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Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hi! here is the people that post on here.

Luna

Hello, I am Luna and the main person that helps run this site. I hope you like it here. If there are any questions about this site people feel free email me luna@interplanetaryqueer.space and you can follow me on bluesky at @thiosulfate.bsky.social. If there are any bugs or issues please tell me.

Random thoughts on trails beyond the horizon

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:47:00 +0000

So i’m just writing this to compile a bunch of my thoughts while they’re still fresh. It won’t be in any particular order and it’s probably be very messy, i don’t really expect anyone to read this though so I think it’s gonna be okay. Also full spoiler warning for the entire series ofc, i’ll be referencing stuff from pretty much all the games i think. With that out of the way, what is my initial impression of horizon: tbh i absolutely loved it. Way more than I was expecting I would. The first huge thing about it that stands out about it for me is that the story was actually coherent and fascinating to see come together. Older trails games like sky sc or azure had great stories ofc too but the overall plot of the cold steel arc has always felt really lackluster to me when viewed as a whole package. There was lots of individually interesting things in those games too ofc and the setting of erebonia sort of carried the arc for me but the plot just got so laughably convoluted by the time you get to the curse and everything in cs4 that the larger plot really just ended up feeling like shackles for the series. At the time of its release one of the things i loved so much about reverie as a result was that did basically didn’t bother with the larger plot much in comparison and felt more like a standalone game where you just get to have fun and do shenanigans with the characters. So in terms of actual plot, especially the big meta plot in the background horizon was a massive return to form imo and indeed elevated the series to heights it was never on before. Like, it’s actually insane that all the crazy stuff that happens and gets talked about in horizon doesn’t feel like they’re pulling stuff out of their ass, it was actually properly set up and foreshadowed.Laegjarn’s chest and the great reset explains everything about how the grandmaster was talking about things returning to primordial nothingness. Her talking about the end being delayed by the great twilight being averted at the end cs4 also now makes perfect sense. Obviously it’s still a silly sci-fantasy story but that’s not a bad thing, that’s what trails has always been about, but in this game for the first time in ages it really feels like the writers have a plan and have this all mapped out in their and aren’t just making it up as they go along. It has really reignited my passion for the whole series in that sense and given me hope. Okay, so much about the game’s place as a Trails game for now, how was it on its own terms? Very Trails i think, that is to say the first half is a total snooze fest for the first half with barely anything happening and then around the midpoint the plot really picks up and never stops until the end. It’s very similar to sky sc, azure or cs3 in that regard, i think that structure is pretty much a trails staple at this point so i don’t consider it a negative, just something one either likes or doesn’t. I do love the way all the paths simultaneously are working to uncover the mystery even when the game is slow, it kept it interesting consistently. There was also this constant sense of dread hanging over everything I felt, with all these huge gears turning and everyone from the society and the church being in crisis mode. That Rean and Kevin were brought in as side protagonists was absolutely the right choice imo, their role was small enough that it never distracted from Van and Anges still being the main focus but seeing them again (especially Kevin) was super great and it added much needed extra context to how everyone else in Zemuria was reacting to what’s happening. Without Kevin in particular we would lack that crucial inside into the septian church. Seeing Rean with better mental health was also so nice, his first bonding event with Altina where she asks him if he’s lonely and feeling left behind in particular nearly made me tear up. And getting to see Rufus play poker against Kevin while they’re sizing each other up, just pure gold. The bonding events in general where just so amazing again as always: Quatre’s dysphoria and Van being an ally, Kevin playing basketball with Swin and “cry for me” starts playing when they talk about Ries, Judith not being able to clean her room on her own, etc. etc. Both now enforcers were really fun I think. Simeon being very understated in stile is very necessary to bring some much needed contrast to the rest of the enforcers and Ulrika is just insane, the localizers absolutely outdid themselves writer to be sooo annoying with all the most modern slang. The scene at the end where Novartis learns he’s from cycle 19,998 and gets super happy and is somehow able to fully grasp the eternal recurrence plan as a result only to have the grandmaster came in and calm him down was also amazing. I swear to god her holding his shoulder and telling to to relax was by far the nicest i think i’ve ever seen anyone be to him, even Lianne never seemed to like him in the slightest, not that that’s surprising given his personality, but i thought it was a great tiny bit of characterization for the grandmaster. Also, while we’re on ouroboros, that part in anchorville where you chat with Harwood in the church and he then joins your party for a bit was just so peak. In general i’m a massive ouroboros simp so the fact that they just show up a lot is always a huge treat for me. What can I say, I love seemingly all powerful secret societies. Nina Fenly was one of the characters i was most excited for going into this game since i’ve actually really loved her since her bonding events in daybreak 1 where she talks about how empty she feels and how she’s scared that there’s no real “her” at all and that that’s the only reason she’s a good actress. Knowing everything about how she’s also the eschaton saint now I just empathize with her even more and think it’s super understandable how she’d develop a complex like that as a result. The finale of horizon was really great ofc and i just love how roy gramheart was literally just planning to nuke a sept-terrion and unironically thought that was gonna work. The twist that it would just defend itself and accelerate the great reset was super predictable, i mean these are aidios treasures ffs, no one in the series has ever been able to destroy one, ouroboros just takes them or they get scattered to the beyond or commit suicide. But the reveal about Rene being in league with Hamilton was really shocking and worked super well I think. I can’t wait for Elaine and van to beat him to a pulp in the sequel. Okay, i’ll leave it here for now.

