Visual Novel / Class of '09

Pictured: Jecka (Left) Nicole (Right)

"It's funny when a girl tells her story, only to be told back that it's unrealistic. Almost as if they're afraid to believe it's real."

Class of '09 is a Ren'Py-based visual novel by Max "soulbrothanumbuh3" Field, which released on Steam on June 10, 2021. The plot of the game can be described as a Darker and Edgier take on Daria that also happens to be a visual novel. The game stars Nicole, a New Transfer Student (who gives up on life after she is forced to move because of her sexist brother and her dad's suicide) who uses her looks to seduce boys for her own benefit, which will end up making things go up to eleven in the process.

A video playthrough of (one route) of the game hosted by YouTuber Mark After Dark and Field himself can be found here. Please also be warned that the game contains many adult themes and situations that may not be for the faint of heart or easily offended. You have been warned.

A re-release of the game, called Class of '09: The Re-up, was released on June 1, 2023, which adds additional story routes.

An animated short was released by the publisher, Wrath Club, to promote the game. A Kickstarter for a fuller-length pilot episode was later launched on November 25, 2023 and earned enough to fund an 11-minute episode.

---

This visual novel contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Basically, all the parents in the game are this. From Nicole's mom screaming at her, and kicking her out of the house for getting expelled to Jecka's who gives her "disciplinary tattoos" virtually all the parents mentioned are terrible.
• Adults Are Useless: A majority of the time, adults wind up contributing to the problems with their ineptitude and Skewed Priorities or are themselves the problem due to them turning out to be a sex offender. Even during the times when Nicole is actually unjustly sent to Principal Lynn's office, the principal will either side with the teacher who sent her or say there's nothing she can do due to school policy.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Nicole gets this in some of the endings despite how much of a genuinely awful person she is:
  • She can potentially be Driven to Suicide over being hounded on by three guys just because she decided to be nice to them. While she's otherwise incredibly cruel to many characters, the fact that she gets punished for trying to act closer to a genuine human being and getting no actual support for her position makes it seem like the world plainly doesn't want her to be good.
  • The ending of her romance route with Ari is very sobering. Nicole was a terrible girlfriend to Ari to be sure, but when Ari breaks up with her and starts dating guys despite being a lesbian because she didn't see any other option, Nicole seems to be left genuinely confused over why Ari would take things that far when breaking things off with her, with Jecka's attempts to spell things out for her failing to get through. During her ending monologue, Nicole asks if it's possible to "feel guilty about feeling guilty", because she's so devoid of positive emotions that she doesn't even know why she should be feeling bad about how she treated Ari.
• All Men Are Perverts: It often seems like the only men who aren't perverts are crackheads, cops who are way too invested in the power trip having a gun gives them, and white nationalists. This is actually justified; Principal Lynn is legitimately good at her job when she has the freedom to exercise her authority, but so infrequently has that authority because almost all the male faculty members have blackmail material on her, since she slept her way into her position through them. In effect, most of the men in the school are teachers because they are perverts.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: In Re-up, Nicole is absolutely livid when she sees her mom was at school as part of the catering service in the "Reported to ADL" ending.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: The character designs used all face a particular direction and flipping them simply mirrors their art and clothes in the game.
• Ambiguous Situation: After all of the endings are achieved, an additional scene will unlock that takes place after the graduation ceremony, where Jeffery calls out Nicole for ruining his valedictorian speech. Though it's heavily implied this scene takes place after the graduation ending specifically, it isn't fully confirmed. Whether the scene is the former or the latter really affects how in the right Jeffery is for calling Nicole out, since the graduation ending involves Nicole publicly revealing that she had been preyed on by most of the male faculty.
• Amoral Attorney: The lawyer defending Mr. White from Nicole's False Rape Accusation outright denies Nicole's claim about the school's pedophile problem despite actually knowing about Coach Colby getting arrested for trying to proposition Nicole for sex. Several of his arguments against Nicole's claims of Mr. White sexually assaulting her are also rather misogynistic. This winds up screwing him over, as Nicole is easily able to provide evidence of the school's pedophile problem and that the lawyer lied in the process, leading to the courtroom calling for Mr. White's blood.
• Artistic License – Law:
  • Nicole's False Rape Accusation towards Mr. White in one of the routes wouldn't have panned out in real life even if she could prove that most of the school's faculty were sexual predators. In reality, her story wouldn't have held up under further cross examination if the lawyer did his job correctly (which he admittedly sort of wasn't), while the other more substantiated claims of sexual abuse regarding the rest of the faculty would have been relegated to separate court cases.
  • Kyle is arrested the day after murdering his mother at Jecka's sarcastic suggestion and states in his phone call that he's already been sentenced to ten years in jail. Aside from being way too fast for a proper trial to occur, Kyle facing a murder charge would be more than enough to get him tried as an adult and would be looking down the barrel of a life sentence instead. It's even lampshaded by Nicole of all people, who's outright baffled that he's somehow going to be out in ten years.
  • In Re-Up in the "Megan" ending, Nicole stated that she didn't break a single law to get the ending. However, given the route involved sharing explicit pictures of Hunter to Megan, Nicole still would have broken laws regarding the distribution of CSAM assuming Hunter is still under 18.
• Ascended Extra: Ari, Emily, Hunter and Megan all get a bigger moment in the limelight in Re-Up with their own story paths.
• Asshole Victim: Every faculty member Nicole can potentially screw over turns out to be this. Many of them are actually sexual predators, and the ones who are not are racist.
  • Nicole herself can become this as well.
• At Least I Admit It: Nicole is a terrible person and doesn't do much to hide that fact. Even when specifically manipulating people, she only half-heartedly pretends to be pleasant. What notably pisses her off is when other people try to pretend to be above it all while being just as terrible as her, particularly the faculty. Conversely, she's a lot more agreeable with peers who are open about being selfish and catty.
• Atomic F-Bomb: Hunter drops a big one in civics class that Principal Lynn substitutes in during the "Charity Fraud" route.
