Stranger Things (Netflix)
- Thread starter Vivek
- Start date
So season 4, volume 2 will only be two episodes? I was kind of shocked to hear that. I was expecting another set of 7 would be coming.
CadetTK2386
Sr Member
I totally missed that season 4 was going to be split into two Volumes, so, as we were heading into Episode 7, I was thinking, "I don't think they can wrap this up in one, but, maybe they can." Then when it ended I thought we were in for another years long cliff hanger, but then the preview popped up for Volume 2 in July, I was pleasantly surprised and very excited to see how this wraps up.
Out of all the col things this season, for some reason the thing that sticks out to me the most was
Out of all the col things this season, for some reason the thing that sticks out to me the most was
How competent "Unamed Hero Agent Guy was. For a character I thought was going to be a throw away gag "lazy agent" guy, he really stood his ground, moved and acted professionally and tactically, like a real highly trained agent would have. I don't know, but, for some reason I just really appreciated that, when they could have just had him be a throw away, incompetent character.
I love stranger things...best series i've seen since, well..the 80s lol. I'm only in episode 2 of season 4 and for some reason at times, i feel the dialogue is either absent or forced, especially with Will, Jonathan and Argyle...all the other characters feel the same to me in a good way...idk, maybe it's just me. The show itself is great so far and , as usual, the characters are hysterical. Funny note: The first church i ever attended used to be a huge indoor skating rink that i actually went to before it was converted. Brought back a lot of memories. These guys have done very well at recapturing our childhood.
When i was an arrogant kid growing up in school i used to make comments about teachers and adults being "stuck" in the 60s or 70s...now those comments have bit me right in the butt because i just love the 80s...lol
I think they capture most of it, yeah. About my only cringe has been... I have been a gamer since middle school -- a couple years off from the gang here ('85-'88 for me). BattleTech/MechWarrior, Star Wars, Marvel Super-Heroes, Star Trek, Robotech, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade... and, of course, D&D. I had a couple gaming groups here where I grew up, was in two others when I lived in New York, was in another when I lived in Japan (military base), another two when I was living in SoCal, and I have known people across the fandom in those years, through various other channels. I don't know what the Duffers' sources were for how gamers talk and act and, well... game, but it never looked like how they portray it, with any of the people I gamed with. Not quite. Exactly one of my groups used minis and maps to sort out combat positioning. I know it had to have been a thing, or Ral Partha, Reaper, and Citadel wouldn't have made all those minis back in the day -- but I never really encountered the people who were using them for that. Warhammer and BattleTech, sure.
The most accurate thing about it has been in the first episode of this season. I remember the Satanic Panic, and we actually had that moment portrayed. Greg's mom was a Christian Scientist and he had brought their periodical with him one week and was reading it while we were getting settled and getting snacks and such. He read about the devil worship, ritualistic rape, human sacrifice, and all of the other garbage gamers were accused of doing. He broke off at one point and said, "Boy, I'm glad I brought this -- we've been doing it all wrong!" And, I admit, we had a Hellfire Club in high school. >_> Our school wouldn't let us use that particular four letter word, so it was officially on the books as the Science-Fiction Club, but everyone, from the principal down, called it what it was. As with the one in Stranger Things (I'll bet good money), we named ours after the fictional one in X-Men, not the real-world gentlemen's club for eighteenth-century libertines. We did not, however, have T-shirts.
The most unrealistic thing, worse than them having the wrong Falcon in series 1, was them using Eddie's D20 to roll. You got your own dice -- often multiple sets. You were always on the hunt for dice that liked you -- especially D20s. And you never touched someone else's dice. Especially not the DM/GM's.
Riceball
Master Member
I agree with that. Everybody I played with, esp. in the heyday, had their own dice. I remember always looking for dice that I thought looked good/cool and would regularly use those that I thought consistently rolled well.
Solo4114
Master Member
Everybody still has their own dice, by the way, for anyone who's wondering.
I'd say that the Duffer Bros. have gotten...not exactly the 80s right, but the cinematic representation of the 80s as distilled through the decades and a ton of film and television set during that era. They NAIL the visual fidelity to the 80s. Can't argue that. Stuff LOOKED like that back then. People think the 80s was all, like, hypercolor neon green and pink, but that's really more the late 80s and early 90s. The early to mid 80s was very brown, but with less orange than the 70s had. Anyway, they absolutely nail that look.
What I don't think is exactly right -- and what doesn't need to be right -- is just sort of the way the characters carry themselves, their verbal tics, sentence structure and cadence, there's a lot of modernity in all of that. But that's to be expected. It's why people don't actually perform Shakespeare in strict iambic pentameter. It's also why we don't have a ton of medieval England shows and movies where the nobles are all speaking French all the time. The material still has to be digestible to modern audiences, and it absolutely is.
Anyway, I'm up to about Episode 5, and I'm loving this season.
And one of these days, we should get an RPF RPG crew going. I've got both a Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds Unity subscription. FGU is probably better for stuff like 5th Ed. D&D, but Roll20 is solid for lots of other stuff. (And you don't really NEED any of that stuff if the virtual tabletop is literally just that: a place to virtually roll dice while you crunch all the numbers yourself.)
