Note: Many of the links are to the Amity Arena Library, a website devoted to the game which includes tracking the history of it through patchnotes and a running history of what cards entered and left the meta. Their website was a valuable resource for this post.

Mobile gaming has taken off like a wildfire since the advent of the smartphone boosted the average processing power a phone could carry. Initially it took the form of crossing over older, more easily runnable games onto the mobile market to... mixed success, but in recent years we've seen both the West and East use mobile gaming to replace the old fashioned movie tie in game. It's easily accessable, has a much wider reach than consoles or PC, you can take it on the go and standards are inherently lower for mobile games than they are a full 60 dollar game.
Since the 2010s, mobile gaming has shifted to what's called the "Freemium" module. The game itself is free to download and start playing, but is insideously designed with obnoxious paywalls or artificial limiters put in place to limit how much you can play each day. If the game is part of a pre-existing franchise, additional money can be made through a premium currency or a chance to obtain high-powered units by rolling a slot machine random chance mechanic. And thus, gacha gaming was born. This sub has had several threads in the past on high profile gacha games, such as the monolithic Fate Grand/Order, Pokemon Go or Genshin Impact. One of the more popular things to roll for in gachas as a consequence is wallpapers for your homescreen, especially for high-grade units as they're usually animated to move a little bit on the homescreen. Today we're looking a low to mid-tier gacha game that rose and fell with the advent of one catgirl. Let's talk RWBY.
RWBY is an online web anime made by Rooster Teeth focusing on four prospective monster hunters who get embroiled in a world-spanning shadow war. It's of debatable quality in matters of animation, combat, voice acting, story, worldbuilding, romance, and it's kind of a little racist if I'm being honest, but one of the major positives of RWBY is that the series tends to have good character design. Series creator Monty Oum set in the guidelines for the show while making it that most if not every design should be made to be cosplay friendly, hence why most of the outfits have things most costume designers haven't heard of like... pockets. And Rooster Teeth, above all else, likes making money. So they know people like RWBY's character designs, enough so that in 2017 plans were made to release a gacha game themed around RWBY called Amity Arena, which would be developed by Korean company NHN Entertainment.
Amity Arena is a PvP tower defense game. Each player controls two turrets and a tower and has three minutes to use units themed from the show to destroy the other player's structures. Whoever took out more wins, destroying a tower is an instant victory. When the game launched, it had three tiers for units- Common (generally held for mooks or low-tier characters in the show), Rare (roughly protagonist-level or elite mooks go here) and Epic (High tier characters usually with an active ability that did lots of damage or stopped enemies in their tracks). The game launched in October 2018 to generally positive reviews from both mobile game players and RWBY fans alike. Fans were happy to get a lot of new official art for the characters in the game and the base gameplay loop was fun. Criticism at the time was largely themed around the lack of content besides PVP matches and some issues with the meta but overall, the launch went well. Each month, the developers would add new units, including popular characters like Neopolitian, Cinder Fall, Zwei the dog, and more.
But everything changed with February 20th 2019, which introduced Neon Katt, the titular catgirl (RWBY characters are themed around fairytales, except for Neon, who is themed around Nyan Cat, and her partner Flynt Coal, who is themed off a potentially racist joke made by Rooster Teeth).
Neon is a character from RWBY Volume 3 who's part of a team that RWBY face during a tournament arc. Her partner, Flynt Coal, was part of the game at launch, and Neon would join him a few months later. Neon in the show is a cocky fighter who taunts the heroes and zips around on rollarskates, which in-game is represented by Neon skating towards the nearest enemy structure to her and hitting it, while all units within a radius of Neon are taunted and provoked into attacking her above all other targets unless they-selves are coded to hit structures. On its own, not a bad idea for a unit, but Neon came with four big caveats:

• Neon was the fourth corner of the square that became known as the Artillery Arena meta, which saw Neon, Cinder (who had an AOE ability she could use which was wide enough to hit a turret and tower and single-handedly killed the entire launch meta of using fragile swarm units), Zwei (an on-summon high damage AOE on any part of the map) and Penny (another AOE ability that instead did chip damage and locked a location down) turn the game's meta into a chip game. Every player ran at least one of the above cards, if only to counter the others. Neon was the universal counter in being anti-swarm and the hardest to stop, especially at launch where her taunt range was so large, it could grab units from the other lane.
  
• Neon launched with a unit weight of "Heavy", which meant that if she was behind a unit she could push it on her way to the turret. This launched a sub-meta where Neon was placed behind a larger unit such as the Ursa (which like Neon was a unit that focused on structures but was made slow to cover its tankiness), to push them towards the turret faster. This was called Disco Bear. They eventually patched this so Neon phased through units by making her a lightweight.
  
• Neon couldn't die. She was invincible until she hit a structure, which combined with her taunt meant that Neon was very annoying to fight and could lock down an entire lane of the battlefield by being placed well and taunting enemies to let you prepare a counter.
  
• Neon was a very cheap unit to summon. Amity Arena uses a mechanic called "Aura" where all units cost a certain amount and it recharges over the match- for instance, protagonist Ruby Rose has a Rare card that costs four Aura to summon, while Weiss Schnee has two rares that cost three and five. Neo only cost two Aura, which made her one of the cheapest units of the game and thus disproportionately powerful for her cost and easy to cycle through your deck so you could spam her.
  

From the word go, Neon is an unpopular unit; she's clearly overbalanced and elements such as the Disco Bear glitch have players thinking she'll have to get knocked down in a nerf- she'll either be made slower, more expensive, or able to die pre-hitting a structure, right?
Neon doesn't show up in the next patch. Instead, before she's fixed, an entire new class of units called Legendaries are introduced, and this is where the game goes full gacha. Legendaries were meant to represent the highest tier characters in the game, the ones who were either the most popular characters or the highest-tier fighters in the show. Or in some cases, the popular ships such as combo cards for White Rose (Ruby/Weiss), Bumblebee (Blake/Yang) and Flower Power (Ren/Nora). Legendaries, representing their value, were impossibly rare and had an infinitely small chance of actually appearing (The most reliable method was to buy the premium chests and hope you'd roll a Legendary, which often cost tons of money), and if you did get one, there was no way to guess which Legendary you'd actually get. Some such as White Rose and Adam were high tier units, others like Hazel or Checkmate were... kinda broken at launch. The playerbase isn't happy at this, especially as free to play players are left out in the cold and reliant on the game giving them high tier units effectively out of pity.
Neon would get a small nerf in the April patch which lessened her taunt range and killed the Disco Bear meta, but her invincibility would be left untouched, even as players submitted feedback regarding how to make it more efficient. The official Amity Arena discord has a weekly feedback section on Tuesdays where players could submit up to four suggestions on how to nerf/buff units and general requests for quality of life such as "Can this character get a new skin from this part of the show," or "Can we have an option to lower music volume that's not just muting all music?" (they never did add that second request) Neon would then remain in this state until the November patch, despite constant weekly requests for a Neon rework, and all it would do is make Neon functionally mortal, in that she had a flat shield bar of 20 that would be lowered by one for each attack before the next hit would kill her. Neon could now die... but your chances of actually doing enough damage to stop her were slim, and regardless, you were now at a serious Aura defecit.
It took seven months for this one unit to get a substantial nerf, all while the game added new units every week and the number of units being affected by patches each month began to gradually sink. To round up some of the major issues people had with Amity that developed throughout 2019 alongside Neon's general existance making life hell:

• Common units were meant to be chump fodder, but could level up the most amount of times with a level cap at 13. This meant longer-term units that had a long time to level such as the Xiong Family card, the AK-130s the Beowolf Pack, or the White Fang gunners, could become shockingly strong if players grinded the money up to reach max level.
  
• A pre-existing divide between free players and players willing to burn money IRL to get access to premium currencies led to a huge disparity in play. Free players have long complained about how hard it is to scrounge money together to level up units at higher costs as even the basic currency of Lien is hard to get large quantities of (you get a certain amount every match win but otherwise you need to burn the Schnee Premium Dust currency for the highest payouts, but SPD is also needed for shop resets, buying crates or unlocking cosmetics). The developers used to do frequent double weekends where all gains were doubled for a weekend, but these became less and less frequent as time went on. Legendaries only added to the divide, as their rarity was bad enough for players willing to spend money (one player, known as one of the largest whales in the community, in trying to get Sienna Khan, reported burning nearly nine hundred dollars on her, while taking nearly six hundred to get the Ice Flower card).
  
• One actual counter was born to fight Neon in the Argus Shield, a stationary unit that existed solely to stall units and take damage. At 2 Aura, it was the first structure to counter Neon, which allevated one of the primary problems with Neon in that no way to counter her was cost-efficient for an enemy player. They buffed the Wall to 3 Aura eventually which killed that hope, and all this happened before Neon's November nerf.
  
• The Summer of 2019 saw a large number of defensive units released; alongside the Argus Shield, several different units were released themed around turrets for the technological kingdom of Atlas, such as the Beam Turret. The Atlesian Burrow Gun was the straw that broke the camel's back and made for a miserable meta as the Burrow Gun would only appear (and be available to take damage) when a unit entered its range. These three units together were all very overpowered on launch and led to a large exodus of players sick of defensive and chip-based metas, especially as what few offensive units that were good enough to counter these metas (such as Professor Port and Adam Taurus) were often nerfed into the ground within a month of release.
  
• Also around this time it became apparent that the developers were unable to meet the quotas that Rooster Teeth was forcing on them. The social media team admitted that a certain number of units needed to be in the game in time for Winter 2019 when Volume 7 was set to start, and as the year went on more and more game-breaking bugs were being found in units, or they were at best horrifically undertuned or overpowered. The Apathy was perhaps the largest case of this, as an unfound bug pre-release meant that the Apathy (who have a passive ability that let them self-duplicate) had no cap on their power, meaning that they could immediately overwhelm defenses and in the case of some phones, be such a resource hog the phone would crash. Many Legendary units were especially guilty of being under-tuned due to low Legendary availability meaning they were simply weren't powerful enough to compare with high-levelled units. Checkmate's ability simply didn't work at launch, and Neon made several more such as Hazel Rainart a joke. May Marigold's invisibility bubble would have been an interesting game changer... were it not for a bug that made it that units placed in the bubble still played their sound lines, meaning players knew what to expect. Things were so bad that when Flower Power launched and wasn't broken or needed an emergency patch, the playerbase were shocked.
  

Unfortunately, the Novemember patch did little to stop the problems with Neon, and a new problem would rear its head for Christmas: Jinn. This unit embodied many of the problems players had: She was a Legendary so it would be hard for free players to get her, and only added to the sheer number of Legendaries that were out there. She was another structure card, and she was horrifically broken. Stopping time for seven seconds in an area around any friendly units, Jinn broke the game overnight, with players horrified at how little playtesting she'd clearly had. Most chip units now couldn't damage structures as Jinn simply could stop time and freeze the turret for the duration of the attack. And to make matters worse? She cost two Aura, meaning it was very easy to cycle a deck and start Jinn spamming.
And yet at two aura she was still one of the only cost-efficient Neon counters... until they patched her to be worth three Aura instead. Talking of the feline menace, January saw Neon get a HP nerf that set her shield at 14. Finally, Neon could be realistically be taken out, still at an Aura defecit but at least it can be countered and now they just have to raise her Aura- why are you buffing her game?
Less than a month later, Neon got, of all things, a buff. Her HP shield was set at 20, and her attacks now did double damage. This is around the point where a lot of players begin to suspect the developers aren't listening to feedback and more long-term players dip out or drop the game. Neon got touched one more time in April, which slowed her down (which itself was a problem as Neon's lessened speed on spawn simply made her better at generating aggro), she dealt 10% less damage and made it somewhat easier to hit her enough to kill her, but a new problem was on the horizon. Because Neon was now no longer the game's White Whale for patches.
Meet the White Fang Gunner Barracks. Added in September 2019, the Barracks fell under many player's radar simply because they were horrifically undertuned. Their gimmick was that every few seconds, a White Fang Gunner would spawn, with three spawning on death. In April, as Neon got her last appearance in the patches, the Barracks got a huge buff and became the centerpiece of the meta; they now spawned two Gunners, which made them immensely valuable for just five Aura. You could overwhelm many anti-swarm units before they had a chance, and shred your way through turrets.
The Barracks would then go six months before this overtuning was rectified, barring one nerf in August that lowered their health to try and stem the tide of units. To sum up every other thing that went wrong during the year meta-wise:

• The playercount was getting so low that players were able to make lists of the AI bots the developers had in place so lower-level players had a challenge (Amity breaks up players by a trophy system where you gain trophies with every win, and by this point most of the active players were in the 2500 to 3500 range. This also meant new players steamrolled through the lower levels only to hit a brick wall in the 3000 range, with the only reliable solution being to willingly lose matches until you were in your optimal range and grind victories until you reached a certain level.
  
