The stagnation of creativity in the community

There is a TL;DR at the bottom: do not fear the wall of text for the wall of text means you no harm. You are free to pass around it as even the longest wall is not without an end.

So this is a result of me taking a (rather rude) shot at a single Rioter (my apologies Bioluminescence that I chose your post to bring up a boiling topic currently). Upon her reply, I decided that the latter half of that bit would be far too long to just shove into a comment - enlargening it would dominate the bloody comment's section of the topic, and that's not a fair thing to do to all the others there. So, here is a continuation of that comment:

There's basically two fan-lores or fan-fictions or what-have-you's that have any red comments (there may be more that I can't bloody find because they're way down the list, but I digress), and the kicker: they don't actually have a correlation. It's sheer dumb luck that it appears that RiotExLibris noticed the "Ionian Nights" series and followed it for a bit - it's sheer dumb luck that one single Journal Entry on a Scuttler caught somebody's eye as well (and to be fair, it's probably due to the scuttler's addition being in that timeframe. And there's a lot of bloody fanfiction that never got off the ground, current standing theory being that these things aren't endorsed. Hell, any lore discussion that I've found doesn't even get a passing glance by reds as far as it appears - the only thing so far is the blown up feedback on Ekko's lore and the subsequent hit against the new lore so far.

You post links to fan art, fan sculptures, fan cosplays - but it's all stagnant art. It's generally a person drawing something that already has existed, or a bloody plastic poro that somebody printed out.

Do not get me wrong on this - it can be pretty impressive (especially the 3D poro, that one was pretty nice). But while you on a seemingly weekly basis round up the fanart and cosplays that are out there, there's not even a shoutout to this bloody thing: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/mkqQaPKa-the-grand-heist-of-zaun

It got one comment from a red who apparently used to work in, ah, the "book industry" as they refer to it.

This is a fucking book.

I could take maybe a week to pump out a drawing on paper (I personally despise styluses) if I actually dedicated some time to it. I could knock out a drawing in less than an hour. This is a book. Well, book-length fan-fiction - the point still stands. Try to pump that out in a week. Half a month. A whole month. A goddamn year. Go ahead, give it a bloody shot.

It's not like it's going to be a classic. Or that it's particularly great. It's all right. But I've seen worse drawings and cosplays limelighted than this long-ass thing, and the person actually put some goddamn effort into it. I have an aspiring cartoonist friend that can do their work in about an hour - again, from somebody who may not draw normally, that's impressive. And while I'm not the world's greatest artist myself, I can honestly still look at the work and say, "That's aggressively all right and stylized, but I can see clearly where you got lazy with the background there." But the other thing is that it's not on paper - my friend has tools to help make her job easier. Need a gradient? There's a tool for that - need to keep switching and shading? Another tool that makes that easier. Oh, you messed up? Undo it, there ya go.

You don't get assistance in writing - there's archetypes you can follow, but the same thing exists for artistry where you start with the "wireframe". Past your ancient established archetypal plotlines, you're working off whatever's left in that thick head of yours, and weaving together something coherent enough to be called a story is bordering on incredible. Like, even for succeeding in finishing something like this, kudos to the writer. Not to mention this is expanding on old concepts and creating new ones - this is actually creating as opposed to just recreating.

So what's the point of that bit there?

Well, you guys tend to ask things like this:

> {quoted} > > This is really cool. Can you tell us what the 'story' behind the piece is? Why is Jinx going with Ekko? Are they going to get the Z-Drive device?

Please note that this was a post on a bloody drawing. Your post on a drawing. You've asked more about how conceptual lore came to be from somebody just drawing.

Which, again, knowing numerous cartoonists myself, here was the inevitable response:

> [{quoted}](name=Gett Jinxed,realm=NA,application-id=2XjzURgc,discussion-id=99GpTGl1,comment-id=00000002,timestamp=2015-05-16T06:06:57.288+0000) > > Yes. From Ekko's quotes, it's quite apparent he seeks to progress Zaun somehow. That's where most of this inspiration came from, but for the most part, it was a spur of the moment muse to draw the two.

And seems prejudiced for me to had not even found the comment yet and yet already know what it was going to say. Somehow, though, I remained correct on the matter.

You don't go to a painter for a story, and you don't go to a writer to draw you a picture - two entirely different forms of creativity. So why am I finding more red activity asking about "the story behind" something on bloody pictures than any form of lore discussion?

