The World of Insufficient Light

You wake up in a strange room in a desolate landscape, unable to move; and faced with a strange girl who seems to die and then regenerate over and over. Slowly you make friends with this girl and learn her Purpose, the state of the world, and what’s happened to you.

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Overall: An interesting philosophical spec-fic story that is varying levels of horrifying depending on how much you think about it. It might be worth your three hours for a buck.

The demon overlord’s weakling son has been coerced into joining the tournament to become the next overlord by his familiar and two women who glom onto him: The one who wants to marry him and be the queen, and the one who is greed and wants control over the treasury. Turns out they have a mysterious backstory and so does he, all tied to the human warrior who appears with a talking sword and starts causing trouble among the contestants.

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Overall: You need to love the gameplay mechanic of doing dungeon runs with randomized card decks; if you don’t enjoy the basic game loop, you won’t enjoy the game despite the plot being fairly strong. I liked this variation better than Novel Rogue, but I’m just as happy they didn’t make a third one of these.

I ended up being picky with this bundle; it’s heavily non-fiction and there are only some of the topics that I was actually interested in engaging with.

The Art of Sushi – A retelling of a high-end food tour of a Japan that includes fishing boats and sake makers. I’m glad I read this before I went because it gave me a lot of useful context that my tour guides didn’t...but by the same token, it made me annoyed at my tour guides. It’s a fascinating volume about how fish are caught and prepared for sushi, how sushi is made, how sake and soy sauce are made, and other random facts about Japan.

Dog Butts and Love and Stuff Like That and Cats – A collection of single-page comics by Jim Benton. Random, cute.

Proxy Mom: My Experience With Postpartum Depression – A woman’s story about post-partum depression, like it says on the tin. I did find it interesting that there’s no big “aha” moment; it just kind of lifts over time.

Algorithmic Reality - A little “absurd parody” and a little Black Mirror, this is an attempt to demonstrate the absurdity of the way we allow surveillance capitalism on the internet and what it would look like bleeding into reality; but it’s kind of heavy-handed and shallow at the same time.

Kids Are Still Weird - One-off comics by Jeffrey Brown about his kids and the goofy things they say and do. I had read his "Girlfriend Trilogy" in an earlier bundle and I think he’s gotten better over time—I think he does “heartwarming and mildly funny” better than “this is my therapy on the page, but it’s funny, right?”

Abelard - This caught me off guard; it’s the story of a naive little bird-man with a mildly magical hat, who is inspired by a beautiful woman to travel to America and learn to fly so he can bring her back stars. And it’s a tragedy that you don’t see coming, because it’s cute and funny until it isn’t.

Beauty - A fairytale-style story about a woman who is granted a wish to be beautiful by a fairy. And we all know how fairy wishes turn out, don’t we?

All Star – The tale of Carl Carter, a teenage baseball superstar in the 90s; a big fish in a small pond. Who, as you might guess, does something dumb (breaks into a convenience store at 2am) and his life gets upended—because his best friend gets expelled over it and he barely gets a slap on the wrist. It’s an interesting little musing on the stupid value our society puts on sports.

Black Dahlia – A “true crime” story about the life and horrifying unsolved murder of Beth Short, nicknamed the “Black Dahlia” by her suitors (and more importantly the media). It’s very much a “missing white woman” case, clearly picked apart by decades of amateur sleuths with a lot of details that don’t quite add up.

Darkly She Goes – Arzhur is a washed-up knight who gets hired by three mysterious crones to rescue a princess. As you probably have guessed, nothing is as it seems. She’s the daughter of a lamia and commands power over animals and monsters, and the crones are trying to manipulate everyone to get her to release that power. Love story, cycles of abuse, generational trauma, all in a convenient fantasy package.

Hasib and the Queen of Serpents – An entertainingly-illustrated tale from the 1,001 nights. It’s long and winding (like a serpent!) and mostly inspires me to rant about Muslim supercessionism of Jewish traditions; but the art is a lot of fun.

Plutocracy – A thought experiment world where all corporations merged into one and took over everything, but it turned into a semi-communist peaceful fake democracy. It…takes some rather painful liberties with the economics. It’s an interesting take on the concept of free will within a consumerist society, but ultimately relies on the “shadowy secret cabal running all world events” trope mixed with Malthusian arguments about the Problem of Evil.

Zombillenium – This one is a lot of fun, actually: An amusement park staffed with actual monsters accidentally acquires a new employee. It’s cute, the art is cute, it’s the right level of goofy. I thought the second volume was a bit weaker; the twist was a little obtuse and it didn’t follow up on the hanging threads from the first. But still, entertaining.

I bounced off of Albert Einstein: The Poetry of Real; it was just too hung up worshipping Einstein as the philosopher-genius. I also only made it partway through The Secrets of Chocolate; it was trying to be the sushi book but failing.

Overall: The Art of Sushi was standout specifically for me; there was some interesting stuff among the rest but it was a middling bundle at best.

