This is why I love It's Ok to not be OK. Ko Moon Young is technically a "hyperfeminine rich girl" but she's actual the protagonist and the "natural girl" isn't picked or shown to be the 'way real women should be'
These villains are more relatable than the male and female lead combined coz she is flawed and that makes her more human. The only problem is that she is often made to do horrible things just so the audience will hate her. As an example the mean girl in true beauty. She was a sympathetic and relatable character, a badass and girl crush material but they ruined her character at the end by making her fall for Suho. It felt so forced and unnecessary.
She is often treated really badly and does not know how to act with other people. That's why, she wears a mask of fakeness or is immediate arrogant. There is no one to support her or help her out. So often for validation, she wears expensive clothes and does her makeup so that people will give her attention and help her. It just feels sad
Dang the similiarities between female villian and male lead is so crazy!!!! Really goes to show how aware you have to be when consuming media and creating ideals.
This is why I love the whole “villainess” theme going around the webcomic and webnovel world rn. Honestly love a story about the “villainess” makes you understand how stupid the things we loved before seem
It is funny how the second ML is shown as an approachable and down to earth guy who is a walking green flag but the second FL is shown as a woman who needs to put others down just to make herself feel better. It is frustrating to see women who are confident with their ownselves shown as selfish and mean whereas the FL is someone who is as soft as flower and needs protection from world by a man. This shows how these drama send a message that "look if a girl is hot, sexy, cool and confident, then she is only good to be your girlfriend but not wife. You need someone who feels insecure with themselves to make yourself look manly". Sure in the recent years there has been improvement in such stereotypical plots but there is still a huge number of shows made just like this. They make people want to believe that if a girl is not able to stand up for herself (whatever is the reason) then you need to pursue her because apparently she is worth it. But if you want fun and a time pass, feel free to hook up with a bold and confident woman. This makes people create a narrative in their mind that this is how a woman is supposed to act like.
Also it is hilarious to me how they show that working in a minimum wage job is better than having a successful career in top fields because apparently we just get high paid jobs out of the blue, lmao. I mean it is a simple fact that the person who has a successful career now had worked back when it was needed and that maybe the so called "hard working girl" is just under qualified for the work the second FL does. It is as if earning good money automatically makes you evil.
Everything you said is absolutely on point, I agree! I actually initially had a little chapter discussing money, gender and class dynamics in these kdramas - the only moral way for women to get acess to money is by getting together with a rich man, having your own money makes a female character evil. But I am actually thinking of making a separate episode about money in k-dramas, about this topic!
@@kdramaresearchinstitute Yeah that would be wonderful to touch such topics. It is so much hypocritical that when a man earns money he is praised because he is earning to support his family but if a woman does the same she is called evil and power-hungry when she probably wants to support her parents as well. It shows how misogyny has been rooted so deep in society. People don't understand what being independent is. When used financially, it is when you do not want to depend on others to provide you basic needs of amenities but people always twist this narrative when a female says she wants to become independent. You can be financially independent and yet be dependent emotionally on the person you love and trust.
Honestly it feels like this idea of the "Normal Girl" vs the "Rich/Popular Girl" is/was intended to target a female audience because the normal girl is supposed to be more relatable to majority of the female audience. The Rich Girl is the stand-in for whoever the audience perceives as the "one who gets everything because she is rich/popular". That would make this the female equivalent of the "Normal Guy/Nerd" vs the "Popular Guy/Jock" dynamic that exists in stories that target a male audience. In those stories the Nerd gets the girl because of all his positive traits. This is also treated as a substance vs style issue. But as is the case with most stories, as storytelling evolves the antagonists become more fleshed out and complex. So now we have the mean girl being more than just "mean", but the stories still treat her like the older one-dimensional antagonist. This creates the problem: Her role in the story is pre-decided. Regardless of how well reasoned the mean girl's character is, she is meant to be the antagonist that the "normal girl" (i.e. the audience surrogate) is meant to beat. And this leads to all the problematic implications that the video highlighted. Which probably isn't the intention (I hope). The message isn't that the independent aggressive popular girl isn't wife material, but rather that "The romantic hero will pick you over the popular mean girl because she is all style to your substance". Which is similar to the message of the Nerd gets the girl story that targets guys. This doesn't make it right. It just explains where this trope likely comes from.
I don't like how the second ML is always in love with the FL for two reasons. One it perpetuates the notion that man and woman can’t be true friends because love always gets in the way and two because it’s messed up to expect that just because you have feelings for your friends they will return them.
Oh I remember in school I was bullied by this natural humble girl for being the hyperfeminine overdressed vain girl 💀 She probably watched too much kdrama with this stereotype and think she’s the main character.
I think one “villainess” character I liked was Seo Dan from Crash Landing on You. She was clearly feminine, as was the female lead but both were portrayed and emotionally strong, intelligent and capable of pursuing what they wanted. Importantly her story wasn’t centred around ruining the main characters. She was a roadblock to the main characters but not really an antagonist. Many may disagree but I kind of wish she did have a happy ending with her guy. I know she didn’t need him to live the rest of her life well, but it would have been nice. The hating on self care makes me sad. I used to be pretty anxious and cope by biting my nails. The zoom into perfectly manicured nails on a villain makes me roll my eyes. Self care is about ME. I now grow my nails and do nail art bc I am no longer in a place where I need to bite them, and I find painting fun & already did it digitally/on canvas. Most people don’t even notice them. The people who do- are very nice, friendly women usually.
Yes, I think she was well written, she was mean in the beginning, but the plot took time to explore how she feels! Makeup being for vain people is such a weird beauty standard, because women don't get to just not use makeup, we are always supposed to try and improve our beauty, never good enough. But also using it makes someone superficial and vain. Like which one is it?!
Seo Dan is probably one of my characters from a drama. I wouldn’t even consider her a villain, more like you said “a roadblock”. But I do wish she got her happy ending, but in a way she got to be free which was the closest she could get to the guy she liked.
I think the fact that she was gives her own storyline and we see her do other stuff besides standing in the way of the main couple is what makes her not a villain. If they stopped showing her story at the point where the audience still though she was annoying, she would be a one dimensional villain, but them telling her story in more detail is what makes her a complex and relatable character
Oh yeah! Seo Dan was amazing! And I loved her fashion style. The last scenes with the guy had be bawling my eyes out like crazy. I wanted them both to be happy, specially as the guy ultimately redeemed himself.
this goes hand in hand with the rising umber of villainess stories in korean and japanese media . case in point: villainess isekai manhwas and webtoons. if you are in this space, you get what i mean. there is something curious about how the villain, most importantly the vialliness, is treated. it's as though they exist as a plot device to move the heroine's story and are throwaway characters in the end. rarely do we see a proper villainess character treated a humane manner. it is only now that we see a proliferation of stories with them as the mc. it's so saturated, they've fallen prey to the same evil vs. good trope it attempted to subvert. it probably boils down to good storytelling, but I can count with my toes the number of antihero stories that drive a point without having to disparage its other characters or appeal to the reader/viewer's sympathy.
Hmm, I actually can't think of a well written villainess from any manhwa/webtoon. I guess there are complex female villains in the horror manga space, like with Junji Ito and Shuzo Oshimi, but this is a completely different genre.
The villainess trope is not actually using an actual villainess as a protagonist. Most of the time it's a Mary Sue character dressed up and labeled as a villain. They don't even use a "villainess" character design, most of them are wide eyed innocent looking. They are also not the confident, ambitious,self assured and fashion forward villainess they are marketed to be. Its click bait at this point. I think this can also be attributed to the fact that the isekai and reincarnation of villianess are of natural girls. The body may be a villianess but the personality and soul is from a natural girl who's middle class and a hard worker and quirky.
@@kst9955 Do you know my Godness 💘: Roxana Agrece 🦋(How to Protect the Heroine’s Older Brother)? Or Eris Miserian (Kill the Villainess), Artizea Rosan (The Villainess Lives Twice), Rita/Verta (Concentration of Malice). All of them are real villainess ~\(≧▽≦)/~.
I hated the characters in cheese in the trap both ML and his sister(?) because the potrayal of her was so caricaturised that at some point I felt she just existed for our hatred. I dont want to talk about how much hate the ML but that would be a whole essay
I was so confused about the ML, I couldn't tell if we are supposed to root for them to get together or not, the FL felt super uncomfortable around him!
@@kdramaresearchinstituteYoo Jung is the worst ML. I'll die on that hill but Baek In-Ha was so amazing. I loved her and her twin's characters and they were definitely the most interesting ones in the show and when I saw their other projects I wasn't surprised. They're really good. I loved In-Ha and she's definitely my favorite female character.
@@kdramaresearchinstitute Honestly I hated sooooo much the ML and the FL, but Baek In-ha was iconic. Literally I just watched the whole show because of her, her situation was sad at some point but she was also a comedic character. I was never able to hate her, also the actress is so beautiful and expressive I'ts almost unreal.
"Her complexity and her backstory are in the text, but we still interpret her as a one-dimensional villain. Do we hate her because she was written this way? Maybe we, the audience, are the real villain in her story" is such a good way of phrasing it (I made it shorter tho). The last conclusion was so great and made me yell "thank you!" in agreement. Even in life, other people can be our "audience" and have their own ideas about us. I just feel like I want to focus on what I think of myself. It doesn't mean it's okay to be rude or mean, just that being confident/rich/competitive or even messy/insecure/emotional is a part of my experience and others can't always understand what I am going through.
Ok love this video and channel. As a guy who likes Kdramas this really helps me things in a different view. The idea that the male lead is problematic - of which Boys over Flowers is the most obvious example - fairly intuitive but you provided more sympathy for the villainess. Well written and said.
This is why I like Komoon Yeoung and Jang Man Wol. I could not pin point why showcasing the hyperfeminine trope as villain made me uncomfortable and why I was done with having tomboy girls as the protagonists. As a hyperfeminine woman myself I can tell some people really need to check their internalized misogyny as well as their insecurities.
I think it has been getting better, there are way more confident and strong female leads and also rich CEO female leads, but those also have their problems. One of the upcoming videos that I am working on is about money and gender in k-dramas, where I will discuss the trope of the unhappy rich woman who needs to experience a more humble lifestyle to become a happy person.
@kdramaresearchinstitute The first K drama that comes to mind is Prosecutor Princess. I get so scared when I see a rich female lead because they like to make the female lead lose her wealth so that the male lead could be her support or so that she becomes humbled and apologise to the people she had wronged in the initial episodes.
Thankfully we can see this is part of the past now. A lot of modern kdramas now have hyper feminine badass character as the female lead and it’s awesome. In fact Korea started way before it became a trend on the west, which I really like! Notable examples are It’s ok to not be ok, Hotel de Luna, Crash-landing on you, and many more
Yes, it definitely got better in the last couple of years, we are luckily moving on from these overused tropes and getting more nuanced female characters!
I sometimes, sympathize for the antagonist. In your words, she is used as an accessory by men. She spends hours on her looks because her beauty and money is what she has got and she can't live without it. She just wants to survive and deep down, wants to be loved. The male lead, who treats her kindly, is now her world and when she gets rejected, she does not know who to blame so she blames the female lead.
