#sometimes you just gotta play a weird dating sim from what could be considered forever ago in fandom time

[sword-feline]

No amount of proof will ever fully convince me that Namco High was not some kind of collective fever dream

[n1k1tty]

kiss me ! part 2

“hawaii!” niki yells, throwing as fist in the air as he enters the van “riki, it’s 3am in the morning, please shut up” jay retorts, going back to sleep as he leans on the window

as if it was almost planned, you and jake sat beside each other at the furthest seat. it was complicated, you didn’t know if you were comfortable or not, you felt tense, afraid of jake’s teasing if you touch him even the slightest. yet you also didn’t want to leave your seat.

you let out a huff, trying to find a position where you could comfortably sleep in. you were spooked at the sudden hand that leans your head on their shoulders “you can sleep on my shoulders, it’s alright” jake chuckles, already drifting to sleep the second after he did that “thanks” you mumble, easing into his warmth.

you laugh a little at his aching figure “this is funny to you? after i’ve been so kind to let you sleep on my shoulder?” he pouts “i deserve a long massage during our flight” he jokes, continuing to carry your bags.

dumbfounded by the fact that you stayed with him, giving him a glance filled with guilt “y/n seriously, i’m fine. it’ll go away sooner or later” he reassures you, his heart exploding at the sight of you with glimmering eyes, feeling the guilt you expressed them with.

“what do you wanna eat for breakfast?” you mumble, taking the luggage cart from his grasp. he laughs at your attempt to make him feel better “sorry? didnt quite hear that well” he teases, making you give him a glare, almost forgetting that he was ‘injured’ you raise your hand to almost give him a punch “good thing you’re hurting or i would’ve punched your ass back to australia” you roll your eyes “you heard what i said!” eyebrows frowning as you look away “alright alright, i’m fine with coffee really—” he lets out a breathy chuckle, dragging his feet as he follows you around “—nonsense! breakfast is important. don’t give me that type of bullshit sim” you cut him off, stopping by a little restaurant as you tell the other members to go ahead “im getting you pancakes. better finish it or you’re not living to see another day”

he laughs “this is quite a unique way to care for someone don’t you think” you roll your eyes "eat the damn pancakes sim jaeyun"

"yas ma'am"

--

after everyone had met up, you all started finding your seats. you were bewildered, somehow, because now you found yourself wanting to switch seats with sunghoon for obvious reasons. but of course, you --again, didn't have the guts to do so.

a few hours into the flight and a few glances from jake here and there, you received a message

jake :):

hey pretty girl, do me a favour and go to the washroom behind you

you:

and why exactly?

jake :):

no questions asked. i just miss you ;)

you swore you wanted to jump off the plane. pretty girl?! he misses me?!. you feel the heat creeping up in your face as you asked jungwon "hey, could you get up of a sec. i gotta go to the washroom" you whisper, mumbling a small 'thank you' before you walked to the washroom.

you felt a hand pull you "hey" he giggles, arms wrapped around your waist "you scared me! i thought i was getting abducted" you slap his shoulder. although you would be lying if you said you didn't want to just grab him and kiss him right at this moment.

he looked so good with his button up shirt, showing off his collar bones, neck wearing the beaded necklace you made for him during the summer and your birthstone necklace. his hair was messy, and you couldn't deny how hot he looked with his glasses on.

"you should consider buttoning up" you hesitantly say, looking anywhere but his eyes. of course he catches on to your intentions, but he felt like pissing you off "why? i'm showing off your necklace" he giggles "i even bought your birthstone" he grabs the necklace with his thumb, making you roll your eyes as you cross your arms, making sim jaeyun giggle.

he places his hand under your chin, finally letting you looking at him "switch seats with sunghoon please. i don't think i like the sight of you sleeping on jungwon's shoulders" now it was your time to piss him off.

"why?" you pout, "his shoulders are so comfortable, and we don't want your shoulders aching again now do we?" you give him a slight smile, well it wasn't like you weren't planning to switch with sunghoon way before the flight even started anyway.

jake rolls his eyes "that leaves you no choice--"

"can y'all hurry up? i'll switch with you y/n gosh! just let me pee!" sunghoon bangs on the door, making jake laugh "well that was easy"

--

oh how you regret changing seats.

because now you get to fully witness the flight attendants obviously flirting with him.

"good morning sir" she annoyingly giggles, biting her lip as she leans in way too close. jake leans back, letting out a small laugh out of politeness "hi, yeah i'd like..." he orders his food while you glare at the girl who's been displeasingly close to him "what can i get for you ma'am?"

