Not been reading as much as I should be recently, but yesterday I started Already Dead by Charlie Huston. I've only made it 38 pages in but I'm liking it so far. I'm pretty certain the author has played or is aware of Vampire: The Masquerade because it's got elements that feel very influenced by it. Or maybe Vampire is inspired by other things, I mean that does make sense. It is kind of a mishmash of many pre existing tropes. But back to the book! It's so far pretty intersting, there's a map at the start of the book that shows how Manhattan is divided between various vampire clans. I'm a little worried that one part of the map says 'The Hood' and I really hope it doesn't turn out to be a weird racist thing (I am cautiously optimistic). It's still too early to give a proper opinion, but I always like this sort of urban fantasy, especially as a detective novel. I'll keep you updated.
I've been seeing a lot of magpies recently and of course I salute them and greet them - no bad luck for me! Spring is finally coming along, which is good because heating bills have been ridiculous this year. I've always liked the end of winter and early spring period, my favourite flowers are snowdrops and they bloom around that time. I think it's getting a bit late for them now but I saw a lovely patch in a churchyard I pass on the way to work and it really cheered me up every time I passed it. Now that it's getting to be a decent temperature I can finally dress in a way I feel more comfortable and myself. I find coatrs and jackets kind of impede how I prefer to look. I'm also wondering if I should get a haircut, something I basically always wonder about. I want a mohawk so bad but it's not exactly job friendly. Maybe a fauxhawk. Maybe a mullet. I'm not completely sure yet, but I'm sure I will figure something out. If I get a job that requires I wear a hat then that's ideal really, since my hypothetical mohawk wouldn't be spiked up at work anyway.
Speaking of punk-adjacent things, I bought a Subhumans CD recently. It's The Day the Country Died. That's one of my favourite albums and I'm glad I could get it (even though I had to buy it from some CD collector on the continent with annoyingly expensive shipping). I also got my hands on Alive and Kicking by Oi Polloi, probably my all time favourite punk band. They're fucking awesome! It was clearly recorded from a concert, and they kept a lot of song introductions and talking inbetween songs on the CD which was annoying... Sort of. I think it will probably grow on me. I mean it's nice to hear a little personality from the singer and why does everything have to conform to the 'correct' way of making a CD anyway?
I'm not entirely sure what else to write to be honest so I think I'll leave it here. If anyone is reading this, I hope you have an amazing day! Including you, yes, you Hywel, when you inevitably read this back a million times and cringe at your own writing.
It's been a while! Like three months-ish, oops! I've been a bit busy with life and totally forgot I had this website. Anyway, I never finished Altered Carbon because of the aforementioned weird writing of women. It's no big deal though I guess. What I DID actually read was this book called 2034. It's about a fictional and hypothetical conflict between the USA and China resulting in maybe a nuclear detonation but somehow not like, a full on war? It was okay but to be honest the portrayal of the Chinese characters felt weirdly sinophobic and also unrealistic/weird. I probably won't read it again because it was just kind of really full of itself. I liked some of the characters though.
Anyway, I have a job! That's what's kept me so busy, it's in a warehouse and is mindnumbing as you would expect, but having some money coming in finally is great. Unfortunately it's a temporary job assignment and I don't know what my agency is going to do when it ends (hopefully they have others I can just move into within the week?). Everyone there has been nice and all, but there's some pretty irritating people. Like this one guy, he always leaves his trolley (we use them to transport boxes) just sprawled in the middle of aisles or tight spaces and makes it impossible to get around without constantly asking him to move it, and he constantly tries to talk to me when I'm like clearly in the middle of something that requires my attention. There are also some people who work slow, really slow, and like, I get it because who wants to be there at all. But how are they meeting their targets? We have to move a certain amount of things per day and they definitely aren't doing that. Is it weird to complain about this here? Maybe. I don't know. But I'm doing it anyway.
Speaking of work, I have no idea what I actually want to do with my life after this job. I guess another warehouse job, but like, I don't want to be doing that my whole life. Maybe I do? I don't know. I don't think I would do well in an office job but I know an intensely physical job like this is not going to be good for me in the super long term. Maybe retail would be better, but I also want something with room for at least some advancement so I can, you know, maybe buy a house one day (lol, as if). Who knows? I wanted to be an archaeologist but that kind of fell apart when I realised I can't really handle university or at least couldn't when I tried it. I think maybe in a few years I might, but by then I might not want to do that at all. My brother (jokingly) suggested I join the army or some related industry to it which I think I'd rather die than do. There is nothing I want to do less than join the army or support it in any voluntary way. This country has done virtually nothing for me. What would I be fighting for? Oligarchs. That's literally it. I don't want to fight a war, not one for ideals I don't believe in and people who don't give two fucks about me.
