#wizardcreates

An Essay on Villainess Manga, or Help, My Subgenre’s Homogonizing and my Villainesses aren’t Mean Anymore!

An Introduction to Villainess Manga: Why Are Villainess Manga Read in the First Place

Villainess Manga (Or Manhwa, or Manhua, or even webcomics) are simply put, comics that feature a main character who is referred to as a “Villainess”. This may be a role or title they’re referred to in the future, past, or even present, and it may even be a title they didn’t earn themself. Often times, our main character is either reincarnated into a story as the Villainess of the tale, or our main character was a Villainess in her past and now has decided to change her ways (via time travel, or living her new life in exile). This means that our main character can be put in a wide variety of situations and still be called a Villainess. Reincarnates and decides to become a baker instead? A staple in the “genre”! Goes Back into the past to exact revenge in a cruel and unusual manner? A common occurrence. A villainess who’s trying to survive her extremely murderous family by convincing them she’s murderous too while trying to escape? You’re looking at one of our most well known classics, Roxana. Have fun!

Okay, but what’s the point of classifying them as Villainess, instead of cooking or revenge or psychological? Girlhood and the expression of it on the “Negative side”. Our main characters aren’t Heroines or Side Characters. They’re the women who are expressly meant to be seen in a negative light, by the role they’re in. And that can be used to show how to get out or through those negative views to live a better life, or used to show when being bad is the best way to get through a situation. Also, and this is very important, sometimes they’re just really cool.

What Changed

Something that’s been popping up in this “genre” is an influx of… not using the villainess role to its fullest let’s say. Instead, these villainesses are changed or outright start not as villainesses, but as Heroines, but now in a different hair color. Black hair, instead of pink. It’s not just that there are some manga that are being pushed out just to make more money, which is fine, but they’re doing it poorly and against what the niche was originally meant for. A Villainess isn’t someone that just was bullied and now needs to be swaddled, she’s someone who was hated widely, and now has to deal with those consequences.

But then, how did this change even happen, from a character exploration to something that seems to be just another Heroine Fantasy?

It happened because of something called Wish Fulfillment.( And money and Capitalism, but that’s not very specific in this current age.)

Purely Wish Fulfillment in Villainess Form

What exactly do I mean by wish fulfillment? Isn’t all art to be shared a form of wish fulfillment? Sort of, but not to the extreme that’s happening to cause a whole genre niche to switch. What we’re looking at is Purely Wish Fulfilment, where something was made just to fill in a specific need, and nothing else. Someone saw an empty space, and thought to fill it. It’s great for scratching specific itches… but when there’s so many of them, all without saying anything about what they’re made about, it squishes down what the art was originally made to be a part of. Making it a whole bag of M&Ms when it was meant to be trail mix.

These M&Ms, or specific Wishes to fill, usually come in two varieties. The Villainess being praised by the world, or the Villainess is against the world and is ready to fight tooth and nail.

The Villainess Turned into A Sweetheart!

With the sweeter side of these wish fulfillment stories, we see our villainess is just a beaten down character by the world who just needs love and everything will finally be great. The story asks that you pity this Villainess for being the Villainess of the story, and once that’s out of the way, she will now get all the love she was never given. If she was reincarnated, she is now loved by everyone who meets her and sees her great new ideas for improving the world like soap. If she’s always been a Villainess and now she’s being exiled, she was never really at fault in the first place and they’ll wish they still had her excellent mind as she now lives a happy relaxing life. She was never in the wrong in her life, and now she gets the great reward of fluffy creatures, good food, and a hot male lead(s) to follow her every word like a duckling. Which, I won’t deny, sounds like something fun to read if you’re in the mood for it. 

Things like My Lady Just Wants to Relax exist for a reason. Sweet wish fulfillments are great for when your mind is just in need of something sweet to turn your brain off to. But once again, we run into that M&M problem. What does My Lady Just Wants to Relax actually do with its main character being a villainess? It gives her a bit of trauma to be resolved via her new harem-found family, and that’s it. It’s a problem to be solved easily as a way to make a bond between the main characters, and not an exploration about femininity in any form. The role of Villainess could have easily been replaced with Previously Bullied Heroine, and nothing would have changed.

