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Unpopular opinions we have on fiction

"Let's go! open up, it's time for Unpop!"
Alright, time for my mandatory Unpopular Opinions Post. Let's get this over with.
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Down here, us Omelasposters only get one Rating a day. One Funny rating is just enough to get your post:reaction ratio to the next day. But that's the life of Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation. If you wanna survive, you have to Unpopular Opinions Post. Every Omelasposter has the same goal, and that's to make it to the top thread, where all the Brothers Karamazovposters live. Except, most Brothers Karamazovposters are born on the top thread. If you're an Omelasposter, there's only one way up, and that is through the Temple of Unpopular Opinions. The Temple of Unpopular Opinions is the only structure on SV that combines the bottom thread to the top thread. To make it up, you have to post an impossibly hard Unpopular Opinion Reply that no Omelasposter has ever completed. And that's assuming you even get the chance to post the reply in the thread. The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier and the only way an Omelasposter gets past the barrier is if they've earned a gilded post. I've never even tried getting a gilded post before, but if I'm going to rank up to a Brothers Karamazovposter one day, I'm gonna have to.
 
Bleh. Here's an unpopular (for SV) opinion. I've grown to like the "Reborn as a villainess" genre because there's an abnormally high percentage of not-bad writing in it despite the fact that the setting concept is so trashy.

Tori transmigrated for example.
 
From everything I've heard the Krakoa era of X-men ended up being a dumpster fire, but as a concept the idea of exploring how a society would function when it takes advantage of the weirdest stuff that comes up in comics interests me. Most of the time it's only the heroes that have access to superscience stuff while for the average joe everyday life isn't that different from what's outside the window.
 
Tithed_Verse said:
Bleh. Here's an unpopular (for SV) opinion. I've grown to like the "Reborn as a villainess" genre because there's an abnormally high percentage of not-bad writing in it despite the fact that the setting concept is so trashy.

Tori transmigrated for example.
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I've never had the impression that it's trashy. Reborn as the villainess is isekai's serious highbrow cousin, much like the relationship between "dating sim" and "otome game" they both have.
 
Night said:
I've never had the impression that it's trashy. Reborn as the villainess is isekai's serious highbrow cousin, much like the relationship between "dating sim" and "otome game" they both have.
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Ehhhhh. There's good villainess reincarnation stories out there, but the genre falls into a lot of the same pitfalls that plague the broader isekai ecosystem. I think they can be serious and "highbrow", but I definitely wouldn't call that the standard.
 
Yeah. For example, they often tend towards the problem of just making it so the villainess can do no wrong and she's just being unfairly persecuted by the wicked scheming heroine.

Those plots are also kind of funny because of the classist undertones though. It comes off as this very aristocratic fantasy where the very highly born "villainess" is good and the jumped-up lower class "heroine" is bad for not knowing her place and seducing the prince like some hussy. This kind of thing is what leads the kingdom to ruin you know! We have hierarchy! Order!
 
Doby Mick said:
I think they can be serious and "highbrow", but I definitely wouldn't call that the standard.
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Night is speaking relative to other reincarnation isekai, where the standard for protagonists has increasingly become 'guy who owns slaves.' The otome game villainess subgenre follows pretty closely in Bakarina's footsteps (given that she essentially invented it lol) and is comparatively much less likely to have that kind of material. The subgenre is often as protagonist focused as other types of isekai, but usually more for the bit.
 
Erebeal said:
Yeah. For example, they often tend towards the problem of just making it so the villainess can do no wrong and she's just being unfairly persecuted by the wicked scheming heroine.

Those plots are also kind of funny because of the classist undertones though. It comes off as this very aristocratic fantasy where the very highly born "villainess" is good and the jumped-up lower class "heroine" is bad for not knowing her place and seducing the prince like some hussy. This kind of thing is what leads the kingdom to ruin you know! We have hierarchy! Order!
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Genuinely don't know what show or book you're referring to here. The convention in the subgenre is that the heroine remains the heroine, just with the villainess as the main target of their affection.
 
