This is long, if you’re uninterested skip to the ten tips list or TLDR
A while ago I started mixing unusual options activity into my gamblinginvesting. At first I lost a shitload of money chasing dumbass whales with zero plan, but now I actually have a pretty good feel for it. I still fuck up alot, but more often I do not fuck up. This is to help those of you who want to start chasing whales, or are at a basic level and want to do it better.
I'm using some plays from this week as examples because they are fresh in my mind and I have a couple screenshots.
Tools I use barchart in tandem with Unusual Whales. For barchart, you can honestly get by using their free version, you just can't sort as well. They have a free month trial too. I also pay the 20 bucks for Unusual Whales to confirm what I scan, and they have a good stocks volume standard deviation tool. I have zero affiliation to either, just saying what I use.
There are way more technical ways to do this, but I like to use my eyes to scan sporadically throughout the day like a boomer.
Basic Concept Long story short, you're ideally chasing the options purchases of what are, presumably, deep-pocketed individuals or institutions. UOA identifies certain options contract orders that are higher than the average daily contract order. For example, if the average daily option volume on an GME weekly is 4,000, and an option order enters for 4,000 or higher, it's flagged as unusual activity since it's a multiple of that daily average volume--sometimes it shows as multiple orders if "they" push through a few smaller purchases that produce heavy volume.
MM are sneks who like to move in silence, which they can do with with stock positions via dark pools and the like. However, they can't get away with that with options activity--it all shows. That fact, young autist, is your slingshot against the institutional goliath.
Hunting the Whale So I've got my unusual options activity page open on barchart or wherever for the current day. I adjust the expiration date option so that the options I'm looking at don't expire past a couple weeks out (more on why later), then I'm ready to eye scan.
I typically start by looking for one of two things: 1) large clusters of orders that belong to one ticker or 2) sporadic orders for a ticker that consistently show up over a couple hours, but belong to non-hot, non-meme stonks that do NOT have earnings imminent. To make sure I'm looking at something potentially weird, I choose to exclude options that expire more than a couple weeks out.
1) Clusters of orders—ABNB example The way I scope it is kind of a tiered process. First, I'm looking to see if there are any clusters of orders that catch my eye on a quick scan. Second, I'm looking to see if those clusters of orders contain both calls AND puts, with some OTM activity and spreads preferred. Third, I look to see if the number of seperate call orders outweighs the number of put orders (or vice versa), and additionally I look to see if the volume of the calls drastically outweighs the volume of the puts (or vice versa).
Why? Because it helps you determine if the options order is just a hedge, or if it’s hedging against itself as it’s own position. This is super important so try to follow along-- most UOA is just institutions hedging; Mr. MM has a nice, busy life and fancy yacht and can't just exit his positions back and forth all day like a WSBer. He also has like a billion shares of his stonks, so if he dumps it when he's got paper hands it will siginficantly tank the value and cause a ripple effect. So, instead of hedging by dumping his shit, he hedges by adding OTM options against his position--next level fucking diamond hands. That would be the type of whale order from Mr. MM we don't want to follow. But, if Mr. MM buys 4,000 FB call options in a few blocks, and you see like 1,000 in FB puts go through right alongside it, the odds are that someone is betting big on FB and using the puts as a hedge, since the puts represent a smaller volume in the call/put ratio. Instead of the options being a hedge for a bigger stock position they hold, these types of option clusters indicate that the option order itself is the big, independent play, and it's hedging itself with lower volume order vs the higher volume (4,000 calls to 1,000 puts).
Then I do an easy confirmation. I check the tickers general trend the past week or so in a chart, do a news search on twitter of their ticker for news catalysts and sentiment, and google and YouTube to see if the crayola kids think it's a good nerd play.
Example: Here's the screenshot on some ABNB UOA I noticed and played this week. It went to 200% and change within a couple hours, but I had unfortunate diamond hands and sold for about half that.
ABNB UOA
So, this a softball. First, you can see that ABNB all of a sudden explodes with all these options showing up at 12:52–that's our cluster. Second, the clusters have both calls and puts in that minute timespan, with some put orders showing at the bottom of the cluster. Some of the calls are deep OTM, as far as 200c. Third, the call orders far outweigh the put orders in both amount and volume. Awwwww shit, looks like we got more than a hedge—we’re onto something.
Confirmation time: ABNB had been on a general uptrend, and I typically don't like to chase, but I combed twitter and saw their were rumors of the CEO speaking the following day, and that news had just broken of their DC booking cancellations. I looked back into the morning, and saw a few more unusual blocks, and a few more rolled in just after the cluster pictured above.
Passed the smell test. Options bought, tendies gained.
Sparse Orders: SNAP example
The same principles can apply to orders on tickers that pop up individual orders, not large clusters, which a) haven’t had much attention b) have been on a steep downtrend—this makes the order unusual, and/or c) seem to keep popping up in single orders over a few hours to a day.The same principles as above apply, but if you see these types of orders with very little time left until expiration, you can assume assume it's probably not a hedge. SNAP isn't the best example of the week because there wasn't a put order in this block. But, there was positive TA sentiment when I searched, SNAP had been on an oversold downtrend, and I don't have screenshots left of the better ones I saw and went after. Plus, importantly, IT WAS TOWARDS THE END OF THE DAY (this is huge, EOD is prime time for AH news whales)
SNAP UOA
A better example from this week though is SPCE, which had only a few orders sprinkled throughout the day, and one toward the end of the day which was DEEP, DEEP OTM expiring 1/15. *That’s a flag for us—sporadic listing throughout the day, OTM toward the end of the day. * BAM! EOD SPCE OTM calls sprinkle in, ARK invests to kick off AH, SPCE moons.
Sparse Orders Patterns: Connecting the dots on tech rebound with FB and SNAP
Seeing the SNAP orders above sharpened my eyes that day to looking for a pattern with tech on the whole, since big tech had been so royally gaped the past week. I kept seeing FB options like this pop up
https://i.imgur.com/muVGtq2.jpg
Sometimes you can put together sporadic listings and create a working theory based on a sector. Because this and similar FB orders were deep OTM and one day out, I knew there was a risk they could a hedge, but also knew that the tech sector was due for a rebound and saw SNAP posting sporadic OTM as well. So, I bought my options for each of those two another week out and closer to ATM (important, more below), to give the whale some breathing room in case was it was a hedge, even though the technicals agreed with the bounce. The whales were right, and it was an easy little overnight profit.
How I’ve Fucked Up 1: Don’t get tricked by trends
Although we like to believe institutions are ahead of the curve, often they are just trend-riding lemmings who follow what's already way, way up. They buy the top, just like WSB tardies such as yourself specialize in. So, when you see shit like this below, take a minute to think before you get excited:
NIO UOA LIKE THIS WAS NONSTOP
It was the same for all the memes: PLUG, FCEL, MARA, and RIOT all week, dominating the orders. If something is already too popular, just stay away from it. You can ride something up, but when you see massive orders on shit that's already like 400% IV, just...don't.
How I’ve Fucked Up 2: DO give the MM’s some breathing room
Even if you’re confident in a move you see that is a few days out, extend your play a week or two further out minimum, and strike it closer to ATM. If you can't do either of those things because you can't afford the premium just skip that play and check back for something new later; I promise a better opportunity will arise. You can recover from bagholding, but you cannot recover from blowing your account on an incorrect 0DTE.
Breathing room is also important because often whales will have the news but not the exact timing. Two months ago I followed a DDOG whale on a Thursday 1DTE that expired worthless the next day. The following Monday (1 trade day later) DDOG made the announcement that rocketed them like 20%--if I'd given them a week's breathing room, it would've been a 15 bagger. Fucking F.
So, to review: look for order clusters or sporadic ticker orders that a) have a mix of calls and puts with one dominating the other b) unpopular tickers that have deep OTM or close expirations c) always check chatter afterward and fundamentals and d) try to put together a narrative of things that are related that catch your eye (this Monday's EV run or this Friday's tech bounce could be next week's airline dominance or cruiseline craze--connect the dots). Initially look for options expiring soon, as they indicate the most riskiness--and therefore confidence--if the MM is not hedging. Shop with a short term eye, buy with a long term choice.
10 Things That Will Help You Not GUH:
1) Monday and Friday morning/afternoon are the most accurate whale times, according to data from Unusual Whales
2) If you don't have PDT always save some spending power for EOD shopping
3) If you don't have PDT never, ever follow a whale with a weekly. Sometimes the news the whale bets on is a 'sell the news' event, and you won’t recover from a drop especially if there is IV crush involved.
4) Always give the whale breathing room by purchasing an expiration at least a week further out
4b) Always give the whale breathing room by going closer to ATM strikes than theirs
5) Sign up for barchart monthly trial (then continue it) and unusual whales--they're each like 20 bucks and thats way less than you spend on an FD.
6) You don't need to learn TA, but you need to check technicals on the tickers you want to chase--almost every major ticker has youtubers or fintwits giving their daily or weekly TA. This way you know if it's a proper breakout happening if the whale hits, and you're not just guessing at when to take profits. Remember, whales can buy wayyyyyyy OTM and sell for massive profit at any point--they aren’t bagholding a call until it's in the money like you are. You may be 10% up waiting for the next 80% GME day while your whale has sold at their target 5% profits on the play and is chillin.
7) Leave at least 10% of your account spending power free each day. I promise, the one time you go full boat you will see the most obvious whale play at the end of the day. Then you won't be able to do shit about it and you'll hate yourself when it's a 10 bagger overnight. Trust me.
8) Make sure the ticker you're chasing isn't just ER anticipation/bets. Always check earnings dates before buying.
9) Remember whales are people, so they can be stupid, too. Don't baghold a position that is clearly fucked for some news that looks unlikely to come. They are gambling addicts just like you, except they have more money.
10) Always take profits if you ask yourself if it's time to. If it's good enough to screenshot, it's good enough to close the position.
Positions: Dumped a ton of stuff and loading up Tuesday because long weekends scare me, but saw some ineresting 2/5s I held including
WKHSc PLTRc SPYc (1/19, 1/22) LMNDp
And a couple tickers that I couldn’t post lol. also have AAPL and JD leaps
TLDR Use a service to follow whales so you can get ahead of announcements. Look for clusters of options activity that hedge themselves via call/put ratio, and do a legitimate check for TA and catalysts to confirm their moves. Never follow a whale into a weekly, but use weeklies are your best screener.
I might do a pretty consistent DD post (a couple times a week) on what I’m seeing at the end of each day if there is interest, and if it’s not a day I don’t have a ton of real work. If something quick catches my eye I usually throw it up on my twitter @yourboymilt (there’s no notification thing on here mods, just trying to be helpful— not selling anything) I’ll also probably throw some more potential Monday positions on here over the weekend once I decide to do some more research. Later.