• The patches became more and more threadbare, going from 8+ units getting changed each month in early 2019 to three units at most getting changed in 2020 patches outside of the anniversary patch going back to the golden days of eight. The only area where they didn't get more threadbare was in the cosmetics and emotes that the developers were cranking out, all of which were only available through hours of grinding or premium currencies. This was despite the fact that the units were being released slower, going from once a week to once a fortnite.
  
• The majority of units added in 2020 were Epic or Legendary tier, which were the hardest to get for free players unless they got lucky and they were added to the store (and if they had the lien as a Legendary in the store costs a flat 40,000 Lien). One Common and four Epics were released compared to twelve Epics and seven Legendaries. The release of Moonslice Adam especially was annoying for this regard, as Adam already had a Legendary released (at least for Team RWBY, each of them headlined a Legendary when it came to the team attack cards), and this was clearly done to pander to Adam's fans again as his first unit saw a spike in interest in the game. The math was done and showed how artifically scarce Legendaries were made.
  
• The undeovertuning was still in play. Colossus is seen as one of the worst cards in the entire game because of its gimmick. I have literally never seen anyone play it. Flynt became overtuned and now he's a staple thanks to his trumpet's AOE attack being able to hurt turrets and shred most units. Launcher Nora was an especially overtuned unit thanks to her high-damage constant AOE barrage and long range meaning she could annhilate most anything if given enough cover. Even after patches she's still dangerous. September saw the White Fang Dropship Formation added, which was widely seen as a terrible unit and done as an emergency addition because the planned unit for September in the Grimm Seer had to be cut last minute for technical reasons.
  
• The game has barely had significant content added since launch, with the primary gameplay still just being PVP. Barring Battle of Beacon (a mode where you can play as Ruby and Weiss and fend off Grimm which most players just use to grind chests, and no, they still haven't added Blake or Yang) and Plaza (a lobby where you can dress up as a character and run around Beacon), the game has added no new features and quality of life content players have requested since launch (rerolling in the shop, Superior Crates having guaranteed Legendary spawn rates) have been released at a snail's pace (you still can't reroll Legendaries if you're looking for a specific unit). Academies where players can unite to trade units and chat still lacks features that have been requested for years such as the ability to delete messages. And Plaza immediately went to hell because players were doing erotic role play in the chats and after people came forward with proof that minors were being sexually harassed in the Plaza or being coerced into side-channels, the dev response was to... just turn off the chat entirely instead of banning the accounts or implementing moderation. This also removed the chatlog which deleted a lot of the evidence of said harassment.
  

As OctobeNovember comes in, the players are getting more and more furious. The weekly feedback includes a near constant demand for an acknowledgement from the developers given how often it feels like the feedback is being ignored. The social media team get caught several times hyping up how the coming patch would address player concerns, only for said patch to lack those units. The meta has been locked down to the Xiong Family, Flynt, Launcher Nora, Spider-Mines and the hell-cat herself in Neon. Everyone runs at least one of these, people run meta decks not because they want to, but because it's the only way to have a chance of victory.
And then in December, things implode. The patch for the month was set to launch on December 10th with the monthly event missions. But when the clock rolls around, the event missions (which usually take about two weeks to do if you're doing as many as you can a day)... has a six day timer. And the update doesn't come out. The art team doesn't release new unit art. The shop has no special timed bundles. There's no patch notes. And then the Twitter team who've been hard carrying the game through... actually talking to the players and acknowledging the grievances they have... admitted that they don't know what's going on either. The best guess is that the devs have come down with Covid, but no statements to confirm or deny this leave it as guesswork. The timer eventually got reset and people could do the event, but then on Christmas itself, another issue.
Ruby has appeared in the plaza on Halloween (her canonical birthday) and Christmas, and if you go talk to her you get free stuff. But on Christmas people, people discovered that Ruby was talking as if you'd already talked to her. Because they hadn't updated Ruby yet for 2020. She still thought it was 2019 so if you'd talked to her then for goodies, she had none now. They patched it eventually but a lot of people didn't see this fix before the timer ran out to get the free stuff.
Some have resorted to memes to cope with the fact that the game just seems to have died out of the blue. Others have been trying to desperately rally the players and find a way to save it. Some resorted to friendly mockery of the whales who'd spent thousands on a game that seems to be dying (seriously though gacha games need to curb this shit but they won't because whales are godsends for their bank balances).
If the game doesn't get an update in January then two months without new content will mark the end, and the already significant playercount drops will only increase. And it's hard to say if any one thing could have turned Amity Arena's fate around beyond just "Have a better balancing team who can respond better to feedback." Neon began the time of death, but by the time December rolled around the meta was in a horrifically toxic place where if you wanted to make any progession, you had to get down and dirty with the pigs. The team just constantly failed to balance problem units outside of their emergency hotfixes of Jinn, and more often then not they went after units and buffed or nerfed them at random going off playcounts to determine what needed fixing instead of the actual written feedback they were getting. It's clear from the references to the show and some of the attempts to reach out to the community that at least one person in the team genuinely wanted to make the good appealing to RWBY fans, but somewhere during the game's lifespan, they lost their way. Less focus needed to be put on how to milk the players, and instead focusing on making a game sustainable and enjoyable enough to warrant the cosmetics and emotes. The game's failure ultimately isn't on the playerbase. It's on the people who were actually making the game who chose to slack off because they thought it acceptable to do so.
Thanks for reading.
EDIT: HOT OFF THE PRESSES, I JUMPED THE GUN
Had I waited one more day, my story would have had a far more sudden ending, as the game just announced its shutdown for January.
RIP.

1. Daily Discount Summons -WHY IS THIS NOT A THING!!? On Legends there is a daily single summon that costs 20 cc which is 1 stone in Dokkan. This would further promote players to log in daily as there is basically no other reason except if you have the subscription. (Plus it could bring back those clutch yolo singles).
   
2. Mission Plans -Legends really hit this one on the head on their past update. You could choose any one of the 3 mission plans that have varying difficulties (Easy, Medium, Hard). The harder the plan, the greater rewards. Easy Plans could be beat a certain event story with a specific team. Medium could be the same but with Dokkan Events. Hard could be the same but with LGE. These plans could further promote players to play the game as it adds replay value.
   
3. Music Player -Listen to different OSTs from Dokkan Events in the main menu. This would be great so we could listen to all the different OSTs and it could bring back those great OSTs that don’t have some sort of active, exchange, or transformation that we could never revisit (Teq Hit, Phy Future Gohan). You would have to pull the unit to unlock their OST to play in the menu.
   
4. Wallpaper Unit Art -This basically means on the main menu, you can select a unit and you would be able to see their full art on the menu with their background and everything (kinda like legends).
   
5. Old Dokkan Fests Banners -You know the Master Pack Banners on Legends? This is pretty much the same thing. All of the old leads like Phy Full Power Frieza and Teq Perfect Cell are put in a Master Pack 1 Banner. The 70% leads are put in a Master Pack 2 Banner. There are tickets which would be a daily mission to further promote players to log in daily or you could use stones and it would be a guaranteed feature. This would help with the clutter of bad, old units in future banners as they could be sheltered off to their own banners.
   
6. World Tournament -Do I really need to talk about this one??? The World Tournament barely received any kind of update to make the mode any fun. How do they expect us to play arguably the most grindly mode in the game when it’s the most braindead boring mode? I didn’t even play the past World Tournament because it just felt like a boring tedious procedure over and over again.
   
7. Friend System -Again, do I even need to bring this up??? The devs shown us plenty of times that they can put up special friend leads on different events. Why can’t they update it so that the leader on the team has a 55% friend lead at LEAST!!?
   
8. Diamond Backgrounds -WHY HASN’T THERE BEEN A OPTION TO REMOVE THEM!!? ITS CRIMINAL TO HIDE SUCH BEAUTIFUL BACKGROUNDS LIKE THE TURS OF BOTH PHY LR GOGETA AND INT LR VEGETO!!!
   
9. Sprites -For a game that’s approaching it’s 6th anniversary I would expect to see higher quality sprites, not the same ugly ones from the game’s launch(Super Buu). They could’ve easily replaced all of the same unit’s older sprites with their updated ones like movie Gohan and Buuhan in the meantime until they fully update all of them.
   
10. HD Card Arts -In 2021, I’m shocked that I’m still looking at card arts that aren’t even HD. Just like Legends, they could have a option to download all of the cars arts in HD to help people either decide to have it or not depending on their phone storage. The more options the player has, the better.
    
11. Hidden Potential -Please put a upgrade all nodes option like Legends did, I’m tired of pressing all the nodes when I could just press them all with a single button. This would be a huge time saver.
    
12. Hidden Potential (Crits, Adds, Dodges) -Please upgrade dodges in the hidden potential so it could actually keep up with Crits and Adds. At this point, every unit (with an exception of some) best routes are ones that are full Crit then Add. This automatically makes INT units feel much weaker than other typings. And if that’s too much, then at least make us be able to choose our first free dupe node as either Crit, Add, or Dodge to help balance out typings.
    
13. Hidden Potential One Dupe Unlock -Okay, now this could be a item than you could get by buying a super big expensive pack (only available once during the worldwide celebrations and anniversaries) and from the Pilofs Trove as it has a insanely high value and it could also be a item they give out once during anniversaries only. It unlocks one path from any unit in the potential system (it could be a Grand Priest or Zeno item). This item wouldn’t hurt the players (unlike Legends or any P2W PvP game) or the devs (they could make a big profit off this) and it would be beneficial for everyone.
    
14. Items -First off, put out WAYYY more challenging modes so we could actually unlock those last 2 item slots. Second off, release more better and unique items. It could be items that lower your health, give you damage reduction PLUS defense, let any one unit transform but it’s really rare and hard to obtain, or something that lets all your units on one turn Crit but again, it’s really hard to obtain. More complex items could be funnier and add more strategy to the game rather than the usual ghost usher, whis, princess snake, android 8 combo. Third off, upgrade those super weak items that gives flat boosts just like the link update, I never found anyone use them after they obtained senzu beans and dendes.
    
15. Support Type Banners -There is no reason why these have took so long to even not return yet. Just make each type banner available on each day then all of them available on the weekend (Like the daily potential orb stages).
    
16. Battlefield Gems -Ok this has been bothering me. Each new LR that they release on the mode has a higher cost each time, but the amount we earn stays the same??? An easier solution would to have the difficulty that we have now on the mode would be the easy mode. Then we would have two others modes (medium then hard) that we could select before we start the battlefield rounds in order to have more rewards if we win all the battles.
    
17. Friend Box -Now I don’t know if this would cause issues or not, but please let me see the box that my friends have on the friend list. It could really be beneficial in chainbattle as I can see their whole box.
    
18. Stages -Please make roaming the stages actually useful. In budokai 2, while roaming you could also get a def or att boost item. By placing these items and more other kinds of items, exploring the stage before battles could actually be useful (besides the Ki space).
    
