[Image Description: the first image is the cover of the TTRPG Wyrd Street. A pale woman wearing a hooded robe is seated in the center of a candlelit room, looking with shock at her bloody hands. She’s sitting on a torn and bloody rug, a broken chair in front of her. Behind her is Ji Wensdottir, one of the Iconic Characters, casting a protective spell while she looks down at the seated woman. Surrounding them are glowing runes from the spell, a few floating, jellyfish-like critters made from possessed junk, and a large, menacing ghostly figure, floating in front of a broken window. At the top is the Wyrd Street text logo, and at the bottom is the text “Core Rulebook.”

The second image is an illustration of Blue Rose, a woman holding a sword wreathed in blue flames in her left hand, with a serious look on her face. She has pale skin, pointed elf-like ears, and is wearing close-fitting grey pants and vest, with a poet-style long sleeve shirt. There is a blue rose embroidered on her vest, thin blue streaks in her blonde hair, and she has blue lipstick and eyeshadow. Handwritten beside her is her name, and her RPG class, Vigilante.]

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Blue Rose the Vigilante

Wyrd Street TTRPG IndieGoGo, funding now!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/wyrd-street-d20-ttrpg-system/x/9982631#/

Wyrd Street cover illustrated by Dana, whose portfolio you can find here: https://www.danabraga.com/

Blue Rose runs the Rose Garden, a bordello and local neutral meeting place for Wyrd Street’s community.

Zero tolerance for harm to her workers—she will break your arm before you can blink to defend them.

Her class is like a not-necessarily-religious paladin—at first level, pick between justice or vengeance paths for support- or damage-focused abilities as you level!

At level 6, you can become a Grappling Hook Expert! What if your paladin was a classic superhero or pirate? SWING YOUR BAD ASS INTO COMBAT plus a different bonus based on whether you picked justice or vengeance!

A deep dive post from Tyler, with more info on Blue Rose and her class design:

https://superior-realities.com/2022/01/10/wyrd-street-tease-blue-rose-the-vigilante/

Also, check out this podcast episode for a half-hour interview with Tyler! They went over Wyrd Street’s mechanics, the setting, and “how the heroes of Wyrd Street are more like Daredevil than the Avengers”—being on-the-streets vs larger-than-life.

https://pnc.st/s/the-bite-sized-gaming-podcast/977de8c1/s3e35-125-walkin-on-wyrd-street

And that’s all the Iconics revealed! Wyrd Street’s IndieGoGo ends on the 26th, so go give it a gander, and take a peek at the primer to check out the gameplay!

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- Wyrd Street Masterpost - Ji Wensdottir the Street Preacher - Lo Karlsson the Drifter - Blue Rose the Vigilante - Five Snow Blossom the Dreamer - Osiron the Fortune Teller - Burning Grin the Scoundrel - Bing Li the Heretic - Na Wen the Brawler - Dr. Zuberi Mbogo the Quack

Promising Young Woman (2021)

*contains spoilers*

Revenge is a dish best served stone-cold sober…

Delightful and dimpled British star Carey Mulligan has had a successful career to date, playing alongside leading men such as Leonardo DiCaprio (‘The Great Gatsby’), Ryan Gosling (‘Drive’) and Michael Fassbender (‘Shame’). Despite not always being centre stage, many of Mulligan’s film choices have been eclectic in terms of genre, and it seems this winning combination of offbeat and orthodox have all led to her explosive lead role in the indie assault on the senses that is ‘Promising Young Woman’.

Carey is Cassandra Thomas, a 30-year-old whose promising career as a doctor went into a tailspin when she dropped out of medical school following the rape of her best friend Nina Fisher at the rough hands of their classmates. It’s implied that Nina – overwhelmed by what happened to her and the lack of support or investigative interference – committed suicide, and in the years since, Cassie has dedicated her life to avenging her friend’s death. Rather than continuing to try to take the claims up with police, Cassie turns unconventional vigilante and offers herself up as hot-mess boy bait, spending her nights fake falling-down drunk in bars and clubs to see and document how many men attempt to take advantage of her. Going so far – arguably stupidly so – as to let them take her home, Cassie abruptly reveals her sobriety to shock them into acknowledging and lamenting their predatory behaviour.

