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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2256 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 22, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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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.

Regarding point (c), various types of conspiracy theories (JFK, Aliens, Illuminati/Satanic Panic, Deep State/Black Helicopters, Anti-Semitic/White Replacement) had been percolating in the 70s and 80s, and then they had a big boom with the rise of Internet in the 90s. So yes, the 90s was kind of the golden age of conspiracy theories. Part of why the early seasons of the X-Files were so good is that they were drawing on a lot of “real” conspiracy folklore from the time.

Material for the 1990s revival, here we go:

Nerd angle: X-files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Babylon 5? Anime was breaking through to Western consciousness, upscale productions like Ghibli movies got better international release through Disney.

In mainstream, we have: Jurassic Park. Saving Private Ryan. Titanic, movies with Leonardo DiCaprio. Disney was pumping out successful traditionally animated movies with relatively traditional plotline, one after another every year. Perhaps Disney can make a nostalgia trip back and start making mvies that are earnest again.

In cinema: Lots of golden darlings of movie buffs, moody but not necessarily bleak European movies by directors with unpronounceable names like The Three Colours. On the darker and edgier side, we have Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, ... actually I am not sure if metafictional post-modernism has ever ceased, so how can it make a comeback? As a case in point, Coen brothers are still making Coen brothers kind of movies, Fargo turned from one movie with interesting takes into a overtly long tv show with 5 seasons of 10 years that just finished. The Matrix has the same issue. Family / kid friendly space, the 2nd* best known cultural media icon from Bristol, Wallace and Gromit debuted, though Aardman is still here.

Fashion: I think we are already there?

(* the best known cultural media icon from Bristol is Banksy, the UK graffeurist laureate who indubitably will be declared British national treasure alongside Stephen Fry sooner or later )

At what point does Stargate (particularly SG-1) rotate back into consciousness?

For me, about five years ago.

Love me some SG1.

Honestly Stargate still has a lot of fans. It's just not a critical darling and there's not a whole company built around endlessly reiterated spinoffs like some other franchises I could name.

Yeah I agree with you and the two siblings that it's still a good show and very enjoyable to watch. The franchise had its spinoffs and its run and then died, but now Amazon MGM is attempting to revive it. What I'm asking is more: at what point does it become a referent in the nostalgia cycle whose 'memberberries can be harvested? It doesn't seem as ready to go as classic 90's conspiracy theory stuff (which would absolutely be part of 90s!Stranger Things), X-Files, etc.

Speaking as someone who used to watch Stargate with his parents and siblings every week as a teenager, I think it's probably there now. You just need clever enough writers who can work some references in without it feeling too forced. It is about a secret government program after all, albeit a benevolent one.

That's the rub, writers and the fanbase they interact with (ie: the reddit crowd) are not in the mood for optimistic sci-fi, Star Trek writers had to be dragged screaming into making Strange New Worlds, otherwise we'd still be stuck with nothing "actually, Star Trek has always been about opposing Trump and Brexit".

Stargate is inherently optimistic, but not blind either, about humanity. Not a hypothetical future humanity like Star Trek, but humanity as it currently is. The government and military are not perfect, but mostly act in the interest of the people. As you say, benevolent conspiracy. Even with a big technological disadvantage, humanity is able to more than pull its weight on the galactic scene. And its not foreign values that makes humanity powerful, it's deeply human ones. Even our flaws are cast as advantages, frequent wars on earth made humans good at fighting, at making weapons, better in many ways than warrior races (Mass Effect put this idea too in its lore).

If they were to try making it now, the writers would have to write it while thinking "if it were real, Trump would be the highest authority in charge of the Stargate program". Their own biases made it easy to ignore when it was Clinton, and they did push more evil politician stories during the Bush era, but that was after establishing the program as benevolent. But I don't think they would be able to do it now.

For me, it never left

Babylon 5 is a core memory for me, X-Files and Buffy were both super popular, arguably some of the first SF media to hit mainstream recognition. I actually only watched Wallace and Gromit as an adult with my kids, and was shocked to realize how little of it there actually was, cuz you're right, it was everywhere for a while.

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.

Your second paragraph raises a good point. Appearing right at the threshold of digitization has allowed a lot of 90s culture to persist as though trapped in amber. I would place the end of a common culture more in the 2010s but yeah, there's no doubt that media is much more fragmented and balkanized now than it used to be. Presumably that's why we keep rebooting stuff from the era; they're the only things with big enough draw for these huge corporations to perceive as a worthwhile investment.

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.

About that...

But yeah, old enough to remember dial-up has become a generational marker

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...

The actual story of the MissingNo bug feels pretty unrealistic, but fits the bill too and wasn't a lie. It did probably make the others more believable, though.

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?

Vampire was huge. I was too young for it but the fact I knew about is probably a good indicator of how popular it was. Vampire media in general were really popular up until I think the mid 2000s, about the time Underworld and the Twilight movies started coming out.

Funnily enough, I have seen multiple pen-and-paper RPGs which say something like "you can set your campaign in the modern world, but probably no later than the nineties or so" precisely because the premise becomes unworkable once everyone has smartphone.

Vampire the masquerade

Was? I thought it has had stable subculture ever since. But out of all 1990 White Wolf products, I think time is ripe for the true coming of Mage the Ascension. Reality is what you and/or other powerful people make it to be.

It could still be, but I'm too old to keep track of that shit anymore.

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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