Last month my kid turned three.
You would think age is just a number but not long after, he decided to drop his daytime naps. As ready as he thinks he is to go the whole day gung-ho, by late afternoon he starts to get cranky and silliness ensues.
We end up having to put him to bed an hour earlier than usual and if for some reason we are a little late in the nighttime routine, he will play up for over an hour instead of going to sleep.
And the tantrums. Oh, the tantrums.
He’s toilet trained when it comes to wees, but the other thing, not so much.
It’s not all bad.
He enjoys making scrambled eggs and helping to bake some oaty Ginger Crunch. And he’s pretty good at tidying up after himself. He’s deliciously cheeky and in good spirits most of the time. He likes jumping off things and getting covered in glitter and paint. His current fascination is the delicate balance of prolonging the short-lived lives of water balloons.
He got very into The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so we bought some swan plants. A monarch butterfly came along and laid its eggs. Soon he got to hold a fuzzy caterpillar in his hands. The cheeky buggers ate through all the leaves so we needed to buy more swan plants to satisfy their increasing demands.
The situation must have been similar elsewhere because the plants were sold out at most places. Then the caterpillars all went and walked off somewhere. We found one attached to the house. It formed a cocoon and later hatched while he was at Centre, leaving behind some of its enclosure. It’s fun being able to show the life cycle of such things, although maybe we weren’t the best caterpillar caretakers.
I’m not sure how the fantastic fours can top this.
What I’m watching
The Book of Boba Fett has just finished its 7-episode run on Disney+. Unfortunately, the season was a bit of a dud for our man, the legend, Temuera Morrison. I was hoping for him to get to do more here.
Boba Fett gives up the bounty hunter life to take over Jaba the Hutt’s empire on Tatooine, with homages to The Godfather and other classic gangster films. But his motivations aren’t clear about what he’s wanting to achieve here and most of all why. Most of the episodes are taken up by flashbacks of what he’s been up to since escaping the Sarlacc Pit, which Han Solo accidentally sent him into in Return of the Jedi (spoilers for 1983).
Something interesting did happen in the last three episodes, however. The show becomes a continuation of The Mandalorian, the series that began this television era of live-action Star Wars. If you’re a fan of that show but for whatever reason haven’t checked out this season of the other stoic helmeted dude, I strongly recommend you catch up on the last three episodes of this season.
There’s an argument to be made about Boba Fett’s story being rudely interrupted by The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda but to be honest, these episodes with Pedro Pascal were much more interesting and it was a relief to leave a boring show behind for something more fun and emotionally rewarding. There is the matter of some ickiness behind a certain digital character but that’s a discussion for another time.
Some of my favourite TV shows have standalone episodes that deviate from our regular cast of characters. They give us a whole episode to devote to a character we don’t otherwise get to spend much time with. Think Christopher Eccleston from The Leftovers or most recently, an episode starring Coach Beard on Ted Lasso of all things. I suppose the thing with The Mandalorian is he isn’t a character from the sidelines and has already had two seasons devoted to him.
Lucasfilm has a whole plan of how these Star Wars shows are going to play out, with Obi-Wan Kenobi premiering this May, and Andor and Ashoka following after. With how they’ve tied into all these Star Wars properties, especially the animated series of The Clone Wars (admittedly I never got around to watching these), it will be interesting to see how these shows all intermingle, surprisingly even more than the Marvel shows, which have been stand-alone for the most part.
What I’m looking forward to
Telltale Games is back from the dead.
For some reason, they still follow me on Twitter, probably back from when I was reviewing their games over 10 years ago. There was that whole thing where they suddenly closed and laid off all their staff in 2018, in the middle of the last season of their Walking Dead series. There’s a solid documentary from Noclip talking to Telltale employees on what went down. As a studio I was fond of, it really caught me off guard. They kept the classic adventure game genre alive.
One of their games, The Wolf Among Us, is a prequel to the popular comic series Fables by Bill Willingham, which I highly recommend and is also coming back this year after a long hiatus. The Wolf Among Us 2 is back on track for release in 2023. Telltale put out a trailer and the developers talked briefly about their plans.
The premise of the Fables series is classic fairy tale characters are now living new lives in the modern-day, complete with mature themes. We’re still playing Bigby, The Big Bad Wolf, but he’s now stood down from being sheriff, creating a further rift between him and Snow White, the deputy mayor of Fabletown. The trailer for the second game shows Bigby in a brawl with Scarecrow and Tin Woodman from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
From a technical standpoint, they have changed from the rather dated ‘Telltale tool’ game engine to the Unreal Engine, used by most modern games. From the look of the trailer, it still feels like the original with its cel-shaded art style but will allow them more freedom with gameplay.
Another major change is instead of releasing episodes with large gaps in between, their plan this time is to finish and release episodes week to week (or close to), so they get the benefit of being the talk of the water cooler without the crunch of having to meet episode deadlines.
Good news
After four years of campaigning, the bill to ban conversion therapy passed its second reading in parliament. This is big news for the New Zealand queer community. Conversion therapy is the barbaric practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity through manipulative and abusive means instead of accepting them for who they are.
What you can do right now
There’s a bit of a tight timeframe on this, with submissions closing tonight at Midnight on Friday 11th February so apologies if you’re reading this after the deadline has passed.
The bill proposes ACC extend cover to maternal birth injuries which aren’t currently covered by ACC.
This post has some useful suggestions for making the bill go further in covering all birth-related injuries, both physical and covering psychological trauma.
Action: Make a submission here.
Odds & ends
Again speaking on comics, Saga has returned and I’ve already checked out the first issue of 2022. After having waited for so long already it’s going to be a painful wait between monthly issues.
Luckily, Brian K. Vaughan is releasing another story week to week. He has teamed up with artist Niko Henrichon, from their work together on the excellent Pride of Baghdad, about the Iraq War told through the lens of a pride of lions.
Called Spectators, new panels are released for free each week over on their Substack newsletter.
“It’s a story about sex and violence, and why so many of us spend so much of our lives watching both.”
Only a few pages in and it’s already living up to its NSFW (Not Safe For Work) labelling.