These scenes in particular are deliciously satisfying – that moment the self-proclaimed “nice guy” realises his unwilling date is more than aware of her surroundings and is going to confront him about them. The genius of these moments is in the power of Mulligan’s swift and drastic transformations. She doesn’t need to threaten or produce a weapon to take control, her stark sobriety is enough.

Making her feature filmmaking debut, director Emerald Fennell has had her fair share of femme fatale experience as head writer on Season 2 of TV’s addictive ‘Killing Eve’. Her love of strong, clever but chaotic women are all bundled into one with the creation of Cassie. She’s a Villanelle-esque sexy sociopath with a skewed moral compass, complimented by a noughties heavy soundtrack featuring a screechy orchestral remix of Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’, a rom-com inspired routine to Paris Hilton’s ‘Stars Are Blind’, and DeathbyRomy’s cover of the Weather Girls’ ‘It’s Raining Men’.

‘Promising Young Woman’ could just as easily be called Privileged Young Men. With a narrative that draws on #MeToo, toxic masculinity and on campus rape culture and rituals, this is a film that is unapologetic about its subject matter and in your face about its opinions on it. There are not-so-subtle traces of trends that are played out in real life today, like dismissing women’s allegations to protect men’s reputations. Whilst Nina’s life was destroyed and her credibility doubted, male peers like perpetrator Al Monroe (Chris Lowell) and his sleazy friend Joe (Max Greenfield) were given glowing references, advanced to the top of their fields and became popular pillars of their communities, industries and social circles.

Although predictable for me, the eventual reveal of the one good man from Cassie’s past being complicit in Nina’s rape (her happy-to-take-it-slow boyfriend Ryan played by a charmingly goofy Bo Burnham), is a gasp out loud moment. Her world is once again shattered beyond repair when she realises the relationship that has made her happy for the first time in a long time was built on a lie (or to give him the benefit of the doubt, a very bad mistake). He is the first man she felt she could trust, be herself around, and fall in love with, but she discovers that underneath he was at worst, another one of the guys, and at best, an indefensible bystander.

You’d be forgiven for thinking ‘Promising Young Woman’ is all anti-men. Everything about it - on the surface and in the trailer - screams angry, bra burning feminist. However, it’s more nuanced than that and takes more of an anti-bad men, anti-bad women and anti-bad behaviour stance, as many of the movie’s female characters also have to confront the fact that their refusal or disinterest to speak up and call out abuse has enabled criminal conduct to set in, rot and spread. Cassie - an anti-hero herself - holds a grubby mirror up to the faces of the women from her college days with varying degrees of cunning and callousness, from feigning the abduction and pimping out of the University Dean Elizabeth Walker’s daughter, to tricking an inebriated former classmate (Alison Brie) into thinking she was unfaithful, or worse, sexually assaulted, in a hotel room.

Cassie’s methods are extreme and quite frankly mad, but her motives are steeped in an obsessive desire to do right by her friend and seek justice whatever the cost (the latter playing out in tragic but successful fashion in the finale). She is an intentionally entangled fly, luring spiders of all shapes and sizes to the centre of the web, daring them to do their worst. Most times she is well prepared, and even when it seems like she’s bitten off more than she can chew, another dose of vigorous vengeance is plunged in (even if it has to be done posthumously!)

Physically too, she’s a calculating chameleon. From pigtails, flowery blouses and flats for a girl-next-door look, to blow-job blotted lips, tight dresses and skyscraper stilettos to give off a late-night pick-up vibe, every element of her outfit is deliberate and devious. Dressed up in a wig the colour of a Rainbow Paddle Pop and sexy stripper nurse outfit in the film’s final act, Cassie is the literal sexual objectification of the promising young medical practitioner she could have been. Instead, she’s a practitioner of pain, turning Monroe’s bachelor party into her plastered patients.

Handcuffing Al to the bed upstairs, it looks like she’s reeled in her biggest fish to date. “It's every man's worst nightmare, getting accused of something like that,” Al cries, to which a deadpan Cassie replies “can guess what every woman's worst nightmare is?” But soon the tables turn when he breaks free, overpowers her and smothers her to death with a pillow. It’s a brutal and distressingly drawn-out scene, and it takes a while before it hits you that she really is dead and this is where her sad story ends. Joe and Al burn her body. It’s all over. Or so you think.