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975

ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.

March 3, 1976

ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.

First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.

I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983

Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."

Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982

'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."

Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982

Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.

This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:

Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.

The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003

This is going to be a really long post, so read it at your pace. I'll try my best to make it worthwhile but I ain't much of a good writer.
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Genshin Impact has been released since 28th of September and so far the game has received a lot of mixed reactions from the players and most of them not being good ones. Let's dig into them. So this is a criticism/feedback/bitching/complaining post or whatever you like to call it.
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First of all What is Genshin Impact?
This is something even the game itself doesn't know and is what's confused most of the people around and is what created the first problem. Genshin has severe identity crisis. It's a JRPG? It's a Mobile gacha game? It's a AAA title aimed for all?
The game tried to find something in between all this and created the mess we see today.
You see people trying to defend the game by saying "This is a Gacha game. This is how it works. This is how it's been for years." Now all these things are complete BS.
Genshin isn't and was never intended to be your typical mobile gacha. It tried to appeal to the mainstream audience. The instant Genshin was being developed for PC, Switch and PS4 it rose above your typical Gacha game. It wanted to cater to the mainstream crowd. Now this creates the very big problem that is the difference between Mainstream gamers like PC, PS4, Switch and Gacha Addict mobile market. While gacha addicted mobile gamers are used to being fcked over by shitty practices by those companies, the mainstream crowd is different. Some of them are completely new to the gacha system. Just accept the fact that gacha is a very bad monetization model, some games have implemented it in a nicer way which actually isn't bad, but Genshin monetization is just straight up ridiculous.
Genshin was promoted as JRPG from the very beginning instead of being your usual gacha mobile game. This is where most of the mainstream players expectations shattered. Things like being limited by stamina system for play is a norm practice in mobile games(Not all games do this but most of them do) BUT it's not in the mainstream market and this is something which is not acceptable when you go for broader market. You can't just expect them to conform to your shitty stamina system and be all happy happy. You're gonna get backlash.
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Resin(this absolute piece of shit item in Genshin)
Resin system is just ridiculous. While being already bad in the first place, it's way worse compared to even the stamina system of other mobile gacha games. Almost 95% of the stuff you do in the game is locked behind resin system. You wanna farm Mora? go spend resin, you wanna farm exp? go spend resin, you wanna farm artifacts? go spend resin, you wanna farm upgrade materials? go spend resin. What's even more ridiculous is the amount you need per dungeons, bosses and the amount you get.
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Resin is capped at 120. So you can run hypostasis 3 times and poof it's gone. Once you get to higher level even running hypostasis 3 times doesn't give you enough material to level up your character. The regen rate is also crap 1 resin per 8 minutes.
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This doesn't stop here. One of the shittiest thing in the game is the weekly bosses.
YOU CAN FCKING FIGHT IT ONCE A WEEK AND IT'S STILL WALLED BEHIND RESIN. Can you see double the bs here. On top of being only available once a week you still need to spend 60 Resin just to collect rewards. The sheer amount of bs is ridiculous.
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Let's talk Experience
To raise your character. The very first laughable thing is that beating monsters of lv60 gives you 14-15 Character exp. I mean why even have it in the first place. This is just shitty on the face of people. You need to fight monsters for months then maybe you can raise one Level of your character. The sheer amount of stupidness that fighting monsters doesn't give you Exp is just wow. You get most of the exp from those Exp Books(Adventurer's exp, Hero's Wit). And guess what you need to spend resin to get those. And what's another fcked up thing is that one run costs 20 resin and doesn't even give you enough to level up even 1 level. Yes you can get it from chests and quests but you'll run out way too soon once you reach higher levels.
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Money walks in now which is Mora.
You need iirc 60000 Mora just to ascend a character and a lv35 Leyline gives you 44000. The amount of Mora you need to upgrade gears and characters is once again another very bad thing. You can spend few days farming 1 Million Mora and guess what it'll be gone in a poof once you get upgrade 3-4 artifacts(which you'll get fcked along the way. We'll get to that). Everything in the game needs mora be it levelling up character, talents, artifacts, weapons. The amount needed is 100x more than what you are earning. You'll always be short on this.
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Comes in the Artifact now
You have greater chance of winning a lottery ticket than rolling good stats on the artifacts. The amount of RNG implemented on Artifacts is baffling.
First you need a good main stat(Pray to RNG), then you good secondary stats. Did you know these are also assigned via RNG. Then once you upgrade the artifact additional stats are assigned based on RNG. Once you keep upgrading the artifacts existing sub stats are upgraded(based on RNG) and more new Sub stats are assigned(Based on RNG) which are further upgraded(based on RNG). Those are whole 6-7 layers of RNG to get a good Artifact. So yeah you're better off praying of being able to kamehameha than getting a good Artifact.
You can say that no problem I'm a hardcore grinder I'll farm them till I get them. But then Resin comes and grabs your a$$ and puts you in place.
Oh did you also know that Artifact drops are RNG!? Also Domains drops multiple type of artifacts you on top praying to get a good artifact main stat, first you need to pray to get the artifact at all. And you need to do this with 6 runs per day ONLY IF YOU GRIND SINGLE DOMAIN AND NEGLECT EVERYTHING ELSE.
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Now Don't ya worry because in comes the weapons upgrade materials
Weapon ascension materials are dropped from different domains and you need 20 resin per run and need to do multiple runs to get enough material to ascend your weapon.
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Talent Books have joined the Chat
You thought it was over, but it was I the talent books. Yet another piece of upgrade material which drops from yet different type of domains that require resin. Higher levels require 9 per talent level to upgrade and the domain drops 1 per run.
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Now what's the center of all the problems mentioned above? IT'S RESIN!
This single piece of item limits everything you can do in the game. The only thing you can do in this game without resin is just farming chests which(don't even get me started on this) are just another piece of shit in the game. Chest rewards are very very underwhelming. It's isn't worth farming them except for that Adventure Exp. Have you ever played a Open world RPG which limits 95% of the content behind such a system? This is one of the biggest bs in the game.
So yeah what's the game at higher levels? You login -> burn resin in 10 minutes -> you get trash -> you curse -> you logout -> rinse and repeat. Basically you're a trash collector.
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Congratulations you've made it so far. Now that the resin is done we look at another horrendous aspect of the game that is Monetization and Gacha.
Now for all those white knights out there just accept the fact that the gacha rate is horrendous. 0.6% to get a 5 star character is way too low. As the CN guy said it's just double the rate of a glass blowing up.
Gacha has been for around quite a while. There are examples of good and bad gachas all around. BUT GENSHIN FALLS INTO THE WORST ONE.
You have 0.6 rate to get a 5 star character which is basically non existent and you get pity at 90 pulls. Here's comes another scummy part. At 90 pulls you have 50% chance to get the UP characters. See this bs. It's actually a pity but not a pity. You can pull 90 times but are still reliant on RNG to get you the desired character. Real pity comes at 180 Pulls which is just straight up ridiculous. 180 pulls are 32000 primogems and converting them to real life money that's a whopping $400 just one Freaking 5 star character. That's like whole month worth of food.
and Congrats if you got the 5 star character cuz that's not his full potential. You need another 6 of him to max him. So in worst case you're looking at $2400 just to max out one 5 star character. Holy flames this shit.
4 star rate is also so low that you rarely get them out of 10 pull pity which is just another scummy practice.
Cost for primogems is yet another crappy practice to greed money. $100 gives you 8800 primogems which are about 55 pulls. This is not even enough to hit that initial pity of 90 pulls let alone that 180 one.
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Monthly Pass and Battle Pass
Another two methods of monetization that the game uses. These two are absolutely worthless. Now you may say that Monthly Pass is actually really good value. You can get 3000 Primogems for $5 which is a steal. and Yes it could have been good had the rates been decent.
Just look at what 3000 primogems net you. A 4 star character you don't want? A useless 4 star weapon? or will you hold out on to hope that it will give you a 5 star character? Even after spending money you are still reliant on that small chance to get something good.
Battle Pass. Oh don't get me started on this piece of crap. It's the single worst BP I've seen during my whole gaming life. From those ridiculous requirements which force you spend primogems to refresh resin to the locking of weekly Exp, this is just accumulation of every single crap lying around. Not even worth a shit.
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Achievements
This doesn't fall under Monetization but is another bs aspect of the game that I'd like to discuss. Achievements spit in the face of the player. Collecting 100 chests gives you 10 primogems. and what's that number? That's 1/16 the amount you need for one damn pull. Even if we count the primogems you get from those 100 chests it nets you 200(2 from each) + 10 = 210 primogems which doesn't even amount to two pulls. I feel like this system is there just to mock the player.
