Steps of mitosis pictures

I am offering various RNG Services across Gens 3 to 7.
Gen 3 to 5: Legendary RNG, Wild RNG, Gift (including Manaphy & Bonus Disc Jirachi/Celebi) RNG with custom OT & TID possible
Gen 7: Egg RNG (TSV hatch RNG possible until April 8th)
The prices for each RNG request will all be in €uro and will depend on the type of RNG, the amount of time I expect to spend on them, and any extras you may request (example: custom OT)
Base prices are as follows (per each mon):

• Gen 3-5 Wild RNG: 2€
• Gen 3-5 Legendary/Gift/Wishmaker Jirachi RNG/Ranger Manaphy Egg: 3€
• Any of the above SHINY: +2€
• Gen 3 Channel Jirachi / Ageto Celebi & Gen 4 Shiny Ranger Manaphy Egg: 5€
• Custom OT/TID (Gen 3-5): +2€ (per ONE save - ie, can be used for multiple mons)
• Gen 7 Egg RNG: 2€ (TSV hatch or Shiny +1€)
• Flat fee per Hour spent on your RNG request: 2€/h

Example: 1x Shiny Terrakion (5€) + 2x Shiny Wild mons (8€) from BW with a custom OT/TID (2€) would be 15€ + the fee for the expected time spent on the RNGs (average 2-6 hrs but obviously depends on the specific request)
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I can also offer a Training service & Item trade service in Scarlet/Violet & Sword/Shield, with prices as follows:

• Training Service: 2€
• Any 10x Items Trade: 3€

The more RNG/Training services you request, the bigger the discounts I can make for you!Requesting RNGs that can save me a lot of time will also decrease your cost considerably! (example: multiple Wild RNGs from the same save/game)At least 5x of any given type of service must be requested to be eligible for a discount!
Buyer pays any required fees!
To calculate how much you need to send me accounting for fees, use THIS PayPal fees calculator!
Delivery available in Gen 8 or 9, or with Bank>HOME transfer, up to buyer's choice, where applicable.
I can provide proof of the RNG in the form of screenshots of all important steps, with all RNG information clearly visible, if requested! These pictures would all be provided within a zip file uploaded to Google Drive that I would send a link for you to download, via PM.
Please reply to this thread asking what Pokémon you'd like me to obtain, the origin game(s)/Gen(s) and if Shiny or not, so that I can work out exactly how much it would cost you for your order!
After we have discussed the above and have agreed on a deal, please send your detailed requests for RNGs (IV spreads, natures etc) through this google form: https://forms.gle/vBhoDio8obiUU47g9
Training services & Item trades don't need to go through the form.
MY TOOLS & DISCLAIMERS:
I have and use several emulators for all my RNGs (Citra - 3DS, Bizhawk - DS & GBA) using assisted overlay tools like lua scripts, as well as the standard RNG 'calculation' tools like PokeFinder.
I also have a CFW 3DS that I use to import my saves into carts with a save manager (Checkpoint), in order to then transfer the mons up to Bank, followed by HOME.
All my saves are also save-managed (backed up, extracted and injected) with tools such as Checkpoint & JKSV.
For my Training service & Item trading in Gen 9 I use my CFW Switch to multiply items in my bag such as Vitamins, Candy, TMs, Apriballs.
You can request the training service for your own mons in Gen 9, or as an extra (for the same price) on any RNG you buy from me!
Feel free to ask any questions you may have here in my thread, and thank you for stopping by!
[svirtual]
My ref: https://www.reddit.com/pokemonexchangeref/comments/18tsljf/usexymalasada_reference/

So to provide some context, I (28F) recently started a law firm with my mom, who is an attorney. I was working on my own business at the time, but when my mom’s paralegal up and left her right before Christmas, she needed help, plus I had experience starting a business and was previously in the legal field, so I agreed to come on as her legal assistant/business helpeetc. We agreed on a set weekly amount for pay, which wasn’t crazy high but solid and I felt like I could use the opportunity to help my mom build something lucrative after leaving her old firm (where she was severely monetarily taken advantage of, and is going to have to sue her old business partners for what they owe her + her partner investment at the old firm, but that’s a story for another day) The thing is, I was wary going into this my mom would not be able to financially keep our agreement, because she has big dreams and ideas but doesn’t always take the practical steps in terms of things like budgeting (the fights and struggles this has caused in my house between my parents my whole life and the financial issues we’ve experienced as a result have shown me she has no plans on changing this but I am also empathetic because she is crazy busy and my other siblings, one who is severely mentally ill and lives at home, take up an insane amount of time)
Now I want to hammer in that my mom is a good person, with a big heart. My dad is a good person too, which is why I feel this situation is so difficult for me to navigate. They have their issues and personally to me, seem to act like children in many ways in how conflicts are handled and how they emotionally react (my mom especially, she cares so much how people feel about her but doesn’t realize that her fuse is short and she will just yell and scream at everyone) They have not had an easy set of cards dealt to them in regards to all of us kids and the individual issues, and I have always had so much empathy for them. However, the older I’ve gotten and more I’ve experienced, the more I realize a lot of the issues we had growing up, whether it was financial or my siblings behavior and issues, probably could’ve been handled in a much healthier way which would’ve saved a lot of the pain experienced by continuing the cycles and behaviors that were causing the issues in the first place. My parents stayed married, but basically tolerated one another and never had a united front, were always talking bad about one another and could never agree on proper ways to fix what was happening, so it was a chaotic mess all the time, where the more difficult kids were enabled and it felt like those of us who actually had more of our shit together, were just expected to either help with it or just deal with the fact they didn’t have time for us because of the time my siblings took up. An example of this would be when I was in college, I was on a full scholarship (full tuition, but not room and board) because of my academic and athletic scholarship, so I ran track and XC to help pay for school. I worked two jobs as well to pay for my rent, and barely slept as I was in pre-med. I am the oldest of the 6 kids in my family, and in my family, I was the good kid. I didn’t ask for much, always figured my stuff out, etc. They “never needed to worry about me” so they didn’t. However, during that time when it went to school, my dad lost his job and my parents were fighting more and more. My siblings had less tolerance for their “bullshit” but they also fought each other because of the issues at home. Therefore, they began to struggle a lot. My mom was always borrowing money from me and I had no idea when I’d get it back. I would struggle and could barely afford my NEEDS. I barely bought books I needed and would often be finding ways to take pictures of my friend’s books, etc. Anyway, this was consistent and even to the point where I could not buy myself the sashes and what not for my graduation (I was in the honors courses, extracurricular, scholar athlete, Greek life, graduated top of my class for my major etc) because my mom had borrowed almost 1000 from me…and gave it to my sister who was studying abroad. This sister has never cared about taking my parents money or caring about how their financial situation affects everyone. She has since been diagnosed with BPD…I get that I have some unresolved family issues, so that may be coming out as I type here, but I also wanted to provide context into why I feel the way I do. I was also heavily parentified being the oldest, with an extreme sense of responsibility, even as an adult, for the well being of my siblings and parents. I have”sacrificed” (I say it in quotes because I know it was my choice and I take responsibility, but looking back I don’t agree with how it was all handled and felt my parents should’ve been more of the adults and allowed me to try and build my young adult like without the burden of caring for children that were not mine) a lot of time, money and opportunity so I could focus on trying to “save “ them (I have gone over this complex I have in therapy and I’m still working through it, but take responsibility for my actions in perpetuating the cycle)
I could go into more detail about the difficulties and struggles my parents face, and how life has gotten harder and harder for them. My mom is an enabler because she has trouble with people disliking her, yet burns bridges with people who genuinely care because she ends up accidentally taking advantage of them to focus on for example, her kids who are not actually doing anything to help and causing more issues in the family. My siblings are beginning to hate her, threaten to cut her off from meeting her future grandkids, etc I will be on the last line for cutting her off, because I genuinely believe she is such a loving person who has never been able to totally focus on her and has just been running on fumes for years. However, through therapy I’ve also come to recognize she is an adult who has had the opportunity to change her behavior (my dad too) to try and get a more positive outcome, but they have chosen to remain stubborn, and say it is because they have no time, but that part just isn’t true, it would take a lot of work and reorganizing at this point, but changes could be made. I have literally bought my mom therapy appointments, set them up, (I control her calendar for work so I know when she’s free and I handle all business scheduling so I know what appointments are important to the firm so I try to schedule when we have a few days without major deadlines) and my mom still says she is too busy
Anyway, finally to the point of this post, my mom owes me over 10k in promised payment, and I have been working full time. She has given me the amount I’ve needed to pay my half of the rent at my place (I live with my partner, who is genuinely shocked at the behavior of my parents and our family dynamics, but is very loving and supporting regardless, even to my family) but besides that, I’ve just been floundering. I don’t know where the money goes after we bill, but my mom is always complaining we don’t have money in the account. However she has not forgotten she owes me, and always brings up how she wants to get me paid, but I am continuing to struggle and don’t know when that will happen. I know she will, but when? The other aspect of this is my sister (the one with BPD) just graduated law school and was supposed to help us with the firm to help pay for her bar prep and bar fees, but she has managed to avoid work and I know my mom is just going to pay for it all anyway. However, I’m not mad cause I’m very proud of my sister and what she has accomplished with her mental health struggles however, that means her work has fallen into me, and not only am I helping with my duties and hers,I am expected to set up all the automations in the firm, handle all the schedules and set up a business for success. That takes time on top of all I am doing, and my mom gets easily frustrated with technology and things and complains this should all be easier and we should get it set up to be automated, have draft emails, etc . I tell her that takes time and money, but she has this idea we can just hire someone to take on the extra work but I’m not even being paid right now, so even the money that could potentially go to me, the person working full time, would be given to a VA to help push the firm forward. I would be okay with that if I really believed we were on our way to making a successful sful, lucrative business, but because of all the issues at home, my mom has barely been able to work. She is emotional and has a short fuse a lot, and it’s hard for me to keep things moving when I need an attorney to do most of the big thing clients pay for when working with a firm. Now she has gotten ill (which I am so upset about but my guess is it is due to stress) and has been out of work for two weeks besides hitting deadlines that need to be hit, she will call me screaming , crying (edit since input syringe instead of crying the first time) that she can’t do this anymore, can’t do the firm, etc. But then being happy and excited the very next day. I always tell her I just want her happy and to take care of herself, but she needs to let me know so I can find new work and build my life. I feel stuck in limbo and know I need to take actions to help myself, but I still wanted to try and help my mom as much as possible and see if the firm could still be built. However, yesterday my non working sister (studying for the bar) called me to show me the new outfits she had gotten and how she was going to go out with some friends, I love those types of calls from my sister but it made me realize my mom was still giving her money, fun money not just get ready for the bar money, and I’m here struggling and my partner is picking up the slack. One of my brothers, who I have lent money to multiple times in the last few months (he always pays me back in a timely manner) who said he couldn’t afford to do things he wanted and had to sell his EDC ticket, is now at EDC and my mom has no money in her account so my guess is she helped him. My dad works too so they are surviving, but she complains about the mortgage and bills to me a lot, so I feel guilty adding to her stress especially with her being sick, but I’m kind of at the end of my rope here after seeing she is still not prioritizing paying her employee (even if I am her daughter and have a lot of empathy for the situation)
I know I wrote a lot but I feel like I could have provided so much more context. Once she is feeling better I know I’m going to have another talk with her, but I don’t know if I should just say I’m done once we finish up our current case load and to not bring on any more clients unless she hires someone else cause I feel she’d be more likely to pay them. I want to believe it could be different and my mom could figure out how to build this firm professionally going forward, but I just don’t know if I’m being idealistic. Anyways, I do really wish I could get the money I’m owed to put into my own business that I have put on hold to do this (thinking I could help my mom AND save some money to put towards my own business which my mom was on board with and wanted because she sees the firm as a way to help all the kids finance their own dreams, and she really means that which is one example of why I say my mom is genuinely a good and kind person who loves her kids) part of me wants to say that if she wants to keep saying she “can’t do this” anymore that I am quitting and I hope she takes the time to focus on taking care of herself because I can’t stand by and watch her do the same stuff that will stress her into an early grave which genuinely scares me but is how I feel. Granted even if she isn’t working she is kind of addicted to stress so it may not change anything but there is part of me that hopes it would. Plus, they obviously need the money so it is probably just wishful thinking.
Anyway, sorry for the ramble, maybe I needed to get my feelings out, but I am wondering if anyone has any advice? Have you been in a situation like this and how did you handle it? Please be kind to my parents, but truthful as any help would be appreciated.
TLDR Summary
Busy Mom of 6 with good heart is my employer and has not paid me what is owed, but spends money on my siblings and has a history of doing things like this. I know she is struggling financially. How do I approach her and what is my best course of action to resolve and help versus just being harsh and cutting it all off?

