Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Forcing lore not to have and good and evil is just stupid

Ataraxas·2/20/2019, 12:12:00 AM·25 votes·7,933 views

Just to avoid having a clear good and evil you're always writing the typical good guys as assholes and the showing the typical bad guys as moralistic. First with Demacia and now with Kayle. Stop it. You're ruining theme. People who are attracted to Kayle are those who like the idea of a Champion being good and actually bringing justice, the new lore ruined that whole champion fantasy. What's wrong with having good and evil in Runeterra? You should embrace it as part of theme and personality. I don't know who came up with the ridiculous idea that good and evil don't exist but it needs to change cause they clearly do. You wouldn't look at someone going around killing people for no reason and say, "hey, that's not good nor evil!" It's clearly evil and it's something that exists so stop trying to pretend it doesn't and stop forcing yourself to color everything gray. There needs to be black, white, and gray for a good story.

68 Comments

GreenLore2/20/2019, 12:25:16 AM24 votes

Well Morganas old lore always described Kayle and her people as tyrants, so that sort of depiction isn't really anything new really.

However I do feel like they missed the mark with Morgana as Morgana is just straight up good in this new lore, wheras the old lore made it sound like Morgana has good goals, but uses wicked methods to achieve them.

Reksee2/20/2019, 12:54:51 AM8 votes

The characters that are purely (and obviously) good: Nunu Neeko Braum Janna Soraka Ivern Lux

The characters that are purely(and obviously) evil: Chogath Fiddlesticks Jhin RekSai Khazix Velkoz Nocturne

The characters where we(or me cuz I'm not a lore genius) don't know: Bard Corki Gnar Kindred Nasus

The characters in the gray area: Literally everyone else.

I probably missed a few but considering there are 143 champions that many champs on each side of the spectrum is far too little. Heck, a lot of the purely good characters are divine beings not affected by mortal emotions and Nunu is a 6 year old kid.

boricCentaur12/20/2019, 12:33:30 AM7 votes

Writing a pure good character and a pure evil character is really boring and not writing like that is especially important when your doing it for a game where people get attracted to characters. But riot really really has done the good guy is a asshole theme way too much.

Poop Johnson2/20/2019, 2:58:42 AM6 votes

Okay, first off; Kayle hasn't ever been just "Good angel that does justice because justice is good" She has had 3 majorish rewrites and in none of them is she just "good".

In her first lore she is apart of a regime that demands full obedience where asking "why" is a death sentence. Slowly she becomes tired of doing mission apon mission on just faith she asks "Why not strike them harder and end this war now and forever" and gets sent to Valoran. Nothing to do with justice at all or being good either, it's completely different then any other lore.
This is the one (technically 2) telling that give us what people think of Kayle. She's basically an alien from another world where a long fought war is taking place. She is said to be extremely powerful and extremely beautiful but she doesn't show her face because the war has destroyed her mentally and she also tries to reform those who do evil but most of the time has to strike them down because she sees them as beyong redemption. The next part was added in later where Morgana with the help of summoners and the League go to destroy her but Kayle then joins the League as well to stall them. Sounds good right? That's without Morgana's angle where it's explained that angels (Kayle's side) are tyrants who can't see the bigger picture (sound familiar?) and while Morgana isn't exactly pure, she isn't exactly evil as Kayle is the one who started the conflict.
Same thing as above but without the whole league bit

TL:DR for above: Kayle has always been arguably not good because she sees herself as judge, jury, and executioner for any of those she sees beyond saving and she's supposed to mirror justice which isn't inherently good (if you steal food for your starving family are you evil?)

Second: We already have purely evil characters, they're from the Void and The Shadow Isles and we already have purely good characters because I doubt anyone is gonna say Nunu, Lux, Neeko, and Lulu.

Camille Ferrøs2/20/2019, 9:32:17 AM4 votes

Since this happened I have a feeling that even morde will become some misunderstood good guy.

Kairoptra2/20/2019, 2:03:12 AM3 votes

Well, having nearly universal ambiguity by itself is not necessarily bad. The real problem comes with the execution.

NotaRobot10062/20/2019, 1:43:28 AM2 votes

I think one way to help would be distinguishing actions and motives.

Maybe you don't want to outright declare X champion pure "evil." But you can still recognize that they do evil things. Two good examples of this are the Apocalyptically Determined Floating Midlaners: Malzahar Karthus

Sure, their motives of trying to end mortal suffering aren't inherently bad. But I think we can all agree that speeding up the coming of the Void or turning people undead against their will are evil actions.

And with that simple distinction, we can acknowledge the existence of good and evil AND have gray areas.

Zapzya2/20/2019, 10:45:00 AM2 votes

I mean, I wouldn't say all good guys are assholes. A couple examples where the characters are on the more mellow side:

Caitlyn and Vi are just protective of the city.
Shen just doesn't know how to lead.
Blitzcrank and Orianna just want to be alive.
Jarvan is a pretty progressive dude, letting Shyvana into his personal guard.
Irelia is actually not that bad, she just hates Noxian's.
Old man Ryze is just kind of grumpy, but never really mean spirited or anything.