In contrast, however, there is a manga that does have a Villainess making food premise as its wish fulfillment, that I believe does explore what it means to be a Villainess. Lady Rose Just Wants to be a Commoner. This is a manga in which once again our main character is a Villainess exiled who decides to make food in her new commoner-life (she bakes bread, in this case. She’s not the owner of the bakery either, she just bakes bread.), but this time she’s being inundated with men from her life as a Villainess who just want her to come back to her old life. Except the life she lived before was a mask she wore, something to present a face of perfection that nobility demanded while playing her role. A mask she doesn’t want to wear anymore, because it literally traumatised her. All while still showing scenes of her making good food, becoming friends with another woman, living her life freely. This is a story where you cannot swap out being the Villainess with being a traumatised Heroine without changing the meaning of what’s being said about the story. With being a Villainess here, she’s someone who has hurt others while forcing herself into being someone unapproachable for her own survival as a noble. But if she were a traumatised Heroine, she’s now no longer someone who has had any fault in this situation, and instead is now someone learning how to overcome that trauma to live a new life. A story that has its place in being told, but not the same as before. It doesn’t hold the same meaning for the readers. It is an exploration in being the Bad Guy in a story and coming out of it.

The Villainess Yearns For Revenge

Here, on the darker side of Wish Fulfillment stories, getting revenge. Our villainess has been pushed around by the world, or more usually her family, and now she’s out for revenge! This usually comes in the form of time travel, coming back to the past after being betrayed with new future knowledge to make sure the thing to fight back against can’t gain a foothold to be able to stab our main character in the back. These types of stories usually have the people opposing our Villainess as evil awful people who are caricatures we all should root against, such as an evil stepmother who’s stolen all of your money, or a “Heroine” sister who’s done everything to make our main character take the fall for being evil.

We’ve all had times where we’ve wished we could take revenge, to not turn the other cheek when someone did something wrong against us. An itch that needs to be scratched, and feels great to scratch in the form of revenge stories. And, when a Villainess is in these types of stories, she usually does do things that would put her as someone hated by the world, putting her against the world! Exactly what we were looking for, right? Something that would be filled by a story like The Villainess Turns the Hourglass, wherein our Villainess comes to the past after being executed because her sister positioned her as a criminal, and so she reenacts revenge against her sister and stepmother who caused her downfall. She manipulates people, she lies, she… fake flirts with her stepbrother. She’s a Villainess through and through! But once again, it must be asked… what exactly does all of that explore about being a Villainess? What it means to take purposefully evil actions to enact a plan that gets you hated? Or does it just fill that itch that says “I just want to get one over on them and get away with it”? 

In contrast, I’d like to bring Villains are Destined to Die. This one may not be exactly getting one over, but it is definitely a revenge. In this, our main character is transmigrated into a Villainess who’s despised by her family for having tantrums and not being the daughter they were using her to replace. In return, she makes sure they realise that the pain they’ve caused her currently and in her past (pre-transmitigation) was unjust, and that they’ve long since gone past the point of ever being fully forgiven. Less of a direct revenge than The Villainess Turns the Hourglass of turning the family against each other to implode, but a devastating revenge in my opinion. In this, being a Villainess is directly in front for why people don’t like her, and it’s in turn why she fights back in evil ways. Her maid uses needles to stab her awake each morning because she’s basically abandoned by her family? Use that needle to blackmail that maid into treating our Villainess like her boss and eventually helping with other less than legal things. In the Villainess’ past pre transmitigation, she shot at other nobles with her bb gun? They were putting insects in her tea and otherwise harassing her. It’s a cause and effect, a showing of how someone could become a Villainess (especially through ways that a Villain wouldn’t normally face, such as being harassed at tea parties) and when’s the right time to fight back and be a Villainess. Against someone who has knowingly caused you harm and intends to continue. When the other won’t listen to you in any other way. When you are in danger, mentally or physically. Protect yourself, fight for yourself. A ‘Do not go quietly in that gentle night”, sort of message. It’s a story that’s very sympathetic to the woman who used to be our Villainess pre transmitigation, the woman who had been bullied and harassed her whole life and fought back with teeth. And every woman needs a bit of that, in a world where woman are told to pull their teeth and be gentle.