We cut to Al’s wedding, and as Juice Newton’s ‘Angel of the Morning’ plays, Ryan begins to receive scheduled texts from Cassie, taunting him from beyond the grave with a juicy contingency plan. Using Al’s ex-attorney Jordan Green (Alfred Molina) and his regret and grief over representing the wrong party to her advantage, Cassie had sent him incriminating evidence about Nina’s assault and her own demise in advance. “You didn't think this was the end, did you? It is now” the first texts read, as police sirens wail and officers emerge from the woods to arrest Al for murder. “Enjoy the wedding! Love, Cassie & Nina” the final messages say, followed by a perfectly placed winky face emoticon as Fletcher’s ‘Last Laugh’ cues the end credits. It’s a gratifying water cooler moment, bona fide badass yet bittersweet, but you’re still left wondering if it was all worth it.

‘Promising Young Woman’ could be cut from the same tortured heroine cloth as ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, with Nina and Cassie’s friendship rivalling ‘Thelma & Louise’. It covers a lot of taboo territories and topics, from slut shaming to consent and coercion, and evokes the harrowing Margaret Atwood quote “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them”.

‘Promising Young Woman’ is not for the faint hearted, and anyone who fears the film may be triggering should stay well clear. It’s not always easy viewing and it’s not always fair, however it’s more than just a pitch-black comedy or clear-cut tale of rape-revenge. It’s a brave, bold and original satire with bite and brains.

4/5 stars.

Meet My OCs masterpost!

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and I’ve gotten a lot of new followers and several new OCs in that time. Enough now that I should probably put them under a read more. OCs are divided up by main setting that they fall under - even though all my Fallout content takes place in its own ‘verse (distinct from the canon Fallout verse in that there are horses, among other differences), the various coasts tend to be pretty separate. Without further ado:

Fallen Knight

Fallen Knight is a longform fic that is currently and irregularly updating. It takes place in the Commonwealth in 2287-2289, featuring a mix of canon characters (often modified to my own convenience) and OCs. It can be found here. 

Christopher Farris, aka the Fallen Knight (Lone Wanderer)

[image ID: a drawing of Christopher Farris by @scarecrow-forest​. He is a white, blond man wearing a baseball cap, a green shirt, and a long tan vest. He is holding a baseball bat and has a pip-boy on his arm. End ID]

Christopher is my lone wanderer that I ported to Fallout 4. He is (currently) a Brotherhood of Steel Knight alongside Paladin Danse. He is the main character of Fallout: Fallen Knight. He has a strong moral compass and idolizes the knightly ideas of protecting the weak and confronting the strong. Content for him on my blog can be found at #fallen knight. 

Kristine Finch, Minuteman General

[image ID: a screenshot from Fallout 4 of Kristine Finch. She is a light-skinned woman in a blue shirt and tan jacket, with a cowboy-like hat. She is standing in front of a ramshackle wooden building with a neon sign that says “Minuteman HQ”. End ID]

Kristine is my Minuteman OC and the General of the Minutemen. Under her leadership, they have worked to make the commonwealth safer by uniting various settlements to exchange resources and provide mutual defense. She has also published the Minuteman Guide To Commonwealth Travel, also known as the Blue Book, a handy pamphlet for settlers and traders making their way across the Commonwealth. Content for her can be found at #one if by land.

Thomas “The Trigger” Calvani

[image ID: a screenshot from Fallout 4 of Thomas Calvani. He is a white, brown-haired man in road leathers with various leather armor layered over it. He wears a pair of reflective aviator sunglasses and a green bandana covering his face. He is standing in front of power armor with flames painted on it. End ID]

Thomas Calvani is a ne’er-do-well from the Atom Cats who has somehow managed to continuously fall upwards, somehow culminating with him as the Overboss of the Nuka World raiders after trying to go to Nuka World with MacCready and Cait. Content for him can be found at #tales from the commonwealth.