Even some of the assholes are kind of forgivable. Jayce is an asshole in the way that Alan Turing in "The Imitation Game", he's actually just bad at understanding other people. There are clearly beacons of good in Runeterra, like Nunu and Lux. There is no longer a good nation however, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I can understand why some might miss that.

I think people interpreting Kayle as purely a zealot is a little far. I do dislike that she has been made into an incredibly rash character, as I find those characters tiring and we already have Sylas, Vayne, Sejuani and Xayah to kill people because of prejudice. But the bio seems to hint she has grown up and should be less like a zealot. I'll reserve judgement till they release her colour story.

Metallikaiser2/20/2019, 7:08:42 PM2 votes

Equally stupid are people who think Kayle and Morgana have been changed, when in their original lore they very clearly are not a story of good versus evil. Kayle was quite obviously always a force of justice at its extreme, some people like that, some people will think she goes too far, I would call her controversial as opposed to making her less 'good'. But it also importantly isnt changing her from being strictly good, because she wasnt.

Ebonmaw Dragon2/20/2019, 2:59:44 AM2 votes

Veigar

Hyper10sion2/20/2019, 8:36:02 PM1 votes

She was NEVER good. Anyone who thought she was some virtuous beacon of hope and light never actually read her lore.

The Highest Noon2/20/2019, 8:56:13 PM1 votes

I mean, Lux and Garen are definitely good. There's not an evil bone in their bodies. Just because certain characters assume they're bad people doesn't mean they're bad people. That's what the entire idea of PERSPECTIVE is about. Good and Evil are terms that require perspective to have meaning. In their perspective, they're good people. In Sylas's perspective, they're bad people because they stand with who he perceives as a bad nation. You call it a bad story, I call it life.

Void creatures are objectively destructive. They're not evil but they're wrong, and that's not something that the lore has ever changed.

Phieldworker2/20/2019, 12:37:06 AM1 votes

Since many of the ascended/aspects etc still have mortal minds their goals and values are skewed but mortal wants and needs. Also if you pay attention every story and character is giving them dimensions. They feel like characters a reader can relate to because not everyone is just dark and light. Having just good and evil is boring. Having morally gray characters is relatable. Take Warwick for example, he kills ruthlessly but he does his best to kill those who are criminals. Darius is devoted to noxus but he also has a heart and will of his own (his love for quill and his brother). It’s nice having characters with depth to them instead of a “i always do the right thing” or “I always do the wrong thing”.

Darius Strada2/20/2019, 11:55:10 AM1 votes

I don't mind some gray characters but there are charaters that should be and appear as good. Braum Nunu Taric Ekko Garen Lux Neeko Soraka Yorick . I don't want Braum to turn evil just because it would be boring if he was "just" good

Jaspers2/20/2019, 12:05:12 PM1 votes

To me, the greyness of characters is fine as overly righteous character can get stale but Riot is using it too much. Riot is telling the stories like all characters are grey besides a few horrors who can't be anything but evil. Changing characters who are seemingly good before to grey to give them more character when sometimes what stories need is good people.

One story type of villain I like in fiction is the unstoppable villain. As in they aren't stopped by morals or talking, they are there to do their things and nothing else. My favourite enemy of all time is The Fury, from Alan Moore's Captain Britain. This 'villain' isn't evil but it is by it's design as it's built on the idea of hate. Jim Jaspers hates superheroes, he blames them for the worlds problem and in his insanity creates an impossible being to rid his world of them, programming it with one task, to find a target and kill the target. This concept to me is better than most other villains in the MU as it's something everyone fears. Cap, Spider-man, the X-men, Thanos, Galactus, Doom, you name them and they will fear this creature because it can't be convinced, it can't be reasoned with and it has no morals.

This is my issue the Darkin change. They went from an outside unstoppable force that decimated Runeterra to a bunch of human made gods that warred with each other, slaughtering thousands in the process. We are made through the stories to sympathise with them as they 'had to fight the void', got PTSD and that they could be redeemed because they were once good.

If they had remained from the outside, beings from another world that were not going to be convinced, were not going to be morally switched and were there to do nothing but slaughter and conquer it would have made them far better as characters because there is no greyness about them. The idea of different races and nations of Runeterra joining together to fight a single opposing force that wasn't going to stop to me is far more compelling of a story than some infighting. Then when they are 'picked up' it would have also given them more purpose as well. Aatrox isn't a Ascended who whines over what he lost (because of his own doing) and is in pain of what he is now, he's a unstoppable being that had to be tricked into his own weapon, now alive taking over hosts to end Runeterran's existence.

General Matty2/20/2019, 3:41:34 PM1 votes

This is some deep stuff lol.