They Used to Bite.

A Villainess’s Downfall Into Erasure

Villainess Manga & Why Read Them in the First Place

When you’ve read enough villainess manga—comics following a female protagonist reviled by the seeming heroes of the story—they start to blur together in a peculiar way, right? 

The villainess manga you read just seem to keep smooshing together for some reason, and now everything you read just seems to become... blander.

When a reader stops and thinks about villainy and only finds themself in stories stuffed with bland fluffing, all that really can be done is to think, “How? How did things become this way? How did all the theatrics of being the villain get sucked away?”

It is time for a change. A change that can only be found by looking deeper into what sucked the life out of what was once great.

Villainess manga are comics that feature a main character who is referred to as a “villainess.”

Often, our main character either transmigrates into a story as the villainess or our main character was a villainess in her past, and has now decided to change her life through various methods. These allow the main character to face a variety of circumstances while retaining her villainess title.

She transmigrates and decides to become a baker instead of a villainess? A well-known niche of the subgenre.

She travels into the past to exact her revenge in a cruel and unusual manner? A common occurrence for villainesses.

A villainess who’s trying to survive a murderous family by assuming a murderous persona while trying to escape? A favored selection of the subgenre: Roxana.

All falling under the Villainess manga subgenre.

Why, then, classify them as Villainess manga, instead of Cooking or Revenge or Psychological?

Villainess manga focus on girlhood and expressing its “negative aspects.”

Our protagonists aren’t heroines or side characters. They’re women who are meant to be seen in a negative light.

Their stories—a villainess’ fall from grace, her rises and failures, her choices, her very life—become a guide on leaving unfavorable situations. A guide to navigating the negative side of society to live a better life. A guide to when misbehaving is the best way to overcome life’s challenges.

Also, and this is very important, sometimes Villainesses are just cool.

The Problem with Villainess Manga Now

The villainess role within this genre, ironically, often remains unexplored and unexploited. Authors have resorted to parading heroines as villainesses and assuming readers will not notice the carved hole where a villainous heart used to lie.

These heroine-villainesses wear black hair instead of heroine pink. Blood red dresses instead of innocent pale blue. They dress as villainesses while still keeping the goals and personalities of heroines.

And in doing so, these heroine-villainesses become easier to market as the currently hot Villainess manga subgenre, but removed from the depth of emotion they once held as actual villainesses.

The prioritization of profit has subverted the niche genre’s original purpose and character. 

A villainess, unlike a heroine, should not be someone who is swaddled; she is someone who has been socially ruined and now has to confront the consequences of her actions. She should not be someone who sweeps in with grand ideas and inventions and easily makes herself a social queen.

A villainess should be a woman who explores the darker side of life—wherein pain is a question of “when,” and not “if”—not to bathe in the light and soothe the reader with comforts.

How did this change happen? How have villainess stories gone from character exploration to yet another heroine fantasy?

Well, it happened because of wish fulfillment. (And money and capitalism, but that’s not very specific in this current age.)

Purely Wish Fulfillment in Villainess Form

What does wish fulfillment mean in a Villainess manga? Isn’t all art a form of wish fulfillment? Somewhat, but not to the extremes being brought into Villainess manga that are causing the whole subgenre to invert their stories’ messages.

What’s currently flooding the villainess subgenre is purely wish fulfillment, wherein stories have been made purely to satisfy a specific need and not dig deeper into the “why.”

These pure wish fulfillment stories fill a reader’s particular itch for narrative elements… but neither explores deep enough to get at the cause of that narrative itch nor explores why a reader would want to have that itch satisfied in the first place.

