queen of hearts, heads, and body parts

🌧 multifandom 🌧 Alyssa or Quara 🌧 25 🌧 she/her 🌧 desktop header by @chillcrafting, mobile header by me, icon by @appleflavoredkitkats

[quaranmine]

howdy!

You may call me either Quara or Alyssa! My main is @doctorletmebebrave (so if you see that name liking or commenting, it is me). I'm also the sole admin of @mcyt-cats, which is not being actively updated anymore, although I'll never forget how much fun I had with it.

My AO3 can be found at doctorletmebebrave.

Currently posting a lot about Project Hail Mary. I'm likely to also post about some other fandoms too, including but not limited to: The Murderbot Diaries, TADC, etc. The MCYT fandom, specifically Hermitcraft, will forever hold a piece of my soul. I write fanfic and post the occasional piece of fanart! Please don't repost my stuff to other sites, or use it in any form of AI.

Common original content tags:

Art- #quara_art

Analysis- #quara analysis

Asks- #quara asks

Liveblogging- #quara liveblog

Fanfic- #quara fanfic

If you need to know what one of my other tags are, just ask. I'm also willing to trigger tag things although I make no guarantees I won't forget sometimes.

Bonus link: My Evo Lore Spreadsheet

Selected fanfics I want to highlight:

How to Be a Human Being AO3; Tumblr Masterpost (HC)

some kind of trouble is coming (DLSMP)

Lonesome Dreams (EVO)

Gadus morhua (ESMP S1)

do you see no ghosts in me at all? (HC)

leave a light on for me (SLSMP)

and my favorite, the HC Firewatch AU 🔥

The Incandescence of a Dying Light AO3

Tumblr Masterpost

<3

[lollytea]

I think it is so funny that the blurb of Platform Decay has Murderbot making a point to imply that it doesn't like kids.

Meanwhile Murderbot's actual interactions with children throughout the books:

(Not pictured is Sofi spamming her best friend Secunit with heart emojis or it carrying Tula around because she feels safe with it or Amena calling it Mom)

You are good with kids!! You are a person who likes kids!!! Would it kill you to say it? There's no shame in saying it.

[xstick-noodlesx]

*sends Murderbot an article about the River Nile in Egypt*

[divorciada]

something I haven't seen people mention about The Hunger Games trilogy and movies is how it genuinely revolutionized the Minecraft server scene

[dragon-in-a-fez]

Martina McBride didn't win Country Music Association Song of the Year for a song about how burning your house down with your abusive husband still inside it is good, noble, and an allegory for the American Revolution for people to act like the genre belongs to bootlicking fucks

[dragon-in-a-fez]

other things people didn't do for you to act like country music belongs to bootlicking fucks:

Garth Brooks winning video of the year at the ACMs for a song about how none of us are free as long as there's racism and homophobia

Reba McEntire charting with a gothic horror song about an innocent man being executed by an incompetent judge and a corrupt sheriff

Willie Nelson being, well, his entire self tbh

Dolly Parton recording the hating capitalism banger of all time

Kacey Musgraves telling everyone to ignore the haters, smoke weed, and be a bisexual slut

[dragon-in-a-fez]

how the hell did I leave Morgan Wade off this list. wrote a song about being depressed, alcoholic, and suicidal and how mental illness stigma sucks, saw how much people connected with it, wrote a Part II of that song about how she's doing better now but you're never totally free of the risk of relapse. fucking icon.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I specifically curated this list so people couldn't be like "ah yes but you see here is my simple binary of good and bad country music which always works", I made sure to add different genders, eras, subgenres, etc and y'all are still pulling that shit in the tags!

