tl:dr Poppy breaks a forced narative by the writing staff that has tried to make Damacia a morally grey state but only succeeded in making it essentially the evil state. The writers are immature and dedicated to grinding their fancition into reality no matter the damage it will cause.
God, don't get me started. But let's get fucking started. Poppy is a massive walking (literally, as an explorer) plothole in nu-Damacia and it's magic racism. She's been around since the early foundations of the nation, so a long time. She personally acquainted herself with a human leader and essentially served under Damacian ranks for supposedly decades before spending HUNDREDS of years looking for the Hero of her hammer. During this time she built a reputation of an unseen protector, killing monsters and the like in her quest. We also know that she tried and failed several times in giving her hammer away. So lets assume glamour is really that good, and through centuries nobody in the Damacian government has thought "hm, maybe we should check out these stories of some seemingly normal person doing extraordinary feats?" Maybe they did, but thought better of it and decided to instead kill more starving farmers. It's perfectly acceptable to assume she is too naive to notice the political landscape change around her to a more tyrannical one, but to assume she NEVER interacted with someone and let it slip that she's not some human? Even Tristana had no idea what glamour was and was exposed before killing her attackers. Poppy interacts with people on the regular, walking freely through towns. She's supposed to be naive but not stupid, so we can only assume she walks into bars and barracks looking for heroes and talks it up with the locals. She loves the country after all, she's not bumming it up in the woods like some witch, she is actively looking throughout the country for her hero.
"I'm no Hero, just a YORDLE with a hammer"
She is the Yordle the MOST likely to let slip her heritage, and she is the MOST exposed to the very people who would hunt her down. And you're telling me she had NEVER given away that kind of information or that nobody has EVER gone in to investigate her? Bullshit. In her comic, which is presumably canon, she one shots a literal walking mountain in front of potentially hundreds if not thousands of witnesses, and I guess nobody decides to look into that? Come on.
What's really going on is that Riot's massive throbbing hard-on for "no true good, no true evil" mentalities is destroying and complicating existing lore. The fact that the writing is garbage does not help. Poppy's lore is a gem of innocence and inspiration, marred by the forced narrative of Riot's uptight writing staff. No Riot, I will NEVER forget the Darth Vader thread, those posts say everything I will ever need to know.
And I know it's hard to write a consistent narrative over so many separate champion stories, but this isn't that. This is writer's greed demanding their own story rather than what works best or even makes fucking sense. It doesn't work that the magic racist state essentially worships a literal magic angel. You can't say that said angel is supposed to be a paragon of justice when she's a genocidal maniac with daddy issues. You can't say a giant magic statue is common knowledge for the populace and is completely accepted as a protector when the true nature of Petrecite SHOULD be known by the higher ups of the state. Get that? Unless they are the most incompetent parliament ever devised, the Damacian government KNOWS that Galio is a walking entity of absorbed magic, but they're just ok with that? They are willing to MURDER their own citizens because they are using magic to keep themselves from starving to death but don't seem to question an actual dragon woman holding established rank in their military?
The reason I am so upset about this is that Damacia was my favorite place in Runeterra. Was, when it was about the ideals of justice and fairness. There was a really good run of lore until you had to change it to fit your loreboy Sylas. Now they are obviously, so laughably the bad guys. Deeper cracks in the justice system of Demacia would have been your way to show that not all things are as glamorous as they seem. That's fine, in fact I encourage some subversion for the sake of a good story. But it's not a good story, its a garbled mess forced into the old country we loved in order to get your literary rocks off. Hilariously evil Damacia magic racism is not compelling, it's not interesting or thought provoking. You tried to hard, and now it just reeks tryhard. I wrote less edgy moralities when I was a teenager. It is again, forced, and it is ruining what little credibility both the story and you as writers have left. Poppy is just the perfect icing on the cake exposing how messed up it all really is.
Bless the Mord writer for not forcing some sympathetic side to the character, keeper him evil just to be evil. He even had the balls to come here and defend his narrative decisions with arguments rooted in the core ideals of the character without needlessly stepping on toes.
Can't wait to see what mess they'll make of Shyv and J4 as they continually update lore and progress with this civil war.