I would like to give a major shout out (and will be doing so directly to Delta as well) to the flight crew and the passengers who saved a man's life last night on my flight from Ft. Myers to Minneapolis.
An elderly man in first class went into cardiac arrest. The flight crew called for medical help and literally 10-12 people passengers came from all directions to offer their help. (There must have been a few medical conferences/events happening in Fort Myers/Naples because there were several orthopedic surgeons on board.) Luckily, one passenger was a trauma neurosurgeon. She along with one of the ortho surgeons and a flight attendant who had previously been a nurse (and the support of the rest of the flight crew) set up an IV for meds and used the AED and did compressions until the man came around. I've never been so happy to hear someone talking than when the patient began to answer each time they called his name. The flight attendant held his hand while we landed and when he thanked them, she said, "We would do this all over again just for you." These people worked quickly, carefully, and with assurance to save this man's life. It was amazing to witness. Other passengers moved seats or held equipment/supplies on their laps to support the medical team. Two men physically supported the man's elderly wife during landing because she wanted to stay on the ground with her husband instead of taking a seat. (Note that this is the second time I have witnessed this life-saving effort on board a Delta flight and, oddly enough, on the exact same route and with a passenger in the same exact row and side of the plane as this man. That first man left the plane still unconscious and I've wondered ever since if he made it.)
Our flight diverted to Des Moines where EMS boarded and took the man to a local hospital. We stayed on the ground in Des Moines for a little over an hour after the man and his family left while the pilots completed critical paperwork about the medical event and then filed a flight plan to get us back to Minneapolis. A cleaning crew boarded to take care of any bio hazards left behind. We were able to get up and use rest rooms. Flight crew passed out waters. One flight attendant stopped at each first class seat to confirm passenger names and emails in order to send out a thank you from Delta. They were very professional and it was actually pretty amazing to see them return to their regular work so quickly after such a profound event.
I would also like to add that there were three men in first class - each sporting full-on branded gear from the large commercial real estate company in Edina, MN that they work for (or, in one case, founded) - who seemed not to appreciate the seriousness of the situation. One took pictures of the man on the ground more than once during the incident and sent it out to friends. They asked the flight crew for drinks (during). They joked loudly about whether they would want to die on other airlines (like Spirit). Once we had landed and were on the ground in Des Moines, after the passenger and his family had been removed and while we waited to depart for Minneapolis, they complained about the length of time we were on the ground telling the flight attendants to let the pilot know "R is for reverse." They complained that they couldn't be served alcohol while on the ground. One literally got up and accosted the pilot at the cockpit door, telling him to hurry things along. They called Delta customer service while on board to complain and see if they could make the flight leave faster, and then later to get more points for their trouble. They joked about how they should have stayed in Florida and gotten more hookers and gone back to Twin Peaks for drinks. When we landed, no surprise that these entitled captains of American finance jumped in front of other passengers to deplane more quickly as well.
I hope they know that should anything happen to them on board, Delta's crew and passengers with medical expertise would step in and do this for them too, no questions asked. These crew members, these passengers who are willing to put their skills and experience to use, and the passengepatient and their families who never wanted or expected this to happen on board deserve their respect.