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Hats of to you. You've made it this far. Next we move on to other aspects.
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COMMUNITY
First of all I'm very happy that people are shitting on these crappy practices and voicing their opinions. There's definitely no need to accept these types of things. Once you accept this, they'll go even lower next time.
Along with this I'm baffled at the people still trying to defend such scummy tactics. Take a look at these posts
https://www.reddit.com/Genshin_Impact/comments/j799kw/i_will_say_my_biggest_tip_to_enjoy_the_game_and/
https://www.reddit.com/Genshin_Impact/comments/j7atw9/my_take_on_the_negative_reviews_as_a_long_time/
I won't go into any of them. Feel free to look at them yourselves.
CN players are not happy and they're bashing the game everywhere and trying to make sure their voice is heard. This is what we also need to do. Some people say that "It's a Chinese Company. It won't matter whether you bitch here". This is 100% bs. This is not just a chinese game. It's released worldwide for everybody to play. They have people everywhere looking at stuff. So voice you complaints wherever you want official discord, forums, reddit, twitter, youtube, in game feedback.
Keep in mind if you don't speak at all nothing will ever change. Once they receive enough backlash from their playerbase things will get better. The community definitely has the power to change things,
Youtube channels
To be honest I was hoping for those youtube channels would bring up some of those concerns of the community but nope. Every single one of them is dripping wet for Genshin and just screaming into the mics.
"5 AWESOME TIPS FOR GENSHIN". "5 INSANE TIPS FOR GENSHIN". "5 SUPER DUPER INSANE TIPS FOR GENSHIN". "5 TIPS FOR GENSHIN TO LEVEL UP AND GET THAT HOT MILF IN YOUR AREA".
I don't mean to criticize those channels, they may create content they want, but a good chunk of community watches those channels so bringing issues with the game will definitely help.
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"This is a Gacha Game. This is how it's supposed to be. If you don't like it quit it. You aren't enjoying the game" ---- Genshin Impact Whiteknights
First of all I have absolutely no need to hear from someone how to enjoy my game so yeah get the hell outta here with this advice.
And for all you sorry a$$ mobile gacha gaming gambling addicts out there get it through your thick skulls of yours that GENSHIN IS NOT A MOBILE GACHA GAME.
This is something even the game tries to achieve but fails very hard to do so. It wanted to be something more than your typical gacha game but in the end it's own system doomed it.
From the start Genshin is being marketed as OPEN WORLD JRPG rather than a gacha game. It also has every aspect of open world rpgs cuz that's what the game is. It is also a game that it playable on PC and console rather than mobile. 90% of the mobiles don't even run the game good. The moment Genshin touched the PC, Switch and PS4 platforms it needed to shed the skin of mobile gacha gaming concepts.
Currently the Genshin Impact for high level player is login -> burn resin in 10-15 minutes -> logout.
This is how you play Mobile Gacha games. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU PLAY PC, PS4 OR FOR THAT MATTER MAINSTREAM GAMES. This part is limited to mobile gaming. It has absolutely no place in the mainstream market cuz most of the time people play for longer hours on these systems.
Genshin is not a game that you'll play waiting at a bus stop for 5-10 minutes or waiting for your friend at the cafe. The game wants you to play it like a full RPG. and in here comes the point where the game contradicts itself.
It wants you play the game but limits it greatly or just 99% behind a stamina system.
See the absolute madness in this? This is where the greed comes in. It's where they sell Resin refills. Look at the $20 BP with extra resin, look at weekly packs in the shop selling resin. The sheer ridiculousness of the game selling you stamina just to play the game. For people waiting for the feature to pet the dogs, just hope that it doesn't cost you 20 resin to do so or they are only pettable once a week.
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Even as a gacha game Genshin Impact is a big disappointment
This is coming from my experience as a gacha gamer. The game is literal crap when compared to other gacha games. You've got examples of great gacha games like Azur Lane around(I'm saying comparatively better, not that other ones don't have problems) but still it choose to go with worst ones.
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I have nothing expect gratitude for you for reading this so far. Next we move on to the final segment that is the Company Itself.
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Mihoyo
The final boss of all is Mihoyo itself and they themselves have been really scummy and shitty.
So far they have been completely turning a blind eye and not listening to the people at all. Starting from the very first CBT to the OBT they have received constant feedback but have completely neglected the main parts which include resin and monetization. Now keep in mind that Mihoyo is not a new company. They have been in the market for years. Their other mobile game Honkai Impact 3 is very big in CN and also quite popular in global too. Throughout constant feedback from players and being in market they have learned what's good and what's bad.
And the shittiest thing is that they choose to completely ignore it and push there scummy tactics. Let's see some of them....
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The first and very obvious one being the gacha and monetization. Monetization was available during the CBT3 on CN server. It received quite a feedback due to rates being so low. But they still didn't change a thing. They just rolled it exactly the same way meaning they didn't pay any heed to the feedback regarding the monetization. They know about gacha and what's good and bad about it but still purposely chose to go with the shittiest kind of gacha.
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Unskippable Cutscenes. Let's just accept it that the only reason the cutscenes are unskippable is because they want to prevent people from rerolling accounts. Though it didn't prevent them but it was their intention. That's why they even went as far as banning accounts who pulled 5 star but had no activity for 24 hours or so but didn't even touch those accounts that only had 4 stars. Criticism threads on the official forums are being deleted. Just another scummy tactic.
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There have been constant bashing on CN forums since 15th, taptap score is 4.7 and on other forums too. Yet they still haven't considered any of them and are just ignoring their playerbase completely.
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What's Mihoyo trying to do?
At this point it's either two possibilities one that either they didn't research enough into the mainstream audience or it's just deliberate. And the chance of it being the former is let's say 0.6
It seems like rather than catering to what the mainstream playerbase expects, Mihoyo is trying to lure them into the shady and absolute bs world of Mobile Gacha gaming. This is what garnered so much hate from the mainstream audience. While the gacha gaming addicts are used to being fcked over by these scummy tactics all year around, this is not the case with others. Some of them are even completely new to the terms like Gacha. And just accept the fact that Gacha is a horrendous system of monetization. Like Gigguk said "Who said gacha is like drugs. Drugs are way cheaper." To any sane person this model of monetization is absolute bs and it is. Even among this Monetization Genshin goes for the worst one their is. So yeah expecting a whole different player crowd to shut up and just fall into crappy and scummy practices is not gonna work and is definitely gonna blow up in your face.
And I hope that people continue to bash such systems cuz if such kind of system is accepted it will shift many other aspects to the shittier side and thing will continue to get worse. This is the reason why mobile gacha gaming is so bad. The devs pushed poorer rates and people just sat there and accepted it blowing thousands on such practices. This is the reason why something like 0.6% chance to get a 5 star character exists. It's derived from the Mobile Gacha Gaming.
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What's all these complaining posts? Why don't you just enjoy the game?
FCKING STOP PROTECTING/WHITE KNIGHTING THESE SCUMMY PRACTICES. First of all get it through your thick skulls that the who are doing the so called "complaining" are doing it because they love the game and WANT IT TO BE BETTER. They aren't doing it out of spite or anything.
You can dismiss a few troll threads when a user is hating without a reason anywhere. But know that when multiple people are complaining about one thing it means there is something wrong with that. People are making long posts giving proper reasons as to why something is bad and giving a reply like "This is how it is. Quit if you don't like it." is a rotten and crappy mindset.
The reason people are taking their time to write of such lengthy posts is because they genuinely love the game and want it to be better and more awesome. That's why something called "FEEDBACK" exists in this world. As it stands the game is just heading to its doom and the people trying to prevent it are the ones who care about it. People giving crappy answers are contributing nothing to it.
And let me ask this question why do you have to fcking head crash into people who care? Is it bad that the game gets better and everybody enjoys it rather than your sorry a$$ of a gacha gambling addict.
A fact is that if things get better these so called white knights will be jumping in joy too. BUT THERE IS ONE VERY BIG DIFFERENCE. They will call it like "Wow! mihoyo is so generous. They're the best devs in the world." rather than actually crediting it to the people who made the change possible.
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FINAL WORDS
The game itself is very beautiful. The awesome Open world map, absolutely banger soundtrack all are just too good. I absolutely love the game itself. But the current game system is very flawed and this needs to addressed as soon as possible.
If Genshin Impact stays like this, it will be removed from the mainstream audience. That's why changes need to occur if they want this crowd to stay, otherwise if all want is just money then they'll carry on with these shitty practices.
Know that at the end of all this if nothing is changed Genshin will just be another Generic Mobile Gacha Game where you'll save primogems for months for a char -> Get fcked by abyssal rates -> Curse the devs and game -> Go to sleep -> Rinse and repeat and if you enjoy it that's good for you. What sucks the most is that a game with so much potential will be ruined.