Making friends

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Having friends is hard. Maintaining friendships requires work and is not always fun but friendships are worth it. Any relationship from just an acquaintance to friend and many others require effort. It is understandable but I believe it is wrong to believe that just existing strong relationship"s will form. The world is so alienating that forming a community has to be a very active choice. It requires labour to make friends as it is so easy to avoid making connections. It requires work and time to deepen those relationships into closer friendships. And it requires work to maintain those relationships. All this can be draining but it is worth it.

new post

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 22:30:00 +0000

I think there certainly are two types of love in the sense of the first one being the love of an idea and the second the love of something concrete. Loving something or someone concrete immediately seems to be a kind of experience where one embraces the totality of what or whom one encounters as they are in the present, warts and all. It’s a sort of blind falling in love that doesn’t allow for mediation. Loving an idea, including for example an idealized person is in contrast fundamentally mediated and in think probably can’t really penetrate the present totality in the same way, but it is the way in which one can try to grasp at the absolute. One constructs an idea that is initially hollow but can be all encompassing. If everything goes right both of these must happen at the same time ofc ultimately. The totality of the immediate present penetrates and fulfills the absolute idea and they come to complete each other.

can we do better then family?

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 09:30:24 +0000

The family is such a horrible institution and the nuclear family is the peak of everything wrong with it. It hurts kids by forcing them to be reliant on such few people who have almost absolute power over their life and it traps parents into taking care of the kids with very little chance for rest. Why should kids depend on the relationships of the parents to have a good life and why should parents be bound to deal with this always. The community that raises a child is seen as the community of the parent because kids are seen as no more than extensions of their parents. Kids deserve the chance to be their own self.

feeling bad for stright people

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 22:52:38 +0000

I think everyone should be queer and if someone wants to be straight they should be straight in a queer way. Heterosexuality is set up to make people so lonely. Men have this particularly bad in how heterosexuality hurts their ability to be in relationships because so much of modern straight masculinity is performing not being gay. Gayness is used as such a common insult by straight men. The difference between romantic relationships and relationships of friendships are not actually as clear cut as it is often imagined in western cultures. It leaves a lot of room for ambiguity that could be seen as gay. So many straight men in order to defend this sacredness of the heterosexual romantic relation prevent themselves from having close friendships. This seems to leave these men very dependent on having a partner to deal with their emotions. What makes me a bit less sympathetic is that this emotional burden is too much for one person to deal with and so hurts their partners , and when they don’t have a partner men will take their emotional problems out on others in very violent ways. I do think these problems are not limited to just men but they have it the worst and cause the most harm to others by it. At least from my limited viewpoint it seems like it is.

fantasy races

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 21:30:00 +0000

The problem with fantasy races is that inevitably there almost has to be some narrative function to them being different races, but the moment there is an actual underlying difference that matters you’re already screwed up any real world analogy the story might want to make. The only way To actually have it work is to have it be just like irl a mere social construct that isn’t actually based on anything other than convenience, but if that’s how you write fantasy races then why are you writing them in the first place after all? Why not just set your story in the real world (or for that matter a fantasy human world). The only actual fantasy races that fully manage to avoid this problem, i think, are the ones are fundamentally inhuman and aren’t meant to be relatable to the audience. Aliens in the proper sense. I personally really wish there were more stories that tried not to humanize and relate but just experiment honestly with irreconcilable contrasts.

