Karma and balance

No, this isn't a gameplay post. Calm down. This is just a consideration for her new lore that I wanted to make sure is thrown out there.

Most everyone says that Karma's lore boils down to it basically not making a lot of sense with her previous character as well as making her some kind of penance self-martyr of some kind - basically boring with no real direction to take her.

#The most insulting thing about this lore is how childish and one dimensional it is, as well as just philosophically wrong.

So all right, before going into this, let's just break down all the key concepts that Riot basically ganked from eastern religion: karma as a base, along with punya, pap, adharma, and dharma which Darha is a play on words of (hur de hur, so clever).

Explained, punya and pap are your merit and sin respectively and dharma and adharma are the deeds themselves - basically, dharma is an act that brings balance to the universe while adharma disrupts it (simplified, they're mostly just good and bad). This works on a ethical scale and isn't meant to be taken as a black and white model - basically, you also factor in intent, attitude, and desire.

Now, this isn't where Riot goes wrong in the lore - this is actually followed rather okay-ish, if a little simplistic. Karma annihilates a Noxian general and his crew. Technically a bad act as it's taking another life, but the intent is the defense of her homeland: Or should be. The point that Riot appears to try and make is that the inner voice of Darha demands that Karma use her powers to kill the invaders. Karma's hesitant but believes that she only need take one life and compromises with Darha. Darha instead drives her to take out an entire vessel of people - okay, over-exercise of power. That can possibly be taken as ill-intent along with a failure in the attitude and desire department.

#Here is where the lore completely loses any sound philosophy.

Karma, an enlightened being, would easily be able to see the justification in killing when it is a necessity to maintain balance and harmony. If a Noxian fleet is barreling down on your nation and slaughtering thousands, inaction doesn't stop the killing - it makes sense that killing a nation's generals would leave their armies far less capable and so seeking to minimize the death toll required to return harmony would be an act of dharma. That's enlightened intent, attitude, and desire. You turned Karma into a whining martyr instead of making this a story of Darha becoming her own enlightened Karma.

#Here's what should have happened: Darha realizes that her intent to exercise her power was juvenile and immoral. She accepts this and learns from it, meditates on it, and realizes that violence should be reserved for necessity and teaches these ideals. In a post-invasion Ionia, while everyone is looking to exercise their might, Karma teaches them that violence without cause only further disrupts harmony and brings no more positive results. Using the ship as an anecdote, she teaches that she could have killed one man for the same result than have killed more.

Instead, Riot goes the "I'll never kill again" route, a childish and stereotypical end for how one-dimensional it is - oh yes, killing will totally always be easy. The opportunity missed is the lesson of restraint and necessity. The suppression of immoral thoughts or actions but also the ability to use one's moral compass.

#Giving in to anger and killing may be an easy path to take, but so is complete inactivity and submission. Exercising the restraint to refrain from excess when necessity calls for darker action - that's the challenge, that's getting closer to enlightenment. Knowing when to start and where to stop.

As the fuckin' religion you ganked these beliefs from practices, the point is to maintain moral balance, inside and out. Inner and outer harmony. It is not just about peace and love and smoochy smooches - sometimes the harsh reality of the universe is that action must be done to bring it back to balance. Even from a stance of non-violence, Karma's motivations and reactions here are completely asinine.

So to leave you with a quote from the man himself, here's Gandhi's own belief on this kind of situation:

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent."

#Rephrased: If your only option left to you is violence to reclaim your own power, it is better to practice violence than to sit by and give up your personal power. It is possible for someone once violent to halt their violence. It's not possible to reclaim your power once you've lost it. Basically, if the only path available to you is violence, it is better to take it than to sit inactive.

But thanks for bastardizing a philosophically sound religious belief down to its most immature base possible.