In a fascinating study, evidenced for a possible landing sight for Lehi in America has been discovered within easy travel distance to Palmyra, NY. If substantiated, it could add weight to an Atlantic migration, the controversial Solutrean Hypothesis, in addition to the traditional Siberian route. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/05/19/first-americans-chesapeake-parsons-island/
The link is behind a pay wall. Here’s the article
PARSONS ISLAND, Md. — With the Chesapeake Bay sloshing at his knee-high boots, Darrin Lowery stood back and squinted at a 10-foot-tall bluff rising above a narrow strip of beach. To the untrained eye, this wall of sandy sediment is the unremarkable edge of a modest island southeast of the Bay Bridge. To Lowery, a coastal geologist, its crumbling layers put the island at the center of one of the most contentious battles in archaeology: when and how humans first made their way into the Americas. The story of the first Americans has long been a matter of public and scientific fascination, undergirded at times by vicious disagreements. The timeline of when people arrived has shifted earlier in grudging steps over the past century, and scientists today mostly agree people were in the Americas at least 15,000 years ago. Story continues below advertisement
Lowery’s site and others like it could revise the story again, pushing back the timeline earlier than most experts thought possible. In total, Lowery and a motley crew of collaborators have discovered 286 artifacts from the site on the island’s southwestern edge. The oldest, they reported, was embedded with charcoal dated to more than 22,000 years ago, a time when much of the continent would have been covered in ice sheets. If Lowery is right, Parsons Island could rewrite American prehistory, opening up a host of new puzzles: How did those people get here? How many waves of early migration were there? And are these mysterious people the ancestors of Native Americans?
Casts of tools found at Parsons Island are seen on display. Lowery and his team have unearthed 286 artifacts from the site so far. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) New claims of sites dated this far back face a wall of skepticism, rooted in legitimate scientific scrutiny and in the threat they pose to long-entrenched views. To complicate matters, Lowery — who has been affiliated with the Smithsonian but does much of his work independently — presented the results of his study of Parsons Island in a 260-page manuscript posted online rather than in a traditional peer-reviewed journal. The peer-review process is designed to help validate scientific claims, but Lowery argues that in archaeology it often leads to a circle-the-wagon mentality, allowing scientists to wave away evidence that doesn’t support the dominant paradigm. He says he isn’t seeking formal publishing routes because “life’s too short,” comparing this aspect of academic science to “the dumbest game I’ve ever played.”
The island is also a challenging site to study for a variety of reasons — most poignantly because it is rapidly eroding as the land subsides and sea level rises. The spot where the artifacts were found is now covered by the choppy waters of the bay. “The visit reinforced my will to invest my time into this time period, because it’s a very fragile record,” said Sebastien Lacombe, an archaeologist at Binghamton University, who visited the island in 2017. “It’s at risk of disappearing, and we’re at risk of [allowing] these sites and artifacts to lose their meaning forever.” ‘A weirdo kid’
Darrin Lowery walks a beach on Parsons Island. Most of the artifacts were excavated by erosion, discovered on the beach after they had already fallen out of the bluff. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Lowery began exploring the Chesapeake shoreline as a child, wandering his backyard on Tilghman Island, about 15 miles southwest from Parsons Island. In 1977, 9-year-old Lowery picked up a distinctive fluted stone projectile point. A few years later, he saw something similar on a documentary on public television, in which a Smithsonian archaeologist explained it was a Clovis point, a relic of what most people then believed were the first Americans. For the last half of the 20th century, the peopling of the Americas followed a tidy narrative. Humans traveled from Siberia across a land bridge that connected Asia and North America during the last Ice Age, when sea levels dropped. They then migrated southward around 13,000 years ago, when the ice sheets covering the continent retreated and exposed a previously impassable inland route. These people — named after a site in Clovis, N.M. — left behind distinctive, fluted stone points that have since been found scattered across North America. Story continues below advertisement
Lowery turned to his dad and said, “I found one of those.” He found more by walking the shoreline every day. Lowery made discoveries as he meandered, and he began to understand how seasonal patterns, sediment movement, wind and waves could unearth ancient treasures. “I was a weirdo kid,” he recalled. He trained as a geologist, and it was geology that initially attracted Lowery to study Parsons Island. In 2010, he published an article in Quaternary Science Reviews describing layers of windblown silt deposited between 13,000 and 41,000 years ago at Miles Point in eastern Maryland. But the geological record is like reading the CliffsNotes version of a book, and he was frustrated by an “unconformity” in the sediment layers where thousands of years were missing, like someone had ripped out those chapters.
Parsons Island is rapidly eroding. The archaeological site is now covered by the Chesapeake Bay. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Lowery and a colleague were prowling around in a whaler, looking for a spot that might fill in the blanks, when they spotted a black streak of sediment rising up out of the bay. They pulled up to Parsons Island and thought they had found “the Rosetta stone” to decode the geology. Parsons is a 78-acre island less than a mile offshore that is privately owned by the Corckran family, which uses it as a family retreat. With the Corckrans’ permission, Lowery and colleagues began to visit regularly. The bluff layers preserved a remarkably intact geologic timeline going back more than 40,000 years. Then, one morning in August 2013, the team discovered a leaf-shaped prehistoric stone tool jutting out of this crumbling wall. They knew from the work they’d already done that it was probably quite old. Story continues below advertisement
On a recent visit to the island, geoarchaeologist Daniel Wagner demonstrated why. He stepped back to scan the cliff, then tapped a narrow spade into a light tan sediment layer just above his head. That, he said, is the geologic “chapter” where they’d expect to find Clovis artifacts. Lower layers were set down before Clovis. The palm-size tool Lowery and his colleague found came out of the dark sediment layer near their knees. The scientists used two methods to date the sediment around the artifact, both showing it was more than 20,000 years old. They scoured the beach on 93 visits and conducted a formal, top-down excavation, collecting the 286 artifacts. They sent out sediment to labs that specialize in studying ancient pollen and microfossils called phytoliths to help reconstruct the ecosystem at the time. Back then, this region wouldn’t have been a coastline. The sediment the tools are embedded in dates to the “last glacial maximum” — the scientific term for the most recent coldest period of the Ice Age. In the final analysis, Lowery thinks the artifacts may have been transported downslope before they were buried, making them between 15,000 and 20,500 years old. “This was a swale, where water was collecting,” Lowery said, envisioning the ancient landscape. “You’ve got a dune. It’s got sedges and small trees on it that are windblown and all contorted, and then behind it you’ve got a little pond.” That pond may have attracted prehistoric bison, musk ox and llamas, whose fossilized molars he’s found scattered on the island shore. And it may have been what attracted the mysterious people who left behind a cache of stone tools. A story in flux
Parsons Island is seen from nearby Kent Island in the Chesapeake Bay. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Parsons Island is the latest addition to a growing list of what are called pre-Clovis sites. But while the long-held “Clovis First” theory has crumbled over the past three decades, that has only deepened the debate about how much earlier the first Americans arrived. Claims of early sites present a challenge on two fronts. The first is technical: Dating a site convincingly can be difficult, depending on the context. Sediments can shift or be disturbed. What at first look like artifacts can turn out to be “geofacts,” created not by humans but by natural processes or animals. As a result, many pre-Clovis sites “enjoy a Warhol-esque 15 minutes of fame, and then they disappear” because of real problems with the geology or the methods, said archaeologist James Adovasio. In 1973, he began excavating Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, which dated back 16,000 years. It was instantly mired in controversy, and the site still has its critics today. The second challenge reflects the culture of science. For a long time, people who claimed to find pre-Clovis sites were swimming upstream against deeply entrenched thinking. Tom Dillehay, an archaeologist at Vanderbilt University, began working on a site in southern Chile called Monte Verde in 1977, which was dated to 14,500 years ago. He recalled a group of researchers he calls the “Clovis police,” scientific gatekeepers who summarily rejected any pre-Clovis sites, sometimes for valid reasons and sometimes as a knee-jerk reaction. Monte Verde began to change that. In 1997, a group of respected archaeologists visited the site and declared it authentic. “It took about 25 to 30 years for Monte Verde to be accepted,” Dillehay said. “We went through hell.”
Holly, a German shorthaired pointer, runs across a bluff top on Parsons Island. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Lowery says he isn’t interested in running that gantlet. He noted that he drew on multiple labs and methods for dating the Parsons Island artifacts in an effort to ensure that any one extremely old date isn’t a fluke. He’s also invited other researchers in to visit and study the site. That approach irritates some scientists. David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University, said in an email that he would not discuss Lowery’s claims “until they go through the wringer of peer review and get published.” Others like Stuart Fiedel, an independent archaeologist based in western Massachusetts who has been skeptical of other sites, say the site should not fly under the radar just because of Lowery’s unconventional process. Story continues below advertisement
“There are people I know in the field who will not pay any attention to it, because it has not been peer-reviewed, which I think is kind of sticking your head in the sand,” Fiedel said. “It’s there. We can’t act as [if] nothing’s been found there.” Share this article Share
A bigger issue may be the site’s rapid erosion. Most of the artifacts were found after they’d fallen out of the bluff, which means their place in the geologic timeline is obscured. Nine artifacts were found in place, and only three were able to be dated using charcoal flecks found next to them. Steven Forman, a geoscientist at Baylor University, helped date the sediment layers at Parsons Island, corroborating findings from another lab. He said that it’s hard to find the artifacts in the kind of bulletproof geological context needed to support extraordinary claims. “The case is not as tight as we like to see it with other sites,” Forman said. Michael Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University who has worked on pre-Clovis sites and excavated at Parsons Island, thinks he probably got there too late, when most of the artifacts had already been eroded out. Still, he pays someone to monitor the bank profile on a regular basis, because he’s ready to jump on a plane if they see something in place. “Too bad we didn’t get there four to five years sooner,” Waters said. Enter ancient DNA
An ancient bovine tooth is among the fossils found so far on Parsons Island. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Parsons Island isn’t the only site that could dramatically push back human arrival in the Americas. Last fall, a study published in the journal Science described fossilized human footprints discovered at White Sands National Park in New Mexico that have been dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago. That stunning finding suggests people were here during the Ice Age — much earlier than most experts thought possible if the first humans arrived via the Bering land bridge and inland corridor. The dates at White Sands are still being disputed because of questions about the methods. But the timeline collides head-on with another exciting line of evidence: studies of ancient DNA. By examining genetic material preserved in bones and teeth and comparing those samples to modern populations, scientists have been able to track when populations mingled and became isolated from one another, offering a new window into patterns of human migration. Story continues below advertisement
In broad strokes, they’ve found that the ancestors of Native Americans split from ancient Siberian populations no earlier than 23,000 years ago. The studies can’t say where such splits took place, but many scientists interpret genetic evidence to mean that the ancestors of modern people weren’t in the Americas until much later. Genetic studies suggest that Native American ancestors traveled into what is now the United States between 17,500 and 14,600 years ago. Joe Watkins, a senior consultant for Archaeological and Cultural Education Consultants in Tucson and a Choctaw tribal member, said that he sees a few problems with using the still-evolving DNA evidence to decide how ancient sites are related to modern-day people. “The reality is genetics does not equal culture,” Watkins said. He also argued that there are still too few samples of ancient DNA in the Americas to be sure they capture the whole story. “Trying to create population histories based on 10 people, if you will, is a little bit of a scientific conundrum,” Watkins said. It could be that additional ancient genomes will one day help fill in the blanks. Another possibility is that earlier sites could represent small, isolated groups of people who didn’t contribute to the ancestry of living Native Americans.
A tree-lined path leads to a beach on Parsons Island. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) “Let’s suppose you have a successful population colonizing an area, and then one day, 15 males go out and get eaten by a short-faced bear,” Lowery said. “You reduce the genetic diversity, and bada boom, bada bing, game over.” All this explodes the neat picture of one population migrating into the Americas as ice sheets retreated, hunting big animals like mammoths and giant sloths, driving them into extinction as they went. If there were small groups making their way into the New World, with different stone tool technologies, and far earlier than previously believed, how did they get here? People could have migrated along the coast by boat, following a “kelp highway.” It’s also possible the ice sheet was not as impenetrable as experts have long thought. Lowery’s longtime collaborator, Dennis Stanford, proposed that people crossed the Atlantic Ocean in what is known as the Solutrean Hypothesis, though that idea has been rejected by many archaeologists. To resolve the question, scientists need to keep looking for more evidence. Archaeology is a historical science, and unlike chemistry or biomedicine, where researchers can perform the same experiment over and over again to see if they get the same results, consensus is built by argument, counterargument and new evidence. To a certain extent, older ideas and prejudices also fall away as new people enter the field, said James Feathers, who performed dating on samples from Parsons Island before he retired from the University of Washington. “Sometimes you have to wait for people to die off,” Feathers said.
Alex Corckran, whose family owns Parsons Island, stands on a beach on the southern side of the island. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Lowery is determined to keep motoring around the Chesapeake, researching the ephemeral landscape that he loves and that may contain clues about human prehistory. He acknowledges that the sites, perhaps a little bit like him, are “persnickety” but that shouldn’t deter interest in them. Instead, it should spur more. He noted that if a pod of silverfish was found gnawing on documents in the National Archives, people would be galvanized to act. “I view it as my swan song,” Lowery said, “to say you can learn a lot from [an] eroding site if you do a little bit of effort and look at it systematically.”
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Hi everyone,
I need some advice regarding a difficult situation I'm facing with a sublet in Toronto. Here’s what happened:
I found a room for rent in Toronto through phone conversations with the person renting it out. The area seemed nice, and the pictures looked decent, so I decided to move in. I was aware from the beginning that she was not the unit owner and that I was subletting from her.
When I arrived, it became clear that the person was a hoarder, and her living conditions were unclean. The room I was renting had a broken window, which she promised to fix. Shortly after moving in, it became apparent that she had severe mental health issues. She had several intense outbursts and even described how she would assault and intimidate others.
Things escalated when she physically attacked me. I called the police, and when they arrived, they spoke with both of us. She fabricated lies about me and claimed that I was evicted. She had already posted a new ad for the room on Kijiji.
I was given until the next morning to leave, but I decided to leave that night for my safety. I requested a refund for the current month and the last month's rent, but I haven’t received anything yet.
What steps can I take to get my money back? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance for your help!

This is a question for those of you who are in the commercial side of things. Does HR have a different class of support for commercial customers using their official commercial equipment?
In the IT world, for example, we have service level agreements (SLA) to guarantee uptime in order to keep a business chugging along.
How does HR support its commercial customers if something fails? And for this example, let's assume we are using HR's entry commercial unit (the $10k one, a step higher than the XL line).
In the bigger picture, I'm trying to figure out if two XL Pros would be a safer bet (redundancy wise) than one commercial unit, and whether I would have to go through mind numbing T1 support first with any XL issues, versus receiving a dedicated class of support as a commercial HR customer.
Thanks for any experiences you can offer!