These types of stories will scratch the surface of an emotional itch, like having characters do hobbies a reader can’t in their daily life, without looking at why those hobbies are something hard to do on the regular, or why those hobbies are a goal main character wants to reach for. Instead, these stories focus on accomplishing a hobby and end the story there.

This lack of depth could be enjoyable in other genres, but within Villainess manga the purpose becomes distorted to the point where a reader would question why they even bothered.

No longer is the story looking behind the curtains on why that hobby was out of reach for the reader in the first place. Instead, a purely wish fulfilling story actively sweeps the reasoning under a rug so readers won’t have to look at the uncomfortable truths that Villainess manga were originally made to look at.

The whole subgenre becomes another bargain-bin story that is easily interchangeable with any other bargain-bin story.

Similar in lacking, this subgenre change could be compared to removing the salty parts from trail mix to leave behind a bag of M&M’s, and then asking why the trail mix feels unsatisfying to eat now.

The substance has been removed!

These trail-mix-lacking M&M’s, or specific wishes an author fulfills, come in two varieties.

The pink variety, wherein the world will applaud the villainess as a heroine, or the red variety, wherein the villainess will stand opposed, ready to fight tooth and nail against cardboard people.

The Villainess Turned into a Sweetheart?!?

Focusing on the more saccharine examples of these wish-fulfillment stories, we can observe that their villainesses are presented as downtrodden figures seeking love, certain that love will magically solve their problems.

These sweeter wish-fulfilling stories ask that a reader pities these villainesses for her role, and once that’s out of the way, only have the reader focus on the happiness that comes with affection the villainess was once denied.

Whether this affection comes from a family who finally learns to love her, or a new found family of people who are indebted to the villainess, the source doesn’t matter. The entire world will love the villainess and regret hurting her.

This worldly love might be because she’s been transmigrated and brings new concepts with her to the world, such as soap, and causes a hopeful revolution for all. Or, her love might be gained by previously having been an exiled but intelligent villainess who secretly held the kingdom up with her intelligence, and now that she’s gone the world crumbles and begs for her back.

In either case, she has never truly been at fault for being a villainess and was only called that because she’s misunderstood. She has never been wrong in her life, and now she gets the great reward of fluffy creatures, good food, and a hot male lead(s) to follow her every word like ducklings.

Such a sweet story can be a great M&M to hook the reader in, if that’s what they’re in the mood for.

An example of a hook for a reader looking for easy affection would be My Lady Just Wants to Relax. This story’s villainess has been exiled, and now owns a cafe, and hot furry men flock to eat her delicious food because she’s so kind to feed them. At a cafe where they pay for her food.

My Lady Just Wants to Relax is a manga where the focus is on hot men and hot food and little else.

The story is a sweet wish fulfillment for when one’s thoughts need a sweeter distraction. There is no need to think about life when there are hot fictional men, after all. But once again, we run into that M&M problem. All M&M, no salty trail mix.

What does My Lady Just Wants to Relax do with the story’s protagonist being a villainess?

The story gives this villainess trauma about being unwanted because she’s exiled and then instantly resolved her loneliness via her new harem-found-family eating her food and liking her and nothing else.

Her trauma is a challenge to be solved, to forge a connection between the protagonists. Her trauma is not to explore the why’s or how’s of her trauma in any form. Her trauma is an easy plot device and not something for the reader to analyze further.

Her story certainly isn’t exploring the differences of what it means for our main character to be discarded with for seemingly-villainous actions, as opposed to any other abandoned woman trope.

Nothing would change story-wise or message-wise if “villainess” was swapped for “heroine”, because in this story they are one in the same.

All problems are solved by ignoring them and getting a better life. Nothing more, nothing less, and that’s how this story is meant to be.

In contrast, there is a Villainess manga that follows mostly the same plot hook as My Lady Just Wants to Relax, while looking deeper behind the scenes, exploring why a reader would want to read a story that satisfies the sweet-hook’s itch such a story presents. A life of relief after hardship.

Lady Rose Just Wants to be a Commoner.

