#april stevens

Sterling: I’m stupid, do me.

they're academic rivals. they do debate together. there is a lot of tension. april/paris inevitably hate sterling/rory's boyfriends as they are "not good enough" aka april/paris are in love with them!!!!!

"And now you've got me."

"I've got you?"

"And I've got you."

On the other hand there’s Sterling who figured out she was gay a week before she kissed April. While we never see a lens into what her parents think about gay people Anderson and Debbie are likely to at least tolerate it. They’re both shown to be flawed parents but they truly unconditionally love their two children. She also was the person who put away John Stevens. She is the sweetest person ever and is too good for this world while also being a somewhat repressed Christian girl who’s incredibly horny. She’s such an interesting character because that’s messy and something that isn’t really shown much.

Twin themes!! There’s so much good foreshadowing surrounding the big reveal (iykyk) and there’s also so much DOUBLING. Double lives especially is a big theme. Like, Debbie hiding Dana; sterling and Blair hiding their bounty hunting; the (functional) froyo shop being bowser’s bounty hunting lair; Terrance the lone wolf bounty hunter and bowser with his little “teen white savior” teammates; Yolanda’s sister who is a perfect foil for her; miles hiding Blair from his family; sterling hiding april from Blair…and then april hiding sterling period.

And I guess the doubling is kind of showing like, here are all the possibilities and here’s what happens when we let love in and here’s what happens when we shut it out

so much good stuff about being from the American south. As someone who grew up in the south and who grew up visiting close family in Atlanta…it is cool as fuck the way the south is portrayed in all of its complexity. The show does not shy away from issues of race, religion, SES, etc SPECFICALLY in Atlanta and manages to do it in a way that doesn’t come across as heavy handed. This show could ONLY be set in the south—it would be a fundamentally different show in any other setting

Also, like I said with the doubling points above, this show is full of secrets and secret keeping!!! But yet a fundamental point of the show is that being silenced is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being. There’s a scene where Blair is telling sterling that her dad yelled at her and that the worst part of all is that he told her to Be Quiet! And like in some ways that scene highlights what a loving household Blair has grown up in that the one of the worst things her Dad has ever said to her is be quiet (not even shut up)…but it really made me be like wow being told to stop questioning and be quiet IS something terrible. It’s a denial and a violation of our right to use our voices

and like it’s not a coincidence that in the final ep Dana gags sterling. Because the way sterling is talking to her is powerful and you can tell it is making her hesitate and question her whole life