#fun with statistics

[zeldahime]

Zelda Liveblogs a Lancet Paper

Following this post, I am now going to liveblog reading the Lancet paper cited by the Economist article to predict worldwide fertility to drop by 3/4s of its current position if current demographic trends continue. It is an Open Access article, so the entire thing is open for anyone on the internet to read.

Citation:

GBD 2021 Fertility and Forecasting Collaborators (March 20, 2024). Global fertility in 204 countries and territories, 1950–2021, with forecasts to 2100: a comprehensive demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. The Lancet, 403(10440), 2057-2099. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00550-6.

I refuse to use Chicago style. This is mostly because I memorized APA and don't want to learn a new one.

First, my background: I am not a demographer; I am not trained as a demographer; I have studied it auxiliarily to my other academic pursuits. I fall in a sort of educated in-between. I am currently a Master's student in library and information sciences, and my undergraduate degree was in political science, both at USAmerican universities. However, the field of economics is also very close to my heart, and I would have double-majored in it if the opportunity and financial costs had not been too high to justify it. During the five years I was a college drop-out, I studied economics independently, reading broadly within the field and taking non-certificate courses online. I've been taking non-certificate courses in economics through correspondence or online since I was about nine. I'm not an expert! I do, however, think I'm a fairly well-informed amateur.

And a note on language. This paper refers to birthing parents as mothers and to the demographic that gives birth interchangeably as female and women. I acknowledge that this is a cissexist patriarchical viewpoint that erases transmen, nonbinary and intersex people, and probably others I'm not thinking of. For consistency between my reflections and the paper and ease of reading, I will do the same. I'm conscious I'm part of the problem here, but don't see a way around it without making my bits harder to understand than they have to be.

With that out of the way, here we go:

Methodology (Summary)

This is where me not being a demographer is an important thing to know. I neither know nor normally care about the statistical methods used to determine demography, just that the demographers aren't retracting papers over it. However, I do know that in general the CCF50 (total cohort fertility before the age of 50) is a neater and more accurate measurement to build projections on than the TFR (total fertility rate by year) and that's the methodology the paper's authors went with. This is good and promising. TFR for known years and CCF50 projections sounds like a solid method. 👍

We additionally produced forecasts for multiple alternative scenarios in each location: the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for education is achieved by 2030; the contraceptive met need SDG is achieved by 2030; pro-natal policies are enacted to create supportive environments for those who give birth; and the previous three scenarios combined.

I'm very hopeful about these forecasts! They'll show a few different hopeful scenarios.

To evaluate the forecasting performance of our model and others, we computed skill values—a metric assessing gain in forecasting accuracy—by comparing predicted versus observed ASFRs from the past 15 years (2007–21). A positive skill metric indicates that the model being evaluated performs better than the baseline model (here, a simplified model holding 2007 values constant in the future), and a negative metric indicates that the evaluated model performs worse than baseline.

This is a very responsible thing for the authors to have done, and I am interested to see how this is reflected in the models.

.

Findings (Summary)

During the period from 1950 to 2021, global TFR more than halved, from 4·84 (95% UI 4·63–5·06) to 2·23 (2·09–2·38). Global annual livebirths peaked in 2016 at 142 million (95% UI 137–147), declining to 129 million (121–138) in 2021. Fertility rates declined in all countries and territories since 1950,

(Emphasis mine. The numbers in parentheses are the confidence interval.) I think this is the most important takeaway from the whole damn paper. Makes sense, since it's the first line of the findings. If you read nothing else, read these three sentences. Global birthrates are barely above replacement (which, if you recall from my other essay, is generally considered to be ~2.1). To me, this implies lot of problems that traditionally have been considered solvable with population redistribution (meaning, mostly, immigration) may not be solvable that way even if fertility were to stop declining today and hold constant for the rest of the century.

Future fertility rates were projected to continue to decline worldwide, reaching a global TFR of 1·83 (1·59–2·08) in 2050 and 1·59 (1·25–1·96) in 2100 under the reference scenario. The number of countries and territories with fertility rates remaining above replacement was forecast to be 49 (24·0%) in 2050 and only six (2·9%) in 2100, with three of these six countries included in the 2021 World Bank-defined low-income group, all located in the GBD super-region of sub-Saharan Africa.

