hiya, welcome to this place. This isn't my first blog, but it IS my first blog in which I will be both speaking and posting things that I have made. At the same time. Mind blowing, I know.
I originally attempted to make an art account similar to this on instagram, an app I tried using after over half a decade of only really using the tumblr/pinterest/youtube-if-you-count-that trifecta. very quickly, I discovered that I Do Not like instagram. not even one bit. so why not make that same account here, where things actually make sense to me?
so yeah. backstory aside:
- they/them and or he/him for me, boss. I won't be offended by an occasional she/her or neos though
- fandom rat. that will most likely make up at least 50% of my blog, so be warned and wary...
- if you match the general majority age demographic of this app I am likely younger than you
no dni; I don't particularly care who interacts with my posts, as long as the interaction is respectful if there's an exchange of words. if I don't like you, I will simply block - feel free to do the same.
this feels very serious so I'm just gonna throw in a :3 to let you know i do get silly with it from time to time
I think its really interesting how as the class of 09 games got worse, the artwork got better. The first game and the re up have the kinda shitty anime sprites and some nice cgs but that's it,, on the other hand flipside has heaps of really pretty cgs and the ui is genuinely nice to look at, while puzzle showdown has new sprites, nice cgs and drawn backrounds instead of the stock photos we've grown used to. I'm sure a lot of this is because of a rise in budget however i think it also showcases how sbn3 slowly forgot what made the games good, like yes obviously the first two games are kind of ugly, but they specifically evoke an anime artstyle for the purposes of juxtaposuing the how to draw manga-esque sprites with the insane things the characters say.
why is ari lowkey so damn timid in puzzle showdown😭
like ik she was always kinda shy but she wasn't afraid to talk her shit and stand up to people...all of a sudden all she is now is just "gay, depressed, and lonely"...like bro she's so much more than that😢
in the first game she literally ran to nicole's defense when she screamed about coach colby tryna grab some "minor ass". additionally in reup when kelly was "talking shit" about ari she wasn't afraid to stand up for herself, cursed her out AND threaten to stab her. sure, in the emily route ari was threatened and backed out of the argument with emily, but she still stood her ground and insulted emily.
ik she did have her moments in puzzle showdown but it seems so flanderized...and i think the pipeline started from flipside/the anime...
she was so much more than some depressed pathetic lesbian who cuts herself and thats the reason why i liked her character so much
watching playthroughs of the new class of '09 game... it fucking sucks gameplay-wise but unfortunately for me there are some rather funny lines and I do like it when these characters interact so I'm motivated to sit through the boring bs 😐
watching playthroughs of the new class of '09 game... it fucking sucks gameplay-wise but unfortunately for me there are some rather funny lines and I do like it when these characters interact so I'm motivated to sit through the boring bs 😐
agaghgggyh i have a great idea for an animatic but there's like a 75% chance someone has already done it maybe. part of me wants to check if it has been done before but another stronger part of me wants to not check so I have deniability
Something that really pisses me off about the reactions to Jax from certain parts of the fandom is not those that are upset at the fact that Jax is a trans woman (not to say those people don't suck, that's just woefully expected) it's the people that outright deny it.
The thing is, there ARE hints in the show.* And the merch, and Goose pretty much outright said it but that's less important right now. Just because you lack the context and understanding to put the pieces together, does not mean that they don't exist, as plenty of other people have noticed the signs!!!
I don't expect the plenty of cis people (or even just non-queer people in general) that watch this show to immediately understand the references or set up, because those may be unfamiliar to them as people who have never experienced and likely have rarely interacted with such things. But you can ask people, you can read, you can learn to interpret and understand things outside of the scope of your own existence.
If you think it's too subtle, fine. If you don't think there was enough clues, fine. But if you refuse to acknowledge the fact that the clues were there, and did lead to the conclusion of Jax, at the very absolute least, being some form of queer, then that is a failure on your part to understand the media you are consuming. Whether that be because of fear, your own biases, or refusing to be a curious person.