My VXX 101 was shared here so I figured I’d be helpful and post my other 101 and 102s from WSB*
some image links and stuff didn’t convert. I’ll clean it up later
Original link: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/ky9m34/unusual_options_activity_101_whale_watching_tips/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
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This is long, if you’re uninterested skip to the ten tips list or TLDR A while ago I started mixing unusual options activity into my gamblinginvesting. At first I lost a shitload of money chasing dumbass whales with zero plan, but now I actually have a pretty good feel for it. I still fuck up alot, but more often I do not fuck up. This is to help those of you who want to start chasing whales, or are at a basic level and want to do it better.
I'm using some plays from this week as examples because they are fresh in my mind and I have a couple screenshots.
Tools I use barchart in tandem with Unusual Whales. For barchart, you can honestly get by using their free version, you just can't sort as well. They have a free month trial too. I also pay the 20 bucks for Unusual Whales to confirm what I scan, and they have a good stocks volume standard deviation tool. I have zero affiliation to either, just saying what I use.
There are way more technical ways to do this, but I like to use my eyes to scan sporadically throughout the day like a boomer.
*Basic Concept *
Long story short, you're ideally chasing the options purchases of what are, presumably, deep-pocketed individuals or institutions. UOA identifies certain options contract orders that are higher than the average daily contract order. For example, if the average daily option volume on an GME weekly is 4,000, and an option order enters for 4,000 or higher, it's flagged as unusual activity since it's a multiple of that daily average volume--sometimes it shows as multiple orders if "they" push through a few smaller purchases that produce heavy volume. MM are sneks who like to move in silence, which they can do with with stock positions via dark pools and the like. However, they can't get away with that with options activity--it all shows. That fact, young autist, is your slingshot against the institutional goliath.
*Hunting the Whale * So I've got my unusual options activity page open on barchart or wherever for the current day. I adjust the expiration date option so that the options I'm looking at don't expire past a couple weeks out (more on why later), then I'm ready to eye scan.
I typically start by looking for one of two things: 1) large clusters of orders that belong to one ticker or 2) sporadic orders for a ticker that consistently show up over a couple hours, but belong to non-hot, non-meme stonks that do NOT have earnings imminent. To make sure I'm looking at something potentially weird, I choose to exclude options that expire more than a couple weeks out.
*1) Clusters of orders—ABNB example *
The way I scope it is kind of a tiered process. First, I'm looking to see if there are any clusters of orders that catch my eye on a quick scan. Second, I'm looking to see if those clusters of orders contain both calls AND puts, with some OTM activity and spreads preferred. Third, I look to see if the number of seperate call orders outweighs the number of put orders (or vice versa), and additionally I look to see if the volume of the calls drastically outweighs the volume of the puts (or vice versa).
Why? Because it helps you determine if the options order is just a hedge, or if it’s hedging against itself as it’s own position. This is super important so try to follow along-- most UOA is just institutions hedging; Mr. MM has a nice, busy life and fancy yacht and can't just exit his positions back and forth all day like a WSBer. He also has like a billion shares of his stonks, so if he dumps it when he's got paper hands it will siginficantly tank the value and cause a ripple effect. So, instead of hedging by dumping his shit, he hedges by adding OTM options against his position--next level fucking diamond hands. That would be the type of whale order from Mr. MM we don't want to follow. But, if Mr. MM buys 4,000 FB call options in a few blocks, and you see like 1,000 in FB puts go through right alongside it, the odds are that someone is betting big on FB and using the puts as a hedge, since the puts represent a smaller volume in the call/put ratio. Instead of the options being a hedge for a bigger stock position they hold, these types of option clusters indicate that the option order itself is the big, independent play, and it's hedging itself with lower volume order vs the higher volume (4,000 calls to 1,000 puts).
Then I do an easy confirmation. I check the tickers general trend the past week or so in a chart, do a news search on twitter of their ticker for news catalysts and sentiment, and google and YouTube to see if the crayola kids think it's a good nerd play.
Example: Here's the screenshot on some ABNB UOA I noticed and played this week.
It went to 200% and change within a couple hours, but I had unfortunate diamond hands and sold for about half that. ABNB UOA
So, this a softball. First, you can see that ABNB all of a sudden explodes with all these options showing up at 12:52–that's our cluster. Second, the clusters have both calls and puts in that minute timespan, with some put orders showing at the bottom of the cluster. Some of the calls are deep OTM, as far as 200c. Third, the call orders far outweigh the put orders in both amount and volume. Awwwww shit, looks like we got more than a hedge—we’re onto something.
Confirmation time: ABNB had been on a general uptrend, and I typically don't like to chase, but I combed twitter and saw their were rumors of the CEO speaking the following day, and that news had just broken of their DC booking cancellations. I looked back into the morning, and saw a few more unusual blocks, and a few more rolled in just after the cluster pictured above. Passed the smell test. Options bought, tendies gained.
Sparse Orders: SNAP example
The same principles can apply to orders on tickers that pop up individual orders, not large clusters, which a) haven’t had much attention b) have been on a steep downtrend—this makes the order unusual, and/or c) seem to keep popping up in single orders over a few hours to a day.The same principles as above apply, but if you see these types of orders with very little time left until expiration, you can assume assume it's probably not a hedge. SNAP isn't the best example of the week because there wasn't a put order in this block. But, there was positive TA sentiment when I searched, SNAP had been on an oversold downtrend, and I don't have screenshots left of the better ones I saw and went after. Plus, importantly, IT WAS TOWARDS THE END OF THE DAY (this is huge, EOD is prime time for AH news whales) SNAP UOA
A better example from this week though is SPCE, which had only a few orders sprinkled throughout the day, and one toward the end of the day which was DEEP, DEEP OTM expiring 1/15. *That’s a flag for us—sporadic listing throughout the day, OTM toward the end of the day. * BAM! EOD SPCE OTM calls sprinkle in, ARK invests to kick off AH, SPCE moons.
Sparse Orders Patterns: Connecting the dots on tech rebound with FB and SNAP
Seeing the SNAP orders above sharpened my eyes that day to looking for a pattern with tech on the whole, since big tech had been so royally gaped the past week. I kept seeing FB options like this pop up https://i.imgur.com/muVGtq2.jpg
Sometimes you can put together sporadic listings and create a working theory based on a sector. Because this and similar FB orders were deep OTM and one day out, I knew there was a risk they could a hedge, but also knew that the tech sector was due for a rebound and saw SNAP posting sporadic OTM as well. So, I bought my options for each of those two another week out and closer to ATM (important, more below), to give the whale some breathing room in case was it was a hedge, even though the technicals agreed with the bounce. The whales were right, and it was an easy little overnight profit.
How I’ve Fucked Up 1: Don’t get tricked by trends
Although we like to believe institutions are ahead of the curve, often they are just trend-riding lemmings who follow what's already way, way up. They buy the top, just like WSB tardies such as yourself specialize in. So, when you see shit like this below, take a minute to think before you get excited: NIO UOA LIKE THIS WAS NONSTOP
It was the same for all the memes: PLUG, FCEL, MARA, and RIOT all week, dominating the orders. If something is already too popular, just stay away from it. You can ride something up, but when you see massive orders on shit that's already like 400% IV, just...don't.
How I’ve Fucked Up 2:*DO give the MM’s some breathing room
Even if you’re confident in a move you see that is a few days out, extend your play a week or two further out minimum, and strike it closer to ATM. If you can't do either of those things because you can't afford the premium just skip that play and check back for something new later; I promise a better opportunity will arise. You can recover from bagholding, but you cannot recover from blowing your account on an incorrect 0DTE.
Breathing room is also important because often whales will have the news but not the exact timing. Two months ago I followed a DDOG whale on a Thursday 1DTE that expired worthless the next day. The following Monday (1 trade day later) DDOG made the announcement that rocketed them like 20%--if I'd given them a week's breathing room, it would've been a 15 bagger. Fucking F.
So, to review: look for order clusters or sporadic ticker orders that a) have a mix of calls and puts with one dominating the other b) unpopular tickers that have deep OTM or close expirations c) always check chatter afterward and fundamentals and d) try to put together a narrative of things that are related that catch your eye (this Monday's EV run or this Friday's tech bounce could be next week's airline dominance or cruiseline craze--connect the dots). Initially look for options expiring soon, as they indicate the most riskiness--and therefore confidence--if the MM is not hedging. Shop with a short term eye, buy with a long term choice.
10 Things That Will Help You Not GUH:
1) Monday and Friday morning/afternoon are the most accurate whale times, according to data from Unusual Whales 2) If you don't have PDT always save some spending power for EOD shopping 3) If you don't have PDT never, ever follow a whale with a weekly. Sometimes the news the whale bets on is a 'sell the news' event, and you won’t recover from a drop especially if there is IV crush involved. 4) Always give the whale breathing room by purchasing an expiration at least a week further out 4b) Always give the whale breathing room by going closer to ATM strikes than theirs 5) Sign up for barchart monthly trial (then continue it) and unusual whales--they're each like 20 bucks and thats way less than you spend on an FD. 6) You don't need to learn TA, but you need to check technicals on the tickers you want to chase--almost every major ticker has youtubers or fintwits giving their daily or weekly TA. This way you know if it's a proper breakout happening if the whale hits, and you're not just guessing at when to take profits. Remember, whales can buy wayyyyyyy OTM and sell for massive profit at any point--they aren’t bagholding a call until it's in the money like you are. You may be 10% up waiting for the next 80% GME day while your whale has sold at their target 5% profits on the play and is chillin. 7) Leave at least 10% of your account spending power free each day. I promise, the one time you go full boat you will see the most obvious whale play at the end of the day. Then you won't be able to do shit about it and you'll hate yourself when it's a 10 bagger overnight. Trust me. 8) Make sure the ticker you're chasing isn't just ER anticipation/bets. Always check earnings dates before buying. 9) Remember whales are people, so they can be stupid, too. Don't baghold a position that is clearly fucked for some news that looks unlikely to come. They are gambling addicts just like you, except they have more money. 10) Always take profits if you ask yourself if it's time to. If it's good enough to screenshot, it's good enough to close the position. Positions: Dumped a ton of stuff and loading up Tuesday because long weekends scare me, but saw some ineresting 2/5s I held including WKHSc PLTRc SPYc (1/19, 1/22) LMNDp And a couple tickers that I couldn’t post lol. also have AAPL and JD leaps
TLDR Use a service to follow whales so you can get ahead of announcements. Look for clusters of options activity that hedge themselves via call/put ratio, and do a legitimate check for TA and catalysts to confirm their moves. Never follow a whale into a weekly, but use weeklies are your best screener.
I might do a pretty consistent DD post (a couple times a week) on what I’m seeing at the end of each day if there is interest, and if it’s not a day I don’t have a ton of real work. If something quick catches my eye I usually throw it up on my twitter @yourboymilt (there’s no notification thing on here mods, just trying to be helpful— not selling anything) I’ll also probably throw some more potential Monday positions on here over the weekend once I decide to do some more research. Later.