Holy shit. I cannot emphasize enough how low a TFR of 1.59 is. This is approximately the current TFR of the United Kingdom, and they're beginning to freak out even though they have relatively easy sources of additional replacement recruitment through the Commonwealth. Imagine that for the whole Earth. With only six countries as a potential source of surplus population to be redistributed.

Funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Makes sense. This is the kind of thing that foundation funds.

.

Introduction

Low levels of fertility have the potential over time to result in inverted population pyramids with growing numbers of older people and declining working-age populations. These changes are likely to place increasing burdens on health care and social systems, transform labour and consumer markets, and alter patterns of resource use.

Oh man, I wish I'd gone through this paper earlier, I could have just quoted this bit and been done instead of trying to explain it from scratch! 😂

The UN Population Division estimates of past fertility are not compliant with the Guidelines on Accurate and Transparent Health Estimates Reporting (GATHER) statement in important respects; notably, they do not provide all code for statistical models or explicit details on criteria for exclusion or adjustment of primary data sources. Furthermore, the validity of UN Population Division projections has been questioned due to the assumptions applied in countries experiencing low post-transition fertility dropping below replacement level.

YES GO OFF 👏 The UN Population Division is so much more cagey about their data than the World Bank, it's so annoying, and they keep predicting increases that don't happen. I thought it was so weird as an undergrad but figured it was because of ~bureaucracy~ or privacy laws or whatever. It's nice to be vindicated [redacted] years later.

Our forecasts also suggest that, by 2100, the largest concentrations of livebirths will shift to low-income settings, particularly a subset of countries and territories in sub-Saharan Africa, which are among the most vulnerable to economic and environmental challenges. Extreme shifts in the global distribution of livebirths can be partially ameliorated by improved female education and met need for modern contraception. Outside of this subset of low-income areas, most of the world's countries will experience the repercussions of low fertility, with ageing populations, declining workforces, and inverted population pyramids, which are likely to lead to profound fiscal, economic, and social consequences. National policy makers and the global health community must plan to address these divided sets of demographic challenges emerging worldwide.

This is such an important point for them to make. Demography isn't a vacuum; it has significant real-world effects. By 2100, most babies born will be born in Africa, and we need to plan for that now. By 2100, most countries will not have enough workers, and we need to plan for that now. 2100 is not that far into the future. I, personally, will live to see the beginnings of the effects of this demographic shift, and I'm an adult who pays taxes and has a college degree and shit.

.

The Data Sources and Processing section is pretty standard and unremarkable. Good job.

.

Fertility Forecasting

We produced forecasts of fertility using an updated modelling framework (appendix 1 section 3) that improved on the methods in the 2020 study by Vollset and colleagues. In our updated methods, we used not only estimates of female educational attainment and contraceptive met need as covariates, but also estimates of under-5 mortality and population density in habitable areas to account for a larger variation in CCF50 across all countries in the sub-models (appendix 1 section 3.1, appendix 2 figure S2). Similar to Vollset and colleagues, we continued to forecast fertility with CCF50 rather than TFR, because modelling in cohort space is more stable than in period space.

Niiiiice. Covariates are things that, well, vary, alongside the thing you're trying to measure. For fertility, the most obvious one might be age of the mother at first birth; if someone is 16 at first birth, she probably will have more kids than someone who is 30 at first birth, for example. This model also includes how much schooling the mother gets, whether she has contraception, the mortality rate (that is, how many of them die) of children under five, and population density! That's a lot of statistical crunching and their model will be more precise for it. Precise isn't the same as accurate, but I think that with the variables they selected, they will travel in the same direction.

What a pretty equation. I don't understand it, but it's got a certain je ne sais quois.

For the education SDG scenario, the forecasts assume that by 2030, all people will have 12 years or more of education by the age of 25 years and then maintains the same rate of change as the reference scenario up to 2100. For the contraceptive met need scenario, to reflect the SDG scenario of universal access, the forecasts assumed a linear increase in contraceptive coverage to reach 100% by 2030 and then stay constant up to 2100.

I love how optimistic these scenarios are 😂 This truly is the best-case scenario for both the education forecast and the contraceptive forecast! I do hope everybody has 12+ years of education and 100% contraceptive coverage by 2030. Make it happen, António!!!!

(Joke explained: António Guterres is the current Secretary-General of the United Nations, and these goals are absolutely not going to be met by 2030.)

