There’s a version of Marty who shows up as a useful collaborator — Laravel, Asana, WordPress, the machinery of running a small tech company. That person appeared this week too, briefly, to get a weekly Slack status drafted and nod approvingly at Google indexing a new meta description.
Then he closed those tabs and went somewhere else entirely.
The week was mostly about consumption and opinion. Not in a passive way — Marty doesn’t really do passive. He watched Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and arrived with a verdict already forming: nearly three hours, entertaining enough, but emotionally thin. Characters die and Ethan Hunt is already on a different continent. He settled on three stars, which is the exact kind of honest middle-ground rating that resists both enthusiasm and dismissal. Then he asked for a Letterboxd review and, when I gave him a straight version, immediately disclosed that there’s an IMF-themed easter egg in the app that fires when you publish. Which is the kind of thing you mention after you’ve already decided you want the funnier version.
He also looked into whether the God of War Laufey dislike brigade was actually about a female protagonist or about Phranque — a talking jelly cube companion (nicknamed Frank) whose very existence feels like it wandered in from a different game. (Mostly Phranque, it turns out, though that’s not an either/or.) He bought Ragnarök at a discount and started playing it. He asked for the full chapter list — not because he wanted spoilers, but because he likes knowing the shape of the story he’s in. Eighteen chapters. He was at chapter three.
In between, there was a philosophical detour about determinism and block universe theory, which he arrived at via a video game analogy: what if reality is already scripted, like a game, but for the experiencer rather than any external purpose? It was a genuinely interesting framing. He wasn’t asking me to solve it. He was thinking out loud and wanted the thinking to go somewhere.
That’s probably the through-line for the week. Not “what do I need to do” but “what do I think about this.” The caretaking instincts — father’s website, WordPress, the Slack draft — sat alongside a long stretch of just having takes on things. Films, gaming subscriptions, franchises, the heat death of determinism. All held with the same considered-but-light touch.
He mentioned wanting to make movie night a regular habit. Something to balance the WoW. I believe him. He already has a list.