Wait, wait, let me rephrase that... why do I find activity about story on a picture yet basically nothing lore related at all on lore discussions or fan-lores? Not even a "how'd you get to this" or a "so what was your thinking here" - just dead silence. For a company whose practices so far have been to encourage players to "make their own conclusions", you guys really don't seem too active in encouraging any of these actions - you're almost absent, like my father to any of my soccer games.

I only joke now because I've dragged this out a lot, and it's a lot that needs to be said anyhow - you guys don't encourage your lore. You don't encourage your players to make lore connections. You don't even encourage them to expand on it even when you claim to do so - you encourage them to pay service to what's already there, and at this point it's resulting in an almost stagnant creativity here. There are a few champion concepts that at least catch a Rioter's eye, but even those are few and far between - and for the most part, you're not going to find anything much really added to the atmosphere of the game. Although kudos to these people for having lores for their concepts longer than the summary of "Catcher in the Rye" (for those who don't know what that is, it's "Teenage angst ensues").

You have community roundups of fanart, why not, just once a month even (that's plenty of goddamn time for you to read two pieces of short-fiction), make a fiction-roundup?

Or... don't tell me you're afraid that it might call even more attention to the sorry state of the lore currently?

Despite my shot at her, if you haven't checked out this piece yet (which if you haven't, fuck you, it's on the front page it's right there, how much of a hassle is it for you to just click the title), give it a looksy. I wholeheartedly encourage this sort of thing from any Rioter. http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/3zEoMJKZ-unofficial-short-fan-fiction-bard-one-winters-catch

And hell, there's an old piece from way way back from one of the actual writers that I'd love to see more activity from: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/KElA4Qb1-fan-fiction-no-glass-ceilings-in-noxian-politics

This not only spurs your players' creativity but also can inspire your own team, and I've been taught throughout my life to draw inspiration from anything and everything. And what reason do you have not to - take something, mold something, turn it into something new. How do you think we got half of the shit you see in the world? How do you think every story starts - uniquely? Good luck finding the one true archetypical story that spawned everything - you're going to have a hard time of it. No, everything comes from something else, and that's the beauty of this stuff - we draw inspiration from your work, Riot. What, are you that high and mighty that you can't admit you draw inspiration from elsewhere as well? I do wonder where you got the idea of Lee Sin from. Or Cassiopeia. Or Pantheon. Or Morgana or Kayle or Yasuo or Lulu or - Jesus, goddamn Karma (wow, talk about "original the character"). Come on. Zed, Bard, Mundo, Maokai - you're not exactly original pioneers. Ekko's ult isn't even new functionally - hello, Weaver from Dota2. You added an explosion to it - good for you. We aren't bloody stupid. The claim that you "don't want to rip off your player's ideas" is a little too much of a blatant lie when you rip off just about every other concept out there.

But to the lore team, maybe you're afraid that you might just like some of these ideas. You want this new, big ol' piece of lore to be all your own, right? Because your ideas are the best ideas, yeah?

They usually aren't. My ideas aren't even the best ideas. Rin the Yordle isn't even the best artist and her ideas probably aren't the best ideas. George R. R. Martin's ideas aren't even the best ideas. Michelangelo's ideas aren't even the best bloody ideas. Usually, the best idea you're going to find was originally somebody else's idea, and that's just the truth of the matter. So why the hell should you care about the source? All that matters to any kind of copyright law, moral or ethical standard, or to any writer anywhere is that you didn't just copy/paste somebody's idea and change the names around - if you've made it your own, then what's there to feel guilty about? Saying that you don't want to pay attention to fan-lore or fan-pieces because you "don't want to rip off your player's ideas" just sounds more shady than if you actually were to do it, so cut the act.

Sniping comments aside now, I will give the summarized, TL;DR version here:

Show that you guys care about your lore and the fanbase that still even bothers to show it any attention. Start some discussions like you do under concepts or fanart pieces. Make more pieces like Bioluminescence's and ExLibris' to get the ball rolling if you have to - but encourage this action. If I have to see one more "LOOK AT ASHE IN A SAILOR MOON OUTFIT OMG NOESBLUD HNNNG" front-paged, I'm going to vomit on my keyboard and gouge out my bloody eyes (and I mean that they will literally have already begun to bleed themselves even before the gouging).