June 2023 Update

"Monthly Update" Thumbnail.

This was a confusing month. Initially I was kind of concerned about the lack of things to talk about, but in reality there's a lot of things I've done in the last 30 days. Not everything I would've wanted to achieve and such, which I think is where said confusion is coming from. It was a weird period of feeling lost and confused. There's nothing new in that, but this month hits differently, and you get to witness my drowning in this insanity... If you're one of those three or five unfortunate people that decided to punish themselves this way.

Anyway, at this point of time I do feel more focused. Maybe I'm just blinded by an illusion of having some kind of plans for the near future. "Focused" doesn't really mean "good" in this case though. Getting sick doesn't really help me either, which probably makes my occasional crazy rumblings much worse. Even when I seemingly catch a break, it has to get scuffed in some ways. I got used to it in some ways, but not fully. Not always, at least.

Instead of "organically" leading into that, I'll just mention that you can look into the previous monthly update right here.

Intended Halt.

There were moments where I could've written something for Ilko's Hall this month, but at the end I decided against it. My original thought was to slow down and relax as much as I can. I could've written a post where, for example, I would've talked about why I didn't like the design of symbiote costume shown in the gameplay of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 or make wrong guesses about some narrative elements of announced Marathon game, but ultimately I just didn't feel like it. When it comes to all recent gaming events, I just don't have to say about them. Even going in different familiar direction didn't felt right.

You know, I've spent a substantial of time just thinking about what topics I could pick for future "article" and that led me in a bit of a conundrum. Previously I would've mentioned dozens of stuff: specific games, services, devices, topics and that's not even mentioning non-gaming related stuff. Not just more of Spider-Man, but other animated series, films and even books. Possibilities are nearly endless and that's one of the best aspects of this ordeal.

However, I started to have more doubts as to if I can even keep going with all that. This blog had semi-active run for more than two years now with more than a hundred posts published for the world to understandably ignore. It exists for my own enjoyment, I just had a few rare lucky moments of entertain some other people and I'm glad I did. I do cherish those moments, even if they make me feel like my "Ilko's Hall doesn't exist to get clicks" mantra is nothing more than a coping mechanism.

Obviously, there's always a way to improve and/or change things up a bit. Experimenting with various formats, styles and all that. If you really put your mind to it (much like with the topics), you will eventually open yourself up to all sorts of options. At this point of time, I'm not sure that if I can and should do just that. Maybe there's actually a limit to Ilko's Hall and I've already reached it. My current plan is to keep the blog pretty active in July, but perhaps it's finally the time for me to consider other opportunities. Time will tell.

Fascinating Distractors.

For the most part, I'm still playing Stardew Valley. Farmer Ilko's third year is just flying, largely thanks to me having too much free time. With restored Community Center and constant supply of Ancient Fruits through the Greenhouse, Safe Haven Farm is thriving. I should now start focusing more on Skull Cavern, planting Fruit Trees, Casino and completing more achievements. Despite getting a significant boost for my in-game progress, I think overall my farming journey would keep going slowly. At some point I would also need to create another farmer to take on Joja Co. Member Of The Year.

Speaking of slowing down, I was able to set all this farming business aside for a couple of days in order to dive into Dear Esther: Landmark Edition. Even though I had some guides opened up in order to make sure I didn't miss out on any achievement, this first-hand experience was totally new to me. I don't think I can truly describe how wonderful and powerful this game is. You just have to see it for yourself, which is pretty easy since it doesn't take too much time (like ~2 hours). Director's Commentary was also very interesting to hear. While you can surely find full recording on YouTube in longplay format, I would definitely recommend dedicating your second playthrough to the Commentary. You can also just use both methods and listen to it twice, like I did.

That's about it in terms of my gaming adventures for this month. I did open up Minecraft: Bedrock Edition after the release of Trails & Tails update, but the game crashed after I tried to open up Character Creator menu and I haven't tried launching it ever since. Perhaps I've reached that point where the game is simply unplayable on my laptop, but I would still need to see if that's actually the case. It would be a bummer if that's actually what's happening here since I would be cut off from completing remaining achievements, which was my key motivation to revisit Bedrock Edition.

Aside from that, my next stop would likely be a return to both Hexen titles. I have two unfinished playthroughs in each game that keep looming over me. This is one of the reasons why I find it difficult to spread my attention towards different things: something ends up left out and I just don't like leaving that something unfinished. I need to tie up these loose ends before they won't stop bothering me, even though I'm aware that this sounds pretty silly when it's about video game playthroughs. If you had higher expectations from me, than I'm sorry to tell you that I'm not the only fool here. Huh.

Much-Needed Variety.