The Reincarnation Isekai at this juncture are basically book companies taking niche content from a fic website, giving them a minor splash of some degree of editing, and then tossing them out to the world. You sort of see a similar thing happening in publishing in English-speaking regions in the form of like...published Reylo fanfic and stuff, though Isekai is usually just prone to being geared for even weirder nonsense. "I've Reincarnated as the Villainess" from what I have seen and known just seems to be from a different sort of impulse and derived from different games entirely.
 
Hmm, while I have a number seen reincarnated as villainess stories where the OG heroine is actually evil though I wouldn't call it the norm as opposed to the OG heroine being either a love interest, friend, siblings or even not that important to the reincarnated villainess story at all because it takes place after the heroine's story.
 
Ford Prefect said:
Genuinely don't know what show or book you're referring to here. The convention in the subgenre is that the heroine remains the heroine, just with the villainess as the main target of their affection.
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That's another common path following hamefura yeah.

Like I haven't done a statistical analysis of this, so I could be overstating how common it is and my villainess isekai binge was years ago now, but the heroine being the real villainess is definitely something that pops up a bunch.
 
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Ford Prefect said:
The convention in the subgenre is that the heroine remains the heroine, just with the villainess as the main target of their affection.
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That is... absolutely not the case.

It HAPPENS, don't get me wrong, but for every villainess reincarnation or time rewind where the heroine and the villainess get together there's half a dozen where the villainess snags the 'secret character', often some kind of demon king or other royal, finds some other cool/handsome man through contrivance, or manages to stay on the capture targets good side and the heroine becomes the villainess - but not the Villainess - of the piece.

Take a quick browse through the 'Villainess' tag on Mangadex if you don't believe me. For every one VillainessXHeroine title there's about a half dozen VillainessXSomeDude titles.
 
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Duke's Daughter is, I believe, one of the bigger and more popular Villainess Reincarnation stories and in that one the original 'heroine' turns out to literally be a spy from a hostile country who is working to destablise the country by trying to get her prince to do stuff like "disband the entire army so that the money can be spent buying dresses for the 'heroine'". Of course the titular 'villainess' duke's daughter easily defeats these plans and gets together with the 'secret' first-in-succession prince who is so much better than the 'starting' prince.

A heck of a lot of them revel in social curbstomps just like 'normal' Isekais revel in physical curbstomps. The 'villainess' (aristocratic) MC will face no real failure or loss outside their immediate social-shunning (which is normally presented as a good thing where they get to part ways with a bunch of petty losers to form their own social club that's so much better than the old one), will use their extra knowledge to make a killing with the cocoa beans that just so happened to be in their territory (or whatever), will befriend all the 'good' nobles with ease causing them to shun the 'bad' nobles who broke with her at the start, and basically everyone who opposes the MC is presented as either a moron, a madman or a traitor.
 
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Ford Prefect said:
Genuinely don't know what show or book you're referring to here. The convention in the subgenre is that the heroine remains the heroine, just with the villainess as the main target of their affection.
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I genuinely don't know where you are that you have never stumbled upon it, Villainess stories where they actually just switch the narrative roles and the heroine becomes the antagonist by being selfish or evil are extremely abundant.

One of the earliest examples is Accomplishments of the Duke's Daughter, which has the girl transmigrated into the villainess exiled after the prince fell for the heroine, but the story bends over backwards: turns out the villainess was beloved by everyone, her family and staff, and the prince is a cheater, and the heroine he got with was in reality a spy for a foreign power.