"oh my girlfriend would like the same thing" jake interrupts, giving you a sly wink after placing his hand on top of yours. you let out a small scoff after seeing the disappointed look on the girl as she hands you the food. your skips a beat. girlfriend? you thought

now he was starting to piss you off. he was doing everything but ask you out. and with every ounce of pride you had in your soul, you hated to admit that you were starting to get really impatient. were you not obvious about your feelings? was the handmade necklace and the concern you have for him not obvious enough?

"ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hawaii" the pilot announces, after you got your hand carry, you didn't even bother waiting for jake. immediately walking out of the plane, causing him to tilt his head out of confusion.

he didn't get a chance to talk to you, i mean, how could he when you would immediately start walking away from him whenever he tried to walk towards you.

as you sat beside jay in the tour bus, he gives you a weird look "why are you here" you give him a lost look "can i not...?" that's when he knew something happened between you and jake "y/n if this is because of jake--" you place your hand on his mouth, leaning way too close. but luck wasn't on your side today, because jake saw.

"shut up please! and yes! it is about him. so please spare me and let me sit here for the meantime" jay chuckles, "jake's going to kill me for this" he mumbles, leaning back to the chair "what?"

"nothing" he gives you a grin

--

after you guys arrived to jay's beach house you immediately grab your bag before jake could help you

"alright riki and sunoo are sharing a room, jungwon and heeseung are sharing, and...." jay looks at you, sunghoon and jake, not knowing what to do "you three figure it out. i'm just letting you know one gets to have their own room" jay starts to head to his own room, shrugging his shoulders as he walks past you with widened eyes.

"we already know what's about to happen. i'm getting my own room-"

"no!" you yell

"yes!" jake yells in unison,

"well......" sunghoon stood there, waiting for the both of you to talk "well, i just think i should get the room since you know-- i'm a girl and-- you and jake are best friends so you should be roommates" you explain, giving sunghoon an awkward smile "yeah sure whatever- ow!" jake hits sunghoon in the arm "you idiot! take the goddamn room!" jake grits through his teeth "you know what y/n! i change my mind. i uh, i think im going to take the room"

"why?!" you whisper with a harsh tone. poor sunghoon "IM GOING TO JERK OFF OR SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW" he yells, although he regrets it after the maids give him a weird look "ayo what?" heeseung peaks through the door "nothing! i didn't mean that. just --ugh! i'm heading out" he grabs his luggage, stomping through the hallways as he walks to the room. leaving you with jake.

--

you were about to have a mental breakdown "jay! you're seriously not helping me at all!" you give him a shove "ow! you need to control your strength sometimes! and i'm sorry okay? i just panicked, and i think you and jake being roommates wouldn't be a mistake. it's better to fix your problems instead of just sweeping it under the rug. you can't avoid him forever y/n" he was right. and you knew that. but you couldn't bring yourself to tell jake what was bothering you. even the thought of it was embarrassing, because what if he wasn't even intending to date you at all?

you walk back to the room, hesitating whether you should open it or not. but after hearing no noise, you open the door "AH OH MY GOD SORRY--" there you saw a shirtless jake, hair wet and his glasses having a few drops of water from his hair. he grabs your hand before you could walk out again "y/n, please talk to me" he places his hands on both sides of your shoulders "did i do something wrong? whatever it is, i'm really sorry" he panics, slightly pouting at the silent treatment you gave him "jake i-"

"dinners ready!" riki barges in, freezing at the sight of you two "oh- hey! riki, let's go!" you grab his arm, walking towards the dining room "please don't mention it" you whisper, sitting in between riki and jay.

jake later follows, now in his grey shirt and the checkered pajamas he wore earlier, he gives you a small smile before sitting next to heeseung.

"so, sunghoon. did you have fun?" heeseung teases

"shut up!"

--

"this wasn't going as planned anymore!" jake groans, he was currently in jay's room, ranting his frustrations out while jay listened. when jake had heard about the trip to hawaii, he originally planned to confess when you guys went to the party, it's not like the party had already happened, but it was already tomorrow "i already apologized, yet she still wouldn't speak"

"do you even know why she's mad?" jay asked, leaning on the bad with his arms as he watched jake pacing around his room "...no?"

"jake sim you idiot"

it was 1 am in the morning and you finally finished playing games with riki and heeseung. you were hesitating to open the door once again. afraid of letting the incident happen once more. you knock lightly, hoping that he was there and you could finally make up

but before you could open the door, jake already opened it. immediately embracing you "please talk to me" he whispers gently in your ear. you couldn't help but burst out crying, causing him to panic, he caresses your hair "let's go for a walk yeah?" he grabs your wrist, his touch so gentle as if you were fragile.

he wipes your tears as you walk along the shore "i missed you. you know?" he holds your hand as you both drag your feet along the sand. you hit him on his shoulder "ow!"