You have to believe that if you are to take anything away from this. I am not crazy. Never have been. Every great genius, I believe, says it at some point before others come to realize it for themselves. I am not crazy. All this happened, more or less.
I first saw the woman. Her eyes melted into tar, turned to smoke, and, as soot, fell on the ground as a shadow. Then came the after-effect woosh of a blade through air. Then the echo of fine steel turned tuning-fork. Somewhere along there I realized I’d forgotten to run. So I did.
A step, another step. Step and then step. After a few of those, I looked up to get a sense of what was going around. The town was burning. There came the bone-tremor of a church bell crashing down from far too high. A grain silo exploded. The seeds burst out in a cloud of smoke and then came the ignition. I pictured the grandest 4th of July I’d ever seen and imagined the fireworks, not a kilometer, but 50 yards from my face. I then realized I wasn’t imagining jack shit.
I ducked into a building as an autumn-leaf-wind of fire rushed down the street in a tidal wave. There appeared a door behind me where there had been none and then a dozen hands where there’d been maybe seven. I was dragged under the floorboards by the digging of nails then claws then teeth.
‘Say it tickles’, came a whisper by my right ear. Some old hag shouted from my left: “Lying bitch! “. “Don’t listen to her, sweetie”, replied the woman-floorboard-voice, “Say it tickles. Just trust me, they’ll let you go. I’m not her, never like her. I won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t hurt a fly” . The hag bellowed a laugh: “Lying bitch bitch bitch bitch… “.
I’d like to say I found it surprising that two shrill voices arguing was more irritating than being eaten by a house but I don’t think anyone who’s ever witnessed a proper cat-fight would believe me. Before I could take a splinter from the boards and end myself came the tickle of a feather upon my feet. It turned into rope, rope into spider web and before long I was being dragged away in the darkness.
There was this beam of light and I found myself settled down on a bed of straw. I had a moment or two to catch my breath too. I thanked the spider like so many citizens of New York before me and it gave a quick nod as it disappeared between the brick side of the house-turned barn. I almost had another moment then. But the bricks parted once again and came crashing out the boot I’d left behind. The spider web turned into a nose and then into a mouth that shouted: “Disgusting!”.
Shut the fuck up Jim. Jimbo. Whatever you call yourself. Sorry. People are loud around here before pill time and I got me a temper. I can’t just shout at some old dude so I gotta type it out. Hope you don’t mind. Back on the trakata track.
Feeling pretty ashamed, I got back on the way. Way? I know less than you do. No way. I just kept walking. The embers of the town soon started thinning around and I found myself shivering in my summer clothes. I don’t know why but I got to walking in the shade and, soon enough, I didn’t feel so cold any more.
I paused with a finger in the air and set my back against a tree. I tried my best to just take a deep breath and relax despite its bark that kept trying to give me a back-rub. I thought for a moment about, not it all, but pretty much nothing at all. And God knows those are the only times you think anything. I realized the sun was cold.
I played my fingers through the beams of light passing through the canopy and held them out over the path. A numbness settled on them in less than a minute so I pulled them back
I looked back at the town then. I saw the strange reflections the non-metal-metal roof-tiles cast back at that sun. I saw how all the buildings were sunken into the ground. I saw that I didn’t see a single window anywhere.
Finally, I saw something hanging from the cathedral’s spire, some half-kilometer high. It was frozen and a cross and on it, as with some crosses, was a man. I raised an arm and saluted myself. Then I realized I’d saluted myself. And then so did I and then I realized that I had that I had and then I realized.
At some point along those lines, I noticed that my mind had come unbound and was bouncing between my two selves. Cloudy, cloudy and cold cold cold memories were in my Jesus-self’s mind. Black holes, revelations, origins of symmetry I don’t fucking know. And somewhere, distant and distant as stars, the memory of the very moment we were living.
I saw then a man like me. He looked like you and he looked like me but somehow he did not feel the same. Always over my shoulder, looking over what I did. Always lurking at the edge, a hunger-unending. One thought, just one in its head. To be me. To be me. To be me. To come out into the light. That was the first time I met my shadow.
I didn’t cause I couldn’t but I saw it smile. Him? I don’t know if he would be mad if he heard me speaking of him like this. Him him him him. Him to the weekend. Cold fucking play man. Bio-digital jazz, man. I don’t know. I don’t know. Honestly, don’t really care. Haven’t seen him in a while. The lights in my room come from everywhere and the walls are all white so I don’t sleep which is when he finds me. I don’t care. Back to the memory.
Then I blinked and the cathedral was gone some miles away and then I blinked and it was gone all the way. I blinked. The forest had given way to jagged hills. I blinked. Still jagged hills. I blinked. Mountains to the West. I blinked. Mountains to the West. I blinked x11. Mountains to the East. Teleportation was lamer than I’d expected.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahikHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Sorry sorry. Don’t you also ever get the urge to just tweak the fuck out sometimes? Youre in class and you realize: “Dude, I could literally molest Ms Robinson rn before anyone had any chance to stop me”. Those thoughts are invariably dangerous but your mind thinks them anyway. Assuming that your mind likes itself, what reason can there be for their existence other than that they are good then? Anyway, excuse the digression.
So I kept doing this for a while. I don’t know if my body experienced time. No, scratch that. I know it did but I don’t know how. I had a beard grow for a few dozen eye-blinks but then it was gone. I felt a finger-nail, finger-long, scrape against my leg but a few blinks later I was missing that arm from the elbow down.
I was pretty determined to keep on doing this. I think everyone knows the feeling. When you’re a little kid and you close your eyes and you pretend to be blind for a few hours, for a little bit of fun? But then I saw the village again. I’d been going for so long that I didn’t really notice it at first but then I saw it again. And then again. I think it was my 7th time around this world that I finally got a hold of myself.
Honestly, I’d thought about this ever since I saw that scp thing. I slowly closed one eye and then another and then another. Voila! Blinking was no more. Tis but a fool’s imitation of blindness anyway. (I’ve realized similar things about sleep too).
I stepped onto the town square of cobblestone of hexagons. Inside the hexagons were triangles and between those stardust. I stared deep into those cracks and realized I was looking through. I moved back and forth and noticed the parallax of the night sky but awry. Before I knew, the floor became a wall and I was falling.
I was lucky that I had been lying down close to the ground. My chin began scraping against the stones as I fell. Then I started to spin back. I grabbed a stone but it came loose and laughed at me a toothless laugh of rock. As I spun, the sky that was a wall became a wall sky and the sky-through-floor just a floor. The gravity changed at points.
The eastern horizon blurred to a disk of sundown glow and the West a twilight lantern. I was spinning so fast I began to hear the woosh of my body cutting through air. Woosh-Woosh-Woosh-Woosh.
I felt myself pass through something. It was a neck. In my wake, I saw a woman melt into night-stuff. I tapped against my chest so my woosh became a metal clang. That finally got myself to start running. I was in a slower type of time than I was right then so I didn’t hear myself say: “Go beyond the church” but I knew I must have because I told myself and then I did, had?
Up turns to down, down to up. Life to dust and metal to rust. I understood, some time in the future that gravity in this land was a matter of taste. I must have sent back that information but time doesn’t really exist when your existence is independent from it, does it now? As I was destined, as I came to know, I had always known and just not known that I’d known. That distinction doesn’t seem legitime to me either but hey, go take it up with the authorities. God knows I tried. I calmed myself and before too long touched down ground back at the hexagon-triangle-square.
I plucked one stone and then another. At first I could only see a few stars but my eyesight grew keener and keener as the wind from across the cobblestone filled my mind. Soon enough, I could see in every stone I unplugged, a million, million stars waiting for me. High up above, I could clearly see, my soul looking back down at me. He smiled reassuringly. He took me by the hand and took me to the beginning of all time.
I saw God then. What do you do when you know everything, when you are everything? I saw then the loneliest man there ever was. All he could do, all he knew he would do would be lesser than him. No one would keep him company. I saw a good that had no reason to be. And so, he became the reason for everything. And then there was light.
I saw then the part of my soul that ran away from the brilliance of that good. That would not, could not, believe itself to be worthy of such love. A part of my soul ran away and, cast in its own shadow, became the root of all shadow-things. I watched myself become satan.
I was back at the clearing. I saw then the summer sun shining down, burning my skin. It was cold. I passed my hand in front of my eyes and saw my shadow brush its fingers against my face. I saw myself then, again. I saw a shadow touch a shadow’s hand.
Bout all I can for the day. Ever since Ethan tried to kill himself with the keyboard they’ve been little bitches about us using the computers. Of course I could tell them it was really the keyboard who started it but Ethan’s depressed so anything he does has to be about his mental condition so they won’t believe me.
But don’t worry. As I said, I am a genius. I know things no one else knows and I can prove it. Feel free to ask about your future and I’ll tell you what I’ll feel like the next time the doctors let me out of their sight. Go long on copper futures.