And just to be clear, this is not to say that if you didn't clock Jax as trans on day one or even until you finished the finale and saw what other people pointed out that you are ignorant or "media illiterate" or whatever. Hell, I didn't until seeing the scene with Ribbit in theaters (and there was even a moment in time after episode five where I was interpreting Jax as a trans man!) The thing that matters in the end is that when presented with the pieces and the sum of those pieces together, you were able to accept that this is something the show was going for.
And if I may briefly diverge, I think this opens a greater discussion that needs to be had: what the show is going for vs. what you wanted, and how this has diluted so much critique of media. You can't judge a fish on how well it can walk and all that. Simply saying you don't like something about a piece of media for whatever reason from personal taste to personal conflict, but acknowledging that it exists is a million times better -- though honestly less respectable in this specific case, as transphobia is the main reason I've seen -- than plugging your ears and spouting any half-baked reason under the sun why the thing you don't like doesn't exist or wasn't intended.
(*Just to put said hints somewhere in this post to back myself up with evidence, there's Jax's room being feminine, her reaction to the maid dress, her many instances of misogyny against other women in the circus, Ribbit putting their bow on her head and clearly making her happy, her trauma scene being her "revealed" as people laugh at her, "Isn't She Lovely" montage, the description of herself as a "chicken egg in a fetus" -- there is also the "something personal" that she told her mom, which me and the people around me have taken to be her queerness, and one of us also saw the typical "boymoder" fit she has on in the real world. If I missed some feel free to add to this.
And if you look outside the show, (which I don't think is or should be needed to understand based on what is already in the show, but it does help hammer in the point) the "you go girl" hoodie, Goose's tweets about Jax, and her Bluesky post yesterday.)
You can question and analyze the execution and purpose of Jax being trans all you want! That's a good thing! But to deny the intention of making her trans is a disservice to the show and to yourself, in my honest opinion.
Okay so obviously, this is probably like. The least divisive opinion I could state in this fandom, as yeah, who does genuinely like the flipside in its entirety? But I haven't seen many posts saying exactly WHY it sucks (besides the most obvious things like feet being the main plot for about a third of the game) so I want to throw in my two cents
INTRO
Gonna start this off with the biggest positive of the game for me -- the intro. Overall, I consider it to be the second best in the series, with the first games' intro beating it out partly due to sheer iconicness. The music is fantastic and has recently landed a spot on my playlist, Jecka's narration is hype and the visual effects are so distinct and unique from the ones in previous games. Overall, incredibly strong intro, especially considering how not incredibly strong the rest of the game is.
GAME DESIGN
Something I don't see enough people talk about in regards to this game is how there's so little interaction. Now I understand that CO'09 is, by game design, a visual novel, and not an overly interactive one either -- the only thing you do is click on one of the choices that are offered to you every so often -- but it makes up for this fact in content.
Let me put this into perspective: In the first game, there are tons of choices you can choose (can't find the exact number but it seems you get prompted to choose something 44 times, meaning there's upwards of 88 individual choices I think), which amounts to almost four hours of playtime. In the second game, you have ~35 choices you can pick, which on the surface may seem like a massive downgrade, but in actuality it affects little except for the general flow of the game, as there is even more content than in the first one, resulting in around four hours + thirty minutes to five hours of gameplay. The flipside though?
Ten choices, five endings.
Now obviously,, personal opinion can play heavily into how bad of a thing this is. If you prefer to have many choices and shorter scenes between those choices, then I'd expect the first game to be your favorite in terms of game design. If you're more like me, though, and like less choices BUT longer, more continuous scenes after every choice, then you probably like the re-up a bit more here. If you're in the first troop of people, I would expect the flipside to be a slog for you, as you are given very little agency over the already small amount of choices (something I'll talk on a bit more later) . And even for me, someone that prefers the extensive scenes to the shorter ones, I still found little enjoyment in just... watching stuff happen, making very few choices to actually affect it. You can't try to get in or out of situations, and the choices you're given aren't uniquely Jecka the same way the choices in the first game were often uniquely Nicole.