"that's what you get!" you sniffle, looking at the reflection of the moon on the sea "what did i do?" he chuckles, searching for your eyes. he tilts his head when you don't respond "hello?"

"cause! you always flirt with me, calling me your girlfriend and hugging me! i hate it! i hate it because my heart always skips a beat every time and i always expect you to ask me out soon yet you never do!" you yell, your skin was glowing under the moonlight. jake was in awe the moment he saw your glistening eyes that had tears threatening to fall.

he had the sudden urge to kiss you and tell you how he felt.

and he did. because jake was a man who never doubted his feelings when it came to you.

he pulls you by the waist, causing you to let out a yelp. his lips touches yours, and it stayed like that for a while, to make up for the moments he wasted without you this whole vacation. you wrap your hands around his neck, playing with his hair

"can i be your boyfriend?" he cheekily says, his smile making you smile as well "suck my ass. sim jaeyun. yes, i'd love for you to be my boyfriend"

"i'd gladly suck your a--"

"sim jaeyun!"

--

[bonus bcs i haven't posted in a while]

it was the morning of the party, you were in jake's arms "finally you're awake! good morning!" he excitedly says, peppering you with kisses "the guys are in the pool so get changed" he informs you, smacking your ass as soon as you got up "getting too comfortable for our first day aren't we?" you tilt your head, giving him a smirk "can't help it" he send a wink your way.

as soon as you got out in your swimsuit, jake's mouth drops "do a little turn for me" he smirks, twirling you around as he hypes you up "holy shit! i'm so lucky aren't i" he checks you out, earning a smack from you "ow! alright but i'm not letting them check you out like that! wear my shirt"

(he didn't let you go from the jacuzzi after heeseung hyped you up lol)

--

[party]

you told jake to go ahead, wanting to surprise him with the dress you bought.

after arriving to the party jake almost dropped the drink he had in his hand after he saw you. he was smiling so hard when the little girl put a Lei (flower neck lace) on you. he felt so proud when the other men at the party look at you giving him a hug

"that's right, she's mine" he thought

after you walked to wards him he grabs you by the waist "you look so pretty in red" he says, hugging you tightly "is that so?" you ask, giving him a chaste kiss on the lips, making him all giddy

--

part 1

taglist: @zylenes @hwalllllllelujah @theskzvibe

HI GUYS :D. i will be posting the visuals for this fic so pls wait :)

[flyingcookierambles]

sadness over a3! eng i guess

oof just on my 700th day.....

kinda sad because of the announcement about A3! ENG server shutting down soon due to financial difficulties at LIBER/CYBIRD in the past two years (covid-19 related, etc.). according to a rather in depth reddit comment that had links to LIBER's publicly available financial reports + some financial reports from LIBER's parent company, Aeria, in english, covid-19 really hit LIBER hard since they had to cancel many money making events, from pop-up shops for the typical anime merch trinkets (keychains, plushes, pins, etc.) to the huge in-person events (voice actor meetups, the stage plays of MANKAI LIVE, etc.). due to shrinking player base on the ENG server + major loss of profits on both JPN and ENG servers, LIBER had to choose one or the other and they chose the JPN one, which i totally understand since it's way bigger there and the JPN fanbase will continue to give the franchise money more often. also, another person found a financial report/estimate from the google play store or something, and A3! ENG only made ~$20K to ~$10K in the past few months, which i guess is not enough to keep a server and localization company afloat. 

i got pretty attached to the characters and it was a great game to help get by during college. and honestly, while i am very sad about this, again, i understand why LIBER did this, looking at their financial report from 2020. I would LIBER save the entire franchise rather than shut all the servers down, making us all unable to see our favorite actors ever again, even if it means that we ENG fans will have to go thru the extra steps of finding/reading fan translations, wikis, etc., to read any further stories from where A3! ENG left off. still, A3! ENG's localization was something special. i'm saying this as a TKRB JPN player who read the wiki for all the character voice lines and then had to see the official TKRB ENG localization make Yamabushi Kunihiro a rapper for some reason? lol. it was....weird.... meanwhile, all the memes and slang in A3! ENG didn't seem out of place and all fit their personalities because 3/4 of the troupes were all high school to college age and 3 of them were ~Gamers~. Out of all the gachas i've played, i feel like the only other F2P gacha game that had this incredibly smooth, all cultural jokes/puns translated in a way that still makes sense/fits the character/doesn't require a galaxy brain and some TL note to understand, is probably dragalia lost and that's only because it has frickin Nintendo localizing/publishing it globally for CyGames. Nintendo. i'll eventually read the fan translations of A3!'s Act 3 on the wiki, but it won't be the same without Kazunari's super high-energy influencer slang of "'whoa fam! that's totes 'blammable, gotta take a pic!" or Itaru's gremlin Gamer speak of "lol get rekt noobs" or Tsuzuru's tired dying breath of "that ain't it chief." the appropriate slang and relatable meme speak of the localization really helped humanize these characters as people of their respective ages, rather than just a typical formal speak or some directly translated JPN slang -> ENG that turns out super awkward that can be found in bad localizations.