If you're curious about my thoughts on previous Yakuza games, here are my much shorter (except for 4, thats pretty long too) reviews for Kiwami 1, Kiwami 2, Yakuza 3 (Remastered), and Yakuza 4 (Remastered).
All of my reviews are made pretty quickly after I finish the game, this was written right after I finished but I haven't posted it till a month later because its so long I thought no one would ever read this but whatever I gotta get my truth out there.
Per usual I played the remaster of Yakuza 5. I'm not sure of any outstanding changes or things of note like with 3 or 4, but if something I say is exclusive to the remaster please let me know! I may sound overly praising or overly critical of this game, who knows but please be kind when you tell me i'm an idiot for feeling the way I do! Lastly and most importantly please please please don't spoil future games in the comments! Also warning I'm way too active in the comments section.
Because I am an utter psycho and decided to write a fuckin bibles worth of yakuza 5 ramblings, Part 1 is just reviewing the plot and Part 2 goes over everything else. I split this up last second so there's likely some spots where I say something like "we'll expand on this later" then I never bring it up again, that's because it's probably in part 2. If you want my thoughts on things like the substories, side stories, gameplay, and settings you can read Part 2 here: https://www.reddit.com/yakuzagames/comments/1cvrybw/yakuza_5_a_mega_big_ole_reviewsummary_for_a_big/
The Plot:
Like with Y4, I will discuss my thoughts on each section of the game rather than in one long chunk just because I find it more fun. I'm not even gonna try to not summarize this time because this game is so big it needs broken down.
Part 1: Kiryu
You might often find me compare Y5 to Y4 a lot in this review because they're honestly quite similar games and feel like a package. When I started playing 4 I was worried I wouldn't like playing as primarily strangers for a majority of the game, but one thing they did absolutely right was making Kiryu the final protagonist you play as in that game. So going into 5 I was very apprehensive about starting off with Kiryu, I worried they showed their hand too soon and that it would be difficult to stay invested the whole time.
With this feeling going into the game, I was immediately somewhat losing it over Kiryu being an incognito taxi driver with the worst disguise of all time (some sunglasses and a face mask, don't worry he's literally the only one in the game that seems to think it's a good disguise). Right off the bat, this game feels...sad. Kiryu watching Haruka giving an interview on the TV and storming out rather then defend her to some losers who don't get what ART is, was SAD. This part of the game felt so mundane for awhile, but not in a bad way! You wakeup as Kiryu, walk to work, drive your taxi, and go home late at night (usually) alone. The whole time my eyes were drawn to a facedown picture frame and wondering what it could be, but I certainly had a guess. Kiryu is going through a hard, isolating, and depressing time and you can feel that so well from the game and how they have you play as him. Anyways there's also a random gal named Mayumi that will not leave Kiryu alone despite him asking her to. All you're doing by the end of chapter one is going "Huhhhhhhh?" Anyways Kiryu is approached by two dudes named Morinaga and Aizawa in chapter 2, telling him Daigo was???? Kidnapped?? GASP.. Admittidly I wasn't too fond of this duo at first. One thing that was consistent through my playthrough is that I was completely incapable of predicting anything correctly, and it had felt like these two were gonna be my pals for the rest of the game and I just wasn't clicking with them. Not to mention this weird semi-one sided-romance going on with Mayumi.
In chapter 3, we begin with the most heartbreaking thing that could ever happen to me, Yakuza 3 superfan. Kiryu has been pushed out of running the orphanage by a lady named Miss Park. It's all making sense now. He does it so the orphanage can have money and so Haruka can follow her dreams. DOESNT MAKE IT EASIER TO DEAL WITH FOR ME :( . Then we meet Watase, first thoughts? I was like "god I hope this guy isn't the main villain he's kinda lame" Soon after we meet Aoyama and I thought literally the same thing. Clearly by this point in the game I didn't have the highest hopes. I was mostly sad and not liking most of the new characters. But then... things take a turn.
Mayumi was actually a spy! thank god honestly. Kiryu meets Aoyama again but then Morinaga shows up and fuckin kills Aoyama and says he buried Aizawa alive HOLY SHIT? and then soon after I'm told Majima is fucking dead. Figured he wasn't actually dead cuz I've seen pictures of him from later games but holy shit I somehow cried just at the THOUGHT of him being dead. Also at some point here we met a detective who is an important player in this story but at this point not too integral. Also before Kiryu leaves he picks up the picture frame and its the orphanage ;-;
Kiryu final thoughts: This part of the game was fantastic. I'm so glad they started with Kiryu in this case despite my initial unsureness with it. Chapter 4 especially is when everything really falls into place and starts going 100 miles an hour but I also love the slowness of the previous 3 chapters. I do wish we got more Morinaga as this is unfortunately the last we hear of him despite this being a wonderful set up to a really interesting villain. Mayumi was a pretty shit character per seemingly always with any full grown woman in Yakuza games. While I think it's cool she was secretly a spy she was clearly an afterthought as we never hear about her again so that's cool. Basically a mixed bag of new characters overall.
Part 2: Saejima
I jokingly said to myself "Wouldn't it be funny if I had to spend half of this section breaking out of prison again. Thank god that's not the case." and continued hanging out with Majima until I was arrested for two more years of serving my sentence and OH NO IM BACK IN THE BUILDING.
Yeah I was VERY unsure about breaking out of prison again being a good call. Thankfully, and sorry to Y4, this is a much better prison sequence. Another thing I was really unsure about was BALD SAEJIMA! But actually... it kinda slays harder? In Y4 he looks like that guy from the game The Hatred (an insult) maybe it wouldn't be so bad if bro washed or brushed it but he never did and so instead bald was a slay. Anyways We're dropped in at nearly the end of Saejima's serving period with his group of friends/cellmates, newest one being some dude named Baba. We are relentlessly tortured by the scariest man I've ever seen, Viktor Zsasz-I MEAN! Kugihara. Who's honestly scarier looking then Zsasz somehow. But it is ON because Viktor Zsasz framed my bestie Baba and I will not let that slide so I beat the fuck out of him and it's revealed Zsasz was instructed to be a dick to me. By who??????????????????? Then it's double revealed to me that Majima is dead and I'm sad all over again :(
Turns out our warden is actually really chill and nice and somewhat tries to help us survive. What a breath of fresh air after Satan (Saito) from Y4. This guy is so cool infact we are encouraged to break out by him. So Baba and I do in the dead of the night and tell me why I cried over leaving my two other cellmates ;_; they were such bros. Zsasz hinders my escape and we fight, but my absolute PAL Himura fuckin shoots him it was an amazing turn of events and I cheered so loud and was devastated to leave him behind but anyways-
FUCK YEA SNOW MOBILES (they were kinda jank to control honestly but its the thought that counts). I am so glad I didn't know I was going to be fighting a bear going into this because that was easily the most camp thing ever and so hilarious. Then some old guy saves me (and later Baba) and we chill in the mountains for a little while. The mountain has a whole crazy detailed side story of it's own that I'll explain in more detail later but basically it was cool.
So then a ton of important stuff happens in Tsukimino, most notably we hang out with Baba in a bar which is great because I love Baba and him and I are super tight and he's easily the only person I could ever trust at this point without potential for betrayal! :)
Anyways me and Baba fuckin kidnap this guy because his chair is by a sewer manhole? He's gone in a flash so all I can imagine is dragging him down the hole by his ankle or something. Then we talk for awhile, Majima is mentioned woohoo, THEN HE'S sniped! The way I gasped. Longstory short :( Baba is the one who sniped him and not only that he kind of set everything up and wasn't my best pal all along :( Why Baba Why? Then Baba basically confesses his love for Saejima and can't go through with killing him, AAAAAAND Im back on the Baba train. That detective I mentioned from earlier arrests Saejima but not to throw him back in jail, to assemble the Yakuza avengers.
Final Saejima thoughts: This was shockingly fantastic. I was probably least impressed with Saejima's section in Y4, so it was shocking to have basically the same structure and general narrative beats but done well. It wasn't perfect, I didn't love it as much as Kiryu's section as I'm partial to a slow burn, but it was fun I have no real complaints, except MAYBE more then one chapter in Tsukimino would be a better choice.
Part 3 (first half): Haruka
I did not know I was going to get the HONOR of playing Haruka going into this game. We start off very strong, dancing to the greatest song of all time "So Much More." I mean we really get the full idol experience here with mean ass teachers and shady management. I didn't expect to get an Idol simulator in my Yakuza game but it might be the best thing ever. I decided right off the bat to put everything I had into this section of the game so immediately I did literally everything I could. Most of this chapter feels like a bit of a reflection of Kiryu's were working and going back home alone, it's all as monotonous and isolating as can be (except you're a predebut idol) and I love this. We quickly meet a girl who will serve as my bestie named Akari and yes I indeed would die for her thank you. Meeting Akari introduces us to this sections version of combat, DANCE BATTLES! I know some people might be disappointed you don't get to punch people as Haruka, and I get that, but this feels like a more genuine gameplay style for her character. It's hard to imagine Haruka fighting thugs in the street due to her personality (not that i'd be against it, especially after that weird virtual reality game where I get to wack dudes with a wand) plus I found this gameplay style so refreshing. I was never groaning or sighing because I had to dance against someone. I think it helps that I wasn't forced to do it 15 times in a row walking down the street, but I had the option to most of the time unless it was part of a quest. Maybe that's how all the gameplay should be? I don't mind being approached by thugs sometimes but it always feels like it happens too often in these games and with getting the option to while getting to walk around carefree otherwise in Haruka's section was just SO NICE.
Anyways, We get the whole set up here, we are participating in a competition show that will single handedly set the course for our debut. We're competing against this band called T-set. I hate them so much. They're so mean :(. At some point we see Miss Park absolutely SLAY and tell off Haruka's dance teacher and she doesn't take his shit at all. At this point I was like "Uh ohhhh I don't wanna like her but...she kinda rocks" my decent into stanning Miss Park only continues from there. We have to go convince some guy named Christina (interesting name to take but also a slay, much respect to Mr. Christina and his fedora) to be our new dance instructor. This causes drama with me and Akari which devastated me because I love Akari but we made up like immediately so it's chill.
Then at one point, I forgot the context, Haruka is shopping for a gift for Miss Park when stupid T-set shows up and STEPS ON THE BROACH I BOUGHT FOR HER. I was back and forth on them until now, now they may burn in hell. Especially after they made Haruka get on her knees and beg for forgiveness like ???? what gives ??? Park shows up and SLAYS and gets rid of them. Park then wears the broach :(((((((((
Then one of my favorite parts happen in chapter 2, Haruka and Miss Park go hit the town and just bond together. It's so stinking cute I wanted to cry. This whole time I was trying to not get emotionally attached to Park because it really felt like she was gonna end up betraying us. But the night continued and we get some mother daughter vibes going, even so far as holding hands????? Also Im somewhat glad I didn't get to wear the outfit I bought at the store with Park because I was going for a Cheetah girls inspired look then realized far too late how tacky that might come off, not everyone is Raven Symone ya know?
Anyways at this point I'm like wow this is the cutest game ever, nothing can ever go wrong, Park MIGHT betray me but I don't even care. She gives us a cool pen and a tragic anime backstory with an abusive ex husband and everything and we call it a night Well the next fuckin day my world crumbles because PARK IS DEAD! She "committed suicide" as if!
Part 3 (second half): Akiyama
I can't tell you how devastated I was to realize I'd only get to play as Akiyama for half of a section of the game. However, I was also thrilled to see him at all. Apparently he's opening a Satenbori office and also he is the one who financed Park's dream to debut Haruka so that's how he has a hand in all this. There is tragically very little Hana, she calls you twice and both times were fantastic but I wish I had more :(. Anyways Akiyama has heard about Park's death and goes to the office and meets Haruka. I didn't think they'd even really know each other and assumed we'd have an interesting reveal that they both know Kiryu later but nah they know each other. It honestly probably works better this way because we don't have time for such trivial things! Akiyama is a fuckin detective now. I don't know why he has been tasked to do this but he does it so well I don't even mind. He quickly figures out Park didn't actually kill herself and they simply need evidence to prove this. I'm unsure when this happens but at some point while talking about the mystery SOMEONE FALLS OFF THE ROOF! It was Horie :( who I haven't mentioned yet but he's my manager and a real pal. Thankfully he lived but we found out that the former dance teacher pushed him off. I think he also killed Park or Kanai did, who knows, either way someone did and they suck for it.
Chapter 4 has a lot going on, but basically the president of Osaka talent is sus and he's also the secret chairman of Ousaka Enterprises, which is a different thing... but sounds similar. Ousaka is basically a higher up family in the Omi alliance, so he's part of the bad yakuza!!! Haruka keeps doing the competition and T-set keeps sucking. She wins the princess league by a landslide. I don't even see the point in a third round if she won both of the other rounds? Is the third round just worth more points? Either way Haruka destroyed them and they suck. Her poor vocal instructor is working as her manager now. At some point we find out Parks ex husband was none other then Majima! Which is quite the revelation. Japan is such a small world, everyone seems to know each other. This does mean that Majima at least hit Park (I think after her abortion) and I think he's like 10 years older then her yet they were already married when she debuted at eighteen... Is it time for me to confront the possibility that my favorite crazed murderer might not be the most upstanding citizen?
It ends with Haruka being kidnapped, (nothing out of character there), and Akiyama saving her. He and Haruka make their way to Japan for the big ole concert Park had been planning. Wow this story is really picking up! I hope nothing grinds it to a sudden stop!
Part 3 final thoughts: God this was amazing, every step of it. My only complaint is I wanted more, more Akiyama and MORE dancing but I might be the only one who wanted 40 more hours of dancing. Detective Akiyama and Haruka duo was not the team I knew I needed but Im glad it happened. I found all of the music and gameplay here SO fun and I loved the plot too. I really liked Parks character. I wouldn't necessarily hang out with her, but I found her to be pretty well written and its hard to hate anyone Haruka clearly treasures, I am very sad she is actually dead because up until the end of the game I kept thinking she was going to come back.
Part 4: Shinada:
We have come to a sudden stop. We start with a flashback to 1997 where Shinada has debuted as a baseball player for the wyverns, don't forget this moment because the rest of this section of the game constantly calls back to it. In the modern day Shinada is a loser who is really heavily indebt and lives in a weird grimey rooftop shack. He also now writes like ? smut articles ? And he's friend with a girl named Milky which is the craziest name I've ever heard. A loanshark who talks about his kids a lot constantly follows Shinada around and takes his money. There was a lot of promise with this gag, like maybe instead of letting me keep the 100k and still acting like I'm broke he shows up after every side mission to rob me but nope. At the end of the chapter we run into a masked man who is frankly just Daigo stealing Kiryu's disguise idea.
Shinada and loanshark (his name is Takasugi) walk around town looking for leads on uncovering the truth of Shinada's past. Because you see, Shinada one time got fired from baseball cuz everyone thought he cheated, oh you already knew that? yeah same but don't worry you'll hear it at least 40 more times. Daigo asked him to go look for clues about this, why does he care? I still don't know honestly. Takasugi is forcing him to go because...I guess money? and he's walking around with me and were acting like friends now for some reason. Shinada is incapable of having any agency for himself, he just does what people tell him to. He also keeps nearly dying like a looney tunes character with shit falling out of the sky and stuff. Eventually we find out the Nagoya family fixed the match and then some guy Shinada used to know does get smashed like a looney tunes character. Skip ahead, were called to help by Milky and she betrayed us. I am sad cuz I thought Milky was a friend for life. Turns out literally everyone Shinada knows aside from the fkn loanshark are evil, even the old baseball lady. This plot was so convoluted I frankly don't understand why they were doing what they were doing, all I know is they were more like a neighborhood watch situation then Yakuza even though they seemed to do the exact same thing. Also when I say literally everyone he knows is evil I mean everyone, even his old coach or whatever. For way too long I thought they meant the middle school baseball coach so I was hella confused. Anyways we then find out that actually Takasugi is Shinada's number one baseball fan. Okay? Anyways
Chapter 4 things finally pick up a little. Daigo reveals himself like anyone ever was doubting it was him, and he also reveals he cares because he went to highschool with Shinada. Is that fr how were connecting this? Daigo got expelled from highschool because he protected Shinada from a rival school. Once again, okay? I guess Shinada doesn't like that Daigo is a yakuza and punches him out the door. I wasn't a fan of this. Daigo goes down pretty easily, pitiful Daigo strikes again. I love him but can he do anything right? Anyways I guess the fight meant nothing cuz they're pals now and go to Tokyo together. We get a cut to Takasugi getting his money back from Shinada as well as a signed baseball...okay that's really cute I nearly cried. I wish they actually left it there but instead Shinada runs away last minute to meet up on that stupid baseball field from 1997 that we cant go 5 minutes without hearing about and we fight this guy named Sawada who was like the kind of mastermind and also the pitcher. Had Sawada not thrown an easy pitch, Shinada wouldn't have hit it and thus been kicked out for cheating. We fight some Omi then play baseball and OMG WHY ARE WE DOING THISSSSSS
Finally it ends and we go to Tokyo
Shinada final thoughts: If you cant tell I was not a fan of this. I found Shinada to be really inconsitently written. In side missions or when he's playing off of certain characters he's quite entertaining and un, but most of the time, he seems to just be a blank slate who does whatever and only talks about baseball. And omg maybe if I liked baseball this would have been the best thing ever but we did not need THAT much baseball talk or constant referencing to that baseball game in 1997. I get its central to his character but it became a meme how often he'd get misty eyed and talk about getting kicked out. Why did he move Nagoya to escape his image as a cheating baseball player when 1) he constantly talks about it anyways, 2) everyone literally knows who he is here anyways. They make it seem like at first he wants nothing to do with baseball anymore but he also goes to the batting cages all the time and also thinks about nothing but baseball. The plot here is just SO hard to follow and not at all what I want to be dealing with after we were really in the thick of things with part 3's ending. I'm not saying it was impossible for this to be good, I think there was so much potential here! Like seemingly all of Yakuza 4, the concepts are there but the execution is iffy. I think it's biggest downfall is when it happens. It would have made so much more sense to make the last section before the finale the Haruka section. Shinada would have felt much better to play as maybe as a part two or even a part three, but NOT part four. The odds were stacked against him being amongst a cast of characters that I already know and love. I definitely was more of a Tanimura fan, but I liked Shinada as a person. His inconsistent writing, unfortunate story, and tendency to be a little annoying really dragged this part of the game down for me.
Part 5: The Finale
This finale is crazyyyyyyy so strap in. I would expect nothing less then insanity from this game. First Kiryu shows up in Kamurocho WERE HOME BABYYYYYY. Were being followed by BABA!! I missed him. We fight for fun or something then we cut to Saejima who is meeting with the detective who tells us we gotta find Morinaga. OH YEAH THAT GUY. So we go to the Florist and we go to the arena only to find... AIZAWA??? The fuck? I thought Morinaga fuckin killed him cold blooded and made me think he was a cool as fuck villain. Only to find out that GASP Morinaga is actually dead. At this point I literally don't believe it because I guess I was in my era of not believing anyone ever dies.
We go to Akiyama who is told by Osaka ceo to not let Haruka perform. Akiayam says hell no. We also find out that Park and him planned to make Haruka and T-set a group and debut them at the same time but I somehow missed this when playing and didnt realize that till way leter. ANYWAY At some point we also see the CEO doing naked push ups in his penthouse which was so weird. ALSO there is a Date-san reveal. The scream I screamt! I didn't know I missed him or needing him so much in a game till I saw him again. Usually I'm wondering why he's even there or what he adds but I finally get it now, he adds being Date to the table and that's all you need.
Then I do a tower sweep at Kamurocho hills and OMG is this what Majima was building the whole time? To be fully honest it's beautiful and im very proud but its so different and lowkey off-putting. Kind of like Majima himself. I miss him. A whole game and I only be hearing about him second hand its not fair. Question, did literally anyone choose Saejima to do the tower sweep? Anyway were on the top of the tower; Kiryu, Saejima, CEO Katsuya, and Watase. We all have to fight eachother to draw out the one true bad guy and also cuz this is a yakuza game, so off our shirts go and everyone fights. Basically everyone gets shot and the bad guy is revealed... THE DETECTIVE. Who saw it coming? I still kept thinking Park would come back or Morinaga but by this point I was definitely suspecting him too. I don't fully get why he's doing all this but long story short he's purging both the Omi and Tojo of nice? Yakuza? I guess? I think it mostly has to do with him making way for his son to inherit a role in everything but thats not further explored till later. Not to worry tho! Daigo has shown up!!!! But because he is Daigo you should definitely be worried because once again he cant do anything right and he gets shot by Kanai. God dammit Daigo. He is now in critical condition, this is the SECOND TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED DAIGO. He's such a damsel in distress, never change.
Baba tells Haruka the message Kiryu had for her, to never give up. He also asks her to come with him to convince to Kiryu to chillax but she refuses. Sad for no one but me. At the New Serena, where that absolute BOP of a song is blaring, Kiryu is sleeping, while the rest of the crew are chilling and chatting. I forgot to mention Akiyama and Shinada briefly teamed up but frankly who cares. Shinada talks about baseball alot here too just incase you were worried he wouldnt. They conclude that detective bad guy is gonna attack Haruka's concert which I will NEVER allow. I guess Shinada's purpose here is actually tha the knows the stadiuk layout pretty well which I will buy in to. Also I believe here Haruka gets told about her and t-set being a band together now called Dreamline. I also dont love this. The idea of it is fine, Im all for a disney channel original movie plot where the bullies are actually great and we all become friends at the end but the issue is they don't properly develop T-set to do that. The short haired girl gets one little moment of being somewhat nice to Haruka then the very next time I see her she's stepping on my boss's broach and making me beg on my knees like sorry but it's really hard to come around on liking them. Even now when Haruka stumbles duing practice they're rude! This is a tragic ending if anything but Haruka seems happy I guess... Dont worry they will be nothing more then Haruka's glorifed backup dancers.
Okay final chapter, and it's a doozy. We send Shinada of all people to go help Haruka at the stadium, I know i just said I get he knows the layout of the stadium but like :( he's literally the only one who hasn't met her. I guess they don't end up interacting really anyways. Saejima is going to go after Majima because btw he's alive and at the top of the millenium tower. Akiyama and Kiryu stay on the ground to defend against attackers and they probably punch/ kick at least 10000 men. All the while Haruka gives her concert. But Baba is lurking and gonna shoot her, I thought he learned to be good again but whatever. Him and Shinada end up having a confrontation that ends in Baba losing and he's about to kill himself when !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my prison besties and the wardon show and up stop him! Oh my god I loved that so much what a nice resolution for Baba and I love that those guys went straight to a Jpop concert just for their pal. Meanwhile Saejima confronts Detective evil man on top of the millenium tower and !!! there he is, finally Majima is here. But he is not having a good time, turns out he's allowed himself to be captured and tortured for the sake of Haruka and now Majima and Saejima have to fight for the same reason. Then! Daigo shows up, while im literally begging him to actually shoot the bad guy but instead they all talk. Haruka is safe from harm (Baba wouldn't have done that shit anyways) and we officially learn about the plot of him attempting to put his son in charge of everything. Kiryu goes to Tojo headquarters to stop whoever this suspicious son is and Akiyama fights Kanai. Then literally all our friends ever show up to help and that was damn cute.
Kiryu shows up and it's eerie, completely silent with dead people everywhere. We go to the meeting room and the guy behind it all along was Aizawa. I definitely did not see that coming because I forgot he existed. But I suppose thats the point, he was so unassuming. I guess that means Morinaga actually was dead all along. We fight Aizawa while Haruka sings a song that seems very pointed at Kiryu wins (duh) but he is not doing well and tries to make his way through the streets. Meanwhile Haruka announces her retirement because she cant hide who she is or stay away from her family any longer and runs away to find Kiryu and THE GAME ENDS. Other games gave me a after credits scene that somewhat eased my concerns, but 5 is a overall very sad game and it's scene is her managing to him but he's bleeding out in the streets and falls unconcious in her arms.
Finale final thoughts: This was quite the finale! It was much better then Shinada's section but it was still a bit messy and left a lot of plot threads up in the air or had some unfortunate revelations. Nothing bad but things I think shouldve maybe been revealed earlier, like Aizawa. Only finding out with like 20 minutes of the game to go makes it feel too empty or even rushed when we know this game is otherwise not rushed at all. I was a little sad about the ending, I don't think it was bad at all I was just sad. The whole time I imagined it ending with the whole gang going to Haruka's concert and having a good time. For once I dont think the game fully dropped the ball on the finale like they tend to do so I commend it for that.
TLDOverall plot final thoughts: As a whole this is one of the most well written Yakuza stories since Yakuza 3 (obviously in my opinion). I can see that for some people all the plot twists and surprises might have felt like too much but I loved it, I never once could predict where this game was going. Morinaga dying off screen was such a let down and missed opportunity, at the end of Kiryu's section I was thinking he was going to be the best Yakuza villain in awhile but instead he went out in such a lame way. I do kinda wonder who killed him, I assumed it was just the detective guy but Aizawa seemed at least somewhat sad about Morinaga's death. I wonder if that was all a show? Another thing I dislike not just because of how it went, but also that it ended up going no where, Mayumi. They made quite the big deal about her at first and I do like the plot twist that she was a spy, but she wasn't even really acting any different when she was in spy mode and in normal mode. Plus you literally never see her again. I think Saejima's section was just very reminicent of his in 4, but done well. Aside from it taking quite so long to get to the city, by the time you leave it feels slightly rushed. I think the chapter in the woods didnt need to be its own thing. Absolutely no notes with Haruka, only that I'm sad this is all we will see of Park, I found her to be a really interesting character. Akiyama is where my main issues arise, only because I really do think he needed his whole section. He felt a little tacked on otherwise when I think he really didn't need to feel that way. I had hoped he would be part of half of Haruka's section then half of Shinada's where he is used to introduce us to Shinada as a character. But instead we get dropped into that like nothing. I know im probably the only one who cares about Hana this much but I really wish we got more of her. I basically said all my issues with Shinada at the end of his section but once again, I really didn't enjoy that plot. The finale was a mess and unfortunatly left at quite a cliff hanger which I wouldve rather it didn't but Im also okay with how it did. Some other things I wanted in this game was MORE MAJIMA I get why he wasnt for narrative purposes but Im gonna say that in every game. I wouldve loved more Okinawa orphan content. That being said there is way more content for them in this then in Y4 which is wild considering we spent like 5 seconds in Okinawa during a flashback and you never actually see them. It was so nice to hear what theyre up to second hand and some of the side missions expand on them a little more but I am devastated they werent there.
Lastly to briefly compare it to Y4, as they do feel like connected games. Y5 realy does feel like they took all of the concepts of the 4th game that needed to be reworked, and then re-did them to be better. The villains are better, prison break outs are better, and just like way more. I do think there are things in Y5 that are lacking compared to Y4, like general atmosphere, and I do think Tanimura's section in 4, as flawed as it is, is better then Shinadas. Akiyama's in 5 is great, but I love his in Y4 more simply because he doesn't have to share the spotlight. But I really have to emphasize, story and character are done better in Y5, ATMOSPHERE is done so much better in Y5.
TLDR for the TLDR: I liked this game :)
And there you have it, the longest goddamn review of all time. It was a really great game and I wish I could play it for the first time again because it was just SUCH a great experience. If you read this far I am so impressed by you and eternally grateful you even cared to. Please let me know your thoughts! I'm so excited to talk about this game with people. As for my rating, It was going to be a 10/10 until I got to Shinada's section now I'm in between an 8 or a 9. Ill just say 8/10 to be mean.
I am already neck deep in Yakuza 0 so I'm excited to write a much shorter review for that one soon.
Thank you for reading!

