#Went no contact with my ex so I can't exactly ask for screenshots

[69-toojay]

Back when I binged glee in covid I used to bother my then friend, now ex about all my glee opinions and stuff and we somehow made this running joke that sebastian was a brown boy because why else would someone have so little chill about a school extracurricular right?

It started as a joke, and it's little more than crack even now but the thought of a biracial seb (sebu as we called him) is still funny and it endeared him to me. Through him we'd go on to make fantastical stories about the universe in which he was half brown. I don't know if I need to mention I'm brown too but yeah

The lore went as follows Sebastian's father Arshad Smythe was a second generation south asian immigrant who studied law in France where he met Mrs. Smythe.

we made him the most run of the mill brown dad imaginable and we loved him so much because of it , he was obviously just based on our fathers and uncles and brothers. The people we loved, who loved us in return, the people whose dad jokes and overbearing old timer antics we rolled our eyes at.

Mr and Mrs Smythe alternated living between France and Ohio, where Mr. Smythes childhood home was. It was a dilapidated suburban duplex complete with ugly beige carpeting. But Mr. Smythe just couldn't bear to part with it so he never sold the house or moved out. He would buy his son the best cars and enroll him in the best schools. He'd spend on everything else but he just couldn't change anything about the house his mother had lived in.

Sebastian and his mother understood. She had been important to them too. Samantha Smythe remembered all the times she sat on the floor of this house so the older woman could rub coconut oil into her hair. Sebastian remembered the spicy pickles she cooked in her kitchen, how good they tasted. So they understood.

Burt Hummel was an old friend of Mr. Smythes. He'd babysit Sebastian every once in a while, Santana too. So Kurt, Sebastian and Santana were all friends that got upto fun shenanigans in this world.

Sebastian had a cat called Maribelle, who scratched and bit everyone except for their trio and Mr. Smythe, she was also a mafia boss and an interdimensional/ divine immortal being who had a life of crime on the weekends. He had found her as a stray and begged his dad to let him keep keep her. He did albeit begrudgingly as all dads do, and then quickly became best friends with her as all dads do. I drew cartoons of Kurt and Sebastian as preteens chilling on beach chairs with sunglasses on, in the front yard of Sebastian's grandma's house. Mr Smythe , a portly gentleman with a half bald head with borders of dark hair lining the sides, wearing thick framed glasses would yell at them about their homework to which they'd reply "It's Sunbathe Saturday, Dad!"

Mr Smythe would then grumble and pick up Maribelle who had been in the process of burying a man, unbeknownst to him.

We had so many really specific just brown people things jokes about Sebastian, like him putting 'manja', a type of liquid glass used in competitive kite racing in South Asia in the rock salt slushie. Just him in general being really excited about sharp drinks after his brown cousin back in his home country show him the ropes.

Him being the kind of typical annoying uncultured highschool boy, ' kamla', who hung around coffee shops all day.

Him challenging his father to a game of cards at age eleven by making Mr. Smythe promise if he won he would have to love him unconditionally. Just as he pulled out the last ace he yelled out 'I'm gay but you love unconditionally no take backs!" And ran up the stairs yelling "no take backs!" As santana and kurt blocked mr smythes entrance to the stairway by popping ill timed party poppers.

If Seb ever got into any scuffles with them during play time he'd fire off a flurry of mixed French and Bengali curse causing Kurtana to exchange confused glances like, did you get any of that ?

His early s3 backstory was literally Mr Smythe being a little bit of a tiger parent. But then when he breaks down because of the Dave thing his dad makes amends saying "I want you to be the best at everything seb, and that includes being a person."

The scandals fix it in this universe was Maribelle scratching Blaines eyes out when she overhears about it from kurt and seb discussing it.

I figured later that Mr Smythe must have taken his wife's name because it's hardly a brown name even in Christian circles, to which my ex had replied you only realised now?

There's really no words in English to properly translate the jokes and their cultural significance to us. Parts of brown seb universe bled into my shitposts and fics but I could never part with him fully. Because the world wasn't ready for or interested in him. Since then I've graduated college, I've lost access to the Instagram account we used to text about this world in, and I've lost my ex and I've lost that time in my life, Brown Seb only exists in my memory now. So now maybe it's time to give him to the world so he exists outside of it too. Idk if there are Desi gleeks out there who get the jokes, but til then this post is just for me to remember