• Bait-and-Switch: The game goes out of its way to imply that the creepy photography teacher Mr. White is a pedophile or some other kind of sexual deviant (much like the other male students and teachers at the school). He isn't. He's actually a white nationalist!
  • If Nicole avoids everyone, she will eventually be given the option to either go to a concert or stay home and commit suicide. The option to go to the concert is the one that results in suicide, with the latter being a failed attempt that lands Nicole in a psych ward.
• Based on a True Story: Allegedly, all of the events in the game are based on real events soulbrothanumbuh3 experienced or was aware of.
• Batman Gambit: Nicole's plan to get Ms. Ames, the remedial English teacher, fired out of spite involves submitting an essay that plagiarizes Mein Kampf, knowing that Ms. Ames is racist and will not only approve of the paper but read it out loud, outing her racism to the school board. It ends up working too well, landing everyone in the school in court.
• Best Friend: Subverted. Jecka seems like Nicole's best friend at first glance, but in one branch Nicole states she's "not crazy about her".
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Nicole's family. Her brother is a basement-dwelling pedophile. Her mother can't go half a year without failing with another relationship. Her father was suicidal and somehow blames Nicole for taking his own life for whatever reason. And Nicole is Nicole.
• Black Comedy: The game opens with a suicide, and just keeps going on from there.
• Blunt "No": When Jeffery asks Nicole to sign his yearbook, one option is simply Nicole saying "no".
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Among the topics Jeffery has bombarded Nicole with to her irritation, she lists comics, laser swords, and lowering the age of consent.
• Brick Joke: An observant player will notice the writer sets up a lot of jokes in advance for the fun of a cascading domino effect.
  • During the Ms. Ames route, it's revealed that Nicole's mother started work at a kosher deli. The deli ends up catering an event for the school where Ms. Ames and Principal Lynn try to revive funding for the remedial programs where Ms. Ames intends to read Nicole's essay aloud. The only problem was that Nicole plagiarized Mein Kampf for that paper to get Ms. Ames caught out for racism, and the owner of the deli reported the school to the Anti-Defamation League. Additionally, a second Brick Joke comes from the dating Ari route where it's revealed Nicole is familiar with the plot of American History X, a movie where the main character also gets into trouble over writing a paper on the same book.
  • During the cocaine route, Principal Lynn discourages Nicole from wearing a hoodie with a gun on it due to it promoting violence, with Nicole mentioning she'd never shoot up a school because she isn't ugly. By the end of the route, Nicole makes plans to hunt down Principal Lynn and shoot her for ratting her out for dealing drugs.
  • During the expulsion route, Nicole amends that the top male sexual fantasies are being their lay's 'daddy' and sexually murdering teenage girls. A few scenes later, Kylar reveals his drawing is of 'bitches getting killed' because 'women dying is cool.' The text message for completing the route has one man trying to hire Nicole's services as a prostitute with the request she pretend to be his dead daughter.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Nicole skips school on the regular for the fun of it, but the few time she commits herself (primarily for revenge reasons), she proves more than capable of acing it. Like in drama class where she acts well enough for Megan to recommend her for the role of Juliet just for the sake of getting back at her.
• Brutal Honesty: As part of Nicole's nihilism, she does not hold back on how she think of some people. Humorously, Crispin and Kylar at some point in the story both think this trait makes her hot to them.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Outside of some of the teachers, absolutely nobody treats Jeffery with any dignity. If he shows up, expect someone to play a joke at his expense.
  • Karen seems to exist only to get her self-esteem destroyed, whether it be Nicole and Jecka causing her to relapse into bulimia or Nicole and Emily making her think that Jeffery cheats with other girls while she's in the start of a relationship with him.
• Cannot Keep a Secret: Nicole can't keep secrets down, not because she's a blabber-mouth, but because it amuses her.
• Central Theme: Abuse can come in many forms - it doesn't have to be physical. Grooming is abuse, leading someone on is abuse, exerting your presence over someone reliant on you is abuse, and so on. The game in no uncertain terms paints Nicole as a victim and a perpetrator of abuse. Adult men attempting to romance their students is portrayed as scummy as it should be, the male students who harass Nicole for not wanting to go out with them are clearly presented as creepy and in the wrong, and Nicole herself goes way too far in abusing Ari in the route where she dates her just because she's allowed to get away with it. The Ari route is Nicole at her worst as a person, and pretty much everyone who isn't homophobic points that out to her. Of course, given this game is a Deconstructive Parody, even this theme is presented comically - namely, Ari learns about abuse by asking a pedophile sexual abuser to clarify how abuse can be more than physical.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Nicole can tell Kylar early on that she'll only go with him to a pool party if he makes a viral video. This gets forgotten about for a while until Jeffery takes revealing photos of Nicole to humiliate her as payback for her bullying. Before the photos can get developed, Kylar trashes the photo lab to make his viral video, inadvertently saving Nicole's reputation.
• Circumcision Angst: Nicole and the other girls are disgusted by uncircumcised men, something that actually helps get her off the hook in the ending where Ms. Ames is taken to court for reading Mein Kampf in front of a Jewish caterer.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Crispin struggles to keep his brain focused on a single topic and seems to be completely unaware of the context of every situation he wanders into.
• Comedic Sociopathy: This is where much of the game's humor comes from. The player can make Nicole take drugs, throw people under the bus, extort people for all they're worth, commit crimes... all for her own benefit.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • In the state-wide expulsion ending after Nicole was caught destroying the school's photo lab, she narrated that she believed she would've gotten away with her "sleepwalking" defense if it wasn't for her wearing gloves.
  • In one of the endings in Re-Up where Nicole ends up in jail, she reflects on the mistakes she made that landed her in jail in the first place, and believes she's made a change for the better. Then she casually reminds herself that once she's released from prison the first thing she will do is murder her principal.
  • Another example happens when Nicole breaks a window with a civics textbook to get sent to remedial classes, and the gym teacher mistakes her for doing it because she hates the government. The same thing happens again when the principal believes the same thing.
• The Corruptor:
  • Nicole encourages a lot of the bullying going on in the school for her own amusement.
