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Spoilers Stranger Things - Season 4

I'm so happy that all this Nerds Vs Jocks is just an U.S. thing. In the rest of the world kids go to school to, you know, study.

In the my high-school equivalent there was a football teams, but they weren't considered demigods by the rest of the school, and the girls weren't dying to sleep with them just because of their ability to throw a ball at goal. And a couple of them were even borderline nerds! And if I remember correctly, someone also gave up the team because it took time away from their studies.

Nope, not a US only thing. It happens all around the world and i was bullied to back in school. Teenage boys and girls can be dicks all around the world.
 
Hm, that does sound vaguely familiar. At least that's something but it doesn't set any idea about when in the timeline her fleeing occurred.
From what I can tell the window of when she might have fled is about 4-5 years. IIRC El's mum showed up in '74 to try and get her back, which as we saw was when Kali was still there.

The incident with One was in September '79 and she explicitly was not. The way One talked about her sounds as if the escape was a while ago; long enough that he felt the need to remine El. So I'd interpret that to mean it was no less that 18 months to 2 years prior. That narrows it down to about '74-77.

Given that Eleven was taken away from Kali after the '74 incident, it seems reasonably to assume her escape was motivated by the isolation more than anything, so probably happened within a year or two. So now we're down to a reasonable guess of about '75-76.
 
It's strange that I missed One saying anything about Eight especially since I was actively looking for references to her during the flashbacks.

I guess a rewatch is in order. Rats!
 
Nope, not a US only thing. It happens all around the world and i was bullied to back in school. Teenage boys and girls can be dicks all around the world.
I didn't say that there isn't bullying in other countries' schools. It isn't usually a specialized discipline where people spend of lot of time becoming masters in it like in the U.S.

I can only make a comparison with Italian schools of course. And I will talk about schools that are not in problem areas.
  1. As I said, one big difference is team sports in high school. Many schools here don't have them and so you don't have a caste of spoiled athletes who are also pampered by school staff.
  2. Time devoted to bullying. Of course I can only judge from the shows I've seen, but it seems to me that students in America have too much free time to spend inside the school building. Here you come, take lessons, take a 15 minute break in the middle of the morning and go home. One can theoretically spend the break looking for someone to bully, but really, it seems like a waste of free time.
  3. No cafeteria or the like, you go home to eat / study (except very few elite private institutes). So fewer opportunities to get together and look for someone to persecute.
  4. According to anyone who has attended both Italian and American schools, the latter are incredibly easy by comparison. So one can be a professional bully and still have decent grades in school. Here, on average, the bullies are the most problematic or failing kids. Obviously being bullied by them still hurts, but they certainly don't have that "winning & cool guys" aura.
  5. Here the students do not change the classroom between one lesson and another, it is the teachers who move. So fewer opportunities for kids who meet other smaller kids in the corridors who become easy prey.
Obviously bullying exists here and it's a problem, but I've never heard of cases à la Carrie or anything that comes remotely close to it.
 
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You are of course conflating on screen fictional portrayals, along with all the creative licence that comes with that territory with real life.
 
I like the season so far, but I have one minor quibble: Eddie is a completely unbelievable character in the context of 1980s youth culture.

Why do I say that? Because he's simultaneously coded as a nerd (plays D&D, jocks hate him) and a cool kid (good looking, deals drugs, has a "don't give a fuck" attitude, plays guitar in a band, etc.)

While metalheads are looked at as being weirdo nerds today, that's because metal hasn't been all that popular for decades. They were the mainstream during this period, and more or less "in" with the popular crowd. In addition, D&D nerds didn't really look anything like Eddie, they looked like...nerds.

I understand they wanted Eddie to be someone that the kids aspired to be like, so he had to be a bit cooler than they were, but IMHO they went to far. Young nerds look up to older nerds all the time not because they are cool, but because they have more specialized knowledge in whatever thing the nerds are into. Also, while Joseph Quinn is doing a great job in the performance, since they didn't even give him a romantic interest there was no real reason to cast an attractive guy in the role.
 
I like the season so far, but I have one minor quibble: Eddie is a completely unbelievable character in the context of 1980s youth culture.

Why do I say that? Because he's simultaneously coded as a nerd (plays D&D, jocks hate him) and a cool kid (good looking, deals drugs, has a "don't give a fuck" attitude, plays guitar in a band, etc.)

While metalheads are looked at as being weirdo nerds today, that's because metal hasn't been all that popular for decades. They were the mainstream during this period, and more or less "in" with the popular crowd. In addition, D&D nerds didn't really look anything like Eddie, they looked like...nerds.

It depends on where you lived; i'm from California, and during the 80's I vividly recall plenty of metalheads at the schools I attended, but to the dominant preppie and New Wave cultures, they were seen as freaks / drug addicts, or being just as odd as their view of nerds. Moreover, D&D players were not all like the kids in Stranger Thing, since fantasy and gaming were generally popular in that era, so it attracted players from a wider demographic pool. That said, if the Duffers incorrectly depicted any group on Stranger Things, it was the original four boys to be a catch-all, stereotypical representation of "nerds" as if they were the only kind of people into D&D, when that was not the case in reality.
 