Thank you for this. The treatment of what i call the Evil Rival Girlfriend is an ongoing source of frustration for me in kdramas. It’s even more obvious in many Cdramas, where there may even be a few Rival Girlfriends, and all of them are rarely given more than two character traits-an obsessive, entitled desire for her target, and a lack of moral compass when it comes to pursuing him. The trope feels like the writers telling us, “wow, girls sure do be boy crazy. Look how catty they are. Look how Not Like Other Girls our heroine is.” It doesn’t help, too, that because writers usually need a reason to write a character as anything but cis male, male coded villains in dramas are given a myriad of motivations-hunger for power, greed and entitlement, abusive past, psychosis-while, with very few exceptions, the only motivation given to a femme coded villain is “i want him, so he’s MINE.” She rarely even acts as the ultimate villain in her story, just a persistent complication on the way to addressing the primary conflict.
Uuh, Evil Rival Girlfriend, I like the name! Yeah, some of the examples of that character are incrdibly one dimensional, she is just hot and evil. Actually a pretty universal villain, that is found in any countries movies in TV shows, she is also in bollywood and hollywood movies too...
@@kdramaresearchinstitute Very true. Even in US media, it’s only fairly recently that we’ve gotten stories that feature an overtly girly heroine like legally blonde or a heroine who obsessively chases the object of her affections like crazy ex girlfriend. As you said, i think all of it just leans into our own expectations about what “good femininity” is supposed to look like, what underlying assumptions feed into that image, and how little room characters have to deviate from the mold.
As i think about it, i’m also noticing how much of our attitudes about the Evil Rival Girlfriend seem rooted in the fact that she actively pursues rather than passively accepting the attention that’s given to her. Years ago, i recall a sociologist describing snow white as a story that contrasts two women-one who actively pursues what she wants, and one who passively accepts or reacts to what comes to her. Ultimately, the queen’s actions send snow white into a state where she’s so passive she’s comatose, and it’s only in this state of extreme passivity that she can achieve the romance she needs to prevail.
Damn, literally the most passive a woman can be! I also had a whole part in my script that I didn't finish about the class implications of that trope. The evil woman just has money or has a prestigious job, and that makes her morally corrupted and greedy for money. She wants to date a rich successful man, which makes her a gold digger (even though she is rich too, so technically she just wants to date someone who has a similar status and background to her). And the rich girl doesn't have acess to money, her family is poor and she has to work in a hard and demanding job. But she does not get rewarded by her job by getting a promotion, she is rewarded by dating a rich man. To stay pure and not morally corrupted a woman doesn't get to have her own money and sh is not supposed to want money at all, money is for men. I removed that part of the video, because it actually doesn't apply to a lot of the K-dramas that I used as examples, in several of these the hero actually does get a cool job that pays better. Pursuing actively and having money makes women evil. Society wants women to stay poor, work really hard and don't make any decisions, otherwise she is a villain.
Idk, for me it feels like the camera completely influences the audience to interpret the female antagonist as hateful and annoying. Art direction has a lot of power to how we interpret a story, even if the girl is complex on the text it self the camera, colors, music, have the power to make the audience perceive her as just an evil witch.
Yes, totally! I think the music in the background influences the perception a lot. When the feminine villain is physically fighting there is often silly comedy music playing in the background, and when the male leads fight there is often either serious music or a romantic ballad playing in the background. The camera does the same. I keep thinking about what it is that makes her a villain, and I think a lot of it boils down to who is the protagonist, we automatically root for the main character even if they are a flawed person. That's why it is so disorienting and refreshing when shows don't have one protagonist and no clear distinction between villains and heroes, like who am I supposed to be rooting for?
The villain is made to seem like a ‘villain’ bc they’re flawed and human. People like the idea of perfect and try to enforce it as being the ‘good’, which is why the hero is always ‘good’ and liked by other characters and the audience. The villain is usually more realistic which people don’t really like bc imperfection is realistic and society craves the former. Maybe it’s why villains are becoming more popular bc plp are realising that the characters were not born that way but made to be like that and have had so much thought and detail put into them like our own lives, (plp are sometimes able to sympathise and relate to them allowing them to understand the character) whereas heros were moulded from unattainable standards and expectations, completely setting them apart from ordinary human beings. I could honestly go on but that’s just a summary of my observation.
But there are a lot of examples of the protagonists being flawed, especially with the male lead. I feel like we as the audience automatically root for the protagonist, no matter how bad their decisions are, because that is point of view character. Just the fact that they are the main hero tells us that this is who we are supposed to root for
And that's why I love See you in my 19th life. When I first read the webtoon, I fell in love with Ban Ji Eum. She is everything I love. She's confident, competent, and independent. She knows her worth and what she wants.
Also consider that even if the second ml is more similar to the fl in terms of kindness and gentleness, but cos of tradional gender stereotypes (masculinity), the more aggressive or arrogant ml is the "better man" for the submissive fl.
Damn, seeing this video makes me so happy because the double standard has also been bothering me for a while but not sure how to put it into words. Thank you for the amazing analysis!
this was a really awesome video essay on this character archetype. i agree its almost always the audience who villainize her simply for existing against the protagonist. i've found that kdrama and manhwa fans have 0 room for nuance and don't care about character complexity. the writer could be weaving an incredibly deep and flawed character with a horrific and touching background that comments on society and you'll see hundreds of comments like "this b*tch is trash" "let her d*e" etc (esp anything on webtoons/tappytoons like remarried empress)
I have red a lot of comments on youtube, reddit and blogs about these specific characters and it seems super divided and polarizing: there are a lot of people commenting stuff like "i hate her so much, why is she getting a happy end the the female lead is not?!", but there are also a lot of people going "ok, but she is severely traumitized she is actually super complex and deserved better".
I'm so tired of k-dramas/comics where male lead is problem, but secondary FL is portrayed like villain. "Oh, she is just my crazy ex" and he two timed SFL and FL, didnt act like mature person delivering break up speech(in second half of a season) , often broke business deal that was their future marriage and left her to deal with fall out while turning tail himself. Like she maybe a B word. but she isnt one who started that mess.
Yes! The male lead is often the problem and the cause of her issues, but it is still her fault somehow. He is also deeply flawed and messy, but he can get away with it
My favorite is the badass female character who doesn't bat an eye for the male lead while everyone else screams his name and fawns over him. She is different, and her dignity is her charm 😎. I wish kdrama (and Asian dramas in general) has more female characters like this.
@@aaania9034a pick me is a girl that brings feminine women down in front of men to appeal to the male gaze. Not a pick me at all. If ur gonna shame women for having preferences about their shows, Atleast get it right 🤡 fake feminist ho
LMAO ok ok. I have realized that I dress like the hyperfeminine villain girl. Yes my prints are bright and I like shimmer and unusual colors, and my hair is curled almost always. And I don’t really know why that’s such a bad thing inherently.
This analysis is so spot on, I love it! Also, love that you included Dan from Crash Landing On You bc she simultaneously fits the archetype and deviates from it. That's my girl, in my eyes she can do no wrong and she did NOT deserve all the shit that got thrown her way. It felt like the narrative punishing her excessively! Also, love that you mentioned Touch Your Heart as a trope subversion! I was thinking of that FL when you mentioned the red hair. On top of that show allowing her to be hyper feminine in a positive way, the plot of the story hinges on her being ambitious enough at her job to go to great lengths to better her performance at it (working at the firm in order to obtain the role she desperately wants). She is not seen as bad for wanting this either! It's a wonderful show, very refreshing in that sense!
Prime example of the character being set up as a stereotypical mean rich girl, except the plot is interested in her feelings and tells the story beyond being the annoying obstacle! She deserved so much better!
I agree with the last part( honestly all of the video) that we the audience are the real villains in her story. I have noticed that the female lead herself stars with admiring the second female lead in both personality and visual representation and wants to be like her ( which I think is very realistic). A good example is True Beauty where the main character admires the second female lead for how "natural" pretty she is and how confident she is plus they are friends( for the most part) and I love that the lead is into makeup and works to be feminine (because it is a form of expression as you said). I do think that it's interesting that the in this drama we see the protagonist being overly feminine ( to an extent) and the second female lead the more studious and doesn't wear make-up. I do like the trope subversion and I do think the drama does it intentionally because of the class difference and how beauty is part of it. P.S. I will say I haven't noticed that a lot of these girls have auburn or red-brown hair( I love the comment that the moment they become brunettes they stop being evil). I do like the characters and are definitely overheated so making them the protagonist allows the audience to see their biases and to see her story in the light where she is admired.
I don't evn watch K Drama but I love watching the little clips of these characters! I don't have any hate for them (cuz I've never seen their shows) so I'm instantly just like yes I love her!!!! 😂
Oh there is so much more I didn't even touch on in this video! I initially wrote a part about money and gender for this video but removed it - but I will be making a separate video about it soon, because there is so much more to discuss the way characters handle money!
I really like sour perspective, i think it also in general that society has a specific picture of woman .. especially in Korea because its still a really conservative country
Seeing Touch Your Heart reminded me of another one of my comfort kdrama beauty inside (2018). The main female character Se-Gye is strong, confident, can stand up for herself, usually wear gorgeous dresses, and also have the image of being 'crazy' in the media due to her situation. But because of that she also just embrace the image altogether than trying to be seen as 'nice' to other people. Maybe its because she's an actress and her entire career are built upon this, but I found it interesting how she's the first character I can think of. The female from the second couple (Kang Sa-Ra) also has a very similar image, she's successful, beautiful, but was looked down upon by the business partner because at the end of the day, she's just a woman.
in real life it's the opposite, shy girls are underappreciated, especially in high school and university (class participation lol) I've been both 'extremes' and neither is a win, there's no way to win xD just find a right friend/lover/blossom alone
I think this is exactly why this trope exists - so shy girls who never got much attention from guys can feel represented on screen and escape into a fantasy where they are the most desirable woman. But this trope over corrected and villainized another type of woman instead
but most of the time i find the main leads much more annoying and completely ridiculous, since we are supposed to root for them but they make such self sabotaging choices, ends up creating a lot of their own problems then crying about it 🤣
Yeah, but they have to somehow fill out 16 episodes, lol! It is really hard to write this much plot and have chill protagonists. Like in Run On /Touch Your Heart / Her private life - the relationships in these are super mature and supportive and that's why it gets a bit boring to watch because nothing dramatic happens in their relationship. The protagonists either need to have stupid conflicts that they created themselves or there needs to be some external big conflict that is not their fault, otherwise there is no plot, haha
@@kdramaresearchinstitute agreed, it is really difficult to write interesting unique characters that can drive the plot forward constantly, i do not envy the writers' jobs but its ok bcos i do enjoy watching the villains and there are still plenty of great protagonists too!
I cannot believe how your small following, your analysis' are super insightful. There is nothing really wrong with the hyperfeminine mean girl (as in, the clothes, the confidence, etc.) as long as she's not harmful to others. We just cant relate to her.
Let's be real, it's the wealth that we hate. A poor girl doing these things are just a jumping clown but a rich girl is a threat. Hating rich people is a pastime for everyone.
I am actually working on a separate video essay that will be about money and women in k-dramas, that will come out some time in the future, stay tuned :)
I liked all the points in this video, I don’t like the inclusion of the mean girl from My First First Love. She actually was a problem, and she definitely didn’t deserve any sympathy until the very END of the show. I think she’s a good example of a well written antagonist that really didn’t need (and sometimes didn’t deserve) a redemption arc. It’s ok to have villainous female characters if written well, and I think she falls under that category. I’m willing to defend myself against anyone that disagrees, or if anybody just wants an explanation I still have the rant I wrote about her Lol.