  • On a less darkly comedic note, Mr. White somehow is able to turn nearly everyone in the school except ironically Nicole into fanatical white supremacists in his route.
• Cute and Psycho: Emily as revealed in her route in Re-up. Nicole herself could also count.
• Deadpan Snarker: Nicole. Unless she's shaken up over her (to put it mildly) dysfunctional life, everything out of her mouth is either disaffected sarcasm or acidic sass throughout the game.
• Deconstructive Parody: The game is called a "Rejection Sim" for a reason. It utterly skewers the scenarios found in the typical high school dating sim, from having a self-destructive sociopath as its protagonist, to showing all of her potential "suitors" in the ugliest light imaginable, all under the backdrop of a very unflattering depiction of typical high school life. And all of it is played for the bleakest comedy imaginable.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Characters casually call things they hate "gay", and the word "retarded" is used a few times, from Nicole calling Kylar that to Kylar calling himself that at one point because of his idiocy. Changing standards in the current era have made both much more unacceptable to say in public, but they were very common place back when the game takes place.
  • In-universe attitudes in the game towards media such as manga and video games are also generally unkind, as such media was considered incredibly niche at the time, in contrast to even a decade later where they're generally considered mainstream.
  • Most of the named teachers are able to get away with sexual harassment or misconduct and/or expressing openly racist beliefs due to most of the male teachers having blackmail against Principal Lynn. Although such problems unfortunately still persist by the time of the original game's release, such awful behavior was far easier to hide in 2007/2008 due to a combination of a lack of smartphones and/or social media to help document evidence and the #MeToo movement that helped bring sexual harassment into the national consciousness and inspire victims to come forward being roughly a decade away by this point.
• Does Not Like Men: Nicole has no problems using men for her own benefit, but she otherwise can't stand being around them due to her belief that All Men Are Perverts.
  Nicole: Yeah I'm pretty sure like 90% of men have the urge to sexually murder teenage girls.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Jeffery and Crispin both are clearly only friendly to Nicole because they're interested in her, with Jeffery taking it a step further by pulling the routine with every girl he meets until he gets a date. Given the nature of the game, their attempts at appearing nice are...unflattering to say the least.
  • Brutally deconstructed in one route where Nicole decides to give some of the guys a chance, only to end up in multiple "hostage friendships" only for them to turn on and harass Nicole to the point of suicide when she doesn't put out.
• Double Standard: Discussed in the route where Nicole dates Ari. When Jecka calls Nicole out for abusing Ari so badly that Ari essentially became bisexual just to get more dating options, Nicole questions why Jecka would have a problem with it when it isn't any different from how she usually treats everyone. Jecka points out that Nicole usually does it towards guys, who by happenstance all turn out to be pretty terrible in their own right. Ari on the other hand is the sole lesbian in the school and suffers from co-dependency issues. Nicole fails to cotton to the distinction.
• Downer Ending: Honestly, it's easier to list the number of endings that aren't total downers. However, some of the bad endings include: Nicole getting murdered by her gym teacher, shot to death by a school shooter, forced to move out of town, forcibly committed to rehab or a mental ward, sent to jail, becoming homeless, suffering a state-wide expulsion and doomed to a dead end job, or being forced into a fake relationship with another girl to avoid accusations of homophobia.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: The lawyer defending Mr. White from Nicole's False Rape Accusation would have had a substantially easier time uncovering Nicole's lie had he not decided to try to deliberately obfuscate the school's very real problem with housing pedophiles. Instead, the tables get turned on him when Nicole provides evidence of the school having actual pedophiles, resulting in everyone in the courtroom calling for Mr. White's blood.
• Dirty Cop: The cop that arrests Nicole's brother for watching CP turns out to be susceptible to bribery, which Nicole can resort to when he suspects her and Jecka of also watching the CP (which was a genuine accident on their part).
• Disproportionate Retribution: Single Nicole out for whatever reason, and she'll plot to destroy your life. Granted, a lot of the people who end up setting her off are pretty terrible themselves, but she couldn't care less about that except for how it assists in her plotting.
• Driven to Suicide: Can potentially happen in two different routes.
  • One ending has Nicole hang herself after getting harassed for sex by the main 3 male students because she acted too nice to them (if the player chooses certain actions that are seen as "moral"), and they mistakenly took that as being their girlfriend! This is after she gets into an argument with her mother (ignoring her completely) or the school counselor (where he too tries to sexually harass her).
  • Another path has Kylar kill himself by jumping off a building in order to impress Nicole with his bravery.
  • Another ending has Emily convincing Nicole to enter into a suicide pact just to spite Ms. Ames. Nicole manages to weasel out of it by diluting her suicide pill, but Emily follows through and dies from overdose.
  • This happens to Nicole's dad in the opening narration.
• Dysfunction Junction: The amount of characters that AREN'T horrible bastards or suffering from massive trauma can be counted on one hand.
• Emoticon: Two of the endings in Re-up has Nicole using a smiley face emoticon in the narrating text.
• Ephebophile: An alarming number of the male faculty sexually abuse the female students.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Nicole's a self-admitted sociopath who sells, and takes drugs, uses people, and ruins their lives for her own amusement, but even she is genuinely freaked out by how insane Emily turns out to be when off her medication and Ari admitting she's attracted to Nicole's abuse.
  • Jecka has no problems being involved in a lot of unsavory activities like bullying and drug use, but Nicole's general Lack of Empathy does disturb her whenever it comes up.
  • Despite Kylar being an unambiguous Jerk Jock, he would never think of sexually assaulting a girl who turns down his advances, which surprises Nicole. Jecka finds it hard to believe that Kylar didn't even think about drugging Nicole.
  • Crispin might be an easygoing, and idiotic weirdo who will put up with Nicole, and the others constantly belittling him, but if him walking away after Nicole tells Jeffery to kill himself is anything to go by, even he has his limits when it comes to their behavior. Same with him refusing to listen to Nicole when she tries to get him to say the N-word during Re-up.
