Personal Note: Me and Stranger Things

  So.... Stranger Things. Set in Indiana in 1983, in a small town. Focuses on kids who play D&D.

  While I moved a lot as a small child by the age of 4 I was back where I was born, Indiana. I lived near Muncie, famed in D&D lore because of Knights of the Dinner Table. But there was a lot of gaming in Muncie, as I recall.
  I lived in al area near the towns of Redkey and Dunkirk, where the downtowns look like this;

this;

this;

and this;

  Yes, that is the entire 'downtown' of four different towns. It looks a lot like where the protagonists of Stranger Things live, doesn't it?

  Here is the view facing south from where I went to high school;

The other directions only vary in that one field is soybeans.

  I was a bit older than the boys in Stranger Things that are hanging out with El and a bit younger than Nancy and her friends - in 1983 I turned 16.

  My AD&D 1e campaign was 5 years old in 1983 and as I recall the party was dealing with a group of evil monks.

  Anyway, I identify with a lot of the characters in Stranger Things because it is, in an odd way, about me and my friends. Sure, archetypes are what they are for reasons, and tropes are useful, yes. But this hits awfully close to home. Very literally.