Well, for me at least-- I really like YHS and its portrayals of relationships, because they're so queer (vague) in how it handles the structure of it... If you get what I mean??
Like the biggest example is with the Main Trio, but specifically Saurtis. There is absolutely an argument to be made that Sam was actually in love with Taurtis, but then there is an equal footing for the argument that maybe he "just" loved him as a friend. Because, at the end of the day, Saurtis had some Gay moments, but they never explicitly dated; and, mind you, they didn't have to in order to justify their closeness either.
Sam didn't need to outright say, "I'm in love with you Taurtis and want to get married" for the audience to know that he was in an obsessive relationship with him, because the actions that he took spoke for everything. And, I could honestly say that maybe their dynamic "simply" being a childhood-friendship adds more layers to their writing; because it then symbolizes something like "familiarity", "the past", or even "a safe space."
...Which... is kind of the basis for Sam's codependency with him.
But let's take a detour and talk about an actually, explicit relationship. Sam and Yuki.
Because in contrast to Saurtis being platonic "and yet" having some of the most intense feelings for one another; SamKi's relationship is incredibly strained and distant. Even with things like prom-dating or even the entire "Yandere" trope being explicit with only their dynamic, the way that they interact with each other is absolutely bonkers.
(I could make an entire thread about how YHS subverts the Yandere trope but that's not the point. The point here is just that Yanderes are defined as romantic.)
And this isn't to say that YHS is outright defining romance as something hollow, because we do see explicit (sorry for using that word so much!) romance with what you'd expect! Soul and Sookie have the typical Loud x Quiet dynamic... Hidden and JTS have a very tragic ending together...
But for the main couple to be so... plastic? To be so strange?
I think that this writing is unintentionally fire, and is exactly why many aromantic people find this series (and Sam!) to be incredibly alluring. Because although the series should be centered around romance in the most typical way (The textbook Yandere trope would suggest that their feelings are only intense because it's romantic); the actual theme of the entire show is derived from a platonic relationship. So much so, that in every season, Sam will always have a co-star that he is never explicitly with.
Do they have some romantic moments together? Yeah, but it's always in a way that's still easy to read as platonic.
I don't know; I just really enjoy Sam being a character who views romance in a very shallow way. Because with how he acts, he really only treats it as a thin label, rather than an actual definition for a relationship. With how he interacts with other characters, you can tell that he's not tied down by societal standards of Platonic Vs. Romantic.
And the fact that we see it in action, with him literally using Yuki as a tool-- so by extension, their entire relationship was a tool-- is really just so much more perfect.
Does this make sense?
(I also wanted to mention the fact that the Main Trio(s) can also be read as polyamorous or monogamous between specific characters, depending on your analysis of them. So that's another fun little queer tidbit that you can pull from them. Honestly, what's the difference between a polyamorous romantic relationship and a really close friend group? In YHS, almost none. The trios will never give you clarity.)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Before I decided on Kieran's name, I had the idea for it to be Kiki. In the end, I thought it sounded too childish to be her full name, so I extended it to Kieran and Kiki became the nickname Sampo gave her when they were dating.
She rolls her eyes the first time he uses it but lets him do as he pleases. It ends up sticking, and then he's calling her Kiki all the time. After they part ways, Kieran doesn't want to hear that nickname anymore. Fortunately, Sampo was the only one who ever used it, but upon meeting Luka, she makes sure he calls her by her full name.
Honestly, Jack is so pure and should be protected. I would seriously die for him, he is such a great person and I can't believe I helped raise him. - a Sam who is really proud of Jack
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
It was happening again, although in no specific order.
The flames, the trees, the cold of her breath condensing in front of her as she ran through an endless, dusky, misty forest, catching glimpses of a tall and thin figure as her legs carried her as fast as she could get them to, but she gained no ground, and the scenery never changed, only lit dimly by the orange glow of the fire behind her. An oddly charming, silky, yet ethereal and eerie laugh chased after her right before she felt something long and spindly close slowly around her left arm.
