While the Selection Committees for the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments won’t release their handiwork until Sunday, we’ve decided to kick off the Madness a little early this year. We all deserve a little fun, right? But, as is our wont around here, we’re switching things up just a little bit.

First, because some things never change, a little basketball nerdery for you…

Back in 2011, the NCAA decided to expand their annual Division I Men’s Basketball Championship tournament to 68 teams. It was the first expansion of the tournament since the creation of the Mountain West Conference forced the NCAA to add an extra team a decade ago. At the time, most people expected the NCAA to expand the field to 80 or 96 teams — to maximize their value ahead of a landmark television deal with CBS — but the “nonprofit organization” settled at 68. The number would offer a few more opportunities for at-large bids and the member schools would be able to maintain their shares of the tournament’s payout.

The women’s tournament didn’t join in the expansion. The NCAA has always been short-sighted in its recognition of the women’s tournament’s value, monetarily and otherwise, so the field remained at 64 teams, as it had been since 1994. But finally, last year, the women’s tournament followed suit. As part of a concerted effort to create more parity between the two tournaments, four additional four additional teams were added to the field, the women were given access to the “March Madness” moniker, identical lounges and swag for men’s and women’s players and more promotion across the board. The investment boosted interest in the women’s tournament, as viewership was up 16% over the previous year.

If the men’s tournament is doing it and the women’s tournament is doing it…we’ve gotta follow suit, right? So this year, we’re expanding our Autostraddle March Madness field to 68 participants. With that shift comes four additional match-ups — play-in games which the NCAA dubs the “First Four” — to determine the last four teams to qualify for the 64-team bracket that plays the first round. Of course, we’ll be adopting that too…only, instead of opening up those First Four match-ups to the whole wide web, as we usually do, we’re going to start here…with the members who power this community year-round.

Welcome to the voting for the A+ First Four!

Click here to open a larger image of the bracket.

The theme of this year’s contest is Tropey Wives and the entire field is a celebration of some of our favorite pop culture tropes:

+ Forbidden Fruit – These are couples that, for some reason — be it the regressive laws of the time period or the rules of nature or prior commitments or whatever — should not be together…but we still cheer for them anyway. Well, some of them.

+ Enemies to Lovers – A classic, right? For some of them, “enemies to lovers” fits…they were really genuine enemies…but for most, it’s like, “antagonists to lovers.” Still an all-time fave, no matter what you call it.

+ Opposites Attract – Two remarkably different people brought together by a shared passion.

+ Friends to Lovers – Sometimes you wake up and you realize that the friendship that you’ve coveted for so many years was meant to be something more.

Let’s take a look at the match-ups for our first-ever A+ First Four:

Forbidden Fruit: #11. Miranda and Che, And Just Like That

The first moment that Miranda Hobbes really gets a look at Che Diaz — when Carrie introduces her best friend to her “podcast boss” — she’s smitten. You can hardly blame her, Che is just so full of swagger, radiating confidence, effortlessly flirting with her and they look like Sara Ramirez. The next time they cross paths, at Che’s comedy show, Miranda has a full-blown crush. She’s just there — looking like the heart-eyes emoji — falling a little more in love with Che in every second. And by the time Miranda shares a blowback with Che at the afterparty, she’s gone: completely and totally in love with someone that isn’t her husband.

That’s the complication, right? Miranda’s married. To a man. To Steve, the only semi-decent man to ever exist in the Sex and the City universe. But she persists, unapologetically…and the truth is, we kinda want her to…because it’s Cynthia Nixon and Sara Ramirez and, dammit, we deserve nice things.