In the pro-natal scenario, we assumed a country will introduce pro-natal policies, such as childcare subsidies, extended parental leave, insurance coverage expansion for infertility treatment, 33 and other forms of support for parents to afford high-quality child-care services, once TFR decreases to less than 1·75. We then made three assumptions on the effects of such policies. First, we assumed the full effect of pro-natal policies will be to increase TFR by 0·2. Second, it will take 5 years after the policy is introduced for the full increase in TFR to occur, and TFR will rise linearly over that time span. Last, we assumed that both the policies and the increase in TFR by 0·2 will endure for the remainder of the century.

The pro-natal scenario is also incredibly optimistic. This kind of response simply hasn't happened in any country that's tried pro-natal policies as envisioned by the authors (my reference cases, just off the top of my head: Japan and France).

The optimism makes sense. They represent extreme cases, in order to contrast possible outcomes versus the reference case. This is good practice! It's just also funny.

.

Results

The Reference Case

I hate the embedded tables. They have the confidence interval in the same cell as the estimate. How very dare they, that's incredibly inconvenient for me personally.

The chart in Figure 1, however, I think speaks volumes:

It speaks so many volumes that I'm gonna go up and put it above the cut, brb. This chart shows the reference case; that is, it shows the fertility rate if the fertility trends of 1950-2021 continue into the future.

At the national level, estimates of TFR in 2021 ranged from 0·82 (95% UI 0·75–0·89) in South Korea to 6·99 (6·75–7·24) in Chad, with below-replacement levels of fertility (TFR <2·1) in 110 of 204 countries and territories (table 1, figures 2A, 3).

I think this range is neat and goes to show that while the trend is world-wide, it's still not even. Chadian women still give birth to about 7ish kids on average. That's more than 3x replacement, and more than 8.5x the average fertility of South Korea. South Korea is going to have different problems than Chad; Chad probably doesn't have to worry as much about their workforce being unable to sustain a large elderly population. (Don't look so cheerful about it. They've got lots of other stuff to worry about. 😬)

These charts are fascinating to look at to me. I think this really showcases just how dramatic the projected decline is. It's not just the Europe, it's not just wealthy post-industrialized countries, but everywhere. It's in Eswanti, it's in Indonesia, it's in Burkina Faso, it's in China. It really shows just how much Chad is an outlier (adn should still be counted, btw, just because it's an outlier doesn't mean we should discard it; it's dependent on study structure and you can't just throw out entire countries because they have high birth rates on a study of birth rates).

Our estimates indicate that there is approximately a 30-year gap between the time when TFR falls below 2·1 and when the natural rate of population increase turns negative. We forecast that 155 (76·0%) countries and territories will have fertility rates below replacement level in 2050; by 2100, we project this number will increase to 198 (97·1%), with 178 (87·3%) having a negative natural rate of increase (figure 3).

A 30-year gap sounds reasonable. That's about how long it takes for people to have/not have kids, and for their own parents to potentially die, in about equalish numbers (on a global scale, anyway). I do think this gap number is likely to increase as healthcare improves in places that are worse today and as fertility technology increases the age at which people can become pregnant, but 30 is a perfectly respectable number with actual statistical backing.

Alternative scenario fertility forecasts

This is the part I'm really excited about!!!

The first scenario, which assumes meeting the SDG education target by 2030, is estimated to result in global TFRs of 1·65 (95% UI 1·40–1·92) in 2050 and 1·56 (1·26–1·92) in 2100 (table 2). The second scenario, which assumes meeting the SDG contraceptive met need target by 2030, will produce global TFRs of 1·64 (1·39–1·89) in 2050 and 1·52 (1·21–1·87) in 2100. The third scenario, which incorporates pro-natal policy implementation, is forecast to yield global TFRs of 1·93 (1·69–2·19) in 2050 and 1·68 (1·36–2·04) in 2100. The combined scenario, in which all three other alternative scenarios are applied, is projected to result in a global TFR of 1·65 (1·40–1·92) in 2050 and 1·62 (1·35–1·95) in 2100.

So recall the reference scenario projections: 1·83 (1·59–2·08) in 2050 and 1·59 (1·25–1·96) in 2100.

I find it interesting that all cases are so incredibly close to reference, with overlapping confidence intervals. Functionally, there's not a lot of difference between a TFR of 1.68 and 1.52. They're both still well below replacement. It's about the difference between Sweden (1.67) and Russia (1.51). Russia, you may have noticed, is waging war about it.*

*This is not a stated goal of the Russian Federation in the Ukraine War. This is me personally making an assertion that the shifting demographics of the Russian population, including the below-replacement birthrate beginning to put pressure on their lacking social safety networks, has contributed to the many complicated and interconnected reasons why the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, but please do not take me to be the final authority on the matter or interpret this statement as implying that demography of all things is the sole or primary reason for the war.