Yes, I would love a rant, I want to understand the argument better, because I was debating whether I want to include her for the exact opposite reason :) I think she wasn't bad enough to be included on this list - when I was rewatching the show I felt like she was pretty chill and reasonable compared to the other villains who attempted murder or tried actively ruining their enemies lives. But maybe you can change my opinion, I want to hear what you think :)
@@kdramaresearchinstitute well here’s goes nothing! To start, stylistically the show was subtle, more slice of life. It wasn’t quirky or over the top in any way (save for some humor with the side couple) - like most romcoms are. It wouldn’t make sense for her to be an aggressively evil and scheming character if the show itself isn’t like that. One thing I want to note, it’s very obvious the show was written by a woman; the way she is written is very much the type of subtle “evil” women are capable of. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the show, so I remember a lot but it might not be perfectly chronological, bear with me please :) Why she wasn’t a good girlfriend; she is seen multiple times catering to different men so she can gain something from each of them, and she does this with the male lead as well. They never actually label the relationship, he just kept calling her his girlfriend and she didn’t correct him, but she didn’t reciprocate it either. We know that she strings multiple men along to do her bidding, but if the male lead even remotely mentions his friend (the female lead) she gets jealous as if she has a right to be jealous when she’d been cheating the whole time. You mentioned in your video that if a woman is seen with other men she’s automatically cheating, but it’s stated that she didn’t take their relationship seriously to begin with, and she was seen with other men before their relationship AND during their relationship. So why does she get jealous? Why does she claim he deserves a slap for stringing her along when he liked someone else? Because she was using him, and the female lead caught on and confronted her about it. In her view, the female lead was a threat to her perfect manipulation plan. She says some pretty biting things to the female lead when she’s confronted, and immediately masks it all with some sick sort of sweetness that just further shows how manipulative she is. Why she’s not a good person in general; She and the male lead sign up for a film/photography competition. She states VERY CLEARLY that newcomers with “untainted vision” have a high chance of winning competitions, which makes it pretty obvious that she teamed up with him to profit off of his newbie status. She says she’ll come up with their topic, but he needs to take care of the filming by himself. She also puts other film and photography projects of hers under his care so that she can “focus on the competition” - despite him doing most of the work for the competition to begin with. The female lead points this out, but at this point the male lead is too head over heels and blinded by the “villainess” to listen to the female lead (which is why she confronts her and why the “villainess” starts telling the male lead that the female lead is a “problem for their relationship”). In the group project for the class she has with the female lead, she’s careless with their meeting times, and never has anything to contribute. She takes whatever work they give her, but they don’t see any progress on her end until she turns it in last minute (we later find out the male lead did her portion of the project). In general, nobody likes the slacker in a group project; sometimes people are very busy, but more often than not they just couldn’t care less about doing the work. Yes, she never pursued him (he quite aggressively pursued her) but once she realized he could be useful she allowed it. Yes, she never schemed to take down the female lead (like destroy her life, career, or happiness) - however she did try to ruin the bond the leads had in order to strengthen the power she had over the male lead. As far as backstory? We’re not given much. We’re given hints that she has a complicated relationship with her father, but it’s barely elaborated upon and then all of a sudden she has a redemption arc at the very end, where we get a mention of her apparently mending things with her father. None of it explains why she treats everyone the way she does, so we’re not even given the chance to say “oh that makes sense” (even though none of it would’ve been excusable just because she had tragic backstory, but that’s a totally different discussion). My sloppy conclusion; she was manipulative and VERY subtle about it, which made her a very smart antagonist that was interesting to watch - but if she were a real person I would probably punch her if I knew her. Lastly, she’s very realistically written because she was A LOT like a girl I went to school with, it is actually very weird how similar they are. I knew that girl very well, and she was an awful person, much like this character. That last bit was just a side explanation of my experience with people like this, and not at all one of my points on why I think she’s one of the few antagonists undeserving of our sympathy. Lastly, I don’t think she’s written in a sexist way, and not just because the writer is a woman (we all know women are very capable of writing female characters in a sexist way just as much as men are). She’s not severely “punished”, she’s not depicted as too smart or too confident to be attractive, she’s not super aggressive in any of her approaches. The only thing she has in common with other evil second lead females is that she’s pretty and well-dressed and seems to come from money. She’s not arrogant, materialistic (except maybe with that guy in the fancy car? But we don’t actually know how much his wealth contributed to their relationship, so I’m not going to jump to any conclusions and say she’s a materialistic gold digger), or bratty. She just … simply exists as is.
Thank you for writing this out, I really appreciate it :) I made the whole channel so I can discuss kdramas with people, so this is perfect! I see your point, you have some very compelling arguments. I think she still deserves to be on this list though - not every literal point I make applies to every character mentioned, it is more of an exploration of a character archetype, which has some common themes - like her style, her behavior and her role in the narrative, I think it still applies to the villainess in My First First Love. They are not a carbon copy of each other, they all have different motivations and backstories (or lack thereof). But the overall themes in all these kdramas are pretty similar. A villainess ina slice of life university romcom does not behave the same way the mean hairess behaves in a soap opera like drama, the character is written in a way that is appropriate for the genre. I agree that she is written in a very subtle and realistic way, she is not the hysterical and loud type, she is more normal, but she is by far not the worst offender of all the feminine villains that were mentioned in the video. Yes, she does some provocative stuff that is mean, but the antagonists in the other k-dramas physically attack people, blackmail people and one of them attempst to murder the female lead. Being a freerider in a group project is bad, but not nearly as bad as beating up people or shoving someone into traffic. In comparison to the other ones she is really tame (which I guess is your point? that she doesn't behave like the other ones in the extreme moments). Also, there is actually a scene in which she and the ML decide that they are now officially dating, so she does acknowledge it and is pretty excited about it. She also does like offloading all of her work on guys who are clearly into her and is pretty flirt with men. But the male lead is also kind of using her, he is into her because of her looks and because of hot how and popular she is. I don't think it is ever confirmed whether she is actually cheating though, all we see is her getting into a guys car and have a lot of admirers around her. But the male lead also lies quite a lot - he doesn't tell his girlfriend that he lives with a woman. The female lead also has a relationship, but that doesn't stop her from having an emotional affair with the ML. The villainess is jealous because it seems like he is lying about living together with a woman and being in love with her, which is true by the way and not baseless jealousy. I don't think I would like it if I dated a guy who lied about living together with a woman he is in love with. Her demands are not unreasonable - she gives her boyfriend a chance to prove that this is not an affair and that it would be more appropriate to move out for the sake of both of their relationships. One of the points in my videos is that yes, the villainess is not an innocent bystander, she is messy, but so is the male lead and he is not a villain even though he does the exact same things. She does pretty gracefully break it off without any hard feelings and wishes him luck, She is also the first of all the people in the love triangle (square?) to admit that this isn't working and steps away. I remembered her as more bitchy and annoying, but on the rewatch for this video essay I kind of realized that she doesn't do anything extreme, she is not as bad as I remembered her. Thank you again for taking the time to comment, I have a lot of interesting things to think about :)
I see that more and more jang man wol type of girl main character (strong, badass, fashionable, have traumatic past, rich, kinda an asshole to everyone but people she's really close with) is appearing more and more. The latest drama I watch, tale of the nine tailed season 2 has this girl archetype (the bird mountain goddess) It's not bad but it kinda get boring sometimes. I would love to see more different personalities in kdramas, both male and female.
Totally! As much as I love the tropes, I do want to see different and more nuanced protagonists and not just the same 3 archetypes repeated over and over again
Great video, it's so insightful and smartly written. Your delivery is also reall funny at times. She is confident and that is... bad? 😆 It was really fun to watch, thank you!
in real life it's the opposite, shy girls are underappreciated, especially in high school and university (class participation lol) I've been both 'extremes' and neither is a win, there's no way to win xD just find a right friend/lover
Hello, I’ve just found your channel and this is the first video of yours I’ve watched and I have to say, I love the quality of this video! I always have a soft spot for complex, messy, and occasionally mean or cruel female characters, but I feel like these sorts of characters are always “created” easily but never really “engaged with” well, if you know what I mean? Like the writers have SEEN the classics, they know the formula that gets them the viewers, but instead of using the formula to create interesting innovative stories, so many writing rooms end up stuck regurgitating the same misogynistic rhetoric. Like, for example, when you were describing the contrast between the Villainess and the Natural Girl, I couldnt help but think “cut the man out and let these two character types enter a dialogue with EACH OTHER!!!” Because when you break them down, the Villainess and the Natural Girl are foils. Seeing them interact with each other, discuss each others’ philosophies and lives and experiences, that could be so so interesting. Especially because it seems that these two character types have a lot they can teach EACH OTHER, not just the Natural Girl to the Villainess. The Villainess is fashionable, witty, ambitious, confident (or knows how to act confident even when desperately self-loathing), the Villainess understands the purpose of artifice, but can also be mean and manipulative. The Natural Girl is genuine, kind, empathetic, but also maybe a pushover and naive. They make up for each other: The Villainess can show the Natural Girl how to be confident and assertive in male-dominated workplaces, or the value of being straightforward or cruel to people who just dont listen (like those aggressive, childish male leads). In turn, the Natural Girl can teach the Villainess the value of earnestness and kindness, the value in vulnerability as the villainess learns to overcome the shackles of her trauma through empathy and respect for herself and the person she is. These two images of femininity are constantly placed in diametric opposition, almost because if they got along, everyone knows they’d be unstoppable 😭. Being assertive and being kind are NOT mutually exclusive, I wish we got so many more stories with interesting, non-antagonist (or even more complex) dynamics between female characters that arent over a man. That said, I just wanted to affirm the quality of your content and the conciseness with which you articulate your ideas in this video essay! I think I found a new channel to binge 😋 I wish you future success in your video essay endeavors!!
I am waiting for a K-drama in which the evil rich girl and the natural shy girl ditch the man and start dating each other and figure out that they had wrong ideas about each other from the start and don't make it about men!
As I am someone who is from a rich background I can tell you that you have be mean and rude most of the times. How I know this you are wondering? Cause I noticed many people trying to put down my mother because she is a lady in the business society. Whether it be a women or a man everyone tries to come out as feisty, dominating or a high person than my mother. Even if you treat them with respect they still try to put you down.
i do wonder how much of the natural archetype of girl depends on Korea's history of confucianism, and the preference for the soft, kind, unasuming, self-sactrificing and pure...just in modern aesthetics.
Probably a lot! I still don't fully understand all the intricacies of the influence (neo?)confucianism has on Korean societal norms, but it wouldn't surprise me
But what about Park Yeon- jin of The Glory? She’s clearly the rich hyperfeminine type, she has dark hair but I couldn’t feel for her AT ALL. She is just THAT cruel. Still, she was my fave character in The Glory. But that has probably to do with the fact that Lim Ji-yeon portrayed her and she’s just one of my fave actresses. She steels the show in everything she’s in, she’s exceptionally talented. ❤
about hyperfeminine characters in kdramas: i recommend watching the kdrama "eve". seo yeji's roles do a good job of reversing that narrative. or it kinda explores the hyper-femininity from another perspective.
