A Community Solution to the New Lore Outrage

So I've been thinking about the new lore changes and how vocally upset the community seems to be on the forums and I think I have an alternative. Since Riot wants to keep gameplay and narrative separate (a baffling move because I always thought the point of interactive fiction was finding interesting ways to combine gameplay and story) we, as a community, should curate our own lore, based on the universe Riot is retconning. You're probably thinking "Fan Fiction, ewwwww" but hear me out:

• League of Legends has a gigantic player base- 70 million people play this game every month. Statistically at least some of them have to be extremely talented writers and artists, and that's evidenced by the amazing fan art and fiction that exists already. Putting together a team of dedicated writers and artists that can do Runeterra justice probably isn't that big of a stretch.

• Passion>Money- Riot's narrative team is employed and draws a salary, and while I'm sure they're very passionate about the game (since that's baked into the company culture) I firmly believe a group of people doing something purely because of passion produce better results than someone who's getting paid. Look at how quickly the community came up with alternative ways to progress the canon after the announcement. It's all over the forums. I personally can think of many, many interesting stories that could be told about The Institute, Summoners, and the tension a system like that could create in Runeterra with only a slight retcon of the Institute's power and reach. I'm excited just thinking about the idea, and will almost definitely write some fan fiction regardless of whether the community takes to this post or not. And I know there are plenty of writers and artists who'd be just as motivated as me.

• Writing within a framework allows for more creativity- One of my English professors used to give us these oddly specific prompts and ask us to come up with short stories. Despite the prompt being extremely limiting (things like "Write a story about a dying man in a bar enjoying his last drink, and do it in under 3000 words") the stories that emerged in the class were all so wildly different from one another it became obvious the prompt wasn't actually that limiting at all, which was the point. And I'm not just talking about the restrictions the Institute of War supposedly place on the narrative, I'm also talking about Riot themselves. We'd have to react to everything they released, working it into our version of the lore. That's exciting to me. A new story and more world building every time a champion is released or a new game mode is introduced? Count me in. They call this storytelling through problem solving. A new champion presents a new problem, "How do we work this person into our version of this world?" And I bet what we come up with could be fantastic.

• Riot has given us the space to do this- If they want to separate the lore from the gameplay fine, whatever. But that leaves a disconnect that shouldn't exist between what we do when we play a match and what we read. That space is where we come in.

I could write more but you get the point. I don't know, I haven't thought super long about this, but I do have some experience world building and writing, and I spend anywhere from two to four hours a day writing my own stuff anyway, so I'd be willing to undertake a project like this just for fun if there was community interest and support. This is my first post ever, but the lore is the reason I started playing (those cinematics are so damn good) so I had to say something. The lore changes hurt a lot and since I saw a lot of people with a similar sentiment, I thought I'd float this idea out there. Let me know what you think.