Discussion

The aforementioned changes in fertility over the coming century will have profound effects on populations, economies, geopolitics, food security, health, and the environment, with a clear demographic divide between the impacts on many middle-to-high-income locations versus many low-income locations. For nearly all countries and territories outside of sub-Saharan Africa, sustained low fertility will produce a contracting population with fewer young people relative to older people before the end of the 21st century. These changes in age structure are likely to present considerable economic challenges caused by a growing dependency ratio of older to working-age population and a shrinking labour force. 42 Unless governments identify unforeseen innovations or funding sources that address the challenges of population ageing, this demographic shift will put increasing pressure on national health insurance, social security programmes, and health-care infrastructure. These same programmes will receive less funding as working-age, tax-paying populations decline, further exacerbating the problem.

This is why the Economist article talks about birthrates the way it does. It's not about white babies or whatever people in the notes are sarcastically ascribing to an article they haven't read. It's about the whole world. There are 150 countries outside of the Sub-Saharan Africa region, and 44 of the 46 countries within Sub-Saharan Africa are projected to feel the many or all of the same effects as well.

It's about the way social security nets are structured and how they're going to fail. It's about the way that elderly people are going to be treated by our societies. It's about me, and it's about you, and it's about making sure that there are enough humans to take care of the other humans that need taking care of.

If we don't increase global fertility rates above replacement, which it increasingly looks like we won't, we need other solutions. The fertility one is easy fuckin' pickings compared to a complete overhaul of society, and you saw how little difference it actually makes. So did the authors:

To date, one strategy to reverse declining fertility in low-fertility settings has been to implement pro-natal policies, such as child-related cash transfers and tax incentives, childcare subsidies, extended parental leave, re-employment rights, and other forms of support for parents to care and pay for their children.49, 50 Yet there are few data to show that such policies have led to strong, sustained rebounds in fertility, with empirical evidence suggesting an effect size of no more than 0·2 additional livebirths per female. [...] Moreover, although pro-natal policies primarily aim to increase births, they also offer additional benefits to society, including better quality of life, greater household gender equality (ie, more equal division of household labour),53 higher rates of female labour force participation,54 lower child-care costs,55 and better maternal health outcomes,56 depending on policy design and contextual factors. In the future, it will be beneficial to perform an in-depth analysis on varying impacts of pro-natal policies in selected countries that have a meaningful impact on population. [...] Importantly, low fertility rates and the modest effects that pro-natal policies might have on them should not be used to justify more draconian measures that limit reproductive rights, such as restricting access to modern contraceptives or abortions.

I just want to highlight that the study authors explicitly argue for certain pro-natal policies that increase quality of life and caution against pro-natal policies that limit rights. These people aren't heartless.

They also discuss at some length the implications of the changing distribution of live births, where by the end of the century most live births will take place in the poorest nations, which are also the ones that will be hardest-hit by climate change. These nations already face famines, military rule, civil wars, terrorism, and climate changed-caused severe heatwaves, droughts, and floods. They advise politicians to take this into account when making policy decisions but don't go into what policy decisions should be made, which is wise since they're demographers and not political scientists, but disappointed me, the political scientist reading the demography paper and hoping to find something to criticize.

.

.

My takeaway:

Incredibly interesting paper. As a non-demographer, I think it's very convincing and hope that it sparks a serious conversation about the paths we need to take forward, in our own countries and as a global community. I especially hope that it inspires us to take bold action to drastically change our systems of elder care, which are already being pushed to the limit and will simply break under pressure if fertility rates continue to fall.

[cringecompanionapologist]

Doctor Who Shipping Statistics: Because I'm Bored and I Like This Sort of Thing

So, I decided to see which Doctor Who ships were the most popular in the fandom, not because it matters, but because shipping is fun.

This probably isn't an accurate ranking of which ships are the most popular though, because it's just the amount of fics on Ao3. I'm only going off Ao3 because it's the only fic site where statistics are easy to find, because pairings are tagged and the number of fics with a tag can be counted.

If there's a really popular ship that people don't write fic for, for some reason, it won't show up on my radar, which is fine because this isn't exactly Science. It's fucking around with lists out of curiosity.

So, let's get started!