Agree! I think a big part of it is that we automatically root for the protagonist and this is who's point of view we see. Anytime these characters get a proper storyline, they no longer seem like villains!
Yeah like kdramas have the male version of this archetype but he is portrayed as sexy, confident bad boy that ends up being 1-softie inside and has a redemption arc or 2-becames the villain or second male lead. Even if he is the villain or second lead, he is always sexy, macho, his bad behavior towards others is normalized even. Meanwhile , the pretty rich mean girl always is really judged by the script, doesnt matter if she has a happy ending. It is a similarity I see often in telenovelas of my country lmao, but recent kdramas are writing more gray characters instead of just repeating the same plots every single kdrama
Yes, it definitely got better in the recent years with more complex characters and morally grey protagonists that are not the same 3 cookie cutter cliches!
On penthouse I really like the rich girl, but they truly didn’t know what to do with her. She s been abuse all her life and has huge abandonment issue. When her mom who never help her when getting beat, put her all into her « real » daughter and stop giving her attention. And the mom dare to be choked that her daughter is going back to be a bully. and later she go back to nice with no explication. I wanted her to have a real character arc and therapy but whatever.
Dude seriously it made me so mad that they just threw her away from the plot without giving her the justice she deserved. Yes she was a bully but so was her brother but oh no, he became good person as soon as Rona became his girlfriend. Everyone blamed Jugyeon for burning her sister in the car but no one puts the blame on the brother. He fucking promised her that he would be with her forever to save them from their father but he literally abandoned her so cold heartedly and then had the nerve to act worried about her when his decision was the one that pushed her to go back to her father. And don't get me started on FL, their mother. Yes sure she was trying to take care of her "biological" daughter and step children but why did no one blame her when she literally left both of them to die with their father because she wanted her revenge. She could have taken them with her. But what irked me the most was how she favoured Rona more than her child even in places where Jugyeon deserved it, like the SNU pass. That was one thing she was so much passionate about yet her mother thrashed her dream just because she thought "oh rona deserves better" I do not hate Rona she had her own issues but why villianize an abuse victim as well?
@@wildfictions705 omg right ! at first she wasn't against rona when she became her "sister" but only once she felt that she was getting her place stolen she acted like a bully again. At first i believe it was made on purpuse by the writter, but after the school tiral ; i understood that they didn't ment to treat her psychology at all. - all her mom and dad talk about all her life, is being the best at the opera competition, she value herself only trough this. Yet the first things her mom do one she get rona encouragement and tell the other to quit. meanning you are worthless. - I worked with bullies and abused child and they all want the same things : attention. So if you neglect your child they will behave baddly, and turn to the parent who give them attention even if he will abuse them. Because to the child abuse is a type of attention. The contrary of love isn't hate, it's indifference. - at no moment the mom or brother stopped t ask her why? how? They all assumed he was bad because she's like that, even worst because she take after her father, implying that child of abuse are doomed to be abuser/ being fucked up. It put a stigma on abuse child that here something wrong with them. When there nothing in the world that they could have done to not being abuse. it's not their fault ! ( a concept that kids have huge amount of trouble assimilate since all their life they put the blame on them, "i'm stupid so dad beat me if i get a bad grade" etc...). People will say that not all beaten kids become violent but it's only if they have someone els showing them a other way. In penthouse, the mom never told the children it was bad or abnormal. she never came to help them. SO how dare she act surprise that her children also use violence to express them self. how can the writter be so uneducated on child abuse, when they make the love interest a child of abuse himself... - All the rich kids take part in bullying, rona is the only one who is a victim. So how come the other don't get a shame as much ? Even the other girl who also get bulllied later on, was a bully prior. So they excuse her bad behavior because now she know how it is. You can be a victim and also being a vilain. the other boy also was a bully, the brother beaten up guys for fun, yet only the rich and confident girl get a social/public conviction. she end up poor working like a "normal" person... when it's not being humble that she needed but a support system and therapy to unlearn the abuse she learn all her life. To me this drama didn't help any korean teenager to realize that bullying is bad, but more that the bully are pyscopath or child that are being abused. So the teasing they do at school, have nothing to do with this crazy loud bitch. And even if it's a little overboard sometimes, they aren't as obnoxious as this girl so they will never get caught... ( that was long sorry, but i'm so pissed by the irresponsibility and misogyny of this drama ...)
@@sophietessier8998 Really, it was so fucking infuriating to see such bullshit in this show. Like yes she was wrong and deserved punishment but what about the other kids. Just because they got their so called "improvement" they are suddenly exempted from being called bully. That whole group of rich kids were bullies and just because few of them became decent, no one pointed the flaw in them. Whereas she was dumped with all the accusations. Like remember how she was so traumatized when she realized it was her own sister that she tried to burn in the car, imagine living with that guilt your whole life. And then she was pushed down the hierarchy of wealth just so she could be shown that she was "humbled". The actual people who needed to be humbled were her mother and her brother who did nothing to help her and yet had the audacity to blame her for things which was the fault of so many people. The mother and brother literally broke her to pieces. When all she wanted was their love and attention, they acted as if she was a spawn of devil. Whereas all the abuse she went through was never her fault. The brother was a piece of shit and yet he was spared by people because apparently he changed when Rona came, like do people seriously think that it is this easy. He and the other kids were equally responsible for ruining the life of the dead sister. People kept saying how the sister did not turn out bad even after going through many things in childhood, but just like you said, she probably had few people who consoled her. When she called him saying she was leaving, he straight up said to her she was nothing to him and wanted to do nothing with her. Rona was important to him but so was his sister. I do not understand why they wanted to show that love is more important than siblings when people can just give both important relations equal efforts And don't even get me started on the mother. She was the most ignorant person in the whole series when it comes to all the parents. All she cared about was the revenge, she did not even once think what her kids would suffer if she were to die. And then had the audacity to act hurt when Jukyung rejected her after she came back. How can you do this with a child who went through abuse almost everytime she saw her father and yet make them feel like they are worthless? She made her think she could become an opera singer one day, she definitely had the skills but still wanted to act like a mother to a stranger rather than giving the same love to her kid, no matter biological or not. Plus the way this show emphasized so much on blood relations that it was disgusting! Blood does not define who is your family, it is the bond and love! Not to forget, just like you mentioned, they used abuse as something to fill the plot. To me, it seemed as if the abuse was inserted only to make the villain look more merciless and ruthless. They wanted nothing to do with the progression in the mentality of an abused victim. She was just added to the storyline to add some "twist" and crazy factor and wanted a scapegoat to shoulder all the blame. They made her seem as the worst human when others were the same as her. They were given free passes with a slap on wrist while her character was dirtied by their deeds included with hers.
I hated how main characters smallest issues are made big deal where one tragic incident is there whole personality while second leads go through shit and still be nice it's it's downplayed like ' it's not that deep bro " . When they actually have a personality it's considered immature or wrong and for god sake . what the heck the second or villains leads don't go through for the love but literally gets played or rejected while male characters gonna make other feel like shit and does the bare minimum and bam great love like wtf is that atleast female leads act like fucking care sometimes but male literally doesn't gives a shit gosh tempted series is whole example even in the main lead perspective you can see the hypocrisy of the main leads . also how the main leads gets forgiven for the shitty things but second leads turn good then also they don't forgiven for it . but if they get angry rightfully so they now betrayed the main leads like make make sense .also "female leads hard works " can give her success even this happened male lead scrape goats..., back up ......I mean second lead supporting characters help but it's hers and great but when villains are second leads have success because it's her parents money or her hard work can easily taken down so the main lead can shine gosh i sHould stop otherwise I'll go forever one last thing why the heck can have happy life and move on like why they most of them have to be lonely regretting for what doging the bullet .........
There is a ton of k-dramas with substance that are not just light and fluffy romcoms :) There are a lot of shows dealing with serious topics that require a lot of thinking - you just have to try out other genres!
Femininity and masculinity are both a social construct and a pretty vague category that becomes even more abstract the more you think about it. But in this case I am using "feminine" in terms of fashion (short skirts and high heels, feminine slhousettes, makeup and nail art) and "stereotypical behaviour" (being hysterical, scandalous and catty). Neither of these actually are exclusive to women, which is a point I make in the video too - a lot of the traits can also be found in the male lead, they are just not considered feminine or negative for him. I don't think there is such a thing as "actual feminine traits", because any possible trait can be found in anybody
"You can tell she is no longer evil because now she is a brunette" lol, totally
Not even brunette, that hair is pretty black lol
i laughed
really interesting observation lmao
This is why I love It's Ok to not be OK. Ko Moon Young is technically a "hyperfeminine rich girl" but she's actual the protagonist and the "natural girl" isn't picked or shown to be the 'way real women should be'
So refreshing to have an imperfect protagonist, I hope K-dramas do this more often in the future!
Yesss, I was thinking about that Kdrama throughout the whole video
Itaewon Class too.
Also Graceful Family with Im Soo Hyang ❤
@@kaylahensley1581itaewoon class the woman he fancied throughout is the hyperfemine. He liked the pretty girl and not the diwn to earth natural girl
These villains are more relatable than the male and female lead combined coz she is flawed and that makes her more human. The only problem is that she is often made to do horrible things just so the audience will hate her. As an example the mean girl in true beauty. She was a sympathetic and relatable character, a badass and girl crush material but they ruined her character at the end by making her fall for Suho. It felt so forced and unnecessary.
She didn't fall for him at the end though, she already had suppressed feelings for him fr the start, at least that's how I felt.
true! She is my most favorite character until she knows about suho and ju kyong
@@Maya_heehow much was it falling for him and how much was it he is the only male figure to ever treat me as an equal and care for me.
She is often treated really badly and does not know how to act with other people. That's why, she wears a mask of fakeness or is immediate arrogant. There is no one to support her or help her out. So often for validation, she wears expensive clothes and does her makeup so that people will give her attention and help her. It just feels sad
She is such a nuanced and complex character!
It's realistic (╯︵╰,)
Dang the similiarities between female villian and male lead is so crazy!!!! Really goes to show how aware you have to be when consuming media and creating ideals.
That’s what I noticed as well! Really crazy!
This is why I love the whole “villainess” theme going around the webcomic and webnovel world rn. Honestly love a story about the “villainess” makes you understand how stupid the things we loved before seem
It is funny how the second ML is shown as an approachable and down to earth guy who is a walking green flag but the second FL is shown as a woman who needs to put others down just to make herself feel better. It is frustrating to see women who are confident with their ownselves shown as selfish and mean whereas the FL is someone who is as soft as flower and needs protection from world by a man. This shows how these drama send a message that "look if a girl is hot, sexy, cool and confident, then she is only good to be your girlfriend but not wife. You need someone who feels insecure with themselves to make yourself look manly". Sure in the recent years there has been improvement in such stereotypical plots but there is still a huge number of shows made just like this. They make people want to believe that if a girl is not able to stand up for herself (whatever is the reason) then you need to pursue her because apparently she is worth it. But if you want fun and a time pass, feel free to hook up with a bold and confident woman. This makes people create a narrative in their mind that this is how a woman is supposed to act like.
Also it is hilarious to me how they show that working in a minimum wage job is better than having a successful career in top fields because apparently we just get high paid jobs out of the blue, lmao. I mean it is a simple fact that the person who has a successful career now had worked back when it was needed and that maybe the so called "hard working girl" is just under qualified for the work the second FL does. It is as if earning good money automatically makes you evil.
