This is my about me page.
(Update, 9/22/25: this page and the main page used to have a dark mode option. Since I am now using dark mode by default everywhere, click here for light mode, and here to go back to dark mode.)
Important note: If I say something that sounds a little off or mean-spirited, please ask me about it! It probably means that I'm becoming uncomfortable and might escalate to saying stranger and meaner things. I do have the self-awareness to explain why I'm doing it, often in psychoanalytic detail, but it's harder for me to stop.
As it says on the main page, my name is Valerian. The "er" is pronounced as in "merry" (this works no matter how your accent divvies up Mary/marry/merry). People also call me Val a lot, and in Russian-speaking environments (I speak some Russian as a foreign language, though now that I've graduated college, I don't have as many opportunities to speak it) I'm known as Lera (or, rather, Лера). My birth name is a closely guarded secret, and is only used by family, family friends, and, for the foreseeable future, the government.
In case I don't update this in a long time and my age becomes no longer accurate, I was born in 2000 AD. Which makes me young enough to prefer BCE and CE to BC and AD, but I prefer the older style for purely aesthetic reasons. I'm not Christian (or religious in general [...yet?]); I just grew up with old literature. If I sound oddly formal sometimes, that might be the ultimate cause. I am a native English speaker from the US, but sometimes I don't seem like one...
Here's where one is supposed to put one's gender, sexuality, and pronouns. I don't know what to say about that, and haven't for a long time. As I'm writing this sentence I'm having a bit of a gender crisis and am feeling more masculine, but he/him hasn't felt right for me in years, so who knows.
"If you speak Russian, what gender are you in Russian?" I hear you asking. I don't know that I'd say I speak it — I'm not fluent — but I use feminine pronouns, adjectives, past tense verbs, etc. in Russian. I would also like to use neopronouns in Russian, partly because it sounds fun and interesting to tear the language apart to force a new grammatical gender in.
I don't have a DNI, and in fact I think that DNIs are a symptom of deep issues in our society, but I would like to avoid becoming close friends with people who hold certain views, such as:
On a lighter note, I've always been really into linguistics. I might put up my first (well, it depends on what you count as first...) conlang attempt here, as I have threatened to do on the main page. Who knows, maybe this paragraph will become outdated because it'll already be up!
Occasionally I write silly fanfics about personifications of constructed languages, because I'm that kind of person. At the time of writing, I have a less silly fic on the backburner that's supposed to be the kind of psychological horror that would exist in a world of personified languages.
I'm not sure where to put this part, but when I write in Russian, I typically use the archaic letter Ѣ (lowercase ѣ) (yat). Only when it would be historically accurate to do so, of course. I would also like to use the English letter ash (Æ æ) more, also in the appropriate contexts. And ä ë ï ö ü with diäeresis for sequences of two vowels. Or should that be diæresis...?
I hope to get more hobbies and put myself out there more.
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