YMMV / Kubera

• Adorkable: Brilith. Due to her Friendless Background, she's clueless on how friendships work and is elated that Asha is rude to her (after their initial meeting), as that's a sign of friendship according to her research!
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Just about every character is subject to this, given that the author has even admitted that most of them aren't fully honest with the reader.
  • Asha has done some horrible things for ambiguous reasons. The fandom is fairly divided on just how evil she is or isn't.
  • Also, despite being a primary antagonist, Sagara has a few fans, mostly because of the Jerkass Has a Point nature of some of her complaints, as well as being a Jerkass Woobie. As she said herself, she's similar to Gandharva, being completely delusional over Ananta-related matters and reacting violently when told otherwise.
  • The nature of Leez's feelings for Yuta are also subject to debate: does she actually reciprocate his feelings, or is she just acting like it in a desperate attempt to keep someone by her side?
  • After the reveal of Menaka's Hidden Depths in Season 3, some fans wonder if she had ulterior motives behind refusing to save Ananta, beyond her already stated one of pacifism. Did she have reason to think Ananta's death was for the good of the universe, given that she was fairly involved with the Primeval Gods (who also didn't intervene)? Or did she even just want to protect Gandharva especially, knowing that he was vital to the universe's fate?
  • When it comes to beings that the Taraka clan desire to eat most, Gandharva in the sura realm fit the bill perfectly, so Taraka attacked. However, with the reveal that her soul is Menaka's and held onto the memory of Gandharva's name, did a potential lingering fixation on him contribute to her actions?
• Archive Panic: The series is approximately 600 chapters long as of November 2023, with no end in sight. Not helping matters is that it's not a series you can rush through easily; you will be expected to keep tracks of plot points hundreds of chapters later.
• Awesome Art: It really has to be seen to be believed at times.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • In Season 3, Gandharva shifted from being fairly popular to this, as more of his past atrocities came to light. Either you see him as a nuanced take on The Atoner who exemplifies the moral ambiguity of the series or as completely irredeemable and that any attempts to make him sympathetic fall short. May or may not be an Intended Audience Reaction, considering that in-universe opinions of him tend to cover a similar range.
  • You'll find a lot of fans who wish Chandra would shut up every time he appears, due to his tendency to piss other characters off and/or be cruel to them, including those beloved by the fandom. You'll also find a lot of fans who find his ruthlessness understandable. Or, even if they don't necessarily agree with it, appreciate the complexity of his character, as fans will generally agree that for all of his dickishness, he's one of the few characters unambiguously out to protect the universe and therefore acting selflessly in his own way.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Saha ranks highly on popularity polls, despite his role being mostly limited to the final arcs of Season 2.
  • At least in the Korean fandom, Makara is quite popular; notably, when the author was open to answering character trivia questions, a lot of them were for Makara.
  • For someone who appeared in only a handful of chapters and one side story, Kinnara (specifically, who she was before becoming "Airavata") has several fans, along with a fair amount of fanworks of her.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Alex" for Kubera, to avoid confusion of him and Leez. This is based off of Leez trying to name him "Alexander" when he tells her that he has no name. The Korean fandom tends to call him ShinKu.^note Shin for "god"
  • "Sammy" for Samphati.
  • Kinnavata for Kinnara or rather her existence as Airavata, to differentiate her from the original Airavata.
• Growing the Beard:
  • The art at the start of the series can drive people away, but as fans will tell you, it gets much better. By the time of The Night It Rained Fire, the climatic arc of Season 1, it's fairly decent, and it only continues to improve from there.
  • Plot-wise, the primary appeal of the series is its Genre Deconstruction, which won't start kicking in until Season 2. Season 1 can be seen as enjoyable, but perhaps cliche and confusing.
• I Knew It!: Riagara and Pingara being Sagara's children through Vasuki and Manasvin, respectively, was such a widely accepted theory for years that it's easy to forget it wasn't confirmed until Ch. 411.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Leez, for whom the series serves as a Trauma Conga Line. Season 3 makes it a Foregone Conclusion that she won't find happiness or recognition for her actions—but also that, in spite of everything, she'll continue to fight.
  • Season 3 reveals that Menaka's entire life was a tragedy, but by the end of it, she did her best to put on a brave face and maintain her compassion and idealism, even with her impending death.
• Jerkass Woobie: Gandharva has a long list of flaws (and an even longer list of atrocities), and by Season 3 he's one of the most In-Universe hated characters. However, the traumas he faces/has faced is also a long list in its own right, so don't be surprised if you find yourself both thinking he deserves to die but also wishing he'd at least find closure after everything.
• Love to Hate:
  • Sagara. Vicious, petty, and unpleasant, but the fact she completely embraces this is also precisely what people tend to like about her.
