Frankly this is not so much as a ask and more of a grievance that I wanted to share. I started to follow this fandom because I really liked the idea of being able to be around people who like the same Manhwa as I, since Manhwa's are not mainstream, so usually that means we cannot connect and discuss it with most of our friends. I really enjoy VADD, but mostly I love its potential that it never quite managed to realize. Though my grievances are with the highly questionable fandom. Even for its short size, there is an eerily infested hive mindset where everyone HAS to have the same outlook and opinions on the story and its characters, the moment you even stray away, no matter how slight, you are immediately getting ignored, disapproved and honestly called out as an idiot who cannot see and appreciate the story for what it means to be. Honestly I may not agree with everything that is being said, however that does not signify that any who do not follow the hive mind do not belong in the community. The most glaring example of this, is the character of Ecklis/ Ickles and how one MUST hate him otherwise you hate Penelope/ Cha Syion and therefor you suck and clearly do not understand how this is all for her survival and how Ecklis got what he deserved. Even though she consistently treated a MINOR slave like a pet, the constant pets and strokes where honestly disgusting and she is very clearly repeating the pattern of the Duke and Derricks abusive behavior towards her, that as long as they throw money at her feet the dehumanization of her is not all that bad. Yet you are immediately silently executed by this fandom for daring to criticize the greatest goddess queen of all time and called an imbecile for not ‘understanding’ her character and her motives.
Cha Syion is reprehensible both morally and ethically for what she did to Ecklis as a MODERN WOMAN, I cannot emphasize this enough, a twenty year old collapsed student from a first world country, partaking in human trafficking as it were just a swipe on Tinder, is as baffling as it is utterly repulsive. And we are supposed to root for her character? There is nothing wrong with morally bankrupt characters, but the thing is we get nothing from Syion. She truly is treating her buying a human being like a young boy she picked out of tinder. There is no internal monologue, no internal conflict, not even a single thought that goes through her head. Her lack of morals and internal conflict is not only strange, but a plot convince, as again coming from our modern world, it makes ZERO sense for her to neither feel not think anything of it. She is made out to be this genius when in reality she is constantly making wrong guesses and is so stuck in her own perception that she completely blinds herself to reality. And while the entire fandom believes she is this independent badass girlboss who everyone stans as their queen, I honestly do not understand it, because even if we look past her corrupt mentality, she also sucks as a character. At first she really started iff strong, but as time went on and all the characters around her started to change, she stayed stagnant until the very end. She is introverted, detached and not interested in in the world she is stuck in, constantly objectifying it as a game, which without a doubt feeds into the cold boss babe persona, which fine but then you cannot except me to get attached to the story that unfolds through the eyes of a main character who could not care less and just wants to go home (Having the story told from only her POV is the novels greatest flaw, the story would have thrived and absolutely needed the POV's of the male leads as well). Cha Syion at times has morals, then she magically does not. She seems to understand something or someone yet immediately goes back into her very wrong internal perception of it all. She has clear potential for growth yet remains just as she was. The story is making her out to be this more unique take of a Otome Isekai vilainess yet she behaves like a utter NPC at times (Seriously what is up with that, I sometimes forget she even is in the scene). She just is not interesting nor fun to read about, all the things that made her interesting at first got old quite fast because of the aforementioned lack of character growth. Her personality can be honestly summed up as a background character who was forced into the spotlight. Other than her Trauma (that includes her live with her mother as well, since she is scarred by her death) her love for archeology, melon sherbet and Callisto's golden hair (or his face as she later revealed), there is nothing to her, name one thing that we know of Cha Syion that exist outside these three things, I for one cannot. What are her hobbies? Her habits? Characteristics in others she feels drawn to, her romantic type, if she has any desire to marry and have a family of her own, is she religious, agnostic or an atheist, what her clothing preferences, her makeup style if she has one, did she constantly visit the grave of her mother or does she avoid it because it is too painful? What are things she enjoyed to do in korea that she can no longer do? Was she only bullied in school or did she have any meaningful friendships? How did her abusive family viewed these friendships? Were they allowed to come over or she to them, was she allowed to go out and did she had a curfew? Was she perhaps not permitted anything, causing her to sneak out? Did she ever retort to unhealthy comping methods, like alcohol or partying? Was she the mother of the friend group or perhaps more mischievous than she might have let on? As she becomes Empress, what are her political views? What laws or reforms has she actually managed to make Callisto sanction them? What are those that they are fighting on? Just who is Cha Siyon outside her trauma?