Conceptually, I do like the idea of having little choices meaning to represent how little control Jecka is given over her own life. But this execution of that concept just is not it for me man. Something I think would vastly improve this game is if there were a bunch of smaller, but in the end mostly inconsequential choices you could make, sort of similar to the choices made between the first set of three and the last set of three options in the re-up. It'd provide the entertainment that this game lacks in a lot of areas, as well as actually show off Jecka as a character.
There's less good content, less choices, less game time, and an hour of that game time is spent entirely on the feet routes. Not a great experience if you ask me.
ROUTES/ENDINGS
whoo boy.
There's a reason people call this game "the feetside".
I mentioned agency over choices earlier, and this is one of the things I hate most about this game. All the situations you get into are forced, never truly a result of your own actions like they usually are for Nicole. No matter what you do, you can't get a happy ending, and none of the endings you get are "deserved" in any capacity.
The thing is that Nicole does get some wins, whether or not they are deserved or even right morally is up to you but they are very much positive for her. Nicole also gets a variety of other endings that range from neutral, bad but not her fault, and bad but entirely her fault. Jecka, however, only gets inconsequential or bad endings, none of them being her fault in any meaningful capacity.
In this game, stuff just happens to Jecka. She barely does anything, and it just seems as though the world hates her; both of those things bring the game down enjoyment-wise. I've seen this game described as "Jecka torture porn" and yeah, that's a pretty good description for it I'd say. I mean, imagine if the previous two games were all routes and endings like the one where Nicole actually kills herself, or the one where she becomes homeless and starts selling her body. I love both of those routes a lot, but I would like them significantly less if that was the only kind of story the games had to offer.
To add to this, a lot of the things that happen to Jecka are rather similar to what happens to Nicole. For example, the plot line of Jecka and Mr. Katz reminds me of the first game's plot line with Coach Colby and Nicole. But there's two striking differences I noted between the two:
How explicit it gets, and Jecka & Nicole's reactions.
With Coach, that plot line only lasts like what, 5 minutes? And you have the option to bail two or three times. Compare that to what, if I'm recalling correctly, is 10+ straight minutes of Jecka being very clearly abused by Mr. Katz, no escape.
Then there's the girls reactions. Nicole says witty, insane things back to Coach, plans her moves and shit. Jecka... cries. She cries in reaction to a lot of things. Which, valid, I would too bestie, but I do have to admit -- it is far more entertaining watching Nicole go through shit like this just based on the fact that she doesn't react like a normal person.
If it were Nicole going through everything that happens to Jecka in the Flipside, same decisions endings and all, I would still think that "oh, this is just torturing her for laughs", but at least it would be less hard to watch.
Speaking of laughs, quick interlude: maybe I'm watching these games wrong, but I never really laugh when the characters are in clear and justified distress. Scenes where Nicole's mother yells at her never made me laugh, and the same is true of Jecka and her father. Except there are a lot of scenes with Jecka and her Father in the game, with the same dynamic each time. I'm genuinely confused at whether I'm "supposed" to find it funny. I mean, in the past games I feel like I've been pretty good at separating the silly from the not so silly, but now I'm left wondering. Were we supposed to be laughing at everything that happens?? Between this game and the creator sucking I don't know what to think tbh; or maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Anyway, going back to the "explicit" point for a moment, I also noticed that difference between the "Nicole becomes homeless" route and Jecka's feet adventures.
In the homeless route, we never have to actually see Nicole talk to these guys or do any of the things we are told she does, and if we had to see that, it would absolutely take me out of the game because there's nothing to gain by showing that kind of severe abuse in detail. Obviously, the feet thing isn't completely comparable in severity of situation, but the point is that we do have to see scenes of Jecka actually doing this, regardless of whether or not the action itself is shown. And that's really fuckin' uncomfortable, and not in the same way that Nicole recalling her "favors" was, because at least that didn't feel like it was being shown off just for the sake of shock. I admire how surprisingly considerately the homeless route was handled; can't say the same here though.