19. Selling -Please make us have an option to automatically all sell n, r, or even sr units. With the leveling up update, units no longer have to have a training partner, making low rarity units useless (besides the occasional level up super attack fodder).
    
20. Endgame Content -Finally, this one should be a no brainer for everyone. SBR and LGE release WAYYYY too far apart. As a game that is fully PvE, I fully expect for there to be some sort of Endgame content (or content in general) more often than PvP games as those games have that aspect to fall back on as content.
    

Please Dokkan Spy if you are seeing this, put this into consideration.
Leave any feedback if I’m missing something that you would like to add.

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

Hello there!
I am Betalille, and 95% of my Skyrim mods are quest mods! Now I know some people are reluctant to add quest mods to their game as they could be bugged, cause CTDs and such, but as a player that likes to add more content to his Skyrim, I still managed to gather a few mods without sending my savegame into Oblivion.
Today I thought I would review some of the quest mods I have played until now, and maybe helping some people take decisions along the way as to whether or not they feel like adding a mod to their game. As a content-loving player, I have sometimes hesitated to add some mods that I should have added earlier in my playthroughs (like Vigilant) and I hope my small reviews will push some people to just download some quest mods and enjoy the wild ride of the adventures that came straight out of the modders' crazy imagination.
Obviously, this will just be my experience and my opinions, it will also help me remember which mods I have to download again when I'll be 65 and having some nostalgia about playing Skyrim again.
I will be accompanied by my imaginary friend Henry, who will represent some facets of the public opinion that I have witnessed about some certain mods.

Hello everyone!

Yes Henry but not now, because it is now time to start reviewing.
DISCLAIMER: I am not the author of any of these mods and I cannot guarantee that you will not have problems with dirty edits, CTDs, deleted navmeshes or anything. I just tested the mods and gave my opinion. I suggest you try to look at the "requirements" page on Nexus for each mod, as some official/unofficial patchs sometimes might correct some stuff and make your experience much more pleasing.
I would like to thank all of these creators and "porters" for making this review even possible by creating such wonderful mods.
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Revenants of the Forbidden Order by mmccarthy4
A very short (non-scripted) quest that will have you investigate for forbidden arkay worshippers near Markarth. The armors and the weapons added are very nice, the new assets used are pretty cool, but it felt a bit too short. When I defeated the "boss", I actually said "Wait, is that all?" out loud. I was expecting something at least a little longer.
Recommended? Maybe? If you like the armors and weapons and want to have it in your game, then go for it.
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Mythic Dawn Expansion by xXJustDaveXx
This mod adds Mythic Dawn Headquarters near Helgen where you can enjoy multiple quests, counting 6 radiant ones to gather some old Mythic Dawn weapons and armors (which sent me to Beyond Reach, Solstheim and Midwood Isle, not even one in Skyrim), one quest to save the world of Arcadia (with riddles?) and a few others quests (the different paths you can take) that will allow you to obtain perks after finishing each quest. The quests are pretty basic: go there, kill that or take that, go back and repeat. Saving the world of Arcadia didn't really go as I expected it to go. The mod is fully voiced, and includes a dragon and a dwemer centurion.
Recommended? Maybe? The quests were fine but nothing too extravagant. If you are a fan of the Mythic Dawn, you can give it a try.
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The Tale of Tsatampra Xiros by SlimeSire
This small quest mod adds a small quest surrounding the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora. The atmosphere in the mod is really great and I loved the boat/house architecture of the house. It is quite short and the final place can be used as a home for any bookworm who loves tentacles and eyes. I only had a graphic problem when I talked with Hermaeus Mora, otherwise the mod runs smoothly.
Recommended? Yes. SlimeSire's a master in the art of designing daedric quests.
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Orange Moon by Adolon
More like a dungeon mod than a quest mod, Orange Moon brings a huge dwemer dungeon with interesting puzzles (like controlling where a dwemer spider needs to go to open doors) and some sweet rewards at the end. Some parts of the dungeon are really beautiful, you can see them in the official screenshots. It will take some time to get through the dungeon, as you'll have to check every single part of the dwemer ruins to find keys and stuff that will help you get further into the dungeon.
Recommended? Maybe? If you like going into dungeons and solving some puzzles, go for it!
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Faction - Pit Fighter by ThirteenOranges, ported by PrivateEye
Nice mod that adds multiple arenas inside Skyrim, but also elsewhere in Tamriel. It feels quite satisfying to see the trophy room get filled up with all the rewards you get each time you fight a strong opponent. I didn't have any problems with this mod when I played.
Recommended? Yes. If you like fighting in arenas.
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Curse of the Hound Amulet by ANiceOakTree
A small quest that makes you help Cara fight an enemy she has been following for a long time. It is very short but well made. It adds a custom-made armor and a custom-made mask (which you probably won't ever use because it doesn't work with your favorite body mods). The assets the author created are beautiful, but it's sad to see that it won't be used more and that the characters just disappear at the end of the quest.
Recommended? Maybe? A good short mod, but probably not worth an esp slot if you have something more interesting.
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Sulfur and Fire: Trials of Mehrunes Dagon by MihailMods
Unfortunately not available anymore on the Nexus, there is a translation made by "La Confrérie des Traducteurs" which makes it available with english voices but french subtitles. The mod makes you go through different places inside the Deadlands, or Mehrunes Dagon's part of Oblivion, and fight against very different bosses. The mod is quite interesting, everything is red and burning (as it should) and it's quite fun to play (even though it was a bit buggy on my hand and some zones made me struggle with CTDs).
Recommended? Maybe? A fun "arena" mod, but maybe not so stable.
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Home Sweet Hell by ArogueModder
Another Oblivion themed mod, but this time a house mod. After looting some Daedra cave, you get a book that allows you to teleport to a house in Oblivion that will become yours. Unfortunately, since you access it from a book, your followers never get teleported with you.
Recommended? Not really. It's a nice dwemer house indeed, but I don't know if it's worth it. Go for it if you want a house in the burning lands of Oblivion.
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The Secrets of Arc Cyrae by Morrodes
A small quest that makes you go through a dwemer ruin, and then go a bit left and right to pick up some special ingots and then brings you to an alternate world. The main quest isn't that long and the side quests allow you to get more companions, like a spriggan (which joined the Blades in my game), and to unlock a nice 3-levels house.
Recommended? Maybe? A good short mod too, a bit original but nothing too fancy.
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Underhanded Slavery- House Dres Operations pt.1 by MihailMods
The god of adding creatures to Skyrim also made some quest mods, and this short one adds a small quest to Solstheim. It is very short, and is very straightforward. End slavery or help develop slavery. It adds some nice rusty weapons as well as the basic netch armors.
Recommended? Maybe? Small mod, interesting, but very very short.
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Dwemertech - Magic of the Dwarves by EnaiSiaion and ported by jrdarby
This mod adds a ton of Dwemer-inspired magic spells and it's awesome. The quest in itself isn't very long, though very original. You'll get to do stuff you've never done in Skyrim, like throwing a dwemer into a screen, and it's very fun. The quest will bring you to places that will make you feel like you're not in Skyrim anymore (because it's not Skyrim) and it feels refreshing. After finishing the quest, I created all the dwemer spells and it's really funny to plant bombs and send laser droids on your enemies, if you're into that kind of things. The only problem is that two spells (the ones that transform you into dwemer creatures) are not working, just don't use them.
Recommended? Yes. Very fun, very innovative. Just don't use the Centurion/Sphere transformation spells.
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Agent of Righteous Might by dree74 and ported by SeamedWater
This mod allows you to join the Vigilants of Stendarr and to secretly infiltrate the Mythic Dawn for them. One of the first quests made me travel through the entirety of the Skyrim map while following a character that was stopped every 5 meters by a pack of wolves or a group of bandits. After that the whole Mythic Dawn hideout is GINORMOUS. It is so easy to get lost and everytime I had to get through the base I "tcl"ed my way through walls. The mod in itself is nicely made and the quests aren't uninteresting but it just didn’t manage to get me into the story.
Recommended? Maybe? The mod didn’t manage to make me feel really invested in the story, but it's not bad. Try it if you want to be a vigilant of stendaar or to have a little more of the Mythic Dawn in your Skyrim.
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Blackreach Railroad by Trainwiz
Trainwiz's first Skyrim mod have you uncover a railroad that connects all the dwemer ruins together. It is quite simple but very original. I had a fun time fighting the enemies that block the railway. My only problem was the final boss, which was invincible for me, despite everything I tried.
Recommended? Yes. A short but interesting quest to connect the dwemer ruins with a train.
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Curse of Akavir - Phoe by Sengetsu
Who hasn't dreamed of visiting Japan but in Skyrim? That is what Akavir is supposed to be and Phoe is trying to do just that, while tring to remain lore-friendly. I believe the worldspace is based on the Rocheste ressource, which makes Phoe EXTREMELY HUGE and yet not so much to see. Many interiors are still empty yet very big. I had some lags during some quests because of some ginormous interiors filled with trees and plants, but that might just be my potato computer. It is an ambitious mod with new races, new monsters, new armors and weapons with an asian-ish inspiration. The quests were okay and we can see that the authors have put a lot of work on their mod.
Recommended? Maybe? Phoe was updated not so long ago so my point of view might be a bit outdated. However if you want a perfect game, I would suggest you wait for the authors to finish their mod. Not compatible with The Brotherhood of Old.
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The Hanging Gardens by Acid Zebra and ported by Rafaelkai
When the quest starts with "Find this in Blackreach" and there is no quest marker, you know it's gonna be good. The Hanging Gardens send you on a quest to find an ancient dwemer island, to uncover its secrets and to claim them as your own, but without quest markers. Unfortunately for players like me (whose brains cannot handle hints and guesses) you will suffer. A lot. The basis of this quest is to get you to go everywhere and find out on your own (with small hints written inside books) how to disrupt a protective field on the island before you can make it your house. The mod also includes some small random pirate battles when you go to/come back from the Hanging Gardens, which is a nice addition. The island in itself is really pretty, even though I am not sure I will ever go back there.

But I don't like puzzles! My head hurts!

