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The cousin scenes were SO relatable. I had a very distant cousin, one I didn't even know I had?? I still had met her when I was a child, but I somewhere around 8-10 years old. The first time I had met her, I had stupidly gotten jealous of my brother's kindness towards her and snapped at her, which I felt very bad about and apologized to her that very same family reunion. For context, we had family reunions every summer. For the next three summers afterward we were like best friends during every reunion, I was excited to spend time with her every reunion and that we did! After our third summer together, I chose to stop going to the reunions for a number of years because of the bullying we had endured together that last summer from our other cousins. It wasn't until I was 19 that I attended another reunion, and I was most excited to see her again. But whenever I did see her, she remembered nothing of the bond we had for a multitude of summers and only remembered the mean thing I had said to her the first five minutes of knowing her. It hurt my feelings to the core, no joke.

CAN'T WAIT FOR GUTS, DRAMA, AND GHOSTS

gosh we don’t talk about RAINA TELGEMEIER enough, like srsly her books were so addicting and formative to so many young girls. it was honestly her that started my love for graphic novels, a digestible story style with engaging art?? yes please!

Cousins eating breakfast next to you sleeping on the floor is such a real family reunion moment 😭😭

Making people pay for bathrooms (or honestly fulfilling any basic needs) is absolutely evil, I just don't get it

When I tell you I was obsessed with Raina Telgemier as a kid😂

Sisters was my first book by her😭 I was the younger sister and I literally act almost exactly like the younger sister in the book while my sister wasn’t really like the main character but it was a cute book because it taught me to somewhat appreciate my older sister

The fish died for two reasons. They were at a pet store that doesn’t take care of them properly, and fish need proper aquariums, not bowls. It’s not normal for fish to die like that. I wish more people knew this and didn’t think fish were just expendable.

i used to reread sisters constantly because i felt so connected to it. i have an older sister and younger brother so as a kid i thought the book was practically written about me

10:20 the issue with fish is due to not only negligence and abuse at most pet stores, treating fish and many other smaller pets as more “disposable” (though definitely mistreating all of them to some extent or another), but also due to the lack of proper care information that’s provided about the animals to new buyers, ranging from proper feeding and co-habitation info, as well as even just basic environmental/habitat info. Oftentimes these stores won’t even sell the right sized tanks/terrariums and the filters and heaters needed for a lot of their animals basic survival, especially fish, and they’ll sell these cheaply made (and yet often overpriced) toy-like decorations and tanks/cages/terrariums etc., that will be WAY too small for the animals needs (and like in the case of fishbowls, might even be designed in a way that actively  disorients and freaks out the animals, thus shortening their lifespan even more), so that they can market to kids and their parents, and will often equate a smaller animal to being easier to take care of and claim they’re a “starter” pet, when in reality, all pets (aside from something like “sea monkeys”, which are the ONLY good “starter pet” for younger kids, but should still be supervised) need varying amounts of care of varying kinds, and a lot of the smaller animals are actually the most fragile and have the most specific care needs, but the pet store industry has been spending years and millions of dollars in training and advertising and whatnot, to convince people otherwise, so that they can continue to run their stores like the equivalent of a puppy mill (esp for smaller animals, but also commonly have horrible breeding practices for their bigger animals too) that just has a brand name stamped on it, and reap the profits. It’s always best to do proper research and go to a reputable breeder when buying a pet, and to ensure that if you have small children, you teach them right as well, and never leave a pet of any kind unsupervised in the care of a young child. I wanna clarify I’m not one of those annoying PETA-loving losers, far from it, just love animals and have major animal autism and I grew up always wanting a million pets but luckily was not able to get any, as I grew up surrounded by that pet industry propaganda that treated pets like toys or dolls and encouraged really poor living conditions and tiny cramped colourful cages. If you want some easy to watch content on this kinda stuff tho SodaPets YouTube channel is a good start I believe, she talks about this stuff a lot and has videos talking about how she has gone about meeting the specific needs for all of her pets and how she’s learning constantly! :)

Since I have a twin I always thought the phrase "only child" was "lonely child"...

Oh GOD that bit about the being too old for the younger kids, too childish for the older kids, and too young for the adults hit hard. I was always able to communicate with older relatives better than ones my age or younger when I turned 8 or 10 and it really just sucked.

I have a lot of memories of being at family gatherings between the ages of 10 - 14 and I felt like it was either hard to relate to anyone, or like I was annoying or weirding out anyone more mature than I was. I have a younger sister that's 4 years younger than me and since the age of 7, I started bickering, yelling, name-calling, all that mean older sibling shit. We've gotten close as the years gone by though (and I'm pretty sure it's cos we've matured in a way and went through some shit).

Growing up is realizing you’re older than the oldest people (meaning oldest of the kids) in these books. It hurts sometimes.

Sisters was one of my favorite books in middle school. Not to mention, this book and Raina T.’s art style influenced my art style.

Worshiping/trying so hard to be liked by your sibling even when they don’t like you is so real

Now THIS is a dead fandom

Dude 100% agree with the fish stuff! I won a goldfish from a county fair when I was a kid, and she lived for NINE YEARS. The only reason why that fish went kaput was because my mom left one of her friends in charge of the apartment while we were on winter vacation, and when we got back the fish was BELLY UP in the tank OVERFED to high hell. Pour one out for Stella, girly you were a real fish:fish-orange-wide-eyes:

I have a story about being overstimulated by heat. My family was checking out this historic church in California and we got lost so we asked a guy who was doing charity work for directions. It was so hot that I was not paying any attention to this person or anything that he was saying, all I wanted was to go inside and drink some water. After my family had a whole conversation with this man, we part ways and start following his directions. It wasn’t until we got inside that I realized the man that my family was talking to was in fact Shia LaBeouf. It just goes to show that when you stop paying attention to your surroundings, you might miss out on having a conversation with Shia LaBeouff 😂.

10:50 fish are not easy pets. pet stores straight up lie about their care needs so they end up dying of accidental neglect. They need a lot of space, the water needs to be tested, the tank needs to run weeks before, they need a proper diet, proper tank cleaning with filters you don't need to replace. They are hard. Dogs and cats are the easiest pets.