YMMV / The Villainess Turns The Hourglass

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Aria. Being a self-proclaimed Villain Protagonist in a revenge-themed romance-fantasy should get her some leeway, but as she’s one of the rare examples of a “villainess” protagonist who is in fact an admitted and proud *villainess* instead of a poor innocent isekai’d protagonist in a novel, she surprisingly takes heat for, well, acting the part. Either people get invested early in her crafty revenge fantasy and watching her slowly improve herself to the point of Becoming the Mask or they find her petty and overpowered. Since she’s a reincarnated adult in the body of a child, it’s up in the air how people feel when she does some of her more childish revenge antics against Mielle, now an actual child. Since Mielle is so awful it can still be satisfying or it can come off as Aria wasting time on pointless things. The third season in particular seems to pile on Aria’s successes without her doing anything though it could be argued she only got to that point where her success is easy because of her intense hard work in the earlier two seasons where she struggles more, making her last plan against Mielle more of a victory lap.
  • Asher. Perfect boyfriend and counterpart to Aria, with a touching story about how Aria’s plan to fix her own life also saves him as well? Or kinda bland, overpowered, and a bit of a Spotlight-Stealing Squad?
  • Mielle. Yes, she caused Aria's death in her previous life. Yes, she's a Spoiled Brat bordering on sociopathic. Yes, she does a lot of terrible things in current timeline as well. Everyone agrees she’s bad, but the base-breaking comes from how much culpability she should have for her actions. She’s thirteen in the start of the new timeline and fifteen by the end. It becomes apparent she was being raised with intense entitlement and her own mother figure Emma suggests it’s fine to kill Aria and her mother for not knowing their places, as does her mentor Lady Isis. So this side argues the story is too harsh because Mielle would understandably act the way she does because her young age makes her easy to influence. The other side is that even at thirteen you’re expected to have basic morals and know that *murdering commoners for annoying you* is wrong. In a flashback where she first meets Aria and her mother, Mielle, at age 12, is already planning to kill them and in the first timeline, she succeeds. Even if it’s rational for a child to hate their new step family, Mielle takes this far beyond merely disliking them. Furthermore this excuse of Mielle’s age ignores that the story holds Aria equally accountable for her own actions in the first timeline despite also having been deliberately given bad influences from a young age. Aria herself accepts she deserved what happened to her before, that she took bad advice because of her own failings, and she has to change to fix this. Mielle never accepts any responsibility for her own actions and gets enraged whenever she faces logical consequences.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Mielle gets such a sympathetic rewrite by her fans that she basically is a sweet little angel ruined by everyone else around her and every terrible thing she actually does in the story is always the fault of anyone *but* Mielle because she was a young teen when much of the story was taking place. Yes, even including her escalating to murder. Strangely this doesn’t apply to Aria, who was also a young child in the first timeline where she was framed for poisoning Mielle and killed because she’d been raised to be such an awful person nobody would believe she hadn’t done it. No, only Mielle gets this blanket forgiveness from her fans because applying that Aria as well makes Mielle even worse than she actually is in the storyline.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Count Roscent. He's not a very good person - he treated his loyal and good first wife abominably because she was too "boring" for him, cheated on her with prostitutes, and left the care of their children to the household maids. When he remarried, it's to another prostitute with the explicit understanding the relationship is purely transactional and he will continue to visit brothels and largely ignore her, while in exchange she will have access to his wealth and home to raise her child as long as she keeps his home in order. Then he allows his children and staff to openly bully his new wife and stepdaughter because he still looks down on their social class. And taking the first timeline into account his neglect leads to the murder of Aria’s mother, Aria bullying Mielle seemingly unchecked, and eventually Aria’s execution. Given all of this Count Roscent would seem irredeemably awful but he actually does not seem to hate Aria or his new wife; he's only grossly negligent as opposed to villainous. After he becomes disabled thanks to Mielle's murder attempt he becomes easy to be sympathetic to, as he's understandably horrified by what Mielle did, and he legitimately believes Aria and her mother care for him. By the end of the story he's divorced, his ex-wife has run off with his entire fortune, and he lives abandoned in a nursing home. Cain's murder and Mielle's execution for said murder finally drives him to suicide. This fate is so dark even Aria is shocked, suggesting the reader is allowed to feel sympathy should they choose to.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Many readers of the manhwa STILL think Lippe is a boy and declare incorrectly that she and Bliss are fraternal mixed-gender twins or think the manhwa changed “his” gender. This is in spite of the source novel clearly using female pronouns for her, references to them as “sisters”, Lippe calling Bliss “eonni”, her royal title being “princess”, and this continuing into even the official English adaptations of the novel and manhwa. To be clear, Lippe dresses very masculine and her short black hair makes her look especially similar to her father Asher so it’s understandable that readers of the manhwa in particular would think she’s a boy especially before she’s properly introduced into the story. Early fan-created machine translations of the novel side story also tended to include errors in pronouns that are common to such automated translations which would mean non-Korean speaking readers that were trying to read the novel this way during the chapters original release could legitimately have read a version where masculine pronouns were used for Lippe.
• The Woobie: It’s hard not to feel bad for Oscar by the end. He’s used as a pawn by his family, horrendously abused by them, and forced into a loveless marriage. He doesn’t make an attempt to stand up to them until the very end, where his refusal to join the plot spares him their fates. He still loses his house and becomes an exiled commoner, though it’s implied he’ll likely be better suited to this life. In his final appearance he understands that his lack of courage cost him everything but is content that Aria is happy.

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