She woke up in a cold sweat, and her left forearm was absolutely burning where the scar tissue had formed. Loki was nowhere to be seen, but she had gone to bed early. He was probably still awake. Shakily, she got up and headed for the door. Madame wound around her legs, mewing lightly, and she paused to pet the cat on the hed a few times before carefully picking her way down the hallway.
Loki was indeed still awake, set in front of the TV, playing a very old-looking console game that she immediately recognized as one of the video games they had gotten with the old 3DO they had picked up recently. (Loki had wanted to try some of the older games around to see and better appreciate how far they had come.) She identified the game as Escape from Monster Manor, and so announced her presence before she entered the room. Startling Loki, especially, if he was working on a video game that had some horror aspect to it or another, was not a good idea.
"Loki?"
He paused the game and turned to look to her, confused.
"Minn Hjarta? I thought you had gone to bed." His voice was soft.
"I did." She nodded once, "I just..."
He noted the haunted look on her face and sighed quietly, the mild expectancy on his face vanishing.
"A nightmare?" He knew the answer even before she nodded in confirmation. He gestured her over, picking up his blanket to wrap her in it as well. (He had recently taken to wrapping himself in a comforter when playing video games by himself. Sam had jokingly called it a 'security blanket' but now it didn't seem to be as much of a joke)
"Oh, Samantha..." He cuddled her close, and she sighed shakily, burying her face into his chest. Everything smelled like him. The comforter was drenched in his incredibly calming scent and she relaxed when she breathed it in, if only slightly. He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head before pulling away to look into her eyes. He didn't have to question what her nightmare was about. He knew.
"It is alright. You are safe now, and never will you be endangered like that again. I swear it." He kissed her lips tenderly, sealing his promise with that gentle gesture, and she returned it just as softly.
"I love you." She murmured, and he kissed her forehead again.
"And I, you." He smiled gently, picking the controller up and offering it to her.
"It is.... oh, what did you call the genre.... 'horror lite'? Not very scary at all. Perhaps a cathartic cooldown?" That endearingly lopsided half-smirk, half grin worked its way onto his face, and Sam couldn't help herself but to laugh and take the controller.
"Yeah, sure.... I wanted to take a crack at it anyway." She playfully headbutted his shoulder before he wrapped his arms around her to pull her into his lap. "You were supposed to wait for me to play this with you."
"We are playing it together now, are we not?" He offered, voice thick with amusement. She looked up at him with mock disapproval before settling her head against his chest while she quickly figured out the controls and picked up where he left off.
"Sure we are. What's the goal here?"
"Find the talisman piece, get to the exit. You can access your map from your start screen and see where you have been and where you need to go. Red crosses are health, white stars are energy for your laser, and everything else, the gems and whatnot, are treasure."
"Right, so pick everything up that I can and shoot whatever moves." She summarized, "Got it." She settled into his lap a little more while he tightened his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her forehead.
"There are also small, harmless ghosts that pop up every now and again in apparently scripted locations to make you jump, but they are harmless and vanish after a moment." He explained, "I wasted rather a lot of energy on one once. Oh, and some of these monsters are alternately colored and takes more than one shot to kill. If you see a room full of health and energy.... or treasure... well..."
"Pre-boss room." Sam concluded, quickly felling a few monsters as she rounded a corner, "Got it. Very simple."
"Simple, but still mildly frightening. The music is masterfully crafted for keeping you on edge." He noted absently, watching Sam take control of the game expertly and smiling quietly to himself.
The best known remedy for her nightmares was himself and a distraction of some sort. Sometimes it was sensual, sometimes it was simply just basking in one another's presence. He wasn't sure what he preferred, but right now, he was content to simply sit with her for however long it took for her to get sleepy again and carry her off to bed.
If you could only see the way she loves me
Then maybe you would understand
Why I feel this way about our love
And what I must do
If you could only see how blue her eyes can be when she says
When she says she loves me
Where were you when the world began to fall? Were you watching it on tv with your loved ones? Were you stuck in traffic, behind an old 1994 Ford Pontiac that sounded like it's engine was built solely out of Swiss cheese? Or were you alone in your apartment, sitting in the dark eating ice cream?
