In Defense of The Lore Team's Point of view (Counterpoint, not contradiction, to Capt.Marvelous)

Writing in response to the Capt. Marvelous Critique of Scathelocke/Lore Team's stance on good/evil. I did mean originally for this to be applied as a response post in that original thread, but it got a little longer and more philosophic than I maybe expected, so it's a post now. First of all, no hate (or even dislike) to the Captain. I respect the desire to have pure goods, and pure evils. In a fantasy, especially, it feels good to watch them duke it out. I write, instead, to offer the value of not having too many of those characters and the storytelling power they exert. I'm writing, also, about 15 hours after the initial post, so I know at least bits and pieces of this will be redundant after reading through the original thread here: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/story-art/QqvvicZk-a-critique-on-scathlockelore-teams-view-on-good-and-evil

That said, I also don't necessarily agree with how Scathelocke responded, and could have been more clear or nuanced (read, maybe nicer) in his replies on the thread that CaptainMarvelous was replying to. Even that, though, I challenge a little as this concludes.

I think the purpose of all this, rather than to abandon "good and evil," is to explore other dualities. On record, I do believe in objective Good and Evil, while recognizing that all people are people and prone to falling from objective good. Morgana and Kayle (as the origins of this round of discussion) are Justice and Mercy, two GOOD things that, applied in isolation from each other, can both cause more harm than help. Story-wise, this makes sense. Even in the Bible (an appropriate reference for a discussion involving former angels) the only irredeemably bad characters are Satan and his Demons, who are evil for the sake of evil. The human characters are all redeemable in spite of being born evil, because their evil didn't start with them. To populate League with characters that reflect human nature in that way, such that evil actions rarely extend purely from an inherent, uninherited, unfounded desire for evil, and such that good is what we're after but so often screw it up in some way or another, is to write humanity into League's story. Even in the Bible (my go to reference, to state the obvious) the only pure good lies with God and his angels (including Jesus, God in the flesh), and the only pure and irredeemable evil lies with Satan and company. All others lie in the divide. It's there that we encounter the questions that Kayle and Morgana ask, that Victor and Jayce ask, that even Demacia and Noxus ask: where, in a search for an objective good, where do we falter and fall? As I see it (and, in some cases, how the tone of the stories show): Kayle falls in too pure justice. Morgana falls in too pure mercy (though not so far as Kayle). Demacia falls where isolation and protection become fear and execution. Noxus falls where shows of strength give way to abuse of power and brutality. ######...jayce and victor just sort of fall apart due to lack of communication. And pride, i suppose. Not every moral discussion falls exactly in these lines, in part because not every character or place is part of a duality. Aatrox, for an example I saw mentioned, is a tragic character, corrupted by the void and his imprisonment to a possibly-irreparable place of madness.

Every character that doesn't fall within perfect good and perfect (anti-perfect?) evil is meant to make us question what those really are. They demand that we decide what we believe to be good, what we believe to be evil, and if there comes a time when we can't judge that something falls into that scale at all. I so badly want to be able to side with Kayle, mostly because of bias to the angel-of-light aesthetic. Her pursuit of justice even is admirable if lacking mercy. But lack of mercy makes her justice perhaps incomplete. So we have to ask, what makes justice good? Can it be perfectly good on its own? Where does it come from, and how does Kayle decide what is just? What is mercy? When does it apply? I believe that's what the lore team is really after, even if Scathelocke didn't make that clear. Maybe that's why he stayed so vague, because he didn't want to build our opinions for us. Would I, in his position, have taken this (much more verbose) path to explanation? Probably. But then this discussion might not have happened.

Thanks to CaptainMårvelous for initiating discussion. Would never have sat and considered this for so long otherwise.