So last night I had this extremely vivid dream. It started with me being back at my jobs old location, (in real life I still work for the same company but at a different location) and I was in a bathroom with the door open and in the lobby it was full of people coming in and out of the building, in the bathroom I was adjusting my tie or almost like I was getting ready for some kind of fancy event when all of a sudden this girl comes in and asks me if she can use my phone to take pictures of her tattoos because she wanted to show me, I thought that was odd because she could have just showed me, well I have tattoos of my own and it was just in the bathroom but with the door still open and we are showing each other our tattoos, I had pulled my pants down to show her tattoos on my legs (very weird for a stranger interaction) and all of a sudden there were a few girls from my high school there in the bathroom with us and they just kept saying “ew ew” when I was showing my tattoos, but this stranger girl that was there with me was like in awe and loved my tattoos. This stranger girl had brown hair, slightly longer than her shoulders, she had on dark blue pants and I can’t remember her tops because they kept changing throughout the dream but I know she had sleeve tattoos. I know she didn’t have glasses but I can’t describe the features of her face. I do remember her telling me she was from Ovid, NY. But, after that bathroom interaction the dream suddenly changed and I was jumping into a pond back first but when I did I got sucked down into a different futuristic world where everything was very high tech, it was almost like I was in a subway system but it was so silver everywhere with like touch screen panels on the walls all around me and everybody was in some VR head sets and some were sharing experiences and some weren’t. And others were just walking around and talking. There’s a haze of things that were happening around me that I can’t quite remember but then all of a sudden the stranger girl was there and she remembered me almost as if we had met a few days prior or something. She was soooo excitable and happy to see me. I asked her if she was single and she was. We chatted but I can’t remember what about. She was gone again, I found myself in this room that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Very silvery and blue and I had a bar code on my wrist, I saw that I could scan it on the wall so I did and I didn’t know what it did. But then as I walked out of the room I walk by very fancy people that were all sitting in 4s facing each other (like you would on a train) and they all had something on their heads like maybe a VR set or something to connect them to this world I was in, but I remember I could still see everyone’s eyes so I want sure if it was VR, but as I walked by there was this black girl in a yellow dress and short curly hair sitting in this group, and she made a comment when I walked by saying something like “oh, well fuck” and I turned and jokingly said “whoa that’s a swear word” and everyone just started laughing, including me. But I left up some stairs and suddenly again I was in a room with two older men, one I recognized and one I didn’t, and when I looked around I realized I was in a rather small viewing room in a hospital. I looked through the window on the wall and saw a women in a hospital bed hooked to tubes and wires. And just then the stranger girl burst into the room and hugged me and said “I can’t believe you paid for my mom’s treatment “ and she was crying. I didn’t know what she meant and she pointed at that barcode on my wrist and she asked me how I could have possibly been able to afford it and I didn’t know the answer. She kept thanking me profusely and then introduced me to those two men and said one was her dad and one was her step dad and they both just shook my hand and gave me a nod. Still crying the stranger girl hugged me and said “you’re gonna make a great boyfriend some day”. Then I walk out of this door almost like the “train” or subway stopped and the doors opened and I walked out into a bright blinding light and then I woke up from my dream. For some reason I remember feeling extreme happiness and comfort anytime the stranger girl was around me. And for context. I’m a 29 year old single white dude and the only major life change recently was having to put down one of my dogs earlier this week. I would really love some insight into this.