Greetings from Appalachia

Hector Sanchez (Reclaimer)

[image ID: a Vault Tec ID card from Fallout 76. It belongs to Hector Sanchez, a latine man with brown hair, a Vault 76 jumpsuit, and a van dyke beard. He is smiling and giving a thumbs up to the camera. End ID]

Hector Sanchez is an amateur cryptid hunter from Vault 76. Raised in the vault on his mother’s stories of cryptids before the war, he left the vault with his best friend Hazel in search of cryptids to find. Content for him can be found at #greetings from appalachia.

Fallout: Brave New World

Brave New World is a collection of various OCs who end up in the Mojave wasteland at the same time, in around 2289 or so. While no unifying narrative yet exists, I am planning some ficlets/short form fic around these OCs. 

Ace (Courier 6)

[image ID: a screenshot from Fallout: New Vegas of Ace. He is a latine man with an eyepatch, a black cowboy hat, and a black leather coat over blue jeans, with several belts and bandoliers. He is standing in front of Dinky the Dinosaur and pointing a gun off screen. End ID]

Ace is my courier, and a member of the Great Khans. Still a teenager when Bitter Springs happened, he was separated from the rest of the Khans and spent his remaining teenage years doing odd jobs around the Mojave and avoiding the encroaching NCR, culminating in a fateful job for the Mojave Express. He now finds himself down one eye, hunting the Mojave for Benny and the platinum chip. Content for him can be found at #ace in the hole.

Sophia Mobius

[image ID: a screenshot of Fallout: New Vegas of Sophia Mobius. She is a white woman with white hair and round, cat-eye glasses. She is wearing a red labcoat and has the holorifle strapped to her back. End ID]

Sophia is a Followers medic turned disciple of Doctor Mobius after a chance encounter with a crashed satellite sent her to the Big MT. She later traveled to the Sierra Madre casino with Arcade and Veronica to hunt down and stop Father Elijah. She is now working with the Veronica and Christine to convince Brotherhood members to leave, smuggling out technology if possible, to assist the Followers of the Apocalypse. Content for her can be found at #followers of mobius

Martin Goldberg aka the Silver Canary (Reclaimer)

[image ID: a drawing of Martin Goldberg and Emmerane Black, aka the Silver Canary and Coal Black, by @rotarydials​. Martin is a dark skinned man with silver hair and a beard. He is dressed in the Silver Shroud’s outfit - a black and gray trenchcoat and fedora with a silver scarf. He carries a submachine gun, which he is pointing off camera. Emmerane is a white woman with short black hair. She has black goggles and a black cloak over a white shirt and red vest. She is doing air-guitar motions. They both have pip-boys. End ID]

Martin Goldberg, known better as the Silver Canary, was a pre-war vigilante and the inspiration for the Silver Shroud. As a staunch anti-fascist and anti-capitalist, he had several encounters with the movers and shakers of American industry, notably Robert House, whose suite Martin broke into while he was visiting a West Virginia plant. Upon learning about Vault-Tec’s plans for Vault 76, he broke into Vault Tec University, changing the list of vault residents to a list of random West Virginia citizens, as well as himself. 

While in the Vault, Emmerane Black, a moody young woman born in the vault, declared herself his nemesis. When they left the vault in 2102, he learned of this, and instead decided to take her under his wing, forcibly adopting the young supervillain. Though they clashed often at first, they quickly found they had more in common than they realized, and soon teamed up to take on certain targets - most notably the Brotherhood of Steel. 

At some point in the following years, both Martin and Emmerane ghoulified, and in the late 2200s, Martin traveled west, to find his old nemesis, Robert House. He now haunts the areas around Vegas, a mysterious spectre doling out justice to the wicked. Content for Martin and Emmerane can be found at #the silver canary and coal black. Emmerane belongs to @corsairesix

Caroline Keene, Ranger of the Wastes

[image ID: a screenshot from HeroForge of a black ghoul woman with short braids. She is wearing a cowboy hat, long duster, cowboy boots, and a shirt and pants that are all brown with tan accents. She has a revolver and a knife strapped to her hip and a repeater on her back. She is offering a hammered tin cup to the “camera”. End ID]

Caroline Keene was a park ranger in a firewatch tower in Monongahela National Forest when the bombs fell. After a few days of quiet introspection, her and some of her fellow rangers agreed to make their way to the nearest town to find survivors, slowly making their way to Flatwoods and then Morgantown to join the Responders. 

