping a drink? None other than Kurt Hummel.
Yes, that’s right; one of the most beloved Glee ships, Brittana, ships Puckurt.
So hopefully this is allowed here and makes sense. If it's not allowed, please feel free to take it down. But any comments on this would be great! Thanks so much, guys.