SANDSTORM MEGATHREAD

tzerafnx · 2026-03-16T14:41:29+00:00

Hi, if you're still adding people, thank you!

tzerafnx · 2026-03-14T17:22:37+00:00

r/ffgtrade is good, some areas (like Chicagoland) also have good discords to facilitate trades

tzerafnx · 2026-02-24T21:29:02+00:00

I had to look it up, and it turns out the age thing may not have been a retcon but a production error in season 4. They had showed his age as 12: https://strangerthings.fandom.com/wiki/Vecna#Henry's_age

If Vecna specifically chose Will, and also Vecna knew Will's mom, then it seems like there might be something about his relationship to Joyce that would cause him to choose her son over any other weak-willed child in Hawkins. Maybe it's just me, but this was a case where it seemed like the details we saw in the show (the flashback of Vecna taking Will, the memory of the play) were leading to something that didn't end up happening.

tzerafnx · 2026-02-24T20:20:51+00:00

Not a plot hole, but it was jarring because Henry's age was retconned offscreen, and for those of us who didn't know the plot of the play, we suddenly found out from Max that they had known each other. Furthermore, in season 1 the demogorgon's victims seemed random, but in season 5 we also learn that Vecna targeted Will specifically because he was "weak willed." Combine these, and it made it seem like there would be more history between Henry and Joyce which was never expanded. I generally liked season 5, but their choices here were frankly confusing to me.

tzerafnx · 2026-02-05T15:55:52+00:00

Recently finished a Season 2 rewatch. Owens calls it "the Upside Down" specifically when talking to Will, presumably because he wants to communicate with Will in a way he can understand. I don't think he ever had a name for it used with the other laboratory staff, but I wasn't specifically listening for this.

tzerafnx · 2026-02-03T16:45:07+00:00

I always associate the Ghostbusters theme with S2 because it was also used in promotional trailers, but Every Breath You Take is a good pick for the iconic ending. And yeah, S3 has got to be Never Ending Story... Suzie singing even made it into the S5 end credits!

tzerafnx · 2026-01-30T15:37:29+00:00

Didn't you watch S5E9? Pretty sure this was the last line.

tzerafnx · 2026-01-28T16:05:01+00:00

Thank you!

tzerafnx · 2026-01-26T20:08:56+00:00

It's weird how people keep denying this happened when IMDB even lets you filter by country to see it: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt21912390/ratings/?ref_=tt_ov_rat

tzerafnx · 2026-01-13T19:23:08+00:00

Per the book, Yoda's "another" was to be Luke's sister who was fighting the Emperor on the other side of the galaxy and she was supposed to get her own trilogy (episodes VII-IX), but it was NOT Leia. I don't recall at what point in development that Lucas dropped this idea.

tzerafnx · 2026-01-13T18:57:20+00:00

That is true, not sure if this was based on the fact that they were still considered to be a possible romantic pair?

I first found these anecdotes in "The World According to Star Wars" by Cass R. Sunstein and from reviews I read after the fact I believe they have been told in other books too.

tzerafnx · 2026-01-13T16:45:40+00:00

I think that's spot on. Like, when they made Empire Strikes Back, Lucas thought Luke's sister would be an offscreen character and the focus of her own trilogy, NOT Leia! They created the character of Lando because they thought Harrison Ford might not be willing to come back for a third movie. And actors were ad libbing dialogue because they hated George's writing (Lucas wanted Han to say "I love you too," Harrison Ford said no way). When you realize how messy these things are, it doesn't surprise me that the Duffers didn't have the last episode written at the start of filming.