Everything you said is absolutely on point, I agree! I actually initially had a little chapter discussing money, gender and class dynamics in these kdramas - the only moral way for women to get acess to money is by getting together with a rich man, having your own money makes a female character evil. But I am actually thinking of making a separate episode about money in k-dramas, about this topic!
@@kdramaresearchinstitute Yeah that would be wonderful to touch such topics. It is so much hypocritical that when a man earns money he is praised because he is earning to support his family but if a woman does the same she is called evil and power-hungry when she probably wants to support her parents as well. It shows how misogyny has been rooted so deep in society. People don't understand what being independent is. When used financially, it is when you do not want to depend on others to provide you basic needs of amenities but people always twist this narrative when a female says she wants to become independent. You can be financially independent and yet be dependent emotionally on the person you love and trust.
Honestly it feels like this idea of the "Normal Girl" vs the "Rich/Popular Girl" is/was intended to target a female audience because the normal girl is supposed to be more relatable to majority of the female audience. The Rich Girl is the stand-in for whoever the audience perceives as the "one who gets everything because she is rich/popular". That would make this the female equivalent of the "Normal Guy/Nerd" vs the "Popular Guy/Jock" dynamic that exists in stories that target a male audience. In those stories the Nerd gets the girl because of all his positive traits. This is also treated as a substance vs style issue.
But as is the case with most stories, as storytelling evolves the antagonists become more fleshed out and complex. So now we have the mean girl being more than just "mean", but the stories still treat her like the older one-dimensional antagonist. This creates the problem: Her role in the story is pre-decided. Regardless of how well reasoned the mean girl's character is, she is meant to be the antagonist that the "normal girl" (i.e. the audience surrogate) is meant to beat. And this leads to all the problematic implications that the video highlighted. Which probably isn't the intention (I hope). The message isn't that the independent aggressive popular girl isn't wife material, but rather that "The romantic hero will pick you over the popular mean girl because she is all style to your substance". Which is similar to the message of the Nerd gets the girl story that targets guys.
This doesn't make it right. It just explains where this trope likely comes from.
I don't like how the second ML is always in love with the FL for two reasons. One it perpetuates the notion that man and woman can’t be true friends because love always gets in the way and two because it’s messed up to expect that just because you have feelings for your friends they will return them.
Oh I remember in school I was bullied by this natural humble girl for being the hyperfeminine overdressed vain girl 💀
She probably watched too much kdrama with this stereotype and think she’s the main character.
OMG, we found the real villain! Someone should make a k-drama that reverses the roles and subverts the trope.
Same. I was bullied for being a girly girl
oop
Why we girly girl always being bullied n compensated by " not like other girls" girls
Same. Me too.. Because the boy i had a crush on likes her. I am not a fashionable girl, but i had good grades and confidence.
I think one “villainess” character I liked was Seo Dan from Crash Landing on You. She was clearly feminine, as was the female lead but both were portrayed and emotionally strong, intelligent and capable of pursuing what they wanted. Importantly her story wasn’t centred around ruining the main characters. She was a roadblock to the main characters but not really an antagonist.
Many may disagree but I kind of wish she did have a happy ending with her guy. I know she didn’t need him to live the rest of her life well, but it would have been nice.
The hating on self care makes me sad. I used to be pretty anxious and cope by biting my nails. The zoom into perfectly manicured nails on a villain makes me roll my eyes. Self care is about ME. I now grow my nails and do nail art bc I am no longer in a place where I need to bite them, and I find painting fun & already did it digitally/on canvas. Most people don’t even notice them. The people who do- are very nice, friendly women usually.
Yes, I think she was well written, she was mean in the beginning, but the plot took time to explore how she feels! Makeup being for vain people is such a weird beauty standard, because women don't get to just not use makeup, we are always supposed to try and improve our beauty, never good enough. But also using it makes someone superficial and vain. Like which one is it?!
It's curious but my manicurist told me that some people do its nails because anxiety, it helps them to avoid biting it
Seo Dan is probably one of my characters from a drama. I wouldn’t even consider her a villain, more like you said “a roadblock”. But I do wish she got her happy ending, but in a way she got to be free which was the closest she could get to the guy she liked.
I think the fact that she was gives her own storyline and we see her do other stuff besides standing in the way of the main couple is what makes her not a villain. If they stopped showing her story at the point where the audience still though she was annoying, she would be a one dimensional villain, but them telling her story in more detail is what makes her a complex and relatable character
Oh yeah! Seo Dan was amazing! And I loved her fashion style. The last scenes with the guy had be bawling my eyes out like crazy. I wanted them both to be happy, specially as the guy ultimately redeemed himself.
this goes hand in hand with the rising umber of villainess stories in korean and japanese media . case in point: villainess isekai manhwas and webtoons. if you are in this space, you get what i mean. there is something curious about how the villain, most importantly the vialliness, is treated. it's as though they exist as a plot device to move the heroine's story and are throwaway characters in the end. rarely do we see a proper villainess character treated a humane manner. it is only now that we see a proliferation of stories with them as the mc. it's so saturated, they've fallen prey to the same evil vs. good trope it attempted to subvert. it probably boils down to good storytelling, but I can count with my toes the number of antihero stories that drive a point without having to disparage its other characters or appeal to the reader/viewer's sympathy.
Hmm, I actually can't think of a well written villainess from any manhwa/webtoon. I guess there are complex female villains in the horror manga space, like with Junji Ito and Shuzo Oshimi, but this is a completely different genre.
I have read quite a lot of the whole “villainess” genre… but honestly, the closest I can think of rn is probably “your throne”
The villainess trope is not actually using an actual villainess as a protagonist. Most of the time it's a Mary Sue character dressed up and labeled as a villain. They don't even use a "villainess" character design, most of them are wide eyed innocent looking. They are also not the confident, ambitious,self assured and fashion forward villainess they are marketed to be. Its click bait at this point.
I think this can also be attributed to the fact that the isekai and reincarnation of villianess are of natural girls. The body may be a villianess but the personality and soul is from a natural girl who's middle class and a hard worker and quirky.
@@kst9955 exactly! it’s a disservice honestly
@@kst9955 Do you know my Godness 💘: Roxana Agrece 🦋(How to Protect the Heroine’s Older Brother)? Or Eris Miserian (Kill the Villainess), Artizea Rosan (The Villainess Lives Twice), Rita/Verta (Concentration of Malice). All of them are real villainess ~\(≧▽≦)/~.
I hated the characters in cheese in the trap both ML and his sister(?) because the potrayal of her was so caricaturised that at some point I felt she just existed for our hatred. I dont want to talk about how much hate the ML but that would be a whole essay
I was so confused about the ML, I couldn't tell if we are supposed to root for them to get together or not, the FL felt super uncomfortable around him!
SHE WAAAAAAS
@@kdramaresearchinstitute 😂 Then there’s the second ml looking like a saint.
@@kdramaresearchinstituteYoo Jung is the worst ML. I'll die on that hill but Baek In-Ha was so amazing. I loved her and her twin's characters and they were definitely the most interesting ones in the show and when I saw their other projects I wasn't surprised. They're really good. I loved In-Ha and she's definitely my favorite female character.
@@kdramaresearchinstitute Honestly I hated sooooo much the ML and the FL, but Baek In-ha was iconic. Literally I just watched the whole show because of her, her situation was sad at some point but she was also a comedic character. I was never able to hate her, also the actress is so beautiful and expressive I'ts almost unreal.
"Her complexity and her backstory are in the text, but we still interpret her as a one-dimensional villain. Do we hate her because she was written this way? Maybe we, the audience, are the real villain in her story" is such a good way of phrasing it (I made it shorter tho).
The last conclusion was so great and made me yell "thank you!" in agreement. Even in life, other people can be our "audience" and have their own ideas about us. I just feel like I want to focus on what I think of myself. It doesn't mean it's okay to be rude or mean, just that being confident/rich/competitive or even messy/insecure/emotional is a part of my experience and others can't always understand what I am going through.
The last shot of the video is a mirror the viewers should look into, ha!
boy stfu "maybe we are the villain" no b shes just a terrible person rope it
Ok love this video and channel. As a guy who likes Kdramas this really helps me things in a different view. The idea that the male lead is problematic - of which Boys over Flowers is the most obvious example - fairly intuitive but you provided more sympathy for the villainess. Well written and said.
This is why I like Komoon Yeoung and Jang Man Wol. I could not pin point why showcasing the hyperfeminine trope as villain made me uncomfortable and why I was done with having tomboy girls as the protagonists. As a hyperfeminine woman myself I can tell some people really need to check their internalized misogyny as well as their insecurities.
I feel like kdramas always villanise femenine traits I wish we could get more dramas with a rich confident and femenine female lead :((
I think it has been getting better, there are way more confident and strong female leads and also rich CEO female leads, but those also have their problems. One of the upcoming videos that I am working on is about money and gender in k-dramas, where I will discuss the trope of the unhappy rich woman who needs to experience a more humble lifestyle to become a happy person.
@kdramaresearchinstitute The first K drama that comes to mind is Prosecutor Princess. I get so scared when I see a rich female lead because they like to make the female lead lose her wealth so that the male lead could be her support or so that she becomes humbled and apologise to the people she had wronged in the initial episodes.
Run on she was rich and confident
@tarrysmile Isn't she in the second couple though? If it's a main character who's an heiress Island Won Mi Ho is the latest one I remember.
Thankfully we can see this is part of the past now. A lot of modern kdramas now have hyper feminine badass character as the female lead and it’s awesome. In fact Korea started way before it became a trend on the west, which I really like! Notable examples are It’s ok to not be ok, Hotel de Luna, Crash-landing on you, and many more
Yes, it definitely got better in the last couple of years, we are luckily moving on from these overused tropes and getting more nuanced female characters!
I sometimes, sympathize for the antagonist. In your words, she is used as an accessory by men. She spends hours on her looks because her beauty and money is what she has got and she can't live without it. She just wants to survive and deep down, wants to be loved. The male lead, who treats her kindly, is now her world and when she gets rejected, she does not know who to blame so she blames the female lead.
Thank you for this. The treatment of what i call the Evil Rival Girlfriend is an ongoing source of frustration for me in kdramas. It’s even more obvious in many Cdramas, where there may even be a few Rival Girlfriends, and all of them are rarely given more than two character traits-an obsessive, entitled desire for her target, and a lack of moral compass when it comes to pursuing him. The trope feels like the writers telling us, “wow, girls sure do be boy crazy. Look how catty they are. Look how Not Like Other Girls our heroine is.”
It doesn’t help, too, that because writers usually need a reason to write a character as anything but cis male, male coded villains in dramas are given a myriad of motivations-hunger for power, greed and entitlement, abusive past, psychosis-while, with very few exceptions, the only motivation given to a femme coded villain is “i want him, so he’s MINE.” She rarely even acts as the ultimate villain in her story, just a persistent complication on the way to addressing the primary conflict.
Uuh, Evil Rival Girlfriend, I like the name! Yeah, some of the examples of that character are incrdibly one dimensional, she is just hot and evil. Actually a pretty universal villain, that is found in any countries movies in TV shows, she is also in bollywood and hollywood movies too...
@@kdramaresearchinstitute Very true. Even in US media, it’s only fairly recently that we’ve gotten stories that feature an overtly girly heroine like legally blonde or a heroine who obsessively chases the object of her affections like crazy ex girlfriend.
