#Citadel Universes

[sun-citadel]

Maria

My take vs the Original :)

[space-thyme]

my citadel comix (part 1?)

part 2 part 3

[thespoonisvictory]

also idc I love the citadel and all its wizard hubris I love the intersection of innovation and horror and progress and crushing others underfoot AND also clothes that magically put them on themselves and Citadel Made bouncy balls and secret societies and universities!!! and espresso and arcane discovery and and and

[visenyaism]

the theory that all the maesters have been conspiring for hundreds of years to destroy the targaryen dynasty and eliminate all traces of old valyria from the planet theory is corny and fake. however vaegon targaryen definitely joined because he thought it was real

[internetskiff]

something something It's very interesting to me how Aperture is consistently a sort of mirror to the Combine Citadel. Two buildings built by entirely different hands, one not even of earthly origin, yet both fulfilling the same purpose - dehumanize, control, conceal.

Both facilities treat humans as a resource. As some kind of cargo to be stored as efficiently as possible, later to be processed and discarded. They both cram people picked off the streets into tiny boxes where they're then preserved for god knows how long, denied even the dignity of death.

They both shift restlessly, uncaring for who or what their many writhing arms may crush They build themselves out of themselves, countless corridors and chasms built seemingly for no one to ever traverse. The buildings feel as if they weren't even built with humans in mind, sparse catwalks scattered about as a mere afterthought.

Even the people who are meant to be in control are barely accounted for. Offices feel like either the bare minimum, or a strange alien approximation of an environment a human could work within. In neither cases were they built for comfort. Only for utility.

Aperture as both a company and a facility shows that humanity, under the right conditions, would have come a little too close to becoming a perfect mirror image of the Combine. If things hadn't gone wrong, it's safe to say humanity was on track for exactly that. Black Mesa wanted to exploit Xen, just like the Combine wanted to exploit Earth. Hell, while those two were at it, Aperture was too busy exploiting itself, and doing a damn good job at it. Both Aperture and the Universal Union are systems where literally no one was benefitting from the status quo, because they were too busy slaving away maintaining it. The Combine is just what Humanity would have become if it wasn't stopped at the very first hurdle. Flesh and machine, living and functional - both turned synonymous.

[roraimae]

Guess who finally had time to start playing Veilguard and is now faced with the Minrathous vs. Treviso choice

Emotional damage.

[cosmicbeastie]

Extremely funny to me that Lower Decks made Harry Kim the Morty Smith of the Star Trek universe

[humblegoatart]

daily sketch 1.16.24

some juni fashion (as is my fascination) and then a slew of lil margin doodles from saltmarsh tonight

[pocket-mortys-doodles]

murder patrol rick & s4 morty

[rhymeswithfart]

Hello my dears! I, osama, ask you to support my campaign to help me reach my goal. 🙏 I am now in desperate need of your support to help me stay alive and safe. I have an injury to my hand joint. I need to complete my treatment outside Gaza. I lost my home and my source of income due to the war. I need your financial support so that I can get the basic needs of my family and for continue my treatment. Please help a family survive through your small donations or through your shares to others. And reblog. The campaign is going very slowly. 🙏🍉💔

This campaign has a clean reverse image search and is donation protected! Very low on funds, $75/30,000.

https://gofund.me/1adf8943

I hope this will help reach more donors. I'll add images for tagging purposes.

[birdricks]

i find the dimension codes in rnm sooo fascinating bc like… how are they decided. if ricks are the only ones capable of interdimensional travel its safe to assume they are the ones who decide on them right …. and based on prime being the one to distribute portal tech perhaps his dimension really is considered the Origin. dimension 1.

[sun-citadel]

Old art, still cute

[space-thyme]

my citadel comix (part 2)

part 1 part 3

[spamalie]

i feel like people take rick calling beth “rick’s daughter” in season 3 in a super chauvinistic way but i honestly always read it as his way of emphasizing that beth is an incredibly smart and capable person. like i feel like it’s fair to say “rlck sanchez’s child” holds a certain kind of weight regardless of gender as opposed to necessarily being about ownership esp in the context he was saying it

[impossible-rat-babies]

/showleft anyway it’s all of eyrie’s children !

from L to R: aoife, sver, ol’ver, bijou, bisha and halvi

[internetskiff]

I'm such a sucker for the Citadel and how it changes over the course of Half Life 2 and it's episodes. I'd argue it's almost like a character going through it's own arc, in a way. The Citadel is (quite literally) a massive organism, a parasite planted into the soil by an unseen force from the skies, spreading it's cords to consolidate it's power over City 17. It's the Combine embodied in a single towering, shrieking and hateful monolith. It's cold and clinical voice decides the fate of entire city blocks. This is the thing that ordered the slaughter of an entire apartment block simply because Freeman happened to go through it. In it's eyes, Freeman is a cancer that must be eradicated as soon as possible.

And it fails. Time and time again Freeman slips away from the Combine Soldiers - the Citadel's Killer T Cells. And all it can do is ramp up the intensity with which it tries to destroy him, ravaging City 17 first, before eventually resorting to tearing itself apart in the hopes it's final dying shriek will bring the full might of the Combine down onto earth.

The Combine love to incorporate biology into technology. The massive translucent veins strung about the Citadel's entire structure have already been brought up a lot, but I've never seen anyone bring up the Reactor. It's like the nucleus of a cell. Or a heart, one beating out of control as the body housing it rapidly deteriorates. This isn't something Freeman caused - this is the Combine's attempt at retaliation. This is the Citadel destroying itself in hopes it can bring Freeman down with it. The Citadel is gradually leaking radiation into it's own body as it's reactor slowly breaks down it's own containment - all culminating in one final blast that would hopefully cleanse City 17 and the surrounding environment of all life.

And even when it's dead, it's carcass charred and splintered open, it still poses a threat to the resistance. The Superportal looms over humanity's head as one final echo of the power the Citadel once held over them. At this point, humanity was as good as dead in the Combine's eyes. The moment the Superportal blossomed open and the first Dropship came through, everyone's fate would be sealed. And even though it's body is dead, it's voice somehow survived, continuing to command the stranded remnants of the Combine's skeleton crew in order to ensure the Superportal could reach maturity. It kept raising the stakes until it completely destroyed itself. It's sort of sad the Citadel basically takes it's leave from the story in Episode 2. Even if a third installment were to happen, the Citadel simply can't play a role anymore - it's arc is finished, leaving behind nothing but a ruined city and chunks of red hot radioactive metal. It really shows how the Combine truly operates - it doesn't give, it only takes, and what it can't take it burns to the ground.