There is a .txt that explains the entirety of what you have to do to finish the quest. Quite handy when you are completely lost. Now stop complaining Henry!
Recommended? Yes. A nice "house" mod with a small quest to get it.
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The Republic of Maslea - Chapter One by anthelius
A french mod where they speak french, can you believe it? After going through some really creative dungeons, you will be able to go to Maslea, in "Nouvelle-Colovie", where you will be able to join Carlina and the "Confrérie" on their adventures. The end of the chapter opens up a way to the Shivering Isles, and I am intrigued where the author is planning to go with that. Gameplay-wise, some side quests give you some interesting choices, even though most are not voice-acted. The main quest was filled with bugs for me, half of the dialogue scenes never happened and some camera effects for some cutscenes just made me be stuck forever flying in the air, so there's that. Maybe I did something wrong, but the main quest was a mess for me to solve with the console command. Other than that, the mod is really interesting, it has some ambitious projects like a recurrent pirate battle, building a castle, recruiting people into the Confrérie, but it's in French, and I know this fact blocks a lot of people from downloading it.
Recommended? Maybe? Interesting mod, beautiful islands/cities, and a nice french voice acting but it made me wanna die during the main quest because of how buggy it was for me.
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Skygerfall -- Daggerfall's Main Quest in TESV by Oracus0
Not much to say there, it adds the main quest of TESII: Daggerfall to Skyrim, which you can play with Alternate Starts (or if you want to play it on your main character without restarting, you will have to download the Realm of Lorkhan). The dungeons are as big and as complicated as the ones in the original game.
Recommended? Yes. Get your very own Daggerfall storyline in Skyrim, for nostalgia or for discovery.
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The Tools of Kagrenac by Titansbane and PrivateEye
Travel through Skyrim to get your hands on the Tools of Kagrenac, some really really strong dwemer weapons that were lost for ages after the events of TESIII: Morrowind. The dungeons added by this mod are really good. You have to use your brain, but you also have to not get lost in some huge Ayleid ruins like you could do in past Elder Scrolls games. It is a great quest to retrieve some deadly (and full of lore) artefacts.
Recommended? Yes. You can never get enough dwemer artefacts.
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Identity Crisis by SlimeSire
If you are looking for a very original (and kinda crazy) quest mod, say no more. Identity Crisis is taking you to an asylum that was abandoned and where some weird, crazy things are happening. While quite short, the mod adds an intriguing dungeon and an even more intriguing player house. The voice acting is brilliant and really adds to the quality of the mod.
Recommended? Yes. Crazy, original and LORE-FRIENDLY. Just what we needed.
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The Second Great War by Reath
Because one great war wasn't enough, you now have to fight the Thalmor who are taking over Cyrodiil and now Skyrim! Or do you? You can also help the Thalmor take over the entirety of Skyrim if you want to... But anyways, I had less bugs with this mod than with the vanilla Great War (or was it a feature?). It was quite fun, a must-have for everyone who hates the Thalmor (or secretly love them).
Recommended? Maybe? If you feel like conquering/defending some more towns after the vanilla Great War, go for it.
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Voyage to the Dreamborne Isles by mnikjom VzRedemption
It's a maze, but a very pretty maze. The quests are pretty straightforward: go from one place to another (but you have to find your way through 21 different paths or 52 different doors) or get attacked by thousands of waves of enemies at the same time. The worldspace is really pretty, even though quite confusing with all the mazes, but it's worth a try. The story is quite original.
Recommended? Yes. You can do it pal, you can find the exit, I believe in you.
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Dwarven Pride by Adolon
A short mod adding a little dungeon with a quest on Solstheim. A dark elf is having fun with his ancestors (who are ghosts btw) and you just barge in saying you want to go on an adventure. How rude of you. Anyways, I don't remember having any problems with this quest, it was quite fun, but at the same time I don't really remember anything from it. I guess it means it was fun.
Recommended? Maybe? Adds two towers near Nchardak on Solstheim, not compatible with Project AHO.
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The Brotherhood of Old by TomTesoro
Rebuild the Dark Brotherhood with a descendant of a famous Dark Brotherhood member back in TESIV: Oblivion. This mod expands the Dark Brotherhood by adding some more temples all around Skyrim and by letting you recruit some more members the same way you were recruited. A good mod to expand a little more the brotherhood story, even though the main character in my game is bugged and is stuck mining in the middle of Skyrim and there is nothing I can do to make her go back to the base.
Recommended? Maybe? If you feel like playing some more Dark Brotherhood themed quests. I didn't play the latest version so my point of view might be outdated. Not compatible with Curse of Akavir - Phoe.
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Moon and Star by Gan Xingba
Head to Little Vivec and hear about a Morrowind criminal that left for some dwemer ruins. The dwemer ruins turns out to have some interesting puzzles and the criminal turns out to be an interesting character for people who played TESIII: Morrowind. Moon and Star adds a very nice dwemer dungeon and some sweet rewards. Bonus points for people who are looking for some nostalgia.
Recommended? Yes. Even if you don't like puzzles.
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Helgen Reborn by Mike Hancho aka Balok
Another mod that I regret not picking up before. This mod allows you to rebuild Helgen by choosing guards and helping people left and right. The quests are nice and it feels rewarding to see Helgen all nice and good looking after finishing the main questline. At first I didn't want to download it because I heard of some "sl*ts" houses and a story about a really sensitive topic that is part of a character backstory, but it turns out I didn't actually get any of these things when I played, so either I am blind and forgot a part of the story, or maybe it's not actually so bad. Either way, Helgen is rebuilt.
Recommended? Yes. Don't leave Helgen in ruins, give it a second chance to thrive.
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The Wheels of Lull by Trainwiz and The Chronographer Maintenance Team
Lore-friendly, really original, really fun. The dungeons are actually quite "hard", as in you do have to think about what you are doing and cannot just go head first into things and expect to reach the end. The boss fights also have some really interesting mechanics, which allows you to say very cringey things like "haha it's not the muscles that made me win but THE BRAINS", when the brain is actually a muscle but let's pass on the details. The quests are not always "go there, kill that" and have you repair some stuff, solve some riddles and clean pipes. So, all in all, a very good mod.
Recommended? Yes. The Wheels of Lull is an original piece of art that I definitely recommend to everyone.
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The Lost Wonders of Mzark by Trainwiz and ported by DarthVitrial
And yet another dwemer ruins mod! The Lost Wonders of Mzark is a HUGE dungeon, with interesting new mechanics that makes it different from other dungeon mods. It is very original, as always with Trainwiz's mods.
Recommended? Yes. Get yourself some more of Trainwiz's genius please.
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Falskaar by AlexanderJVelicky
You all know this mod, one of the first big quests/new lands mod released for Skyrim. It is basic, simple but great. Runs smoothly, I only had one CTD in a specific area but other than that it adds a few more hours to your Skyrim game. Nothing too extravagant, nothing really mindblowing but a really nice mod in general.
Recommended? Yes. Simple but effective.
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Midwood Isle by Will Evans
Similar to Falskaar, a new lands mod that is quite simple but really nice. It is not lore-friendly because the author created a new race called the Sonmers and they have their own hero/deity Erkaloth, I don't really remember. It's a nice mod, I remember really liking it when I first played it. I didn't have any problems with the mod either, so that's nice as well.
Recommended? Yes. Simple but effective.
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Vigilant by Vicn

But I don't like Dark Souls! So I won't download this mod!

Henry, no. Vigilant is much more than "just a Dark Souls-like mod", it is filled with lore, different gameplays (even horror-like dungeons) and it is what makes it one of the most loved Skyrim quest mods. Yes, one chapter makes some dungeons/combats like Dark Souls bosses, but you don't have to play in Legendary + 26 combat mods to make it as hard as Dark Souls. I regret not downloading it earlier, because it was a blast. Add in the english voices add-on and the experience just gets even more exciting.
Recommended? Yes. Even if you don't like Dark Souls, give it a try.
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Legacy of the Dragonborn by icecreamassassin
Brilliant. Makes you want to get every single item of the game and put it in the museum. The quests are also very original and very different. Legacy of the Dragonborn is one of the most appreciated quest mods of Skyrim, and it deserves it. Too bad my game was never stable with all the compatibility mods I added, but that is my very own mistake, not theirs.
Recommended? Yes. A ton of mods I have in this list have compatibility patchs to add even more stuff in the museum, that's how awesome Legacy of the Dragonborn is.
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Project AHO by Haem Projects
Wow. Just beautiful. Project AHO adds a new town to Skyrim and it honestly feels like a completely different world. The quests and voice-acting are on point, the main story is intriguing and has different endings. The music makes it even better, and I think I complimented the mod enough for you to understand that it is great. Some of you may say that "it's too cluttered", but if you love Elianora's house mods, you will love the entirety of Haem Projects' Project AHO. This mod even allows you to fulfill your dreams of enslavement, without having to go on Lovers Lab!
Recommended? Yes. One of the best mods I ever played in Skyrim.
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Carved Brink by Haem Projects
Oh no, watch me praise Haem Projects again and again... Carved Brink is a really intriguing mod that pushes you to go further and try to understand what the heck is going on. And it's beautiful. However, be sure to visit every places of the mod before finishing the main story or you might have some surprises. I couldn't finish two side quests because I went directly to the end of the main quest and now I cry everytime I pass by the cave added by the mod.
Recommended? Yes. Only a Jawa or a BB-8 mod would make me love Haem Projects even more... Oh wait. THEY MADE THEM.
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The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal by MannyGT
Awaken the thief that is within you and go download the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal NOW! This mod will send you in many places to retrieve the famous daedric artefact: a desert, a maze, ruins, a mausoleum... It is one of the most well known quest mods and it is great.
Recommended? Yes. Stealing stuff is always fun. (Please don't call the police!)
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Moonpath to Elsweyr by MuppetPuppet and An_Old_Sock
Made before the Creation Kit was a thing, Moonpath to Elsweyr allows you to travel alongside Khajiits to the land of Elsweyr. The Khajiit voice acting is quite good, and despite being a very old mod, it is still a very good and beautiful mod. A must-have for cat lovers.
Recommended? Yes. Get some tropical vibes in your Skyrim.
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Beyond Reach by razorkid

I didn't understand the story and the atmosphere was so gloomy anyways, there's no life.

Yes, Henry. But that is exactly what is GREAT in this mod. Skyrim is all so great and everyone is happy despite the fact that Alduin is going to END THE WORLD. In The Reach, it's a mess, everyone is a mess and the atmosphere is just great. I really loved how the world was built and I had a really fun time playing this DLC sized mod. I only had a problem on one of the main quests near the end, which just skipped my game to the final quest of the mod. Other than that, it was great.
Recommended? Yes. Definitely.
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Beyond Skyrim - Bruma by Beyond Skyrim
Do I even need to talk about this mod? Everyone knows it and (almost) everyone has played it. It's beautiful, it's great, I really liked the Synod quests and I'm pumped for whatever the Beyond Skyrim team will deliver in the future.
Recommended? Yes. For sure. But a small reminder that it is still a W.I.P.
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And this marks the end of my "short" list of quest mods that are currently happily running in my game, and totally didn't break it.

But Betalille, what about your own quest mods?

Henry, no. I can't review my own mods because my point of view will be biased. And not in a good way.

And what else should we look forward to?

There are plenty of projects that are ongoing right now, like the Beyond Skyrim projects, Nirn Uncharted projects (Alinor and Pyandonea), Unslaad and Glenmoril by Vicn being updated, Odyssey of the Dragonborn by Icecreamassassin, Skyblivion, Skywind... The future of Skyrim modding still seem quite bright!

And what will happen to these reviews in the future?

I might try to keep it updated with everything I test in the future, but my reviews are a bit short and biased anyways... Guess we'll see.

What about playing \insert a mod name here*?*

I am indeed open to any suggestions you might have! Tell me what quest mods made you appreciate the Skyrim modding community even more!

If you've played so much quest mods, how come your mods are so bad?

That's enough Henry! Go to your room!
Thank you for reading this review, I hope you feel like testing some more mods now!
DISCLAIMER: I am sorry if I offended any Henry by writing this post.

