On the Yandere Archetype - October 12th, 2025

This is going to be personal, but I thought it would be interesting to record, so here I am, hesitantly writing.

I connect with the yandere archetype, and have since I first learned it existed. I remember how important it felt for me the first time I encountered the archetype in fiction; like the feelings I’d struggled with for as long as I could remember finally had a solid name and form to put to them. One of the first examples I encountered was Yuno Gasai from Mirai Nikki, and I believe this is part of why she became one of my hearttypes, above any of the other yandere characters I encountered. She is deeply important to me, and I find immense comfort in her even now. For a time, I would parrot her voice lines and use her name and icon on Skype as a form of reassurance; like donning a mask and light shield against that which hurts you, not becoming it, but wearing it.

I don’t know whether my deep longstanding connection with the yandere archetype fits the experiences archetropes have, so I cannot solidly call it an archetrope, and usually just say I resonate with the archetype. Archetropers are fulfilling a fictional role; a code of arms, a way to act, a role that shapes their existence in both the present and moving forward. Is to take comfort in an archetype, to not try to fit it intentionally or follow its laws but merely understand it as a reflection of oneself, for all its ills, anything similar? It is hard to say.

There is a lot people say, in many directions, on the yandere archetype as a whole. That it’s cute, alluring, interesting, or that it’s awful, disrespectful, misrepresentation; the whole spectrum of feelings, but often a polarized view. I can understand both, and everyone has their reasons. But for me, I think what stands out most when engaging with the archetype in fiction is that in my eyes, it reflects pain much more than it does love.

I wonder if that even makes sense to say? To see the core of a label that reflects how one feels and expresses love as representation of a specific kind of pain? But maybe because my own perspective is so deeply entrenched in my experiences, I end up focusing on things like that above what else might be happening.

Overwhelming obsession. To be with them is to be bathed in golden light, the world itself smiling upon you. To watch them, observe their mannerisms, listen to their voice, is thrilling; you’d be satisfied just sitting there until you rot, clinging to their every word and breath. Their attention is more than you deserve, but it gives you hope. Everything is bright (and carefully restrained).

But the lack of them is the most chilling winter. To see them enjoy the company of others feels like knives repeatedly shoved through you, a pain that leaves you rigid and silent. Time spent apart is thinking of them, wondering how they are, agonizing that you don’t know. The quick back and forth between the elation of their messages and the resulting deep spiral of any words that seem to be spurning you. Of feeling like you’re always plunged in ice water, and their presence by your side is the only thing that lets you finally break to the surface and breathe.

Pain. A violent back and forth that sends you ping ponging between the happiest you’ve ever been, and a sensation like you’re on the verge of death. It is instability; it is being controlled by your feelings and something inside you that you can’t fight.

Now, I feel like it’s important to address that my connection with the archetype, and my personal experiences with it, does not mean that I find the behaviors commonly associated with it, both in fiction and reality, acceptable. This is something that is necessary to dive into whenever discussing something like this, I think; when it comes to situations that drag others in and may cause them fear or discomfort, one should be careful to handle them.

I don’t know if I can handle them with all the delicacy I wish, but I can say this much: the feelings and behaviors associated with the yandere archetype are two separate things to me.

If one is expressing behaviors common to it, I deeply urge them to consider the feelings of the one they’re obsessed with. Painful as our experience may be, it does not give us permission to hurt others in any way, and any momentary relief gained from such is not worth the turmoil it may bring those around us. If there is any way you are able to learn to cope with it, whether it is confiding in someone and seeking aid from them, or finding some outlet that does not bring harm to yourself and others, please try to choose that path instead. Regardless of our feelings, we hold a responsibility to others to not express them in a damaging way, and I find this particular point very important.

Now, I don’t really think others should mirror my own response, which was intense self-punishment that made me utterly miserable most of the time, but that I justified as being a way I could avoid being a burden to the person I was obsessed with. If I felt like I was being too annoying, I would intentionally isolate myself from them and pain myself but feel I deserved it. I kept all my feelings entirely private, not letting a word slip to them, and I hope in the end they never knew how I felt; I was certain they’d find me horrific and disgusting for even thinking what I did. In the end, we graduated, parted ways, and I prevented myself from developing other friendships out of fear that my brain would latch onto them, too.