On top of all that, I managed to watch a couple of films. Actively playing games and having fun that way is great and all, but you definitely need more variety in your day. Perhaps it's not as productive and creative as doing something else, but I think that overall it's great to spend roughly two hours on some movie instead of yet another YouTube video. It surely doesn't help when there's just nothing interesting (to me) coming out, but lately I had a bit of luck in that. In some ways, at least.

My first choice was The Super Mario Bros. Movie. There's more and more film and TV series adaptations of games coming out in recent years, so it's natural that I would end up paying attention to some of them. I enjoyed a few Mario titles in my time and currently watch some Super Mario Maker 2 content on YouTube. It wasn't hard for me to get into the mood to watch that film and I enjoyed my time with it. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is playing it safe and it doesn't really do anything groundbreaking, but it's a fun experience. Your basic origin story to the book. Just imagine "what would the most okay version of a Mario film" and there's a huge chance you would already come up with its plot. I would say that I wasn't really keen of the film using various popular music instead of actual in-game compositions or remixes of it. I wish they leaned more into that.

Somehow, I may or may not be able to watch Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse and that's all I'm going to say on that front. Despite having a renewed interest in the character and not really being on board with Spider-Verse as a concept, my focus here (much like with Into The Spider-Verse) was to see various version of Peter and other characters behind the mask. Did the film deliver on that? Well, they honestly overdid it. I think my favorite part of this film is probably Gwen's story with her version of Peter and such. Kind of wished we stuck with her until the end instead of switching over to Miles. There wasn't enough of the Spot, which is a real shame. Seeing Peter being happy with Mayday is wholesome, and I suppose Pavitr was alright too.

I definitely won't praise it as much as other people seem to. There's no way I could see it even close to the top three of Spider-Man films. Unlike No Way Home, there're just too many cracks on it to really ignore some clearly bad writing points and plotholes. Why would I care about "canon event" ordeal if it's obvious that Beyond The Spider-Verse will somehow either change or outright ignore this rule in favor of delivering a happy ending without Miles paying dearly for it? Spider-Society's view on letting things play out both works and doesn't really make any sense. While the multiverse clearly implies the infinite number of timeline and countless variations of each Spider-Man, at the same time this attitude doesn't really go well with the character. Even if I personally would definitely lean more towards taking Miguel's side here, that's just not really something you would expect from your traditional Spider-Man.

Besides that, the entire Spider-Society segment of the film felt incredible forced. I knew I shouldn't have expected much from the Spectacular Spider-Man here, but it was nice to hear him again (even if his quote felt out-of-character for him; also why he was in 3D while Peter from the 60s cartoon was in 2D?) nonetheless. As the film kept showing off various cameos, it made the experience feel rather shallow. It was neat to see an actual Spider-Man from Insomniac game and Donald Glover's take on the Prowler (who I don't expect to see returning in MCU), but there wasn't much to it. This feeling got even worse once I get to see them reusing various bits from other Spider-Man films, even down to Doctor Octopus' quote from No Way Home (why it was even added into that scene?)! There're some things I liked about Across The Spider-Verse and I don't regret watching it, even though I clearly have a lot of issues with it.

Permanent Mess.

Besides that, my daily routine was quiet and mostly stale. After suspecting it for a long time, I finally got a prolonged break from my usual gig. It was definitely nice to catch a break after having rather rough time on multiple fronts... That quickly became a problem as I fell into yet another procrastination state. I suppose it's natural to have these moments where you just "malfunction" and move on to stress myself with overthinking, especially in current times since the world is a mess.

I didn't like that though. Never do, in fact. Even though I often gave up as it doesn't feel like I have a control over it, this time I had moments where I was simply fed up with it. This happened before and that rarely led to anything significant, but now I'm trying to slowly riot against this constant. As I've kind of mentioned above, I was thinking a lot about what and how I should do. Horizon remains very gloomy, but there're still a lot of opportunities out there. Yes, they might be far away and almost unreachable for me at this point of time. Yes, part of me thinks it's just a weak excuse, and I'm just being a coward.

For one, I'm making small steps towards being more social out there. Not only trying to stay active in my current friend circle, but also reaching out to some folks I haven't talked too in a while. It was a pleasant experience thus far, which pretty much proves to me that I should keep it going. So that's reassuring and gives me hope that I would be able to make more changes for the better. That would be nice.

It's too soon for any kind of celebrations over self-improvement right now. I definitely should do more than just talk to more people more regularly. My current routine could still use some work, I think I need to further cut corners here. I should also simply start taking care of myself since it got out of hand a long time ago. You don't want to know. Maybe start drinking less black tea, doing workouts again, read books or at least comics... Again, there's a lot of options. You just need to start and put your mind to it.