Samantha was with him, her husband, curled up against his chest with her eyes to the sky, sitting together on their balcony. A meteor was to pass behind the moon on that night and it was said that it would shine brighter than the moon and that, was by far more interesting than anything the two of them could find on tv. Though he had more interesting ideas for the two of them.
"You know we could be doing something else in place of sitting and freezing our buns off while we wait for the....what did they call it?" Loki leaned back through the sliding glass door to glance at the tv before straightening. "The Aerial Event of The Age." He sounded unimpressed and the raised eyebrow paired with this tone and the fact that he was trying hard not to laugh made it all the more ridiculous.
"We could..." Sam replied, turning to kiss the underside of his chin, before facing the sky again. "But that happens all the time. This is the Event of The Age, remember? Once in an age thing. We have to watch it."
"Are you telling me what I do to you, eheh, for you, in the bedroom is not an Event of the Age?" A coy note slid into his voice as his arms tightened around her. A cross between a smile and a look of confusion rose to her features and she turned to look at him slowly. "Babe....if it were an Event of The Age, we would have issues. It should be an Event of the Hour. The hour." He scoffed and lightly ran his fingertips along her sides in a tickling fashion. "Some one is greedy." Samantha wiggled in his grasp and lightly elbowed him to get him to stop. "Only because it's you."
Loki opened his mouth to say something when a shine in the sky caught his eye and distracted him. "I think it's starting minn hjarta." To emphasize he lifted his arm and gestured above them. Raising her eyes to follow his gesture, a smile broke out across her face and she hunkered down against Loki's chest and watched the meteor come into view. The light it gave off was spectacular, to rival the moon, dimming the stars a foot in each direction (to her reckoning, it was probably much further in actuality) until they disappeared from sight. Hey the news was right, the Event of the Age indeed.
She sat content there for a few more moments before a deeper chill set into her skin, settling into her very bones. Making a face, she hummed her displeasure and stood up to head inside. "I'm getting another blanket, I'm freezing." Loki nodded to her and rubbed her leg as she went by. "Hurry, I'm not sure how long this spectacle will take." He spoke off-handedly, eyes still skyward. Making a sound to show she heard him, Samantha crossed the tiny dining room heading for the small closet just down the hall to grab a spare comforter. It was barely in her hands before she heard Loki call to her, a tone of apprehension swiftly spiraling into fear filling his voice. "Samantha, Samantha come here, quickly!"
The blanket left her grip, hands going slack as she bolted back towards the balcony, nearly killing herself on Sir (who gave her a haughty hiss as she went by). "What is it? Did I miss i-.....What the...." There was something wrong. Something very wrong. The meteor, while it had appeared to be going behind the moon, it was actually colliding with it, right into the side. They both stood dumbfounded, staring at the sky. Approaching him closer, Sam slipped her hand into Loki's and held it tightly. "Did that...did it...?" She couldn't even finish her sentence, the amazement at what had just took place was a little too much for her to grasp at first. Was that...was this bad? It had to be, Sam was honestly surprised that it hadn't blown a hole through the moon, but...they said it was to just pass on by not...not slam into it like this...
A pang of fear filled her, a fear she'd long thought she was past, one that filled her with memories of running. Running through woods and dark paths, hiding on roofs, running from a house on fire....a faceless spindly gent in a black suit...so far sucked into these memories as she was, she didn't hear Loki when he called her name, terror evident in his voice. Strange...she didn't hear anything, nothing at all, she just felt a hard tug on her hand and saw a blaze of orange-ish light before....
Nothing.
A deep dark...nothing. She couldn't hear anything, not at first, but a shooting pain she felt clearly sprung up her right leg. It wasn't like she'd bumped it, it felt like she'd been stabbed through the calf by something extremely sharp and something fairly heavy was keeping her pinned downward. What in the name...Slowly she fought to open her eyes and shake off the fuzzy darkness that fuddled her senses.