Forbidden Fruit: #11. Jackie and Leslie, Hightown

There’s a memorable scene in the movie, 28 Days, where one of the rehab patients asks their counselor how they’ll know when they’re ready to start dating. The counselor ponders for a moment and then shares his rule of thumb: “when you get home, get yourself a plant. Then, in about a year, get a pet. And then, if, in say…two years, the plant and the pet are still alive…then you can start to think about having a relationship.” That struck me, both then and now, as a little excessive but I get the point: in the early stages of recovery, it’s important for the focus to be on yourself. That time is about a newly sober person finding their footing again and you never know how injecting a new person into that dynamic will turn out. It’s dangerous.

But Jackie Quiñones doesn’t care. She just lost her best friend and thinks she’s already hit her rock bottom. Now she’s in AA meetings, she has a job she’s excited by and good at, and she convinced she’s won. She’s beat her addictions. And for while, that feels true, but never more than when she’s with Leslie. When Leslie weaves their fingers together, when she pulls Jackie into a kiss, when Leslie asks for permission to go down on her, she forgets how dangerous this could be.

And, if we’re being honest, so do we.

Enemies to Lovers: #12. Candace and Lilly, Astrid & Lilly Save the World

Once upon a time, Candace and Lilly were friends but, somewhere along the way, things changed. Lilly shows up at Candace’s house for a birthday party and is told she’s been disinvited. Lilly assumes it was because of her weight, that it made her a casualty of Candace’s teenage pursuit of popularity and they go their separate ways. Lilly finds a new BFF in Astrid and Candace aligns with the bullies at school who torment them. The local jock, Tate, leads the bullying — calling Astrid and Lilly the “Pudge Patrol” — and his girlfriend, Candace, regularly joins in.

But one day, the tension between the girls lessens. Lilly comes to school with the confidence of someone who’s kicking ass and saving the world in her free time and Candace notices. She’s drawn back into Lilly orbit…starts defending her from the bullying and reclaims her role as Lilly’s confidante. Even still, it’s hard for Candace to let go of everyone’s expectations until “she remembers Lilly’s advice about her life and her decisions being her own now and decides to act on it…by kissing Lilly! Right on the mouth!”

Enemies to Lovers: #12. April and Sterling, Teenage Bounty Hunters

Like their First Four competition, April and Sterling started out as friends and then became enemies before finally becoming…well, whatever the age-appropriate equivalent of lovers is. Sterling tried to introduce April to new people and April took that as Sterling not wanting to be around her anymore and, instead, pawning her off to new people. April was left heartbroken and the pair went from friends to each other’s arch-nemesis. It happened in the fifth grade and April’s still smarting over the slight.

Once the truth of what actually happened back then is out, tensions starts to ease and feelings start the come to the fore. Still, though, the relationship doesn’t come easily. Here’s how Valerie talked about the couple in her review of the show:

one thing I love about Sterling and April as they figure out their feelings is that neither of them have really internalized the homophobia they are surrounded by. They have smartphones and the internet, they’re growing up in the era of shows like One Day at a Time, Euphoria, and The Bold Type. (I just realized I don’t actually know what teenagers these days are watching but everyone on the CW is gay so my point is, they’ve been exposed.) April is already fully aware she’s a lesbian by the time she is forced to confront her feelings for Sterling. But April isn’t ready. Not because she’s ashamed of who she is, but because she’s afraid of the backlash.

Opposites Attract: #16. Quinn and Isabela, Harlem

When Quinn first meets Isabela, she’s not at all what Quinn’s looking for. She came expecting a family dinner with her parents so she could ask them for money to support her struggling business. Instead, Quinn finds herself at a political fundraiser, being introduced to the candidate, Isabela Benítez-Santiago (think AOC but gay and hotter), by her disapproving mother, as a potential mentor. Quinn bristles at the notion — though, I suspect Quinn would chafe at anyone who her mother embraced so readily — but Isabela quickly ingratiates herself to Quinn…and suddenly, the person she never expected becomes the person that Quinn can’t forget.

