The Only Connect final for 2024

In the blue corner, the Thrifters, three charity-shop fans.

In the red corner, the Also Rans, three Mastermind finalists seeking redemption a little later.

Both teams were tremendous. But which will win this nip-and-tuck match? And what is the appeal of Only Connect, a show with many viewers and next-to-no prize?

Clear as mud! But I expect nothing less from a Homestuck 🫡

Something I miss from earlier eras of the creative side of the internet was things just being unabashedly low-budget. Just all unashamedly amateur, unprofessional, ‘I don’t own a good camera but I have a story to tell you’, ‘I can’t afford a good mic but I have a song to sing for you,’ ‘I don’t have any kind of background in editing or lighting and I only just picked up this guitar last Tuesday but here’s an entire musical me and my friends wrote about our favourite book, we filmed it on a potato and put it up on YouTube in ten minute segments because we thought it was pretty funny.’

Offering to you all some sandy doodles in these trying times

I'm gonna be so honest with y'all. I don't take you seriously if you complain about the casting of the Percy Jackson show because the poc actors aren't "book accurate."

Because here's the deal. I remember when the internet threw a fit when Rue, a black character, was played by a black person. It didn't matter that it was book accurate, y'all didn't want to see a black person on screen.

For some of y'all, it's not that you are against adaptations straying from the source material- you are simply anti black.

If you are about to argue with me, I want you to ask yourself something. Did you not mind the race change of Grover, but you are against the casting of Annabeth? If that's true, maybe try to address that. Acknowledge it and try to deconstruct your anti-black biases.

Prompt 198

Now Bruce was not expecting to reincarnate upon his death. At least he thinks he died, he’s pretty sure he did. There wasn’t any other reason for him to be a well, literal baby. Around two he thinks, which fits well with the fact that it’s around that time that babies start forming memory recall, if he, well, remembered correctly. 

But while he knew about reincarnation thanks to Shayera and Carter, he’d never exactly given it much thought towards himself. Because seriously, what were the chances of such a thing as him being given another chance? 

So he was quite surprised at his situation, experimentally opening and closing pudgy hands that looked well, just a tiny bit off. He’d never been that pale before, he thinks, even back when he never went outside like, ever. 

He turned his gaze towards the mobile above him with a sort of idle curiosity- a mixture of bats (ha) and other trinkets he wasn’t familiar with. It also caused him to get his first good look at his parent, asleep on a rocking chair right next to the crib. 

Huh. They had the same pale skin he did, albeit in the light it looked like it was slightly tinted blue, and while their hair was white they didn’t exactly look old. They looked surprisingly well rested for raising a toddler too, unless they had a nanny or something similar… He rolled over, managing to very shakily push himself to his feet with the help of the crib. 

Why was standing so hard as a toddler? And why did he have his memories of everything except how he had died anyway? 

His head whipped up from where they were staring at his feet when he heard a snort, finding his parent awake and standing. Somehow silently enough that he hadn’t noticed- or he was that easily distracted by the unfamiliar giddiness bursting in his chest. 

“Morning little bat,” his parent easily picked him up and held him while he inwardly sighed at the nickname. Of course his bat motif would follow him into this life. A low rumbling almost caused him to jump, his body relaxing before he could fully register the sound. The… purring? 

Oh. 

He wasn’t human this time around. 

okay i know they went to university basically never because plot, but i'm forever amused by the idea of strangers seeing these two together and being baffled/wildly wrong about them

williams downright has the best marketing strategy of any team on the grid rn, like having accessible meet&greets, the tp giving his blunt insights on the team’s performance, and an almost-weekly podcast of their drivers just yapping away; it’s all an almost foolproof way of gaining fans outside of the track.

between elon musk breaking twitter, the spacex rocket exploding, and now a few billionaires shelling out a quarter mil to suffocate in a pressurized minivan 10,000 feet below sea level, it really feels like we're in the era of Rich People Very Publicly Showcasing How Fucking Dumb They Are

Moodboard for when one of your posts suddenly gets a huge amount of notes for seemingly no reason

i think isolating the bats from their teams and external support systems is like….. functionally bad. like wdym red hood is on dicks speeddial but his actual soulmate donna troy isn’t. why is everyone in gotham. why do these people have no friends

it’s weird when people act like mori would regularly torture dazai and/or chuuya for funsies. even ignoring that he does hold some affection for them why would he risk losing two of his strongest subordinates like that? why would he send them on missions while they’re injured??

dazai was clearly fine interacting with mori until the whole oda thing went down. and we know dazai is very clear about him being the only one allowed to make chuuyas life more difficult than it needs to be so he wouldn’t just stand by and watch if this ever happened

also how would you even explain that chuuya is perfectly happy hanging out with mori? he’s clearly not expecting any harm and y’all can’t tell me that chuuya "that’s more than a light wound" nakahara would ever happily spend his time with mori if he ever did actually torture dazai

Of course it's fucking THESEUS

okay. i havent shut up about the greek myth aspects of Simon's story and i wont stop now. At first it was a statue of Persephone in the garden, with it's head replaced to be Betty, giving the implication that Betty is the Persephone to Simon's Hades, and it was Simon's status as an antiquarian. and now we've gotten Simon being a huge nerd and bringing up Theseus completely unprompted (so real)

a bit of context in case you need it, Theseus was one of those greek "legendary Heroes" (Achilles, Heracles, etc.), and previously King of Athens, but had managed to dodge most bad things that happen to Greek heroes. he was just stupid and i guess they took pity on him.