• Extreme Doormat: In the Dating Ari ending, she'll practically become Nicole's slave so long as the latter continues to be her girlfriend, no matter how emotionally abusive or self-absorbed she acts. This finally comes to an end after several weeks when she breaks up with Nicole after the school counselor gives her the proper words to voice the pain she's been feeling.
• False Rape Accusation: Nicole can do this to Mr. White in one of the story paths, which can lead to her testifying in court in a lawsuit against the school, where she can either gets a bountiful settlement amount and move to LA or becomes homeless if her lie was discovered; or earning "disciplinary tattoos" if she confesses to her mother that she lied.
• Felony Misdemeanor: The cops are really fond of going straight to their firearms over relatively minor offenses. In the Re-Up, if Nicole tries to run off with a stolen CD, the aptly-named Mall Cop will fire on her as she reaches the parking garage and blow a hole through her leg. When Jecka goes ballistic on him for firing five shots at a teenager over an inexpensive CD, he admits that firing with their eyes closed is little game the police having going at the precinct. In the prison ending, rather than call in a vehicle pursuit of Mr. Katz as he drives off with cocaine, the cop on the scene immediately starts firing on the fleeing vehicle, killing Mr. Katz and causing a traffic accident. ^note  While selling drugs is highly illegal, buying drugs, especially as a first noted offense, is typically punished with a year in prison at most.
• Framing the Guilty Party: In one of the routes, Nicole can falsely accuse one of her teachers of rape. Said teacher is revealed to be a white supremacist in a different route, though he's ironically enough not a sexual predator. Of course, Nicole wouldn't have known this, considering it doesn't come up in the route where she levels the false accusation against him.
• Freudian Excuse: As explained in the intro of the original version, Nicole had to constantly move around due to her mother's inability to hold a marriage, so she was never able to become attached to anyone her age. And by the time she actually was able to stay in one place for more than a single year, the attention she got from puberty finally hitting her only made her realize that she wasn't interested in any of the guys and that the popular girls in her school were idiots. She tried to keep her disdain from showing, but then she was forced to move again due to her brother getting in trouble with the law and her father committing suicide. By the time she landed in her current school, she saw no point in hiding just how much she hated everyone.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: In the ending where Nicole gets incarcerated, Jecka of all people tells Nicole that her difficult home life doesn't justify actually committing crimes.
• Functional Addict: Most of the student faculty fall into this; Kylar has enough percocet to 'demotivate an elephant,' Crispin and Emily are frequently dealing and getting high on their own stashes, and the lead characters make taking drugs their life goals. Despite this, they're all able to function well enough, though Jecka gets crabby when she can't smoke. This is subverted with Mr. Katz, who has an overpowering addiction to cocaine. His physical health is in tatters and he can only make sporadic appearances as the school's civics teacher.
• Gainax Ending: A secret ending in Re-up shows a real life recording of a person escaping what appears to be a hospital or mental facility and fleeing into the forest right as a picture of Jecka briefly flashes on the screen saying "What about me?" and ending with the words "If God isn't watching, who is?"
• Gay Option: Ari's route in Re-up where Ari confesses her feelings for Nicole after being Forced Out of the Closet. Nicole has the option of either giving the relationship a try or rejecting Ari. Of course, given the nature of the game, the two branching story lines from this choice would lead to two separate deconstructions of this route.
  • Emily's route could also technically count as she gets more, and more infatuated with Nicole as it goes on, and her ending text reveals she actually is "gay" for her and wants it to look like they're cuddling when they die.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: Pretty much everyone who deals in drugs is either implied or outright stated to take them, though Kylar stands out as an exception - he has enough percocet to 'demotivate an elephant' and deals but also stresses he only takes drugs to legitimately deal with athletic injuries, something no one ever contests.
• Gold Digger: Nicole makes it pretty clear she's only stringing guys along for the perks it gets her. This can backfire horribly, such as the route where she gets the school raided by the FBI after agreeing to pose for some pictures for her white nationalist teacher.
• Graceful Loser: Should Nicole reveal to the school's sexual predator problem to the public during her graduation speech, Principal Lynn will lose her job. She admits to Nicole that it was a long time coming and sincerely congratulates her on managing to get one over the school.
• Grass is Greener: The final unlockable scene in the base game is basically this trope in practice. Jeffery launches into a tirade against Nicole for being ungrateful for the constant attention she gets, telling her she has no idea how miserable it is to be alone like he always is. Nicole and Jecka counter that being the center of attention, particularly with the guys, is downright unbearable because of the constant advances they constantly get as well as the persistent fear of being sexually assaulted if they refuse. The biggest irony is that Nicole actually does know exactly what it's like to be in Jeffery's shoes, as her being forced to transfer schools constantly throughout her childhood meant she could never emotionally connect with anyone.
• Hard Truth Aesop:
  • Just because an area is generally accepting of people along sexual, racial, and ideological lines does not mean that discrimination and hate can't still exist and be an actual problem beneath the cracks. Though Nicole insists that her school and neighborhood is inclusive because they voted for Obama, at least three of the teachers are horrible racists behind closed doors, and there's effectively a Heteronormative Crusader cult operating in secret under the purview of one of those racist teachers - one of whom, incidentally, happens to also be so sexist he conflates Feminism with Communism. They're also not harmless in the slightest just because they're the minority; if Nicole accidentally emboldens Mr. White, he can convert most of the student body into white nationalists like him, and the Straight Club ends up firebombing Ari's house for being a lesbian in the 'Reject Ari' route - Ari and her family only survive the hate crime because they were out at the time. Bigotry, hate, and extremism can exist anywhere, even if not especially in places where people don't think it lurks, and can absolutely be dangerous if given a chance to flourish.
  • Some people are just not worth being nice to, red flags exist for a reason. As much of a misanthropic jerkass as Nicole can be, she does have her reasons for being mean to others, mainly with men that sexually harass her constantly, or assault her at worst. In her own words, being nice "only works when men don't want to have sex with you."
