Fetechou (left) and Naerim (right)
"So, to summarize, this is a story about my truly messed-up life, and the truly messed-up man who found me just then."
— Shin Naerim
Bloody Sweet is a romance Korean Webtoon written by NaRae Lee, of the Maximum Ride manga fame.
Gloomy Shin Naerim is an outcast in her class. Being the daughter of a shaman, she is avoided by most other girls and pushed around by a group of bullies, including her former childhood friend as the ringleader. Terribly insecure, she barely talks except online, where contrary to real life she's a popular blogger and writer. One day on a school field trip, Naerim is pressured by her bullies into breaking into an old church, where she disturbs a seal holding a 500-year-old vampire, one with a Dark and Troubled Past of his own.
Said vampire, Vlad Fetechou, becomes bound to Naerim as her servant in exchange for her unique "witch" blood, hoping to use it to become human. Romance and angst ensues as girl and vampire both try to get by in a world where they're both outcasts.
The webcomic is complete at two seasons, with the first season focusing heavily on Shin Naerim and the bullying she faces at school, while the second season delves more into figures from Fetechou's own past.
The series is available to read on TappyToon.
Bloody Sweet contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Played for Drama with the teachers who willfully ignore or fail to notice the severe bullying happening to one of their students. This failure for them to act is part of why Naerim doesn't reach out to the adults who do want to help her, as she doesn't believe it will change anything.
- All of the Other Reindeer: A reoccurring theme of the manhwa:
- Shin Naerim is bullied and isolated by the other girls because her mother is a shaman and her unkempt appearance creeps them out, as well as because the ringleader of her bullies has a grudge against her and talks about her behind her back.
- Back when he was a human, Fetechou was hated and called a demon for having red eyes, and his mother likewise was viewed as a witch for her albinism and foreign mannerisms. This comes to a head when his mother is burned at the stake and Fetechou is almost murdered by the other villagers afterwards.
- Roxanna, the little girl shown in Fetechou's story, was abused and taken advantage of her entire life because she was the niece of a priestess and branded a witch.
- Naerim's friend Mina admits she's being bullied in college because she refused a guy's advances and rumors began spreading about her being flirty.
- Always Chaotic Evil: When Naerim supposes that other vampires could be good-natured like Fetechou, he quickly shoots this down and claims that vampires are always evil, blood-thirsty and self-centered. He began gradually losing his sense of a conscience after becoming one, and only got some of it back from drinking Roxanna's blood and becoming partially human again.
- Bait-and-Switch: Vlad sees a resemblance between Naerim and a woman he loves from his past, hinted to be a deceased lover. In actuality, she reminds him of his dead mother, who was also an outcast like her.
- Burn the Witch!:
- This happens to Fetechou's mother, who is blamed when the village they lived in fell on hard times and executed by being burned at the stake.
- Laszlo later threatens Roxanna with this to get her to stop coming to his castle. Roxanna's aunt is burned to death in her own house for similar reasons.
- But Not Too Foreign: Vlad Fetechou is a Western vampire who grew up somewhere in Europe, but his mother is stated to be from the East and is implied to be Korean specifically.
- Fantastic Drug: The blood of a witch is extremely hard for a vampire to resist, and once one tastes some they will forever crave it and drink it even as it turns them human. Fetechou outright compares it to a drug.
- Happiness in Slavery: Fetechou appears perfectly happy and cheerful as he serves Naerim during their magical contract, though this trope is deconstructed as Naerim eventually understands he's only pretending to be so cheery because he needs her and not out of genuine care for her. Although his devotion to her becomes real over time, Naerim ends the contract by the end of the series to give them a healthier relationship.
- Interrupted Suicide: Naerim nearly walks off the roof of her school after trying to confront her bullies only leads to her getting wounded and humiliated yet again, while also hurt that Fetechou didn't come to help her when she was injured (not knowing her mother had trapped him in her room with charms.) Fetechou escapes and arrives just in time to grab her.
- No Periods, Period: Naerim ends up having her period shortly after Fetechou starts living in her house, which causes the red string of their contract to show back up since she's bleeding. During this time Fetechou keeps his distance from her just in case.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Naerim realizes late into season two that she and Roxanna both suffered through a lot of the same things in regards to being scorned and abused as "witches". This inspires her to try and save Roxanna by giving her some of her blood and offering to be her friend. Unfortunately, this just triggers Roxanna's Villainous Breakdown and leads her to commit suicide-by-sunlight.
- Old Shame: In-universe, Naerim's online novels humorously become these to her in the second season, regardless of how popular they made her at the time.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Fetechou complains that the method Sam-Mi prescribed to turn him human (eating garlic and mugwort) won't work because it's what Koreans use, while he's Western. The vampires who show up in the comic are all Western, and are shown to be burned by the sun and weakened by religious artifacts, even ones that aren't Christian. It's also shown that drinking the blood of a vampire turns you into a vampire, while drinking the blood of a witch (or, it seems, any spiritual/religious figure) slowly turns vampires human.
- "Reason You Suck" Speech:
- In the first season Naerim's mother gives such a speech to the mothers of her daughter's bullies, pointing out that their behavior and subsequent punishment from it is all because of how badly they were raised, meaning that it is the mothers who are really to blame.
- Naerim gives one to Laszlo in the second season when the latter tries to reason with her to turn Fetechou over to him, explaining how letting him turn human will only kill him, so she might as well give him back. She calls him out on how he talks about Fetechou as though he's an object and unable to make his own choices, and that the only way he's coming back is if he goes back of his own volition.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Inverted; Fetechou's eyes were red in life, but when he became a bloodthirsty vampire they became yellow. His eyes turning more and more red means he's getting closer to turning human again. This trope is believed in-universe by the humans in his old village, however, who thought he was a demon because of it.
- Red String of Fate: The "string" connecting Naerim and Fetechou, which shows up every time the former injures herself, is a nod to this, although in-universe it indicates the relationship between a vampire and the witch they contracted with.
- Slave Collar: A dog collar shows up on Fetechou's neck as a mark of the contract he has with Naerim; Roxanna likewise sports a choker after drinking Naerim's blood. Laszlo goes the extra mile after accidentally contracting to Sam-Mi by wearing a collar attached to a harness.
- Trauma Button: A brief one in the second season; Naerim is troubled by a hair pin one of her friends buys her because it looks similar to a hairclip that her former bully gave her once.
- Teens Are Monsters: Naerim's misery in the first season is due to how cruel her fellow classmates are. Interestingly in the second season Song Jina is still an awful person in her one conversation with Naerim, but has become less outright hostile as an adult and tries to brush off what she did as just being because they were all kids.
- Time Skip: There's a two-year timeskip between seasons one and two, and the end of season two shows the characters six years later after the confrontation in Laszlo's penthouse.
