Rin asks: Why does Quinn love Rachel?
Sophy says: Quinn loves Rachel because she is gay and wants to get in her pants.
What? Sometimes it’s that simple.
Okay, it’s not that simple. But there is no doubt in my mind that a part of Quinn’s early fixation on Rachel was coming from a place of repressed lust and a yearning to break out of her Daddy’s Little Heterosexual world and taste another in which she might be free.
I think that’s what Rachel is to Quinn in the beginning. Freedom, to which she is drawn and of which she is terrified. She is pornographic pictures on bathroom walls for other people to find funny. She is mean caricatures surrounded by hearts. She is never good or bad to Quinn. She is never ugly or beautiful. She is never wanted or walked away from. She is always both. And pretty soon she becomes everything.
For Rachel, knowing who Quinn really is is a journey. For Quinn, knowing who Rachel really is is over before it begins. She’s surprised, in season 1, when Rachel entreats her to stick with Glee, when she doesn’t use her pregnancy as an opportunity to torture her, not because she thinks Rachel’s that kind of person but because she expected her to pretend that she was.
Quinn expected Rachel to play games with her or at the very least she expected her to just not care. But she doesn’t. She reaches out. She walks away with her head held high. She is the least ridiculous thing Quinn has ever seen.
And that’s the moment when it all falls into place; that’s when Quinn knows why she zeroed in on Rachel Berry to torment. She’s strong. She knows who she is, even if she doesn’t quite know it yet, and she is on her way to something big.
Rachel has plenty of insecurities in season 1 and they never really go away. But she also has plenty of vigor and self-belief. She has a determination to live life on her own terms, and that is so sexy to Quinn that it makes her shudder (she tells herself she is repulsed).
Quinn never dreamed of being let into Rachel’s world the way Rachel dreamed of being let into hers, because she recognized right from the start that it was not some kind of exclusive club you could buy your way or even behave your way into. Rachel’s world was a state of being. Rachel’s world was much braver than Quinn thought she could ever be.
What she didn’t count on was how hard Rachel would try to show her how much better she is than she knows and how easy it is to believe her when she looks at you with those earnest and omniscient eyes. What she didn’t know - could never have imagined - was that she would someday tell Rachel the same things she needed to be telling herself.
You can’t change your past. But you can let go. And start your future.
Quinn loves Rachel for so many reasons: her decency, her boldness, the way she makes her laugh just by being who she is, her one-in-a-million talent, her ambition, her gentleness, the dimples in her cheeks when she throws serious smiles her way, the way her arms around her feel like a relief.
But above and beyond all else, Quinn loves Rachel because Rachel is how she came to love herself.
