About

Hello and thank you for your kind interest!

Who I am

Stylized red robin on a snowy branch in pixel art over a blue background.

I go by Ether, Dianthus, Lysandre, and a few others. My pronouns are they/them, they/he, or he/him.

TL; DR

🏺 I love history, archaeology, and arts history.
🖱️ These days I'm really into game and web development!
🧶 I love knitting!
🐧 I'm passionate about free and open source software.
👍 I'm left-handed.
🌻 My recent hobbies also include playing video games, pixel art, knitting, painting watercolours, writing letters, and taking nature walks. I used to take lots of nature pictures as well, I hope to get back to it!
💜 Oh!! I have a tiny YouTube channel where I let my inner png fluffball ramble about video games. It's been very energizing to do.

scratches head That's all I can think about for now! You can find all my links here.

What I Do

Below you can find the menu of my current creative activities, in alphabetical order. Most of these links can be found on my LinkStacks as well, if you prefer that.

Art

I generally use queerofswords as an username for art-related endeavours.

Cara portfolio: Watercolours, pixel art and everything else. (Woefully out of date as of February 2025)
Lospec: pixel art "dailies". (Somehow even more out of date than the Cara)

Pixel art landscape, a stylized cottage surrounded by foliage.

Gamedev

I publish all my games under Ether or noxether, and I am half of Hidden Vale with my partner. I create short (5-15 minutes), hopeful, queer, sometimes wholesome, sometimes really personal experiences.

itch.io is where all my little games live. Check them out!
(this is where I will put the link to my gamedev tumblr sideblog and other social media thingies once I have them!)

Gaming Videos

A purple, round creature with a red dianthus sprouting on their head. They're holding a Japanese-style tea mug. Their eyes are closed in contentment.

Dianthus the PNG fluffball has been showing you their beloved games since late 2024! Come have a look, you might discover your next favourite!

Dianthus on YouTube;
Dianthus on BlueSky;
all of Dianthus' links, including the Dianthus-specific contact info!

Shop & donations

LiberaPay is where I'd really like to get some support for my work.
My Ko-fi offers lovingly hand-painted wallpapers and an easy way to support me for those who already have an account there.

A sunny photograph of sheep grazing in a green field, with hills in the background and a tree on the right side.

Writing

I've published several short stories under the name Ether Nepenthes. One of them was the opening story for a Lambda-nominated anthology back in 2021!

I write speculative fiction (fantasy, scifi...) with a focus on queer, disabled, autistic narratives. My hope is that my stories provide a nice respite from the troubles of the world.

I really... need... to take a deep breath, and finish my author page.

I wrote fiction semi-professionally for a few years. I burnt-out real bad and I'm only now getting back to it, very slowly.

You can also find my fanfiction on AO3, as queer_of_swords. Mind the tags! Mind the tags, okay? Mind. the. tags. Thank you.

Misc.

You can find my personal Tumblr here.

Other places where I'm not active, but can still be found include:

Mastodon,
Pillowfort,
Gemini (the smolweb protocol, not the genAI!).

Stylized coffee cup in pixel art.

Special thanks

Kate Bagenzo for the wonderful Strawberry Starter which I've used to make this website in a little more than two hours!
Tootkin for cheering me on and bringing me hot tea while I worked.