PJO & HP for Dummies

Writing Dark Romance/Yandere Stories 🥀

This was requested by -cherrywlne: hey! how are you? i'm reading your jjk book and man, i'm geeking out over the dark fantasy of it all (i probably shouldn't). if you don't mind me asking, are you interested in doing a chapter on "how to write dark yandere characters"?

I CAN'T BELIEVE I NEVER EVEN THOUGHT OF DOING THAT? I'm so dumb because I literally LOVE dark romance and yandere books, like that's been my fucking obsession for years. 

Anyways, they asked me to do one on writing dark yandere characters... but I'm gonna go above and beyond 😃👍

Also, I know this guidebook is only for Harry Potter and Percy Jackson things, but we'll forgo that. For this chapter, I will strictly be talking about stories in general and NOT just pertaining to those two universes. 

Another thing, throughout the chapter I will be making references to my Jujutsu Kaisen fic "TSUNAMI" because there's sooo many yanderes in that book that I can make examples out of (and I also wanted to do a shameless promo asihfuwhfg).

1. WHAT IS YANDERE/DARK ROMANCE?

Yandere stories are kind of similar to dark romance, I think?? They're both stories about toxic relationships and fucked up situations, but I'll explain both anyways. 

First off, dark romance. There's multiple definitions of what 'dark romance' is and it always depends on the person you ask, but here's my definition of dark romance:

A dark romance basically features a romantic relationship that is extremely morally grey or straight-up dark (they'll be labeled as problematic in real life too, btw). The characters (whether they are the main couple or characters outside of them) do twisted, immoral things, and they're either put in disturbing/distressing situations or are the cause them. The readers might feel scared, disgusted, anxious, when reading about them and they're supposed to be. 

As for 'yandere'. Well, it's not really an official genre. You're not gonna go to the library and find a section labeled 'yandere'. It's more popular in online reading sites like quotev, wattpad, ao3, and other similar sites. HOWEVER, yandere is an actual genre in the anime/manga community! There's lots of animes/mangas centered around a yandere or have yandere characters in it. 

Now a yandere is actually a word to describe a person. According to some yandere wiki I found, a yandere is "a Japanese archetype used to define a character whose love, admiration, and devotion is so strong that it is expressed as an excessive obsession and possessiveness. They are often seen as characters that are crazy in love with someone.". That's the general gist of what a yandere is, but I'll be going over the different types of yanderes later on. 

So yeah. Dark romance and yanderes everyone! 🥰