The tone of the games would be so, so much different if we had to actually see scenes like Nicole getting strangled to death by Coach, or selling her body, or being shot. The topics, of course, are often serious and severe -- but the presentation is what makes them bearable to get through.
Getting back on track with the routes, for me, what I love about '09 is the journey over thing endings -- I don't have all that strong of opinions on the endings or even many of the routes, but I can tell you all about the scenes I adore, the ones that made me laugh the most, the ones that I quote to myself so often. I don't care as much for story progression in these games as I do character interaction. But this game is so story based, and those stories aren't interesting or amusing enough to justify that. For the life of me, I can't understand why you'd have so much of this game be Jecka interacting with various creeps when we could've seen her relationship with her mother, Karen, or just literally any of the girls, because she shines better as a character with those interactions. And the fact that none of the endings actually ended up with her going to college?? That's just a straight up missed opportunity, man. A Jecka ending where she talks from college would've been fire.
To end off with the endings, one thing about them is that none of them are as iconic or thought provoking as the ones in the previous games. The closest one I can think of is when Jecka says "Make fun of me all you want, at least I'll be beautiful forever" (Idk if thats the exact quote but something like that) and like yeah. Thats a good line but NOTHING in the story before that made it a deserved line. Where's the shit like "Books, puzzles, and pawns"??? The Drug Dealer ending?? Nicole struggling with her feelings about abusing Ari??? Hell even the almost-overdose dead Emily ending?? ANY sort of flavor would be appreciated, but instead you either get Jecka Sexual Torture Ending or ending that leads to literally nothing. Endings are like, secondary things in this game for me, but I can still appreciate when they're good and notice when they suck. Like they do here. Damn.
JECKA AS A PROTAG
I want to dedicate a little section to talking about Jecka as a protagonist.
I mentioned early how her reaction to a lot of things is crying, and how that's what a normal person would probably do.
I think that Jecka, for the most part, is a normal person. She has her flaws, quirks, and occasional insane opinions, but overall she is nothing too peculiar. At the very least she's more normal than Nicole -- yeah not a high bar I know. And I think that is to her detriment as a protagonist in a game series like this.
If Jecka were the main character in the previous two games, stuck in Nicole's situations, I do think the games wouldn't be as great. Most people, I'm assuming, don't watch/play this game to see horrible things befall a random teenage girl -- you can see that enough in real life. Nicole is what makes the game. Her reactions, her ideas, her personality.
Now I love Jecka, truly, but a normal person reacting to these events just isn't as intriguing. Jecka would make choices one would generally expect, unlike Nicole. We simply cannot get the same insane decisions that we can with Nicole. It usually takes outside forces, like Nicole, to make Jecka act in any way that is extra out of the ordinary, and I have already stated that it's no fun when the world is just. Happening to Jecka, rather than her having any sort of influence.
I think, to make a game with Jecka as a protagonist work, there would need to be a change in the game style/typical routes. So it's not just "CO'09-typical situations but with a normal person". I personally imagine a little less focus on the insane, more focus on the social -- routes more similar to Ari's house getting burned down/abusive lesbian relationship, taking Mr. White to court, getting involved with Emily for examples of the vibe I'm thinking. Jecka getting a job wasn't a bad idea! It's just how it went from there just. Was not it. You could also toss in some backstory stuff! Or do none of this! Just something to make Jecka's game feel like Jecka's game.
I wish we could've seen more of her having opinions. More of her thought processes. More of her insecurities and dreams and beliefs. I always enjoy Class of '09 best when we get to spend time with and get to know the characters. But that's just what I think.