  • Ravana is an unrepentant, troublemaking Jerkass even by sura standards, but it's hard to deny that they steal the show whenever they appear. They're quite popular for that reason, even though their fans admit they'd hate someone like Ravana in real life (but since this is fiction...).
• Moe: A lot of fans Squee'd over how adorable Shess was as a child during the early days of the universe, especially when he was immediately presented as The Woobie.
• Moral Event Horizon: Asha's brutal murder of Saha On, followed by the attempted murder of Lorraine, her mentor, and then trying to make Leez believe that it's her fault Saha's dead.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: While Brilith's past incarnation may have had Ship Tease with Maruna, Currygom had to explicitly state that Maruna's feelings weren't romantic, as it would change the nature of his Character Development if fans interpreted it as him falling in love rather than developing respect for humanity as a whole.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: GanTeo is used by both the Korean and English-speaking fandoms for Gandharva/Teo.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Brilith was generally the least popular of the main characters, largely due to being Not Badass Enough for Fans and being seen as less relevant to the plot. Her development in Season 3, however, has caused her popularity to skyrocket.
  • In Season 2, Menaka was surprisingly unpopular, despite already being dead and having only a handful of appearances. Between her role in Gandharva's downfall, the series of events that resulted from her well-intentioned influence, and the fact that the husband she left widowed happens to be shipped with another present-day character by a fair portion of the fandom, one might be able to guess exactly why this is. However, when Season 3 showed that she wasn't quite as naive as she seemed and that she did vastly more good for Gandharva than bad, on top of her story being a Tearjerker, fan opinion of her improved significantly.
  • While more of a Base-Breaking Character than universally disliked, the reveal of Chandra's Hidden Depths and his surprisingly noble actions leading up to his death in Season 3 won over some fans who hadn't been impressed with his vicious pragmatism up until then. It helps that he's one of the few characters explicitly against the Primeval Gods—an assessment that fans found themselves agreeing with more and more as the series went on, making his objective (even if not his methods) increasingly sympathetic posthumously after his death.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: Season 1 is largely devoted to introducing the setting and the main characters, and as a result it can come across as a typical Hero's Journey type story—before Season 2 tears it apart.
• Starboarding: Kinnara and Airavata weren't particularly prominent as a ship when their dynamic was first revealed as Kinnara killing Airavata and taking her name. However, the bonus chapter that revealed that Airavata was secretly in love with Kinnara caused the ship to increase in popularity, even with or because of fans knowing exactly how things ended for the two.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Many readers initially think that Asha is male.
  • Until Kadru was confirmed to be a Vritra nastika, fans weren't sure if he was male or female.
• The Woobie:
  • Brilith starts off as an insecure (and dying) girl in a position she's not quite ready for, and it only gets worse for her from there. Transitions into a Stoic Woobie after regaining her memories. As she puts it, she'll mourn alone for all of her suffering at the hands of gods and nastika, as she always has.
  • Ran shifts into this whenever his trauma flares up (and isn't being Played for Laughs).
  • Agwen, with the constant source of distress having Kasak for a father—especially when, from her perspective, he almost kills her in the The Night It Rained Fire and appears unapologetic over it.
  • Shakuntala, as a kind-hearted sick girl who met A Fate Worse Than Death.
• Woobie Species: Just about each one, in their own way, with the suras and gods coming in Jerkass Woobie flavor. No one gets to be happy in the Kubera universe.
  • Humans: Essentially doomed to be the punching bags of suras and gods alike, and used as pawns in the cosmic war. It's worse when their history is revealed, as the ancient human race were essentially perfect and wiped out precisely for it, with the current humanity actually designed to be unable to stand up to the "superior" species. It's little wonder that numerous humans who come to realize the gods' true nature end up embittered with their role in the universe.
  • Suras: Despite their penchant for rampant slaughter, it's easy to pity their species as a whole, living in a society stuck in a vicious dog-eat-dog cycle (literally, at times) where only the strongest survive. The rakshasas (and below) have it especially rough, given that they must answer to the nastikas who tend to make for terrible, potentially murderous parents at worst and apathetic at best. The reason most suras aren't kind or empathetic is because they weren't raised to be so, and because those are qualities that will almost certainly get them killed in the long run.
  • Gods: They seem to have it the best, lacking humans' weakness and the suras' depressingly violent circumstances. On the other hand, they're designed specifically to oversee the universe, and one can interpret a large part of their uncaring attitude, after billions of years of this and unable to escape from their duty, as them being horribly burned out. The nature of enlightenment makes it worse, as the way it's described and depicted makes it come across as severe depression more than anything else, with no way to endure but to literally throw away their grief (and, in the process, their compassion) given that even death isn't an option for them.