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Lissandra's Bio Should Get Rewritten

HonestJohnTheCon·8/22/2018, 3:50:13 PM·40 votes·13,633 views

NOTE: All of this is my opinion.

Now, look. Before you start downvoting me and bashing me because I "hate change" or something, let me just tell you this isn't about the content.

The concept of the new lore is that rather than serving the Watchers, Lissandra now is trying to stop them from killing everything. That's the main difference. She's still insidious, cunning, and evil. Her personality is basically the same. This, on its own, is more of an adaptation of Lissandra now that the Watchers are from the Void and want to kill everything. Her general character, or at least her personality, remains intact.

However, the bio fails to deliver on that. Heck, I thought they turned her into some kind of anti-hero before I clarified with a Rioter. You wouldn't know that she's evil and plans for world domination by reading the bio. I think the bio focused too much on her connection with the Watchers (which is important, but it's there too heavily) rather than her own personal exploits. They conveniently left out the fact that she has a religious guild and that she wants to rule the world, which I think are two big parts of her new character.

Also, there are some clarity issues. Exactly HOW did sacrificing her sisters and her followers seal off the Void? WHY does she want to kill off the reincarnations of Avarosa and Serylda? It tries to cram too much into one bio.

There's personality problems, too. She comes off as incompetent and fearful of the Void, rather than being careful and confident that her plans will fall into place. She seems desperate, which is out of character. Very out of character.

And if there's a problem with the word limit, then you should do what you did with Ornn. Have a separate story that details the most important tales that contain Lissandra, some kind of "History of the Freljord" or something like that. And keep the bio brief and on what she plans to do now in present-day Runeterra.

TL;DR If I have to clarify information with a Rioter after reading a bio, the bio isn't clear enough and should be rewritten.

Discuss. If you found the bio clear, please explain to me how, because I got bamboozled by it.

20 Comments

Pale Mask8/22/2018, 4:17:36 PM12 votes

I don't disagree with you; I think some parts of her lore should be rewritten or expanded for clarity. However, I, personally, immediately understood where they were going with it.

I don't know where people got the idea that she's an anti-hero/anti-villain or that she has benevolent intentions. From how they described the Watchers, it's obvious that no one except the insane or suicidal would ever serve their true goal. Lissandra desired power, and made a bargain with them.

When Lissandra's tiny brain finally managed to comprehend (as much as it could) their interests, she backed out of the deal, understandably terrified of the prospect of throwing everything she worked so hard to gain away, and betrayed them (or maybe she planned to betray them from the beginning).

Either way, this makes complete sense; there's no point in making a manipulative fairy tale villain only to have them go full omnicidal on themselves and the rest of the world. Of course, being an ambitious witch, she also backstabbed her sisters.

I think the best thing they can do is simply to reference her hunger for power and control more. If they did, all of these confusion-induced threads would be avoided.

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOO8/22/2018, 5:33:02 PM4 votes

What makes the bio unclear?

EmittingXs8/22/2018, 4:17:17 PM4 votes

Yea I don't like how they went about rewriting her lore. It makes little sense given what we already knew about her and it seems to go against some of her previous beliefs. I understand that's the purpose of a revision in story but in that case, I don't like the direction they're going with Lissandra now. I had to get a few people to better explain her new lore because it made no sense to me the first few times I read it. It seemed as though other people have to go through the same thing too and if that doesn't say something, then I don't know what will.

I like the Lissandra that's evil and wants to take over the Freljord and the world. The one that's willing to sit back and watch Ash and Sejuani destroy eachother while she builds her army. Heck, her in game quote "The watchers will return" says to me that she wants them to come back so she can use them for her own gains. I loved how she would kill her daughter generation after generation just to take their image and name, that's dastardly but very unique to who Lissandra was as a villain in the League universe. At this point I think that her new lore needs another revision with a strong focus on what makes her who she is based on what her wants and how she hopes to obtain that. They reworked Karma's new lore right after it was revised recently so I see no reason why they can't do that for Lissandra.

GingahBread8/22/2018, 10:15:39 PM3 votes

TL;DR If I have to clarify information with a Rioter after reading a bio, the bio isn't clear enough and should be rewritten.

You nailed my feelings on this perfectly.

The change isn't bad. The bio itself isn't bad, but the writing is just not up to snuff. There's too much going on, and none of it gets the amount of attention it needs.

It 100% needs to be rewritten, just for clarity's sake. Otherwise we'll continue to have people misinterpreting who and what she is until no one actually knows her character. Then when she's finally updated to be more clear, we'll have a bunch of people that are upset because they thought she was something else entirely, so the clarifications will feel like a retcon to some, similar to what we have going on right now.

Hopefully Riot will see this and understand we're not just bashing them because of change, but just want things to be a bit clearer. We know they're capable of some really good writing, which makes this bio all the more jarring. It doesn't meet the standards they usually hold.

