#bad science

https://www.psypost.org/early-sexual-initiation-accelerates-physical-aging-massive-genetic-study-finds/

This is a bait title again, if multiple factors together can be any given total increase then an entourage effect is what occurs here & not one specific one causes this.

When these factors can be delt with through good education & healthy continued use of that education, then it's literally a dog whistle saying look over here instead of the fact that non of these would actually cause a reduction of life span if not for us not educating & making sure to practice & continue using what we have learned while changing our decisions moving forward to address those issues.

(I'm sorry this took so long. There's only so much idiocy I can take in one sitting.)

When last we left our intrepid Party+Nikki they were being menaced by a … Pumpkin Flayer. Thing. Monster. With thorns.

And suddenly I remember why I do not care about this show. Why am I doing this? Who even am I? Does anything mean anything anymore?

The fight begins! The Pumpkin Flayer grabs El the exact same way that the Meat Flayer did in season 3. Maybe it’s a Flayer thing - no originality, just a pre-programmed set of moves. Or maybe these writers are just bloody lazy. I wonder which it might be.

The others leap into action! And are immediately snatched up by Pumpkin Tentacles of Doom! Except for Will who just stands there and mumbles, “No, not again.” No neck tingles. No screaming trauma triggers. Just the world-weariness of a veteran warrior in the body of a 12 year old boy.

I’m being generous. It’s not anything so noble. It’s just flat. Like Will just dropped his ice cream and is watching it melt on the hot pavement.

Wait, what is this? Will is being proactive? He takes on the Pumpkin Flayer singlehandedly, armed only with the mallet from the carnival strength tester in episode 2! How foresighted of him to think to steal the mallet before he even knew he’d be facing this fearsome enemy. 

Will hits the Pumpkin Flayer! Hard! The Pumpkin Flayer drops the kids! And … dies? The demo-particles waft off in a sudden and convenient breeze to become … something else, and Dustin’s arch-nemesis is rescued. You know, for a final boss that was pretty damn unsatisfying. 

And yet, apparently, these demo-particles are undergoing some kind of fast “evolution” that means they take on newer and more complex forms every time they grab someone and glomp them into their latest shape. 

Uh. No. This is not evolution. See, this is why Mr Clark should not have been allowed to go on “sabbatical”. (Do high school teachers even get sabbaticals, anyway?)

No no no no NO NO NO STOP IT STOP PUSHING THE WILL/NIKKI idea.

What would you call that ship, anyway? Wikki? Nill? Zombiepunk?

Faced with the failure of science to adequately explain why neon demo-things are wafting all over Hawkins, the Party+Nikki turn to more trusted sources. Like the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Which, you know, at least is in keeping with the original show.

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, Dustin decides that the demo-pumpkin-flayer-snow-shark-plant-particle-thing is … an Aboleth.

Let me just say here, as a veteran D&D player and DM … no. This makes even less sense than the Mind Flayer. An Aboleth is an amphibious eel-thing with psionic abilities, who breathes mucus and uses its psionic slime to turn other beings into mindless zombies. 

Having given the demo-particles an apparently arbitrary name (and no, I won’t be using it, because demo-thing is much more satisfying), the Party+Nikki inexplicably decide that maybe they should think some more about this science stuff, and wonder out loud where oh where can they find a science teacher.

What a coincidence. Nikki’s mom is the substitute science teacher.

Oh god, and Nikki’s dad is the guy who works at the convenience store where Dustin’s been scamming for free snacks.

This is unnecessary. I mean, really unnecessary. The original show had no problem introducing random characters and never bothering to tie them into the main ensemble. It’s contrived to the point of annoying. Imagine if the guy at Bob’s diner who opines about Will’s disappearance was, for example, Dustin’s second cousin twice-removed. Or the school counsellor who talks to Max turns out to be Karen Wheeler’s long-lost childhood friend.

Nikki’s mom promptly demonstrates why she’s a substitute science teacher instead of one with a steady job, by explaining evolution in a way that is just - how can I put this - stupid. Insert thats-not-how-it-works.gif. The show has fallen into a fundamental trap, trying to explain what is essentially unexplainable, and rendering itself absurd. This is fantasy, not Science 101. We don’t need these tortured explanations that take us right out of the story. Just tell us “it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and we don’t understand it”, and we’ll happily sit back and watch the monsters roam the land.

