January 2026 media
-
The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon: We’ve enjoyed years of improbable wins in the overseas Trails fandom, from localizations of the niche spinoff titles to remakes with simultaneous worldwide release dates. Horizon, though, may represent the most improbable win of all: the international releases have somehow caught up to the Japanese ones. Nothing to sneeze at when we’ve been an entire decade behind at times! I’m loving the game itself, too—it’s an overindulgent mess but a wonderful one, like a sundae with too much hot fudge.
-
”The Lord of the Year” on Shelved by Genre: The literature podcast Shelved by Genre is talking through Tolkien for the entirety of 2026, from The Hobbit to The Silmarillion. It’s been a pleasure to read along thus far; the leisurely pace affords them time for taking long digressions or reading favorite passages aloud, and keeping up is a breeze. The premise of approaching the books as a “naive reader” is immediately stretched past the point of credulity, but I appreciate the approach—it’s refreshing to take the words at face value first and not lead with eyebrow-waggling allusions to what we know will come later.