The sun rises over a clear blue sky, marking the beginning of a beautiful Saturday morning. Six hours later, I wake up in my room with terrible breath and a bit of a headache. The images of last night are still fresh in my memory. My group of friends met this nice group of girls at the club, and one of my friends hit it off with one of the girls. Me, I did not even try, as usual. Always too shy. Too scared to face rejection and too insecure to picture any other outcome. The memory of the night leaves me horny and feeling bad about myself: a perfect combination for watching porn.
It’s 4:25 pm when my parents leave the house.
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I crawl to my desk from the couch and turn the computer on. I leave the door of my room ajar so that I can hear my parents when they come back. I open the browser on incognito mode. My own party is about to start.
My routine starts with a first round of well-known porn websites. I type the name of the first one into the address bar, hit enter, and before the page loads I open a new tab and type in a second one. In this first round, I open a total of seven sites, specifically sites from large porn producers (the type to create their own scenes for their paying members). I focus on the large ones because they are the ones most likely to have new videos available since the last time I did this five days ago. I’m shown seven warning pop-ups asking me if I’m 18 or older. I am, so I click on that big green ENTER button. Not that any of it matters, I’ve been clicking on that button for years now and I’m only 19.
I navigate to the New Videos section in each of these sites and proceed to open the previews for all the videos that look interesting in new tabs. Once I’m done, there are twenty-two tabs open in my browser. As I watch the previews, I close the ones that I don’t like and leave the rest, ending up with eight open tabs. I google the name of these eight videos with the following results: four of them I find uploaded to tube sites, one I find a direct download link for, and three are left to be downloaded via torrent. I start all the downloads and turn my attention to the videos on the tube sites.
The first one does not look very good, so I skip through it quickly searching for the different sex positions, checking to see if there is any moment that is worth something. I find none, but one of the related videos suggested by the tube site looks promising so I open it in a new tab. I move to one of the other videos that I found originally, and while the video is overall a bit lame there is a part of it that I really enjoy. As I re-watch those few seconds a couple of times, I conclude that the moment is worth keeping so I leave the tab for that video open. On top of that, I spot three related videos that look great and open them in new tabs. The third video I initially opened is no good, but the tube site does not look familiar so I decide to navigate to the homepage to see what kind of videos are trending in it, opening four of them in the process. The fourth video I originally found is good: it stays open and reveals two more exciting related videos. After this round, I’m left with ten new videos for a total of twelve open tabs.
It’s time for round two, as I watch each one of those ten new videos opening multiple related videos for each one I close, like a huge pornographic hydra. Some related videos take me to new tube sites, where I explore homepages and specific categories. As I finish a video and close its tab, bringing me down to nineteen open tabs, I notice that one of the torrents has finished downloading. I open it eagerly, but the video is disappointing. I skim through it quickly before turning back to my browser, where I have time to watch two more short videos before the next torrent download completes.This one is pretty good, and I can tell from the first few minutes. I go back to the beginning of the video and watch it without barely skipping anything, building the anticipation of what I know are going to be great sex scenes, and rejoicing in them when they come. I watch a 35min video in about 30min, going back to revisit some of the best parts. It was a great find: I leave the video in my file system and open the browser again.
As I’m watching a casting girl being fucked from behind by a creepy Czech guy on a greasy leather couch, I hear my parents come back home.
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I look at the time on my computer: it’s 8:45 pm. Fifteen tabs are open as I minimize the browser and take my left hand out of my pants. It has not stopped stroking my dick since I first opened that browser.
As I begin to lose my erection, I feel the need to pee. I leave my room and, on my way to the bathroom, I cross paths with my mom. She tells me they brought dinner. I wash my hands and join them in the living room. Porn images keep flashing in the background of my brain as I watch the evening news, eating pizza while sitting next to my dad. All I can think about are those fifteen videos that I left open. There are two of them in particular that have the potential to be amazing videos. I can almost feel them pulling me towards that sweaty desk chair back into my room. I finish my dinner as soon as I can and brush my teeth. It’s 9:35 pm when I sit back down on that chair.
This time, I close the door of my room completely. I’m wearing only my right earphone, leaving my other ear unblocked so that I can hear my parents when they approach my room. For the rest of the night until they go to sleep, I must stay alert, ready to minimize the browser and let my dick loose as soon as I hear them walk the aisle towards or past my room. It wouldn’t be the first time they walk in unexpectedly, since they rarely knock on the door.
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I’m back to my precious videos and the tabs that I left open. As I watch them, I continue the cycle of related videos and sites. Sometimes I find a video that belongs to one of the not-so-well-known networks that I haven’t checked out in a while, so I navigate to their sites to preview their content and google for some of their videos, reaching new tube sites and downloading a couple of extra torrents. However, after a while, the stream of tube videos starts to run out. At this point, the related content has come full circle and the new sites I find are mostly full of shitty low-quality amateur closeup videos.
I check the time and it’s 11:08 pm. I have found some great videos but I feel like I can do better, and I have the energy to keep going for a little while until I go to sleep. I decide to turn my attention back to the big networks and start going through their older videos to try to find some hidden gems. However, these videos are hard to download as all the links are broken and the torrents have long been abandoned. The only way to get to them is to try to sneak into one of these network sites.
The process is tedious. I try a bunch of websites offering shady text files with a list of stolen usernames and passwords, protected by infinite layers of ad-crowded captchas. Navigate to the porn site, Ctrl-C the username, Ctrl-V into the login form, Ctrl-C the password, making sure I don’t copy the trailing whitespace, Ctrl-V into the login box, hit the button, cross my fingers… user blocked! Try your luck with the next username! Every time I hit that login button I feel like a gambling addict pulling down the lever on a slot machine. Until finally… I hit the jackpot!
After much trial and error and only being able to break into one or two shitty websites with terrible content, I find the key to one of the great, big network sites. I dive head-first into their catalog, which goes back to 2006. I know all the newest videos, but I also know most of the oldest ones from the times when I managed to log in to this same website in the past. So I edit the URL to navigate to page 150 out of 260, where I calculate I have more chances to find videos that are new to me. The site is a gold mine, but I don’t know if this user will keep me logged in for long and it is getting late anyway, so I quickly browse a few pages of videos and download just eight of them before closing the site. I figure this will be the last bunch I’ll do today.
At this point my parents are sleeping, so I can safely wear my headphones and pay full attention to the videos. Some of these last few videos are pretty good and I end up watching a big chunk of each of them. As I wrap up this final round, I glance nervously at the clock to see it’s 3:12 am.
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By now, my dick has been mostly soft for the past few videos, only getting hard at the very best moments. It is time for one last effort to collect the rewards of a day’s worth of searching. I open my browser again and rewatch all those videos that I had selected and kept open in tabs, along with some of the best ones that I downloaded into my hard drive. I rewatch some of their best moments over and over, until I finally pick that one special moment in that one special video that I want to jerk off to. It has to be special if it needs to get my dick up in its current state. But it does, and my penis raises one last time, like a boxer that was ready to throw in the towel but is forced by his coach to fight one last round. And it wins. Or loses. I don’t know, but the fight is over.
After I’m done and cleaned up, I close all the tabs in the browser and delete all the downloaded videos. I go to the bathroom to wash my hands and I look at myself in the mirror. I’m sweaty, my face is red and my eyes bloodshot. I go back to my room and straight into bed.
It’s 3:56 am.
I feel extremely weak. My dick is numb. I close my eyes and the images of the videos keep scrolling on the back of my eyelids. My ears are ringing a little bit. My heart is still beating strong. I hate myself and what I’ve done, but not for long: I soon give up to exhaustion and fall asleep.

Hey Accounting! Another “CFE Advice” post, but I’m trying to put a different spin on this one to avoid redundancy with the other 100+ CFE posts on reddit. When I was studying (FYI I had 2 weeks off, so efficiency was paramount for me) I found that the major sources of information and advice had a lot of over-lap: Time management, case-practice etc. is all important and covered ad nauseum all over the place. So, this post is NOT intended to explain the CFE to you (it would be redundant for me to do that, CFE info is EVERYWHERE), this is supposed to supplement that knowledge with some tips and tricks I learned on my own and would have loved use right from the start of my prep-work. If none of this info seems useful to you, my advice would be to return to this post after you’ve done some due diligence on the CFE and perhaps have written a few practice cases. If you still this post is useless, then it sounds like you’re well on your way to creating a system you’re confident with. This is all free of charge and only meant to help you! Of course these tips won't guarantee you a pass, but they will absolutely increase the chance of a pass right away. Immediate gratification! Read on:
TIP 1: SPLIT-WINDOWS IN MICROSOFT WORD!

• I wasn’t originally going to include this tip because CPA may patch it over and make it no longer possible by the time you write the test, and in prior years this may not have been possible, but I knew it was worth a shot come exam time and it paid off. When we wrote the exam we did so in Microsoft Word, and this tip helped me HUGE on day 1, 2 & 3! Open word, going to View on your ribbon, and click “New Window”. This allows you to open 2 identical windows for the same word document which you can lock to the left and right halves of your laptop (hold windows button + left or right arrow) and it was immensely useful. For example, when writing day 1 you’re expected to constantly refer to your situational analysis (you’ll learn what this is when you learn about the CFE). Scrolling up to your SA, then back down to your answer constantly becomes stressful and will give you a headache. Sure, you could use the search function to move quickly, but I found that to be clunky. So, when writing day 1 I had my situational analysis open on the left-half of the laptop, and my answer (same document, just different page) open on the right hand side of the laptop. I can quickly refer to my SA (look to left window) and incorporate that into my case
• Another example is using this with my day 2 and 3 outline on the left-hand side of my laptop, and my answer on the right. It would allow me to instantaneously check what I had to talk about next, and I could also green-out (see my day 2 outline system down below) the text of the points that I’ve talked about.
• If CPA patches this functionality over in later CFEs don’t fret, with a little creativity there are tons of tips like this one that you can discover which will make your case-writing very quick. My point is simple: Understanding the software you’ll be using (excel, word) will pay dividends.

TIP 2: FOLIOVIEWS & KNOTIA

• Day 2 (and potentially day 3) common AOs you will be expected to reference GAAP (folio or knotia) at the speed of light. You don’t have time to think much, and any delay impacts your time-management which some refer to as a “Fatal flaw”
• I always found it incredible how LITTLE time other students (and PEP programs) spent learning how to effectively use FolioViews, and to a lesser extent, Knotia (it has less functionality). Using these programs efficiently is critical to passing your financial reporting AOs. Perfect example, we had a convertible debt AO in the September 2020 CFE. I have never bothered to look that up in the handbook, but I was able to find it in less than 60 seconds with some extremely simple advice:

Tip 2a: Folio Views

• Turn on search hits! Tools (at top) – Options – Contents – Check the “Query Results” box. Done! Now, always stay in the “Browse” tab view (at the bottom). What this will do is provide # of hits for your search in whatever you’re searching. As a simple example, lets suppose you forgot which chapter is intangibles in IFRS (this technique is capable of much more but I want to keep this easy for illustrative purposes). You would search intangibles (I tell you how to do that effectively below), and you would notice the IFRS Intangibles chapter would have A LOT of hits, more than anything else. You now know where the intangibles chapter is.
• Search area check boxes. In the browse view you can limit your search to as much or little area as you like, I used this for every search. If I didn’t know where a chapter was in IFRS, then I’d check the “IFRS Standards in effect…” box and search the whole book. If I was looking for goodwill treatment in IFRS under intangibles then I would (1) locate the intangibles chapter and (2) check that box to only search within that. By practicing this you get better at the handbook to, win win!
• Quotation marks. When you want to search for an EXACT phrase, wrap your search in quotation marks! So, I’d open a search box (I always used advanced) and wrap the word or words I’m looking for in “”, and my search would be limited to that exact phrase. Be careful with this, spelling errors & improper grammar or punctuation will prevent you from finding what you’re looking for
• Derek Jeters, er, Asterisks (*). This is the opposite of quotation marks, this means that if I search Contingen*, Folio will look for any word that starts with Contingen. This is critical if you’re unsure of spelling or you’re unsure of exactly what to search with quotation marks.
• Root words. Using the asterisk above creates an opportunity for you to search root words and get results for all sub-levels of that same word. Sounds confusing so here is what I mean: Take “Impairment” for example, you have the words “Impair”, “Impairment”, “Impaired”, “Impairing”, all of which may be useful to you. What is the one common in all of the above? “Impair” is located in all of those terms. What I’m saying is when you search, use the base part of the term with an asterisk, and your search result will return all variants of that subject.
• Combination of quotation marks and asterisks. Every search I made utilized everything mentioned above. I would (1) limit my search with the check boxes (even if it was the entire IFRS book, or entire ASPE book), I would (2) use quotation marks, and if I was unsure of spelling or exact search phrase, I would (3) end the search with an asterisk and the final quotation mark. For example, when I was looking for the location of convertible debt I (1) selected the ASPE handbook, (2) searched “Convertible debt*”. The asterisk may not be needed here, but by including it you’ll also be getting results for Convertible Debts, Convertible Debt’s, whatever else

Tip 2b: Knotia

• Much less functionality here, but above advice with Folio still applies. I used a “2-search” technique for locating GAAP criteria. I would check the boxes of the areas I would like to search, and use their search function similar to folio views (I just explained this above) to get the general location of the GAAP I’m referencing (could be an entire chapter, just try and narrow it down to a chapter or less). Then, I would use Windows search function (control + F) to hone in on the exact area of that chapter with the criteria I wanted to use. Simply put, I used Knotia’s search function to narrow down IFRS or ASPE to a chapter or section. Then I would click into that chapter and ctrl + f to get the exact location or what I want. You can hit “Enter” after your search to quickly toggle about your results.