Even her desire for archeology is born out of trauma, a desperate need to find closure to her deceased mother, just like it is for Callisto, whose motivation to fight for his birthright is to honor his mother and hold her memory close. Granted, Callisto is not a character that is talked about a lot but the stance on him is clear, that he can do no wrong because he is the only one who supports Cha Syion. Listen I love Callisto, in fact he is my favorite character and the only reason why I even finished the Manhwa in the first place when Cha Syion's hypocrisy and straight up NPC like behavior at times got on my nerves, he was the only character I enjoyed throughout the story. But what both the story and the fandom seem to disregard is that he is a deeply disturbed character and his perchent for violence is boderline insane at times. Yet he is made out to be this paragon of salvation when he really is not a good person and the Manhwa constantly showcasing this by making the panels where he appears bright with golden light does not help either. If the story would have followed OG Penelope instead of Cha Syion, her romance with Callisto would have been the epitome of the Villain gets the girl, if his character would have been handled as it should have (obviously not saying that he is or should have been the antagonist or villain of the story, but rather a morally corrupt man learning through the love of a good hearted woman to better himself, which yes OG Penelope is good hearted, unlike Cha Syion, at the very least that is how I read her character between the lines since there is not a ton revealed about her). The reason I love him as much as I do however is first because I see him as he is, secondly he is the only character that we get to see mutiple sides of even outside his character arc, no matter how in between they might seem since his screen time is actually not that much considering he is the male lead, but we get it nonetheless, making him the only character that is not one dimensional. Also I have a big soft spot for deeply flawed and morally grey men who are as obsessive as they are possessive.
I do not honestly have much to say about the other male leads as Reynold and Vinter are NPC's after their respective arcs and Derrick while he was interesting and repulsive at first, lost all of his intrigue after he for brainwashed and ran around like a headless chick through the remaining story. While I personally do for the most part not like Ecklis's characterization, as he is as interesting as a block of wood, it is mostly the reading between the lines, his backstory and ending that make him grueling to read. He has by far the most wretched fate out of all characters and his ending made me feel icky all over my body. How is it that every character, INCLUDING Derrick, get redeemed and get good endings while Ecklis is an amnesiac mercenary who goes around killing more people and is wandering through live like a ghost. It is grueling and awful to read through, it begs the question to what exactly was the author intent here? That slaves deserve to be punished while the rich noblemen get excused? That in itself would have been fine as that is in accordance with our worlds realism, alas unfortunately this was no showcase of this dark and horrid reality, but much rather a rushed ending to tie up the remaining ropes that only managed to carry the apologisim of abuse. Ecklis's fate is also only revealed in the side stories so the main storylines ending is even worse as he is the only character for seemingly having been killed off. For what? For getting brainwashed and committing heinous acts? Then why the hell does Derrick not get punished either? Ecklis is such a tragic and heartbreaking character not for his characterization, but for the role he serves in the story and the disturbing implications of how he was used, discarded, dehumanized in somebody else's story, yet the world of the story and its fandom treat his fate like a forgone conclusion. What Cha Syion does to him is beyond awful, the dehumanizing, the strokes and pets, the gift giving and love bombing while at the same time being neglected, forgotten and his wretched end for him loving the same girl who did all this to him, yet that love being twisted and per-versified by a demonic entity and therefore him committing evil acts. I in no means mean to sugarcoat Ecklies, what he did to his own people had my jaw on the floor, that was a Joker level atrocity he committed. Also him insinuating sexually assaulting Cha Syion to give him the mirror shard out of her own volition, otherwise he will not be able to keep his hands off her when he has to search for the fragment which is terrifying as it is reprehensible as it could get, especially a man threatening this open a woman is one of the most horrifying threats there is. This however still does not wash Scion’s hands clean. Ecklis is horrible and deeply disturbing for what he does to his own people, his threats towards Syion and him trying to isolate her. But that still does not earase Syion's actions towards him, which is the narrative the fandom is desperately clinging on to.
