New Clothes -- April

I got some new clothes this month! My room looks so messy in these pictures ;; Not gonna lie, it's really disorganized. (At least I know where everything is.)

This is all the stuff I got when we went to Ohio a couple weeks ago. I haven't worn the white-ish top in the middle of the picture, sorry ;; 

First up is this sweater! I got called "Creamsicle" three times when I wore this yesterday;; It's really nice though! It's a little too warm for the weather at this point, but it's comfy and it's not too bad when I just wear tank tops underneath it. 

This was actually the first outfit I wore of the new clothes I got! The cardigan I got from Old Navy last year, but the dress I got from an antique store! It's very 50s aesthetic, I love it ♥

I can't figure out how to make these align correctly ... My mom found this dress in a thrift store we went to! When she showed it to me, I didn't really know how it would look on me, but I ended up really liking it! It's got more of a 70s retro vibe to it, but it's the most comfortable dress I have so far, and I think I can keep wearing it through the summer, so I'm excited. 

I was really excited to find new clothes that I liked when we went out to Ohio, especially since I've been wanting to have a nicer / more girly vibe recently. I've been wearing the same t-shirt / jeans / sweatshirt outfit combo for the past seven years, pretty much, and I want to try wearing new things. 

Alienated by Melissa Landers

TL;DR humanoid aliens that try to make a peace treaty with the humans. Humans, of course, ruin everything about it. 

(finished 4/23/15)

As my friend put it recently at lunch, "It's like the Lux series, but they don't completely hate each other." That's gonna be the theme of this review, I think. I bought Alienated because I found it in paperback when I went to buy Fairest. I've been wanting to read Alienated for a while, so I figured it was worth $9. 

And I think it was, but I definitely don't think buying it in hardcover would've been worth it, if that makes sense. Alienated felt kind of "typical" for me. I read the book over a period of about four months, so I'm sorry if some of the stuff I talk about is kind of distorted or wrong. I know I've probably forgotten some stuff by now. 

My biggest complaint about Alienated: they totally white-washed Aelyx on the cover. His skin tone is described as "russet" -- and I actually had to google that to make sure it was what I thought it was. I'll even include the first color that pops up in Google so you don't have to do it: 

This is nowhere near the skin tone of the boy on the cover. 

Against the white-washing argument, I can maybe see the point that the guy may be Cara's brother, since he is living with the L'eihr and Cara seems to miss him (as much as you can with such an immature adult like Troy), but I don't think that's enough for him to be on the cover. When I picked the book up, I assumed the guy on the cover was Aelyx. 

Anyway! I have to say that I did appreciate Cara and Aelyx's relationship a lot more than I did Daemon and Katy's. It still felt a little insta-romance-y, but not nearly as much as other books I've read. Their relationship did seem to be fairly stable, too, excluding what Aelyx withheld related to the plot. He does come clean about the lying and seems to learn from the whole thing, so I have to give him that. I feel like their relationship moved way too fast for Cara to be willing to give up everything on Earth to continue living with him, though. They'd known each other for less than a school year. Like, slow down, maybe. 

I don't really feel like I can comment much on the plot. I liked the concept of people being openly against the L'eihr, but a lot of the stuff regarding Cara felt like Murphy's Law. There wasn't really just "kinda bad" stuff. It was all "really bad". 

I liked that Cara was motivated and willing to speak her mind, and I felt like the emotions she had were realistic. (There was a @typicalYAheroine tweet that I was gonna link to about being redheaded, but I can't find it. I feel like Cara played a little bit into the "fiery red-headed main character" trope, but I don't think it was all that bad, and I can't really find enough proof to talk about it. So I'll just mention it in passing.) I was kind of surprised at how Aelyx seemed to fall in love with Cara pretty easily, despite coming off as very cold and inhuman at first and having very little of the concept of "love" to base it off of. He seemed to genuinely care about her, though, and didn't really pull any @broodingYAhero moves, so I've gotta give him credit for that. 

Gigi liked Alienated enough that she went ahead and bought Invaded to read, so I'm gonna give that a chance. I'm pretty intrigued to see what will happen to Cara, even though I'm a little nervous about the hints of an upcoming 'love triangle' at the end of Alienated. (Not that it's really a triangle, since it's really just an "on my way to steal your girl" kind of thing, but of course you can't have a YA book without two love interests.) 

TL;DR it's not super memorable but it's not super dark and depressing and I'm gonna keep my copy of the book, so that means something. I'd consider it a pretty fluffy read. 

