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!