Oleandervine8/22/2018, 4:26:53 PM3 votes

I think I agree because I'm conflicted because the new lore, as it's written, is horrible and paints in the most opposite nature of who she is and what her plans are. I would agree that if this wasn't the intent, Riot needs to fix it. The bio needs to deliver to us who the character is, and in the case of rewrites, needs to deliver THE SAME CHARACTER that we love, with updates to fit in the new lore. It shouldn't take "clarification from Rioters" to find the same character in the new lore, because that should have been delivered with the bio update.

Riot needs to fix this, and rewrite this so that we know this person as Lissandra.

Shinjrou8/22/2018, 6:30:47 PM3 votes

summoner 13

The Iceborn8/22/2018, 6:16:28 PM3 votes

True they focused too much on the watchers when her Bio is about Lissandra and not the watchers...

Noxxarian8/23/2018, 5:18:56 PM2 votes

"In that moment, her only choices were to let all the world be consumed, or to give up what she cared for most—Lissandra sacrificed her sisters and the allies they had gathered, entombing the Watchers beneath a glacial barrier of magical ice that could never be melted."

This confuses me quite a bit. She cares for her sisters the most... yet she doesn't want them coming back. There are significant gaps in the story. The only way I see her sacrificing them is by either... I dunno, maybe entombing them all as well as the position was such that she could stop the watchers but had to entomb them all? Otherwise it doesn't make sense to me. I mean we're not talking life-drain capabilities, where she has to kill allies. Sacrifice would mean "Oh shit, bad place bad time, I have to sacrifice you."

Meanwhile, perhaps her motives are power because she saw "potential" aside from death in the void. Maybe she quite literally only intends to stop the watchers, in order to keep this "potential" for herself. This would maybe also explain why she no longer wishers for her sisters to return, because they most definitely would want to stop her if they were to learn she could somehow harness power from the void. That's just a lot of speculation, I know, but there are so many gaps in the story.

I'm just digging so hard cause I intend to do a lore biography video on her, and also a lore discussion to cover these theories. Very interesting.

kneel on Ice8/22/2018, 4:41:31 PM2 votes

1OOO% agree

PS: also she needs a buff and a new skin

Fondling Gems8/22/2018, 11:52:01 PM2 votes

As someone who loves tons of factual information, the Bio was a super interesting read. As someone who enjoys good writing, the Bio gave me a headache.

They are meant to be stories, not snippets of the national geographic channel.

Ixxer8/23/2018, 6:30:09 AM2 votes

[deleted]

Emperor of Fate8/22/2018, 7:24:00 PM1 votes

I am conflicted now..although i did like the way the story was told a lot i understand that for a biography it was somewhat unfitting.I really dont know , from the one side questions like : why did she sacrificed her sisters and erase their history can be ansewered in futere lore pieces , i mean lissandras lore is not the first one that lefts questions ananswered ..

On the other side it would be nice if we knew what lissandras goal is now.. ( except from keeping the watchers trapped ) because although we can speculate a clear answer is more suitable for a bio!

However, that being said i dont agree that lissandra was out of character during the bio , of course you would panic if you had to choose between killing your own family or letting the world be consumed by eternal darkness.Also fearing the watchers ( creatures able to end the universe) is understandable and makes her feel real...

All in all iam leaning towards keeping the bio as it is and expand it with other stories , i dont see how this can be more harmful than the bio of , lets say , kindred ! If riot changes one vague lore then it must replace all vague bios ..and in the end what or who will decide when a bio is vague enough to be rewritten ?

we dont know what leblanc's goal is or how did she lived for so long should her bio be rewritten ? i don think so... The same applies to lissandra the mysteries of the past will slowly be unfolded we dont need to get all the answers in one bio..

Thefrostyviking8/22/2018, 6:20:45 PM1 votes

From what i understood, by sacrificing her sisters, allies, various true ice artifacts and friends she managed to magically create a glacier made entirely out of true ice right ontop of and partially inside the giant void portal the watchers were using.

She could not do this normally as the power needed was far too great.

And because the watchers are now corrupting the glacier to break it she is trying to gather more true ice artifacts to boost it, she is also gathering iceborn as they are the only mortals she can rely on to beat voidborn in a fight.

And while some true ice artifacts are still present all the ones that she gave her minions except trundle are mainly just steel weapons imbued with a shard of true ice rather than a weapon made entirely from it like what Ashe has for instance.

As for the reason she is desperate, she at first only knew them to be powerful and that they wanted to destroy the world, she thought she could leech power from them but essentially not do anything.

But shit fell apart when the watchers actually went and started opening their own portal into the world, hence the very drastic reaction of murdering everyone to plug the portal/hole.

Then she probably decided it was good enough for the moment and began gathering up forces which would be the frostguard, their task is to gather iceborn descendants(mainly children) and train/awaken those into proper iceborn and also brainwash them religiously into Lissandra´s minions for guarding the seal and eventually taking over the Freljord when she has enough soldiers i guess.

So while she was definitely flustered and forced to make the sacrifice that she did she is now almost certainly just plotting and scheming for personal benefits while trying to ensure that her giant magic glacier remains stable.

I only wish we had some idea of her long term goals because the current situation doesnt look that good for her, even if she manages to make an army eventually watchers will begin to break through and she wont do squat against them with just a army, even if they reach a superhuman standard.