So last night I had this extremely vivid dream. It started with me being back at my jobs old location, (in real life I still work for the same company but at a different location) and I was in a bathroom with the door open and in the lobby it was full of people coming in and out of the building, in the bathroom I was adjusting my tie or almost like I was getting ready for some kind of fancy event when all of a sudden this girl comes in and asks me if she can use my phone to take pictures of her tattoos because she wanted to show me, I thought that was odd because she could have just showed me, well I have tattoos of my own and it was just in the bathroom but with the door still open and we are showing each other our tattoos, I had pulled my pants down to show her tattoos on my legs (very weird for a stranger interaction) and all of a sudden there were a few girls from my high school there in the bathroom with us and they just kept saying “ew ew” when I was showing my tattoos, but this stranger girl that was there with me was like in awe and loved my tattoos. This stranger girl had brown hair, slightly longer than her shoulders, she had on dark blue pants and I can’t remember her tops because they kept changing throughout the dream but I know she had sleeve tattoos. I know she didn’t have glasses but I can’t describe the features of her face. I do remember her telling me she was from Ovid, NY. But, after that bathroom interaction the dream suddenly changed and I was jumping into a pond back first but when I did I got sucked down into a different futuristic world where everything was very high tech, it was almost like I was in a subway system but it was so silver everywhere with like touch screen panels on the walls all around me and everybody was in some VR head sets and some were sharing experiences and some weren’t. And others were just walking around and talking. There’s a haze of things that were happening around me that I can’t quite remember but then all of a sudden the stranger girl was there and she remembered me almost as if we had met a few days prior or something. She was soooo excitable and happy to see me. I asked her if she was single and she was. We chatted but I can’t remember what about. She was gone again, I found myself in this room that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Very silvery and blue and I had a bar code on my wrist, I saw that I could scan it on the wall so I did and I didn’t know what it did. But then as I walked out of the room I walk by very fancy people that were all sitting in 4s facing each other (like you would on a train) and they all had something on their heads like maybe a VR set or something to connect them to this world I was in, but I remember I could still see everyone’s eyes so I want sure if it was VR, but as I walked by there was this black girl in a yellow dress and short curly hair sitting in this group, and she made a comment when I walked by saying something like “oh, well fuck” and I turned and jokingly said “whoa that’s a swear word” and everyone just started laughing, including me. But I left up some stairs and suddenly again I was in a room with two older men, one I recognized and one I didn’t, and when I looked around I realized I was in a rather small viewing room in a hospital. I looked through the window on the wall and saw a women in a hospital bed hooked to tubes and wires. And just then the stranger girl burst into the room and hugged me and said “I can’t believe you paid for my mom’s treatment “ and she was crying. I didn’t know what she meant and she pointed at that barcode on my wrist and she asked me how I could have possibly been able to afford it and I didn’t know the answer. She kept thanking me profusely and then introduced me to those two men and said one was her dad and one was her step dad and they both just shook my hand and gave me a nod. Still crying the stranger girl hugged me and said “you’re gonna make a great boyfriend some day”. Then I walk out of this door almost like the “train” or subway stopped and the doors opened and I walked out into a bright blinding light and then I woke up from my dream. For some reason I remember feeling extreme happiness and comfort anytime the stranger girl was around me. And for context. I’m a 29 year old single white dude and the only major life change recently was having to put down one of my dogs earlier this week. I would really love some insight into this.

So on top of everything else I've listed in my posts about gross shit my husband does and doesn't do. (Like not brushing his teeth, or using a scrubbie in the shower, or never clipping his toenails so they curl over the ends of his toes and are dark brown and yellow.)
My husband is ALWAYS congested. Right? So he's ALWAYS coughing and sounds like he has bronchitis. Well the other thing he ALWAYS does? He coughs up mucus on the walls/surfaces and leaves it there.
Just leaves it.
Doesn't bother to wipe it up right away like a NORMAL HUMAN BEING WHO CONSIDERS OTHERS FEELINGS AND COMFORT.
He leaves it.
There are over 100 splotches of dried mucus all over the walls of our current rental. And if I ask him to clean it up? He doesn't. The wall next to the bed where he sleeps? Literally covered in mucus.
I've stepped in it. Rolled over in it. Sat in it on chairs or the couch. Had it unintentionally wiped on my face by a kid with a blanket that he COUGHED IN TO AND DIDNT CARE TO PUT IN THE LAUNDRY.
Yeah. My kid was cuddling with his glorified, wet sticky handkerchief. If I could post pictures here... I still wouldn't because it's so fucking gross nobody deserves to be exposed to it.
If I don't notice it somewhere and it gets on me and I get grossed out and tell him to clean it off me and wipe it off whatever surface it's on, he acts like I'M THE PROBLEM.
MY HUSBAND COUGHS UP THICK DARK MUCUS ONTO THE WALLS AND OTHER SURFACES IN THE HOUSE AND HE DOESNT FUCKING CLEAN IT BUT IM THE ABUSIVE ONE BECAUSE I CALL HIM A JACKASS WHEN HE GETS ANNOYED AT ME FOR HAVING TO ASK HIM TO CLEAN IT UP MULTIPLE TIMES Y'ALL.
He doesn't cough into a tissue or anything. He just coughs in the open and sprays everything.