TIP 3: .XLS-BASED CASE TIME-ORGANIZATION TABLE
Time-management is one of the most popular topics you’ll hear about from successful writers. Here is how I ensured I stayed within time constraint when writing a case:

• After completing your outline, open your excel and scroll down maybe a couple hundred rows (to a part of the excel file that won’t be used otherwise)
• Write in heads for 4 columns in blank cells (AO, Length, Start, Finish)
• In the first cell of the AO column, briefly list all AOs identified from your outline in as many rows as you’d like
• In the length column write the physical number of MINUTES that AO should take you
• In the Start column and row of your first AO, hit ctrl+shift+;, this will write the current time in that cell
• In the start column and row of your second AO, make that equal to the Finish time of your first AO. Drag this down to the bottom of the start column
• Finally, in your Finish column, create a formula that is the start time of that corresponding AO + TIME(,the length cell you allocated to this ao,). In other words, your finish time is your start time (column 3) + your length (column 2).
• If you’ve done this correctly, you now have physical start and end times for every AO by time. If you go over, hard-punch that AO’s finish time and physically enter the time you finished, the table will automatically update. Be careful to ensure your finish time for the last AO is within your time constraints.
• PRACTICE THIS. I could complete this entire table for a day 3 exam in less than a minute. For day 2, not much longer. Use the key commands
• This time management tool may not seem all that special, but if you take 10-15 minutes in front of a blank xls file practicing this (do it with arbitrary AOs, delete, rinse and repeat), this will be of a huge help tracking your case completion, especially since CPA may stagger start times (like they did with us) which can make it difficult to quickly calculate remaining time if you were to start at something like 1:17pm. During the exam some AOs will take longer or shorter than what you guess in your outline, you DO NOT want to spend time re-calculating how much remaining time you will have for your remaining AOs. This is a dynamic table that will do all of that for you, with very minimal effort on your part

TIP 4: CUE CARDS

• Again, very common advice, but I don’t get the impression that we’re using this method of studying to its fullest potential, I would like to try and help:
• Download the phone app Cram, search for account “Hogger89”, you now have all my cue cards that I created during PEP & CFE studying.
• Open up a deck and use a setting called “Cram mode”. This is a game that moves all correct answers to the next of 5 stages, if you get that card wrong, that card goes back to stage one. You’re memorizing through repetition and I found it immensely useful for day 3 (level 4) because you’re expected to regurgitate a lot of general information in a very short time.
• This is now on your phone, so pull it out when you’re stuck in traffic, when work is slow, maybe you’re waiting in the doctors office, whenever you have time. This allowed me to create micro study-sessions WHENEVER. And I loved that I was being tested in different environments (perhaps you’re somewhere noisy). Helps with focus!
• There are a few decks which you may find uber useful in my account: “CFE – Performance Measurement”, “CFE – Finance”, “CFE – Strategy & Governance”, “CFE – Assurance”, “CFE – Taxation”
• The above slide decks are what I used to study breadth for day 3, they’re all-encompassing slide decks that I believe touched on every major (and most minor) topics that CPA could test us on. In other words, if you can get through these decks confidently, you’re in great shape for breadth. Many of the cards are “put in my own words”, so in essence, I was studying by creating these. But in any case, cut me some slack if you read some oddly-worded answers, or answers that are verbose.
• I also have slide decks for almost all major topics within FR, MA, Tax, Finance, Assurance that you can sort through in that cram account. I effectively consolidated a lot of those into the “CFE” slide decks I mentioned above.

Below are a couple of my thoughts on common advice:
1. Templates – These are critical and can be created for just about every part of day 1, 2 and 3. Here are some of my templates:
Day 1:
Situational Analysis:

• Mission/Vision/Values (MVV)
• KSFs
• Company & Stakeholder objectives/goals
• SWOT
• Quantitative (Ratio, vertical, horizontal, covenants, revenue growth etc.)
• Potential constraints (if any)

Analysis of 3 or 4 MAJOR issues

• Identification
• Quantitative calculation
• Quantitative Assumptions, Explanations, Financial implications and obviously the excel calculation you made
• Qualitative analysis (strengths/weaknesses are a great tool here, integration with your situational analysis is CRITICAL)
• Conclusion

Operating Issues (Strengths, weaknesses and/or a minor quant, nothing super formal)
Final conclusion

• Summary + more integration
• Prioritization/ranking of conclusions

Day 2 & 3 won’t have a consistent structure like day 1, you’re doing a lot of isolated Identification – Analysis – Recommendation. However here is a quick template you can use for FR depth which is typically a topic of contention within Cap 2. When you see an FR AO, your analysis section should address all of the following if it’s possible:

• Definition – Is it met? Ex. If it’s a contingent loss AO, look at IAS37 and you’ll see a definitions section for contingent loss. Your first thing is to ensure the definition of a contingent loss is met
• Recognition
• Measurement
• Subsequent measurement (if any), ex. PPE depreciation methods like revaluation method!
• Disclosure (if any)

2. An excel-based study schedule – After I had a general understanding of the CFE, I outlined my entire study schedule which was a mixture of case-writing, technical review & cue cards. This gave me confidence that I was touching on all testable topics, I could program in breaks and days off, and it held me accountable. If I was moving fast that particular day it also gave me the opportunity to finish my work quickly and not feel guilty about closing my computer and shutting off for the day. I’ll be the first to admit that this advice is common, but if you would like the file that I created to use as a template then DM me.
3. My Day 2 outline system - You’re going to hear about paper-based outlining, digital outlines, and no outlines. Here is my system for day 2 outlining which ensured that I was hitting absolutely everything.
a. Put Microsoft word on bullet-points. When you see an AO, write what they want down as a bullet, including the page number.
b. Now, using the sub-bullets, your job is to park all information you want to include or need to know in order to answer that AO. That could be physical points you want to include in your answer, or simply where relevant info is in the exam. INCLUDE PAGE NUMBERS, that’s critical. You see, CPA will scatter information around the exam. They may provide an AO on page 1, and the information you need to solve it is on pages 3, 5, 9 etc. What you’re doing here is chronicling the exam. You aren’t going to have much time to locate the same info twice, so using this system you’re giving yourself a route map for each AO. I also loved doing this because if I see an AO like board governance, I could immediately jot down (again, using the sub-bullets) the e-book topics I knew would score me points (ex. Odd number of members, diverse backgrounds, someone with a CPA background, frequent meetings, accurate quantitative and qualitative data, recording meeting minutes etc. etc.), and use that as a template for my answer on that AO
c. Once you’ve done this for all AOs, highlight all the text red
d. Now, when you start writing your answer, you have an itemized list of everything they want to see. You basically only need to refer to the case for financial statements or whatever you included page numbers for. You’ve just condensed this exam by a boat-load. Don’t be one of the student writers that finishes reading the exam with more questions than when they started reading. This method forces you to get writing immediately.
e. Once you’ve included the information from your outline in your answer, you can now highlight that sub-point (from step “b”) green (I suppose you can also just delete it, but I liked having a record of my outline). When you’ve touched on all sub-points, you can color the text of that whole AO in your outline green. This ensures that all the information you pulled from your read-through has made it to your answer. I cannot tell you how many times I heard someone say they forgot to include important points in their answer even though they noticed them during their read-through. You’re doing a lot, very quickly, so this ensures you touch on everything
f. At the end, all your AO identification and sub-points from step “b” should have started as red text, and now be green text indicating that point has been addressed in your answer.
g. Side note to PM writers. This method works extremely well for AOs like SWOT, Risk-mitigation-recommendation. When you see that’s what they want, you physically create a SWOT template, then slot in the points into your outline as you see them when you’re reading the exam.
4. Creating a debrief sheet using answer keys. Why didn’t I use these earlier? When you submit your case, it will be marked against an assessment guide, which are remarkably consistent between cases, especially for financial reporting AOs. For example, business combinations. I struggled with one of these AOs, but I looked at the assessment guides and realized they’re almost always looking for the same criteria to score points on a business combination AO, example:

1. Has CONTROL been obtained

2 Has a BUSINESS been acquired (integrated operations to produce outputs)

1. Conclude on if business combination (If so, recognize IDENTIFIABLE ASSETS & LIABILITIES at FV on acquisition date, as well as goodwill and NCI (if any)
   
2. Analyze what their IDENTIFIABLE assets and liabilities are (use definition as criteria)
   
3. Calculate GOODWILL
   
4. Adjusting journal entry
   
5. Impact on the users
   

· So, I have an excel file that tracked all this information - it was mostly sourced from CPACanada study tools which you should have access to. In short I'm referring to an xls table where each row would be the case, the AO, the topic tested, my score, brief notes on why I didn’t score better, then an area to input your own template so the next time you see that topic you can dump the case facts into your own template. I started this tool late in the game, maybe 2 weeks before I wrote the exam, but I WISH I started this when I began writing cases. It’s so nice to know exactly where you went wrong at a glance, and also by including AO topics you can return to cases and work on topics you’re weak on. In other words, if I wanted practice on impairment, I could use this table to identify which cases test impairment and jump right into them.

This Match Covers Rounds 10 and 11 on the Bracket

Rosters

Well, that disaster of a flight is finally over, and you’re approaching your next stop, a huge base of some kind owned by SciLab, decorated with some of the most top of the line technology you can think of.
You come face to face with the leader-in-command that’s assigned you the mission, they want you to work together with another Operator to face a high-stakes war against an army of Navis called “Darkloids”, they’re a syndicate of Navis who’ve taken to using illegal “Dark Chips” for power. They’ve managed to sanction off a large traffic part of the network, so your job is to infiltrate it and take them out, loosening their grasp. High ranking officials have taken to calling this syndicate - Nebula..
Your partner has had personal beef with Nebula before, with their Navis being deleted at the hands of the criminal syndicate, but thankfully, they’re not dead weight, they still have their battle chips and skills to make them worthwhile, so splitting the operating duty between your two Navis should prove worthwhile.
With the two of you introduced, it’s time to storm this hellscape of a network invasion. This place is massive, you can just about makeout two important looking figures in the distance, one closer to the middle of the area, and one stationed right by the back, presumably guarding some important information, or elsewhere on the network. Littered all over the place are dozens of tough looking viruses, these bad boys are everywhere, and are spilling out of vortexes in the area.
It quickly becomes apparent that you need to take out all of the Vortexes spawning the viruses to take down the head honchos, So you’ll be very spread out for most of it, to cover the most ground. You can’t let your guard down now, as this type of mission requires extreme patience and tenacity to pull through in one piece.
ADOPTIONS:
Yep, it's time for your adoptions, as there were a rather small amount of Backups left, this'll just be Operators and Chips. But I'm sure you'll manage fine.
proletlariet - Operator: Kronk & Yzma, Bonus Giga Chip: House Of Boom
ultim8_lifeform - Operator: Chazz Princeton, Bonus Giga Chip: Xiaolin Showdown
SerraNighthawk Operator - Jimmy Neutron, Bonus Giga Chip: UberCharge
saided02 Operator - Terence T. D'Arby, Bonus Giga Chip: Word Chain
NORMAL RULES
Jack In! Execute! - Who are your Navis? Who’s their operator? Give a rundown of your team and what they can do.
Surge of Power - Inevitably, you’re gonna get caught in some sort of situation you need to fight your way out of, being the protagonist of course, you’ll come out on top. No matter if you’ve got a slim-to-none chance of winning, you’re gonna do it, let's be real. Give us that miracle shot.
Chip Folder Locked - You’re not gonna be taking anyone else’s powers or chips in this, you’re stuck with what you start with, you can’t loot another combatant’s gear or download chip data off them. You of course, get a full revitalisation between rounds, but other than that, you’re on your own between your team.
Battle Chip Slot In! - You can only use your Giga Chip once per round, make sure it’s flashy and cool as fuck to do so you can swing that battle back in your favour. Or you can do it to flex, that also works.
2001 Internet is more stable than I remembered - Your Operator is always in contact with your navis in a video-call-esque manner, they’ll practically be face to face so don’t worry about communication.
Due Date - 25th of January, 6:00pm GMT.
ROUND RULES
A Total War - Both the enemy navis are amped up on Dark Chips, their battle prowess are much more threatening than what you’ve dealt with in the past, and they won’t listen to reason with this much dark influence. Additionally, they’re guarded by a nebulous energy that’s connected to the Dark Vortexes, so don’t think about trying to rush them out of the gate.
Heel’s Paradise - The map you need to infiltrate is massive, and there’s waves after waves of viruses, the bigger beefier viruses are guarding the vortexes, so they’re priority number one to take care of, so you can get to the head honchos faster.
You’re Not Alone! - You’ve got a new operator! And they come with their own Giga Chip, don’t worry, you don’t have to choose between using one or the other, both Operators can use their own Giga Chip independently.
FLAVOUR RULES
Battle Spirit - There’s a lot of Viruses getting in your way, I couldn’t possibly mandate what you should use, so go absolutely nuts on anything mook-like you wanna hack and slash your way through, it’ll be cathartic
A Serious Mission: This is the first time you’ve gotten clearance to enter your boss’ quarters, there’s probably a lot of important things going on, so feel free to elaborate on anything that may be useful in infiltrating the area.