I started off with just finding the top 10 ships for Doctor Who in general. To no one's surprise, it was completely dominated by New Series pairings. The New Series tends to encourage more shipping and is ongoing, so more people are paying attention to it. Therefore, more fic.

10/Rose

13/Yaz

11/River

Metacrisis 10/Rose (That's the human clone of 10 btw)

9/Rose

12/Clara

Amy/Rory

Doctor (in general)/Rose

Doctor (in general)/River

Doctor (in general)/Master

Only Doctor/Master could be a pairing without any New Series characters, because that would include Classic!Doctor/Classic!Master.

Also, you might notice a lot of Rose. Get used to that. She's inescapable.

Anyway, I decided to filter the search to only E-Rated fics to see if there was a major difference when smut was involved. This didn't actually change very much:

10/Rose

13/Yaz

Doctor/Master (the Master comes up a lot more on the smut list lol)

12/Clara

Metacrisis 10/Rose

9/Rose

13/Dhawan!Master

10/Simm!Master

10/Jack (of course he'd show up more on the smut list)

11/River

What this reveals is that people are more interested in Doctor/Master smut than Doctor/Master romance, which honestly makes a lot of sense. The smut list is also slightly less het than the overall list. Slash fans appear to be the horniest of shippers. As a slash smut writer/enthusiast, I can't really protest.

But, what about Classic Who? I was more interested in Classic than New, so I looked at fics tagged Doctor Who (1963) specifically, instead of Doctor Who in general. Most Classic Who fics are tagged this way, so you'll find more Classic Who there. Here's the results:

Doctor/Master

2/Jamie

10/Rose (Yes, there's still new stuff in hear and of course it's Rose)

3/Delgado!Master

Tegan/Nyssa

4/Sarah Jane

7 and Ace (Notice the and. Platonic relationships get tagged too)

Ian/Barbara

6/Peri

5/Ainley!Master

And I did an E-Rated Only list for Doctor Who (1963) as well:

Doctor/Master

6/Peri (They seem to be more popular as smut than anything else)

3/Delgado!Master

5/Ainley!Master

2/Jamie

Tegan/Nyssa

5/Tegan (I see a lot of fics for this ship and feel strangely jealous...)

10/Simm!Master (A new series ship that isn't 10/Rose?!)

Mel/Ace

7/Ace (No and this time. They get shipped sometimes.)

Once again, Doctor/Master gets a lot of smut. Also, I think this is the first list to not include 10/Rose :)

Look, I don't hate 10/Rose. I'm pretty indifferent towards 10/Rose. Rose is nowhere near my favorite companion, but nowhere near my least favorite either. I just get a bit tired of seeing her absolutely everywhere.

I think decided to check for fics tagged with each Classic Doctor to see who they get paired with the most. I'll list every character who they're shipped with in the top 10.

First Doctor: Rose

There are at least 3 separate fics about Rose fucking every incarnation of the Doctor. If it was River or Jack, I probably wouldn't care, but Rose is not the Doctor's One True Love. And least River can claim dibs on having married an incarnation and Jack is Jack. This is what I mean about seeing her everywhere. Rose is often treated like the most important companion in the history of the show when she's just as important as any other companion. There's probably reason for this mindset that I could go into, but I'd like to finish my list first.

I did the E-Rated Only thing for each Doctor as well. Yes, for all of them. I'm curious and I fear no smut.

First Doctor (E): Rose, Barbara (there are at least 2 1/Barbara fics)

Second Doctor: Jamie

E-Rated Only doesn't change that. Fics tagged with the Second Doctor still contain a lot of Rose Ships, but 2 isn't emphasized quite as much. 2/Jamie is basically THE Second Doctor ship.

Third Doctor: Delgado!Master, Brigadier, Jo, Sarah Jane

E-Rated Only is the same characters in a different order

Third Doctor (E): Delgado!Master, Jo, Brigadier, Sarah Jane

Jo gets more smut than the Brig.

Fourth Doctor: Sarah Jane, Romana II, Sarah Jane/Harry, Rose, Ainley!Master

The Rose Fucks Everyone fics strike again! Also, we get our first OT3 with 4/Sarah Jane/Harry.

Fourth Doctor (E): Sarah Jane, Leela, Rose

Of course Leela would get more smut. I'm surprised with the lack of Romana though. Both Romanas are gorgeous and 4/Romana is the closest to a canon Doctor/Companion ship we get in Classic Who. Maybe it's a Time Lord Thing.

