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PaperclipPerfector  18hr ago (text post)   676 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 22, 2026

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Finished the final season of Stranger Things this past week. I think I'm agreement with the general consensus that it was a step down from 4th season. The first two episodes were strong and had some cool ideas (a base in the upside-down, etc), but somewhere around the third episode they started to lose the plot and I decided I had to stop thinking too hard about things and just roll with it. That said, I loved the 40 minute "18 months later" epilogue that provided closure, more or less, for all our characters. Was this accomplished with transparent emotional manipulation backed up by an iconic soundtrack? Yes it was, what's your point? When the door to the Wheeler's basement closed for the last time and Bowie began playing over the end credits, I felt all the things I was supposed to feel. Judge me if you must.

But considering that Stranger Things started ten years ago, it occurred to me that we're due for the 90s nostalgia period pieces to start hitting any day now. So I started wondering, what would a 90s version of Stranger Things look like? By that, I mean a broadly sci-fi story that exploits the cultural memory of slightly-nerdy nineties kids the way Stranger Things exploits the cultural memory of slightly-nerdy 80s kids, building a plot around copious references to games, movies, common childhood experiences et cetera.

Off the top of my head, in no particular order:

a) Console/PC gaming and the internet were all coming into the mainstream in the nineties. I spent hours playing Civ 2 on the family computer.

b) I'm not a huge comic reader, but I do have the sense that comic books (as opposed to movies based on comics) were at peak popularity.

c)UFOs and government conspiracies were both pretty big, though I'm not necessarily sure they were or less popular fiction fodder than they were in the previous decade.

I had more or less the exact same impression of the final season of Stranger Things. I get people who were too turned off by it's obvious inferior quality to immerse themselves in the 40 minute farewell to these kids we watched grow up. But damnit, I was still a sucker for it. Especially Dustin. I think he was the only "child" actor who was still even trying. Finn Wolfhard sure as shit wasn't.

I'm not sure what 90's nostalgia looks like. I'm not sure they ever really went away. We still have all the same video game genres, more or less frozen in time from the 90's minus how they've been mutated into live services or mobile games. Virtually every IP from the 90's has been rebooted. Honestly the 90's might have been the last time the nation had a more or less common culture before the internet killed it, and so in many ways it remains hovering over us like a ghost. Not entirely relevant anymore, but never entirely displaced either.

But who knows, maybe people who came of age in the 80's felt the same way.

As a 90s kid, I think Nintendo/Sega/Doom would probably be somewhat analogous to the D&D from the 80s. Playground arguments about some obscure (false) cheat code that requires some elaborate set of steps or one's "uncle at Nintendo" leaking them some upcoming release would be fitting and certainly accurate. Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park were 2 of the more iconic films for boys in that era. Perhaps a lot of low-fat foods packed with sugar? OJ Simpson would be big enough in the news for kids to know something about, too. Getting a new AOL CD with a free 15 hours of dial-up internet every month/week/day would make sense. Speaking of which, the dial-up modem connecting sound (I recently watched a zoomer streamer comment utter disbelief at her chatters saying that it was a real thing, when she had thought that it was just some meme up to that point).

That said, I loved the 40 minute "18 months later" epilogue that provided closure, more or less, for all our characters. Was this accomplished with transparent emotional manipulation backed up by an iconic soundtrack? Yes it was, what's your point?

To me, this felt like trying to tickle yourself or have sex with your hand. When I am made consciously aware that the events are happening because the writers wanted to manipulate me, rather than because of reasonable action-and-consequence within the world in which it was built, the suspension of disbelief is lost, and I'm left emotionlessly thinking about the writers instead of emotionally empathizing with the characters. I'll also say that, with both Stranger Things and Game of Thrones, I was shocked by how many people thought that the final season was a sharp dropoff from the penultimate one; for both, I had thought that the penultimate season was garbage, and the final season just felt like a continuation of the trajectory.

I was shocked by how many people thought that the final season was a sharp dropoff from the penultimate one; for both, I had thought that the penultimate season was garbage, and the final season just felt like a continuation of the trajectory.

The penultimate season was garbage, but it still at least had some promise (and felt like it had some stakes, and hadn't gone all Dark Fate on the protagonist).

Also, the final season forced you to wait for the worst episode(s). And over the holidays, too. Likely wouldn't have been so bad at any other time.

A cancelled season is always as good as the fans make it. A rushed season is bad forever. I get that the show-writers were dealt a bad hand with it taking way too long to film everything but in truth the cracks were visible from S2 (mainly because they reset most of the character development and hit the protagonist with the idiot ball, which S3 and S4 actually seemed to be safer from).

When I am made consciously aware that the events are happening because the writers wanted to manipulate me

The writers didn't respect the characters enough and it shows. (Which goes double for character types society in general does not respect; kid characters being the most obvious.) I'm led to believe the same thing occurs in the final season of GOT.