    • Additionally, while people should endeavor to be nice to each other, the simple truth is that some people are just going to be nasty and abusive no matter how much they're told to play nice. In a high school setting with a bunch of emotionally maturing and unstable teenagers, it is downright negligent to downplay any student calls of abuse or mistreatment against them. If steps are not taken to crack down on malicious rumors and abuse within a school setting, there will be several cases of teenage suicide.
  • Don't abuse other's prescription medicine as you might end up depriving them of life-saving medicine and kill them as Nicole's mom ultimately goes through in one of Re-Up's story path.
  • Do not go off a prescription unless it is actively physically or mentally harming you, and especially do not do so without the consultation and consent of any guardians (if you are a minor) or your psychologist, therapist, or GP. You aren't 'taking control of your life,' you're actively harming your health and welfare. The 'unfiltered' Emily is a suicidal, temperamental nihilist who is even more volatile than she is on anti-psychotic medication. Being an already unstable teenager, it doesn't take long for Emily to bully Nicole into a suicide pact when she goes off her meds, and she ultimately ends up killing herself and putting Nicole in great danger of overdosing.
• Hates Everyone Equally: Downplayed in that there are rare moments where she can be civil with certain peers such as Jecka and several other girls in Re-up, but Nicole otherwise doesn't have any strong attachments and is down to abuse anyone. It's more accurate to say that there are people Nicole hates slightly less than others, but she hates everyone nonetheless.
• Heteronormative Crusader: A Straight Club exists in the bowels of the school, overseen by Coach Colby and attended by Braxton, Kylar, and Jeffery. The group plans out hate crimes against LBGT people and engage in stereotypical masculine activities, and come dangerously close to killing Ari in the 'Reject Ari' route once she comes out as lesbian.
• Hidden Depths: Crispin may be a horny, air-headed weirdo who simps for Nicole constantly despite her terrible behavior, but there's moments in the game where he subtlety displays that he might truly be the only person in the game who's actually genuinely a good person. That is if he's not just pretending to get his way. See Nice Guy and Obfuscating Stupidity below for more.
• High School: The main three male students in the game all represent different clichés about teenagers in Eagleland.
  • Jeffery is the nerd.
  • Kylar is the Jerk Jock.
  • Crispin is the The Slacker.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Most of the male students in the school are willing to debase themselves in all kinds of ways just for a shot at having sex with the girls, particularly Nicole. Jeffery takes it to particularly embarrassing levels by being way too willing to talk about his masturbation habits.
• Idiot Ball: Principal Lynn is competent enough to police and keep the school running amidst all the scandals along the way, yet in the "graduation" ending, she somehow thought it was a good idea to give the repeat trouble-maker Nicole a grand stand after Jeffery's interrupted speech, where she spills it out to the entire audience the sexual abuse problem prevalent in the school's faculty, which results in Principal Lynn being fired.
• Interactive Movie: While a visual novel containing elements of an interactive movie is nothing new, this game is designed to have an ADV visual novel-styled presentation, but designed in a way to "Avoid the carpal tunnel" as the Steam page describes by having the dialogue auto-play.
• I Love the Dead: Coach Colby, who strangles Nicole to death, and rapes her corpse if the player follows his route.
• Irony: A situational version regarding Nicole's and Ari's relationship status in the paths where Ari comes out as gay. Accepting her as a girlfriend leads to the "Break-Up" ending where the Ari breaks up from Nicole's constant abuse, while rejecting Ari leads to the "Hostage Relationship" ending where Nicole has to be in a relationship with Ari to avoid being accused of a homophobic hate crime.
• Jerk Jock: Kylar is incredibly belligerent towards everyone, constantly complains about every inconvenience, and is racist and homophobic to boot.
• Kick the Dog: Nicole enjoys making others suffer, sometimes for no other reason than she can.
• Lighter and Softer: A very relative quality, but the Re-Up has a lot fewer story scenarios where Nicole outright dies, and even the bleaker scenarios are played with more humor throughout than some of the creepier endings and paths in the original. The game is still overall oppressively dark - the Re-Up is simply more humorous about it.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Basically every character is a bad person to some extent, including the protagonist. Some are just slightly less shitty than others. Exactly who is the lighter shade of black depends on the situation.
• Lust Makes You Dumb: Nearly every guy is this towards Nicole. They do some truly stupid things just for a shot at getting in her pants, from Jeffery being willing to air out all of his fetishes to Nicole down to the last detail to Kylar giving her the keys to his house.
• Manipulative Bitch: Nicole in spades. She manipulates just about everyone, and everything for her own amusement, and to get her way.
• Mask of Sanity: During her earlier high school years, Nicole was willing to hide her sociopathy and put on a friendly face while keeping to herself. Then her dad killed himself, and she had to move to yet another school. At that point, she completely gave up on pretending to be a good person.
• Meaningful Name: And of course the white nationalist teacher is called Mr. White.
• Multiple Endings: Players can get over a dozen different endings based on the choices they make, some of which can be rather... unexpected.
  • Re-Up introduces:
    • Nicole ruining Megan's romantic relationship simply because she was rude and bossy to her as a student teacher in theater class. She ends by mentioning that people will do crazy things when pushed too far.
    • Nicole gets expelled from school, becoming homeless, and having to be an online escort trading sexual favors for drugs. She only gets out of it by blackmailing and then reporting her former Art teacher who got her expelled for attempting to solicit her. She ends by mentioning street rules don't exist "on the actual street" and how people will do anything, no matter how depraved, just to survive.
    • Nicole goes to prison for selling crack and after almost self-reflecting on her actions, immediately backtracks by vowing to kill her former principal after getting out.
    • Nicole becomes emotionally and mentally abusive to her girlfriend Ari before she breaks up with her. She ponders the alternative of being abused or being alone, how bisexual girls feel around men, and ends wondering if she somehow learned something from all this.
    • Nicole gets roped into a suicide pact by Emily, the latter dying of an overdose in their remedial English class while Nicole just barely avoids the same fate due to diluting her share of the pills she was meant to use. She mentions that Emily is far more evil and messed up then her, but at least she "has the serotonin to not kill herself."