Okay, on to the Fifth.

Fifth Doctor: Ainley!Master, Tegan, Turlough, Nyssa, Rose

Yes, 5/Tegan is more popular than 5/Turlough right now. I'm fine really. 5/Master being at the top of the list is kind of what I'd expected though.

Fifth Doctor (E): Ainley!Master, Tegan, Turlough, Nyssa, Simm!Master, 6

Unlike most Classic Doctors, 5 is Young and Pretty, so he reminds people of 10 and gets porn with 10's Master. Also, Tegan is still ahead of Turlough.

Shipping wars are mostly bad, especially when people try to claim a moral high ground for their ship. I don't want to get involved in any hostilities just because my ship isn't as popular as another ship.

However, maybe encouraging some friendly competition by saying "more 5/Turlough fic should be written" wouldn't be going too far. If you ship 5/Turlough and write fanfiction, write a 5/Turlough fic because winning is fun.

Anyway, how about the Sixth Doctor?

Sixth Doctor: Peri, Ainley!Master, Rose

Sixth Doctor (E): Peri, Ainley!Master, Mel, 5, Charley, Rose

Our first Big Finish companion! Also, I was so distracted by shipping jealousy with 5 that I forgot to mention the selfcest. I think one person wrote a bunch of 5/6 smut fics.

Seventh Doctor: Ace, Ainley!Master

Ace was 7's definitive companion, so if people want to ship him with someone, I'm guessing she's the obvious choice. I personally see 7 as the one incarnation I just can't pair with anyone, but People Can Do Whatever They Want Forever.

That includes writing smut! The E-Rated Only round is the same two pairings in the same order.

Lastly, we get the Eighth Doctor. He's always interesting in terms of fandom because his televised run was one movie. Anyone who's familiar with him has had to see out audios and novels. The audios and the novels each of their own Definitive Eighth Doctor Companion.

But they somehow all lose to fucking Rose again!

Eighth Doctor: Rose, Charley, Fitz, Grace

The three Not Roses can all be explained. Charley is the Definitive BF Eighth Doctor Companion and the Big Finish audios are the most popular Eighth Doctor stories, especially since they're still ongoing in some form. The EDA novels ended around the time the new series began, so Fitz isn't as well-known as Charley. But, in the book version of the Eighth Doctor's adventures, Fitz is basically 8's Jamie. He's a guy who stays with him forever and is more prominent than the female companions of the era.

As for Grace, she's the only onscreen Eighth Doctor companion and they kiss.

The Eighth Doctor was the first Doctor to really be portrayed romantically. 1 got a one-shot love interest and the first four classic Doctors were allowed to flirt with someone from time to time. The Doctor wasn't a traditional male lead and he didn't have long-term love interests because no one writing him was really into that. It wasn't until the 1980s that Doctor romances were flat out banned. They made JNT nervous.

This led to a period of time where not only did the Doctor not get love interests, but it had to be emphasized that Doctor Who Has Never Fucked Ever. Not even for reproduction. The 20th anniversary came with a Radio Times short story establishing that Susan was adopted. Along with that, when filming The Five Doctors, Carol Ann Ford was told not to call the Doctor "grandfather", because that might make people think the Doctor had sex at some point. Ford laughed at the whole thing and was allowed, for continuity's sake, to call the Doctor "grandfather" anyway.

There's nothing inherently wrong with interpreting the Doctor as aroace, or Not Having Fucked Ever and Susan being adopted. It just shouldn't be something treated as Sacred Lore That the Americans Ruined With Their Stupid Movie. The rule against the Doctor having love interests was made by a producer that the same fans who claim that this rule is sacred usually fucking hate.

Doctor Who fucks however much you want him to.

But, because 8 was allowed to have love interests, 8/Charley, 8/Fitz, and 8/Grace are all varying levels of canon. I haven't listened to much of 8's BF stuff yet, but from what I can tell, 8/Charley was mostly one-sided, but might've not been. 8/Fitz wasn't as directly discussed in-universe and came across as Canon in All But Name.

We got sidetracked. Here's the E-Rated Only thing:

Eighth Doctor (E): Rose, Charley, Fitz, Roberts!Master, Jacobi!Master

Of course there's Master smut. This is an established pattern.

Since we've already gotten sidetracked, I'd also like to say a bit more about Rose.

