nothing new under the sun. weird combination of shit in this post but then again do you ever expect anything else from me?

first up: book review. i was tempted by jennifer weiner's the griffin sisters' greatest hits because it's a book about music and also the main characters are from philly - weiner is local and i've read a couple of her books before (a very long time ago!) so i trusted her to not make me miserable in that regard. it's about two sisters who become a smash hit overnight in the early 2000s, the death that they each, separately, blame themselves for, and the one sister's daughter, who is, love and light to her, a stubborn little terror and goes to track down her aunt in alaska when said aunt really doesn't want to be found. it is impossible to read this story and not side with the younger sister, i think. the book compellingly revolves around their bandmate's death and the band's breakup in a way that really keeps you on the hook as to what happened, but then when you finally do find out, ZOE IS UNQUESTIONABLY THE BAD GUY HERE and i very quickly lose any sympathy i had for her. like girl i know what it's like to have a younger sibling way more cool and talented than you but never once have i stooped to that level. the sisters reconcile and eventually start singing together again but idk, if i were cassie, my trust in my sister would be so so broken. 

it was christmas this week and that meant hanging out with my extended family. specifically, it meant hanging out with my fourteen year old cousin, who casually dropped that she was bisexual into conversation when i wasn't expecting it and who i taught to use ao3. (she used it to look up f/f arcane fics. i'm delighted.) she's also been getting into kpop so i showed her some "older" groups (twice, red velvet, dreamcatcher... groups that were established but certainly not vintage when i was first listening to kpop in 2017!) and where to find dance tutorials and filled her in on some of the survival show lore. wow wow wow. she's like, a real teenager. i remember the day she was born. 

okay, and also - like, if you've been on the internet recently you know that everyone's been losing their mind over heated rivalry. i've watched it, WITH my heterosexual boyfriend, and we've both been liking it, as an extension of my recent fascination with hockey romance that started with the zegras trade back in June and has only grown now that the flyers somehow don't suck. but the only reason i knew about the zegras trade in the first place is because people who i followed for check please, a webcomic series about a gay NCAA player, later got into actual hockey. ngozi ukazu, the author, has been teasing her fans for the past couple of months so we've suspected that some news is coming, but we're getting a fifth volume???? after all this time???? what??????????????????? my childhood. it returns.