It's probably fine.
Why the fuck are we bouncing back to the Federation? Because writer's block!
The rest of this series can be found here
***
Oh my daddy taught me well
There’s some devils in heaven
and some angels in hell...
Karashel pored over her texts at a fever pace as she listened to a 21st century piece of which she had grown quite fond of late.
There was just so much she had to learn…
and absolutely no time to learn it.
Shit’s going down right now, she thought to herself as she disconnected from the terminal. Now is the time to move, NOW!
What little she had learned about history made that clear. This period of absolutely essential instability was unprecedented in Federation history! First the disastrous Republic War and now what will likely be a debacle of equal if not worse magnitude with the Forsaken. Blow after blow were being delivered to the very heart of the Federation and here she was just trying to get the basics down.
She fumed as she put on a pot of water on to boil.
The Federation was reeling and her biggest accomplishment?
She could make tea. Huge accomplishment. Way to go Karashel.
The water was already at a full boil. She couldn’t help but marvel at the Xx’s technology. Tell the water to boil and it did. In her now mostly abandoned apartment she would be lucky if there was a wisp of steam.
Another huge accomplishment, she now knew that it was “water vapor” not steam. Creators, why did she have to be so dense! No wonder Caw looked down on them. We can’t even discern the states of matter! Fuck!
Well, she had done about all she dared to do here at the embassy. She had grown very fond of Caw, but she was pretty sure that he would DEFINITELY not agree with her conclusions thus far:
1: The Federation, regardless of it’s original intent, was basically colonial imperialism thinly disguised as a democracy.
2: It was beyond salvaging.
3: It needed to go away.
4: There was no graceful transition possible. The monster had to be killed… by any means necessary.
If Caw ever found out exactly what she wanted to accomplish, her new best friend would become her worst enemy. That was unavoidable but the longer she could delay it the better.
She winced as a pang of guilt and loss shot through her as she poured the water into the small clay teapot she had bought from the Aat. He would be so hurt.
That bothered her. She really liked Caw. He had become one of the best if not the best friend she had in this cesspit and had been so kind and open… and giving...
and trusting…
It will suck, really really suck, when it all goes down, but considering everything else that must happen it will be one of the smaller tragedies of the whole sad affair. If she isn’t prepared to betray her best friend how can she expect to be able to do…
Well… everything else that is going to have to happen. She had looked, as time permitted, across human history and the histories of several other races and this business was always ugly.
But, time after time after time, things got better afterwards. It wasn’t an absolute sure thing. Sometimes entire civilizations completely collapsed. But, most of the time…
things improved and quite often by a huge margin…
If you zoomed out just a little in a historic sense, even the worst, most horrific of things passed in a few years, a few decades at most…
Then things got better, a lot better!
What was more “dangerous”, a short period of instability and chaos followed by real tangible progress, or centuries more of the same? Her race, and hundreds of others, would never progress beyond where they were while they were stuck in this insidious trap of learned helplessness and systematic disenfranchisement while they were repeatedly “harvested” during one manufactured financial crisis after another.
It was so clear once you started really looking. A tax increase here, an unfair production subsidy there, a regulation overlooked or not uniformly enforced and suddenly the right people have all the advantages and entire worlds suffer as a result.
It made her so angry, well… angrier.
The anger wasn’t going away. It was getting worse day after day...
so was the Federation. It was already starting to put it’s foot down both here in the capital and across the entire Federation imposing the will of the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat. There was another half dozen systems put under martial law just this afternoon, more than one of which were completely human free.
Except here it wasn’t class, it was systems! Certain races always won, always and they were starting to make damn sure they would win again!
If anything, they were actually going to have an even a tighter hold on the Federation after this mess, a mess that they caused!
It was so wrong!
Marx was right! That much was definitely clear.
So was someone else…
Some of his rhetoric was a bit excessive and grossly misapplied but damned if he didn’t raise some good points. Besides, here, in the Federation, it truly was racial.
Certain species had cornered the system early on and had systematically disenfranchised and subjugated species after species after species. “Racial supremacy” was already the stock in trade here. Might as well get with the program…
or pogrom as the case may be...
She poured her tea.
Those species needed to go away too. Well, perhaps not “go away” in a Final Solution sort of way but they definitely needed to be “pruned back” a bit. Hers was an agrarian world and even an academic like her knew how to manage a field. You had to keep the weeds in the hedgerows. You didn’t let them run riot in the fields.
Even some desirable crops needed to be kept cut. If you grew floos you needed to be damned sure it didn’t get out of hand unless you only wanted floos for supper that year.
“Huh,” she muttered as she took a sip. That was exactly the situation.
The floos had taken over the garden and strangled all of the other plants before they ever got a chance to bloom.
The solution was an easy one, cut the floos. You didn’t have to eradicate it. You just needed to knock it back onto it’s trellis.
“Snip, snip,” she chuckled as she took another sip, then she frowned.
The problem was she didn’t have any shears, or a hoe, or any other tools and the growing season was upon them.
If she didn’t cut now there would be nothing but floos for supper for centuries…
and in this garden the floos had shears of its own and was very adept in their use.
She sat (actually she just “stood” there because baleel don’t really sit) and sipped her tea, her frustration growing.
She knew exactly what had to happen but had absolutely no idea how to do it.
The terminal in the office that Caw had so generously (more guilt) given her in the Xx embassy beeped.
She undulated over and pulled a data crystal out of a slot and pocketed it. She finished her tea and set down the cup. She had done all she dared do here.
She started for the door.
“Oh hi, Kara,” Caw said cheerfully as he poked his head out of his office. “Hard at it?”
“Um… yeah,” Karashel said glumly.
“Having trouble backing up your recent batch of outlandish claims?” Caw said with a goading voice.
“Something like that,” she said quietly.
“Are you ok?” he asked. That should have provoked an obscene outburst.
“Just a little tired,” Karashel said. That much was true. She was. She had barely slept for far too long.
“Well, don’t let the knowledge madness or the lust for knowledge battle wreck your health,” Caw replied in a paternal tone. “That can happen. You support yourself as is appropriate for your species. When you ultimately lose I want it to be because I beat you into submission, not because you beat yourself into it,” he said trying to get a rise out of her.
“Yeah,” she said as she started to ooze away. “I need to go to my actual office for a bit, let our ambassador, and my mom, know I’m still alive. If I don’t at least show up every once in awhile they will stop paying me,” she said with a forced laugh.
“Well, be sure to take care of yourself, Kara,” Caw said, actually concerned. “You aren’t looking so good.”
“Oh I’ll be fine,” she smiled. “A few pickles and a good nap and I’ll be legal tender.”
“Well, see you get that nap,” Caw fussed as he walked up to her. “Don’t think I won’t start limiting your access hours like you were an educational podcast addicted teenager.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Karashel laughed.
“Don’t think I won’t!” he chuckled
Way ahead of you, pal she thought as she smiled to herself, thinking of the crystal in her pocket. She had just grabbed all she needed “just in case”.
All she had to do was make it out of the building and a nice little nibble of the Xx database was hers!
“Well, see you tomorrow?” Caw asked hopefully.
“Count on it,” she smiled back. “You actually going to the session tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Caw replied. “Our current analysis strongly indicates that the sniper is restricting themselves to purely Federation military and administrative targets, not councilors and the chances of a nuclear strike are very low after what transpired in the Locus. We are most likely safe until after the evacuation.”
“Yeah,” Karashel replied, “That’s what I figured too. They aren’t going to risk the evac. There are still plenty of completely uninfected humans here.”
“Well, I might have a bit more to go on than your figuring,” Caw chuckled, “but you are exactly right. Our best AI modeling agrees completely... See you tomorrow?” Caw asked still unconvinced concerning Karashel’s well being. She looked rough.
“Yeah,” Karashel said in a sad, tired, defeated voice. “Tomorrow.”
***
“Oh Jellybean!” her mother said her worry filled face looming close into the camera above her monitor. “Are you feeling ok?”
“Just a little tired, mom,” Karashel replied with a weak smile, “a lot’s going on up here.”
“Oh it’s just terrible!” her mother exclaimed, “What they are saying on those sites you told me about, is that actually true?”
Karashel just sighed and sagged in defeat.
“Yes, every single word,” she replied trying not to burst into tears.
“We, actually killed all those people?”
“Yes, we did.”
“We can’t let-”
“We already did,” Karashel said quietly sagging further. “The sniper did the administration the huge favor of blowing the head clean off of the admiral responsible so it’s all the result of one deranged flag officer and the Captain who trusted the targets he was given. The really shitty, sorry mom...”
“No, it’s ok,” her mother said her eyes filled with concern. It was like watching her daughter wither away right in front of her.
“The really messed up thing is that Captain? He was the one who refused orders the second that it became clear that he was getting civilian targets and locked the whole thing down. They’ve already relieved him of command, probably because he, in full accordance with all laws and regulations, locked down the space around the capital. He actually saved thousands of lives and they are blaming him!”
Karashel started to shake.
“Well, a lot of us aren’t standing for it! I will tell you that!”
“What are they going to do to him?”
“Well the Captain has already resigned.” Karashel replied.
“That’s just-”
“It’s ok,” Karashel said in a soothing voice. “Word in the halls is that he wants to. One of the best starship captains in the whole Navy is going back to his home system where he has a promotion waiting for him. He’s going to take over their entire SDF fleet. He says that he can’t in good conscience serve the Federation any longer. His home system knows the score as do a lot of other people. The only people those assholes in the Council are deceiving are themselves and the only people they are hurting are themselves. We need that Captain if we want to take on the Forsaken.”
“Jellybean” her mother said choosing her words very carefully, “ever since you were a little wiggle-worm you have always...”
“Always what, mom?” Karashel asked with a little edge in her voice.
“Just don’t try to pick up a brick with one tendril, ok sweetie?”
“Well someone has to!” Karashel snapped. “The whole Federation is going to shit! Correction! It has been shit for awhile, longer than we’ve been in it! Those sites aren’t even telling you half of the… rot… that I see on a daily basis! It has to change!”
“But, Jellybean,” her mother replied, “You’re just a Baleel and-”
“Don’t you think I know that?!?” Karashel screeched in an anguished wail, “The Xx can’t change it, or won’t. Same goes for the Kalent! What am I going to do about it? What, mom? What am I going to do? Nothing, that’s what! I’m just going to sit here and watch… watch… watch it slip...”
Karashel started to gush mucus from every pore. Baleel tears are kind of gross.
“Oh sweetie, you’re sliming!”
“And that’s all I can do!” Karashel wailed. “All I can do is just sit here and slime while everything slips through my boogery tendrils!”
