Spoilers Stranger Things - Season 3

Don't you want your social justice medal now?

 

Oh nah apparently most of the gay community was out and proud in the 80s no biggie

 

I guess we will see. In some way it has to come up in S4, even if its not a main plot. I would hope they don't have Steve have second thoughts and wonder if he could explore his original feelings for her.

Probably, but it makes their town seem more idealized for their relationship to not have one negative observation beyond Billy. ...and what about her stepfather? If Billy inherited his racism from him, one would imagine he will not sit still for his stepdaughter's relationship.

That's the Brady Bunch kids levels of frightening....

 

I think there's a difference between being out and proud and letting Steve know.

 

I'm not sure about that. According to this reasoning, war veterans who saw untold horrors should be the most tolerant people out there...

 

Maybe Steve just isn’t a dick, because that’s what all homophobes are.

 

There are people who are usually good people, but who have been taught that homosexuality is the worst of evils. These may perhaps express Christian pity towards homosexuals, exactly as they could do toward a murderer. If Robin had come out in front of them, maybe they wouldn't have tried to burn her at the stake, but they would have answered something like "Oh, I'm so sorry, you seem to me such a nice girl ..."

Homophobia is not only the result of a disturbed personality, but also of ignorance and bad education. And Steve didn't give me the idea of having grown up in such a liberal environment. And I mean, he couldn't even give the title of THREE favorite movies, so it's clear that education has never been his priority ...

 

...which I posted about pages ago...

 

Sorry... I missed it... deleting my post...

 

Like I said, dicks. I really don’t care what their excuse is, it’s wrong.

I also find this Monday morning quarterbacking odd. Steve didn’t have a negative reaction, that’s it. There’s no reason to try and twist it to figure out why he should have had one.

 

For countering your ill-founded assertion with an example from my life? Nah. I got my reward 36 years ago through helping a friend.

 

Just some people I knew actually. But do keep trying to twist things around. It's amusing to see you flail and flounder.

 

There is. I first came out to a single friend, I didn’t come out out until a little bit later and I wasn’t dealing with the oppressive environment of the 1980s. Coming out is a process and generally takes a while, especially in a time where there wasn’t social media, access to a decent support network of friends both in real life and online, and society was extremely homophobic.

It’s not like you come out and suddenly gain a tag to your identity so that everyone knows like you’re changing your custom title on a forum. It takes at least some time to tell people close to you.

 

I finally got around to reading Suspicious Minds last week and finished it this afternoon. For those who don't recall it, the book is the Gwenda Bond-penned novel about Terry Ives' experiences at Hawkins Lab. The story more or less plays out the way one would expect, but there are a few surprises in it. I quite enjoyed the read, even though I knew how it would all end, mostly because I got a better sense of who Terry was and just how monstrous Brenner really was. I recommend reading it for anyone who loves the show as much as I do. Details in the spoiler code...

Spoiler: Suspicious Minds

The story plays out over a course of a year between 1969 and 1970 with each chapter covering a month. Major historic moments play out in the background including the Moon Landing, Woodstock, X-Men comics, Lord of the Rings, the Vietnam War, the draft lottery, the Kent State shootings, the Beatles break-up, and one particular televised Nixon speech. During this time, Terry takes the place of her roommate, Stacey, to join a voluntary experiment at her university campus (the university is set at Bloomington and while it's not explicitly stated, I've assumed it's IU Bloomington) after Stacey gets a bad vibe from it. After a couple of months, the experiment shifts to Hawkins Lab.

During the experiments, Terry becomes friends with her fellow testees, Alice, Gloria, and Ken. Each of them are given doses of LSD and each go through different tests to see how their minds develop. Terry eventually begins to develop, after one particular experiment in a sensory-deprivation tank, a similar ability as Jane by traveling into a black void with shallow water. However, Terry's experience is more limited to communicating with one particular individual...Kali aka Eight.

Kali is five years old and Brenner brought her with him after recently taking over the lab because its previous personnel weren't gaining much results. Terry initially met Kali after becoming suspicious of Brenner's activities and tried to sneak into his office in order to learn what he was up to, but instead she first discovered Kali's room in a different part of the lab. The two develop a close bond over the course of the book, one that Terry is too trusting with Kali to hold secrets away from Brenner.