Favorite New Music: April

Yeah, let's make a trend of these posts! They're fun! 

I'm thinking about making YouTube playlists for each post, so let me know if that would make things easier! 

I actually found this song through a tumblr post that said "8 player Sm4sh be like". Apparently it's been out for a while, but I've never encountered it before this past month. It's really catchy;; 

I found the next three songs via an underclassman in my video production class! He and another girl were showing off the music one day after we were done making the announcements. None of these are the kind of music I listen to -- I tend to go for pop -- so I was surprised when I really liked these!

I've been looking into more One Last Night songs than just what my classmate showed us, and I really like them so far! It's cool to hear a more band-ish / rock version of pop songs. 

I haven't looked into any other PVRIS songs yet (and I'm still not sure how her name is supposed to be pronounced), but My House has a really cool feel to it! 

This song was one my classmate heard when he visited the Philippines. I have no idea what the lyrics mean, but it's pretty catchy. I like the sound of the language -- I think it's Tagalog, but I'm not entirely sure. 

This is a song that the girl was playing via her phone! The chorus is really catchy ( •̀ᄇ• ́)ﻭ✧

This is more along the lines of music I listen to already. The music video is pretty amusing, too.

And speaking of catchy choruses! I've heard this one on the radio a few times, and I really like it. 

I've been slowly discovering more of the American Beauty / American Psycho songs, and this one is really catchy to me so far! I really like the intro of it. 

I posted this a day early because I wasn't done with the book I was planning to review, but I hope that's okay! I've realized that having these kinds of posts helps me branch out and find new music, so right now it's my favorite thing to write about! ♪

Procrastination

Gonna totally go for a meta post since this is last-minute, too x(

Anyway, in case you guys didn't know, I'm a huge procrastinator. As in, I waited until about 10:30pm Sunday night to start the homework I got on Friday. (And I still haven't finished all of it at the time I'm writing this. Shh.)

For a while I had actually cut down my procrastinating to a minimum. When I first started posting regularly again, I usually had a few posts scheduled at any one time. Definitely none of this "write the post two hours before it goes up". Which I did with the Pinterest one. Then again, that might have just been a honeymoon phase of sorts ...

I think a lot of the recent procrastination is coming from the fact that graduation is pretty imminent. It's a mixture between "why can't it be summer already" and "oh god there's a lot going on next month".

And I realize that procrastination isn't the best answer. At all. I think it's mainly just self-preservation -- I mean, if I push something off long enough, I only have to full-out stress over it for only a little bit.

(I know that's a bad theory. I don't know how to explain why I wait to do my homework until the last possible second recently. I mean, I played Little Alchemy for three hours instead of doing my Lang homework, which literally just took me about 15 minutes. Ironically, I'm still not done with the game.)

I'm probably going to be kicking myself all through May. We'll see.

TL;DR this post really doesn't have a point other than to have something to guilt-trip myself about. Because it's sad when I have to write a post about procrastination because I'm procrastinating.

Pinterest Story Boards

I've been running so last-minute with these blog posts recently;; I swear I'll catch up again soon!

In the meantime, I decided to share the boards I use on Pinterest! Click on the link at the bottom of each widget to see more, since I learned that clicking on the photos will only bring up that specific pin.

Also, I don't really know if it'll let you see the whole board without an account, so I'm sorry if it tries to cut you off! :c

Follow Joy's board Aperture on Pinterest.
Follow Joy's board Sugar Plum on Pinterest.
Follow Joy's board Casanova on Pinterest.
Follow Joy's board Eigengrau on Pinterest.
Follow Joy's board Rewrite on Pinterest.

I'm not gonna describe any of the plots, since pretty much everything but Aperture is still in a brainstorming phase, but I think most of the boards have details about what I want to do with it! (I think Sugar Plum just has pictures of snow and Eigengrau just has Hanne's hair;; I'm getting there, though!)

Anyway, I hope they're interesting to look through!

Sakura Matsuri 2015

(I don't have my pictures with me right now, so check back later this week!)