    • Nicole gets her English teacher fired by intentionally writing an essay quoting Mein Kampf and having the English teacher read it out loud during a PTA assembly, which was got her reported to the ADL by a Jewish deli worker acting as a caterer for the event. The teacher's racist past is unearthed during the whole scandal which gets her teaching license revoked, much to Nicole's satisfaction.
    • After rejecting Ari's confession, Nicole is painted as a homophobe by her classmates. After Ari's house is burnt down by the school's "Straight Club", she reveals she had to date her to ensure she won't be blamed for the whole thing. She ends by mentioning how annoying Ari is and hopes she moves away after graduation.
• Nice Guy: Crispin, oddly enough. While he does send Nicole an unsolicited dick pic, he's the only character the game that's not violent, sadistic, sexist, racist, or a sexual predator. He never raises his voice, or insults anyone once, and even walks away when Nicole bullies Jeffery, and even then, he still showers her with compliments, and tries to be her friend. He evens runs to her, and Jecka's defense in Re-up when he hears Kylar yelling at them because he thought he was going to hurt them. Furthermore, while he does join Mr. White's white nationalist group, his interactions imply that he doesn't really know what's going on, and just joined because everyone else was doing it, and because he liked the shirt. However, it could all just be an act when one notices all the other bizarre, and questionable things he does. See Obfuscating Stupidity below.
• No Communities Were Harmed: The main setting of the story is NOVA or Northern Virginia. While there is plenty of hints to where the story takes place, Word of God confirmed the setting during a kickstarter live-stream.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Choosing to have Nicole act like a marginally okay human being does not end well for her. The three male students all end up assuming that she was only nice to them because she wanted to go out with them, leading her to being sexually harassed constantly. The student counselor not only failing to help her with this but also revealing himself to be a sexual predator causes her to be Driven to Suicide.
• Noodle Incident:
  • If Kylar jumps off the building to impress Nicole and she heads home, her mom scolds her for causing another incident and that this was the third time a boy ruined their life for Nicole.
  • In Re-up, Nicole's mom mentions Nicole sending a male student to the psych ward by apparently asking him to donate a gallon of blood to see if he would do it and burning a POW/MIA flag in the cafeteria, again apparently just because she thought it'd be funny.
  • The animated short starts with Nicole and Jecka brooding over losing a bet. The bet somehow involved a girl stealing a hot dog roller.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Part of what sets Mall Cop apart from other police officers is that he's one of the few adult males in the series that is not affected by Nicole's attempts to seduce him to get out of trouble. This doesn't mean he's without his vices, however, as he's a hyper-violent psycopath. Nicole can also meet another man who isn't interested in her when she tries to run a car wash, though in that instance it's a case of Incompatible Orientation.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Possibly Crispin if he truly is just faking his whole idiotic, and friendly stoner personality. Evidence for this is him somehow getting Nicole's number after meeting her once, sending her an unsolicited dick pic, and somehow always "coincidentally" running into her at places as if he would know that she would already be there. However, given the other things he does, and the nature of the game itself, it really could go either way.
• Offstage Villainy: In the Re-up "reported to ADL" ending, Nicole mentions that because of South Park, "Jew" was the number one insult at the school for the last ten years. However, there are very rarely any jokes or insults about Jewish people in the game's dialogue, if at all.
• Only One Name: All of the characters either have a first name or a last name, never both.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • After Nicole pretended to be into Jeffery to expose his embarrassing fetishes to the school, Jeffery completely drops his standard high-pitched nasally voice to a droning monotone moments before killing her and shooting up the school.
  • In the scene unlocked upon getting every ending, Jeffery blows up at Nicole for ruining his valedictorian speech and tells her she doesn't know what it's like to be alone. Rather than toss some acerbic snark like she always does, she simply says "I guess we'll never know" and walks away. As her intro narration illustrates, she is painfully aware of what it's like to feel isolated from everyone else.
  • The softspoken counselor is always shown with an eerily calm voice. However, in the story path where Nicole can publicly expose him as a pedophile to Principal Lynn, his behavior turns extremely violent and loud with verbal abuses as security cuffs and escort him away.
• Only Friend: Jecka was this to Nicole until Re-up, and even then, they weren't really friends so much as just willing to hang out with each other because of how awful everyone else was. Although, to be fair, they themselves aren't much better.
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: Jeffery wears these to cement his image as the stereotypical nerdy loser.
• Otaku: Jeffery is an over-the-top caricature of this character. He constantly pushes his manga onto other people, is openly perverted towards the female students, acts out the characters he watches in cartoons and anime, and (poorly) draws manga of his fetishes.
• Pædo Hunt: Adult men engaging in pedophilia and ephebophilia is a reoccurring joke in the game. The concerning part is that a majority of the men accused of being pedophiles turn out to actually be guilty.
• Pair the Smart Ones: Jeffery somehow convinces Karen to go on a date with him in one route in "Re-up". However, any budding relationship they might've had gets sabotaged by Nicole and Emily because they don't appreciate the idea of Jeffery being happy, especially after disrespecting them both only moments before they discover his date.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Nicole can end up doing this to many of the staff members, and also has it done to her on occasion.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Nicole has a noticeable one in Re-up when she intentionally gets herself in trouble with the school counselor to get him to stop perving on Jecka who even admits that it was the nicest thing anyone's ever done for her. Possibly subverted if Nicole just did it to get her to hang back out with her after what happened between the two the day prior. Re-up specifically showing that Nicole does have at least one other person like Jecka to hang out with makes it even more unclear what her true intentions were. However, given it's Nicole it's probably at least both.