Back in december I came across a small project called Prosper.
#Prosper is a prediction market project, just like augur, only much, much better.
First of all i'll precise that I am not a member of the project. I'm just smone who does his homeworks and likes to help :)
I looked into it superficially and it seemed there was potential so I kept an eye on it until public sale. That is until they canceled public sale to replace it with a mining event, essentially putting their prediction platform to live testing. I decided to participate and mine $PROS. That's when I got convinced this had tremendous potential.
I’ll let you hop onto their platform at beta.prosper.so to check by yourself how predictions work, it’s pretty straightforward. You choose a pool amongst the proposed (currently BNB and ETH, many more to come) and predict whether the price will be above or below the ticker displayed. There you go, 2 clicks and you’re in. The predictions are currently closed until next event, which should happen soon.
So what makes me think it’s just a wonder in the making? here is what:

1. The team:

- The team is composed of some of the guys from Prometeus labs (which is a backer of the project btw). Their LinkedIn and twitters are public, they make AMAs etc. We’re dealing with some serious guys, settled in the crypto industry for years.
- More importantly, their mindset is what convinced me. They’re very focused on delivering their roadmap and more, seem to have a clear picture of where they want their product to go, and how to get there. They also have a good understanding of the tokenomics mechanisms of 2021 cryptos and understand the interest of creation and retention of value in the $PROS token.

2. The investors and backers:

You’ll find a list on the website, but the project seems to have very strong backing, from Prom labs ofc, but also from all the other projects they are working with such as chainlink, Polkadot, Matic etc. And then there is Binance, which is not officially listed, but it is clear to me that they are supporting as a part of the BSC ecosystem. I mean, what project gets listed on Binance when it’s like 3 weeks old ? because yeah , Prosper is listed on Binance already. Also the team is connected through Prometeus labs that has had its own token $PROM listed for years.
I would also highlight that their TG (https://t.me/prosperfi) has already 5k+ people and a growing engaged community. That just does not happen with shitcoin projects.

