noumena fan

An old WIP of a 2nd cheesy romance novel Axiom's End piece that I'll never finish 😴 from 2021

Maybe if you tried more

Then you would deserve it

Maybe if you fixed the whole world by yourself

Then you'd earn it

And I'm the worst mistake your God has ever made

I can't get the numbers right

I can't fucking count because not one goddamned thing is in its place

So, of course I couldn't draw Ampersand without drawing Cora too! (From the book Axiom's End)

Now, when it comes to human characters, I suck at remembering specific details about their appearance. A mental image usually pops into my head after the first description and it refuses to change. However, I hope my version isn't too off-base.

She had Nik relay that the three similars in TOTD can’t have Ampersand because “he is mine.”

Ampersand:

- For Nils, truth is a human right but some people are more human than others. Nils’s slogan is “truth is a human right.” But his actions in TODT paint him as either cognitive dissonance-ing himself away from his own lies, or as a blatant, corrupted manipulator. Truth is a human right, except when he secretly blackmails Kaveh, schemes to indoctrinate his children for gain, and requests political favors in exchange for information. 

- For Kaveh, the means to truth do not justify the ends if the means cause more suffering than the ends prevent. Kaveh worked with Nils on at least one of the same projects, outing government atrocities that Sol was wrapped up in. But Kaveh believes this is a truth that needs to be outed to save lives and hold the government accountable, not to get his name in an article or book. When he has the truth of what Nils is willing to do his own integrity as a truth seeker and human being helps him make the easy decision to never want to work with Nils ever again. 

- For Cora, lying is seen as a way to protect herself and protect others, but if she goes too far it does the opposite. Cora tells little white lies, usually in the pursuit of peace. “I believe you,” she says when she doesn’t believe somebody, but doesn’t want to fight. She manipulates and minces interpretations of Ampersand’s comments for the sake of keeping peace. Her omissions of truth rarely cause great harm but neither do they ever help anything. However, as her illness progresses, little white lies snowball until she’s lying about the state of her own mental health, until she breaks. She hurts herself and her loved ones by proximity.

- For Luciana, it feels like telling the truth has only caused harm in the long run. Luciana wants to believe in her own goodness, and therefore cannot conceive that she would ever do something like breaking a NDA or hurting her family. She’s so concerned with being correct that she hurts her family, anyway. And still, that truth hurts. 

- For Ampersand, the truth will only make you suffer, so omission is an act of self-sacrifice; his instability for your stability. Ampersand always lies by omission, telling half truths or distracting from the real truth. He’s exactly like Cora but to the extreme, omitting truth because he believes the truth will hurt those around him. However, he’s gone so far down this hole of omission that his problems never get solved; he hurts himself, he hurts all his loved ones, and he knows he needs help but feels too broken to seek it. 

- For Nikola, there is no reason why he needs to lie or omit; the end is near, anyway. Nikola only tells the truth, as he understands it. His truth is pessimistic but his actions optimistic, something Kaveh notes about their friendship. When he says he’s ready to die but takes care of his body and mind, he isn’t lying about wanting to die. He wants to have hope but he is compelled to let the humans understand the odds of their hopelessness, all the same. 

- For the pequod superorganism, truth is a tangible thing they can hold in their hands, and they consume it like their sister-species “consumes” planets. The general pequod society, if Nikola is right, thinks that they can keeping going and going and going, that the universe is a black-and-white thing they can pull apart. But Nikola sees it as something bigger and incomprehensible than either pequod or human beings. There is a divinity- the unknown- which they can never touch. But the superorganism will keep trying to understand, anyways. They will destroy themselves and the miracle of other intelligent life in their endless pursuit of black-and-white.