The Ship of Theseus or "Theseus' Paradox", which I'd imagine all of tumblr knows by now, but if you don't, is the question on whether if a ship, specifically Theseus', is still the same ship after having all of its parts replaced exactly. To me this makes for such an obvious connection to Simon. Simon's story factors around identity, first and foremost. (yknow. "I Remember You" and all that?) The concept of not knowing what you are fundamentally was originally Ice King's thing, as his previous life as Simon was essentially history. But now that's being brought to Simon. and Simon has the lucidity to process what that means for him.

The thing about Ludinus is that yes, he does have a very high INT score but he is in fact stupid. He is a particular brand of stupid that I like to call Wizard Stupid, which is related to but not identical to Wizard Hubris. Wizard Hubris is the vision; Wizard Stupid is the realization.

Wizard Hubris is excessive confidence that is derived from the fact that one is a wizard, and therefore obviously knows everything, probably even more than the gods. Wizard Stupid is then carrying out the plans derived from Wizard Hubris without any kind of safety net. Where Wizard Hubris says "There is nothing beyond my capabilities"; Wizard Stupid says "No consequences can touch me." Wizard Hubris is building the Tower of Babel; Wizard Stupid is leaning one ladder on top of another ladder to do so. Wizard Hubris is the belief that you can, and indeed, are entitled, to fuck around. Wizard Stupid is the unshakeable belief that you will not be subjected to finding out.

So: let's look at Caleb. Caleb is FULL of Wizard Hubris for most of Campaign 2, given that he desires to reconfigure the time-space continuum, but except for a few relatively rare occasions, he is not terribly Wizard Stupid. He actually tends to be extremely cautious, and the cases in which he indulges the Wizard Stupidity are relatively self-contained (eg: the emerald).

Yussa, meanwhile, has few grand designs and mostly wants to hang out and fuck with the gentrification and political cronyism of Nicodranas, and honestly, good for him, seems totally reasonable. However, he does think that the Archmage's Bane is not referring to him (archmage) and that Astral Projection, a totally standard high level wizard's spell well within his abilities without any need for hubris, will carry no risk if he then decides to check out a little place called Cognouza.

Of course, many wizards have both. It's actually pretty rare to be mostly one or the other (which is why Caleb and Yussa are used for illustrative purposes). It's also pretty rare to have neither; Allura is the closest, and even she has her moments. Some degree of Wizard Hubris and Stupid do come packaged with the act of being a wizard.

Ludinus, obviously has both; he is, basically, building the Tower of Babel and he is, canonically, violating a list of safety protocols that rivals the length of a CVS receipt. And so: the hubris is "I can, should, must, and will blow up the moon that imprisons a god-eating abomination"; the stupid is sticking his fucking arm in the machine to power it.

tfw you, as a mind reader, have to team up with a man who thinks too much

Slight spoilers in tags

Tomarry AU where Tom HATES this book he read because his favourite character dies a miserable death. So what if his favorite character was a no-named side villain? Why does it matter that he only had like seven lines (seven is Tom's favourite number anyways)? He was still gorgeous, smart and strong and beautiful — and it doesn't matter that others think he isn't all that because they would never know him— understand him like TOM DOES.

An AU where Tom has a healthy obsession with a character named Harry Potter, a no named baron's son who was the first to go against the king (MC's father, and the mc who is incidentally known as Draco Malfoy, ahem anyways); he tries to “poison” him. But he gets caught or to be more precise he ends up sacrificing himself for the common girl Hermione Granger (the female lead, I'm sorry guys but imagine the fucking drama.) who gets blamed for his transgressions.

But that is not why Tom falls for this weak villain, no — it's because he respects how this no-named orphan became a baron on his own two feet without anyone being there for him especially in a world where old money and title is everything— and he hates how he had to give his life for the MC to notice the female lead? (Harry is better looking and smarter than her anyways — Tom, in an online forum perhaps.)

Anyways, now imagine Tom dying (he hated it so yes he ends up looking for immorality anyways.) and waking up in the world he hated. Now imagine, Tom Riddle, waking up in the body of a Duke who wasn't even given a name in the novel. (He would know because he has a photographic memory, ok? It's totally not because he read it more than 14 times) and then saying fuck it and owning it.

Just think, Tom taking over the world slowly with his worldly knowledge while trying to keep Harry alive because even though he was right about Harry being smart; the guy treats his life like Draco treats his money - you get the idea.