Staying a child

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 20:26:09 +0000

I don’t want to grow up. Not that I want to be a child in responsibilities or that I preferred my life when I was younger. I am so glad that part of my life is over. It is seen as childish to have radical politics and mature politics are “realistic” and incremental. Kids have not been fully stamped into accepting the world as it is and that is amazing.

The look wrt death and social anxiety

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 19:54:21 +0000

I believe there are parallels between the fear of death and social anxiety in that they are both connected with surrendering one’s subjectivity monopoly as an authority on oneself and become an object for consciousness. In both cases i give up my sovereignty over myself in the sense that i accept becoming an object for others. If there isn’t a really high level of trust giving someone the power to to know anything about me, to judge me and thus to objectify me can be absolutely terrifying. One of the things that can make death so scary is that one is forever giving up the ability try and alter what sort of object oneself is or becomes in others memories. It’s a total loss of control, one is utterly and forever at the mercy of others with no more input anymore, even to the limited extent that one could have during life (As a side note i think conceptions of god as the ultimate, all encompassing subject can serve as a sort of insulation to that). Social anxiety is just having that fear even while living: I don’t want to give up myself. I’m scared of surrendering who i am to others and living in their mind. I imagine more socially comfortable people are either more confident in their ego being maintained by their subjectivity alone or are able to sufficiently communicate so that they can bridge the gaps their internal sense and the object others create.

Start of feburary

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 22:30:14 +0000

I hate how difficult it is to get ADHD medication and how lacking it really makes my mood worse. January was a very hard month because of the lack of medication. I understand that the medication has risk for abuse but the increased control on the medication is hurtful. It makes getting the medication require more paperwork which is always hard for such a forgetful person like me.

I have not been reading as much about chemistry as I would like for lack of time but mainly because I have been depressed. Depression is such a weird thing. It is hard to get to doing what I want to do but I don’t do them so I get sad. I think this cycle has a lot to do with why depression and anxiety so often go together for me.

feeling sad about the world

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 23:19:54 +0000

It is hard to cope with the knowledge that every one I know and care about is being hurt by a system that I don’t see a path forward to solve right now. Capitalism is destroying earth, it is working us to death and it is taking our time. It is easy to be down about the world. It is a system that is hurting everyone so that there should be more people trying to change it but people seem to just accept the world as it is. Rage and sheer strength of will won’t solve this but it is important to never give up. I think we must convince more people that the world is not doomed to be this way. People, more than ever before, are capable of changing the world.

AI trash content

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 22:21:04 +0000

I don’t think the effect AI is having on art is that novel but a continuation of trends. Most media that is not by truly independent artists are made by studios that need to make money and most artists still even need to make money though making art. Art is stripped of meaning to be made into a commodity to be sold and turned into content. Marvel is the peak of this, bland tasteless content that is designed to be as easy to consume as possible. So much content is franchised based off of preexisting works to keep making media easier to consume. The experimental art has been lost as it has greater risk. Indie games as a category has come to just refer to slightly smaller studios like Larian. This applies even if art was based on more radical themes like Disco Elysium. Capital is just putting art into this blender to make it into content, sanding off all the interesting aspects and AI will be just an accelerant to this process. AI will just reprocess content into a slightly different shape so it can be consumed. It is a grim outlook for media that requires a larger budget. I am only really hopefully for the most inexpensive media to have any real creative capacity as this continues. I am worried movies, shows and video games will become more like Marvel movies. Conservative media will be like right wing podcasters and more “left leaning” media will feel like the corporate slop DEI like what too much current star trek has become. Interesting writing and any interesting ideas will be avoided not out of malicious intention but just because that is how the system operates.

Hopefuly works

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I learned some CSS and HTML so this site looks a little bit better. It should be good enough. I should make a favicon and some other things but I’m not in the mood to draw right now. I really want to write about some games I have played recently when I get the time.

Hello World

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is my first post. I am planning on posting my thoughts on everything from media to science topics. I am also expecting Sophie to contribute to this blog. I do not expect many people to ever read this but if you are then thank you. I am not the best person with computers so this site may be slow to be functioning well. I am using Hugo and hosting on github pages for now. I still need to set up the theme fully so rss is functioning. If you have any question for now you can ask them on bluesky @thiosulfate.bsky.social