Fetch Rewards is an app that allows user to earn points by scanning their receipts. Earn enough points and you can redeem them for giftcards (Target, Amazon,, Paypal, etc).
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If you have any questions, please send me a message.
Terms of Service
SLRep Post

Fetch Rewards is an app that allows user to earn points by scanning their receipts. Earn enough points and you can redeem them for giftcards (Target, Amazon,, Paypal, etc).
If you're interested, please do the following steps:

1. Comment $bid and input referral code T29MFD when you sign up for Fetch.
   
2. Snap a picture of a receipt.
   
3. Message me the name you used to sign up for then account. Once confirmed, I'll Venmo/Cashapp/Paypal you $1.50.
   

If you have any questions, please send me a message.
Terms of Service
SLRep Post

Fetch Rewards is an app that allows user to earn points by scanning their receipts. Earn enough points and you can redeem them for giftcards (Target, Amazon,, Paypal, etc).
If you're interested, please do the following steps:

1. Comment $bid and input referral code T29MFD when you sign up for Fetch.
   
2. Snap a picture of a receipt.
   
3. Message me the name you used to sign up for then account. Once confirmed, I'll Venmo/Cashapp/Paypal you $1.50.
   

If you have any questions, please send me a message.
Terms of Service
SLRep Post

(I am using a new account to post this, i have been in the infidelity subreddit since January, just didnt want this linked to my other accounts. Mods, please reach out to me for verification of being in group with other accounts if need be.)
I apologize in advance for the long post, I'm trying to edit as I go, but I am typing it quickly on my phone.
I (37F) have been with my husband (36m) for almost 13 years, married almost 12. About 2.5 years ago we hit a rough patch and stopped communicating and working together. Around that time we had his daughter (13) move in with us, she is severely depressed among other mental health disorders. When she came to us, she had been using drugs and drinking for the previous 6 months, so we set about getting her sober and working through withdrawals. School was also a constant battle, getting her to do her schoolwork and practice the things she was learning in therapy. I say we were dealing with all of this, however, it was mostly on me. My work schedule allowed me to adjust my availability to work with her therapy schedule and to alow me to be home to help with schoolwork. My husband is working third shift and unfortunately had been unable to move to a different shift, so I didn't mind carrying a lot of the load he was working to provide for the family. In the midst of this my SD ended up getting hospitalized for having a plan to unalienable her self, in dealing with the recovery from that we also had multiple deaths in the family (6 total between the 3 of us in a year and a half).
So that is the stress that caused us to begin to disconnect. My focus stopped being on our relationship and I was constantly dealing with putting out fires. My step daughter and I began butting heads, her psychiatrist attributed it to her borderline personality disorder. Our house started tuening into a war zone, I would go to my husband and ask for help and he wouldn't step in or fully have my back. My SD was opening disrespectful and aggressive towards me and we would get into verbal arguments (not in the beginning, the relationship devolved).
While all this was going on at home, my husband began to confide in a female coworker. He mentioned one day to me how he had a crush on her, I told him I wasn't comfortable with the friendship. He kept it on, eventually moving to her team to work along side her. Now he has never physically done anything, not making an excuse just painting the picture. As he confided in her and got closer to her, he began to have feelings for her. She knew/knows about his crush. He would come home constantly talking about her, and about her relationship problems (her cheating on her significant other with a different coworker). About how he would give her advice about her relationships, and so on. I still kept asking for distance.
January of this year he came to me and told me he wanted to move out. That he wasn't in love with me and wanted to see where things would go with a different coworker (who was also in a relationship). We went back and forth for a few days about how he wanted to leave before he finally told me about the other woman. We spent the night and next day talking about everything and he decided to stay and work on us. He stopped communicating with her, told her they weren't to speak to each other any longer at work and that was it. After a few weeks she got a new job and quit.
Beginning of February my SD moves back to her mother's after she had been fighting about going back for ages. My husband and I had gotten to the point with her therapists, that there was really nothing more we could give/offer her. So we let her go, hoping that things would start to improve for her if she was in an environment where she wanted to be. She has been doing slightly better, and does seem happier.
End of March/Beginning of April, I had a feeling and took a day off from work so my husband and I could talk. My husband decided to tell me he was leaving me and moving out, that he was moving to a camper on the first coworkers property and would live there. Apparently she had been in his ear the whole yime we had been working on each other, telling him to leave me. Reminding him of how his daughter and i fought, and that we would scream and call each other names. I again begged for distance between them, and asked him to stay and work on us REALLY work on us. I told him I need to get a better job so I don't have to be financially dependent on him, as I don't want him to feel obligated to give me money (he said he would if he moved out). He decided that yes, we would work on us that he would tell this coworker that we were working things out. At first they were still friends as before and then she started reminding him of all the negative things and never being supportive of him working on his marriage.
Which brings us to now, I started having a feeling again last week and asked him why he was diatant. He told me that his coworker was moving to another shift and he was sad that he was losing his friend. By this point I had had him block her on social media, and was under the impression they stopped communicating unless it was about work. Well no, she had been in his ear after about 2-3 weeks of us building back from April. So with this feeling I had, I came home early from work and he told me again that he was leaving. That he didn't love me (which he told me he said to try and make it easier, but that he still does and I know he does) and she had asked him to move to her place. He told me he loved her and wanted to see the what if. I messaged her and told her to back off from my husband and allow us to work on us, and that it was impossible with her being in his ear constantly. She went off on me and my husband and blocked us both.
We are working things out, and we both know we need this cloud of her gone before we can truly connect. So he is going into work tonight and I am just filled with so much anxiety. He is stressed out because work is going to be stressful, he thinks she is going to make his life miserable. He is going to talk to one of the managers and see of he can switch places with someone else on another team, while waiting out her going to an opposite shift (she's going to first shift, while he is still on third and in a different department.) We are also in the process of applying for new jobs for both of us, for a fresh start and more distance.
I just hate feeling like my life is up in the air, I love this man with all my heart and I am still in love with him. I told him that I will be here to support him as he starts his grieving process of losing that friendship and potential romance. (Hie screwed up is that, but at the end of this he is still my best friend and i do not want to see him hurting.) I told him I don't want us to talk about splitting up in the future while we are working on us, I only want us to be positive. I told him I know us fully working on us will only really start to happen once she is no longer in his life and he can grieve. I asked him to atleast give me that much, to atleast try and then attend marriage counseling if we hit a wall. He has agreed, but I still have so much anxiety about all this. I know it will pass, but it's just so hard.

Mikan has a habit of pondering many things while waiting for her mother to use the restroom. It is not aimless daydreaming, but rather akin to how some people would keep different books by their bedside, toilet, and office. Mikan always use this time to think about light but continuous things. Typically, she'd spend three to five minutes, with the first minute warming up, recalling where she left off in the book from the last time, then staring at her nails, progressing her thoughts bit by bit.
She developed this habit during her first visit to the zoo. That spring, she graduated from kindergarten, and before leaving the house, her mother was in front of the mirror, adjusting Mikan’s elementary school uniform. The zoo was on a seaside cliff, connected to the foot of the mountain by a narrow path lined with cherry blossoms. Children of all ages sat on the steps, waiting for a gust of wind to blow so they could shout for their mothers to take pictures. Mikan buried her head and walked up, thinking the others were childish. At that time, her father was still young; his neck had not yet thickened, and his eyelids had not drooped. When they left, she asked her mother who the strange uncle was, the one who knew so much about giraffes. She couldn’t remember how her mother answered, but she remembered seeing a kitten lying on the hillside, showing its belly to the sunset, making her exclaim "wow" to the cherry blossoms. From that day on, one weekend a month, she would go to the zoo with her mother to meet her father. During the time her mother was in the restroom, Mikan used it to think about the kitten. She had imagined raising three kittens: the first was tortoiseshell, then an orange one like her surname, and the latest was another tortoiseshell. Each cat lived for twelve years, and she thought about the world and herself thirty-six years later.
She didn’t always think about cats. Occasionally, when she didn’t go with her mother, she would talk with her classmates about how they envied the animals in the zoo, like gorillas and hyenas. Although there were no lions or tigers, there were lynxes. They looked so ugly, walking on all fours all their lives, but they were lucky to live by the sea and enjoy the sea breeze for a lifetime. The crude boys in her class would retort, saying, "Yeah, yeah, they can even poop directly into the sea."
After graduation, she never saw that boy again. All the boys would go to Tokyo when they were young; that was the rule. Only when they were old and decrepit would they be reluctantly sent back by the younger ones. But she often thought about that classmate. By the time she raised her third cat, he might have come back. When she saw the sea again, the image of a smooth butt hanging over the cliff came to mind. When she got into Waseda University, she told her mother that she might consider marrying that classmate.
When Mikan was little, she secretly asked her father how he fell in love with her mother. The primate area always had a strange smell, between animal and human. Her mother didn’t like the smell, standing five meters away near the door for ventilation (they couldn’t go further in because they were not allowed to meet outside the guardian’s sight; that was the rule). She didn’t remember what her father said, but she remembered pressing her hand against the glass, with an orangutan looking at her disdainfully. She felt like she was the one being watched. But her father must have said something, without hesitation, as if talking about a daily matter. It was too mundane, overshadowed by the contemptuous orangutan in her memory.
Influenced by her mother, Mikan also didn’t like the smell of the primate area. It wasn’t that it was unpleasant; it was like touching the residual warmth of someone who just left their seat, the mixed smell of decaying wood and butter in old temples, awkward and cautious. The only chance she almost had to be alone with that classmate was during a field trip. Both happened to be lingering at the entrance of the primate area. Mikan was there first, then the boy appeared behind her, peeking around. The introduction at the entrance had been scanned five or six times. Inside, the darkness reminded Mikan of the anteater’s mouth she had just seen. The boy asked, “Are you afraid to go in?” Mikan replied, “Of course not.” The boy retorted, “Coward, the teacher said not to wander off; you definitely won’t dare.” Mikan suddenly felt annoyed and walked in. When she reached the orangutan’s window and looked back, the boy had already disappeared. Mikan thought, childish.
One summer, a cat sneaked into the zoo and was brutally tortured by baboons before being killed. Mikan learned about it from the morning paper, crumbs scattered on it. The front page was about US-Japan trade friction, followed by news about Tokyo, Syria, obituaries, nuclear, and the next Olympics’ sailing event being held on the local beach. The news was arranged from far to near, and finally, in the middle column, she saw this news.
"Such a pity, so sad, so heartbreaking, so infuriating." She inhaled deeply and exhaled.
She didn’t know what this incident meant for the townspeople. Didn’t the middle column mean it was unimportant? She didn’t understand, but the townspeople seemed outraged, eventually passing a resolution to lower the male zoo supervision age to fourteen. The next day, this proposal moved to the front page, although not the headline, it stood alongside news from the US and Europe.
But this wasn’t a distant matter for her. Recently, she had joined the baseball team because that boy also loved baseball. At a celebration party, when discussing future high schools, he talked eagerly about a famous school in Tokyo, jokingly preparing for life there. Everyone laughed at this joke.
The front-page news explained the lawmakers' logic: due to men’s violence and animalistic nature, our country decided to confine men in zoos years ago, something we have always been proud of. Over the years, many outstanding women have joined the country to restrain their husbands' potential harm to the world. But our solution isn’t perfect. When does a child become a man? The radicals believe it’s at adulthood, at twenty, the legal marriage age. Conservatives argue that maleness is in the chromosomes and should be separated at the hospital. The incident with the baboons harming the cat further proves the harm of violence and animality to civilization. We should be more cautious and responsible. Thus, in our town, the second sex characteristic is used as the basis for identifying males.
This event was written into textbooks, leading to significant zoo renovations. Besides old mothers bringing their children to see their fathers, the zoo now provided spaces for the new generation of women to date their boyfriends in the park. For the town’s zoo, this room added at the end of the primate area, with rain hitting the iron roof, animal calls (and conversations from the men’s park) and the sound of waves hitting the cliffs, seemed far from a suitable place for romance. Mikan had never been there.
She never saw that boy again, though he didn’t play baseball. He likely lived the life he joked about, pooping off the cliff.
When her mother came out of the restroom, Mikan was imagining holding the tortoiseshell cat that had just died. She remembered her father saying that the zoo’s most famous animal was a giraffe, but it was a specimen, transported from Tokyo Zoo, always standing in the most conspicuous place. He saw it every morning as if it were still alive. She asked if he would become a specimen too, but she couldn’t remember his answer (she always remembered her questions but not others’ answers).