Status Report #5: 18th of May, 2025

 

Mornin'! Nice day for a blog post, ain't it? Hah-huh! 😃

Amalia here, and it's time to chronicle our musical (and not so musical) adventures once more! So, let's get on with the....

 

Music stuff

 Well, the last couple of weeks have been a bit slow, to be honest. We've had the idea that we should try to always work on two projects simultaneously, so that when we feel inspired, we can pick whichever project best fits our mood, rather than just working on the one and only project we have going.

 

The idea is that it oughta get us making music more often, but in the past couple of weeks, we've been struggling to get any projects off the ground. We did get some inspiration by playing Schedule 1 (More on that down below), and we've gotten a bit of a start on a trip-hop-ish tune, but yeah, gotta put our feet down and get some traction going.

 

That's kind of it for our musical stuff, this time. Electric Boogaloo is releasing this coming friday, so that'll be a busy day for us, but yeah, should be fun. 🙂

 

So, onwards to our....

 

Not-music stuff 

 So, as i mentioned, we've been playing Schedule 1 for the past week or so. Or, to be precise, we started playing it, got super into it, then got to the point where you expand your operation by hiring NPCs and stopped pretty quickly.

 

It's a super-cool game, but the employee systems are -really- buggy. Like, half the time they just simply don't do their jobs, unless you quit and load your save, for example.

That's not meant to be a massive criticism, mind you. The game's just launched into early access like a month ago, so no worries there.

 

Plus, up to that point, it really is a super-solid, really fun experience. This is one of those cases where Michael and I are really looking forward to following a game's development through early access and probably playing around with it every now and then. 🙂

 

Other than that, we've recently watched the Starship Troopers movie for the first time, after reading the book.

It's well-known of course that the two are quite different in tone, but rather surprisingly, we have to say we prefer the book.

 

..... which feels odd to say because some people like to claim that the Starship Troopers novel is some kind of ultra-far right propaganda that massively fetishizes the Military, but..... nah.

 

Don't get me wrong, it's clear that it's written by someone who was associated with the military (Heinlein served in the Navy), but that actually gives the book more authenticity, we feel.

It's political, yes, but it's a neutrally presented, down-to-earth view of a futuristic society that has tied collectivism into it's voting system, requiring voters to have done some kind of public service to prove themselves responsible enough to be trusted to vote.

 

You may think of a system like that what you will, but far-right propaganda it isn't.

 

The movie feels like it subscribes to that idea though. And while it's a pretty good movie in it's own right, there are times where we both thought that it was a bit too cynical towards it's source material.

 

For example: In the book, the Mobile Infantry are well-equipped, efficient and (sometimes coldly) competent, like one might expect from a gritty, down-to-earth military novel.

 

A lot of it is dedicated to training, and your really get a sense of how the main character changes, transforming from a bright-eyed kid into a disciplined, capable fighting machine. Eventually even going into officer school to learn how to lead, too.

 

In the movie, meanwhile, there's still training, but after that, the Mobile Infantry is basically presented as clueless kids who were handed rifles and sent out on a field trip.

Whenever enemies show themselves, they stand there gawping for a minute before opening fire, and there's absolutely no sense that these are meant to be trained professionals.

 

...... which is in line with the movie's tone, really. It's just that the tone is so wildly different to the book that the two probably shouldn't have been associated in the first place.

I mean, the movie loosely follows the plot of the book and uses a lot of names and places from it, but frankly, the satirical tone divorces it from the source material quite a lot.

 

Er, yeah, okay. Big tangent. But yeah. Starship Troopers. Novel and Movie are very different, but both good in their own right.

 Back to watching Starsky and Hutch and reading Warhammer 40K novels. Currently reading Crimson Tears, from the Soul Drinkers series. Space Marines go brrr.

 

Other than that, Michael and i started playing another old game from his childhood that many people will have forgotten. I won't name it here, because much like Will Rock, we wanna make a blog post about it. 😜

 

So yeah, that's it from us, folks. See you around, and have a splendiferous week! 😉