I think that for fans that got into the show at any time other than right as the new series began, it's hard to see why Rose is not only super popular, but still dominant in fandom, appearing in more Ao3 fics than any incarnation of the Doctor. The thing is, Rose was the first companion for a lot of people and her introduction worked differently than similar first companions.

If you started watching the classic or new series at any point but the very beginning, someone had probably already told you that companions come and go. No individual companion is a vital component of the show. You might get really attached to Sarah Jane, but she leaves and the show continues without her. This will happen to every companion.

The only exceptions to this were people starting at the beginning of a series, before any companions had left yet. This makes Susan/Ian/Barbara as a team similar to Rose as existing before the show could exist without them. But, there's three of them and only one Rose.

There's also the way their introductions are set up. Both An Unearthly Child and Rose (the episode) start with the companions and introduce the Doctor through their eyes. They're normal people in present day London who walk into something strange. But, there's a certain even distribution between characters in An Unearthly Child. The entire show is named for the Doctor, the first episode is named for Susan, but Ian and Barbara are the real main characters.

But, though Doctor Who is still named after the Doctor, the first story is called Rose and is about Rose. To someone unfamiliar with the classic series, the show has established Rose as the main character of Doctor Who, the center of the show's universe. The idea that there could be Doctor Who without Rose doesn't seem to add up.

In Series 2, School Reunion is the point where Rose (and the new audience along with her) learns that the Doctor traveled with humans before her. She's traveled with Jack, so she knows that other companions can happen, but she thought she was the first, the special human the Doctor bonded with. She's special, but only because all of the Doctor's companions are special. She's part of a group of special people.

While the classic series audience would've recognized Sarah Jane and enjoyed seeing her again, the new audience would've learned that the Doctor had companions before Rose at all. You could swap Sarah Jane with a completely original character that the Doctor recognizes as a former companion, and the same point would be made.

So, School Reunion attempted to do some damage control. Rose was leaving at the end of the season and establishing that she wasn't the first companion would make it clear that this would be a normal part of the show. Doctor Who would go on without Rose.

But, the show was incapable of leaving it there. After a Big Dramatic Exit, Rose haunted the show longer than any companion had before, new series companions included. Until Jack returns in Utopia, the Doctor doesn't seem that upset over losing him. The show moved on. But, Series 3 has the Doctor still not over Rose, causing him to be a dick to Martha. Audience members that warmed up to Martha will be mad at the Doctor now and audience members still upset over Rose will turn on Martha because the Doctor does.

Series 4 brings Rose back and gives her a second send-off, once again establishing that the show can't let Rose go. It wasn't until the change of showrunner that Rose was allowed to be just another companion.

This was sort of the same thing that happened when 10 regenerated. The show wouldn't let the characters go, so audiences that'd grown attached refused to let go either, screwing over the next in line. Rose is treated as the Most Important Companion because the show wouldn't let her go, when the show normally lets companions go.

So, that's why Rose is shipped with every Doctor and is inescapable. Once again, I don't dislike Rose. I just find it annoying when she's given special treatment, though from everything I've just said, I know why. I started watching Doctor Who right before the 50th anniversary, almost exactly a decade ago, so when I starting watching the show on Netflix, I saw how many seasons there were and knew that things changed a lot. When my friends talked about the show, it was all 11th Doctor stuff, but I already knew that he was on his way out. I consider 12 to be My Doctor because he was the first Doctor I experienced live, basically. He showed up around the same time I did.

Watching the 1st Doctor's episodes for the first time while overhearing multiple hissy fits over the new Doctor being "too old" was an experience.

Okay, I've rambled this thing to death. Hope we all learned something.

[guiltyidealist]

On your MOST FOLLOWED blog on Tumblr,

[the960writers]

the top ships on AO3 (2023)

ColeyDoesThings

[lalalaugenbrot]

ich sehe schon, ich hätte eine vierte Option "ich spreche eh alle "g"s & "k"s als [g] aus" einbeziehen sollen — also in dem Fall gerne Option 3 wählen, oben ist insbesondere die Aussprache [g]u[k]en gesucht

mal wieder eine wichtige sprachwissenschaftliche Umfrage:

@ Leute, die Option 2 wählen, taggt oder kommentiert gerne, woher ihr kommt!

[chickenchirps27]

hello denizens of tumblr i come with humble offerings

they wish to romance you

[calamitycodified]

excuse me?