  • Overall, the work lends itself more to a deconstruction of the trope. Nicole can be nice to people, but often it's only because she's just aware of the cultural zeitgeist and is following what she thinks is a normal trend - like not having an issue with Ari being a lesbian. Given how cynical the world in this story is, it's less that Nicole is intentionally being nice and often more she just doesn't see a point in being mean at a given juncture. Almost any nice action she takes either has no actual backing beyond Nicole thinking her actions are normal or is part of a larger effort to get something out of someone. Additionally, just because she's willing to be nice in the moment to a person doesn't mean she'll continue to be nice to that person, given she's canonically a 'blaze of glory' sociopath who typically only exists in the moment to enjoy herself. Even when she does try to be nice with no strings attached, she's often made to suffer for her kindness down the line.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: Nicole plagiarizes Mein Kampf for her remedial English paper in order to expose her teacher, Ms. Ames, as a racist, replacing every mention of Jews with hip-hop artists and rappers to specifically play into her teacher's hatred of rap. That said, Nicole's plagiarism missed out mentions of "zionism" in Mein Kampf, something that Ms. Ames missed as well and lands Ms. Ames and the school in hot waters with the ADL.
• Police Are Useless: Zig-zagged. Unusually for a darkly comedic game, they do their job of arresting the criminals fairly often. It's just that it's usually in a way that inconveniences Nicole due to her getting up to illegal activities. That being said, their actual behavior tends to range from violently overzealous to outright corrupt, and the one time that Nicole actually needs the police, the emergency call responds by stating the police wait time is 1 hour and charges her $0.25.
• Politically Correct History: Averted. The original game and Re-up accurately shows the 2007-2008 setting with warts and all, mostly shown with Kylar using "gay" as an insult and the school's male staff openly preying on the girls with no repercussions. On the other hand, Ari coming out as a lesbian and most of the student body accepting her in her route isn't an example of this, as acceptance of homosexuality was just starting to become more mainstream at around this time (with it being particularly in vogue in democrat-leaning communities like where the game takes place) although still had a long way to go.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • Mr. White is revealed to be this in the route where he turns the whole school into a ruthless white nationalist cult that manages to brainwash most of the other students and teachers, including Nicole's best friend Jecka.
  • After subtle hints such as her hatred of rap music, Ms. Ames turns out to be racist against black people and is reportedly against interracial relationships.
• Practically Different Generations: Nicole is 16 (17 in Re-up's additional scenarios), while her brother is a decade older than her. It only makes the fact that he's a Basement-Dweller all the more pathetic.
• Proud Beauty: Puberty was kind of Nicole, and she has absolutely no problems flaunting it to get what she wants, though she hates it when her looks end up attracting unwarranted attention.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Nicole's brother is an unemployed, obese Basement-Dweller who does nothing but watch porn and plays video games all day. He also happens to be a pedophile who gets arrested in one route for looking at CP online.
• Riddle for the Ages: Just what did Nicole do that apparently drove her father to commit suicide? An answer is never given.
• Running Gag: It's frequently brought up that Jeffery is so pathetic he doesn't even know how to tie his shoes. Not only is it frequently mocked in several routes, it's mentioned in the animated short.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: It turns out the reason a majority of the sexual predators in the school have been getting away with their crimes is because they've all slept with Principal Lynn in exchange for giving her favors. Lynn admits to Nicole in one of the endings that she could have avoided turning her school into a scandal powder keg if she had just dismissed her flings after they had stopped being useful to her.
• Serial Rapist: If Re-ups intro is any indication, multiple members of the school's faculty have been sexually abusing students for so long that it's pretty much an Open Secret among those who attend. The coach might also be a Serial Killer if his ending with Nicole is any indication.
• Settled for Gay: Inverted in the Dating Ari ending. Nicole's emotional abuse proves to be so traumatizing that Ari decides to get a boyfriend because she now associates all women with making her suicidal.
• Shout-Out: During the route in which Nicole ends up going to court over a fake rape allegation she cast against one of her teachers, the lawyer is sporting a burgandy suit like a certain other law professional from another visual novel series. Their face also looks suspiciously similar to that same professional's father's, too.
• Shower of Angst: In the opening narration for Re-Up, the image associated with Nicole saying her life sucks is her moping in the shower.
• Situational Sexuality: Nicole doesn't seem to be explicitly attracted to anyone, but she is shown being willing to go out with both genders if it means getting something out of it. In one route, Nicole even asked Jecka if they want to try being "sexed up abusive lesbians" for a week, but Jecka refused the offer because she knows Nicole would be the one doing all the abusing.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Generally, the game skews towards 'cynical' for the sake of humor. Any men who aren't pedophiles or racist are still stupid, contemptible, or ineffectual in some way. Most of the women are drug-addled or high on their own perceived sense of superiority. From a social perspective, though, the game is actually fairly idealistic, as people are typically punished for being terrible, and the game reflects the emerging culture of coexistence and LGBT awareness that was starting to take root at the time. Overall, the individuals are terrible, but the greater system at work is mostly just deeply flawed.
• Small Name, Big Ego: The teachers that Nicole specifically antagonizes all happen to teach elective courses (or a remedial class in the case with Ms. Ames) because she believes this trope applies to them. From her point of view, they try to make their optional courses look incredibly important to hide how much they crave the power and control they currently lack in their lives, specifically wanting to use that power to engage in unsavory activities. It is partially her just being spiteful for them not allowing her to use the classes as an excuse to do nothing for a period, but disturbingly, all of them end up validating Nicole's beliefs in one way or another.
• Smash Cut: During one route, Nicole seduces Jeffery into revealing that Mr. Lorre caught his wife cheating on him with the mailman, which Nicole mocks as Mr. Lorre being so pathetic his wife is 'fucking down.' Jeffery begs Nicole not to tell anyone, and Nicole assures him he can trust her. Without the usual fade-out and fade-in transition, the scene immediately cuts to Nicole instantly telling Jecka.
• The Sociopath: By her own open casual admission, Nicole is this. She generally has a Lack of Empathy, is capable of being incredibly cruel at the drop of a hat, has no strong attachments to anyone, and is solely focused on her own wants. She also has a profound lack of impulse control.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: In the Kylar route, the girls are happy that Kylar dies after Nicole (inadvertently) makes him jump to his death. Justified and lampshaded that they know it's wrong too speak ill of the dead, but Kylar was such an unlikable and bigoted jerk that no one really had any reason to miss him.
