Natural Rocks
The Eye of the Sahara: A Mystery Older than Humans
Known as the Richat Structure, the Eye of the Sahara is one of the most interesting and impressive geological formations. It is in the Sahara Desert, stretches for 40 km, and looks like a bullseye. The eye is so huge that it can be seen from space and astronauts use it as a visual landmark. It was first photographed by Gemini Project astronauts in the 1960s.
Totem Made
CASS
Sandra Slead
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personal favorite headcanon: totems don’t just ‘heal’ you. They fill every scar, every open wound, with gold. They knit you back together Wrong, and it doesn’t just extend to the injury that killed you, it knows Everything. Even long-faded scars are back, brighter and bigger than they were when they first healed, shimmering bronze in the green light of resurrection. They’re a soul-deep instance of the craft of kinsugi: you come back better, in one sense of the word, but you do not come back the same, and whatever dictates ‘better’ does not care to hide or soften your history of suffering like your body does. Every loss, every slip, every pain is magnified and glorified, until they are all most people can see of you. You become, in entirety, what you have survived. Your death becomes your identity. (Are you really even revived?)
Elaboration on my personal favorite headcanon: Techno’s execution was the first time he’d ever had to use a totem.
He’s an old thing, be he god or man: he’s never died. But he has fought. He has fallen. He has held himself together with cloth and rage, and afterwards Philza has had to stitch stray pieces of flesh together until they once again resemble his dearest friend. Most of his injuries are old enough for the evidence to have faded from the surface: they are not old enough for the totem to pass them by.
For a moment, when the anvil fell, he looked like he was made of gold entirely, a figure of divine fire. He barely faded when the light did: every inch of his skin laced through with shimmering lines. One of his eyes was crushed in the execution: it glows yellow now, alongside its red partner. Quackity fought a man made of metal, and died watching him bleed ichor instead of blood (long healed bones, deep tissue tears… his heart, crushed by his rib cage when the anvil ground his body to pulp. the gold took everything, even the blood his chorus chants for.)
Tommy has to take a moment to recognize Techno: he doesn’t have to hear the story to know what the Butchers managed to do.
Philza spends a hundred winter nights replaying that moment on the balcony, one futile arrow shattered against the falling iron, half of his soul consumed in green and gold. He spends a hundred more laughing, pressed to Techno’s side, naming each glittering cut, recalling their origin. Neither of them remember what Techno looked like scarless. That is, of course, the whole point.
When Doomsday comes, the first sign of death is a burning figure, tall and bright and cast in gold under a blood red sky, standing amidst a sea of black hounds.
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You know, when I think about Arcane I can't help but think about the fact that I'm not a huge fan of how Vander handled things.
I mean his heart was definitely in the right place, he wanted to protect his children and his people, but to be honest there were moments where I felt like he was very confidently doing the wrong thing.
Specially in a child rearing sense. Now I just want to put it out there, that we the audience are shown a biased depiction of Vander.
Just about every scene he's in he's surrounded by his people who (mostly) look to him for protection, his children who adore him, or his enemies who are literal drug lord gang leader bad guys and corrupt policemen. Who are not humanized by the story until after his death.
For one there's Vi's pretty obvious eldest daughter syndrome, which Vander does nothing to try and curb. In fact I feel like in most of their scenes together Vander is treating this unhealthy dynamic as Vi being her sibling's leader and that she therefor needs to take more responsibility for them.
Even though I feel like Vander teaching Vi that way of thinking caused a lot of problems for all of the kids.
Sure it's great when your kids can work together, but there shouldn't be a pecking order among them, and if there is you shouldn't encourage it.
Vander fully expects Vi to take responsibility for Powder(which makes some level of sense considering she's 4-ish years younger than Vi), but also Mylo and Claggor, who are both the same age as her.
Meaning that if Vander trusts Vi to look after herself (and Powder) I feel like he should be able to trust Mylo and Claggor to look after themselves.
Vi should not be saddled with the responsibility of being in charge of her siblings, who are literally the same age as her.
If Vander is going to be reprimanding Vi for getting into trouble, he should be getting on to Mylo and Claggor just as much.