When I am made consciously aware that the events are happening because the writers wanted to manipulate me, rather than because of reasonable action-and-consequence within the world in which it was built, the suspension of disbelief is lost, and I'm left emotionlessly thinking about the writers instead of emotionally empathizing with the characters.

The 90s nostalgia that has already been written has been pretty good so far. Granted, it's also not really trying to be this right now. But outside of Deltarune and Omori it's going to take a lot more effort to pull it off because there really isn't very much kids of that time will remember about the '90s- there's a lot of difference culturally between the '60s and '80s, but not a lot of difference between the '90s and now (this is kind of the cost of extended adolescence, by the way). At least, not in the West; the East probably sees it differently.

Playground arguments about some obscure (false) cheat code that requires some elaborate set of steps.

I once convinced my classmates that you could get a boat in the second Liberty City level of GTA, somewhere in Hackenslash. Used up all my cred, but it was worth it.

have sex with your hand

I'm afraid I have bad news for you. Or great news, depending on how you look at things.

Probably not the worst analogy to the Stranger Things denouement. It's a good enough simulation of the actual thing to give a lot of the same feelings, but there's a core missing that just prevents it from achieving the same things as what it's simulating. And it's a lousy way to finish a 10-year-long relationship.

One prominent sex-education website claims that masturbation should be considered a form of sex.

Is Masturbation Better Than Sex?

Sorry, Wrong Question

So first of all the question is wrong for three reasons. Sorry about that.

(1) Masturbation is sex and so if something is a thing it can’t be better than that thing. This is called philosophy.

(2) The question implies that the only kind of sex that is real sex is sex with another person, which is wrong. Solo sex is sex.

(3) It also makes out that masturbation itself isn’t sex and that only penetration is ‘real’ sex. There is no ‘real sex’, just sex. I think that if we start to see sex as what may or may not be enjoyable to us, rather than what is ‘real’ or not, then we might find it easier to enjoy.

Solo Sex

Some people just prefer not to have sexual and/or romantic relationships with other people. It doesn’t mean that they don’t like sex, they just want to do it with themselves. Maybe they have had difficult relationships in the past, or just don’t really feel very connected to many people. Perhaps they’ve had sex with other people and it was crap, or non-consensual and just don’t want to go back there. There are many reasons why people just prefer to have sex with themselves – and it’s totally totally okay.

ToaKraka, you are a wise man. I am less wise, and wish to enquire if it's masturbation when one side of a Siamese twin jerks off the other.

In all honesty, arguing about whether masturbation is "sex" is arguing about semantics. I'm fond of that kind of mental masturbation, but I think trying to use it as a central example is inappropriate. If I ask a patient if they're sexually active, I don't want to know if they had a recent date with Rosie Palm and her five sisters. In a non-clinical context, if my buddy rings me up and tells me about the great sex he had last night, I'd kick him in the butt if it was that banal.

If it doesn't involve physical contact with and penetration of another person, doesn't count for me.

if my buddy rings me up and tells me about the great sex he had last night, I'd kick him in the butt if it was that banal.

On the other hand, perhaps you'd slap him on the palm if it was banal?

I'm glad you noticed the innuendo. I'll update the tally accordingly.

To be clear, I was just pointing out the fact that at least some people seriously hold this view, not actually endorsing the view.

ToaKraka, you are a wise man.

LOL.

Away from me, spirit of Satan!

Lending yourself a hand is the best way to get rid of the spawn. Can't comment on the diabolical nature of the process without gross hypocrisy.

Playground arguments about some obscure (false) cheat code that requires some elaborate set of steps or one's "uncle at Nintendo" leaking them some upcoming release

Ah, the truck and how to get Mew in the original Pokemon...

Well, about that...

Vampire the masquerade was a big nerd thing at the time, especially in the artistic side. Anne Rice was still taken seriously too. Horror in general was a surprisingly big deal then compared to now.

Somebody introduced me to Warhammer for the first time in the 90s. Thank God I didn't take to it.

In the 90s, the nerd/punk overlap mirrored the nerd/metalhead overlap of the 80s. The live music scene was going through something of a golden age with the festivals starting back up in earnest (Lollapalooza, Lilith, HFStival, Woodstock 99).

Cell phones existed, but not everyone had them and they didn't work well. As I write this, how much of this 1980s nostalgia is a top-down consensus campaign by writers who just don't want to deal with how cell phones negate 90% of the easy ways to create danger and tension in a narrative?

how much of this 1980s nostalgia is a top-down consensus campaign by writers who just don't want to deal with how cell phones negate 90% of the easy ways to create danger and tension in a narrative?

If it means the shows have 80s music I really couldn't give a damn :)

As I write this, how much of this 1980s nostalgia is a top-down consensus campaign by writers who just don't want to deal with how cell phones negate 90% of the easy ways to create danger and tension in a narrative?

I've noticed just how many modern crime/noir novels are set pre-2000 for what I assume is this reason.

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