As I'm playing the strange and delightfully LXG-esque adventures of van helsing, I realise that I can't really guess which famous character will be used as a good guy or a villain. The first part involved a large scale war between Van Helsing (son) and Jonathan Harker (some sort of military dictator figure). Weird. But there again, Van Helsing plays more like some Hellsing Alucard than like some professor Abronsius, so. Cards are shuffled.

But it got me thinking about that interesting and refreshing unease when a fiction turns around the role of a popular character. Like James Bond reinterpreted as a creep (a postmodern caricature of his questionable traits in the novels/movies) in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen sequel. Or, well, let's say some character in the Mission Impossible movie. It sometimes irks the fans. I can imagine the discomfort level when it's a character you're invested in.

The problem is similar with some mythified personalities. Old West characters (like Bill Cody, William Bonney, Jesse James, Wyatt Earp) often oscillate between idealized and demonized. Mythical characters (just like mythical creatures) did go through many re-reading through the ages, as the pagan tales were christianised and back, so we have different versions Menelas, Agammemnon, Paris, etc. One very interesting Hugo Pratt album had the hero, Corto Maltese, judged by a jury of "historical baddies" including Merlin and Dick Turpin, each presented with the reason of their inclusion (Merlin had "betrayed his king for an underaged girl"). So, there is often a flavor of historical correction : de-glamourized criminals, sources research or "thought of that ?" perspectives. Still it can be all the more unsettling for people who learnt to idolize historical or pseudo-historical figures (it easily veers towards "blashpemy" or "antipatriotism"), or who get nervous about possible disinformations (how Robespierre is presented in Assassin's Creed is a genuine concern for many french, given the actual historical debates around him).

There should be more freedom for the role-reversal of more modern, less symbolically significant characters. But we know how people react to the slightest mis-representation of their heroes. So. I wonder how I'd feel in front of evil Sherlock Holmes or evil Bob Morane. And I wonder how you people feel about such 180° reappropriations of old favorites. Do you get angry and offended ? Do you get annoyed and shrug it off with contempt ? Do you feel mildly interested, or thrilled, or amused, or irritated ? Does it depend on other parameters ? Is it the same thing when the role-reversal is baddie-as-good-guy (with nice guy Dracula and friendly Cthulhu) or is it yet a different question ?

I’ve recently read a novella, I think it is by Dan Simmons, with a crossover between Sherlcok Holmes and the Cthulu mythos. The most interesting part being that Sherlock Holmes is on the side of the Old Ones (who took England crown), while Moriarty is hinted as being on the side of humankind.
It is a short read, but really great!

This is the kind of twist I love, so if anyone has videogames to suggest that use it, please share them here.

Don't you mean A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman? But in that it's Moriarty who is on the side of the Old Ones, and Holmes who is something of a resistance fighter. It's just that the two characters sort of "swapped lives" in that universe - it's an England taken over by evil, so Moriarty is living the life of a hero detective with Moran as his Watson, and Holmes is the criminal.

Which is sort of the problem with such reversals. Many fictional characters already have villains who are sort of the evil versions of them, just like Holmes and Moriarty, so there is not much point to making the hero evil, unless you actually write a story about how the hero we know turns into a monster, and write it really well, like the Injustice series did for Superman and some other DC superheroes.

You’re 100% right, I’ve been reading Dan Simmons and Neil Gaiman novellas around the same time and got things mixed up ;)
I didn’t get the part about Holmes and Moriarty swapping roles, so I guess I should read it again.

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EDIT: I didn’t know Sebastian Moran character (I haven’t read all Sherlock Holmes novels), I guess that’s why I didn’t understand this final twist.

I don't think the names are ever clearly stated in the story, but there are a lot of clues, like the detective in the story being an author of a paper about asteroids, which was written by Moriarty in the Holmes canon, and other stuff like that.

Gaiman also wrote another Holmes story The Case of Death and Honey, though that one is not an alternate universe story, but rather a sequel or epilogue of sorts to the Conan Doyle stories. I won't spoil it for you, but it's also very good.

If you want something of role reversal, its not quite tied to your point, then check out this steampunk album:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DO8M2WnggXQ

Nursery rhymes gone bad...in space!

Interesting. And that brings about a question, I've been thinking of. Some of the best characters are grey-area ones, where it's tough pegging them as heroes or villains. I wonder what would be the reaction of the crowd, where these characters are pushed towards a perception further down one way or the other? This would surely unveil how people in the swirly depths of their minds truly view them, wouldn't it?

I would want to see a subversion of Sherlock Holmes. I'm curious as to how would that be accomplished. Would a being twice as sinister as Moriety lead him down a path of no redemption, through a clever labyrinth of entrapment? Ideas. Ideas.

In the case of Wyatt Earp, its more complicated than just role reversal. It kind of came down to who you ask I think. I have seen a few different documentaries about the shootout at the OK Corral, and the majority of them portrayed Wyatt Earp as more of a villain than a hero. But not all of them did. *shrugs*

Or maybe they'd simply complain about the character being dumbed down, and rendered one-dimensional. Unless it's a push more towards the grey, of a character who, at the basis, is not-quite-a-hero or not-quite-a-villain. Reactions are unpredictible, still. Especially at this abstract level of speculation, without concrete exemples.

I think of two sorts of subversions mainly. An excellent holmesian subversion is the one in "Without a Clue", one of my favorite movies. It's not (quite) a moral axis, that get reversed, but an abilities one. Holmes is a dumbass, Watson is revealed as the genius behind it (Remington-Steele-like). The result is fantastic. Hilarious, charming, and strangely faithful to the books, atmosphere-wise (in order to work, it has to change just one element and keep the rest classical). So, that's one subversion. "You thought it was like this ? It's in fact the exact opposite." On a moral exis, that would be "Holmes was an evil genius all along".

