Ye Olde 'About Me' Post

[dreamerinsilico]

 I should probably do one of these, yeah?

Name: I go by Dae or Silico.
Age: 30s
Nationality: USA (unfortunately)
Classification soup: white, vaguely female enby (they/them), queer as fuck, neurodivergent, SJW (Social Justice Warlock)
Fannish things I do: writing, cosplay, beta reading, geeking out over fandom as a phenomenon in general, roleplay, dreaming up character playlists
Other things I do: Make noises about learning languages, make noises about science, make noises about fibercraft, kvetch about RL and the current state of the world
Fannish things I'm (historically) most known for: Labyrinth fic, smutty Elder Scrolls fic, Dragon Age femslash, cosplaying DA characters for like five DragonCons in a row, griping about scientific inaccuracy

I'm an enthusiastic beta reader when I've got the energy for it; mutuals can feel free to hit me up for that when you need, and I'll help if I've got bandwidth at the time.

I have a PhD in chemical/biomolecular engineering that I'm still recovering from.  Grad school is the tenth circle of hell.  But hey, if you have biology-related questions for some reason, chances are I can answer them.  (And I'll be happy to do so because I'm terribly pedantic when given any encouragement whatsoever!  :D)

My current main obsessions are Hannibal, Sandman, and Pillars of Eternity, but I've got a pretty big handful of 'forever fandoms' I keep coming back to (and I can't decide what the threshold should be for whether or not I list a fandom as an Interest on my profile, honestly - I've enjoyed media from plenty of fandoms that I don't necessarily consider myself to Be In).  I also do some original fiction occasionally.  I'm super enthusiastic about indie video games and tabletop RPG systems (and non-indie ones as well), so you'll see me posting about those sometimes.

I have a long, somewhat cranky history with Blizzard games. Diablo I was the very first non-kiddie video game I ever finished.  I played WoW like it was my job in college (shadow priest and resto druid, mostly), and I played altogether too much Overwatch when it came out in my last year of grad school (support main, but I flex.  Favorites to play include Mercy, Ana, Reaper, Dva, Soldier 76, Moira, and Winston).

I have a fluffy demonspawn cat that I love to pieces and talk about sometimes.

And I'm an enthusiastic if recent member of Yarn Fandom - I knit a lot and will occasionally post pictures.

Transformative Works policy: I welcome translations, podfic-ifying, remixes, and other works based on my fics - please send me a message to let me know about the thing, and I will link to it on the fic.

Friending & Interaction: I welcome comments from anyone and everyone on all my posts, unless explicitly stated otherwise (and I have yet to have a reason to state otherwise), whether or not we follow each other.  If you add me to your circle, I will most likely add you back at the present time, although that may change if the update rate of my Reading page starts to get unmanageable.

Languages: English is my first language.  I speak/understand French well enough to have a conversation in text (my spoken French is rusty as hell, unfortunately, though I could get by if I needed to), and I'm currently applying myself enthusiastically to German.  (If you speak either of those fluently and otherwise want to interact, I'd welcome the practice!) 

I have also previously spent various amounts of time on (but have not attained any real functional level in) Irish Gaelic, Japanese, Hindi, and Korean.  Japanese I have pretty much given up on because I'm sorry, but fuck kanji.  (Which is unfortunate, because I spent a pretty substantial amount of time on it and still have close friends who live in Tokyo.)  Any of the others might see a period of intensive study at some point in the future, and I'm also really interested in picking up a North Germanic language (either Norweigan or Icelandic).

Comments

overwatch!

[solarbird]

Might I suggest the brand new communities:

watchpoint_gibraltar: Overwatch fan community I started yesterday. (I am also from tumblr but I know how this works!)

widowtracer: Amélie "Widowmaker" Lacroix/Lena "Tracer" Oxton - but Emily shippers are also welcome and we're OT3 friendly.

mekamechanical: Hana "D.va" Song/Brigitte Lindholm. Also OT3 friendly as long as it's related.

as well as

A Master List of Master Lists of Communities on Dreamwidth?

Re: overwatch!

[dreamerinsilico]

Those aren't my ships (I'm largely a Mercymaker/Moicy/Reaper76/Sommercy/McGenji shipper), but I joined the first one! Thanks for the invite. :)

[author_by_night]

Social Justice Warlock)

Hey, I like that.

