important to note also that the first doctor was NOT dating the tardis. when one of his companions suggests the tardis might be alive he's like 'hm what are you talking about? it's a machine?' it's a slow burn relationship from that point to 'the tardis is my beautiful wife'

People love to make fun of Archeologists for how often we say objects were used ritualistically, as if we overuse that designation or just say it when we a don't know what something was used for. But that's only because people don't stop to think how full of ritual all of our lives are.

The meme is actually correct for the most part, hotdogs are ritually consumed during baseball games. Lots of people only even eat hotdogs if they're watching baseball. The expectation for us to eat turkey on thanksgiving is another example of us ritually consuming food. Drinking coffee every morning is another ritual we do. Going to the gym several days a week is a ritual.

"Ritual" doesn't necessarily mean "religious."

"i feel besquintled", said no one ever. because that's not a word.

okay nevermind it IS a word now and this is exactly what it means.

I do think it's a beautiful thing when an author is clearly going for a metaphor, but the diegesis gets in the way. The story has symbols, but they're not just symbols, they're real things that exist within the world of that story, and as soon as the reader thinks about this, the symbol can be shattered.

I don't know what it is I find nice about this, but maybe it's the wet impact of meaning-making against base reality.

I was asked for examples, here are two:

I swear I read a book that was supposed to be pro-gay that treated its gayness metaphor as a contagious, curable disease. Also, being gay meant you could regenerate from any injury and it felt really good, so before the protagonist got infected, she nearly got killed by accidentally walking in on two gay teenagers blowing each other up with a grenade as a sex equivalent.

It's why, I think, in pretty much every story about aliens/robots/elves/mutants/etc, it's a mistake to read the aliens/robots/elves/mutants as a direct one-to-one metaphor where something said about the aliens/robots/elves/mutants is something said about gays/browns/disableds for anything. Because gay people don't come from space, and disabled people can't shoot lasers, and if you were to imply that one were the same as the other you would be wrong, because they are not the same.

But it's always gonna have similarities though, right? Humans react to groups-of-people-that-are-not-like-them in semi-predictable ways, not always the same way, but there are commonalities. It's kind of inevietable that if you had aliens/robots/elves/mutants in your story then people would react to them in a kind of a way, and that way would *rhyme* with the way they react to existent types of people, especially if you want to be remotely interesting about it, even just on an individual psychological emotional level.

And that inevietabiltiy is something that makes it almost like... not worth criticising. Obviously if you interpret the orcs from mordor as a one-to-one substitution of Canadian people then Lord of the Rings would be a horrifically Canuckphobic piece of media, but you really don't *have* to interpret them as a one-to-one substitution!

There's a bad tendency in a lot of lefty media crit to act as though stories about aliens, robots, elves and mutants *aren't* about aliens, robots, elves and mutants, as if that's always just a thin and unimportant veneer laid over stories about real life social issues for a bit of flavour.

But no! Stories about aliens, robots, elves and mutants REALLY ARE about aliens robots elves and mutants! These people care about aliens robots elves and mutants and really do want to write about them!

I think in general there is a tendency by many critics to act as if a speculative fiction story cannot be reduced to mere allegory, it is of no value, because they are fundamentally not very interested in speculative fiction. But applicability is not the same as allegory, and the former is often more interesting (and has more to say).

Yeah, the allegory rarely works all the way down, but that doesn't mean it's not still working as intended.

Like let's take the X-Men example. While it's true that in-universe there's more of a case to be made for regulating super powers that let people just like, turn a car inside-out with their mind, than drummed up hysteria about immigrants or something, it's also the case in-universe that the people pushing for so-called regulation are more concerned with controlling/weaponizing any useful abilities for their own gain and experimenting on or otherwise persecuting those who aren't exploitable, and that lumping everyone from the guy with the world-shattering psychic abilities to the kid who just kind of looks like a fish into a singular category that would all become indefinite wards of the state is bad business.

This highlights that even in cases where you might think, huh I wouldn't mind actually if someone in a uniform came and took that particularly destructive asshole I know away, you must be careful not to actually advocate for that, because you will be playing into the hands of people who do not have anyone else's best interests actually at heart. Like, maybe you did get mugged by an illegal immigrant or something, that would really suck and desperate people do tend to do shitty things, but it still wouldn't make endorsing ICE the right thing to do.

And that is the serious real-world applicable point the narrative is trying to make, where even if the bad guys have a leg to stand on that doesn't mean you should automatically agree with how or why they want to go about doing things. X-Men goes, you have to pay attention to who is really doing what, not just who scares you more.

