Lore Updates And The Impact Of Fanon

I've seen quite a lot of discussion with the new bios about character changes and retcons, and I think it's interesting. With what we've seen in the past too, often a beloved character will receive a new Lore, and fans will be very upset that a certain aspect of them was changed. Riot, somehow, cut out an aspect that was absolutely core to the champion! How could they? Except, often...it was never present in the canon Lore to begin with.

Let's use Zed as an example. A lot of people are big Zed fans, and I've seen them cite his relationship with Syndra as something that humanizes him. Except...that's not canon. Zed and Syndra have never even so much as met in the official lore. It springs from an extremely popular fan comic.

Especially with characters that came out in Seasons 2 and 3, after the JoJ ended but before the launch of the new Lore content, you often had a page long biography for a character, and that was about it. The massive League fanbase was often forced to sort of fill in the blanks. Over time, and through countless fan fictions, art, and other content, that becomes a pretty key way people see the character, and the lines between fanon and canon start to blur. So, when those fanon establishments are replaced by canon ones, it can start to look like Riot's writing over their own stuff.

You can especially see this with . Her short lore and Judgement basically told us "Dead family, wants to destroy what was responsible, vigilante". So people filled in the blanks with "Oh, so she's like Batman." Well, not exactly. She's more The Punisher. (i think i've only really seen the netflix show)

This creates a pretty damn difficult position for Narrative staff. The direction that Riot might intend for these characters may have already been switched by fans who have sort of adopted them. They have to make the choice of tossing some of their own plans and going with the fanon, or using their own material and risking upsetting fans who had certain ideas about how these characters work.

Example, again, Viktor. I think it's pretty obvious Riot originally wanted Viktor to be a straight villain. Jayce's original Lore, his ability names (Death Ray), his voice over, all point to an evil cyborg overlord. But Viktor had established a fanbase who liked him as a tragic villain, or even an anti-hero. So, when they saw fan backlash to Viktor's villainy, his character became what it is now, which has...honestly pretty few villainous traits. His Universe story is about him playing with an orphan. He uses his terrifying DEATH RAY to...heat a pot of cream. And it's pretty great, honestly.

So I'd be interested in hearing, what fanon traits of your favorite champions do you think are worth keeping? Which would you be okay with falling by the wayside? And, sort of a pie-in-the-sky hope here, but if any Reds want to respond about their position on preserving fanon VS establishing canon, I'd be pretty damn pleased.

Anyway, that's enough out of me.