I never got into tumblr; nor am I really one for NSFW content. Honestly, for fandom I'm actually as vanilla as it gets. :P However, I'm also very much for free speech, and furthermore, apparently posts that aren't even related to NSFW things are being taken down. It's all so idiotic to me.

[dreamerinsilico]

(Haha, thanks!)

And yeah, their automated filtering algorithm is well and truly terrible. It might get better, if they're using a machine learning method? But I don't even trust them to be that intelligent in how they're going about it.

[oldtoadwoman]

I too walked away from Tumblr during that time even though it didn't directly affect me. The idea of it just pissed me off. Also, I had to admit that I'd been wasting more and more time there experiencing fandom in an increasingly passive way. So I just deleted my Tumblr entirely and came back to Dreamwidth where I still waste time, but in more creative ways and having actual discussions with people.

[dreamerinsilico]

Yeah, I still maintain a presence over there, myself, but frankly I wish I could bring myself to do what you did. It can indeed be SUCH a passive time-waster! DW feels *much* more interactive, and that's been great.

[oldtoadwoman]

I deleted my account in sync with the people trying to rally people to delete their accounts as a form of protest. But the real reason I was deleting it was because it was both wasting my time and stressing me out (because I was following too many political activist blogs and even though I agreed with them, it's not great for your mental health to constantly be told you're not doing enough to save the world). I needed to go cold turkey to make a break with it.

[dreamerinsilico]

Oh god, yeah, I entirely hear you on the activist stress. That's a big thing for me right now, too. I've gotten better about staying away on the really bad days than I used to be, at least.

[tomakeanoffer]

Okay, come talk to me about indie video games. I'm really interested into getting more games to try and play (cause I don't have enough already) but yes, I am so here for listening to people talk about their favorite indie games.

(I really wish I could play Overwatch but somehow, it hits my anxiety buttons for some reason. I don't even know why but I've tried playing and I failed at it.)

[dreamerinsilico]

FPS games typically mess with my anxiety too, actually, heh, so I can sympathize! The thing that ended up making Overwatch accessible to me was that playing Mercy felt more like healing in an MMORPG, which I was used to and good at, so I played her almost exclusively when I first got started, and kinda eased into playing the more shooty characters.

Re: indie games - yay! I will definitely talk to you about them. I anticipate doing some "now playing" and review-type posts in the future, but here's a quick run-down of some of my favorites in various genres (roughly ordered from least intense/difficult to most, though YMMV on that since there are very different types of difficulty represented):

• Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator - got a lot of fandom attention, so you may already know of it, but basically, what it says on the tin. Heartwarming and hilarious and veryvery queer. Single-player.


• Stardew Valley: Kind of a fandom darling right now, and you might well already know all about it, but I call it "lesbian farm simulator" and I adore it. It has a wonderful mix of sandbox elements, story/character development, and low-stress challenges. Has a co-op mode.


• Terraria: Sandbox/adventure. Think Minecraft in 2D, but way, way better. I recommend googling a beginner's guide if you try it, because while it's theoretically possible to feel one's way through, the progression, particularly through the adventure part of the game, is non-obvious. Has co-op and PvP options.


• Long Live the Queen: Visual novel with heavy stat-raising-sim elements; you play as the crown princess who needs to live to see her 15th birthday and be crowned Queen. Actually pretty damn difficult to survive to the end of the game, but dying is fun and amusing and there are achievements for all the different ways to do it. Single-player.


• Don't Starve/Don't Starve Together (single player and multiplayer, respectively, sold separately): Vaguely Lovecraftian survival/sandbox game. Also worth looking up a guide rather than going in blind. Good for playing with friends or a partner (if you get the multiplayer version); multiplayer also has PvP options. Great music and aesthetic.


• Darkest Dungeon: *Very* Lovecraftian turn-based dungeon crawl game. You recruit and maintain a roster of heroes, whom you send on quests in teams of four. If they survive their dungeon forays, they gain experience and sometimes personality quirks that affect their effectiveness in various situations. Honestly quite difficult, but I find it low-stress since there's never any time pressure for making decisions (the difficulty is all strategic/tactical, not mechanical). AMAZING music and aesthetic. Single-player.