In this story, our exiled-villainess protagonist has become a commoner baker, and finds herself besieged by past acquaintances urging her comeback.

Mostly hot men.

The main difference comes in how our villainess’ trauma is dealt with while they’re trying to persuade her to come with them back to high society.

Her trauma comes in the form of a mask she figuratively wore, something to present a face of perfection that nobility demanded of her in the past. It’s a mask that she wears whenever these men come back to ask her to return, and it’s a mask that mentally harms her when she wears it.

She left high society to never have to wear that mask again, make new friends, learn how to cook—but she’s being reminded of that trauma again and again.

Her learning to heal both from that mask and learning what troubles come with not wearing that mask are repeated hurdles for her to come to, and for her to learn how to let go of all by herself. The men coming into her life are not a solve-all magic, nor are any of the other things she takes up to live a happier life. Her only problem-solver is herself and her resolve.

Lady Rose Just Wants to be a Commoner is a story where replacing the villainess with a traumatized heroine would fundamentally change the story’s core meaning.

Our villainess has hurt people to survive while wearing her social mask. She has distanced herself from family, has never had a true female friend before, and felt like everyone interacting with her was a threat to deal with. She’s isolated because of her own actions to survive.

Were our villainess be made into a traumatized heroine, she wouldn’t have taken those actions and hurt others for herself. She would become a woman without blame.

Our villainess is not that woman.

She hurt people; she has blame to bear, and this is her story to tell of how she learned to live after the fact.

One woman’s trope couldn’t be switched for the other without changing what the story means and who the story is for. This story is an exploration of being the antagonist of someone else’s story and emerging from that role. 

To put it simply, the balance of the trail mix in this story is intoxicatingly balanced in its sweet and salty taste.

The Villainess Yearns for Revenge

On the darker side of wish fulfillment stories, enacting revenge is quite a common trope.

Mistreated by society, and more frequently her family, our villainess now seeks retribution!

This can manifest in a variety of forms, but time travel is very prevalent. Therein, our villainess returns to the past after having been betrayed, with future knowledge to ensure nothing can stab our protagonist in the back again. Either that, or the main character is transmigrated and now finds herself in a terrible family and now has to get revenge on behalf of the villainess whose place she took.

These revenge narratives feature evil caricatures to oppose our villainess, figures designed for audiences to detest without reservation.

They might be evil stepmothers who’ve stolen the villainess’ inheritance.

“Heroine” sisters who’ve done everything to make our protagonist evil in society’s eyes.

Cold fathers who turn away from injustices to adore a favored child.

Stand-ins for people who have hurt the reader.

Everyone has had times when they’ve wished they could take revenge and not turn the other cheek when someone wronged them. That feeling becomes an itch that needs to be scratched, and can be found somewhat satisfied in the form of revenge stories.

When a villainess appears in these narratives, her actions usually provoke universal condemnation, setting her apart from everyone else. She becomes the vessel through which to scratch the itch of a turned cheek. She is wronged, and now she’ll have the chance to bite back.

The Villainess Turns the Hourglass fits the need to bite back perfectly. This story recounts a villainess, executed due to her siblings framing her, then returning to the past because of an hourglass. She then seeks vengeance upon those responsible for her ruin. She manipulates people, she lies, she… fake flirts with her stepbrother.

She’s a villainess through and through!

However, it should be asked: what does that story do to explore the problems that caused the situation in the first place?

Why does her sister frame her, why take revenge, why go so far for revenge? And what does that change about our villainess to take actions that far? What does it mean to become the villainess that they said you were so you can take revenge?

Nothing is answered, our villainess gets a happy ending with her revenge completed and a romance partner to be snarky with, and those sorts of questions are swept under the rug.

Nothing for the reader to worry about, just focus on feeling satisfied that revenge was accomplished on your behalf and be happy with that.

Villains are Destined to Die, in contrast, looks at those types of questions that are uncomfortable for a reader to think about.

In this story, the focus isn’t revenge by ruining her family, but instead on the actions it takes to get out of that family and living through the aftereffects of getting to that point in the first place. A revenge of getting away from abuse, and standing tall afterwards, even when they try to drag you down.