hghwolf has pretty much listed the typical archetypes of these stories, but typically, in stories where the heroine becomes the villain:
  • She is also a reincarnator like the isekaied villainess, but unlike the protagonist, she is a vapid and egocentric girl who wants to use her status as the heroine of the game to assemble an harem, and treats the world as if it were still a game rather than a real place with real people
  • The heroine is not reincarnated, but has some sort of unsettling supernatural power (especially if she is a "Saintess", a role that can mean almost anything depending on the work you read) that makes men fall for her easily
  • The heroine is actually the "heroine", the villainess has the actual power to save the world (again, usually the Saintess stuff), while the "heroine" is faking her power for various reasons or actually has a dark power passing itself off as light, working for the Demon King or not.
  • She has neither meta knowledge nor power, but the heroine is still someone who wants people, especially men, to love her for Reasons. Prone to burst into false tears and falsely accusing the villainess of bullying to gain sympathy
  • The heroine comes from a common background, either as a commoner, former slave, or an illegitimate child, and her lack of knowledge of the social mores of nobles and her naivety are portrayed as making her Too Stupid To Live, and bad for the noble school's reputation, and the prince falling for her is an idiot who will lead the realm to ruins by marrying a girl who knows nothing about ruling or nobility. Usually done in the stories where the villainess is a Girlboss(tm) whose training as future queen before the engagement was broken off makes her hyper competent. The heroine frequently tries to befriend the villainess protag and is written as annoying for doing so.
  • The heroine is a spy of a foreign nation passing herself off as an innocent girl to deliberately ruin the realm (usually the more interesting option, hence it is rarely used).
 
While I would agree that the Villainess hooking up with some dude or even another villainess rather than the heroine certainly happens, I would be inclined to say it's more common for the OG Male lead or male leads to be evil than the OG heroine to be evil even if the OG heroine isn't a love interest.

Thinking of it I've seen a lot of stories having the OG male love interests or be evil or at best trash.

Must be something about multiple males of power of various sorts vying for one person that ultimately has less power in the sort of society tends to be depicted in those sorts of stories.
 
Ford Prefect said:
Genuinely don't know what show or book you're referring to here. The convention in the subgenre is that the heroine remains the heroine, just with the villainess as the main target of their affection.
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It's more common than you think, though mostly it's only seen outside of anime. This is only one of many ways in which Common Sense of a Duke's Daughter is terrible :V

Though in general, I think it's more common to get "Heroine also got a reincarnator (who is terrible)", but they're similar genres of bad.

(I vividly remember it being annoying enough to me at one point that I started thinking about how I'd go about making a story where it upends the idea of the bad heroine reincarnator by having it be that no, actually, they're treating the love interests coldly because they have real beef with them and just aren't as willing to go with the flow as the original heroine. I did throw some concepts at the wall that I think are interesting and that I might revisit at some point, but overall it went the way of Halo DS and never materialized)
 
Yeah I was just wondering how many of those stories have anime adaptations, or if the adaptations are biased more towards things in the vein of hamefura etc.
 
Alane1 said:
While I would agree that the Villainess hooking up with some dude or even another villainess rather than the heroine certainly happens, I would be inclined to say it's more common for the OG Male lead or male leads to be evil than the OG heroine to be evil even if the OG heroine isn't a love interest.

Thinking of it I've seen a lot of stories having the OG male love interests or be evil or at best trash.

Must be something about multiple males of power of various sorts vying for one person that ultimately has less power in the sort of society tends to be depicted in those sorts of stories.
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I mean, I would love for more villainess stories to have male villains, but more often than not, the kind of villainess common denominator are power fantasies that are...kinda misogynistic?

For every story I've seen where the prince who breaks up with the villainess is genuinely treated as evil (and I mean truly evil, a lot of them just have him be moronic evil), I've seen five counter examples where the real antagonists are other women:
  • The heroine who is secretly evil or so stupid she still threatens the protag
  • The evil maids (or just the head maid) bullying the villainess marrying into a new family
  • The evil stepmother right out of Cinderella
  • The evil mother of one of the princes (either the queen or a concubine) scheming to get her son on the throne
  • The other noble ladies jealous of the protagonist for having secured the affection of the most eligible man in noble society and will spread rumors about her at tea parties, balls, and hunting competitions (the usual social events)
And they are often, though not always, drawn uglier.