Or maybe not. There’s nothing about this show that could make me watch it happily.

Moving on from “evolution”, the Party+Nikki discuss the demo-thing’s need to use humans to build its various forms around, and liken it to the Xenomorph in the Alien movies. Especially the bit about the facehugger and how it shoves an ovipositor down Kane’s throat and lays eggs in his chest. It’s all very exciting.

And Will is … laughing.

You know. The kid who was traumatised by having an alien thing shove an ovipositor down his throat and lay demo-slugs in his chest, which he coughed up on Christmas Day, the kid whose trauma was massive even before he got possessed. The kid who is so racked with PTSD that he cries uncontrollably.

That kid. Laughing as his friends excitedly describe exactly what happened to him as though it’s a cool idea they’ve just discovered.

I remain convinced that these characters are pod people who replaced the actual Party.

Back to the pseudo-science. The demo-thing is, apparently, what happens when a few of those fuzzy spores that were floating around in the tunnels in Season 2 got stuck on this side of the gate when El slammed it shut. It’s terribly afraid of extinction, so its solution is to … super-evolve pumpkins and swallow the occasional person.

I mean, in terms of natural selection, these spores have got it going on. They’re the only things from the Upside Down that didn’t die when El closed the gate. (Yes, I know, I know, it makes no sense at all. Take it up with the Duffers.) They’re probably not in danger of extinction any time soon, right?

Keep that in mind.

Speaking of people getting swallowed, we haven’t seen Generic Bully Number 2 since the first episode. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say he’ll be powering some sort of final boss.

Lucas and Max go back to the pumpkin patch, where they discover a bunch of dead demo-pumpkins “covered in dead spores”. Because, you see, the demo-particles die if they don’t find a host within 24 hours. Which implies that ever since the gate was closed, these demo-particles have been floating around the woods happily changing into various neon creatures until that rogue guy with the flamethrower showed up.

But wait. Didn’t we already learn that the demo-particles require a mind to build their forms around? What were they doing all that time, possessing random squirrels? And how about all those demo-pumpkins? Are there no field mice left in the entire land? Consistency? This show doesn’t know her. 

Please please please PLEASE stop this rubbish where Will gives Nikki smitten, admiring glances. Really, he’s looking at Nikki the way he looked at Mike in the original show. Let the boy be gay, for god’s sake.

In the course of this long discussion about the biology of demo-particles, we find out that Nikki’s mom has no stick-a-bility. That’s why they move from school to school, and, presumably, why they’ll vanish off the face of the earth before season 3. And not, you know, because the writers wrote themselves into a corner with these essential new characters who never appear again and had to find a good excuse to disappear them.

Honestly, just kill them. All of them. Have a demo-thing rip the entire family limb from limb. At least then we could get some satisfaction for having to sit through this terrible attempt at revisionist anti-queering.

And now the Party+Nikki decide to go visit the old sawmill. You know, the one we never saw in 5 seasons of this show. The one nobody ever even mentioned. But okay. Sure. There’s a sawmill. Which looks a lot like a Dead By Daylight skin, because why not. And the reason the Party+Nikki are going there is so that Will can ask an aggressive stranger if he’s seen weird stuff around lately.

Because sure. Will is obviously the person you send out to confront angry adults. Not, say, Dustin with his gift of the gab, or Max who gives no fucks about being respectful to adults just because they’re older. Send the traumatised kid who never raises his voice and hides behind Mike when threatened. Or he did, before Nikki the Wonder Het turned up.

The questioning proves futile, and the Party+Nikki wander off, leaving us to wonder just why the hell they went there in the first place. But wait! In a stunning coincidence, demo-plants appear to glorp the screaming sawmill guys, and turn into … a demo-aardvark? Two demo-aadvarks, in fact. A fight ensues!

Aaaaand … having established that if the demo-particles can’t find a human host they die, one of the demo-aardvarks lives on after its human host is rescued by El literally tearing him out of the thing.