As you said, i think all of it just leans into our own expectations about what “good femininity” is supposed to look like, what underlying assumptions feed into that image, and how little room characters have to deviate from the mold.
As i think about it, i’m also noticing how much of our attitudes about the Evil Rival Girlfriend seem rooted in the fact that she actively pursues rather than passively accepting the attention that’s given to her.
Years ago, i recall a sociologist describing snow white as a story that contrasts two women-one who actively pursues what she wants, and one who passively accepts or reacts to what comes to her. Ultimately, the queen’s actions send snow white into a state where she’s so passive she’s comatose, and it’s only in this state of extreme passivity that she can achieve the romance she needs to prevail.
Damn, literally the most passive a woman can be! I also had a whole part in my script that I didn't finish about the class implications of that trope. The evil woman just has money or has a prestigious job, and that makes her morally corrupted and greedy for money. She wants to date a rich successful man, which makes her a gold digger (even though she is rich too, so technically she just wants to date someone who has a similar status and background to her). And the rich girl doesn't have acess to money, her family is poor and she has to work in a hard and demanding job. But she does not get rewarded by her job by getting a promotion, she is rewarded by dating a rich man. To stay pure and not morally corrupted a woman doesn't get to have her own money and sh is not supposed to want money at all, money is for men. I removed that part of the video, because it actually doesn't apply to a lot of the K-dramas that I used as examples, in several of these the hero actually does get a cool job that pays better. Pursuing actively and having money makes women evil. Society wants women to stay poor, work really hard and don't make any decisions, otherwise she is a villain.
Idk, for me it feels like the camera completely influences the audience to interpret the female antagonist as hateful and annoying. Art direction has a lot of power to how we interpret a story, even if the girl is complex on the text it self the camera, colors, music, have the power to make the audience perceive her as just an evil witch.
Yes, totally! I think the music in the background influences the perception a lot. When the feminine villain is physically fighting there is often silly comedy music playing in the background, and when the male leads fight there is often either serious music or a romantic ballad playing in the background. The camera does the same.
I keep thinking about what it is that makes her a villain, and I think a lot of it boils down to who is the protagonist, we automatically root for the main character even if they are a flawed person. That's why it is so disorienting and refreshing when shows don't have one protagonist and no clear distinction between villains and heroes, like who am I supposed to be rooting for?
The villain is made to seem like a ‘villain’ bc they’re flawed and human. People like the idea of perfect and try to enforce it as being the ‘good’, which is why the hero is always ‘good’ and liked by other characters and the audience. The villain is usually more realistic which people don’t really like bc imperfection is realistic and society craves the former. Maybe it’s why villains are becoming more popular bc plp are realising that the characters were not born that way but made to be like that and have had so much thought and detail put into them like our own lives, (plp are sometimes able to sympathise and relate to them allowing them to understand the character) whereas heros were moulded from unattainable standards and expectations, completely setting them apart from ordinary human beings. I could honestly go on but that’s just a summary of my observation.
But there are a lot of examples of the protagonists being flawed, especially with the male lead. I feel like we as the audience automatically root for the protagonist, no matter how bad their decisions are, because that is point of view character. Just the fact that they are the main hero tells us that this is who we are supposed to root for
And that's why I love See you in my 19th life. When I first read the webtoon, I fell in love with Ban Ji Eum. She is everything I love. She's confident, competent, and independent. She knows her worth and what she wants.
Touch your heart is so cute I loved it! I gotta see a video on how "strong female leads" are only strong in the beginning of the drama.
I have been thinking of making a video on strong female leads, so if you have any specific examples you are thinking of, let me know :)
This channel is seriously underrated! We need more angels like you to help people see the problematic side of these glittery dramas.
Also consider that even if the second ml is more similar to the fl in terms of kindness and gentleness, but cos of tradional gender stereotypes (masculinity), the more aggressive or arrogant ml is the "better man" for the submissive fl.
Damn, seeing this video makes me so happy because the double standard has also been bothering me for a while but not sure how to put it into words. Thank you for the amazing analysis!
I always ship the hyperfeminine antihero with the female lead 😂
Yes, I am still waiting for a kdrama to make this trope into an enemies to lovers sapphic love story! The plot twist we deserve
this was a really awesome video essay on this character archetype. i agree its almost always the audience who villainize her simply for existing against the protagonist. i've found that kdrama and manhwa fans have 0 room for nuance and don't care about character complexity. the writer could be weaving an incredibly deep and flawed character with a horrific and touching background that comments on society and you'll see hundreds of comments like "this b*tch is trash" "let her d*e" etc (esp anything on webtoons/tappytoons like remarried empress)
I have red a lot of comments on youtube, reddit and blogs about these specific characters and it seems super divided and polarizing: there are a lot of people commenting stuff like "i hate her so much, why is she getting a happy end the the female lead is not?!", but there are also a lot of people going "ok, but she is severely traumitized she is actually super complex and deserved better".
I'm so tired of k-dramas/comics where male lead is problem, but secondary FL is portrayed like villain. "Oh, she is just my crazy ex" and he two timed SFL and FL, didnt act like mature person delivering break up speech(in second half of a season) , often broke business deal that was their future marriage and left her to deal with fall out while turning tail himself.
Like she maybe a B word. but she isnt one who started that mess.
Yes! The male lead is often the problem and the cause of her issues, but it is still her fault somehow. He is also deeply flawed and messy, but he can get away with it
Korean comics are called manhwa’s
Honestly at the end of it all These women characters lives just tend to revolve around pleasing men. Cmon like stop
I wish the writers gave them more interesting stuff to do besides being obsessed with a man and being mean to everyone!
I'm so happy every time you post
I am very happy to hear that :)
My favorite is the badass female character who doesn't bat an eye for the male lead while everyone else screams his name and fawns over him. She is different, and her dignity is her charm 😎. I wish kdrama (and Asian dramas in general) has more female characters like this.
U defined a pick me viz a viz I am not like other girls trope. I thought we were past that. I don't want to see a pick me as a lead
That sounds more like the ideal female lead in an American show or movie
So you like the "I'm not like other girls" cliche?
I've always hated the trope because is rooted in misogyny.
@@aaania9034a pick me is a girl that brings feminine women down in front of men to appeal to the male gaze. Not a pick me at all. If ur gonna shame women for having preferences about their shows, Atleast get it right 🤡 fake feminist ho
@@justthetruth3950a pick me is a girl who brings feminine women down in front of guys, so get it right cxnt
I wondered why the hyper feminine character can't be poor too, I was. Some rich people dress humbly because that is life.
Rachel from THE heirs is a perfect example and i loved herrrrrr
LMAO ok ok. I have realized that I dress like the hyperfeminine villain girl. Yes my prints are bright and I like shimmer and unusual colors, and my hair is curled almost always. And I don’t really know why that’s such a bad thing inherently.
This analysis is so spot on, I love it! Also, love that you included Dan from Crash Landing On You bc she simultaneously fits the archetype and deviates from it. That's my girl, in my eyes she can do no wrong and she did NOT deserve all the shit that got thrown her way. It felt like the narrative punishing her excessively! Also, love that you mentioned Touch Your Heart as a trope subversion! I was thinking of that FL when you mentioned the red hair. On top of that show allowing her to be hyper feminine in a positive way, the plot of the story hinges on her being ambitious enough at her job to go to great lengths to better her performance at it (working at the firm in order to obtain the role she desperately wants). She is not seen as bad for wanting this either! It's a wonderful show, very refreshing in that sense!
Prime example of the character being set up as a stereotypical mean rich girl, except the plot is interested in her feelings and tells the story beyond being the annoying obstacle! She deserved so much better!
I agree with the last part( honestly all of the video) that we the audience are the real villains in her story. I have noticed that the female lead herself stars with admiring the second female lead in both personality and visual representation and wants to be like her ( which I think is very realistic). A good example is True Beauty where the main character admires the second female lead for how "natural" pretty she is and how confident she is plus they are friends( for the most part) and I love that the lead is into makeup and works to be feminine (because it is a form of expression as you said). I do think that it's interesting that the in this drama we see the protagonist being overly feminine ( to an extent) and the second female lead the more studious and doesn't wear make-up. I do like the trope subversion and I do think the drama does it intentionally because of the class difference and how beauty is part of it.
P.S.
I will say I haven't noticed that a lot of these girls have auburn or red-brown hair( I love the comment that the moment they become brunettes they stop being evil). I do like the characters and are definitely overheated so making them the protagonist allows the audience to see their biases and to see her story in the light where she is admired.
I don't evn watch K Drama but I love watching the little clips of these characters! I don't have any hate for them (cuz I've never seen their shows) so I'm instantly just like yes I love her!!!! 😂
Great analysis. I didn't realized how steep in misogyny these kdrama are 😢
Oh there is so much more I didn't even touch on in this video! I initially wrote a part about money and gender for this video but removed it - but I will be making a separate video about it soon, because there is so much more to discuss the way characters handle money!
You are so right on!! The misogyny crosses all borders including business, art, movies, and life. PS I love your humor!
I really like sour perspective, i think it also in general that society has a specific picture of woman .. especially in Korea because its still a really conservative country
It was such an interesting essay, really opens my eyes to a seemingly one dimentional archetype
Seeing Touch Your Heart reminded me of another one of my comfort kdrama beauty inside (2018). The main female character Se-Gye is strong, confident, can stand up for herself, usually wear gorgeous dresses, and also have the image of being 'crazy' in the media due to her situation. But because of that she also just embrace the image altogether than trying to be seen as 'nice' to other people. Maybe its because she's an actress and her entire career are built upon this, but I found it interesting how she's the first character I can think of. The female from the second couple (Kang Sa-Ra) also has a very similar image, she's successful, beautiful, but was looked down upon by the business partner because at the end of the day, she's just a woman.
in real life it's the opposite, shy girls are underappreciated, especially in high school and university (class participation lol) I've been both 'extremes' and neither is a win, there's no way to win xD just find a right friend/lover/blossom alone
I think this is exactly why this trope exists - so shy girls who never got much attention from guys can feel represented on screen and escape into a fantasy where they are the most desirable woman. But this trope over corrected and villainized another type of woman instead
The diffeence is really the perspective
I loved this so much I watched this multiple times.
but most of the time i find the main leads much more annoying and completely ridiculous, since we are supposed to root for them but they make such self sabotaging choices, ends up creating a lot of their own problems then crying about it 🤣
Yeah, but they have to somehow fill out 16 episodes, lol! It is really hard to write this much plot and have chill protagonists. Like in Run On /Touch Your Heart / Her private life - the relationships in these are super mature and supportive and that's why it gets a bit boring to watch because nothing dramatic happens in their relationship. The protagonists either need to have stupid conflicts that they created themselves or there needs to be some external big conflict that is not their fault, otherwise there is no plot, haha
@@kdramaresearchinstitute agreed, it is really difficult to write interesting unique characters that can drive the plot forward constantly, i do not envy the writers' jobs but its ok bcos i do enjoy watching the villains and there are still plenty of great protagonists too!
I cannot believe how your small following, your analysis' are super insightful. There is nothing really wrong with the hyperfeminine mean girl (as in, the clothes, the confidence, etc.) as long as she's not harmful to others. We just cant relate to her.