I'd say that the Duffer Bros. have gotten...not exactly the 80s right, but the cinematic representation of the 80s as distilled through the decades and a ton of film and television set during that era. They NAIL the visual fidelity to the 80s. Can't argue that. Stuff LOOKED like that back then. People think the 80s was all, like, hypercolor neon green and pink, but that's really more the late 80s and early 90s. The early to mid 80s was very brown, but with less orange than the 70s had. Anyway, they absolutely nail that look.
What I don't think is exactly right -- and what doesn't need to be right -- is just sort of the way the characters carry themselves, their verbal tics, sentence structure and cadence, there's a lot of modernity in all of that. But that's to be expected. It's why people don't actually perform Shakespeare in strict iambic pentameter. It's also why we don't have a ton of medieval England shows and movies where the nobles are all speaking French all the time. The material still has to be digestible to modern audiences, and it absolutely is.
Anyway, I'm up to about Episode 5, and I'm loving this season.
And one of these days, we should get an RPF RPG crew going. I've got both a Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds Unity subscription. FGU is probably better for stuff like 5th Ed. D&D, but Roll20 is solid for lots of other stuff. (And you don't really NEED any of that stuff if the virtual tabletop is literally just that: a place to virtually roll dice while you crunch all the numbers yourself.)
I expect some idealized version of the 80's but often in movies and TV it becomes a parody of itself. Season 3 tread into this a bit, but thankfully they went back to what made the show great this Season in which the era didn’t call so much attention to itself. This show is far better than most at depicting the decade so if it doesn't get it 100% right, I can overlook it. This also is an homage to the era, not a period piece.
CB2001
Master Member
I agree with this. I attended classes for radiology and the school had a Halloween costume party and each class got to decide their theme for their costumes. My class chose the 1980s, and I went with dressing as Marty McFly from Back to the Future because his outfit looked like the kind of thing that teenagers would wear from that time (with the exception of the vest. Not sure if that was a thing or not). But everyone else in the costume went with the hypercolors you mentioned.
Unfortunately for me, I'm not much into fantasy that D&D presents (though I have enjoyed some products in that same area such as Critical Role, which I know is fantasy based in alignment with D&D, as well as some childhood works that were fantasy/non-D&D related, such as films like Excalibur, Dragon Slayer, Willow, etc ), but I have been looking at various tabletop games and have even collected some books (mostly tabletop adaptations of other works, such as the RIS Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, and The Expanse, to name a few. The only thing D&D related I did pick up is the Dungeon Masters' Guide, 2nd Edition, and that's because I'm a fan of the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and the cover is mentioned in the introduction chapter, and no, it's not the only thing I have that I picked up due to RP1).
I have to say I love Eddie. His character and the actor who portrays him really impressed me. He also acted as a nice foil to Steve and the friendship between the two and Dustin was really cool. I can't wait to see how they tie this season up in Volume 2!
firesprite
Master Member
Oddly enough, despite being a woman, I really identify with Eddie in a lot of ways. I love scifi and fantasy and while I was shy rather than brash like he is, when I was in school, I loved metal and was a big reader of fantasy and scifi... so much so, I was actually a minor victim of the so-called "Satanic Panic" and the Pulling Report.
In middle school, I was actually pulled out of class one period a week for a group study hour that I slowly realized was a group therapy session for troubled/abused kids. Since my homelife was actually better than most, and I had a good relationship with my family, needless to say, my mother lost her mind when I told her about it.
In middle school, I was actually pulled out of class one period a week for a group study hour that I slowly realized was a group therapy session for troubled/abused kids. Since my homelife was actually better than most, and I had a good relationship with my family, needless to say, my mother lost her mind when I told her about it.
I was very little when that whole thing was going on but I do have memories of it and I heard the same mistaken thinking with regards to Dungeons and Dragons. I remember my older sister had a large coloring book of D+D and I think it was a mixture of the game art as well as the cartoon. I used to flip through it for what seemed like hours.
I finished Vol 1 last night. I'm amazed and delighted that this show continues to raise the bar.
The revelations in episode 7 totally recontextualize the whole show in a good way, and left me with lots of burning questions I hope get answered in Vol 2. The stakes couldn't feel higher and I'm extremely nervous for a particular group of characters. I have to commend the writing and editing of this season because despite each episode being an hour+, the pacing never dulls and there's so much going on it keeps you engaged the whole time. Just brilliant all around, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the ending of episode 4 is probably the best sequence from this entire series. Bravo Duffer brothers!
The revelations in episode 7 totally recontextualize the whole show in a good way, and left me with lots of burning questions I hope get answered in Vol 2. The stakes couldn't feel higher and I'm extremely nervous for a particular group of characters. I have to commend the writing and editing of this season because despite each episode being an hour+, the pacing never dulls and there's so much going on it keeps you engaged the whole time. Just brilliant all around, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the ending of episode 4 is probably the best sequence from this entire series. Bravo Duffer brothers!