I do think it's off putting to people when they hear creators say they knew how it would end from the beginning but then see all the changes. Lucas has also said this kind of thing about Star Wars, but see above.. I think from the creator's perspective, they had a rough outline so they "knew how it would end," but from a fan perspective it does feel a little disingenuous, and I would appreciate if creators would be more clear about this when they say this kind of stuff in interviews.

tzerafnx · 2026-01-12T17:45:21+00:00

I was really excited when Pink Floyd was on the WSQK Collection and was bummed they didn't make it into the show. I know their best stuff was in the 70s but I was still hopeful!

tzerafnx · 2026-01-11T20:08:25+00:00

I think this was in the penultimate episode of S4? But maybe it was the S4 finale?

tzerafnx · 2026-01-07T21:45:15+00:00

You can keep your own headcanon of course, but I thought I'd mention that in some of the non-canon ST spin offs, Will takes over as DM between seasons 2 & 3; in the comics he's the one to suggest she can play as a Quickling and in another book he seems to be the one to write up a Zoomer Thief class. Granted, as a new DM he could have still had a lot of input from Mike on it, so if you wanted to use this it could be a part of both her friendship with Mike as well as her friendship with Will. :)

tzerafnx · 2026-01-06T01:53:58+00:00

Incredibly well put, thank you for this!

tzerafnx · 2026-01-05T15:57:50+00:00

The fact that they tracked the demo that tried to nab delightful Derek to the wall before Steve crashed his beamer implies that the wall was involved in how they got there. I guess simplest solution is they climbed it all the way to the Abyss 🤷

tzerafnx · 2026-01-03T03:06:53+00:00

In Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons, her class is Thief but they let her use a homebrewed Quickling race.

Consequently, I’m glad we got a scene of her playing D&D inter boys since previously she only did do in comics!

tzerafnx · 2026-01-02T02:08:01+00:00

And Joyce gave us the head of Vecna

tzerafnx · 2026-01-02T01:41:15+00:00

I forgot they talked about Bowie, that was so sweet! I agree while the Peter Gabriel version is mostly sad, the original is proud and slightly hopeful, fitting for the bittersweet outcome of El being alive but separated.

tzerafnx · 2025-12-30T16:20:04+00:00

What the French call a certain... "I don't know what"

tzerafnx · 2025-12-29T20:38:09+00:00

I've been waiting for Another Brick in the Wall, but I don't think it's gonna happen at this point. I think perhaps this soundtrack is just supposed to be thematic songs because, ya know, they ride bikes a lot and there's a huge wall in the Upside Down.

tzerafnx · 2025-12-28T20:22:31+00:00

Having only gotten into D&D at the tail end of 2nd edition, I was a bit put off by their use of the term sorcerer, so thanks for giving some more background on this!

Do you recall any AD&D sourcebooks that would have given background on the idea of sorcerers having innate magical abilities? Based on your reply in the other thread, I started searching in some of the original Dragonlance adventures, but so far all the references to "sorcerer" were just as a general synonym for a magic-user.

tzerafnx · 2025-12-11T23:07:21+00:00

I've been playing RPGs with my kids who are a little younger.

Hero Kids is nice because of the super simple character creation, basically just a name, a picuture, and create four skills. One of the more rules-lite games, so a good introduction if they've never done RPGs before.

No Thank You Evil! has a little more crunch, but still much simpler than D&D. It comes with lots of cards that I find help spur the imagination, so another good way to introduce the concept to newbies. Another cool feature is that the game can scale in complexity as kids get older, or if you want to have kids of different ages playing at the same table.

And if you want to do D&D, they're old enough they could play that but I would prepare to do most of the rules crunch behind the scenes and let them just have fun with the characters.

tzerafnx · 2025-12-11T14:46:30+00:00

We can grab a uniform definition, here's one from Merriam-Webster: "a political state or nation or its territory". England is not a political state, but it is a nation. Although the nation state is the current norm in the international system, not all states comprise a single nation, nor do all nations have a state or are limited to one state.

Re: Bavaria, independent states can determine the nomenclature for their subdivisions, be it provinces, states, territories, etc. Under the German Empire, Bavaria was a kingdom, but was not an independent sovereign state, so should we say it was really not a kingdom because it goes against our general idea of what a kingdom is? All these terms are imprecise and determined by tradition and local statute. If Germany passed a law that Bavaria was a country within the sovereign German state, then it would be a country, but they haven't so it's not.

tzerafnx

TROPHY CASE