After helping the Responders stabilize Appalachia in the wake of the Great War and faction infighting that followed, Caroline traveled west, continuing to help out those in need as he crossed the country that had once been America. During this time, she began to ghoulify; though initially and understandably distraught, a community of ghouls in what was once Texas helped her to accept her condition. Upon arriving in the Mojave, she found that her reputation as the “Ranger of the Wastes” preceded her, and she was recruited by the desert rangers, though she left again when they were incorporated with the NCR. Now, she has settled in the Mojave, starting a brahmin and bighorner ranch with her partners, and helping shelter, teach, and raise lost and disaffected youth in the Mojave. Content for her can be found at #ranger of the wastes

The King of the Road (Chosen One)

[image ID: a screenshot of Heroforge of a dark skinned ghoul in a black suit. He has a red tie and a red cape, and is wearing round glasses and an opulent crown. He carries a spear and has a holstered revolver on his hip. Near his feet is a pile of coins and a gray cat, ready to pounce. End ID]

The King of the Road was once the Chosen One of Arroyo, but became disatisfied with the duties of ruling and the pressures of being the tribe’s chosen one. In 2244, he left Arroyo, wandering New California as a drifter. He abanoned his name and title, choosing instead to take the name of the King of the Road as his renown as a drifter grew. He ghoulified due to his exposure to radiation over the years, but took to the change rather well. He continued to travel the roads of New California, eventually finding his way to the Mojave wasteland as the NCR did. Content for him can be found at #king of the road (when I make it).

Angelia King

[image ID: a Heroforge mini of a white woman seated on a white horse. She is wearing a tan jacket over a brown chest piece, chaps, and tan cowboy boots. She has a red bandana around her neck and several belts around her waist, one of which holds a holstered pistol. Her left eye is covered by an eyepatch and there is dark makeup around both of her eyes. She has short dyed blonde and red hair that is shaved on one side. She is brandishing a rifle towards the camera and there is a sawed-off shotgun on her back. End ID]

Angelina King, the leader of the Nightstalkers, a gang in the Mojave in 2289. When Ace drives the NCR out of the Mojave, she at first believes that she will be allowed to operate with relative impunity; however, when the NCR supply trains stop coming from the west (no longer needing to fight a war that has been lost), she starts hitting caravans first and then larger settlements, carving her way across the Mojave towards New Vegas. Content for her can be found at #the nightstalkers strike again.

Other OCs

Hannah Alton

[image ID: a screenshot from Heroforge of a white woman wearing a forest green cloak. She has a brown cloth wrapped around her chest and blue jeans on. She has a quiver of crossbow bolts on her hip and is holding a crossbow. She has red hair and several piercings. End ID]

Hannah Alton is my PC for our Fallout: New Orleans campaign run by and using the PBTA hack Powered by the Nuclear Apocalypse made by @corsairesix. Hannah is a “raider” from a gang called the Robbin’ Hoods, a gang dedicated to stealing from New Orleans’ ghoul aristocrats and redistributing their wealth to the town they’re based in. Content for her can e found on #fallout New Orleans and #powered by the nuclear apocalypse

Oh my god you're right. Bruce had Dick as his ward for years and never adopted him until Dick was an adult but he adopted Jason immediately as soon as he made him Robin. What the hell. I can't imagine how Dick must have felt finding that out. If I were him I'd be mad at Bruce and resent him for that.

BRO IM FUMING. ive been thinking abt this all morning bc someone reminded me but like everyone talks abt jason being bruce’s first canon adoption in any continuity and like that just isnt true? i was reading old tec a little while ago and bruce used ward and adoption pretty interchangeably, and at the time ‘ward’ as a classification had a very similar definition to adoption today. especially with these writers just like. not knowing adoption law, its pretty safe to think that they just thought of dick as bruce’s adopted son. bruce certainly thought of him that way. theres this one book pretty early on in tec where some how bruce ended up adopting like this evil kid (who dies to save robins life and his statue is on wayne grounds still im p sure). but bruce asks dick if he’s okay with it, like this kid is in need of a family and some people to look out for him. and dick pushes him to do it, so bruce says “okay i’ll have my lawyers draw up the adoption papers” and it follows the same process it did with dick. so actually? in any universe dick was the first kid to be adopted, then this evil billy kid, then later jason.