3. The project:

- The project is at the exact spot I’m seeing this bullrun hit:
- Crosschain on many altchains, and mainly BSC which is rocketing atm, but also Polygon (matic) and Polkadot.
- DEFI: although prediction markets are still a niche in the DEFI, someone you may know thinks they're deemed to take their share of this run (hint: he created Ethereum).
- Non Custodial: You make your predictions and claim your gains straight from / to you own metamask wallet (walletconnect will be implemented). Your keys, your money. Best thing? BSC will let you do that for a few pennies of fees.
- The DAO: team will let holders and community participate in the project governance. Will become pretty standard in the future of crypto projects, but we have here a DAO that took a huge decision in the very first week of its existence (see tokenomics section), and that is telling a lot about the strength of the project.
- It is alive and kicking: the platform has been launched and ran for several days as a beta. It saw tremendous volume (over 18.5 M USD) and generated over 355k USD in fees in less than 10 days. This is absolutely huge, espetially considering those fees are going back to the treasury, feeding the whole project as well as holders pockets.
-The UI is miles ahead of the competition. Let’s you literally place a prediction in two clicks.
- It has an open road to capture a good chunck of the Prediciton market: competition is either old news and outdated in technology (augur etc.), or just announced and very far from hitting the market (polkamarket etc.).
- It has many features on the roadmap, with the main being a mobile app (coming out soon), and sports bets. The team already leaked in an AMA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IB8s6GtVww) that they have secured a partnership with a huge sports betting site. Its is also developing a unique system of bet insurance, and the possibility for holders to open their own custom pools (i.e. be the casino).
- The platform is already ported in Chinese. The fact that china is a gambling addict and bet lover country is news to no one.
- Last but not least, they just announced that they will keep making mining events every time the project is ported to a new Blockchain, giving the opportunity to users to get the BC’s native token + to pro holders to pocket even more Pros. When does this stop getting better ??

4. The $PROS tokenomics:

- The Max supply is 100M $PROS. The circulating supply is currently about 4.5M.
Here is the repartition and unvesting schedule of the supply:
Investors: 4.57M Strategic + 3.4M Seed + 0.25M Presale + 2.01M Private :
½ released on UNI listing in Jan.2021
Seed round: 9 months of linear vesting (0,35% / day), starting from April 14th; Strategic round: 6 months of linear vesting, starting from April 14th; Private round: 8 months of linear vesting, starting from April 14th; Presale round: 3 months of linear vesting, starting from April 14th.
Marketing: 10M - 3 months lock-up, after — 10% per month.
Community funds: 5M - 6 months lock-up, after — 10% per month.
Reserves: 15M - Locked for urgent situations, the community will be notified in advance before unlock;
Ecosystem: 12M - 6 months lock-up, after — 25% every 3rd month.
Team: 13.38M - 1 year lock-up, 1 year linear vesting period;
Staking Rewards: 30M - Remain locked until the binary liquidity program an on-chain aggregation launch.
As you can see, we’re not having a cliff release, the team actually changed their initial plans to adopt linear unvesting and help protect the price of the token, and avoid dumps. Equally, DAO voted in the very first week to delay the start of unvesting by 2 full months in order to give time for product and features roll out. With a total of 99% yeses on the vote, it means that even investors probably voted to vest their own tokens longer, which means they’re in to support the project on the long term.

5. Use of the Token:

This is a very important part. As already said, team has taken good measures to increase the value and rewards of holding $PROS.
Amongst them are mainly the staking (team leaked: very very soon) and Liquidity providing. We don’t have announcement on that yet so I can’t tell more, but I’m feeling it will be huge as part of the fees collected by the platform will be redistributed to the stakers.
Another very interesting use is the DAO vote of course, and the future possibility for the holders to create their own prediction pools and earn fees from them. This is just one of the best use case I’ve ever seen for a token.
These are just the first and announced reasons to hold PROS, and with such low circulating tokens I’m expecting the demand to ramp up pretty fast.
​
So these were all the infos on Prosper and $Pros I have, feel free to DYOR :
Website : https://prosper.so/
Prediciton platform : https://beta.prosper.so/
Medium : https://medium.com/pooler
Main telegram channel: https://t.me/prosperfi
Buy $PROS on Binance https://www.binance.com/en/trade/PROS_ETH
And
UNISWAP https://info.uniswap.org/token/0x8642a849d0dcb7a15a974794668adcfbe4794b56
Before you go I’ll try and help you with one last thing: lets say you saw the value in the project, here is an interesting last info :
#Prosper is currently below 10M market cap.
Which is ridiculously low for such project.
Main competitor is at 160M, and is way behind on pretty much all topics.
It is currently one of the very lowest cap listed on Binance.
As for the price ? Although it keeps going up at a reasonable pace, i would say that it has a lot of room to grow upward from the consolidation phase it has had for 2 weeks now. The team announced some staking news for as soon as this week-end, and i'm expecting it to move the price considerably.

• I'd like to start by saying I will probably get a lot of negativity with regards to this following opinion. I have nothing against HODLING Doge if you can afford to. There's nothing wrong with investing in the coin, sharing memes, etc.

​
Doge has for a long time been a meme coin. It hasn't really had a suitable realistic use case. There are many detractors when looking at it. A lot of red flags. Other better projects to invest in over a longer term. However recently people have put money into it and seen gains.
One of the major problems I have personally when looking at the price of Doge is this: People are pushing up the price and talking about selling at $1. I mean it's laughable to expect it'll get there any time soon. The amount of money it would take to achieve that is astounding. The barriers people are experiencing just to buy the coin is another limiting factor.
Another major problem is that people don't seem to understand how the markets work. They talk about selling the coin when it reaches a certain point. They seem to completely misunderstand where the money is coming from and how it works.
FOR ONE PERSON TO MAKE MONEY THERE ARE OTHERS THAT ARE LOSING THAT MONEY
If you take GME as an example: Lot's of people made gains. Hedge funds lost a lot of money. There were also retail investors that road that price all the way back down too. In markets there are always winners and losers. I can imagine not all the posts on reddit about people constantly buying are always true. However it's sickening to see people throwing good money after bad. You see it a lot in gambling addicts. They chase and chase. Blinded by the prize as it is. HODLing is all well and good, but if it's your life savings it might not be the best idea.
For sure invest into Doge, play the market. Be smart about it, take out some of the profit as you ride whatever it is you're investing into. If a hedge fund goes bankrupt the company might go bust, people lose jobs. If a person goes bankrupt, they might literally end up on the streets and lose their life. Be sensible people.
​
Like I said, this is my opinion. I generally don't like positing opinions online anymore due to the backlash you can gather. I just wanted to put this out there. I'm sure there are many people who agree with me and I'm also sure I will have a lot of very negative responses towards my opinion. This is not financial advice. I am not advising you to BUY or SELL. Only you can make your own informed decisions.
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH BEFORE INVESTING.
​
Thank you.
Edit: I'm actually shocked by the level of positivity I'm seeing below in the comments. Thanks for not biting my head off :)