Sure Mylo and Claggor mention that Vander is going to be upset, but it's very obvious that the majority of the responsibility rests on Vi's shoulders.
Which, sure they look up to Vi and listen to what she has to say and what she thinks they should be doing.
But if it's to the point where Vander thinks it's gotten to the point that they will literally blindly follow Vi into dangerous situations because she said so. Then I feel like it's time for Vander to have a sit down with the rest of his kids and have the very important "Thinking for yourself" talk.
It's- You can't raise your children to just blindly follow their oldest sibling their entire life, and raise the oldest child to be the caretaker of the rest of their siblings their entire life.
Yeah, Vi needs to think things through a bit more, because the other kids look up to her a lot, and will go along with whatever her plans are, because they think she knows what she's doing and they trust her.
But also the other kids need to know how to assess things for themselves, rather than just blindly follow whatever it is Vi says, no matter how much they look up to her.
Like this man fully thinks that his 15 year old daughter, who clearly has problems with her temper and being impulsive herself, should also be responsible for her two adoptive brothers who are functionally the same age as her [one with a pretty obvious superiority/inferiority complex], alongside her younger sister who already has problems of some kind of anxiety.
Mylo and Claggor are just fully not held to the same standard as Vi in spite of being the same age, and literally getting into the exact same trouble. Their choice to go along with what Vi planned, is put onto Vi's shoulders when it shouldn't be, because if Vi is old enough to know better in Vander's mind, so are Mylo and Claggor.
If it was just Powder I could somewhat understand. She's younger, more impressionable, she idolizes Vi, she's not as strong or fast as the other three and if Vi forgot that at some point Powder could have gotten left behind or hurt.
You know the general "You need to be a good role model for your younger sibling because they look to you for guidance" stuff.
Like the fact that Vi feels the need to fight Piltover in order to secure a better life for Powder in Act 1 tells me so much just how parentified Vi is when it comes to Powder's care.
Which I do think originated from before Vander adopted the girls, to be fair to Vander. Vi gives off the vibe of looking after Powder having always been her responsibility.
To be unfair to Vander, I don't think he did anything to try and undo Vi's over responsible and over protective mindset when it came to Powder after adopting them.
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Give me the c!Foolish/c!Dream team-up. Give me c!Dream and c!Sapnap and the revival book and the death book. Give me their connections to XD. They set up a web with these characters so intricate that c!Foolish had to map it out on the wall of his basement, and it went NOWHERE.
we were ROBBED of all the DreamXD lore and his ties to all the characters - like I can't stop thinking about how he had something special for every member of the DreamTeam. why them? is it cause they were the original server dwellers? why choose Foolish as the next one to interact with? what are the ties?
why didn't Foolish help Dream take down Las Nevadas like that would've been so fun why did their conversation and scheming and transaction Go Nowhere
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you know i must have been bone-tired when this part of the herb brides lore didn't come to my mind when i discussed how the Kin fundamentally differs from the cultures it is inspired by um There Is The Human Sacrifice part. like it's an important part of pathologic 2 that you are doing human, or anthropomorphic (if you want to see the Herb Brides as closer to spirits, which comes with its own set of problematics regarding how to approach their oppression) sacrifice. it's an important part of pathologic 2 that you kill a woman, as part of the journey and in direct resonance with you ritualistically killing cattle earlier, and she offers herself to you with cultural and religious significance.
human sacrifices have been done across the globe for millennia, but i cannot, for the life of me, find any source at all that mentions the Buryats (since that was the discussion point) partaking in human sacrifices by the turn of the 19th-early 20th century (or even anything past the 16th). every single source mentioning offerings and sacrifices i've read mentions animals, things such as milk and vodka, and often both at once. would love to read anything about these rituals if papers exist, but i'm personally drawing a blank.
the Kin has Obvious and very Visible influences but it also differs from specific (in this discussion's case, the Buryats) or wider (here, turkic/mongolic as a whole) cultures from the area by so many pieces, big and small, that i wouldn't have enough appendages on my whole body to count them all. and sister. i have plenty of appendages.
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