They couldn’t be more different: Isabela, the girl who came from nothing to become an organizer and advocate who’s now running for Congress, Quinn, the daughter of privilege, who — much to her mother’s chagrin — is an aspiring designer struggling to keep her boutique afloat. Isabela, laid back and effortlessly cool (even when she’s doing something completely uncool like bowling alone); Quinn, high-strung and frenetic (especially when it comes to relationships). Isabella, gay; Quinn, straight…at least until Isabela comes along and turns her world upside down.

Opposites Attract: #16. Fabiola and Eve, Never Have I Ever

During their run for Cricket Queens, Sherman Oaks High’s version of the Homecoming Queen, Fabiola tries to fashion herself into someone more amenable to the kids at school. For week’s since they got together, a lot of Eve’s queer pop culture references have gone over Fabiola’s head — L Word trivia, King Princess, Carol — but now that she has to solicit votes from her classmates, Fabiola fashions herself to be more palatable to those around her. She switches up her style, she skips Robotics Club practices, all in an effort to win the crown. But by the time the Homecoming Dance rolls around, Fabiola realizes that she can’t come out and be any less than who she truly is.

“I’m not cool. I don’t know anything about pop culture. I don’t know how to use hip phrases like ‘what’s the tea?'” Fabiola admits. “And the only thing I love besides my family, friends and [Eve] are robots so I don’t want to miss any more practices.”

But she never had to be “cool,” not for Eve: Fab is the most beautiful person that Eve’s ever met and she loves all of her, including their differences.

Friends to Lovers: #16. Jamie and Dani, The Haunting of Bly Manor

For most of her life, Dani’s been scared. So scared she pushed her lesbian feelings into a closet and agreed to marry a man she didn’t love. The moment she lets go of that fear — when she breaks things off with her fiancé — he gets hit by a car and dies. It feels like a cosmic punishment for her bravery. So she’s retreats in the face of that loss…haunted by his ghost…convinced that it was her and her lesbian feelings that got her fiancé killed. But then along comes Jamie. She sees Dani, truly, and begs her to let go of the guilt that she’s been carrying.

“We leave more life behind us. That life refreshes and recycles and on and on it goes,” Jamie reminds her. She notes, it’s the mortality of the thing that truly makes the moonflower…life…her…beautiful.

It’s then that Dani realizes that her fear is serves no one. She isn’t the reason her fiancé died and her feelings aren’t responsible either. She can have love with someone who returns it wholeheartedly…and that someone can be a woman. Dani can give up the ghosts of the past and embrace the promise of a future with Jamie.

Friends to Lovers: #16. Sabi and Olympia, Sort Of

Moments before Sabi meets Olympia for the first time, they listens to a voicemail from their mother. Sabi’s been avoiding her calls, unable or unwilling to have the uncomfortable conversations with her about their gender journey. But to Sabi’s surprise, their mother’s message is a simple one — part in Urdu, part in English — but it is also emphatic: “Live. Your. Life.”

Enter Olympia. Four hours late to the party that Sabi’s just leaving. Olympia says she’ll stay but only if Sabi does too and, with their mother’s advice echoing in their ears, they follow Olympia back inside. Olympia tries to restart the party, turning on the music and dancing, and Sabi joins her. It’s the odd start to a friendship unlike any that Sabi’s ever known and it illuminates their world in a totally unexpected way. Between seasons, their relationship transitions from friendship to something more.

It’s not love — this is, at best, a situationship — but there’s something groundbreaking about it. The fact that two two trans-feminine people are hooking up on TV for what seems like the first time ever, obviously…but also? The fact that these two characters are given the space to be messy and relatable in a way that rarely happens for gender non-conforming characters, in a way that the rest of us get to take for granted.

Each region has a pair of contenders represented in the First Four match-ups. It’s your decision — and your decision alone — which couples advance to the Round of 64. You have 48 hours to cast your ballot and you can vote once every 12 hours. At the end of the voting period, I’ll tabulate the results and unveil the bracket and our annual bracket challenge to our entire readership.

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