But it was still dark, save for a dim light that took some eye adjustment to get used to. In the immediate area around her, at first Sam could hear nothing, but at a further distance she could hear sirens, people shouting and loud crashes that shook the ground. A few long moments passed and finally her eyes adjusted.
The apartment was literally in ruins, from the quick initial glance, she could tell that somehow she'd gotten into the living room, she was laying on the floor it, and though it too was in pretty bad shape, it was not nearly as bad as the balcony. Well...what was left of it anyways. Carefully Sam attempted to lift herself off of the couch, slowly, very slowly. "Loki?" Her first attempt at calling to him was cut off by a coughing fit, dust had settled in her throat and after a bout of dry heaving, she moved to call again when her eyes caught the dull gleam of gold someone close to her right and it took her a moment to put it together...It was a ring, or at least part of a ring that she could see.
And suddenly with terrifying clarity, she knew what that weight was on top of her.
"No." The word left her breathless, the fear turning to realization quickly in her chest, spreading a numb feeling throughout her body. "No, Loki. Loki. LOKI." She took hold of his arms as best she could and shook him gently at first. "Loki, no, please not-no, look at me, come on, please, please, please!" With every word she shook him harder, but there was no answer. Laying there prone, Sam pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, muttering "No." over and over again, trying desperate to keep calm, he was probably just...just out, like she was, right?
Moving her hands from her eyes she found his head in the semi-darkness and clumsily searched for a pulse, checked his breathing....And immediately wished she had not. "Oh please...you..." Her voice was hoarse from the heaving she'd been stuck with, from the lump that rose in her throat. "You said....you said you wouldn't..." Words breaking off, she choked on the tears that welled up and grasped his shirt in both hands. "You told me you wouldn't go..." This couldn't be happening, this was just a nightmare, one she desperately wanted to wake up from. Leaning forward as best she could, Sam pressed her forehead to his chest, eyes squeezing shut as wet heat rolled over her cheeks and she cried openly. Nearly screaming as she fought the reality of her situation.
She didn't hear the other voice, the voice shouting for her, for Loki. The sound of a distressed Julian searching for his family, as he ever was. Vaguely, she felt hands tugging at her before Loki was moved from her and she was sat up, making eye contact with her older brother, who looked just as banged up as she likely did. Sam turned to look at her fallen husband, but Julian wouldn't let her, he kept her eyes on him and told her to make sure she kept looking forward, to not look around, keep looking forward.
But a sudden warmth over her hand made her look. Two bright blue eyes stared up at her, a weak meow asking after her. Sir rubbed against her arm, a low purr emanated from him. As relived as she was at seeing him alive and well...her happiness was sucked from her. Disregarding her brother's instructions, she turned to look at Loki, taking a breath to steady herself. In the back of her mind the soothing words of a man rose up...
"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."
Samantha was almost sure that was her father's voice...and the words were true. She didn't want to leave him here, but she knew she had to. He was gone from her and there was nothing she could say or do to bring him back, she was no virgin to loss, she should have been used to it. But one never grows accustomed to it.
Leaning over him, she placed one last kiss against his lips, then his forehead, before taking his left hand in hers, holding it tightly for a moment, before slipping the gold band from his finger and sliding it onto hers. It was loose, but she'd make it fit, tucking it behind her own. Releasing his hand, Sam got to her feet with Julian's help, the pain in her leg radiating, agitated. But that, save a few scratches were all she had bear. Loki had saved her from the worst of it, saved her life by giving up his in exchange. For that Samantha was more than grateful but...she would rather have gone with him, then to be without him.
As Julian helped her from the ruins of the apartment and Sir, quickly accompanied by Madame, followed, a sense of tranquility came over her. Her husband was a fighter, a warrior, there was a place for him in his heaven, in Valhalla.
So maybe, just maybe...if she could find the courage inside to carry on, to not waste the life Loki had saved for her and become a fighter herself...