I debated making this post for awhile because I normally just comment in replies to other things. But someone came across an old post and thought I should share directly, particularly given the influx of homeless discussion.
I'm a homeless person in the area. I lived on paid campgrounds in the region when the weather was nicer and now when I have the cash, I stay in motels. So I'm not someone on the lawn, chopping up bikes (I actually sold mine for $50 to pay for another room night) I'm a nobody and you've probably stood in line next to me and had no idea I was homeless because I do everything in my power to keep it together. But I cry a lot and the longer this goes on, the more difficult it is to climb out of because literally everything in society is working against you and I don't think many people realize the logistics of how difficult homelessness can be.
I lost my job literally the week after the NBA shut down. For what it's worth, my former boss got a six figure PPP loan (it was on ProPublica which is how I found out) and I haven't heard from them since. Other than when I had to fight some reporting stuff that they messed up. The shitty thing too is, the company made multiple millions of dollars. Still in business. Still operating btw. Anyway...
I was raised in foster care, so I don't have a family to run to when times get tough. All of my IRL friends live in Canada and I was actually in the IEC working visa pool and hoping to go over, get work experience, make connections, and eventually immigrate there permanently. My friends there are like my family, but there's nothing they can do to bring me over because we aren't blood related and they can send me some money but the exchange rate sucks and so do all the exchange fees. They really just don't know how this country just lets people struggle. But the pool suspended draws in March and at the end of last year, they fully closed it out. There hasn't been any announcement on if they'll ever bring it back and jesus christ I feel so fucked.
So, I want to explain how people end up in situations like mine. I was on a short term lease and it didn't get renewed. It was probably for the better anyway because my former roommate was talking about stabbing Jews like Soros to end the pandemic. (I'm Jewish.) Oh and she owns a business in town.
That was early on in the pandemic when I lost my previous place and I thought honestly this would be over by summer, my job would ask me back and it wouldn't be an issue, so I rented airbnbs even though they were pricey. I don't think many people thought this would all go on as long as it did either.
Then I had car issues (tires balded completely, brakes, rotors, and tired rods iirc? I needed a whole lot of shit done.) Then I got really sick too and medical bills were an arm and leg. I was applying to places to live and my credit was going to obviously get dinged with maxing out credit cards and having unpaid medical bills would just obviously make me a shitty candidate to rent to.
But through June I tried applying to places. But those are hard credit pulls and I did...a number of them over 2-3 months to try my damndest. However, I can't get approved for housing because I'm unemployed and have been unemployed for months. I don't make enough from sex work other than to cover some nights nor is that a viable "job" to most people. I don't have a WA cosigner, hell I don't have ANY cosigner that lives in America, so that takes me out of the running of the vast vast majority of places. And not only that, a number of landlords would only take me if I could pay something like $5k or pay the full amount of the lease upfront. One woman almost rented a room to me, but I have now no "recent" landlord for them to reference and call. When I explained to her I was living in a motel, she called me homeless scum looking for a place to do drugs. One of my friends tried to "act" as a former landlord, but they looked up property records and he wanted to arrest me for fraud. I was just desperate for a place to live (and I want to share this story too because a lot of people make VERY VERY VERY bad suggestions to homeless people.)
I don't even drink in this goddamn state full of craft breweries. I don't like NOT having my wits about me. So no, I'm not some tweaker that does drugs. I also cannot fucking stand the smell of marijuana. I'm a lame ass square. But it doesn't matter because every single stereotype is what you are when you are homeless.
You can't rent a room without having CURRENT employment THAT PAYS THE RENT. So a part time, 10 hour a week gig at $15 McD's won't qualify you for housing. I don't know what is so difficult about understanding that but people really seem to struggle with that. You need to make at least 3-4x to qualify for anything, including just a bedroom.
And? You can't rent without RECENT landlord to reference. It's one of the several sneaky requirements they throw in there in order to make it damn near impossible for someone who is homeless to get permanent housing.
Mentally, it's all a constant waking nightmare. I have to try to figure out the best prices on places to stay, I have to make lots of calls, I apply for aid, I have to stay warm, I have to try to sleep, I have to try to promote my sex work, I have to try to think if there's any future for me. It's exhausting.
"Now you're wondering why not go to the shelter?"
I did one night and I had to fight off assault. I know another girl who was raped and she attempted suicide and had to be committed. PLEASE stop thinking this shit doesn't happen in this town just because your homes cost half a million fucking dollars.
Most people may not also understand the restrictions or lack of dignity that occurs at a lot of shelters. Some shelters force you to change into scrubs they provide, so it feels like prison. You can't keep your stuff on you. It's very time restrictive, so if you are working later than the entry time, you're totally fucked. Or if you need to go to work, you can also be fucked for violating the rules. It's also just full of people who are screaming at night from the mental anguish this shit leaves you in. It's literally sleeping among nightmares.
A lot of aid in town and in general, America, is run by churches or "loosely affiliated religious organizations". I have been point blank asked to convert in order to get help. I'm ethnically Jewish and I dunno how they can't quite get that I can't exactly convert into a new ethnicity. The synagogue in this county has been closed and offers zero aid or help. Also LOTS of charities focus strictly on families and there is also one in town for young adults (under 24.) While I understand that's important, there isn't a lot of help for people like me in their mid-30s or who are single.
"Why not apply for affordable housing?"
Well, most people don't even know that the waiting lists are closed for 1 bedrooms. The list is 5-10+ y e a r s long. Many people have probably never visited it, despite constantly suggesting it to me: https://bellinghamhousing.org/home/applicants/open-waitlist/ go ahead and tell me what's open and what's closed. And that's the waiting list- that's not even you getting housing tomorrow.
"You must make a lot sex working!"
90% of OnlyFans accounts make under $50 a month. It's not the money maker you think it is, earning even $100 is hard work. Processors take huge chunks of earnings, then you have transfer fees, and yeah it's a lot to be desired. There's also the mental toll it can take. Also, I'm not a hot young college thing, I have a specific niche and it doesn't really pay.
So just a few other things, especially as it concerns food:

• Not every motel, especially the cheap ones, have rooms with microwaves or fridges. Or they don't work. If you're on a campground, you can't use perishables without ice, a freezer and that has to be constantly maintained.
• EBT doesn't cover warm or prepared food or "anything intended to be eaten in the store".
• I won't accept food handed to me where I didn't purchase it or it didn't come from a verified place. ESPECIALLY HOMEMADE FOOD. Please, PLEASE reconsider this (I know there is meal train and that might be different, but I'm talking just generally.) I'd actually avoid handing food directly to a homeless person. You have ZERO idea of their allergies or medical conditions. I have NO IDEA if you poisoned it. Now you might laugh, but given the way people who are supposed to be helping have treated me, I really, really can't afford to trust strangers.
• Also, I'm wary of the free pantries. Why? Again, because people tamper with food.
• YOU may be well-intentioned, but enough people aren't.
• I routinely have gotten rotten produce in my food bank box, I can send you fun pics. Point is, most of the stuff is on its last legs or has no legs at all. I have gotten fully molded loaves of bread and I honestly couldn't even eat after seeing it.
• PLEASE stop donating your expired goods to the food bank.
• PLEASE do not donate UNSEALED things to the food bank. Like your hot chocolate mix in a tin from 2014.
• Please donate jams, jellies, honey, and spices because 1) plain beans and rice sucks and 2) surviving on peanut butter sucks and every person struggling right now will tell you some jam would be nice.

People want to help and I get that. And you're like "goddammit what can I do?"
Just hand people money.
Just give people the dignity that they know how to prioritize their needs.
Research continually bares this out: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/americas/direct-giving-homeless-people-vancouver-trnd/index.html
Don't give me coats, I have one. The one you gave me probably won't fit or if I'm allergic to wool, I will have no use for it. (I'm not allergic to wool, but people are!)
Don't give me things I haven't asked for in general. Someone send me a PM saying they have a twin bed I could have. Uh, I have a bed in storage, no thanks. They called me a cunt and told me to kill myself.
Don't hand me lotto tickets. Most scratch offs are loser tickets and then it looks like I'm wasting my money on gambling. You also have no idea who might have be struggling with or recovering from a gambling addiction.
Don't donate your trash and expect me to grateful. You gave me the work of throwing away your garbage and reminding me that's all I am to you and the community.
Don't bitch about homelessness and in the same breath fight Section 8 or assume shit about housing vouchers. If you're a landlord in this town, maybe you ought to accept vouchers and actually try to be a force for good. Or bitch about how minimum wage is too high. It ain't high enough.
Don't send me a PM saying you have a room for me to stay in or will "take me out on a date" to get me food. That's taking advantage of someone. That's also really fucking unsafe. If you do allow homeless and jobless people a place to stay, put that on your facebook or craigslist ad publicly or respond back when someone does explain their situation. (Note: and while I sex work, I'm not an in/outcall worker or an escort. I'm not going to have sex with you or put myself in an incredibly dangerous situation.)
Don't criticize people who are homeless who are trying to tell you what they actually need- you do not know their needs. Please stop assuming you do.
You can encourage groups to just give straight cash grants. If you absolutely are committed to give giftcards, do them for useful places like Target, Walmart, grocery stores, etc. where someone can buy toiletries, clothing, etc. Don't send me a $5 giftcard to like Cabela's. The closest one is a drive away and what can I do with that? I would spend more in gas to get to one. In the same vein, someone offered me a giftcard to like a steakhouse in Seattle. I hope you can understand how those aren't useful.
You can also hold your church, your preferred charity org, etc. ACCOUNTABLE. Actually look what they require of applicants for aid, ask them for how they advertise to the public and what their outreach is, ask how much is going to people, demand transparency.
"Okay, so I want to give to United Way--"
Wait. Stop. PLEASE understand that United Way is a passthrough organization. It's a middle man. They just help fund other charities and they obviously skim off the top as "operating expenses". Likewise, I saw here and on facebook lots of folks donating to Whatcom Community Foundation. They also do not provide any direct aid. It's also a middle man. Listen, I understand they fund a few scholarships and help promote nonprofits and I'm NOT saying it's bad or the worst idea ever, but if we are talking about the most direct, most efficient, and most bang for your buck, just hand your dollars to people struggling.
Hand me $5 and that can go towards my storage unit or cell phone bill or private mailbox or gas or insurance. It can go towards supplements, it can go towards getting a warm cup of soup, or it can go towards another night of a safe warm place to stay. Other sex workers, my friends in Canada, and a couple nice souls on reddit who have helped via paypal/cashapp/venmo? That's been THE reason I've stayed afloat, it's the been THE reason I can stand next to you in line at Target and I don't reek of piss because I was able to actually have a real shower. It has NOT been because of nonprofit organizations.
I think it's really important for people to understand that some bills, some bad luck, and some pandemic fuckery can easily spiral your life into daily struggling and homelessness. It's not easy to move and most of our safety net requires you to have a robust social network. I hope one day I can migrate to Canada, but now I need to resave thousands of dollars to qualify for any visa and to be brutal with you, my chances of achieving that dream and being able to have a real life again are very slim. I'll soon age out of IEC Working Holiday visa and I simply don't have tens of thousands of dollars to pay for graduate school as an alternate way in. It's a hard road ahead for me to get through until I can even get the vaccine.
My hope in sharing this lengthy long diatribe is that it causes you to think and critique the institutions we have. Please think about how you can truly help and what that looks like in action. Not everyone's struggles are the same, especially not everyone's homeless struggles, but thank you for reading mine.
Edit: Thank you again for reading this and really taking it to heart, I really appreciate the kindness and gratitude show. I honestly didn't think anyone would even read this. If anyone else is homeless or struggling or on the verge, I don't take any mind to you sharing your story too and please feel free to just send me a message that this sucks and I'm here to listen to bitching because lordy I get it. xo

