#the noumena series

[whentheynameyoujoy]

Oh, so this is going to be interesting indeed.

[deanu]

While awaiting my copy of Apostles of Mercy in the mail I downloaded the free sample ebook and. Damn. The first chapter is such a gut punch

[nellasbookplanet]

The three tiers of queer sff:

Broke: what is worldbuilding? Made in a lab to be as blandly inoffensive as possible. Time to randomly namedrope terms like 'nonbinary' and 'ace' while doing zero work actually incorporating them into the world or characters and have someone give a speech about how valid they are. Lines like 'I'm too ace for this' while never exploring the concept of asexuality or aromanticism and still having very central romance plotlines is common. I hate it here learn how to write realistic dialogue and fully realized characters I'm begging.

Woke: more ore less typical sci-fi and fantasy but It’s Queer Now. Might include in-universe queerphobia to be struggled against or may have queer identities be fully normalized. Can be done bad or well depending on the skill of the writer. A good way to explore our contemporary ideas of gender and sexuality or to have a bit of a power fantasy with lesbian princesses and trans knights. There will probably be a bisexual love triangle.

Bespoke: what is a gender. What is monogamy. What is polyamory. What is romance. What is platonic. Time to show you the most fucked up uncategorizable relationship you’ve ever seen. There may be weird ass metaphorical sex

[who-do-i-know-this-man]

⚠️Vote for whomever YOU DO NOT KNOW⚠️‼️

[salamanderinspace]

gooooood the new Lindsay Ellis book is like someone dialed directly into my subconscious. Is connection and understanding an illusion, like when you talk to your cat and think it understands you? What degree of authoritarianism is necessary to make you feel like you can save everyone? Is there really an objective truth or just competing stories? What makes a person? Are people worth saving or helping? What is love, really?

I'm only on page 122

[secretsofthewilde]

There's something so gut wrenching about the way Cora constantly views Nikola as a threat and doesn't humanise him the way she does with Ampersand, and yet Nikola is the one that's more outwardly compassionate towards humans.

She also struggles with Ampersand lying or keeping things from her so much during Truth of the Divine, but Nikola freely gives information to those who ask him. When Ampersand is emotionally distraught, he shuts down and self isolates, but Nikola lashes out and self medicates - which is not only incredibly human in general, but it's something that Kaveh admitted to also doing in the past. Cora herself exhibits both traits; she will isolate herself from other humans and fail to look after self, but then will lash out at others when she's unable to be alone.

I can't help but wonder if part of it is due to her self-hatred for the bond she has with Ampersand, when Nikola is not only the seemingly kinder alien but he also shared a connection with Kaveh that was far more healthy than hers.

[centrally-unplanned]

Oh I had a book review that I never did - Apostles of Mercy. Third in a series that I like, but while still "good" its the worst one so far! The Noumena series is a First Contact story set in Bush-era USA, telling the tale of Cora, a down-on-her-luck "everygirl" who gets dragged into being an interpreter/uncomfortably-intimate pairbond for an alien refugee named Ampersand whose home species is probably gonna wipe out humanity as a threat prevention/"why not" measure. Lets complain about things on the complaining-blog:

(The cover art continues to slap, no downgrade there)

Book 1 of the Noumena series is, fundamentally, the story of Cora and Ampersand, and how they connect. It is done really well, their differences stack on their shared contexts and a bit of alien magic to make it really believable that they become a found family unit. So in book 2... Ampersand kind of PTSD's into becoming a reclusive asshole, and Core spends most of the book away from him connecting with other people? It is an odd choice but, you know, this can work. You create space in a relationship, they grow and change from the space, then reunite and that distance in fact builds the foundation for new stuff. Its bold for book 2 but fair enough. But then she does it again in Book 3!! Cora goes off to deal with other issues and hang out with someone else, and is primarily annoyed by or made deeply uncomfortable by Ampersand's presence and decision-making for most the book. Its not as severe this time, but still; you can't play that card again, like come on! Are you telling your Transformers meets Beauty & the Beast fanfic or aren't you? Make up your mind! It comes off as too-clever-by-half, someone uncomfortable with doing the "typical" and having to constantly ~subvert, to ill effect.

Speaking of, the distraction du jour for Book 3 is Paris, Cora's new girlfriend. And she is very, very boring. She is just A Person, spends most of the book a prisoner trying to survive alien captors who don't understand her, and pretty much just has to be rescued at the end. There is no connective tissue - skills that she has that are crucial, themes she is the lodestone for, etc. In Book 2 Cora's partner Kaveh was far, far more interesting - he pushed the narrative forward, he was audacious and witty, and he had a deep internal narrative as to his motivations and goals. Paris seems like a checkbox in comparison. And I think there is something to that - in an interview Ellis remarked that she has gotten far less "critique" on her male characters than her female characters from the lens of making them interesting to read. She implies a degree of audience sexism there, but I think its probably the reverse - besides Cora (who is great) her male characters are just way more fun because, surprise surprise, they are allowed to be assholes sometimes in ways that make them complex and interesting. Even Kaveh, who is a very positively coded character, is a thirty-something rich guy sleeping with a college-aged broke trauma ball and is shamefully kind of loving being the fixer to her broken bird. That is good shit to read about - Paris could never because she is simply A Good Person. Because of Woke.