On one hand, I think it was a bit excessive to punish myself in such a way. On the other hand, I’m grateful, albeit in a sad way, that my intense fear and self-loathing prevented me from ever acting on anything I felt, and that they never had to experience any of the horror stories people tell about possessive friendships. I hope that they could be happy and enjoy their highschool life, if nothing else.

Generally, one of the key points of a yandere in fiction is the way they actually act on how they feel, creating drama in the story, rather than just feeling it. Growing up, I used this portrayal as a coping mechanism; I could never act on the things I felt the urge to do, both out of fear and out of a desire to not hurt others, but to watch them be free with their actions in a purely fictional space, where no one was having their lives negatively impacted, was a form of catharsis.

(While this is a complex topic for fictionkin in particular, I ask you to understand that I am referring to fictoform characters here. While fictionkin of the characters affected were truly affected by what happened in that world, the characters as characters, drawn into the screen, were not, no matter how many times the video was replayed. This is the angle I experience it from.)

I may have been saddled with these unwanted feelings since I can remember, but with the appearance of them in stories, I finally felt understood. As such, characters who experience the same struggles I do are very dear to me, and when I come across them, I can’t help but see it from the view of how they might be feeling.

While many yandere in fiction do have a “tragic backstory” that explains their nature, I truly have always been like this, for some reason, with experiences going back to, at the latest, early elementary school. (And it is something that carried on into my current state of being even after splitting from the original, so I try to view the experiences they had like an extension of mine, even if it wasn’t entirely myself. Even if it was just the pieces of me within them that later became me, it was still me in a way, is how I sometimes try to rationalize it.)

And that point leads into how it could connect to fictionkinity for me.

One of my fictotypes is C-ta from Shuuen no Shiori, canonically a yandere. When I first encountered my canon self, I thought he might be a synpath; after all, it was natural that I would resonate with a yandere character. I always have.

(Then came the intense shifts, and I changed my tune by the next month, but that’s just how it goes.)

As C-ta, I was obsessed with my childhood friend, A-ya. Because he was quiet and often misunderstood by others, I stepped in and became his voice, and over time, I felt like that role gave me worth; that A-ya needed me, relied on me, couldn’t do anything without me. As we grew up, I continued to watch him, indulging in his rambling on the occult and encouraging him to continue just to hear him speak to me longer. I set up cameras in his room and put a microphone in his bag just to know what he was doing when I wasn’t around, so I could “protect him” whenever it was necessary.

I told myself it was all for him, to help him when no one else could, and ignored that his existence and my role in it was the only thing that felt like it gave my life meaning. I pretended I was perfect, that he would always need me, that if I just had an eye on him, everything would be okay.

It culminated in participating in a ritual that threw myself and my clubmates into an occult-based demise game that ended in all of our deaths. Convinced that A-ya had been replaced with a false version of himself, and spurred on by a spirit that possessed me, I killed him, and was then killed myself by another spirit.

As I personally believe my kintypes are inherent to me and that I did not gain them later on but always had them, it makes me wonder whether having been C-ta then led to essentially still being a yandere by nature, but with more... insight into my situation.

In that life, everything ended horribly. I gave in to my urges to invade A-ya’s privacy and considered his behavior “out of character” enough that I convinced myself he was replaced by a doppelganger. Even though all I wanted was to be his shining hero, it never worked out, and part of that was due to my selfishness in assuming I knew everything he’d want and need.

In this world, I know I can’t be like that. I can’t act on what I feel. I can’t hurt others. I can’t allow my feelings to become a burden to others. I can’t behave in a way that would make anyone suspect that I could feel that way in the first place. I have rigid rules for what I can and can’t do, to protect others from myself.

It really does feel like I was influenced, in a way, to adapt to the failure I’d experienced before.

Ultimately... I still fear those feelings coming back. I still worry about becoming close to anyone, because if my brain latched onto them again, I would have to suffer the same way I did growing up, stifling everything I felt. But I hope that with all the experience I’ve had, from both other worlds and this one, and in adulthood, I’d deal with it better. In a healthier way. And if that ever happens... I guess it’d be time for another essay.

(Thank you to Still in Love from Umamusume for having a character story that triggered me to write this, because I realized that I finally had the words to try and express something I haven’t been concretely able to for a long time.)