• Spiteful Suicide: Nicole assumes her dad committed suicide in response to some slight from her in the past, considering his suicide note just contained the words "NICOLE'S FAULT". Kylar will also commit suicide by intentionally botching his roof jump (that was going to fail regardless, but he's too dumb to realize it) if Nicole tells him he doesn't have a chance with her.
• Start of Darkness: Nicole's dad suicide is implied to be this for her. Beforehand, Nicole had made attempts to socialize and be part of the school's society. Afterwards, she couldn't care less of the school she is enrolled into.
• Suicide as Comedy: Nicole's dad kills himself and posts his suicide note with a Cookie Monster magnet, in the opening of the game.
• Sucky School: Even before Nicole arrives, it's clear the school wasn't a pleasant place to begin with. While everything seems fine on the surface, most of the teachers are shown to be either pedophiles or hardcore racists with Principal Lynn letting them go unpunished due to most of the male staff having blackmail against her, while drugs are sold often in the hallways out in the open with most of the named student body having a drug problem of some kind. Not only that, but the gym coach also runs a small but violently homophobic "Straight Club" that meets regularly, and sexual activity on campus is apparently enough of a problem that the school even has its own sex addict rehab program.
• Teeny Weenie: Nicole leaks the dick pics Crispin sent her unprompted, revealing to the whole school that he has a micropenis.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In Re-up, Jecka gives one to Nicole in the prison ending, ranting about how Nicole had a good life in a safe neighborhood and her own relatively minor problems are no excuse to spread bigger problems, particularly how she sold crack to a pregnant mother, and that she has to get over herself if she wants to change.
• Totally 18: The disclaimer on the Steam store page and the About section in the game states "Apparently all characters depicted are over 18". This is despite the fact that Nicole and other characters state their age at some points in the story, usually in the context of a pedophile coming after them.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Nicole's mother is noticeably a lot meaner in Re-up. Possibly justified as the game takes place during Nicole's senior year, which means she's had to put up with all the things her daughter does at her new school for over two years now.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Jecka is notably much more scrupulous in Re-up and willing to call out Nicole's more impulsive and callous behavior. She still hangs with Nicole and engages in bullying, but she at least has the decency to feel bad when her actions have unintended consequences.
• True Art Is Angsty: Referenced at multiple points. Emily certainly believes this to be the case, and even lists Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway - specifically, the fact they killed themselves - as proof of what made them immortal. Humorously, Emily and Nicole both regret not being able to buy panties with an excerpt of the suicide note of Kurt Cobain written on them.
  Emily: All great writers have suicidal thoughts, cause you can't have a good story knowing there's gonna be a happy ending.
• Turn of the Millennium: This game is set in 2007-2009, and has tons of shout-outs to various aspects of 2000s culture.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Nicole takes this trope to its logical conclusion. She has practically no redeeming qualities, but her terrible behavior is played for the bleakest comedy due to how flagrant it is.
• Valley Girl: Despite the game taking place around the D.C. area, Crispin is the male version of this.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Oh lord, where to even begin with this one? In just the first 5 minutes of the game, the player can rip apart the self-esteem of a guy hitting on her, take prescription drugs with the local jock and then throw him under the bus when a teacher catches them, extort the photography teacher for an expensive meal in exchange for letting him take some photos and inadvertently cause the school to eventually be completely taken over by a ruthless white nationalist cult.
• Villain Protagonist: Nicole is a self-admitted sociopath who is extremely self-centered and unsympathetic in most of her interactions with the other characters. While she can have a few redeeming traits depending on player choices (ironically, this will usually result in the situation turning for the worse for her in a couple of endings), she is overall not a very nice person. At all.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: An example where this applies to an object rather than a person. In Re-up, Nicole can come across a brick of cocaine left behind by a student drug mule and takes it with her. If she doesn't opt to use it to commit charity fraud for her civics class, it just disappears from the story altogether. For all we know, it's still hidden somewhere in her house.
• What Is This Feeling?: In the ending where Nicole dates Ari (and it inevitably goes poorly), Nicole is left wondering what "feeling guilty about feeling guilty" is called. She knows she's supposed to feel bad about something regarding her break-up with Ari, but she's so devoid of natural empathy that she doesn't know why she should be feeling that way.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • During the expulsion route, where Nicole is most sympathetically portrayed, Nicole viciously tears into Jecka after a court case allows her to get back into school and under her mother's guardianship. Earlier in the route, Jecka refused to let Nicole couchsurf at her house due to it being inconvenient, forcing Nicole to sleep in alleys and on mall benches - and at worst take showers and sleep in the houses of the men she needed to have intercourse with to get the money to survive. It's a rare moment where Nicole has moral superiority over Jecka, who otherwise never really is as much of a jerk as Nicole can occasionally be.
  • In the "Break-Up" ending with Ari, Jecka blasts Nicole for "bullying a gay girl into being straight", noting that unlike Nicole's bullying on male teachers or students that she justifies as the victim being a terrible person or going to grow into a terrible person, Ari has done nothing to deserve Nicole's mistreatment. All Nicole could say was that Ari "stole her excuse", which just makes it worse.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Jeffery goes from a stereotypical bullied nerd to a stereotypical school shooter in one of the endings.
• Who's on First?: Nicole telling Jecka that her brother is into minors turns into this gag due to Jecka believing Nicole meant her brother has a "minor" fetish (as in one that's incidental or miniscule).
• World of Jerkass: Every student is some brand of pervert, bully, narcissist, or the worst kind of Dogged Nice Guy. The faculty meanwhile consist of sexual predators, as well as racists. And then there are the characters we see outside of the school like the trigger-happy cops and the terrible parents. Nicole might be a sociopath, but she isn't exactly surrounded by people who are that much better than her.
• World of Snark: Witty, sarcastic comments and catty insults tends to be the norm in this setting. Nicole often find herself engaging in Snark-to-Snark Combat with most of the other characters.
• Wretched Hive: Nicole's high school can be considered this. Not only are the majority of the students either stupid, mentally ill, violent, or drug addicted (or all of the above), but also the faculty are largely corrupt, with most of the teachers being sexual predators or racists.