The most disgusting part for me however is the constant victim blaming of OG Penelope. Be it either by Cha Syion or the other characters. She is literally the metaphorical punishing back of all that went wrong. Cha Syion very explicitly states in the side story chapters while she is at the dukes manor, that perhaps everything that happened to her, Penelope brought onto herself before proceeding to say that distinctions between them are no longer useful. What the actual hell? Why does this not get talked about more? I suppose because it would destroy the perfect image of the girlboss queen that is Cha Syion.
Leila is interesting as a concept, yet in execution she is evil for evils sake. At the least she was entertaining to read through, there was never a moment I dis not enjoy the scenes she was in. I just which we could have gotten depth in her character. The story even attempts to do so, as she is monologuing at how it claws at her that the men no longer love her in this timeline, yet that was treated as nothing as background noise as she quickly goes back to being a sadistic psychopath who gleefully tells Syion how she killed her and all the male leads off. Why then even give her that monologue in the first place if it gets shoved down like it never happened?
Overall VADD has a lot of potential that never quite got realized, the ending arc was especially rushed in my opinion. Syion has constant plot armor because nothing she does is actually intelligent enough to get her out of this mess without dying and the story suffers deeply from having the entire narrative unfold from the POV of a female leads off that is extremely detached from the world she finds herself in and never attempts to get connected to it, therefore making the most readers just as little invested into the lire as she is. The story also has a nasty love for abuse apologisim while making its female lead switch into either being a unsympathetic and closed off at best, a sadistic borderline sociopathic slave owner at worst and strangely at times an NPC when the story itself does not know what do to with her and the scene mostly revolving around whatever male leads off she is involved with. The premise, the story, the lore, all the characters in theory were all extremely promising and even though I mostly critiqued the Manhwa, I still throughly enjoyed and loved it, it is one of the best villainess stories in light/webnovel, I do not think it can actually stand on its legs as a full fledged romance-fantasy novel because it is not, nor is it trying to be, but as the saying goes, to like something is to critique it. These were my concluding thoughts on the story, the fandom on the other hands is more or less toxic. I know this label gets thrown around quite a bit, however there is that odd elitism going on in the fandom, anyone who has a different opinion is viewed as not a true part of it, Syion is a mortal goddess who everyone who truly loves the Manhwa must worship her to the ends of this earth, no criticism is allowed unless it is directed at Derrick & Ecklis and it is rather hard to gain a footing into the fandom because of its strange elitism. Perhaps as to combat the fandoms rather short size, the Manhwa is being gatekept by a few that are mostly running the fandom and those are the only voices that are being listened to. Everybody else is immediately labled as morons who make the fandom toxic and who do not ‘understand’ anything. You do not have to agree with anything a person says yet you can still not hate on them and be generally kind to everyone and open to newcomers. This fandom feels less like a warm community where all different kinds of people gather around to discuss and share their thoughts about the one piece of media that each love, but rather walking into a lions den. It is unfortunate quite honestly, in a way the fandom mirrors Cha Syion herself, close minded people that are shut off and unwelcoming unless you agree with anything they say.
Thank you for reading through my rant, I know this was a lot😭 I personally do not agree with anything you say yet your headcanons are genuinely interesting and disturbing to read through and your opinions about Ecklis, Derrick and Cha Siyon are finally coming from a different perspective that feels refreshing and is often right. I can certainly see why you make for such a polarizing character, but a good fandom would appreciate such stark viewpoints and engage in them, it absolutely does not warrant the scrutiny you face however within this fandom.
I know, it is (was?) like a cult over there.
dededos
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
2087
romaincrisis
