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There are quite a lot of disagreeable issues you'll be able to say concerning the Upside Down, the alternate dimension from which monsters and world-ending calamities originate in Stranger Issues. It’s darkish. It smells. It’s stuffed with nasty creatures that ought to not have wings however do anyway. It’s inhospitable to human life. However I dwell in New York Metropolis, so I’m used to all that. The Upside Down, nonetheless, is disagreeable in a method that I merely can't abide by.
The Upside Down is just too moist.
Different viewers have catalogued the purple prose in the present’sclosed captions intimately, so I'll simply say that I counted not less than 24 variations of one thing occurring “wetly,” one thing squelching, or one thing slithering—and I know I missed some. That’s additionally not counting the occasions I positively heard one thing moist occurring, with no caption to explain it to me. The Upside Down is so moist that the closed caption artist needed to describe tentacles as “ichorous,” earlier than they simply threw their fingers within the air in defeat and went again to the ever-reliable “moist squelch.”
I can deal with some dampness—my dwelling clime is known for rain, and anybody who’s ever been to a subway station will rightfully level out the well-known phenomenon of subway juice. However that’s all simply gross, and I’m not arguing from a spot of disgust right here. No, I'm arguing from a spot of unwavering ethical righteousness.
The Upside Down’s moisture isn’t simply nasty: It’s an affront to the legal guidelines of nature, a flagrant flouting of the principles of physics that’s far more extreme than a gap within the material of time and area. And if the Duffers gained’t respect these sacred legal guidelines, then it falls to me.
Think about this: Whereas just about every part within the Upside Down is coated in a patina of goo, the place is the water? Stranger Issues Season 4 alone featured two locations which have plenty of water in the actual world—a lake and a pool—which can be bone-dry (save for the tentacles) on the opposite facet.
The Harringtons’ pool within the Upside Down: bone-dry.
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The entire place is consistently beset by thunderstorms and lightning, however we by no means see it rain. And I discover it VERY laborious to imagine that a) working water nonetheless works within the Upside Down and b) demo-bats are sensible sufficient to determine a faucet. These little dumb-dumbs heard a bootleg Metallica live performance and thought, “Oh, that appears like one thing we must always go take a look at and go away our grasp utterly defenseless! Go staff!”
This presents a paradox. Within the Upside Down, every part is moist, however there isn't a water to make it so. People haven't discovered a single life kind that may survive with out water, which is why after we’re searching for life on distant moons, we search for liquid water, like on Europa. However you imply to inform me that not solely is there a distressing quantity of life within the Upside Down, but it surely’s additionally all coated in moisture, simply to spite me?
And to make issues worse, we see Vecna exploring an early model of the Upside Down within the Season 4 finale—it seems to be like a desert, and but, there are STILL moist tentacles in all places! I ask once more: WHERE did the water come from?! I didn't spend 4 years getting a biology diploma to see the basic tenets of science disrespected like this!
This isn't a criticism concerning the Upside Down being too moist as a result of it’s icky. No, this can be a jeremiad towards a infantile disregard for all times itself. Is nobody else clocking this?! Am I the one one who sees the reality: that if life within the Upside Down is moist just like the gods of Stranger Issues, the caption writers, and the Duffer Brothers inform me it's, then there needs to be water? However there isn't a water within the Upside Down, so both LAWS of NATURE imply NOTHING or GOD LIED TO ME?
A really arid Upside Down earlier than the primary storyline of Stranger Issues, however nonetheless containing the distinctive moist appendages for some purpose??
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Clearly, I'm preaching gospel that the Duffers aren’t prepared to listen to but. However there may be hope—there’s nonetheless yet another season of this indictable present left to make issues proper. Both the Duffers develop up and present me some freaking water within the hellworld that's now Hawkins in addition to the Upside Down, or everybody wins the day by surrounding Vecna with dehumidifiers and returning him to his rightful, desiccated self. The true victory of Stranger Issues is not going to be in saving Hawkins—screw Hawkins. It is going to be in restoring the pure order of the whole universe: during which issues that needs to be dry keep dry.