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We are also watching my sister's dog, Ozzy. They are best friends. 🐱🐶

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My sister's out of town visiting my other sister for the holidays, so Din is staying with us for a bit.

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Old joke requests incoming.

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CW: PET DEATH

We've just been in to the vet to put down Zoey.

Zoey was the sweetest, sassiest little dog, with the cutest little face. We got her as a rescue maybe a decade or so ago.

My parents had in mind to get another golden retriever, which the shelter worker had thought she was. They bring her out, saying that she "doesn't like men", and the first thing she does is snuggle up to me. My dad mentioned her not being a golden. Meanwhile, I've instantly bonded with this dog and ask "Is that a problem?" and they're like "I guess not". And that was that.

We've had other dogs over the years, but Zoey is the one I bonded with the most. Hannah was more my sister's dog. Micky was more my dad's dog. Zoey was my dog.

A few weeks ago, she started snoring, and her breathing was becoming labored. Last week or so, after a vet visit, they said there was a swelling in her throat that looked like it could be cancerous. They gave her a steroid to take, and it seemed to help a little, but once she was off it, the decline was sharp and rapid.

A few days ago, she stopped eating, even her treats, and would just pace the house. Just a test to find out for sure what it was would be too expensive, let alone treatment. If it was cancerous, it was likely to present elsewhere. If not, it would be an invasive surgery on an old dog. It'd just be selfish to have her suffer longer just because we weren't ready to say goodbye. Any time it'd buy us wouldn't be enough to be worth it.

I took these pictures today.

And had my mom take this one, the last picture I have of her. Goodbye, Zoey. I'll miss you a lot. Thank you for being my best friend all these years. I love you so much. Rest in peace, little miss butternut.

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Was going through my camera roll and found this picture of my sister's dog, Ozzy.

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I've finally beaten Brothership, and thought I'd share some of my thoughts. End-game spoilers to follow.

First of all, if I had a nickel for every piece of media where a TV-headed guy trapped Mario in a world of his own creation to further his own selfish goals, I'd have two nickels, et cetera.

But if I had a nickel for every time the final boss of a Mario and Luigi game didn't involve Bowser in some way, I'd only have one nickel.

Reclusa was a real fun boss fight. Just the spectacle of it all, for starters. So much going on the whole way through. I like how he started talking during his attacks near the end.

He was a fun villain, too. Zokket was so dire, I was expecting whatever hatched from the egg to be, like. Some force of nature, or something. I don't know if I even expected it to talk. And then out comes this fuckin clown.

As for what else in general. The combat in this game was fun. Felt about as M&L ever does. The enemy variety and all the different attacks was super fun. The new Bros. Attacks were neat, and I liked the updates to the returning ones. The final ones keeping with the theme of escalating to be ever more over-the-top.

I love all the cute and colorful characters in this game. Them and all the different islands felt so full of personality. Specific shoutouts to the Shipshape crew, the Heatfreeze couple, and the Extension Corps. All very fun characters that I could spend far longer typing about.

And, uh, speaking of spending far longer, wow, I thought the game was just about to end like three times and it just kept going. It's like. So we're fighting Zokket and then the spicy egg, right? Nope, Bowser. We got through the barrier and are fighting Zokket, we're just about done, right? Nope, Reclusa made a tree. We're about to fight Reclusa, right? NOPE, lotus eater flower world. Note that I'm not complaining about the game's length; I just think it's funny.

Feels like this is as good a point to end as any. This game was great; solid 8, maybe even 9. Take easy.

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Another, kinda spoiler-y thought about Brothership that I forgot to mention:

Both Bowser and Zokket don't have unique boss themes and that is baffling to me.

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Been playing Brothership. Couple thoughts I wanted to share. Late-game spoilers to follow.

So, first off.

I just beat Zokket, and it took me until the fight with him to realize the object adorning him was a pair of wire cutters. I dunno, I just kinda parsed the metal part as part of the cape, and the red part as, like. Some kind of spiky wire hanging off? You see it in motion in the fight, which makes it more obvious. Speaking of the fight, one of Zokket's attacks is kinda channeling Cackletta. Which is fun.

Also, it took me until just a few minutes ago to get that "Glohm" is a portmanteau of "gloom" and "ohm". Like. The unit of measurement. Don't know why that took me so long.

The first thing I said as soon as I saw Reclusa was "Oh no."

Anyway, if I had a nickel for every video game featuring a mad isolated jester with otherworldly power and warped views about freedom, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

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Oh shit it's a week into November and I just remembered I meant to share the Big Gay Skeleton we saw in our neighborhood around Halloween.

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i'm so fucking tired

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Sekibanki😈

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the orb continues to perplex mouse

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SO UH CAESAR'S KINDA GOOD I GUESS?

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Jesus Fucking Christ, I have a new most hated character in all of media and it's the principal from Koleda's story missions. Angry rant below.

This cunt oversees an illegal mining operation that sees a hollow overtake a kindergarten, and only feels bad for a moment when he finds out his daughter's caught up in it. The whole time smugly and condescendingly spinning bullshit about how he's a "law-abiding citizen", while ACTIVELY in the presence of the thugs he's hired to do the mining. AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF, he not only gets off scot-free, but gets a better-paying job. Meanwhile, we're supposed to just be okay with it because "oh wahh if it came out her father was a criminal this child would get bullied :(".

What pisses me off isn't JUST the character, it's the godawful writing, too. Like, we have multiple eyewitnesses to this shit, including the fucker's own daughter, and he just gets off because "the association never got involved uwu". In WHAT fucking world?

I have no memory of ANY time a character/plot has made me actually scream, several times, at length, from being so frustrated.

The worst part is, I thought ZZZ was doing fine, plot-wise. It went three whole chapters without pissing me off, which is a LOT more than I can say about Genshin Impact. The first time I got mad was at the Jane interlude, because hey, there was ONE direction for them to escape to when she threw a smoke bomb. WALK FORWARD. Y'know, like Seth did? Looking back, sure, maybe it's excusable as "they needed to not catch Jane because she's undercover". Fine, whatever.

Then I get to Grace's story and HOOOOLY shit. I was already kinda on the fence about Grace from chapter 2; turns out yeah, I hate this woman's guts. Completely forgets a woman from her school that was on her team, that she was roommates with, and then we get the setup for a plot predictable from the get-go of "oh it's okay that her personality sucks and she disregards other people to a practically misanthropic degree because she's good at machines and she was right about this the whole time; that excuses everything else about her". Boring. Meanwhile the narrative ends up treating the frankly justified Betty like the villain, and honestly it feels like they want us to not feel bad for her at the end.

Which, uh, doesn't that fuckin' suck? Already frustrated after one poorly-written story, then right into another, with the biggest cunt I've ever had the displeasure of seeing.

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Some of the family got together at my sister's to carve pumpkins with her kids. Nephew's a big fan of Bowser, so this was my contribution (and my first time trying to surface carve a pumpkin).

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My favorite part of Echoes of Wisdom so far is that you can just grab Deku Babas and tear their heads off.