but ok sure. g-d is dead and we’re in post crisis continuity right? bruce never did adopt him, and it was around the time he started communicating any form of affection really badly, and became an emotionless pillar in dicks life who sometimes expressed anger. pre crisis dick individually decided that he was growing out of robin, and as the leader of the teen titans it was time for him to step out of bruce’s shadow and become a separate force for good. he recognised that bruce’s vigilantism comes from a place of pain and revenge, but dick’s comes from compassion and seeking justice. and he couldnt continue to work bruce’s way, he cant maximise his good-doing-ability that way.

but AGAIN. g-d is dead and we’re in post crisis continuity, dick got kicked out as robin. it was one of the few things keeping him together, he barely got to spend any time with bruce and he felt so alienated from his parents’ memory, that being robin was a way to bridge his divide from them and from bruce. it was one of the few places he knew he was making bruce and his mother proud. but then? dick was off at college and on a few too many teen titans missions, and bruce got jealous and self righteously angry that dick wasnt just his own personal soldier who asked how high when bruce said jump. so he took it away from him, kicked him out of the manor, and replaced him.

he went out, found jason, and adopted him. without even telling dick. he found out through like a news paper im pretty sure. can you imagine that? dick missed out on a childhood for this, he spent hours and hours training, he spent every night out fighting crime with bruce, or going through data and being bruce’s right hand man. at every single turn, he did whatever he could to make bruce proud. that way he might be more emotionally present. and instead? he goes and adopts another kid, encourages jason to call him dad, and is about a trillion times more affectionate with him. and he always said he had the papers drawn up to adopt dick in a drawer, but what good are they there? the mind games. he did everything in his power for bruce, he bled for him, and it just wasnt enough! can you imagine how soul crushing that must have been.

and to his credit dick was really good at keeping jason out of this, he snapped at him in their first meeting and yeah i understand why, its overwhelming. but after that he made an effort, because it wasnt jasons fault. he deserved a loving family, but like so did dick. so he kept this anger directed squarely at bruce.

but robin wasnt bruce’s mantle to take away, or to pass on. it was dick’s. he created it to help people, to work with batman, and to make his mother proud. and i just. [screams]

Stranger Things

Stranger Things proves that we, as an audience, don’t want original stories due to the overhanging nostalgia, relatable characters and straightforward yet enticing plot within this internet-breaking Netflix original series.

The first season of Stranger Things is set in 1983. Throughout the series, the directors replicated the 80’s vibe. In turn, this meant no cellphones and spotty communication. The flow of the plot depended on this. For instance, use of walkie talkies was important for the communication of characters. It aesthetically gave the nostalgic effect, but also allowed the writers to easily manipulate what information characters would obtain. In Season 1, the use of the walkie talkie was important in finding Will. Eleven was capable of using the walkie talkie to attempt to at least talk to will. A few times, Will responded through crackling feedback. This was just enough to give the audience hope that Will was still alive. In Season 2, Dustin announced over the talkies that there was a “code red,” referring to the growth of the polliwog into a demi-dog. None of the characters heard the code red, leaving Dustin to ask Steve for help as a last resort. This lead Steve to become the “mom” of the kids throughout the rest of the story. The talkies are constantly referenced and show up at least every other episode if not every single one. More-so than the walkie talkies, the kids themselves are a huge reminder of this overhanging nostalgia. Their clothing style and general way of living is spot on with how it was in the 80’s. From biking as their main mode of transportation, to collecting quarters just so they could go to the arcade, Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas were prime examples of the freespirited living as an 80’s kid. Seeing as every aspect of this film is created with the intent of replicating an era, it takes away from its originality. But the familiar feel of the 80’s is what many people love the most about Stranger Things.