Wow, that took five minutes to contradict its own internal logic.

Oh no! El is down! After displaying more power in one fight than she did in the entirety of season 5, she’s unconscious - not because she’s exhausted, but because she got smacked around. And Will seems to have lost his carnival mallet. What will the Party+Nikki do? How will they survive?? What a cliffhanger! I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

I’m lying. I can wait. I can wait forever. We know none of them are going to die, or even be seriously injured. This is only episode 3 of 10 (oh god). There are no stakes in this show. None at all. And, sadly, no stakes to stab into the hearts of the idiots responsible for this drivel. In Minecraft.

Episode 3 final thoughts: Look, I’m pretty generous when it comes to handwave-y explanations for weird, cool stuff. I’m okay with “it’s an alien thing” or “it must be something our science hasn’t discovered yet” or “it came from another dimension, who knows how physics/biology/chemistry works there”. What I’m not okay with is this show attempting to provide real-world scientific explanations and getting it utterly wrong. (I’m looking at you, season 5.) I’m really not okay with a show that contradicts its own world-building within minutes of establishing something. It’s just sloppy.

THE NEANDERTHALS??? FELL??? TO HOMO ERECTUS???

THE NEANDERTHALS THAT BEGAN EXISTING AFTER HOMO ERECTUS AND CONTINUED EXISTING AFTER THEY WERE EXTINCT??? THOSE NEANDERTHALS FELL TO HOMO ERECTUS???

Was randomly deciding to make the whole "Sugar Folk are bad replications of humans and are more like sugar goop monsters at the end of the day" thing more apparent in the story. Well, it's not like you'll hear this explanation in story, but it still happens of course and is another "fun fact" that makes you realise they are just little clown guys.

Anyways, huge disclaimer, I am not learned in this sort of thing (don't even know what the general term would be) so forgive any misused terms, although the physical aspects are all correct although subject to cartoon/alien logic.

So the Sugar Folk do engage in sexual reproduction. That is to say, two Sugars combine their genetic material in order to make offspring. They also have genitalia and there is "female" and "male" types but- they are all the same sex biologically speaking. They are isogamous creatures. Or similar anyway. That is to say, there is no difference in their gametes (like in size and stuff, the genetic material is different of course). There are no ovaries/testes, they all have the same organ that produces their genetic material, it functions the same even though they are positioned as if they were testes/ovaries. They are just copying where humans placed their gamete makers, although their gonads are the same in their species.

Any Sugar, barring infertility or issues with their gametes (etc.), can reproduce with any other Sugar. However. because they based their anatomy on humans (who are anisogamous), they mechanically cannot (i.e. same "sex" Sugars can have children together but their genitalia doesn't allow for it since their gametes can't really meet without assistance). And of course, without a womb, the resulting zygote will die. So male pairs need a surrogate but the child is their genetic offspring. Female pairs have difficulties but especially in modern times don't need medical assistance or special instruments only a clinic would have.

TLDR:

Sugars reproduce sexually.

Sugars are isogamous and thus are all the same sex.

While Sugars are all the same sex they have sex organs similar to humans and label themselves as male and female based on that.

They have the same type of gonad because they all have the same type of gamete. They are just located in different areas depending on if they are "male" or "female"- but they are the same organ.

While any pair can make a zygote, if there is no womb for the zygote to implant into, it will die.

"Fun" Facts

They are not genderless nor do they consider themselves sexless. They do not associate gametes with sex like we do in real life. They do have a proper way to label this sort of thing but it's different*.

In essence they are hermaphrodites. This is not the same as being intersex, thusly people like Bobbert and those with ambiguous genitalia are still treated differently/badly. Of course, them being isogamous has a major effect on this treatment and what even is considered intersex.

They have very different sex chromosomes than humans/how their sex is determined is very different. Which is why Bobbert genuinely has NO SEX WHATSOEVER.

There are too many stupid people in this world.  People who are given all the tools and resources needed to be smarter, but refuse to do so.  It’s baffling to me how easy it is to be smarter in today’s world, yet people still choose not to.  We could chalk it up to confirmation bias.  I do that a lot.  People have the narrative that they want to hear and don’t listen to information that…