High Potential (Hulu, Seasons 1-2) - A fairly standard “neurodivergent genius helps the cops solve crimes” drama, but with the twist that the genius is a highly-ADHD middle-aged divorced mother of three, and the drama is peppered with comedic bits that stay reasonable constant throughout two seasons. (I wanted more Poker Face; this was the closest I could find.) I got kinda tired of the ongoing plot about the ex-husband’s disappearance and wanted more clever one-offs. Also, I don’t think they knew what they wanted to do with the police chief for the first half of the second season and changed their minds halfway through about making him an antagonist. (And thankfully got rid of his awful mustache.)

Wonder Man (Disney+, Season 1) - An actor who secretly has superpowers gets cast in the role he always dreamed about and everything goes terribly. This felt like they had something stronger to say about black men’s anger in society and what constitutes an abusive home life; and that part got swallowed up in the standard Marvel movie formula. (They did manage to sneak in a clever commentary on Hollywood and their approach to actor safety—or lack thereof.) Like Ironheart, this honestly feels more like a villain origin than a hero one; and the fact they did that with two black characters isn’t lost on me.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024) (Netflix, Season 2) - When you take this as an “alternate retelling made with love” (because it’s clear that the writers and actors and artists all really loved the original), it’s a fun ride. It’s not a substitute for the original, but it’s like watching George C. Scott play Scrooge in A Christmas Carol because you don’t have the DVD of Patrick Stewart handy and you’ve got the entire movie memorized anyway.

My Adventures With Superman (HBOMax, Season 3) – Supergirl becomes a regular, and just as Clark and Lois start having serious conversations about their relationship, their kids from alternate terrible futures start appearing and attempting to change history. (This clearly follows the “time remnant” theory.) Plus it gives some additional backstory about Krypton and Brainiac. Remains adorable, I hope they keep making more.

Man on the Inside (Netflix, Season 1) – Retired widower gets hired by a PI to infiltrate a nursing home and a find a thief. The concept is reasonably clever and I feel like it had to be written for Ted Dansen, because I’m not sure who else could have sold it so well. He really does a good job with “personable, lovable utter dork.” And this has some very poignant things to say about aging, death, family, and caring for older people alongside the silly bits. I definitely enjoyed it.

This is another variation on the R36S setup, and this is one of the ones that has a 4” square screen. Was I expecting anything special here? No, but it was $22, and I like to keep tabs on what the “ultra-low-end” has become.

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Overall: Getting a fully-functioning member of the R36S family for 20 bucks is where we’ve landed in 2026. To think it was only 7 years ago that you’d pay $100 for half-decent SNES emulation. I see no reason to trade in my R36S for this in my current ecosystem, but if you’re looking for an “I don’t care if this gets lost or breaks” device that you can still have lots of fun with, here you go.

I’ve been making an effort to manage my handheld collection, keeping it down to devices I actually want to use rather than cluttering my house with things that will eventually become e-waste.

Four devices I actually moved on:
• The Anbernic RG35XX was absolutely a success story. I paid $55 for it, played 62 hours on it, then sold it to a friend for a net $42.
• The R46H Hand-held Console cost me $38, I fiddled with it for an hour or two, and then donated it to a charity auction. Honestly, I was never expecting that much from it but I figured it would be both cheap and decent enough I wouldn’t mind passing it on.
• The Miniloong Pocket 1 cost me $60 because I found it on sale on AliExpress. I also fiddled with it for a couple of hours, but it didn’t have a good place in my ecosystem. I turned around and sold it on eBay (in the original box and everything) for $60, which after fees meant I net $47. So I paid $13 to play with it for a couple of hours and get a sense of it, which isn’t super-efficient but isn’t bad.
• The Ampown MagicX Zero 40 cost me $93 when I bought it from the manufacturer, and it was worth it because I was really excited for the gimmick. I played about 16 hours on it, but the issue was really that it wasn’t quite pocketable enough (the fact it wasn’t a clamshell and was instead both wide and tall really hurt it) and that my eyes aren’t what they once were: Shrinking down DS games smaller than their original size made jrpgs uncomfortable to read. (And I’m certainly not traveling with reading glasses to play a handheld!) I sold it for $50 and net $38 after fees on eBay, which wasn’t the most cost-effective by a long shot, but I suppose it’s not much different from giving away a $40 handheld, and I did play and enjoy a bunch of hours on it.