More interestingly, characters can be nudged along their already existing traits, and become the nasty aspect of themselves. It's about exploiting an already present, recessive component. Like Batman becoming a creepy brute in "Dark Knight", or James Bond in "League of extraordinary gentlemen". There, Holmes wouldn't become a Moriarty, but an even more excessively recluse, manipulative, sociopathic drug addict. Some sort of Daryl Zero, or darker Cumberbatch. Not necessarily a ciminal, but possibly a ruthlessly calculating agent of the British empire (driven by nationalist loyalty in a context where the good guys would be opposing the State, for instance). JUst like you could easily make a dangerous hypocritical puritan of Eliot Ness, for instance (although it's more delicate because there's a genuine person's representation at stake there). I mean - a subverted Ness wouldn't be a Capone henchman, but a frighteningly narrow-minded puritan inquisitor of sorts. No, "You thought it was this ? It is, and more than you'd expect, but have you thought of this aspect ?"...

I wonder if the reactions are the same in the case of U-Turn and in the case of Caricature.

That would be Doctor House. They lampshaded it hard when the audience wasn't getting it after the first few episodes (you end up seeing his drivers license showing his address as 221B Baker) but they kept his misanthropy-bordering-on-sociopathy but then made him inescapably driven toward being a good guy (curing sick people). So I think that may meet your criteria.

In a broad sense Ive grown to find it irritating. Subverting characters used to happen occosionally and I didnt mind it. Now Ive seen it so much it just looks like our Entertainment industry has lost all perspective on right and wrong, or for that matter the nature of Humanity.
It does go hand in hand with what has become a nihilistic, narcissistic and self important industry.
Just one poor mans opinion ofc.

No, already established characters have specific traits that make them who they are. You can't change those without fundamentally destroying who that character is. That said, there's room to play with the archtypes used for new characters to subvert expectations.

You could have a sherlock holmes that participates in evil due to the effects of drugs or by accident or something, but if you have him intentionally committing crimes in an evil way he's no longer sherlock holmes. If you have a sherlock holmes with an iq of 50 and no ability to even try and solve anything, he's not sherlock holmes. You could have a twist where sherlock holmes' attempts to solve a problem creates a bigger one that he was unaware of. You could have a character with a similar archtype as sherlock holmes, but it would be a new distinct character. For an example, I don't want to see a female thor, black spiderman, black female ironman, white black panther, female captain america, evil grumpy luke skywalker, female ghost busters, etc. Not only do these often come off as incredibly lazy, they attempt to destroy the identities of the characters they copy. What I would like to see are new characters with their own identities that can fill new roles.

There's plenty of room to explore the complexity of already existing characters, but there are certain characteristics that make them who they are that cannot be reasonably changed. If someone tried to change captain picard into a brutal warmonger who executes his crew for speaking out of turn(and it's not some mirror universe episode, but in that case it technically wouldn't be the same character), it comes off as trying to destroy his character, his fundamental identity. Of course people are going to be angry.

Thar reminds me of The Last Ringbearer book. It is based on the assumption that History is always written (and thus twisted) by the winners, and tells the losers' point of view. Not a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it.

That's fascinating, I'll have to check it out.

Role reversal is fun, but we should understand the purpose of the characters. Remember how we oppose censorship of content in games, but at the same time there's something similar to be said about taking something and turning it into something else, which is often in the same spirit of censorship.

Let's take for example that we have the wonderful Geralt character. Let's say for a minute that we felt he was too dark, and deserves to have more of a good guy role: because his treatment towards women is inexcusable (or whatever we want to say). So, we should take out that he bangs women completely on a whim and even when he's got a dedicated relationship. Therefore, we've taken this evil, hedonistic womanizer and turned him into a hero. Now, that's censorship, is it not? Is it still censorship if i wrote my own books pretty much copying the story as much as i can legally, except leaving out that little detail? Most people call that censorship, but on the other hand, i'm just reversing how some people would see the character.

Now, what if i were to do another thing, such as taking an actually bad character and "toning them down," like Hades in the Disney Hercules movies? Sure, he's absolutely rotten, but are we not basically censoring his more negative traits? But, let's turn it around entirely. What about if we have something where Satan is construed as a good guy (fighting for chaotic freedom), fighting the evil Yahweh (who struggles to maintain static, totalitarian order)? We're taking a negative character, censoring all that makes him evil, and making him good, to a most extreme censorship, to the degree of role reversal, and that's just censoring the evil of Satan, but totally ignoring that in order to do that, we'd have to censor out Yahweh's arguments in the bible for anarchy, because we can't have God be an evil dictator if he argues that mankind should be free, so we have to, effectively, censor God's good traits, right?

What i think this really comes down to is that if we create a character for a certain purpose, it can easily become tempting to want to corrupt that character if we like these role reversal scenarios, but have a hard time building up our own character to ruin. It's too tempting to ruin someone else's character. On the flip side, we often view this with characters like Earp, to use your example, as OK, because we know Earp was a real person and he sure as hell wasn't exactly the hero his legends made him out to be, because we know he's human (same with David Crockett). So, we feel that his real self was censored, so it's OK to paint him in a bad light however we feel, because we like to believe we're "restoring the original character," when in reality we're just taking the legend of the real person and censoring the legend, which is more or less further censorship, 'cause we don't really know the truth about his dark side (actually, we do to a degree, since there's lots of info on him compared to someone like Aristotle). To make matters worse, the only reason we'd want to go and make someone like Earp evil or crooked is to ride off the success of his legend (and making our own twisted spin), not because we honestly respect the actual person.