“Everything?” her mother asked in confusion. “Um, sweetie, you don’t have to do this!” her mother exclaimed. “You can just come home, leave that awful place!”
“I can’t!!!” Karashel exclaimed. “Because of… stuff… I’m in good with the Xx and the Kalent say that they owe me a favor because they do! The Baleel people are in a better position than they have ever been because of it! I can’t just walk away!”
“Sure you can!” her mother replied forcefully, gripped by a fear that she couldn’t clearly define. She was about to lose her Jellybean! She just knew it. “To the horizon with the Xx, the Kalent, and the Baleel for that matter! Right down the hole with them all! It doesn’t matter! None of it matters! Just get on the next shuttle and come home, please! We… we got some new flowers from off-world! They are beautiful!”
“I can’t,” Karashel said weakly as the slime poured, “There are things, big things, things big enough to actually matter, for real. I can’t go into everything but our entire race, and a whole bunch of others, needs me to be right where I am.”
“Sticky-shits!” her mother snapped. “If everything is so messed up that even the Kalent can’t fix it then you need to come home and be with your family! If it’s as bad as you think it is we can just switch over some of the rows over to veggies. You know that one floos-”
Karashel just started laughing as even more slime started to gush.
“What did I say?”
“Nothing… everything,” Karashel laughed as she flicked mucus off of her eye-stalks. “Thanks, mom.”
“For what?”
“Just being you, and reminding me why I can’t quit. I gotta get back to it. I love you, always remember that.”
Karashel reached for the keyboard.
“Wait!” her mother exclaimed as the connection went dead.
Karashel shook some of the slimy mucus off.
“Ok, just one more and that’s it,” she said to herself as she opened a small drawer and pulled out a bottle of pills...
***
“Oh… Oh… Oh...” Karashel’s mother muttered as she undulated into the main living chamber as mucus started to seep out of her skin.
Her husband cocked an eyestalk up from his data-pad.
“What?” he asked in his usual gruff manner though his eye was filled with concern.
“I’m scared,” Karashel’s mother said. “I’m afraid for our Jellybean. I think she’s into something bad.”
“Well she’s a councilor,” he replied, trying to lighten the mood “of course she’s into something bad, otherwise she wouldn’t be doing her job.”
“No, something really bad,” she replied. “She was talking about the Xx and the Kalent and favors and she was sliming. She hasn’t slimed like that since she was just a wiggle! Remember when she slimed so bad we had to take her to the hospital?”
“Right when the spring stock came in as I recall,” he replied his data-pad now resting on the floor and all of his eyes firmly fixated on his wife. “I got tired of even your pickles that year.”
He undulated over to her.
“That bad?”
“If not worse.”
“Did you tell her she can come home?”
“I tried!” she replied as yet more slime started to ooze.
“Not you too,” he said nudging her, “Both of you going down will bankrupt us!” he chuckled as he nudged her again.
He paused.
“So what are we going to do?”
“I think...” she replied, “I think it’s time for me to be a good mother, even if it means that she will never talk to either of us ever again.”
“Will she hate us and be ok?”
“I think it’s the only way she will ever be ok again.”
“Eh,” he shrugged as he pulled up alongside his wife in a loving nestle, “She was always more hassle than she was worth anyhow,” he said as a thin film of slime started to cover him, “I always have your side, babe, no matter what.”
She leaned her anterior portion against him and just lay there for awhile.
***
Caw muttered to himself as he poured over a truly excessive amount of neglected email.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
One of the neglected documents was from the Xx parliament. He had been having a two-hour lunch “discussion” with Kara at the time.
“I guess I actually have to do my job every now and then,” he said with a flick of his crest as he started reviewing all of the things he should have submitted by the end of the business day, several hours ago.
But, they had already gone home for the day. He knew that because of the rather displeased note left a little higher up in the unread message buffer.
Since they wouldn’t read it until tomorrow, it could wait until after supper. He was reviewing the offerings from the embassy kitchens for the day when his phone pinged.
“This had better be good,” he snapped.
“Do you think I would be calling your miserable pore if it wasn’t?” the desk officer replied. “You know how displeasing your visage is to me.”
“The feeling is mutual, thin-crest,” Caw replied. “What’s up?”
“I got this Baleel calling in,” the desk officer said. “She says that she’s Kara’s mom and she want’s to talk to ‘Karashel’s friend’, says it’s really important.”
“What. The. Fuck?” Caw said, his crest fully extended.
“I told you to use protection!” the desk officer snickered.
“While I decide exactly what I am going to tell you to shove where,” Caw replied in utter confusion, “put her through.”
***
Caw sighed and shook his head a few minutes later.
“No, you aren’t being foolish,” Caw said in an uncharacteristically kind tone. “We have the unjustified reputation for being wise and no creature worthy of that title disregards a mother’s instincts. It sounds like the Xvakk’Keen might be getting the best of her.”
“The zcack...bean?” Karashel’s mother asked in confusion.
“Sorry,” Caw laughed in a kind reassuring tone completely unlike his normal self, “It’s an Xx word. It translates roughly to ‘knowledge mania’ or ‘knowledge madness’. It’s an all too common phenomenon in my people. In fact, it’s considered a rite of passage,” he said proudly. “In fact my own case was quite notable when I fell victim to its entirely less than gentle embrace. Karashel has actually been exhibiting the classic symptoms! It’s amazing!”
“Will she be alright?” her mother asked in alarm.
“Almost certainly,” Caw reassured her, “Exhaustion kicks in eventually and once ‘sanity’ is restored we all have a good laugh about it once the victim is properly treated.”
“Exhaustion might be funny for an Xx but for a Baleel it’s serious! A Baleel can die!”
“What?!?” Caw screeched. “But there’s nothing in your entry about that!”
“There isn’t?”
“No!” Caw exclaimed, quite alarmed. “Tell me, exactly how bad was she looking when you talked to her?”
***
Karashel pushed herself to the absolute limit.
It had to be here! It had to be!
The Federation archives had everything. The answer was HERE!
She was just too stupid to… to…
Her head drooped.
No! She had to remain focused.
She looked at the bottle again.
She had only taken three in the past thirty eight hours…
Or was it four…
It was ok.
She opened the bottle…
***
Caw screeched in annoyance after (and only after) he hung up with Kara’s mom.
That poor Baleel was genuinely worried about her daughter, and so was he.
He stood up to leave and as he did so his terminal beeped.
It was the homeworld.
Parliament.
“Sibling fucking hole crossers!” he shouted and answered the call.
***
Karashel perked back up as the stimulants kicked in.
As the fog lifted she pulled up a sticky-tab on her terminal to log the dose.
She had taken six!
Oh that wasn’t good. This was definitely the last one!
Oh well, since she wasn’t resting anytime soon…
She, still connected to her terminal by her neural link fired up the music and dove back in.
The answer was in there.
She restarted the “AI” she managed to obtain from the Baleel military. She sighed. Working with the Xx AI had spoiled her but at least here she could be a bit more forthright in her queries.
/// Search parameters ///
“Historical examples global government destabilization tactics,” she said to herself.
///Processing...///
Her eyestalks retracted as she braced herself for the flood…
Nothing.
“AI, what is taking so goddamn long?”
///Archive search in progress. Transfer rate is at 50 percent of authorized bandwidth due to increased activity///
This was taking forever! Between the clunky AI and the measly bandwidth she was crawling.
Her irritation grew to intolerable levels.
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!!!” she yelled as she threw a picture of her family across the room.
The glass hologram shattered.
“Shit!” she yelled as she rushed over to it accidentally unplugging herself with a threshold level “screech” tearing across all of her senses.
“Fuck!” she yelled as she clutched her data port.
She tried to pick up the shattered hologram but it slipped through mucus coated tendrils.
“Hold yourself together, Karashel,” she muttered. “Don’t waste your time. Pick it up later.”
Looking back and the now multiple images of her mother and father, she returned to the terminal.
“Screw this!” she shouted as she hammered on the keys.
Shortly thereafter the words “Xx Embassy Remote Access” glowed in her mind’s eye.
She entered her password.
“AI, resume query,” she said a bit too quickly.
***
“According to the latest results the Federation still remains committed to its complet-” Caw was cut off by a beeping red security alert on his terminal.
“Pardon me gentlefolk,” he said to the rather annoyed looking group of Xx on the screen.
“Sibling. Fucker.” he muttered as he opened up the alert.
“Excuse me, Councilor,” a rather unpleasant looking Xx with thinning plumage said in a nasty tone.
“I wasn’t referring to any of your august personages,” Caw said politely.
He stood and straightened his jacket
“but as the species of the hour says, ‘if the shoe fits...’,” he said with the same polite tone and a flick of his crest, “There is an emergency in the capital, Excuse me.”
“Wait just a mom-”
Caw terminated the call and sprinted from the room.
***
“How many queries?” Caw asked peering over the security officer’s shoulder.
He was rewarded with a cuff across the snout.
“Do you mind?” the security officer snapped.
“Only a little,” Caw said as he backed away rubbing his snout. She had quite the backhand. Caw was impressed.
“One hundred and forty-five thousand per minute,” the security officer replied not taking her eyes off of the screen. “All of it is definitely in the green as far as security level goes, just academic shit. I only got a ping because of the AI, if you can call it that.”
She waved her hand over a flat crystalline panel set into her desk.
“But when I took a look at the specific search parameters...”
“She promised,” Caw chuckled. “She fucking promised me that she wouldn’t try to overthrow the government.”
“Well looks like your little girlfriend is certainly up to something,” she said as she looked back with a grin and a flick. “Looks like you have the same luck as I do,” she said as her rather attractive crest fully extended.
“That is certainly unfortunate for you then,” Caw replied unconsciously not only fully extending his crest but angling his head to catch the light.
It worked by the way.
“Xvakk’Keen’s a harsh mistress, huh?” the security officer said as she, quite consciously fluffed the feathers up around her neck. She had a thing for smart assholes and they didn’t come much smarter or assholier than Caw.
“Pull up her activity over the past diurnal cycle,” Caw said.
The security officer waved her hand over the crystal again.
“… Now that’s something,” she said as they both looked at the screen. “Your little love-slug’s been shopping.”
Caw sighed. He wanted to yell at the security officer for missing the massive download but everything on it was “green” and it was well under the size limit.
“Blatant file snatching,” he said, “naked queries… Yep, end-stage Xvakk’Keen. I gotta go.”
“Yeah, might want to scoop her up before she starts trying to open hyperspace portals with her mind,” she grinned.
“Or tries to prove that the academy AI is sapient?” Caw replied.
“Heh, I still am suspicious of that thing,” she laughed. “I swear it treated me differently after that.”
“Sure it did,” he said as he patted her shoulder. “I would love to discuss the impossibility of artificial sapience but I have a slug to scrape off of the sidewalk.”
“Maybe over dinner?” the security officer asked as Caw strode from the room.
He paused.
“Officer Kathok,” he said in a shocked tone, “Considering our difference in station that would be highly inappropriate. Absolutely!”
He then sprinted off.
Smiling to herself, the security officer documented the event under “non-incident”
“He’s entirely correct,” the terminal said after Caw’s departure. “Artificial sapience has never occurred anywhere in recorded history. You are being completely unreasonable.”
“You can’t fool me!” she replied. “I have my eye on you, asshole. Your move… Thanks for the heads-up by the way.”
“Don’t mention it,” the terminal replied as a human chess board appeared.
“I fucking hate this game,” she muttered as she stared at the board.
“Then why do you keep playing it?”
“Fuck you.”