Oh, sorry, no, but I haven’t really looked either. But it’s early days and it does feel like the fandom’s growing, though, so maybe soon?
hi i don’t know if this will make sense but i just want to share it with someone. i recently finished tbh like 4 days ago and has been rewatching it again after. then i only realized this morning how powerful the implication of sterling, blair and even april on their complete acceptance of their sexuality and them being ‘right’ with their God. i was born & raised in a very devout catholic family and even the thought of masturbation or sex trigger alarm bells in my brain. (1/2)
(2/2) i’ve long accepted that it’s not to be ashamed of but the conditioning and the feeling still lingers. it was a mind blowing moment for me, when i realized the complete freedom they exude in regards to these topics. the belief that, in the eyes of God, who they are is right and is nothing to be ashamed of.
That makes complete sense and you’re right, it is so powerful! Honestly, now that you mention it, I’m wondering why it didn’t really register with me as significantly as it should have. I try to focus on the meta aspect, right, not just what it’s like in the story but outside it, as I definitely did make a super big deal about the pressure on April to come out.
I guess maybe I glossed over it because on some level I still saw it as a very liberal satire more than a genuinely religious show? But now that I’m turning over that theory too, like, it is a gentle satire, sure, but it’s not mocking actually religious people, just the extremes. There’s nothing at all jokey in the show’s treatment of Sterling and April’s very real panic at being outed, and that also was something I related to very hard. Or maybe it’s because I never actually had the religious reconciliation problem myself, I didn’t struggle with–in my case–Islamic beliefs about being gay, I actually went the April path, all well, if I am, that’s on God, so like, not my fault.
But no, no, you’re right, it is so valuable to see these relatable but still sincerely religious girls, with not just the knowledge of the Bible and…all the rest of that, but the belief in it and the genuine acceptance to let it in and influence and affect them, to still be like, it’s all good. They didn’t withdraw from their beliefs or make trade offs, or have to interrogate it within themselves, debate it out, try to accept it with their head but still wrestle with it in their hearts, choose one or the other. It is very cool, that comfort.
Thanks for sharing and making me think about this aspect!
Sterling looks like a Jes Macallan to me
Ohhh, but like, different evolutions of the same Pokemon? Maybe when there are so many thin blonde white actresses, there’s just gonna be a lot of overlap.
And another anon:
Sterling kind of looks like Sydney Sweeney in certain angles, and April looks like Angourie Rice from Spider-Man!
I can see what you mean by the first one, but the second, tbh, she also reminds me more of Sterling, not so much April. Well, looking at more pictures, maybe like, a mixture… Hmm. I mean, it just goes back to the point above, the overlap.
i think a really underrated scene i haven’t seen enough people talk about was when sterling facetimed april after her fight with blair. april was really sweet about comforting her and didn’t panic even though she asked her not to tell blair. plus she took sterling’s ‘let’s come out’ spiral in stride or at least until her dad showed up at the door
I know! I was literally just reskimming through ep 9 and caught that again and even though she was so freaked out about anyone else knowing, AND that Blair reacting badly would just increase the chances she’d tell someone else, she saw Sterling was upset and just focused on reassuring her. Their short moments in ep 9 were pretty great, tbh, and you could really see, in their interactions with other people, that they were considering themselves a unit.
felt SO bad for sterling in episode 10 i mean jesus talk about having a bad day. also, blair’s “no” at the end when she held sterlings hand just about broke my heart
Seriously, whatever else everyone was going through, it wasn’t alllll this together.
There are a bunch of asks about the ending and I was gonna do them as a batch but I was just watching random scenes before bed and ended on the finale and man, the way it built up, with the mom going, I gave you everything you asked for but I wasn’t going to let you take my daughter and Dana smirking at that and you JUST HAD THAT INKLING WHERE IT WAS GOING, all the previous moments starting to come together, when she “knew” to pick up Sterling from the lock-in and was so oddly proud and was like I guess it’s mother’s intuition, and then asked for a hug.
AND THEN IT WENT INTO TWIN VISION, for characters other than Blair and Sterling and it was like, well, of course they’d have it too, and then their convo and the audience knowing what was coming, and Debbie and Anderson, and then heartbreakingly, BLAIR realized before Sterling and as you said, that “No” and reaching out for Sterling’s hand before Dana dropped the bomb. Aaah, it was so well done.
I feel like April flirting with Luke in the lockdown was bc of her dad mentioning Sterling, she probably thought if he knew something then other people must be thinking it too.
Oh, absolutely, she went into panic mode and it’s so understandable. Her first thought would be that he knows and is either hinting at it so she stops on her own or is going to draw it out, because really, why else would he bring them up? Of course there are other rational explanations–even aside from Sterling being one of the bounty hunters that caught him, maybe one of his church friends brought them up, everyone likes the Wesley twins–but none of them particularly likely and you know how it is when you’re a closeted gay in a homophobic environment, you become paranoid at everything, looking too long at women, avoiding looking at them, how you dress, how you interact with girls, how you interact with boys, what your hobbies are. She is absolutely correct to worry about herself.
Of course that doesn’t give her free rein to hurt other people and she did need to apologize to Sterling about how she handled it without talking to her first and they both might end up hurting Luke some more, but it really is a situation with no good answer.