listen. Alan Jackson, the archetypal mister big hat man sitting on a tractor singing about a pickup truck, wrote a shockingly normal song about 9/11 that was like "yeah I don't know jack shit about politics but my copy of the bible says we're supposed to love everyone" and then went on the radio and explained how he specifically wanted to write a song about that day that "wasn't vengeful". Miranda Lambert took the southern leftist slogan "y'all means all" and made it the title of a corny ass pop-country song for the Queer Eye soundtrack. Kenny Chesney stole a horse from a cop and Tim McGraw put the cop in a chokehold defending him, and I know that's not about their music but it is, and this is very important, fucking sick as hell

it's fine if you only listen to female country artists or pre-1990 country artists or whatever the fuck you want but stop acting like you've cracked the secret code to dividing a whole genre of art into good pure anti-establishment folk songs vs bad corrupted right-wing sellout pulp

[dragon-in-a-fez]

updating this post for 2025:

Luke Combs covering Fast Car and keeping the line "I work in the market as a checkout girl" and doing an interview about how he couldn't change a single word because it's not his story. king shit

Morgan Wallen doing I Had Some Help, literally the first song that spoke to me as a male survivor of domestic abuse. also shoutout to the guy for getting caught saying a racial slur and responding by specifically telling his fans not to defend him and raising a bunch of money for the Black Music Action Coalition. bro had an engraved invitation to the culture war and said "nah I'd rather be normal"

Shaboozey just absolutely obliterating the drunk roadhouse anthem glass ceiling

Maren Morris and Brothers Osborne with a song that okay, released in 2019 but I didn't hear until recently, about how good friends mind their own business and let you love whoever you want and also get high with you when you're broke

Kimberley Perry! If I Die Young Part 2!! "actually I'm glad I lived, bitch" ass song that I bet is gonna mean a LOT to kids fighting depression

Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan with Cowboys Cry Too. okay it's shallow and corny but genuinely a shallow and corny song about how men shouldn't be afraid to have feelings is what a lot of men need

[dragon-in-a-fez]

bringing the full version of this post back around because people are pissing me off today

[quaranmine]

i keep making revisions and cuts on the three fic, which tonight has involved Killing One of My Darlings, because i simply cannot justify its presence for how uneven and choppy it makes the scene read

so we're still at 6k words even though i've added quite a bit since i last said we were at 6k words lol. this fic is fighting me a little but i think i like how it is turning out

[quaranmine]

now at this point i think i'm just subconsciously avoiding writing the climax of this fic because i am still winging it and therefore it scares me. because instead of doing that like i expected i instead went back to editing earlier parts and added in a whole new plot point

[quaranmine]

i keep making revisions and cuts on the three fic, which tonight has involved Killing One of My Darlings, because i simply cannot justify its presence for how uneven and choppy it makes the scene read

so we're still at 6k words even though i've added quite a bit since i last said we were at 6k words lol. this fic is fighting me a little but i think i like how it is turning out

[quaranmine]

the fact that i am this wiped out on tuesday evening does NOT bode well for the fact that i am working 6 days this week (extra 10 hr day on saturday)

[woodfrogs]

like every book there's a scene where murderbot has to explain something horrific that secunits are put through to its humans and it moves on (because it is functioning 90% due to denial and repression) while everyone else is horrified and each time it feels exactly like this:

"the governor module will freeze you in place at your client's command and force you to do nothing as they're kidnapped then will kill you terribly and painfully when they're taken out of acceptable range"

[liminalbeauty]

Murderbot just knows it as ‘the way it is’. As it starts to break free the story follows its own journey to self-awareness and the beginnings of an understanding of the value of life. The story skims lightly over a deep sea of horror and abuse, because that’s the only way to survive until you can start to heal. Preservation is the mirror being held up to ‘the way it is’. Humans don’t have to be like the way they are in the Corporation Rim. Murderbot has the genetics of its own oppressors built into itself, which it hates and wants to deny in the beginning. But it realizes that the ones oppressing it were the product of their own system, and they themselves were victims as well. Sanctuary Moon was its first look into what it means to be human. Or part human. What humans dreamed of being as well. Maybe Preservation was a window that allowed Murderbot to escape. But it had to first understand how to make a human connection.

