#And mostly filled with VNs that range from okay to…not great

[kwamiwayzz]

lol so I was looking through me and my friend’s dms as a #throwback or something and thought about how even got myself into liking co09 in the first place

Funny story, I came across a post on Twitter talking about how the (implied) gay couples in hoyoverse games were all bait (that’s a discussion for another day). And while I wasn’t a fan of how the post was diminishing how China tries to get past censorship through heavy themes, symbolism, intertwining characters, etc. they also used the post to bring the “Hella Yuri” library on Steam Curator. While it’s nice to prop up more games that have yuri/GL in them, I was disappointed in the plethora of VNs that took up most of the curator. There weren’t enough “traditional” games in that list for me to consider, and the only one that was worth looking into was Signalis (which I still haven’t played yet).

Then for some reason, I got really interested in trying out VNs due to a super lazy period where I couldn’t play any game that involved walking. It might’ve also been due to gaining some interest in trying out the old well-known VNs like Fate/Stay Night. VNs are an interesting medium for me to engage with because most of the time you’re really just playing a “pick-your-own-adventure” without actively moving the character. I ended up going back to the Hella Yuri library to see which yuri VNs I could try out again.

There were a few that I liked. I think there was one that I thought had some nice voice acting and art called “Without a Voice” which was published by Studio Elan. But there was still some itch that couldn’t be scratched, and I ended up considering dedicating time to play through long VNs like Higurashi, Stein;s Gate, and the Fate series.

I kept asking my friend in the screenshot above what yuri meets my “requirements”. To be honest, I think I was just looking for something like JWQS but in VN form (but one can dream lmao). I’m horrendously picky when it comes to things I end up really liking, but then I decided one day, “Okay, let’s try that one edgy game with the okay-ish anime art to see what the fuss is about.”

I found out two voice actors from Genshin were in it, and that was enough for me to try it. I watched one out of context video for Class of ‘09 and I thought…wow the voice acting is really good here.

I’m gonna be really honest, but I actually don’t even know how I got to heavily shipping Jeckole??? Because the out of context videos did nothing for me aside from find the characters and interactions funny 😭. I think the “Jecka and Nicole being a chaotic duo for 8 minutes” on YouTube sort of made me lean into it more but I was still kinda neutral to it.

Actually, wait.

I think I do remember lol. It was these:

Then I just went down the rabbit hole, and then I just straight up forgot about the rest of the Hella Yuri library on Steam Curator…

I’m way too picky when it comes to things I like and my brain just picks the most random things sometimes. I will say, I do think getting that ending (above) as my first playthrough made me see Class of ‘09 below the surface level, and it also made me really warm up to and start to enjoy (be obsessed) with Jecka and Nicole as a pairing. I’ve already written like x number of brainrot posts on why I like them, so I’ll skip over that part (just dig through my other #jeckole posts lol). Shitty creator aside, I think that ending really reminded me so much of things from that time period that I didn’t realize I was blocking out and it was sort of interesting, comforting(?) that I didn’t just “throw out” the version of me from when I was teenager.

I liked the humor, I liked the dialogue, but I think what’s keeping me invested in a VN like this, is Nicole (specifically from the Suicide Ending). Jecka comes at a close second when taking parts of her home life into account. Basically, some Twitter post meant to be propping up “actual yuri” when talking about Hoyoverse gay couples ended up doing the opposite of what it’s supposed to do lmaooo 😂