It's not that you can't have female antagonists, you certainly can. But the way they are written is very often not convincing. They are evil, but not really threats: if anything, most of them are ineffectual villains so the protagonist can effortlessly counter their plans and crush stomp them because it's part of the wish fulfillment. The evil stepmom feels like the fantasy of someone wishing to get back at their controlling mom, where the protag can do an Epic Takedown of her mom and reduce her to tears once she realizes she is superior to her (usually by now being of a higher social standing through her marriage). The evil noble ladies aren't powerful people with the wealth and connections to ruin your life, they are the gossiping popular clique in high school you can also deliver epic takedown speech too or have your Male Love Interest threaten into shutting up. The evil maids are your social inferiors and employees (who could somehow bully their employer???), so just channel your inner Girlboss and slap them, before either firing them or, in some cases, sending them to prison or to be executed for daring to cause harm to a blue-blooded noble (something I've seen happen at least twice).

Oh, and if the heroine is a former slave motivated by trying to eliminate slavery, you should only be mad that your kingly husband cheated/replaced you with her, and do absolutely nothing about the root cause.

And yes, a lot of these wish fulfillment villainess stories are not only low-key misogynist, but also very weirdly classist, usually towards servants but also towards heroines of a common background. It's not rare to see the villainess shown to be be Right and Proper about social conventions while the heroine is clumsy, and the heroine is a scheming vixen accusing the villainess of bullying her when she scolds her for clinging to the prince and other men, which is just not proper at all.
 
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It's true that in Tori Transmigrated, the 'heroine' is actually a 'bad guy', duped by a foreign agent, who suffers a horrifying end… though no more horrifying than victoria's so called canon horrible end of being sold into slavery.

Tori, taking victoria's place gathers the Nega-harem to fight the harem in the opposite of what essentially is supposed to happen in the 'original game.'

You see all these events from two perspectives, what was supposed to happen and what happened now. It's fun, but it is definitely somewhat classist. Tori's whole thing is that she's actually in love with the very autistic first prince, not the second prince who the harem protag loves. (and only one member of the harem protag girl's harem actually love-loves her, which she's too blind to see and she doesn't love him back)

Tori actually initially dislikes Victoria, the girl she's replacing, but comes to appreciate her attitude and actions as she learns more about the world around her and feels sad over replacing her.

Tori transmigrated manages to have 'epic fantasy court intrigue' vibes, which I enjoyed.

Level 99, with Dolkness, has the 'protag girl' as a minor villain who hates Dolkness for no particularly good reason.

I also like 7th time loop, though that one starts with a spoiled rotten prince rejecting the 'villianness' and her enjoying in her resulting freedom. (she winds up pen pals with the poorer, lower class 'protagonist' girl)

The rat becomes a butterfly is fun because the swap between 'obvious protag material' and 'obvious villainess material' happens at the start of the story with them being switched into each other's bodies and having to live each others' lives, which neither of them seems to enjoy much.
 
all fictions said:
I genuinely don't know where you are that you have never stumbled upon it, Villainess stories where they actually just switch the narrative roles and the heroine becomes the antagonist by being selfish or evil are extremely abundant.
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Okay, well, you have one named example, which is actually the same example that everyone else has named :V
 
Ford Prefect said:
Okay, well, you have one named example, which is actually the same example that everyone else has named :V
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Well, in no particular order then...

A bunch of the Oneshots in 'Though I may be a Villainess I'll show you I can obtain Happiness'
The One within the Villainess
A Former Assassin Was Reborn as a Blue-Blooded Daughter
I'm a Villainous Daughter, so I'm Going to Keep the Last Boss
A Splendid Revenge Story of a Super-Dreadnought Cheat Villainess
Pretty much every arc in 'Cheating Men must Die !'

...all have 'villain heroines' and that's just titles off the top of my head. There's more that I remember but don't remember the title off.
 
Hmm, other than I'm a Villainous Daughter, so I'm Going to Keep the Last Boss, I never heard of any of the rest of those so I suppose we must simply be coming across different works.
 
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