Stranger Things

fancy

pants
AKA
Fancy
Bruh the scene with Will destroying the photos and other memorabilia of the gang and taking a bat to Castle Byers reallllly really resonated with me omg I was tearing up so much. My precious Will. T_T I just wanted to hold him.

I really like Robin hahahahahaa. <3 Fave!

I predict that that blondie from the Hawkins Post that antagonises Nancy the most is gonna get his just desserts.

I really hope the lifeguard is alive :C
 
After season 2 ended I was very worried that season 3 would be a severe downgrade in quality. Thankfully, season 3 was excellent.

- I won't forget you comrade Alexei.

- The bittersweet ending was awesome and only slightly inhibited by the final scene in Russia. The reference to an American in the prison cell makes you wonder if Hop, instead of being killed, was teleported to Russia. Please let Hop remain dead (or at least ambiguously dead) so that the impact of this season finale can remain. I say this even though I feel so deeply sorry for Joyce. Talk about torture and trauma.

- Excellent writing of character psychology in this season. As always, Stranger Things is able to pull the strings of what it feels like to be a kid, a teenager, a young adult and even a middle-aged person. Even the brief moments when Mike essentially becomes Ross from Friends work well because of the context of his young age and what he is going through.

- In 1985 it was far more difficult to admit your homo- or bisexuality. Or put in a different way, statistically speaking you were far less likely to be met with positive, encouraging reactions. Remember also that this was in the height of the global AIDS panic and the enhanced homophobia that surrounded it. I had to consciously remind myself of this when Robin confessed her lesbianism to Steve, because that's what explains why she expected Steve to no longer want to be her friend. It was 1985. Ergo why it's so powerful that Steve did in fact not reject her friendship.

I still feel sorry that Steve didn't get a girlfriend but hey, there's always next season right? Actually I'd be perfectly fine with if they ended Stranger Things here. As much as I liked the season, the fact is that the same formula has been used for all three seasons: Multiple groups independently discover different threads of the same mystery, they eventually get together by quasi-coincidence and share their information with each other, then they split up again to perform their separate dungeon runs and defeat the final bosses.

I like the formula but if they re-use it for a fourth season I may tire of it.
 

Erotic Materia

[CONFUSED SCREAMING]
I just now finished season 3, and overall, I loved it.

I found myself running the whole gamut of emotions throughout, from laughing out loud to physically cringing, to weeping like a pregnant woman watching The Notebook.

I have only one complaint, a plot hole that I was hoping would resolve itself as the season progressed, but unfortunately, it never happened:

Why would the Russians transmit a "secret code" that essentially leads someone on a merry jaunt through the mall? If it's a state-sponsored, official military operation with huge efforts made to disguise it happening under everyone's nose, surely anyone involved would know all the details long before setting foot on American soil. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this does not make sense!
0330chewbacca.jpg
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
So this season was excellent as always. We finally got the Lovecraftian use of the dead and body horror, but there are (as always) some other hints left via their D&D campaign.


In this season, "The evil force from The Swamps of Kuzatan" could be either the Upside Down or the Russians, since they're both interconnected. Like with Will's unfinished campaign, while they quell the threat for the Khuisar (Hawkins) the characters this season aren't tied into following up on the evil force itself because of how the campaign is ended.

"But no, wait. That's not thunder. It's a horde of Ju-ju Zombies!" It's worth noting that the Ju-ju Zombies in AD&D are more intelligent than regular Zombies, stronger, and tied to the negative energy plane in the same way that The Flayed are depicted this season. The thundering referencing to them combined in the amaglam creature that formed the Mind Flayer.

Sir Mike gets bitten by the zombies while attempting to attack them (the same thing that happens to Eleven).

Mike's suggestion, "I'll use my torch to set fire to the chambers, sacrificing ourselves, killing the Ju-jus, and saving the Khuisar. We all live on as heroes in the memories of the Kalamar." matches the ending with Hopper (which is good because in dying a hero now, he avoided becoming genuinely problematic), but this also touches on the fact that this is the end of them playing, but the campaign's story itself isn't nicely wrapped up.

This brings me to the end of the season:

Will passes his D&D books on, and Lucas' sister gets them. If anything, I think that her introduction is largely to help pass things on to a different type of storytelling. Even the way she was introduced because Dustin's lack of collarbones would've been how he got into a ventilation system before – he's grown up too. Dustin has his girlfriend in Salt Lake City (extra hilarious for me given that I just moved away from there), and with the Byers' living farther away, I expect that long-distance communication is going to be a big deal.

On top of that, the series wrapped up and tied the Satanic Panic in to the events that occurred, which means that it's likely that we're looking more at it from a perspective of information suppression if there's another season, as well as locations outside of Hawkins experiencing issues.

Also, Simon Stålenhag's art books for Tales From the Loop and Things From the Flood also have some RPGs connected to them and they have some interesting framework for Stranger-Things-like interactions and I think that there're some interesting differences as they age up the characters and campaign setting that'd be interesting to see with Stranger Things – especially because of how they draw on D&D.




X :neo:
 

Octo

KULT OF KERMITU
AKA
Octo, Octorawk, Clarky Cat, Kissmammal2000
Thoroughly enjoyed season 3. Probably going to rewatch from season 1 again when I get the chance.

I'm mad about
Hopper, though I know there's a chance he's still alive! I believe the phrase is... FUCK YOU HE WON'T DEAD
 

Lestat

He/him
AKA
Ergo, V
So recently David Harbour has been dropping major hints that
Hopper might not be dead

He has been changing his Instagram feed picture to different numbers for a while now and some fans figured out it was actually a phone number. When you call it your put through to an answerphone message from the conspiracy nut which leaves a message for Joyce that he thinks he found something.
 

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
I haven't watched the third season yet, I was kinda disappointed with the second one (too similar to the first.) Is season 3 better?
 
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