Growing up as an 80s metalhead in the midwest he rings pretty true to me. I know it wasn't exactly seen as an in to being cool with the mainstream kids especially the ones who did drugs, leading most of our type to be referred to as "burnouts" instead of stoners or metalheads or whatever where I lived. I think even amongst that crowd though you had popular and good looking ones and nerdy and whatever in betweens. You certainly could've found my long-haired, Metallica shirt, ratty denim ass playing a game of D&D somewhere (though I may or may not have fit that good looking tag).
 
There are always "crossovers" in many High School cliques. A friend of mine once bought a ton of comics from the quarterback of his high school football team. Another friend was into Star Fleet Battles and Alice Cooper.
 
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After seeing S4, I decided to do a bit of a rewatch until it comes back in July. Even though I'm enjoying this season, it's kind of stunning just how much tremendously better that 1st season was compared to any that followed. Almost every character has had less going on since... except Murray. Somehow, since he showed up in season 2, Murray has more going on as he goes along :lol: It's also pretty hilarious just how right he is about everything in hindsight :guffaw:

You know, it's been so damn long, I'd actually forgotten Hopper's other officers, & hadn't even realized the smarter of the 2 was the guy who's now sheriffing... chiefing? captaining, we'll say captaining. I'd forgotten both those actors completely, & thought Hop's replacement was a new guy.

BTW, WTF ever happened to 008? She's just still out there?

I had forgotten that one of his other officers was a actor who played one of the main characters on "Search Party." It was like "Hey I didn't know he was part of the series."
 
Noah Schnapp, taking a page from Tom Holland and Mark Ruffalo, accidentally revealed on Fallon that there will be some deaths in volume II. Apparently he also posted footage on his Instagram that he shouldn't have before quickly taking it down when he realized his mistake.

Since I'm going to be at the beach for a family reunion that weekend, it looks like I'm going to have to completely stay off the Internet until I'm able to watch the episodes on Monday.
 
You are of course conflating on screen fictional portrayals, along with all the creative licence that comes with that territory with real life.
I know there is a little exaggeration in fiction, but there is something factual wrong in what I've written? I'm really curious. For example, there are a lot articles which say sports in U.S. highschools (as the way they are organized today) are actually hurtful to education.

The Case Against High-School Sports

Reasons to Eliminate Sports from Schools

And by the way, school should be a place to learn, not to get concussions.

Study: Concussion rates in high school football games rising
 
Finally caught up. This is one reason I prefer weekly releases, because if all the episodes get dumped at once you can't go into any discussion threads until you're finished.

Doesn't look good for Nancy. Unless Eleven in her current state finds a way to reach out to her.

The main purpose of school is to learn but it's inherently going to be the center of kids' social lives, so having sports and clubs is natural. It teaches children to work together as a team, and gives them a safe outlet for their natural competitiveness. It should be done in a way that protects children from serious injury obviously. But not letting kids play sports isn't going to stop them from forming cliques and being assholes. It just takes away the structure to the assholery.
 
Doesn't look good for Nancy. Unless Eleven in her current state finds a way to reach out to her.

I'm guessing the attention paid to the Steve / Robin friendship hints that one of this duo will not live.

The main purpose of school is to learn but it's inherently going to be the center of kids' social lives, so having sports and clubs is natural. It teaches children to work together as a team, and gives them a safe outlet for their natural competitiveness. It should be done in a way that protects children from serious injury obviously. But not letting kids play sports isn't going to stop them from forming cliques and being assholes.

Well said. Targeting school sports is an overreaction and consciously ignoring that children and teens naturally form cliques for various reasons (some for negative / violence-based reasons) not formed in the environment of sports, or as a reaction to the team cliques.
 
Am I the only person who thinks that the actor who plays "One" looks like a Brian Bolland version of Joker come to life?
jamie-bower-campbell-stranger-things-season-4.jpg


If he can cackle maniacally, someone give him Matt Reeves' phone number.
 
I'm guessing the attention paid to the Steve / Robin friendship hints that one of this duo will not live.

Maybe, but if either Nancy or Steve die I don't see it happening until they've had a proper love triangle standoff with Jonathan. When they showed Nancy observing Eleven's flashback I saw it as setting up for Eleven to be awakening to some of One's mind flayer abilities and breaking into the mind world.

I'm glad Hopper didn't die but I would have rather him be stuck in the upside down for all that time instead of in Russia.
 
I'm glad Hopper didn't die but I would have rather him be stuck in the upside down for all that time instead of in Russia.
Same here. I had been hypothesizing that's what happened to him (before arriving in Russia) during the long wait for this season and I even thought they were going in that direction when we got the flashback about how escaped death...until it was lame he just ran and jumped out of the sight and then was captured by the Russians. Alas.
 
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