Question Why does the second female lead and second male lead are treated differently ?

In romance novel but also in drama and manga too the second male lead and second female lead are often treated differently. You can easily found a second male lead who is a dreaming Prince charming always here to help the mc often better than the male lead type of guy in the contrary the second female lead are often the annoying (mostly in drama and novel but can be found easily in shojo) Cannon fodder who will be face slapped or punished in the end like the villainess nobel girl trope before mc transmigrate the second female lead often bully the female lead and is severelly punished . If the men are Cannon fodder i think that the women punishment is more harsher than the men . (What i say is not a generality just an observation ).

 

Because, just like how ridiculous uber-harems feed male delusions, shoujo otome-style stories feed the female equivalent. It's all about the self-insert.

Otome-style stories are especially bad for it because they're built of hypocrisy, brainless male characters and usually ignoring the world's own societal settings.

Edit: For example, lets take the "villainess noble girl rival" 2nd FL archetype. Usually they're set in worlds where propriety is a big thing which immediately exposes the hypocrisy inherent in the stories themselves.

It boils down to: Heroine, usually some commoner or lower noble girl, (willingly or unknowingly) goes around seducing engaged powerful ikemen, who are the tops of heir society, contrary to the societal values. When the female fiancees (the rivals), acting with the societal values, try to correct the improper behavior they are labelled as "evil", "mean", "bullies" by the MLs who either arent thinking at all or are thinking with their lower brains.

That's partly why i think Villainess POV novels picked up popularity because they poke all manner of holes and fun into the ridiculous stories and their giant plotholes.

Slow Prison Life is, in my opinion, the epitome of Villainess novels that poke fun at and parody brainless shoujo stories.

 

its the plot sama. i bet it wont be like that in real life hehe.

 

As I've said in previous thread. Shitty female anime novels/manga/manuha/manwhas are aimed at people who got bullied at high School, these second female leads who get bad ends are the mean girls that never got there due in middle schools. There the reader can project onto the Mc and pretend they did.

They can pretend the hot guy actually fell in love with them and rebuked the the mean girl


This is why you see a lot of spirited comments saying "DIE BITCH" and "WHITE LOTUS SCUM'. And its the same for male aimed stuff too. The most popular girl in school falls for the quite guy who keeps to himself "wowhe's just like me" while rejecting CHAD

 

Are you talking about just female-oriented stuff or both?

It's easy in the girl stuff-- second female lead is a rival for the male lead's affection. Obviously, author can't have them win. Easy way is to make the fanbase hate them, so they end up really trashy sometimes.

2nd male lead is to tempt the MC away from the end game, so he's often a lot more attractive than the real ml which is ironic haha. There's a thing called 2nd lead syndrome for a reason.

Tldr; 2nd female leads are usually rivals or villains versus the heroine, 2nd male leads are usually allies of the heroine and rival to the main male lead. It's just story dynamics.

 

Because if the people trying to get the MC attention were evil they would be ignored and there would be no drama (be it male or female)
The annoying thing in harem novels is that most of the time even if the girls are evil and hateful, they get tame into a virtuous wife by the MC

 

i want to talk more about More female oriented stuff because i think that this is more obvious here for me.

 

And those second dreamy male leads will always lose from the tyrant, abussive, rapist that is the male protagonist.
#CEO

 

Double Standards. In many cases CN novels female lead and second female lead are of the same mold. In JP there is a little more variety, SUDDENLY.

 

To get away from this type of tropes, you should try sci-fi/fantasy novels.

The main stories with the 2nd leads being really used as a foil for the love are mainly in the romance genre.

• The high ranking engagement that’s gets cancelled
• The villainess revenge to keep it or get another engagement
• The secondary character who suddenly gets engaged to the high and mighty
• The ceo/general routes - many different versions, some are very.....inappropriate to be nice
• Of course, we can’t forget the cultivation stories. Most of which have multiple wives

If you check outside the romance only side, I tend to see the 2nd leads being treated more fairly. The stories have romance but that is not the main reason for the story so the other characters are treated better in the romance side. Though they may suffer more when it comes to other things.

Making fun of the love is always right to break off the engagement, there was one that I cannot remember the story name.

The prince breaks the engagement but the king is really against it. The royal family magic power is too weak due to all this marry for love since the magic power depends on the marriage partners. They do not have enough magic to keep a barrier around the entire country like other countries due to the multiple stupid younger generations.

After typing the above, is this trope question more in the specific genre or for novels in general?

 

https://www.novelupdates.com/series/a-sequel-for-the-villainess/ ???

 

Yup that’s it. Lots of brain dead people but .... the rules in place make it moot in a way.

 

Ya, there is allot of idiots there, but considering the original game's fate of the MC in that series (being abducted and forced to work in a brothel), the rules were not enough. Heck, in that series the king is just as bad as his son, since it took a year to fix things when he was literally dealing with a matter of life and death for his nation, and had the resources to fix them in less then a month, realistically is should have been fixed in days, or that day.

 

Reminds me that funny yaoi story second male lead vomitted because of the words he said bcs they were too disgusting lmao

 

It’s Actually Not Easy Wanting to be a Supporting Male Lead . It's that story ?

 

nope!! this one!! its really funny and short, you should give a go!
https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-script-is-not-like-this/

 

It's not easy being a lot of things!