On a more positive note, I'm building up a pretty good CD collection. I'm at 40 (I think! Might be forgetting a few) and I am so happy so actually have physical music I can hold and like, keep. I don't trust that Spotify or Youtube or any of these other big companies have my interests at heart. What if music I like is taken down? What if the platforms just don't exist in the future? What if the internet doesn't, or I can't use it? Physical music just seems the best idea. Maybe vinyl is like, 'better' but I don't care. CDs are what I prefer, and are much easier to store because they aren't MASSIVE. How do people store vinyl?! My most recent CD I got was Humble As The Sun by Bob Vylan. I love his music, but all his earlier music seems to be really expensive on second hand CDs and I don't think new copies of them are in production because I struggled to find any at all. I'm glad I have this one at least. Maybe in the future I'll find his older music in a charity shop or somewhere else? I dunno.
Okay so I know I said I would read Altered Carbon finally, but I kind of didn't. It wasn't for lack of trying, I got a ways into the book. But the way Richard Morgan writes women just creeps me out in a way I don't know how to fully articulate. It's very 'men writing women' and I just wasn't enjoying it. I don't know if I'm actually going to finish it now, but if I do then I'll update you.
It rained buckets the past few days, part of my town flooded. This is kind of deserved for building inside the floodplain zone (seriously!) and not having proper wetland areas for all of this water to actually drain into. I mean, I do feel bad for people whose homes and stuff got damaged, this isn't their fault but instead the fault of whoever allowed it all to be built there.
Anyway, I've started beta-reading! One of my tumblr mutuals asked if I could go over their fic (it's SO long!) and I'm really happy they thought of me for that. It's really an honour. I've been going fairly slowly, but their writing is so so so good. I've liked their fics for ages and it feels good to be a part of writing one of them, even if I'm mostly just checking grammar and if the plot makes sense. I'm not sure how long it's going to take but it feels like it might take some time. Hopefully I can get it done soon though. I don't think I'll read the final fic (at least when its being posted) because I will already know it all. Speaking of, they have almost finished uploading another one that I wanted to read. It's a sad one though. I might cry.
I finally finished reading 'I Was Born For This' by Alice Oseman ad it was a really good book. The analysis of fandom and what the people involved can do, be like, and experience was great and i think it should be 'required reading' for anyone involved in fandom. Especially the Osemanverse (specifically Heartstopper fandon, iykyk!!!). I related a bit too hard to Fereshteh/Angel to be honest I have in the past used fandom to sort of escape who I am because to be honest I'm not entirely sure who that is. I've spent most of my adolescence involved in fandom and I do think that it has impacted me in ways I can't really fully explain but suffice to say I do feel very seen by the book.
I find this happening a lot with Alice Oseman books, Tori from Solitaire, Georgia from Loveless, and various characters from Heartstopper. She's one of my favourite writers.
I'm not sure what I'm reading next, I've considered rereading the Maze Runner books but I have a long list of books I haven't yet read at all. Maybe I will read Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan next. I've always found cyberpunk to be a cool genre and started reading the book before, but forgot about it part-way through. I think that's it, yes I will read it next.
Cyberpunk is a really interesting genre to me, the exploration of how technology could be misued, how humans under the capitalist system will always abuse technology for their own gain is something I've felt mirrored in my actual life. I mean, have you seen how invasive and creepy advertisments have gotten? I don't like that if I say something out loud it will start showing up on adverts on my phone. It's fucking weird. On Altered Carbon specifically, the idea kind of creeps me out. My consciousness being cloned and living on as me is weird. I don't know how I'd feel about it. Would it even be my consciousness, if it doesn't share the memories I had up until dying? I don't know. We'll never know how that stuff works I reckon.
This is my first ever blog post so I guess I should tell you who I am and what this place is.
My name is Hywel, I'm a 21 year old (he/they) from the UK. I've lived here all my life, though one day I hope to visit Iceland and maybe move there. It's probably not going to happen but I like to dream about it anyway.
This website is going to be a sort of museum dedicated to my interests, and I guess me (lol is that a bit narcissistic? maybe. whatever, nobody is going to read this!). I've always wanted a website, I remember when I was 11 I tried unsuccessfully to make one on some platform I've long forgotten. I didn't know what HTML even was, to be honest I'm still not great at it yet (and CSS is a nightmare). I figured I should learn to do it anyway after watching two youtube videos, "You Should Check Out the Indie Web" by You've Got Kat, and "Why YOU Should Make a Website!" by LuvstarKei. I've been idly interested in the 'indieweb' or small web, or whatever people call it, for quite a while but never really got too into it until the past few weeks. It's been fun going through all the websites on Neocities and I wanted to finally make my own website, so here it is!
I'm not really sure what this blog is going to be yet. I was thinking a sort of 'diary' or something, though I'll have to be careful what I post here because well... Anyone could see it. Hello if you know me in real life! On the rest of the website I plan on posting my creative writing, fanfiction, discussing music (especially punk music), and maybe posting my worldbuilding concepts here too. I've also decided to make some pages dedicated to shows and games I love, shrines I think you guys call them. It'll be fun I hope!
Anyway, this is all I've got for now. I hope this website thing turns out well!
Archive:
Contact me: hywelhughesss@ gmail.com
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this?????