Role-Reversal AU's are fun, and good for a thought-exercise and character exploration... And it's interesting when you come across characters who simply Will Not Work in a Role-Reversal scenario!
Helluva Boss is a good example of that. Specifically, Blitz and Stolas.
"What if the roles were reversed? What if Blitz was old-money Demon Royalty, and Stolas was a struggling business owner with a complicated (& star-studded) backstory?"
-Well, for starters, Blitz would not be the person he IS if he were Old Money Royalty! His entire PERSONALITY was FORGED in the fires of poverty, active competition, substance abuse, dreams of upward mobility, and a world trying to keep him down!
Take away his specific trauma's and give him a different set?! He becomes a WHOLE DIFFERENT CHARACTER!
"Stolas grew up in a Circus, instead of a Gilded Cage--!" Okay, so was he a clown, an acrobat, a fortune teller, or what,? How do you fit this rich-boy from the poetry group into the mould of a Carnie?
He is a nepo-baby; he is a student who was pressured to Study Hard so that he could earn that Law Degree without Father having to bribe the University; his whole life was planned for him without his input. How do you re-write him into a self-made man who chose to leave the Family Business and take his career in an entirely different direction.
You might as well have a different character!
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If I were to imagine Blitz as Demon Royalty, he would be a warlord, some Foot soldier or General who took the throne in a bloody coup during some ongoing conflict.
Cavalry with bloodied swords, not 8th-generation Fencing School championships at the Country Club.
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Likewise, I can imagine Stolas in the working class-- perhaps as a florist, or some kind of clerk or secretary with a Stressful Desk Job, trying to support their teenage daughter, convinced that they're way to old for their "Cinderella Story" to ever actually happen...
But I have to change things, see? I can't simply put one into the other's shoes, because they never would've grown into the people they are now, if they're been wearing those boots from the start.
You're?