This Saturday was the Cherry Blossom Street Festival down in DC. This is at least my fifth time going to it, if not more. I've lost count. I went down with two of my friends this year, which is I think the second-smallest group I've ever done, other than last year when it was just me and Chris. My dad's friend got us into the festival for free because he was staffing it, and I'm soooo grateful that he was willing to give me passes two years in a row. ♥

I didn't spend too much time in the festival itself this year. It's basically the same every year; even all the stalls are in the same locations. We left the festival pretty early because my friends wanted to find cheaper food, and then I asked to go see the cherry trees themselves while they were still in peak bloom. We did go back for the last hour of the festival, though. I didn't get any taiyaki before they all sold out, so I was disappointed :(

I came home with more stuff this year! Last time I just got a letter set and a Tuxedo Mask plushie. This time I got another letter set, two notebooks and an old Sailor Moon kid's novel. I also got taro-flavored bubble tea, which was kind of expensive, but which I think was worth it.

Unfortunately, I didn't really get to see any of my online friends at the festival :( Luck wasn't on my side this time. I did cross paths with someone I met at the Mekakucity Actors photoshoot at AUSA, but that was about it. Now I have to wait until Otakon to see them;; Meetups should be easier to plan at Otakon, though, and I'll have more time to see them then.

My friends and I sat underneath the cherry trees near the Washington Monument for probably close to an hour. It was really chill! There were a lot of people around, but we were in the shade and a little bit out of the way. There were a couple times that the wind blew and we were showered in petals :) It was cool.

Coming home was kind of a mess, though. We were stuck in the huge crowd leaving the festival and had to walk down to the Smithsonian station, which was only slightly better than Federal Triangle. I ended up making me and my parents late to dinner with my grandmother for her birthday;; My wig was driving me crazy, but I kept it on until we got home because I put my hair up when it was still wet and I didn't want to see what it looked like. (It was pretty terrible.) None of my family seemed to mind, though!

TL;DR this year's Sakura Matsuri wasn't the most interesting year yet, but I still had fun. It was good memories :)

Apr 2015 Camp Nano Progress

I do NaNo a lot. I think this is, like, my fourth Camp NaNo or something. Usually it's a good motivator for me. It bothers me to think about running behind, or even worse, ultimately not reaching word count, now that I know I can pull off the full-blown 50k NaNo. The fact that I did that twice and am somehow failing this 20k month is honestly kind of funny. 

NaNo is basically motivation / competition for getting your current novel WIP done. The "traditional" NaNo in November is a set 50,000 words, but Camp NaNo has flexible word counts and mediums (including short story collections, plays, or revisions). It's usually done twice in the warmer months; I wanna say this year it's in July as well. 

This time I decided to give myself a little wiggle room and let myself work on the story that's being published in my school's lit mag as well as the story I've used the previous two NaNos (and however many Camp NaNos). 

It doesn't really help when I'm at a loss for ideas all across the board ... 

My word count is on the left. I initially set my goal to 25k, but I lowered it to 20k after getting back from vacation the first weekend and having almost no words to show for it. 

Camp NaNo lets you do "cabins", which are little groups with forum boards that will track your collective progress. I did a private one with two of my friends, but we've all been suffering from writer's block. I think I'm the only one that's updated their word count since the second day >:|

Writing for my "newer" project Eigengrau helped me catch up. The only writing I have for it is the abandoned first version I based off a dream (and vaguely off a fandom crossover concept) and an assignment I did for my creative writing class that I submitted to our lit mag. It's got a lot of stuff I'm unfamiliar with, including diplomacy and aliens and sign language, but it's been fun so far to work on it. It's a lot different than Aperture. 

I will catch up at some point this month, I swear. I've barely written anything over spring break (which is pretty much over for me now), and I'm kind of mad about that. I'm hoping to get lots of writing done once some of my school obligations are out of the way this week.

Easter Weekend Trip

I'm currently on spring break! This past weekend we drove up to Erie, PA to visit family for my great-grandmother's birthday and Easter. We spent a lot of time in the car;; 

I did almost nothing productive that I planned to do;; I was going to work on my school's lit mag and my Camp Nano in the car ride, but I couldn't get InDesign on my laptop before we had to leave and I had almost no motivation to write. I also couldn't connect to my great-aunt's wifi, so I couldn't even goof off at all. 

But, I did get some pictures with my HTC, so that's what this post is mainly about. To be honest, none of the pictures are super-super interesting -- they're just stuff I felt looked cool. 

The post is going to be really long because I don't feel like arranging the pictures into grids, so here's a cut:

EDIT: apparently none of the pictures want to stay visible because I tried to upload them through Google Drive. I don't know what's going on with them. You can see all the pictures in my Drive here. I'm keeping the captions below the cut in case you're curious, but I don't feel like going through again to replace the images just to have them break again. 

