Hard or impossible to visualize, but as the temporal dimension is so much larger, most of the deformity is in the time dimension.
But yes, spacetime itself is jiggly like Jell-O.
As we can't visualize 4d spacetime, most analogies will be wrong. But as photons don't experience time themselves, thinking about the geodesic path is probably less error prone than thinking of it as squishing physical objects.
Objects being pulled towards slower flows is the intuition that matches the math best for me.
But yes, spacetime itself is jiggly like Jell-O.
As we can't visualize 4d spacetime, most analogies will be wrong. But as photons don't experience time themselves, thinking about the geodesic path is probably less error prone than thinking of it as squishing physical objects.
Objects being pulled towards slower flows is the intuition that matches the math best for me.