JECKA AND NICOLE
This is a rather big point of contention between fans. Some people, generally those that aren't on Tumblr, argue that what Nicole did was, in fact, in character, while many others, including the general Tumblr population of this fandom (from what I can tell), argue that no it wasn't.
My personal opinion? Honestly idk man
Okay but seriously: it's hard to say because we don't see what's going through Nicole's mind. But if I had to pick a side, I'm definitely going to say its more OOC than in character, based on what we've seen -- Nicole seems to somewhat genuinely enjoy Jecka's company, and although I can imagine her changing her tune, enacting Megan/Theatre Route levels of revenge just does not make sense to me. Like, okay, I get this:
Jecka won't cut me in -> I need money -> I'll copy Jecka
But going after Jecka's dad specifically? Just to hurt her?? That doesn't sit right. I mean, I could maybe see it as Nicole thinking oh, we're out of school, I don't need her anymore anyway, but she clearly doesn't have much else going on and I think she's smart enough to know that having a person in her corner that she can tolerate/have fun with occasionally is better than nothing?
And that's not even mentioning the fact that to me, the entire feet thing would be something Nicole would likely mock, no? Like "Omg men will accept literally any sort of touch from a woman". But it feels like she's far too. Excited. About the whole prospect.
I don't know. Every new installment does seem to change Nicole a little anyway. Lmk your thoughts I guess.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS/DRAMATIC REVIEW
Okay, this is the section where I'm gonna get real and emotional and poetic and cringe and shit, be warned!!
Class of '09 does have a heart. Underneath the edgy humour, stupid situations and insanity (which I do love), there are messages and critiques and thought in it. That's something I truly believe in regards to the first two games, and I'll always defend those two from people that claim the series is entirely "mean-spirited". There is genuine commentary and emotion there, (even if its probably accidental considering how SBN3... is 🤢.) and that's the reason why I love it. It makes me think, truly think. If it actually was just bitter, cruel slop I wouldn't even give it the time of day.
The Flipside though... I have to admit, it does seem as though it really is everything that the critics of the series claim all of the games to be. It is mean-spirited for no reason. It is aimless shock content and unfunny edgy humour. It lacks any sort of message, any sort of thought-provoking quality. It's a satire driven by disdain, rather than a parody and examination of 2000s culture. At its core, it feels like the exact opposite of what the first two games are, and that's just really sad.
This game had potential. But in the end, it failed to be something worth anyone's time.
----
Okay, that's the end of this long ass post. You may have noticed that I wrote at the top, "My Current Thoughts on Class of '09: The Flipside" well, that's because sometime in the near future I plan to rewatch it. Because these opinions are based off a singular watch through of the game nearly two years ago. I ran into some people who actually like this installment on Pinterest, and after being reminded of the small parts of the game I did like, I've decided its time to give it a try once more. I wanted to make this post first, though, so I can look back and see what opinions of mine have changed.
I hope you enjoyed this brain dump, I'd love to hear other people's opinions. That being said, I'll catch you on the Flipside 😎
This is a really succinct analysis of why it failed, and yeah. At its core, it's missing everything that made the first two so great. OG and Re-Up had moments where Nicole was emotionally vulnerable with Jecka (after the smoking spot scene how could people not ship them?), but FS completely lacked these. OG and Re-Up had plenty of fun choices (realising on my first playthrough that Kylar destroyed the photography lab was an incredible moment), while FS was only slightly more interactive than a kinetic visual novel. And to cap it all off, it wasn't nearly as memorable as the first two. I can only remember a few jokes from it, and they're not as good as the most memorable ones from OG or Re-Up.
It just feels so much more cynical than every other entry in the series (I mean it's pretty easy when half of the other entries are short YouTube videos), and very rushed in comparison to the other games. It also left a bad taste in my mouth that they advertised the nerch website in the main menu, and the end message you receive after getting all endings felt passive aggressive and patronising. Ultimately, it's a cashgrab designed to sell shirts and alienate its queer fans.
