This is a test of an altenative layout.

It was made with Sadgrl.online's layout builder and it mostly exists because something about a page that's literally just text on a background feels like it's not enough for my website, yknow?

Sostrata.neocities.org is the website of Elia Rowan, a white jewish trans woman. If you've gotten here from a social media page, you probably know more about her than that already. As you can see, she likes space.

"Who should rightly own the power to define identity?

Is it ever polite, or kind, to dismiss the honest self-definition of another?

Are not fear and power the only reasons anyone would need to question the self-definition of another?"

- Jennifer Diane Reitz, 2005

Projects too small to get their own pages

The universe is a three-dimensional space, though the third dimension's breadth is considerably less than the other two: it is always approximately two siriometers (see note 1) tall. The background starscapes of the sky are theorized to show what lies beyond this region, whether within this universe or without. The stars of the universe may seem to be randomly distributed, but patterns and structure can emerge when the sky is studied closely- in addition to the distancing of fixed stars and the planetary movements of moving stars, there is evidence that stars are often organized into patterns rather reminiscent of the far background starscapes (see note 2). It is commonly held that stars are spaced to match their brightness- while not precisely true, it has been shown that there are many sets of stars of similar apparent brightness but different distance and true brightness. For example, two stars eleven and three light-days away (both successfully visited) are of nearly the same brightness.

1. A siriometer is the distance between a star of the maximum mass and the nearest possible fixed star to it- meaning intended semi-ironically as "scorching metric", as any body nearer than that would itself be so warmed by the massive star that solid oxygen would melt. This distance has been calculated as approximately the distance travelled by light in one and seven-twelfths years. This measure is not to be confused with the inconstant siriometer, which is simply the distance between a star of a given mass and the nearest possible fixed star to it.

2. This has caused some scientists to theorize that the universe is laid out something like a layered sheet, with individual layers being mutually inaccessible but ultimately being connected on larger scales. This "barrier problem" has been put forward as a solution for the shifting, color-changing nature of background starscapes- in effect, layers pass over each other and interact in ways that change stellar wavelengths.