And four more I haven’t yet:
• I waffled a lot on the Powkiddy V10, because it’s not super-comfortable without the grip and it’s not super-portable with it; and it’s only got one system it’s really good for (GBA), which basically every other handheld plays. But damn, it’s so good for GBA. The perfectly sized 2X screen is just beautiful. I only paid $55 for the system and the grip, and there doesn’t seem to be a used market for them. At least at the moment I’m holding onto it and playing GBA games for a while longer.
• I’m wondering if I should move on my Retroid Pocket 2+, because I don’t really use it and it doesn’t have a great place in the ecosystem. (It has similar performance to the RG35XX-H and the same screen size but a much larger body that isn’t pocketable and a UI that isn’t as convenient; and it runs Android but now I have the RG Rotate for Android on a small screen.) The problems are that there also isn’t really an aftermarket for them at this point, and I would need to factory reset it because it’s connected to my Play Store account.
• And I’m contemplating whether to move on my R36S and my Game Console Power Bank DY19. The R36S cost $42 and I’ve gotten 60 hours on it; and I have several other devices that fall into the “I don’t mind if this breaks” category and also the more-comfortable RG35XX-H plays all the same games on the same-size screen. Meanwhile, I’ve only had a handful of cases where I’ve used the Game Console Power Bank DY19, because I have a fast-charging power bank that holds 20,000 mAh and I’ve generally been willing to carry both that and a better handheld. (If I’m out long enough that I’m worried about charging, then I’m bringing a backpack.) As it was $30 and I doubt I’d find a buyer, I’m thinking I’ll bring that camping in a few weeks and then give it away.

Fantastic Four: First Steps - They managed to make a pretty decent F4 movie and it only took three tries. It's fun and pretty funny; the science is nonsense but genre-appropriate. You know they’re going to win because it’s that kind of a comic book story, and the suspense really hinged on "how are they gonna pull this off?" And like the first Thor, this wasn't something Jack Kirby would draw, but he would have thought it was cool.

Superman (2025) - Not perfect, but solid. I appreciate that both of these films touched the origin stories (just in case you didn't know them) but didn't make them a centerpiece. Hawkgirl was an odd choice, but then, the entire Justice Gang was "James Gunn uses his favorite characters". That did meant things got a bit goofy at times (Metamorpho's baby was probably too much), but again, it was comic-booky, and that was a refreshing change from the grimdark approach a lot of the DC movies took for the past decade. The casting was particularly good and I liked the nods to the franchise (the music, Eve Tessmacher, etc).

Masters of the Universe (2026) - I had a lot of fun with this though I’ll admit that I was 100% the target audience (I watched the original cartoon when I was 6 but rewatched it recently enough to know how terrible it was) and it was objectively not very good. This movie was not taking itself the slightest bit seriously, and in some spots the silliness worked better than others. I appreciated that the goofy character names were all the nicknames Adam gave the characters when he was 10. I maintain that Jared Leto has never done anything Mark Hammill couldn’t do better; and that definitely includes Skeletor. And I appreciated the internet-aware usage of the song “What’s Up?”, but I feel they could have used it even better.

Project Hail Mary - Unlike The Martian I haven’t read the original book, but I thought this was a well-done movie, and a lot of that was that Ryan Gosling really sells it and that the practical effects used to make Rocky were significantly more effective than CGI would have been. The science is, as is often the case with these things, “fast and loose”, and the most danger-filled scene falls apart when you apply the slightest amount of logic to it. But nevertheless, this was genuinely good.

Source Code - A soldier is Quantum Leaped into an 8-minute loop of someone else’s memories right before a train explodes, and needs to keep trying until he finds both the bomb and the bomber. I watched this one because I have an unhealthy addiction to Groundhog Day loops, and it was middling and didn’t really make full use of the premise, though the twist at the end was decent. (And “the big boss doesn’t actually understand how the science works and that bites him in his unethical ass” is pretty much always a moral I can get behind.)

100 years after the Ruinous Overlord was stopped by the great Warrior Ria, the new legendary warrior set out with his companions to defeat the new monster overlord, but a magical mishap ended with a hapless summoned spirit controlling the warrior’s body and needing to go on a quest to prevent the revival of the original overlord. You explore two worlds while trying to keep your secret intact and save both.

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Overall: This is thoroughly middling. Not great, but not particularly bad on any metric. Points for the magic system being something new and the plot actually tying together. Playable, mildly entertaining.

The gods created the winged people of the Firmament to watch over the world, and the surface humans to dwell in it. Four god-empowered people became the Tetrarchs of light, dark, life and death; and they used the holy sword to seal the Scar to the underworld after a war 600 years ago, and then went to sleep. The dark Tetrarch Ishbel woke up, stole the sword and started mass-murdering everyone in his way. A few plucky humans (including a novice solider who can inexplicably talk to spirits) join the other three Tetrarchs in trying to save the world.

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Overall: Probably on par with Crystal Ortha and Monster Viator as Hit-Points later, more playable games. The battles are interesting and more varied than just hitting attack, and the plot, while occasionally a bit bogged down in lore that isn’t fully explained, is pretty decent. Monochrome Order remains my favorite Hit-Point game, but this lands in the upper tier.

In this society, when you develop your personal skill you can join the Bravers and challenge the various elemental-themed trials and eventually try to take the rank of Astera, the sole champion. Arga’s father became the Astera and vanished from his life, not returning even when his mother took ill and died. When Arga finally develops his power—a surprisingly-useful ability to switch between being a child and an adult—he gathers a party and takes on the trials so he can confront his father.

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Overall: This kept itself contained and fun and lighthearted, and despite the kind of overabundance of systems, didn’t feel over-complicated. This ends up on the recommended list.