The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter

TL;DR a poor adaptation of the mythology of Persephone and Hades

(finished 4/3/15)

So the whole concept of The Goddess Test and the first couple chapters seemed fairly solid. It just went downhill pretty quickly.

And honestly, I can't say that it's a terrible book. It's just really mediocre. I didn't really feel any attachment for any of the characters, there was lots more telling than showing, and apparently all the mythology was messed with. I can't really comment on the mythology because 85% of my knowledge comes from Percy Jackson, but everyone just seemed kind of flat and none of the character dynamics really made sense to me. I don't even think the gods' human-like personas made sense. They only related tangentially to the Greek gods that I'm familiar with, Percy Jackson or otherwise. They mainly only had one characteristic of the god they were supposed to be, and even at that it felt like a really weak connection. It would kind of be like saying I'm Athena just because I study stuff of my own free will sometimes. It doesn't work that way. 

And the premise of the tests seemed pretty weak. I'm not going to go into all the mythology and Greek vs Christian principles, because just about every review I looked at on Goodreads talked about it. The tests were a pretty weak judge of character even overlooking the whole "Christian principles applied to ancient Greek gods" thing. I feel like those tests didn't prove anything near to Kate being "worthy" of immortality. Heck, I probably could have passed those tests. 

Kate and Henry's relationship is something that's been bothering me as I thought through my opinion of the book. Like, on the surface, I felt like I should have been happy with their relationship. It was fairly chaste, save for one scene that was out of their control regarding tampered food. It just didn't feel genuine. The narration was too packed, so there were only like one or two scenes that actually displayed the two interacting, rather than just Kate narrating it in passing after the fact. It felt like there was no chemistry. But at the same time, there are still infinitely worse couples in YA, and that's really infuriating to me to not even be able to rank them that low. 

Speaking of the narration: it felt like something aimed at the very young end of YA. Like, Kate can't even bring herself to talk about sex in the open. She refers to it multiple times as "that", italics and all. The only people that do that are kids in elementary school who are just starting to understand the concept of sex. No eighteen year old dances around the topic like that. Even as a super asexual person I have no problems with saying the word, though I do try to avoid learning the graphic details of other peoples' sex lives. I feel like Kate falls into the category of narrators where the writer underestimates or doesn't really understand the demographic. And a lot of the book was just Kate talking about stuff happening, rather than her describing the things as they happened. I'm pretty sure January through March happens on a single page. It's really boring. The Goddess Test isn't action-y at all. 

I honestly didn't feel like finishing this all the way through. The main thing that got me through it was needing to review it, since I feel like I need to know the whole story before I write something up. (Meaning that I'll probably never review a DNF.) Also, I was bored in school. My social media only updates so often and I have one teacher that would kill me if I tried to check my twitter after I caught up with my work. 

TL;DR I don't think it's really worth the read. I mean, maybe if you're bored or need something to get frustrated with. Definitely don't read it if you like Greek mythology the way it is. 

A Creature of Moonlight by Rebecca Hahn

TL;DR a fantasy story about a half-dragon girl
(finished 3/30/15)

The premise seemed interesting enough, but I think the cover and goodreads descriptions are kind of misleading. The book never really made me feel like Marni had to choose specifically between living with her uncle (the king) or her father (the dragon). Spoiler: honestly, by the end she picks neither and ends in almost exactly the same position she started. I don't know if this is a model of the stereotypical hero's journey or if it was just a poor plot. Marni didn't feel all that decisive to me, which made the ending feel pretty lackluster. 

The book started out fairly strong, but then it just kind of stagnated. There's no real action at all. Like, I'm not really one for action-genre books, but I felt like the stakes were never really all that high. I mean, they kind of were, but I feel like Marni's narration kind of downplayed it. 

A good portion of the book was just Marni detailing what happened, too. It wasn't bad, but I think that's why it felt so action-less. Everything blended together because they were only touched on. 

I have to give Marni credit for standing up for herself, both with the royal court and with the fae trying to spirit her away. She kept her ground against the guys she turned down and made her own terms with her father instead of accepting a kind of "fate" that everybody seemed to expect. 

I can definitely see how the ending could be Marni making her own decision as a third option to what she's been given. It just didn't seem like a strong conclusion after what she had been through. 

TL;DR I feel like the book didn't really accomplish much, but I guess it could be a pretty fluffy fantasy read.