STRANGER THINGS 2 REVIEWED! EKATERINA SEDIA + MINISTER FAUST ON POWER OF RAGE, THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE GROUP, THE AMAZING BOB, ELEVEN VS MAX, NOSTALGIC OVER LOVECRAFTIAN EVIL WHILE NORTH AMERICA FACES FASCISM (MF GALAXY 144)

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IS THE PUNK EPISODE THE MOST HATED OF SERIES? THE ANTI-FEMINIST DANGER  OF LEARNING HOW TO BE HUMAN FROM ALL MY CHILDREN, WHAT THE HOPPER-EL RELATIONSHIP SAYS ABOUT TRAUMA, WELL-INTENTIONED TERRIBLE PARENTING

 LISTEN/DOWNLOAD 

 Stranger Things, Season One, is the Netflix hit series that revels in 80s nostalgia and pays homage to everything from ET and The Goonies to Firestarter and Dungeons & Dragons.

 It’s  the story of four small-town American boys, Will, Mike, Dustin, and  Lucas, who encounter a mysterious girl named Eleven who possesses  enormous power that threatens to destroy anyone who crosses her—even  agents of the United States government. And all of them and the people  they love are threatened by Lovecraftian annihilation from a force  emanating from a place beyond reckoning: the Upside Down. 

 I love Stranger Things, and not just because I’m a child of 80s. I love it because it does what I tried to do with my debut novel The Coyote Kings:  celebrate friendship and young love and science fiction and fantasy  fandom and the heroism of young people. The series is enamoured with its  non-glamourous setting and the innocence of its characters, chief of  which are teenagers played by actual teenagers, harkening to the glory  days of DeGrassi Junior High, rather than having gangly 13-year-olds played by 25 year-old athletes and underwear models.

 The  series loves the American science fiction and fantasy movies, TV shows,  and games of my youth, and does them one better—tying them into a  coherent package that rises above 99% of its inspiration. The show makes  me feel like a kid again in the best possible ways.

 And now  season 2 is out, and tonight’s SPOILER-INTENSE CONVERSATION features my  guest and friend, the acclaimed science fiction novelist who’s also a  scientist, Ekaterina Sedia. She’s the author of five novels including  the celebrated Heart of Iron. She’s been on MF GALAXY before to talk food, fiction, and feminism, and she’s also maybe just as much a fan of Stranger Things as I am, if that’s actually possible.
Today, we discuss:
  • How Stranger Things 2 depicts discovering personal power, personal tactics, the power of the group, and the power of rage
  • Whether the punk episode is the most hated of series and if it deserves to be
  • If Steve is mother of the year, or brother of the year
  • The anti-feminist danger of learning how to be human from All My Children
  • The danger of being Barb or Bob
  • Why standing up to Nazis or Lovecraftian evil by yourself is not the best strategy
  • What  the Hopper-El relationship says about trauma, well-intentioned but  terrible parenting, and leaping from prisons of exploitation to prisons  of misguided love, and
  • Joyce’s relationship with the most BASIC character of all
ekaterinasedia.com

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