Seeing as the main audience for Stranger Things is millennials, many of the characters were made to be relatable in some way. The kids, Mike, Will, Lucas and Dustin are prime example of this. These kids are a part of the AV club at their middle school. In class, they’re front row, ready to learn. They are utterly true to themselves regardless of what other people think. Alas, they’re considered “lame” or “outsiders” due to their difference in interests. I feel like that resinates in everyone in at least some way shape or form. We all have that one thing about us that makes us unlike everyone else, no matter if it’s “lame” or not. Incorporating this close to home concept draws the audience in, creating an empathetic love for these characters. This empathy has been done time and time again. Take “Perks of Being a Wallflower” as an example of this. In the book, Charlie, Sam, and other main characters are relentlessly themselves. No if ands or buts. As you read, you can’t help but put yourself in their shoes. Another very relatable character within Stranger Things is Joyce. Joyce is the mother of Will, the kid who went missing. Joyce never for a second even thought about giving up on Will. Although it was confusing and frightening, Joyce blindly put the puzzle pieces together bit by bit until she found her son. She didn’t care what she had to do or how crazy she’d become, she would stop at nothing to get her son back. This relates to me personally as Joyce reminds me very much of my boyfriend, Ian’s, mother, Mary. Similarily to the Joyce we saw in the first episode of Stranger Things, Mary is completely and utterly invested in Ian’s life. She kept every drawing, every photo and cherishes every moment with him even to this day. She’s a very spiritual person as well. If Ian were in Will’s shoes, I know for a fact that Mary would have done very similar things. This made watching Season 1 even more heartwrenching. Watching a character so similar to a human being I know in real life really brought the story to life for me. These unoriginal yet relatable concept pulls at those heartstrings, creating an immersive connection with the text.

Many credit Stranger Things for being the best original story of our time. But as I’ve come to learn, the plot line is anything but original. As we discussed in class, the Hero’s Journey is embedded in this thriller series. The tv show begins with Eleven being introduced to the “Ordinary World.” The audience didn’t know it yet, but El had escaped from Hawkins Lab and wandered astray into a restaurant where she simply was looking for food. This introduction to El was sympathetic in a way that the audience could relate to before they found out she had superhuman powers. As more people began disappearing, and as El’s powers became known, the “Call to Action” became for El to somehow help save the town. The “Refusal to the Call” occurred when El and the other kids were wandering on the railroad tracks, following the compass to the magnetic field their professor told them about. El used her powers to deter the kids away from the source due to fear of what may happen. Skipping to the second Season, El “Meets the Mentor.” After getting into a large fight with Hopper, El decided to run away and find her mother, Terry Ives. Meeting Mama was a major turning point for El. She learned what had actually happened after birth and why Mama was no longer able to speak. Mama up to this point in the show was only able to utter the words: Breathe, Sunflower, Three to the Right, Four to the Left, Rainbow, 450. El decided to used her powers to attempt to talk to Mama. El found out what these words meant. ’Breathe’ is the one word Terry remembers from giving birth to Jane and ‘sunflowers’ were the first thing she saw after waking up from childbirth. After a few years, Terry found enough information and thought of a way to get her daughter back. ’Three to the Right, Four to the left’ referenced the combo to a safe where Mama grabbed a gun which she used to get her daughter back. The room Jane was in was marked with a ‘rainbow.’ As Terry entered the rainbow room, Jane was there, sitting next to a tan young women. After being caught trying to leave with her daughter, Terry was brought to a room where they pumped ‘450’ volts of electricity into her brain. El was quite obviously shocked to find what happened to her mother. So she then made it her next mission to find the other girl from the rainbow room. Which she did by using her powers. El found Kali in Chicago. Kali is another superhuman like El. But unlike El, Kali has taken the time to master her trade. As they reunite, Kali taught El everything she knew, leaving El with a new understanding of her own capabilities. After a complete ‘bitchin’ makeover including slicked back hair and thick black eyeliner, El “Crossed the Threshold” and swore she would never leave her sister again. That vow was short lived after El joined Kali and her gang on a mission. Kali and her team were ‘vigilantes.’ They sought out and killed those who had done wrong to them. This time, they sought out and planned to kill the man that used electric shock therapy on El’s mother. Yet when it came time to murder him, El used her powers to keep Kali from shooting the man. Only then did El realize that her friends needed her. And thus she started “the Road Back” where she returned to Hawkins and saved the town, at least for now. This Netflix Original is a prime example of how we as an audience, don’t want original stories due to the reminiscent 80’s vibe, empathy for characters with real-life struggles and the unmistakable hero’s journey within Stranger Things.

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