i have never wanted a fic more, than i do stepril!! i remeber reading “childhood friends to enemies to lovers” on fandoms where the characters are like 30 and not even canon. come on fic writers, if we can conjure up childhood/teenage personalities/plotlines for people on their 30s, surely we can do this! please. anyone?
Aww, I’m sorry I took so long to reply but I actually went and checked ao3. When you sent this, there would have been 16 fics in the tag. There are now 91, so that’s not terrible!
But I super get your point, this is ripe for fic, it’s left in that perfect place where they’re separated but it’s the kind of conflict that you can play around and work with. Sometimes canon leaves characters SO far apart it’s like, okay, it’s gonna take 90k words for them to even be in the same room, and other times–and I find this HARDER, where they actually have no conflict at all, they should be together and just…aren’t? Like, how do you handle that in fic? “Hey, we should be together.” “We should.” The end. Post-s1 Stepril, you have so much juicy material, and all kinds of ways they can get back together or carry on a secret relationship, or have April react to Sterling putting her dad in jail (that might take 90k words).
Lmao at your comment about how people write HSAUs for characters in their 30s, or say, when they’re warlords in a dystopian future? I remember getting into discussions about why there were so many HSAUs and wondered if it was just people wanting to write away from canon, but, for example, Glee had a ton where they stayed in school. I think it’s that a lot of fic writers actually have experience with high school, sometimes recent, so it’s easier to write what you know, as opposed to hospitals or mysterious warehouses. Even if you haven’t been to American high school, there’s so much media out there based in it and it’s easier to research. It’s also interesting to write as a stripped down archetypey version of other worlds. The popular kids, the nerds, you slot people into simplified positions and try to replicate their original dynamics with way lower stakes.
Though I guess the really good fic, even if it’s a HSAU, goes beyond the basics, because like, look at the world of TBH. Sterling and April are somehow both the popular kids and nerds, and the stakes are certainly higher than they might be. Even if you start with this relatively simpler setting, people are complex. I haven’t really looked at the actual fics yet, but I assume most are canon adjacent and not like, doctor or rock star AUs.
Maddie’s tweet: ” i like #stepril cus april could step on me if she rly wanted wait did i say that out loud @hales_devon”
Lol, the blue check really makes it.
And I hadn’t seen Devon’s reply, hah, they’re having FUN with this.
But what if April meets Bowser? Like when Like met Paris in girlmore Girls?
Lololol, I went and rewatched their first meeting:
The way I can see April–especially if she and Sterling are still apart–TERRIFYING poor Bowser exactly like that. God, they really are canon Paris/Rory, huh, height difference and exasperated fondness and all.
But I think I might need to tag in my resident expert @dollsome-does-tumblr for a better answer.
Why is Sterling so sure everything will be ok with her parents if they found out about her an April? Sorry i found that odd. Just look what happened when she drank. She was kicked out the house. So you mean to tell me Sterling just thinks her parents will be like ok i suppose its ok. Its just oddly placed. What your take on it?
Well, I think the show gets that people, and teenagers in particular, make decisions that aren’t always the most logically sound. They don’t do a cost benefit analysis, it’s often I want this to be true, so I’m hoping it is. We do that all the time, how many decisions do we make that we know we’ll pay for later, but we’re just hoping it’ll magically work out, sleeping late, eating unhealthy, skipping a class, procrastinating on literally anything? It doesn’t make sense, it’s just the best option in the moment. April herself was falling into that in ep 8 and 9, she knew there was no way she could come out safely, but oh, she wanted it.
But Sterling in particular has led a bit of a charmed life until the last ep. Like, okay, she breaks the rules (sleeping with Luke, drinking) and faces the consequences (school ostracization, mother kicking her out of the house), but the being kicked out of the house was about as gentle as possible, and when her mom found out about the sex it was a bonding moment and the drinking somehow fixed the school situation! So she’s actually come out on top.
She WAS scared about what to do with April, as she told that lady in the throuple, April could tell her parents, but she went ahead and kissed her anyway because in the moment, she couldn’t do anything else. And then she (rightly) freaked for two seconds until even THAT somehow amazingly worked out, against all odds, as we well know. You surprise the most Christian high maintenance girl in school with a kiss, it’s lottery probability not having that backfire badly.
There are some people who make high risk decisions again and again even when they turn out badly and they just spiral. This kid is rewarded again and again, like, I would have understood her optimism even if only half those things had worked out. She’ll think, oh, they’ll be fine, or at worst, I’ll spend a night out on the lawn, but honestly? She’s not thinking of the consequences at all, it’ll work out.
Thoughts on when April is pretending to be friends with Sterling for the debate and the first thing she says to her is that she looks good ?
Ahaha, and then I tried to picture you as someone I love and respect? APRIL, why are you like this. She really was like, hello, fellow heterosexual girl, you look amazing! That’s what straight girls do, right, compliment each other on their looks to boost their confidence! And then unable to continue the charade for five seconds.
Although there might have been a bit of truth in that, the way she looked her up and down… Honestly, Sterling did look good that day.
Can I just say I’ve been listening non-stop to Slow Burn, I am sucker for shows using music for significant moments (and it is the perfect song for them). I am also suffering because I cannot stop remembering April’s face when Sterling played the song, she looked like she was in pain and on the verge of tears ?
Oh, I’m like that about songs too! Except I actually tend to not know any songs in general till I hear them on media so that’s my first and only association with them. I have this whole list of songs I just associate with f/f scenes. For Stepril it’s not just Slow Burn but that Hit It Hard song from ep 7 too, lol.
But no doubt, Slow Burn is definitely their song, ughhh, including ep 10. :((( April’s face in that sceeeene, like, I think because we see so much of Sterling’s interiority and Maddie has such a ridiculously expressive face, in contrast we tend to picture April as someone more in charge, knowing what she’s doing, but her expression showed how she’s also just playing this as best as she can with what she has.
What did you think of the scene of “I aim to please” “noted” and Sterling’s reaction afterwards?
Hee, well, okay, what do YOU think of it, anon? I honestly just giggle when I see it, it’s just so surprising and fun with all these layers. Like, on the one hand, they’re these super inexperienced Christian kids, right, doing their little Christian project, closeted, nothing can be put out in the open, but you also have Sterling explicitly so horny for April and it is PALPABLE.
And like, the aim to please, she’s saying it half-joking but it’s literally what she is, this good kid people-pleaser of the highest order but it’s also this proud little acknowledgement of her efforts to win over April since the debate tournament, wear her down with sheer friendliness, and like, yay, progress! Progress because she wants to DATE her.
But god.
I don’t think any of us, Sterling included, expected that drawn out “Noooted”, it’s just April being her bossy, overbearing self, but it’s so unintentionally aligned with the way Sterling has been approaching this convo. I think she’s caught off guard by how much it played into her little fantasies, lol, because MAKE NO MISTAKE. This kid has been fantasizing about April and is not at all opposed to her bossy, overbearing side and it was just this odd little intersection of the two and she sharply looks over and swallows as she realizes that no, April didn’t really mean anything by it beyond their usual dynamic.
In a season filled with a lot of favorite moments for just this ship, this remains in my top few just for its sheer rewatchability value. The first time we’re here, it’s all nerves and anticipation and even worry for Sterling, rooting for her but afraid of how quickly she’s running into this. And there was some relief that there’s obviously some thawing on April’s part and even a BIT of optimism, but god, on rewatching, and knowing Aprli’s this super intense lesbian and that underneath this tentative little interaction they’re both canonically starting to see the other in a new light and developing raging crushes on each other, it’s just SO much fun