Let's be real, it's the wealth that we hate. A poor girl doing these things are just a jumping clown but a rich girl is a threat. Hating rich people is a pastime for everyone.
I am actually working on a separate video essay that will be about money and women in k-dramas, that will come out some time in the future, stay tuned :)
I liked all the points in this video, I don’t like the inclusion of the mean girl from My First First Love. She actually was a problem, and she definitely didn’t deserve any sympathy until the very END of the show. I think she’s a good example of a well written antagonist that really didn’t need (and sometimes didn’t deserve) a redemption arc. It’s ok to have villainous female characters if written well, and I think she falls under that category.
I’m willing to defend myself against anyone that disagrees, or if anybody just wants an explanation I still have the rant I wrote about her Lol.
Yes, I would love a rant, I want to understand the argument better, because I was debating whether I want to include her for the exact opposite reason :) I think she wasn't bad enough to be included on this list - when I was rewatching the show I felt like she was pretty chill and reasonable compared to the other villains who attempted murder or tried actively ruining their enemies lives. But maybe you can change my opinion, I want to hear what you think :)
@@kdramaresearchinstitute well here’s goes nothing! To start, stylistically the show was subtle, more slice of life. It wasn’t quirky or over the top in any way (save for some humor with the side couple) - like most romcoms are. It wouldn’t make sense for her to be an aggressively evil and scheming character if the show itself isn’t like that. One thing I want to note, it’s very obvious the show was written by a woman; the way she is written is very much the type of subtle “evil” women are capable of. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the show, so I remember a lot but it might not be perfectly chronological, bear with me please :)
Why she wasn’t a good girlfriend; she is seen multiple times catering to different men so she can gain something from each of them, and she does this with the male lead as well. They never actually label the relationship, he just kept calling her his girlfriend and she didn’t correct him, but she didn’t reciprocate it either. We know that she strings multiple men along to do her bidding, but if the male lead even remotely mentions his friend (the female lead) she gets jealous as if she has a right to be jealous when she’d been cheating the whole time. You mentioned in your video that if a woman is seen with other men she’s automatically cheating, but it’s stated that she didn’t take their relationship seriously to begin with, and she was seen with other men before their relationship AND during their relationship. So why does she get jealous? Why does she claim he deserves a slap for stringing her along when he liked someone else? Because she was using him, and the female lead caught on and confronted her about it. In her view, the female lead was a threat to her perfect manipulation plan. She says some pretty biting things to the female lead when she’s confronted, and immediately masks it all with some sick sort of sweetness that just further shows how manipulative she is.
Why she’s not a good person in general;
She and the male lead sign up for a film/photography competition. She states VERY CLEARLY that newcomers with “untainted vision” have a high chance of winning competitions, which makes it pretty obvious that she teamed up with him to profit off of his newbie status. She says she’ll come up with their topic, but he needs to take care of the filming by himself. She also puts other film and photography projects of hers under his care so that she can “focus on the competition” - despite him doing most of the work for the competition to begin with. The female lead points this out, but at this point the male lead is too head over heels and blinded by the “villainess” to listen to the female lead (which is why she confronts her and why the “villainess” starts telling the male lead that the female lead is a “problem for their relationship”). In the group project for the class she has with the female lead, she’s careless with their meeting times, and never has anything to contribute. She takes whatever work they give her, but they don’t see any progress on her end until she turns it in last minute (we later find out the male lead did her portion of the project). In general, nobody likes the slacker in a group project; sometimes people are very busy, but more often than not they just couldn’t care less about doing the work.
Yes, she never pursued him (he quite aggressively pursued her) but once she realized he could be useful she allowed it.
Yes, she never schemed to take down the female lead (like destroy her life, career, or happiness) - however she did try to ruin the bond the leads had in order to strengthen the power she had over the male lead.
As far as backstory? We’re not given much. We’re given hints that she has a complicated relationship with her father, but it’s barely elaborated upon and then all of a sudden she has a redemption arc at the very end, where we get a mention of her apparently mending things with her father. None of it explains why she treats everyone the way she does, so we’re not even given the chance to say “oh that makes sense” (even though none of it would’ve been excusable just because she had tragic backstory, but that’s a totally different discussion).
My sloppy conclusion; she was manipulative and VERY subtle about it, which made her a very smart antagonist that was interesting to watch - but if she were a real person I would probably punch her if I knew her. Lastly, she’s very realistically written because she was A LOT like a girl I went to school with, it is actually very weird how similar they are. I knew that girl very well, and she was an awful person, much like this character. That last bit was just a side explanation of my experience with people like this, and not at all one of my points on why I think she’s one of the few antagonists undeserving of our sympathy.
Lastly, I don’t think she’s written in a sexist way, and not just because the writer is a woman (we all know women are very capable of writing female characters in a sexist way just as much as men are). She’s not severely “punished”, she’s not depicted as too smart or too confident to be attractive, she’s not super aggressive in any of her approaches. The only thing she has in common with other evil second lead females is that she’s pretty and well-dressed and seems to come from money. She’s not arrogant, materialistic (except maybe with that guy in the fancy car? But we don’t actually know how much his wealth contributed to their relationship, so I’m not going to jump to any conclusions and say she’s a materialistic gold digger), or bratty. She just … simply exists as is.
@@kdramaresearchinstitute I wrote a very long essay/rant. I apologize, and thank you very much if you read the whole thing!
Thank you for writing this out, I really appreciate it :) I made the whole channel so I can discuss kdramas with people, so this is perfect!
I see your point, you have some very compelling arguments. I think she still deserves to be on this list though - not every literal point I make applies to every character mentioned, it is more of an exploration of a character archetype, which has some common themes - like her style, her behavior and her role in the narrative, I think it still applies to the villainess in My First First Love. They are not a carbon copy of each other, they all have different motivations and backstories (or lack thereof). But the overall themes in all these kdramas are pretty similar. A villainess ina slice of life university romcom does not behave the same way the mean hairess behaves in a soap opera like drama, the character is written in a way that is appropriate for the genre.
I agree that she is written in a very subtle and realistic way, she is not the hysterical and loud type, she is more normal, but she is by far not the worst offender of all the feminine villains that were mentioned in the video. Yes, she does some provocative stuff that is mean, but the antagonists in the other k-dramas physically attack people, blackmail people and one of them attempst to murder the female lead. Being a freerider in a group project is bad, but not nearly as bad as beating up people or shoving someone into traffic. In comparison to the other ones she is really tame (which I guess is your point? that she doesn't behave like the other ones in the extreme moments).
Also, there is actually a scene in which she and the ML decide that they are now officially dating, so she does acknowledge it and is pretty excited about it. She also does like offloading all of her work on guys who are clearly into her and is pretty flirt with men. But the male lead is also kind of using her, he is into her because of her looks and because of hot how and popular she is. I don't think it is ever confirmed whether she is actually cheating though, all we see is her getting into a guys car and have a lot of admirers around her. But the male lead also lies quite a lot - he doesn't tell his girlfriend that he lives with a woman. The female lead also has a relationship, but that doesn't stop her from having an emotional affair with the ML. The villainess is jealous because it seems like he is lying about living together with a woman and being in love with her, which is true by the way and not baseless jealousy. I don't think I would like it if I dated a guy who lied about living together with a woman he is in love with. Her demands are not unreasonable - she gives her boyfriend a chance to prove that this is not an affair and that it would be more appropriate to move out for the sake of both of their relationships. One of the points in my videos is that yes, the villainess is not an innocent bystander, she is messy, but so is the male lead and he is not a villain even though he does the exact same things. She does pretty gracefully break it off without any hard feelings and wishes him luck, She is also the first of all the people in the love triangle (square?) to admit that this isn't working and steps away. I remembered her as more bitchy and annoying, but on the rewatch for this video essay I kind of realized that she doesn't do anything extreme, she is not as bad as I remembered her.
Thank you again for taking the time to comment, I have a lot of interesting things to think about :)
I see that more and more jang man wol type of girl main character (strong, badass, fashionable, have traumatic past, rich, kinda an asshole to everyone but people she's really close with) is appearing more and more.
The latest drama I watch, tale of the nine tailed season 2 has this girl archetype (the bird mountain goddess)
It's not bad but it kinda get boring sometimes.
I would love to see more different personalities in kdramas, both male and female.
Totally! As much as I love the tropes, I do want to see different and more nuanced protagonists and not just the same 3 archetypes repeated over and over again
Great video, it's so insightful and smartly written. Your delivery is also reall funny at times. She is confident and that is... bad? 😆 It was really fun to watch, thank you!
Aaw thank you 😀
the perfect video essay on a trope doesn't ex...
thanks for this, this make me change the way I view them
in real life it's the opposite, shy girls are underappreciated, especially in high school and university (class participation lol) I've been both 'extremes' and neither is a win, there's no way to win xD just find a right friend/lover
another one such character is the villain from The Devil Judge. She was grace personified even when she didn't go about killing people.
Omg I dress like a kdrama villain I'm just realizing
If wearing bomb outfits makes us a villain, I don't want to be a hero, lol
Great analysis i didn't think about the symbolism of hair color woman
Hello, I’ve just found your channel and this is the first video of yours I’ve watched and I have to say, I love the quality of this video! I always have a soft spot for complex, messy, and occasionally mean or cruel female characters, but I feel like these sorts of characters are always “created” easily but never really “engaged with” well, if you know what I mean? Like the writers have SEEN the classics, they know the formula that gets them the viewers, but instead of using the formula to create interesting innovative stories, so many writing rooms end up stuck regurgitating the same misogynistic rhetoric.
Like, for example, when you were describing the contrast between the Villainess and the Natural Girl, I couldnt help but think “cut the man out and let these two character types enter a dialogue with EACH OTHER!!!” Because when you break them down, the Villainess and the Natural Girl are foils. Seeing them interact with each other, discuss each others’ philosophies and lives and experiences, that could be so so interesting. Especially because it seems that these two character types have a lot they can teach EACH OTHER, not just the Natural Girl to the Villainess. The Villainess is fashionable, witty, ambitious, confident (or knows how to act confident even when desperately self-loathing), the Villainess understands the purpose of artifice, but can also be mean and manipulative. The Natural Girl is genuine, kind, empathetic, but also maybe a pushover and naive. They make up for each other: The Villainess can show the Natural Girl how to be confident and assertive in male-dominated workplaces, or the value of being straightforward or cruel to people who just dont listen (like those aggressive, childish male leads). In turn, the Natural Girl can teach the Villainess the value of earnestness and kindness, the value in vulnerability as the villainess learns to overcome the shackles of her trauma through empathy and respect for herself and the person she is. These two images of femininity are constantly placed in diametric opposition, almost because if they got along, everyone knows they’d be unstoppable 😭. Being assertive and being kind are NOT mutually exclusive, I wish we got so many more stories with interesting, non-antagonist (or even more complex) dynamics between female characters that arent over a man.
That said, I just wanted to affirm the quality of your content and the conciseness with which you articulate your ideas in this video essay! I think I found a new channel to binge 😋 I wish you future success in your video essay endeavors!!
I am waiting for a K-drama in which the evil rich girl and the natural shy girl ditch the man and start dating each other and figure out that they had wrong ideas about each other from the start and don't make it about men!