And speaking of politics! So this part of the series was always a little cringe - Ellis as a writer wears her politics on her sleeve and they are definitely a form of unsophisticated leftism with some really heavy-handed moments. But I don't mind reading the works of people I disagree with, I quite love it in fact; in the first book it is generally fine, because she sets up competent and realistic opponents. In Book 1 its the CIA embodied in Sol Kaplan, who believes in the War on Terror and all that jazz and is one of the best side characters, and Cora has to face brutal consequences for her own ideals. In Book 2 the cringe ratchets up a bit but still, here the debate is over civil rights & strategic approaches to the now-public alien refugees, and the "right-wing" factions are portrayed with intelligent arguments around security & deterrence, and also score their own wins. In Book 3, the main plot revolves around a sister alien faction's camp who specialize in biotech. And they have this whole thing where they move from place to place for secrecy, and to be away from people they find themselves in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and then an uncleansed mine field in Cambodia. At which point they start saying things like "we should eliminate the humans, we would steward the earth better" and you in the audience are totally supposed to be sympathetic to that. Its incredibly eyeroll, the large majority of the planet is rural countryside they could escape to with nothing close to that scale of damage, they literally chose the worst possible locations on two coin flips in a row. How are they not in Montana. Or Siberia. Its cringe, guys. She does the same thing with the CIA in this book, who eventually get commandeered by a US general who literally thinks of ethnic minorities as subhuman and says so explicitly. Incredible cringe.

Finally, Mary Sue problems. Cora interacts extensively with three humans in this book, and two of them want to fuck her and the third is her evil dad. Said dad spent the first two books being a distant figure pulling off big moves; in this book he literally does nothing but putz around, with no clear agenda but "butter up Cora", who sees through it immediately and fucks him over at the end. Like you spent two books setting this guy up? That is it? So Cora can look smart? We already knew she was smart. Someone says he loves her an "angelic" platonic way. Its not a good look and tbh a little baffling coming from Ellis, who is not at all someone who typically does that kind of stuff. I have to chalk that up to "ah fuck how do I wrap this arc up" syndrome.

Okay, done! Tbc the core of the book was still solid plotting and there was progress on interesting fronts. Its just sad to read Book 3 in a series where it commits mistakes the first two books explicitly avoided, like she ran out of endurance. Hopefully this is a book where she just got it out of her system.

[squishy-lombax]

Went feral and drew this all in one sitting. Here is a full reference sheet with my refined drawings of my personal Ampersand head-canons (From the book Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis).

I'm not the type of person to highlight or make notes in my books. So trying to remember every detail of how the author described Ampersand's appearance was difficult. Especially since this book isn't wide-spread enough to have the characteristics listed anywhere online from what I could find.

What I remembered and how my brain interpreted it:

A face like a mask, large enough for a hand to spread on. Since I had "gray aliens" in my head when this was brought up, a triangle shape came to my mind.

Large amber/orange eyes with multiple red pupils like "stars". When closed, the eyes have a membrane like film that slides over top. I envisioned it to be slightly transparent based on that description.

Frills like feathers on the head that spread out into a flower-like appearance. Since he was described as robotic, I went with something that looked akin to blades or scales but still inspired by birds and placed in a crown.

Openings on the side of the neck that admitted sound (while reading, I envisioned them as flaps, almost skin like, that vibrated). Since the sounds were described as dolphin or whale-like, I felt this could be the one thing on the body more "organic" and not rigid.

The body itself is said to have the posture like a dinosaur or velociraptor with a rough exoskeleton shell. My feet were also inspired by this dinosaur/bird theme since the amygdala are described as plantigrades, and Cora described his footprints as "bird-like".

The arms are described as always being in a "mantis pose" or, as I like to call it, the "autism t-rex pose." The length of these arms changed in my mind a lot, but in the end, considering how much they use their arms, I went with long instead of short like a t-rex.

The hands were directly inspired by @deanu's drawing here. I loved their design, because it kept in mind the "spider" aspects the hands are described to have, without them being literal scissor fingers like I see in a lot of other fanart. Since that is not how I envisioned them while reading but wasn't exactly sure how I felt before seeing @deanu's fanart.

The fact this raptor body didn't have a tail was jarring for me to envision upon first reading, but a shell casing on his back that ever so slightly curved past the rear quickly formed in my mind. This made him feel less naked in my head and I don't know why.

Edit: I have no concept for how tall 8ft but this is the generally the height i envisioned.

I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and my head-canons <3

[whatthesquids]

I can’t believe i spent so much time thinking of this meme art AND made it AND THEN forgot to post it

[titles-for-tangents]

So there I was checking to see if there was a summary was up yet for "Apostles of Mercy" when I spotted this little rather telling detail

There's no summary up on B&N yet as of this posting but it's up an Amazon, and both have three quotes of incredible praise. Let's zoom in on this one in particular by the incredible, indelible Jamie Loftis:

"Lindsay Ellis shows us that humans are just as much the other as their alien counterparts with incredible detail, humor, and empathy, and never better than in this un-put-downable conclusion to the Noumena saga. Cora Sabino has officially joined the pantheon of first contact heroines." - Jamie Loftis, New York Times bestselling author of Raw Dog

CONCLUSION?!!?!

I knew Noumena was originally published under a three-book deal with Macmillian Press, and that it would hopefully go to a full five-book series depending on the success of the first three. What then, pray tell, on earth happened to the other two?

[innocet]

I <3 sex scenes that are uncomfortable, sad, and disturbing

[artbyvampiraptor]

Struggling struggling struggling to make a good Ampersand design, my alien cyborg blorbo,help I just wanted to draw something because the Apostles of Mercy cover was recently released and I'm vibrating with excitement

[keeg-draws-stuff]

[foxpearlwilder]

some rough sketches of amygdalines. i imagine they have slightly different crests and eyes, also that & has a hUge head compared to the rest

[who-do-i-know-this-man]

⚠️Vote for whomever YOU DO NOT KNOW⚠️‼️