The other surprising development is how Alice, through electroshock treatment combined with the LSD (let's just ignore the pseudo science here...), begins seeing visions of monsters, including the Demogorgan, and even the Upside Down itself. And she then starts seeing the future, specifically when Jane breaks free Hawkins Lab. She doesn't initially understand what she's seeing, but when she recreates the experiment under the guidance of Terry, Gloria, and Ken, Gloria susses out that she's seeing the future because Alice describes personal computers and because she doesn't recognize any of the cars she sees (which she would've because she's a brilliant mechanic). Gloria is able to pick up on these nuances partially because of obsession with X-Men comics (where Jean Grey is her hero) as well as reading articles about technological development.

I don't recall how much information was revealed in the series about Jane's father, Andrew, but we see him for about half of the novel until Brenner pulls some strings behind the scenes by getting Andrew kicked out of college for protesting the war (which stood out when his two cohorts only get the slap on the wrist), which in turn makes him eligible for the draft. Brenner makes sure Andrew's lottery number is moved to the top of the list and he's quickly drafted and deployed. Terry doesn't discover that she's pregnant until about the same time he's killed in combat. We don't learn the details of his death, but during a Brenner POV, he notes even he was surprised by how quickly Andrew died (thus removing any speculation whether he further made sure Andrew was out of the picture).

The book ends a bit abruptly. After a pseudo-successful mission to convince Brenner to leave them alone and then plan later on to rescue Kali, Terry goes into premature labor (secretly induced by Brenner) and Brenner kidnaps Jane from a semi-conscious Terry. The doctors pretend she lost the child during the process, which leads to her sister, Becky, believing Terry has become delusion when she insists Brenner stole Jane (despite Terry telling Becky much of the shady dealings of Hawkins Lab prior going into labor). After giving birth, Terry discovers she can no longer visit the black void (which was able to do on her own without the aid of LSD as recently as the morning of giving birth), surmising that her abilities were always with Jane.

The epilogue closes with Terry planning to break into the Lab sometime in the future with Gloria and Ken's help to rescue Kali and Jane. I guess that means we'll be getting a sequel at some point because things haven't quite reached to how we saw Terry in seasons 1 and 2.

With that in mind, I'm planning to rewatch the episodes with her (as well as Kali's episode) to see how well things line up between this book and the series itself.

Coincidentally, in relation to the recent discussion about the realism of people in 80s rural Indiana accepting someone who is openly gay or a biracial relationship, the book gives some glimpses of reality. Albeit not with homosexuality and only broadly with race relations, but rather with women's rights.

Spoiler

When Terry finally realizes she's pregnant, she decides to see a doctor to confirm her suspicions and get a check up on the pregnancy, although because she knows Brenner has her and her friends under surveillance, she decides to visit Stacey's doctor instead of her own. The whole scene is grotesque with this old doctor judging her for only now getting checked up, for getting pregnant while unmarried (regardless of the fact the father was drafted and killed), and for being a pregnant college student, with a silent nurse constantly scowling at her. The doctor further instructs her to drop out of college immediately (even though there's only a couple of weeks left) and go to her family where she belongs. Terry also frets about the university finding out that she's pregnant and penalizing her accordingly.

Along with that, and I found this somewhat surprising despite the location and the time period, the university forced students to attend a public viewing of a televised Nixon speech about the war. Andrew and two of his friends show up wearing masks to protest both the mandatory viewing and the war itself, which is what lead to Andrew's expulsion (but again, his two friends only got a slap on the wrist in comparison).

Lastly, there isn't much ado about the fact Gloria is black other than Gloria feeling a little nervous visiting Terry at her cafe job because it was in a white neighborhood. She also wished there was an X-Man (or any superhero) that looked like her, but she settled for Jean Grey because of how powerful she was.

 

Stranger Things 3: The Game has finally been released for mobile apps. Came out at the end of last month but I hadn't thought to look recently and I never saw an announcement anywhere. I only just downloaded it so I don't know what it's like yet.

 

$5 on mobile is easier to swallow than the $20 on PC. I think they missed the mark though, not only has the ST hype died down but it seems like a perfect casual summer romp kind of game.

 

Yeah, I'm kind of baffled at why they couldn't release them all at once. $5 is a lot better than $20, so I don't mind even if it's a little "late."

 

Surprisingly, we already have a teaser for Stranger Things 4. It's not enough for a new thread (I'll wait until we have more substantial information like a release date):



I also finished the game awhile back, completing it in about 12 hours game time (since it's recorded). Overall, I really enjoyed just as much as the last one. I'll probably try the harder version later on at some point.

 

So it definitely sounds like things will be expanding beyond Hawkins in the new season.

 

For those who aren't on social media, the official accounts for the show have changed their avatars to the clock seen on the left at the end of the teaser. And I'm not the only person who was reminded of a certain 80's time traveling trilogy...