Thanks for making this incredible video
I love touch your heart so much!!! The FL was so relatable, I like how they made her a bad actress lol 😂
As I am someone who is from a rich background I can tell you that you have be mean and rude most of the times. How I know this you are wondering? Cause I noticed many people trying to put down my mother because she is a lady in the business society. Whether it be a women or a man everyone tries to come out as feisty, dominating or a high person than my mother. Even if you treat them with respect they still try to put you down.
i do wonder how much of the natural archetype of girl depends on Korea's history of confucianism, and the preference for the soft, kind, unasuming, self-sactrificing and pure...just in modern aesthetics.
Probably a lot! I still don't fully understand all the intricacies of the influence (neo?)confucianism has on Korean societal norms, but it wouldn't surprise me
Is it just me.. as a grown woman I am always cheering for villainess in k dramas .. they seem like more humane portrayal
But what about Park Yeon- jin of The Glory? She’s clearly the rich hyperfeminine type, she has dark hair but I couldn’t feel for her AT ALL. She is just THAT cruel.
Still, she was my fave character in The Glory. But that has probably to do with the fact that Lim Ji-yeon portrayed her and she’s just one of my fave actresses. She steels the show in everything she’s in, she’s exceptionally talented. ❤
Not literally every hyperfeminine character with dark hair is redeemable, sometimes they are just iconic villains :)
about hyperfeminine characters in kdramas: i recommend watching the kdrama "eve". seo yeji's roles do a good job of reversing that narrative. or it kinda explores the hyper-femininity from another perspective.
as expected, everything was on point. thank you for the hard work❤️
It's all to do with perspective. If we spent more time with villains, we'd have more ambiguous feelings towards them.
Agree! I think a big part of it is that we automatically root for the protagonist and this is who's point of view we see. Anytime these characters get a proper storyline, they no longer seem like villains!
Yeah like kdramas have the male version of this archetype but he is portrayed as sexy, confident bad boy that ends up being 1-softie inside and has a redemption arc or 2-becames the villain or second male lead. Even if he is the villain or second lead, he is always sexy, macho, his bad behavior towards others is normalized even. Meanwhile , the pretty rich mean girl always is really judged by the script, doesnt matter if she has a happy ending. It is a similarity I see often in telenovelas of my country lmao, but recent kdramas are writing more gray characters instead of just repeating the same plots every single kdrama
Yes, it definitely got better in the recent years with more complex characters and morally grey protagonists that are not the same 3 cookie cutter cliches!
Baek Inha, the ultimate anti-hero, but also partly why I kept watching halfway through the drama. She was diabolical.
The most interesting character in the show
loved the analysis
OMG, Thank you so much I never saw that.
Ending up in a relationship is the goal because it is a romance
I absolutely love these characters
On penthouse I really like the rich girl, but they truly didn’t know what to do with her. She s been abuse all her life and has huge abandonment issue. When her mom who never help her when getting beat, put her all into her « real » daughter and stop giving her attention. And the mom dare to be choked that her daughter is going back to be a bully. and later she go back to nice with no explication. I wanted her to have a real character arc and therapy but whatever.
Dude seriously it made me so mad that they just threw her away from the plot without giving her the justice she deserved. Yes she was a bully but so was her brother but oh no, he became good person as soon as Rona became his girlfriend. Everyone blamed Jugyeon for burning her sister in the car but no one puts the blame on the brother. He fucking promised her that he would be with her forever to save them from their father but he literally abandoned her so cold heartedly and then had the nerve to act worried about her when his decision was the one that pushed her to go back to her father.
And don't get me started on FL, their mother. Yes sure she was trying to take care of her "biological" daughter and step children but why did no one blame her when she literally left both of them to die with their father because she wanted her revenge. She could have taken them with her. But what irked me the most was how she favoured Rona more than her child even in places where Jugyeon deserved it, like the SNU pass. That was one thing she was so much passionate about yet her mother thrashed her dream just because she thought "oh rona deserves better" I do not hate Rona she had her own issues but why villianize an abuse victim as well?
@@wildfictions705 omg right ! at first she wasn't against rona when she became her "sister" but only once she felt that she was getting her place stolen she acted like a bully again. At first i believe it was made on purpuse by the writter, but after the school tiral ; i understood that they didn't ment to treat her psychology at all.
- all her mom and dad talk about all her life, is being the best at the opera competition, she value herself only trough this. Yet the first things her mom do one she get rona encouragement and tell the other to quit. meanning you are worthless.
- I worked with bullies and abused child and they all want the same things : attention. So if you neglect your child they will behave baddly, and turn to the parent who give them attention even if he will abuse them. Because to the child abuse is a type of attention. The contrary of love isn't hate, it's indifference.
- at no moment the mom or brother stopped t ask her why? how? They all assumed he was bad because she's like that, even worst because she take after her father, implying that child of abuse are doomed to be abuser/ being fucked up. It put a stigma on abuse child that here something wrong with them. When there nothing in the world that they could have done to not being abuse. it's not their fault ! ( a concept that kids have huge amount of trouble assimilate since all their life they put the blame on them, "i'm stupid so dad beat me if i get a bad grade" etc...). People will say that not all beaten kids become violent but it's only if they have someone els showing them a other way. In penthouse, the mom never told the children it was bad or abnormal. she never came to help them. SO how dare she act surprise that her children also use violence to express them self.
how can the writter be so uneducated on child abuse, when they make the love interest a child of abuse himself...
- All the rich kids take part in bullying, rona is the only one who is a victim. So how come the other don't get a shame as much ? Even the other girl who also get bulllied later on, was a bully prior. So they excuse her bad behavior because now she know how it is. You can be a victim and also being a vilain. the other boy also was a bully, the brother beaten up guys for fun, yet only the rich and confident girl get a social/public conviction. she end up poor working like a "normal" person... when it's not being humble that she needed but a support system and therapy to unlearn the abuse she learn all her life.
To me this drama didn't help any korean teenager to realize that bullying is bad, but more that the bully are pyscopath or child that are being abused. So the teasing they do at school, have nothing to do with this crazy loud bitch. And even if it's a little overboard sometimes, they aren't as obnoxious as this girl so they will never get caught...
( that was long sorry, but i'm so pissed by the irresponsibility and misogyny of this drama ...)
@@sophietessier8998 Really, it was so fucking infuriating to see such bullshit in this show. Like yes she was wrong and deserved punishment but what about the other kids. Just because they got their so called "improvement" they are suddenly exempted from being called bully. That whole group of rich kids were bullies and just because few of them became decent, no one pointed the flaw in them. Whereas she was dumped with all the accusations. Like remember how she was so traumatized when she realized it was her own sister that she tried to burn in the car, imagine living with that guilt your whole life. And then she was pushed down the hierarchy of wealth just so she could be shown that she was "humbled". The actual people who needed to be humbled were her mother and her brother who did nothing to help her and yet had the audacity to blame her for things which was the fault of so many people.
The mother and brother literally broke her to pieces. When all she wanted was their love and attention, they acted as if she was a spawn of devil. Whereas all the abuse she went through was never her fault. The brother was a piece of shit and yet he was spared by people because apparently he changed when Rona came, like do people seriously think that it is this easy. He and the other kids were equally responsible for ruining the life of the dead sister. People kept saying how the sister did not turn out bad even after going through many things in childhood, but just like you said, she probably had few people who consoled her. When she called him saying she was leaving, he straight up said to her she was nothing to him and wanted to do nothing with her. Rona was important to him but so was his sister. I do not understand why they wanted to show that love is more important than siblings when people can just give both important relations equal efforts
And don't even get me started on the mother. She was the most ignorant person in the whole series when it comes to all the parents. All she cared about was the revenge, she did not even once think what her kids would suffer if she were to die. And then had the audacity to act hurt when Jukyung rejected her after she came back. How can you do this with a child who went through abuse almost everytime she saw her father and yet make them feel like they are worthless? She made her think she could become an opera singer one day, she definitely had the skills but still wanted to act like a mother to a stranger rather than giving the same love to her kid, no matter biological or not.
Plus the way this show emphasized so much on blood relations that it was disgusting! Blood does not define who is your family, it is the bond and love! Not to forget, just like you mentioned, they used abuse as something to fill the plot. To me, it seemed as if the abuse was inserted only to make the villain look more merciless and ruthless. They wanted nothing to do with the progression in the mentality of an abused victim. She was just added to the storyline to add some "twist" and crazy factor and wanted a scapegoat to shoulder all the blame. They made her seem as the worst human when others were the same as her. They were given free passes with a slap on wrist while her character was dirtied by their deeds included with hers.
To me they just look like people suck in the past. I've tried it, and i really wouldn't recommend letting one bad experience of your lead your life
aka Cannon Fodder girl
Some villainess characters are complicated and more relatable but some are just awful bitches for no excusable or understandable reason…
I love hyper feminine characters❤
I hated how main characters smallest issues are made big deal where one tragic incident is there whole personality while second leads go through shit and still be nice it's it's downplayed like ' it's not that deep bro " . When they actually have a personality it's considered immature or wrong and for god sake . what the heck the second or villains leads don't go through for the love but literally gets played or rejected while male characters gonna make other feel like shit and does the bare minimum and bam great love like wtf is that atleast female leads act like fucking care sometimes but male literally doesn't gives a shit gosh tempted series is whole example even in the main lead perspective you can see the hypocrisy of the main leads . also how the main leads gets forgiven for the shitty things but second leads turn good then also they don't forgiven for it . but if they get angry rightfully so they now betrayed the main leads like make make sense .also "female leads hard works " can give her success even this happened male lead scrape goats..., back up ......I mean second lead supporting characters help but it's hers and great but when villains are second leads have success because it's her parents money or her hard work can easily taken down so the main lead can shine gosh i sHould stop otherwise I'll go forever one last thing why the heck can have happy life and move on like why they most of them have to be lonely regretting for what doging the bullet .........
Shae is just like me for REAAALLL!!! ♥♥♥♥ queeeeeeennnn!!!!
You should analyse cheodamdong-Alice
The heirs también hubiese funcionado poner aquí
How about the lone wolf protagonist?
That's when you know the drama will be good, when there's a rich mean girl 😂
To be fair no one was rooting for the FL in Tempted!
Aaaah~ yes, M I S O G Y N Y 😍😍😍😍😍 lol
I could NOT watch it’s okay to not be okay.
Donde estamos las que vimos floricienta y cuando crecimos nos dimos cuenta que delfina no era la mala?
Maybe I should quit watching k-drama. K-dramas are just like Korean kimchi. It is for flavor, but not for main dish.
There is a ton of k-dramas with substance that are not just light and fluffy romcoms :) There are a lot of shows dealing with serious topics that require a lot of thinking - you just have to try out other genres!
Alexa, play the man by taylor swift
They might dress 'feminine' but doesn't mean they are feminine...
That said, what are the actual feminine traits again? Its different for everyone.
Femininity and masculinity are both a social construct and a pretty vague category that becomes even more abstract the more you think about it. But in this case I am using "feminine" in terms of fashion (short skirts and high heels, feminine slhousettes, makeup and nail art) and "stereotypical behaviour" (being hysterical, scandalous and catty). Neither of these actually are exclusive to women, which is a point I make in the video too - a lot of the traits can also be found in the male lead, they are just not considered feminine or negative for him. I don't think there is such a thing as "actual feminine traits", because any possible trait can be found in anybody
💖💖👏👏👏👏👏
Lets justify the evil.
Soo ah from my id is gangnam beauty is best girl