going back to the reddit comment too, the death of A3! ENG servers could have bad repercussions in the future for other joseimuke games. josei, if you for some reason have been in the anime fandom but still don't know this term, is basically the genre of stories/video games/media/etc aimed at women. it's the mature adult counterpart to seinen, media aimed at adult men. basically shoujo/shonen = elementary/middle school/high school aimed while josei/seinen = high school/college/adult aimed if that helps. Joseimuke is a part of josei that is not specifically romance. while some josei/joseimuke can overlap with otome, aka female aimed dating sims/romance media, they have many things about them that make these all separate genres. one of the official A3! ENG translators and a known fan translator of another joseimuke gacha, Mahou Yaku/Wizard’s Promise, minami, goes more in depth with this in a twitter thread. 

A3! was an actor raising game, and a big part of it was found family and relationships that were platonic. yet it got advertised as an otome, which has more connotations with dating sims and brings to mind other shoujo/otome games and anime where the cast is all high schoolers and the setting is most often in a high school. but, other than some characters making flirty jokes or implied to have crushes on Izumi/player character, many character relationships with Izumi are platonic and not romantic at all. Spring Troupe in the game also jokingly calls themself a family. the entire Mankai Company is basically found family. plus, since the game actually has time passing in story and the characters age with each year, half of the characters aren’t even in high school anymore. a large majority of them are in college or are graduated by now, with only a few still in high school. i’m not surprised if a reason that some people left the game was due to feeling bored with the slice of life/not romantic story, feeling that they were lied to about it being an otome, which was falsely advertised since it is a game meant for the older teens/adults demographic of josei/joseimuke.

i’m worried that other japanese companies will look at this shut down as a “josei/joseimuke doesn’t work well in the west” and never localize other josei/joseimuke gacha games like Mahou Yaku, EnStars, Twisted Wonderland, Helios, etc.

while i like otome and shoujo, i, as a 23/soon to be 24 year old college graduate and now tax paying adult, want more stories that have more mature themes and characters that are more my age so i don’t have to feel awkward when i’m playing some dating sim and i, a literal 23 year old adult, and trying to woo a 16 year old. it’s...a little awkward to say the least. i would gladly welcome more mature media that is categorized as josei/joseimuke.

sorry if this is all over the place, but overall im just sad that A3! ENG is shutting down. i don’t know if i’ll join the JPN server yet. i’m def going to read the Act 3 story via fan translators on the wiki, but A3! gameplay was...boring lmao. as much as i love A3!, im sure that the constant event grind/burnout and boring rng gameplay turned people off too and i dont blame them. i felt the burnout bad since i participated in basically every event since day 1. it. is. rough. i’m not joining the hellish thunderdome that is the JPN server and im not ranking anymore as a F2P player lmao. literally had to play almost every waking free moment to get into the 30%-20% bracket as a F2P person and i never got to top 20%-10%, much less top 1% lmao. i’m don’t whale enough lol. 

i feel like i should probably just. crack open my genki 2 textbook and uhhh totally legal pdf copy of tobira. so i can just. get the JPN version of games in the first place so i don’t have to worry about getting shafted since overseas fans are often considered expendable. 

i wish that, when any games that are online end, gacha or mmo or anything, anything online, companies will let fans archive things. or like. release a book that is just the story text or something. like. CYBIRD is letting us still technically play the game and have the story and all, but what if they eventually later shut everything down? why not just release a pdf/ebook that’s just the text of the eng localization for some money? i’d buy it. for nostalgia and rereads and all and also archiving purposes. i think i’ll try to help with any english localization archive projects if i can so that the hilarious and incredible localization that was a work of love from the translation team doesn’t just disappear forever.

well.

that’s it for now. as i said, guess i’ll head to the app for one of the last times to read the last unread stories and mini stories i have left, then the wiki for Act 3, and then i guess i’ll crack open genki 2 and bunpo.....

some fun random links for you to think about!

random ffxi article that came to mind (if ffxiv ever shuts down in the next 20 years or whatever i’d be cool to get a statue of my character at the end)

and death of a game playlist by NerdSlayer Studios on Youtube that has me thinking a lot about game preservation and losing MMOs and games

the lost media wiki  and blameitonjorge’s lost media iceberg

other gacha games i’ve played that have shut down that i think about sometimes because the loss of A3! ENG isn’t my first rodeo:

terra battle & terra battle 2 (1)

AFTERL!FE

(related kitsu post link for archive reasons)