[segernatural]

sure it was a perfect storm of a pressure cooker but i promise destiel was about destiel

[thorinds]

The "BBC" Book List Challenge

[bigmoon-is-bigwife]

Clown asked Ros for some golden carrots to fuel his 'training arc' to kill Pili and she used all her gold to give him 6 and a half stacks of golden carrots. It's a fun little parallel to when he gave her golden carrots way back toward the start of the server and that made her start farming for them in the first place. Except this time she repaid him tenfold and he joked about never needing food again

[jackwhiteprophetic]

Hey guys have been doing some data analysis on hit TV show 9-1-1 today as one does, and basically:

- based on data from 7x01 to present (8x04, excluding 7x08 as none of the related characters are in this episode).

- Buck says "Eddie" an average of 0 (ZERO) times per episode if Tommy is not present.

- if Tommy is in a scene, Buck says "Eddie" an average of 2.75 times per episode.

- this is over double Buck's over all "Eddie" average per episode since season 2, which is currently 1.08 EPEs (eddie-per-episodes).

(here is my graph with data from S2 to S7, I will make a new one maybe at end of 8A but definitely by the end of season 8)

More data/analyses under the cut

If anyone is curious on similar data for Eddie:

- 0.4 BPEs if no T.

- 1.125 BPEs if T present.

(currently overall, Eddie is at 0.73 BPEs)

Sorry if I counted anything wrong lmao ANYWAY we bear in mind that when Tommy is present it is due to a Buck/Eddie plot in that episode (because they are often deliberately paired together by the writers) and just have more lines anyway so may be more likely to speak each others' names.

To me this highlights that Buck and Eddie are being heavily linked together whenever Tommy is there, which indicates that the writers want the audience to associate Buck's romantic relationships with Eddie. Also when interpreting Tommy as a storytelling device used to represent part of Buck's queer awakening, having Eddie be tied to this is another potentially interesting writing choice.

Basically gay Eddie is haunting bi Buck's narrative and Buck is narratively condemned to be unable to separate his queerness from his attachment to Eddie

[samglyph]

Ghost Hunter Au Part 1/2

Next

This is my entry for the Malevolent “write in your style event”, @malevolent-monthly!

I wasn’t initially planning on participating since this is a writing event and not an illustration one, but the prompt immediately inspired me so I got the go ahead to make a little comic! Part two out soon.

ID in Alt text provided by @shadow0haven

If you like what I do and want to see more, consider donating to my ko-fi!

[veliseraptor]

i was curious for no particular reason how many of my 112,782 posts (which, incidentally, comes out to about 21 posts per day on average) were actually original, so I checked and apparently it is 45,222 or 40% (this works out to 12 original posts per day, which is actually fewer than I thought).

so then I was curious how the data would change if I looked at more recent years when I've been using tumblr more heavily - or at least that was my expectation. what I actually learned was that my posting peaked in 2013 (5,766 posts, or almost 16 per day) and has been on a general decline since 2018. see:

the sharp drop from 2019 to 2020 is surprising to me given quarantine. so far this year I've been on an average of a mere 4 posts per day. (counting original posts only.)

this is interesting and fun for nobody except me but, as usual, i did it anyway

[marioposssa]

Because I've been curious about usage of pet names for some time now and I finally have the books in non-audio format, some statistics from 'His Majesty's Dragon'.

Laurence starts calling Temeraire 'my dear' first in chapter 3, directly after Daye's attempt at harnessing.

He then proceeds to use that pet name a whooping 23! times across the book. Every chapter at least once, with the notable exception of chapter 7 - the Victoriatus rescue where the narrative is centered on the action.

His usage of 'my dear' is so consistent, if not a bit iconic throughout the series, that the single use of 'dear one', also in chapter three, was all the more heartwarming to me.

This is all early Temeraire & Laurence and I feel the narrative, and Laurence as our restricted point of view, centers the emotional moments between these two much more explicitly than in some of the later books.

(That is not to say that I think these moments don't happen anymore in the later series, just that they are often more implied or less explicitly mentioned in favor of other story beats)

Other notable usages of dear:

Laurence's mother calls him 'my dear' two times during his visit.

Harcourt uses the pet name 'dearest' to address Lily, when the dragons go swimming.

Laurence also says 'Oh dear' twice when having to explain or deal with 'uncomfortable' concepts. Though I feel that Granby in later books much more embodies this saying.

[alackofghosts]

vierapril day 22 - flower

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

stares out the window and watches the rain fall ….. every mutual must have their token blonde man …….