ohshc clichés and rants

Rivals.

I know I talks about rivals a bit in a previous chapter, but I want to put more emphasis on this cliché.

This cliché ties in with a bunch of others. Such as the guest cliché that was mentioned before, or the love triangle cliché that I will most likely write a future chapter for. Or even the stupid past best friend comes back and wants to get with the main character but the host ends up getting jealous cliché. But I'm not going to focus on those other cliché, today it's just specifically about rivals.

Rivals are typically defined as a person or thing competing with another for the same objective or for superiority in the same field of activity. And I get in some aspects that yeah, the main character is going to have a Rival for the affection of one of the host. But, as I said before, not all Rivals will be horrible people. There are many different types of ways you can portray rivals.

You can go the cliché way, make her bully the girl out in the open. And honestly, this happens in most fanfic people write and I'm just like ??? I mean sure rivals will tend to probably have negative thoughts about the person they're competing with, but I doubt they would ever do something about it. At least not it the real world they won't. I mean not to bring my personal life into this but there was this person I liked last year and apparently a lot of other girls liked him as well. And yeah, of course I was jealous whenever one of those said girls would be around him, but I never did anything to harm them. Besides, it's just a guy?? Lmao why would you want to make someone feel like shit just because you like the same person as them like wtf.

You can do it like Kimi Ni Todoke did it, and make the Rival become friends with the main character. Then later on in the story, reveal that the rival only became friends with the main character to use them to either;
a. get closer to the love interest or
b. try to manipulate the main character into supporting them i.e.
"Hey, I really like (host name), and I want to be in a relationship with them. ...Do you think you can support me?"

And from there on you can make the main character decline, which could lead to the rival showing her true colors. And that's a interesting way to take things (I mean I find it better than just making the rival a bully and giving them no personality what's so ever.)

Another manga that I like how it portrayed rivals was Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun. There are so many rivals and love triangles in that manga I mean holy fuck you guys.

One way you can do it is that the rival still likes said host, but they don't do anything about it because they don't feel confident enough in themselves. Or the rival supports said host with the main character and try and remain the host friend, but they still do try and win the host heart if they have a chance. Or you can do the rival openly flirts with the Host in front of the main character and tries to win the Host heart despite the main characters feelings.

Honestly, any of these ways could work, even the bully one, but the only thing I'm fed up with is the rivals basically have no personalities. Despite you wanting Haruhi and Hikaru to get together in your fanfic, or if you want your OC and Kyouya together, you should still give the rivals personalities because they still are people in your story and they deserve more development than just being labeled as a bland bitchy girl. I mean you can still make her a bitchy girl just don't make her personality one sided.

Also btw, those two mangas/animes I mentioned are good and I highly recommend them if you haven't heard of them already. Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun has an anime that has twelve or thirteen episodes, and a manga with like twelve volumes and is completed. While Kimi ni Todoke has two seasons and both have twenty-four episodes I believe, and I believe the manga is still going.. but the pacing of the romance is a bit slow so if your not into that this might not be the story for you.