• Crypt of the Necrodancer: Rhythm game with a fun adventure storyline and a spectacular soundtrack. Very hard unless you're the kind of person who's really good at rhythm games or things like platformers - I am *not* such a person, but in the right mood found it fun enough to struggle through anyway. Has a co-op mode for two people playing on the same PC.

If you tell me some more about your preferences (re: genres, gameplay elements you like/dislike, story and/or aesthetic preferences), I can give some more personal recommendations too. :D

[tomakeanoffer]

I did know about Dream Daddy and Stardew Valley but the latter actually sounds more interesting with a personal pitch.

I'm super interested in Long Live The Queen and Darkest Dungeon. I am gonna have to poke them.

As for things I'm into: I like visual novels, horror, queer stuff, single player stuff, strong on story, with clear visuals. Good soundtracks are totally up my alley and I like low stress but I also don't mind scary shit/high tension stuff, there's just something about FPS that get me.

Games I have on my Steam that I mean to play that might give an indication of my interests:
Bioshock
Year Walk
Her Tears Were My Light
Firewatch
Final Station
The Cat Lady
The Talos Principle.
The Long Dark.

I could not play The Vanishing OF Ethan Carter because the visuals, while pretty, were very hard for me to read, so I need clear text or audio to go with it if there's a reading compnent.

[dreamerinsilico]

Oh man, yeah, if Darkest Dungeon sounds appealing at all, it's amazing and you should absolutely give it a try. I have almost 200 hours in it at this point and pick it back up periodically.

With the mention of The Long Dark, my recommendation of Don't Starve goes up a notch or two, as well; that's got an entirely different visual feel (it's third-person isometric as well as being all stylized 2D animation), but it's very survival-horror-with-exploration.

Another VN/stat-raiser hybrid by the same dev as Long Live the Queen is Black Closet. It's basically a mystery thriller built around the All-Powerful Student Council trope; you play as the Student Council President at an elite girls' academy, with the other story-relevant characters being your "minions" on the student council, and the faculty advisor. It's lighter on the VN elements than LLTQ, as most of the gameplay consists of assigning your minions to go investigate/handle issues happening in the school, but I enjoyed the story anyway (and some of your minions are date-able!). It's pretty difficult and doesn't do a great job of indicating in-game what's going to be important for end-game, but there are some good Steam guides for it that can help with that.

There's two pure VNs by a different dev that I'd also really recommend - Cinders (which is based on Cinderella) and Solstice (original setting). Both have beautiful art and strong writing. Romance-wise, Cinders has a sad lack of queer options, but there are multiple options. Solstice has only one potential romance available for each of the two protagonists, but one of them is queer, so that's nice.

Finally, if you've any interest in pure interactive fiction (all text) games, Choice of Robots (you're a grad student studying AI and then... lots of things happen once you make your first smart robot) and Choice of the Deathless (you work for a necromantic legal firm) both have great stories with a lot of interesting choices. Both also have potential love interests for the protagonist (none of them gender-gated).

That's a lot of games, so I'll stop there for now, heh. If/when you do end up trying any of them, let me know what you think!

[tomakeanoffer]

Ooooh, this is great! thank you soooo much for the recs and Iw ill be adding them all to lists to keep an eye out for.

[dreamerinsilico]

You're welcome! :D

[walgesang]

Found you via pauraque and hope you don't mind if I friend you! I've been meaning to try my hand at Overwatch fic. It's hard to find fellow gamers on DW. :D

[dreamerinsilico]

Not at all! Hi! :) You know, I'd kinda been thinking gaming fandoms seemed a lot quieter over here than elsewhere! (I joined back in December when Tumblr did the thing.)

[walgesang]

I get pings on my WoW fic every so often, but I did wonder where people are finding them (or if they're just searching on AO3). Welcome! I never managed Tumblr but I'm glad to see a flurry of activity on DW lately!

I really loved playing Overwatch too but I was just not that great at it, though I am loving the canon and really hope they come out with more.

[dreamerinsilico]

Yeah, it really seems like they're making a solid effort on the lore for Overwatch, and it's great! I did not expect to get nearly as invested in a bunch of FPS characters as I have!

Who are your WoW favorites?