I read a very formative article a number of years ago which said that every book a child reads, no matter what their life circumstance, improved their life outcome. The act of reading helped the child’s brain to grow, gave them more ability to imagine something better for themselves, and increased their awareness and compassion for others. This, in turn, made the entire trajectory of their life better.

I think it was the same for Murderbot.

[cooking-with-hailstones]

I wrote this all out in the tags but it turned into enough of an essay that, fuck it, it's going in the post.

I just reread Fugitive Telemetry and I think it's so interesting to see all the little moments like this with Indah and Aylen.

They both start out deeply afraid and suspicious of MB, in a way that MB doesn't want to acknowledge but is definitely very painful. But through the course of their interactions, they have enough Wendy's Lady moments that they start to change.

And I don't think Murderbot picks up on this much, if at all. I think it would be surprised to know how much both of their opinions of Murderbot have changed through the course of the events of FT. But MB just keeps dropping these little hints, little stories and anecdotes, little things about the CR that it just Knows. And they're both standing there like "what the fuck... Holy shit... That's so fucked ...." And they both soften up so much to MB. (Helped significantly by the extreme competency MB displays the whole time, but also just through its sheer... Well humanity isn't the right word. Undeniable personhood. They start to see past the scary Secunit and start to see the scared and hurt person that Mensah first saw wrapped up in a blanket in the cubicle.

The moment that drove this home most to me is the way Indah quietly supports it after What Happened with The People in That One Scene. When you know MB is devastated but not actually able to articulate why even to itself in any meaningful way. And Indah is just there, supporting it quietly and carefully and giving it space, but also affirming "you have just been violently dehumanized, and I'm sorry. For what it's worth, I do see you as a person and it sucks that this happened and I'll press charges against them if you want." (I think MB doesn't really process that concept. Imagine a SecUnit making a complaint about a human and it being taken seriously? It's definitely not ready for that yet.)

But the way that in the last chunk of FT she's just quietly affirming MBs personhood. She's seen the cruelty it's lived with all its life and now she can see the person who never deserved it. It's earned Indah and Aylen's trust, and probably most of the station security team, just by being itself, through its undeniable personhood.

[liminalbeauty]

Yes ❤️

The *layers* in the writing.

[anna-antoshchenkova]

Time

[jayjayjayjayjayjayjayjayjaye]

Carl consulting the Cookbook whenever he needs something

[valenalentine]

[wintergardenscribe]

Pick your favorite Lord Huron lyric about ghosts!

I saw a ghost; he looked the same as me.

All the spirits that I know I saw... do you see no ghost in me at all?

I glimpsed a ghost in the darkness, stared me straight in the eye.

All who sail off the coast will remember the tale of the ghost on the shore.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you.

Love is like ghosts; few have seen it, but everybody talks.

I made a life out of chasing a ghost.

I land on an island coast where the only souls I see are the ghosts.

I'm a fool, I'm a ghost, so it seems, drowning in my squandered dreams.

Love is like ghosts; the moonlight, baby, shows you what's real.

Spirits follow everywhere I go; they sing all day and they haunt me in the night

Love is like ghosts; what ain't living can never really die.

Remaining time: 4 days 19 hours

[palesweetdeeer]

I love the idea of Rocky extending Grace’s lifespan to Eridian levels without telling him

[atomikats]

my personal take on the matter

[hallwaysss]

Genuinely I think this might be the most important scene in the book

[hallwaysss]

this is the moment he becomes her second in command by the way. not the coma resistance gene. not some insane feat of scientific discovery above the rest. ryland grace looks the most powerful woman in the world in the eye and demands to take part in the project. because he looked in those children's faces and saw death. just like stratt did. and that's what dooms him. she saw the good man underneath the coward and she will kill the coward to let the good man breathe. phm

@carlyraejepsans how does it feel to be the most correct person ever. You're so right

[sentient-pineapple]

Cubicles are so quietly horrifying as a concept 11/10 fridge horror so here, have some art