But if you try and extend it too far it will break and stop making sense. Because it's fiction.

machine uses image recognition to detect lice on fish and then uses laser to blast the parasites.

are we too far gone

it does still make me insane specifically how many queer people lovingly embrace astrology. I went to a poetry workshop yesterday that was genuinely quite good but also included an option to disclose astrology designations during introductions and so many people broke out some variation of "I'm a [x] sum but I have a [y] placement and it SHOWS" girl no it doesn't. that's meaningless correlation you completely invented the causation

I'd say that rejecting biological determinism in favor of space gas determinism isn't the slay the astrology queers think it is but if I'm being completely honest I fear that many members of our community haven't even really rejected biological determinism so much as sprinkled a layer of glitter on it

yes that's how confirmation bias works

People get their panties up in a twist about astrology because they think it’s people shoving themselves into boxes that are not pre-existing.

Most people who like astrology like it because it reflects things about themselves that they relate to that they have difficulty vocalizing themselves. And things like doing a chart reading can allow you to gaze deeply into yourself

yes that's how confirmation bias works

#wait wasn't that also OP?#is this the third such post now?#we shouldn't be pissing on the poor at all#“ok so we should only piss on the poor a little when there's no toilets free”

It's more than three. I've lost count but this is at least the fourth.

#hi op of the Taylor Swift isn't bisexual there are many bisexual pop girlies post

OP what wizard did you cut off in traffic to get cursed like this

Tom Baker’s thoughts on a female Doctor from a 1983 convention panel ❤️

Guy in red is an artist ai guy is not

I just want to point out that the guy ate a bunch of images, chewed them out, and spat out an unrecognizable slop - literally what ai models do.

This is poetry to me and whatever the goal of original art piece was it is now elevated to heavens.

Learning new things! An anonymous fear submitted to Deep Dark Fears - Thanks!

You can find original art in my shop! Click Here!

The blink of an eye. A fear submitted by Rick to deepdarkfears.com/submit - thanks!

You can pick up a Deep Dark Fears book! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24388442-deep-dark-fears

Analyzing the politics of a work that's meant to be apolitical is actually a really interesting exercise because it asks you to critically examine what the creator considers to be "political" in the first place. Which ideas are just How Things Are, and which ones are Political, and how is that influenced by the creator's beliefs?

Usually this just ends up with you looking like a moron btw

Angrily lashing out at the suggestion that it's possible to do basic media analysis was foundational to the ragebait ecosystem of the 2010s, from which we got basically the entire culture of modern far right politics, btw.

I genuinely believe myself and others are being so sincere and literal when we say TOUCH GRASS

I went outside and got an education, that's where I learned that you can obtain knowledge and insight through analytical methods, then noticed that some people who sit on the internet yelling at strangers get really mad about that constantly.

Don’t make me point to the Omar Sakr poem

fave queer characters + Beckett Mariner, Lower Decks

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

Thinking about when one of the reporters who helped report the original podcast exposing Neil Gaiman put out a vague piece about how she never wanted a "blanket cancellation" of him and that wasn't her goal without really saying what her goal was. Like it was written in such a weaselly way you knew something else was going on

And then it turned out every other thing she's written was uh. Different:

Whining about how "woke" sexual harassment policies ruined office Christmas parties

Defiantly saying that she stands with male celebs accused of sexual harassment

Publishing the exact same Christmas party whining in 2025. She does this every year

Boris Johnson's sister: "I'm only joining the quest to expose Neil Gaiman in the hope the woke lefties rally around him and defend him! Just like we do to our men!"

Woke Lefties: "Wow, what a monster! We'll drop him immediately."

Boris Johnson's sister: "I didn't...I didn't want...not being able to harass secretaries is ruining the office Christmas party, innit?"

Very much doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Unfortunately, part of her motivation was because he defended and supported trans people.

I’m glad she did the expose, and there’s something darkly fascinating about how it failed to do what she wanted it to do (give fuel to the people peddling the “trans people and their allies are rapists” myth) because people on the left acted appropriately, disowning him and listening to his victims.

I know that when people complain about the Folgers commercial, they’re usually pointing out the weird incest vibes, but I don’t think we give enough hate to the fact that this man came home from generic Africa, his sister put on a pot of Folgers, and he swooned over it saying “ooh! Real coffee!” You were in Africa, my guy! Africa has several countries that are known as having the best coffee in the world! Saying you didn’t have any real coffee in Africa is like saying you didn’t see any Black people in Africa! The fuck is wrong with these people?!