In this story, our main character is transmigrated into a villainess who’s despised by her family for the crime of not being the daughter they were using her to replace. She is isolated, called a thief and threatened, and abused by the staff.

In return, our villainess takes every chance and tactic she can use to get away from them.

She lies to them; she manipulates them into feeling guilty; she does everything in her power to make sure her new family doesn’t get close enough to her heart as she makes her plans to escape.

She is in survival mode and uses the tools at her disposal, both mental and physical.

She blackmails her maid who stabbed her every morning with a sewing needle.

Her social connections putting insects in her tea? She uses a BB gun to remind them of their place as below a duke’s daughter.

Her father feels guilty for the harm he’s done? She uses every opportunity to make him provide money and tools she’ll use to get away from him when the time comes, because who knows when he’ll turn around to hurt her again?

This is a story about escaping abuse and using every tactic you need for survival to get out, and never saying that it’s wrong to survive. Just that it changes you and how you see people.

This is a story that looks at when’s the right time to be the villainess and fight back for yourself.

This is a story on when to hide those fangs, without destroying yourself in the process, just change with it.

This is a story about revenge in the form of protecting yourself when the world says that such an act is villainous.

This is a story sympathetic to who our protagonist was before the story, and whose life she took over when the story started. Neither is wrong to have fought, just that it could have been done in a smarter way to protect yourself in the process. Every woman needs a reminder of that, in a society that pushes the message that women should pull their teeth and subdue themselves.

Curtain Call on the Villainess

The thing about villainess stories in general is that they’ve changed.

They’ve changed for marketability and they’ve changed to train their readers into not thinking further. They’ve changed from stories about the dark for those in the dark, to stories for heroines and good people to read and discard with everything else easy to read.

Villainess stories used to be more.

They used to bite. They used to explore the darker aspects of womanhood. They used to be a story that held meaning from beginning to end.

Now, with so much wish fulfillment being put on the market, they’ve just become a marker that says, “This girl’s got issues :C” and says that’s adequate. They’ve become a marker the same way that “Werewolf boyfriend” is a marker for what kind of monster you’re going to romance.

The villainess subgenre has devolved into yet another filler title, losing the magnifying glass it held to look at things that are glossed over for women.

It hurts to know that the old ways of villainesses are fading or are being smothered under everything else.

I’m not against wish fulfillment, but I’ve had enough M&Ms.

Please, just let me eat something real again. I just want to read a story where being considered evil means something. I just want to stop feeling like being a woman means that you’re supposed to be some flawless figure.

I just want to be seen as real. Why is that wrong?

Death Bird (Has some pretty cover art): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dea...

City on the edge of forever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cit...

(Found a transcript of the episode!): http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/28.htm

"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Repe...

Dangerous Visions (also has pretty cover art): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangero...

John W Campbell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W....

Naked lunch (book): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_L...

Naked lunch (movie): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102511/...

The Autobiography of a Flea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aut...

Minotaur erotica w/ good worldbuilding stuff: https://www.amazon.com/Morning-Glory-...

Rogue magazine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(...)

Scooby Doo Harlan Ellison: https://scoobydoo.fandom.com/wiki/Har...

Twilight episode To serve man: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734684/

The futurain group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurians

Going for infinity:   / 715301.going_for_infinity  

Eliza chatbot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA

Eliza emulator: https://elizaemulator.com/

Turing test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_...

Turing test game: https://turingtest.live/

Golem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem

Scholar paper ihnmaims & dante's inferno/the Rostler interview clip (apparently?): https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/entities/p...

Manna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna

Jonah and the whale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah

Tudor mansions/architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudor_a...

Louis Armstrong - Go down moses:    • Go Down Moses  

Mercury (It was actually silver, I was misremembering) blue man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ka...

The rats in the wall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rat...

The country of the blind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cou...

The pilgrims progress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pil...

Gregorian chant:    • Salve Regina - Les Petits Chanteurs de Passy