Ever since the game was announced to have a Switch port coming soon, many who have previously never heard of Genshin Impact grew intrigued. The open world in particular peaked the interest of many, especially after comparisons to Breath of the Wild were drawn. In anticipation of the port, I’d like to give a brief rundown on what the game is, and how aspects of it work. While the game is free, so there is no harm in trying it out, I’m hoping this post will serve as a guide for anyone on the fence about giving it a shot.
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What exactly is Genshin Impact?
Genshin Impact is a fantasy open world action RPG from Chinese developer studio miHoYo, responsible for a couple prior games, notably mobile game Honkai Impact 3rd. Though they aren’t strangers to games, Genshin Impact is their latest, and by far most successful title yet.
The game is set on the continent of Teyvat, a vast, completely open world consisting of 7 nations associated with a different element, and a god-like figure of said element. You play the role of a traveler from a far away world, sealed in Teyvat following a confrontation with a powerful entity who separates you from your sibling. Your main driving goal is to reunite with said lost sibling. On your journey you are accompanied by a strange floating fairy thing which accompanies you and serves as both a guide as well as a quirky sidekick.
Important thing to note at this point is that the game is not currently finished. Genshin Impact is a live service game, receiving continuous content, story, and event updates every 6 weeks. At the current point, with everything there is to do at the moment, the story is less than a quarter of the way finished. The story is expected to develop over time via game updates. Currently, only 2 of the 7 regions are available to explore. As this implies, Genshin Impact isn’t the type of game you blast through in a week. It’s a long term commitment.
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What is the gameplay?
Being an open world game, a big emphasis on exploration is present in the game. Several markers exist within the world that encourage travelling across the world to discover them all and have constant access to the entire world by warping to these markers. Materials from the world itself are everywhere, and are actually critical in the upgrading and improving of of your party members. In this regard, running around gathering any harvestable materials you see is highly rewarded. The world itself is vast, full of everything ranging from sheer cliffs, to dense forests, snowy mountains, beaches, and plains.
Domains, which are basically this game’s version of dungeons, are present, only unlike BOTW, they are almost entirely combat trial based, either having you defeat a certain amount of enemies, of defeat all enemies within a set amount of time, usually with sort of restriction or challenge aspect to them. Completion of these domains rewards loot such as weapons and artifacts (equippable items to make your party members stronger), which you can either use to improve your team, or upgrade your existing weapons/artifacts by infusing them into them. World bosses also exist in addition to regular enemies, which drop special materials required for upgrading your characters, Safe to say, you’ll be fighting these world bosses a lot.
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What About the Combat?
Combat in this game is very much team focused. Don’t expect to have success by relying on one overpowered party member destroying everything. You have 4 party member slots, and each character in the game has a unique element associated with them. Those being Pyro (fire), Hydro (Water), Cryo (ice), Geo (earth), Anemo (wind), Electro (electricity), and Dendro (nature/plants, no current playable character has this element). Switching in and out between party members in battle to cause elemental reactions of the various elements is a huge part of the game’s combat, and thus a balanced team composition of characters of varying elements is encouraged to maximize damage potential. This might sound a little confusing, but in practice it becomes much clearer. In addition, the combat isn’t turn-based. Everything happens in real time, so you’ll need to rely on quick thinking and maneuvers in combat.
Every playable character in Genshin Impact has unique attributes and skills that set them apart from the rest, all with varying playstyles and roles. This means you have lots of freedom in terms of how you set up your party based on how you like to play or what role you want someone to fill. There are four different weapon types as well, being swords, bows, polearms, claymores, and catalysts (basically ranged magic), further increasing potential avenues for teambuilding.
Now while all this may seem like a lot of work and things to keep in mind, it’s important to remember that...
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Genshin Impact is a PVE Game
You can play co-op with your friends and explore and beat dungeons together, but there is no PVP in this game at all. None. This, in essence, means there is little pressure to actually grind and make your team as good as it can possibly be. Genshin Impact isn’t a particularly difficult game. If you want, you can play with your favorites only and you’ll do fine. There’s no need to stress about using the very best characters with the very best equipped artifacts or the very best weapon. This much freedom in how you chose to build your party, and no pressure to compete in some sort of meta ultimately results in a refreshingly laid back experience, allowing one to truly experiment and see what style fits them best, at least for me.
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Unfortunately, I’d be hard pressed to not mention Genshin Impact’s big catch. I’ve been painting it in a pretty positive light thus far, but now comes the time where I talk about the thing that will unfortunately put many people off of this game.
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If Genshin Impact is free, how is it monetized?
Put bluntly, Genshin Impact uses a gacha monetization system. For those unfamiliar, gacha is a system where resources are spent on random items in a store. If it sounds like I’m describing a lootbox, it’s because I am.
Assuming you start playing right now, you’re only going to get access to 5 playable characters. You, 3 other party members to start you off, and another one you get by completing a challenge. Every other character in the game, of which there are 20 and counting, are only available via “wishes.” Wishes are the lootboxes. They take an ingame form of currency known as “primogems” which are trickle fed to the player via completing tasks in game, and in special events. They also just so happen to be in the store, purchasable with real money. Unlockable characters are categorized into 4 stars and 5 stars. 4 stars you can expect to obtain roughly every 10 wishes. 5 stars are much more rare, with less than a 1% chance to get one until you hit 75 wishes, in which case your odds increase until you roll one. Keep in mind, you have absolutely no control over what you get when you wish. This system exists for 4 and 5 star weapons as well, with the same system.
It’s gambling. Plain and simple. Please, do not play this game if you have an addictive personality and are the type to impulsively spend large amounts of money on games like this.
The other notable form of monetization is the resin system. Resin is essentially energy. Many things in this game cost resin to complete, such as domains and bosses. And given that domains and bosses drop essential materials for improving your team, you’ll be doing them very often. Resin regenerates over time, or is able to be purchased via the game’s aforementioned premium currency, primogems. As you can probably guess, the game artificially limits what you can do every day in order to keep you consistently playing day by day, in an attempt to get you addicted to the point where you’re more comfortable spending real money. Such is the sad reality of many games, and Genshin is not immune to these monetization tactics. The sliver lining is that money only accelerates the process or ensures you can get a character or weapon you want from a lootbox. As I mentioned, you get the premium currency just by playing the game, only they are very stingy with it.
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TL;DR
If you go into Genshin Impact expecting a game that provides a story you can blast through in a week, and gameplay that respect’s the player’s time, you will be disappointed. However, if you can accept the free-to-play monetization tactics, are intrigued by the battle and exploration systems I’ve described, and just want the type of game you can play for about an hour every day, give it a shot. It’s free, so it couldn’t hurt.
I hope this post helped anyone with any doubts or concerns. I have over 100 hours into the game myself, so you have any questions, I’ll be happy to try and answer them!