I'm tired of people freaking out about this. Riot went out of their way to call Vastaya a phylum. It's a larger classification of creatures. Fish and Humans are part of the same phylum, for example. Yordles being spirits doesn't stop them from being Yordles. Ahri being Vastaya doesn't stop her from being a magical fox girl. Nami being one doesn't stop her from being Marai.
Story-wise Riot didn't change much; they just added a name to animal-human hybrids and a brief insight into Runeterran history.
Nami can be vastaya AND Marai. The tribes have names y'know.
These Ahri mains would rather her be a painfully generic Japanese reference with no influence or interaction with the world around them rather than an actual character. Ahri's lore put side by side with the lore of other characters, Ahri is nothing special.
Ahri was a sexy boob fox naruto copy and now she has background ://////////
Yup. Classification and world building isn't retcon.
People need to stop arbitrarily deciding something is 'retcon' simply because of their unconfirmed preconceptions being proven wrong later down the line.
I might as well be saying that every new champion is a retcon because the lore isn't exactly the same as it was before. Or an announced champion being different from what I expected is a 'retcon'
Huh. I hadn't realized this. I wasn't freaking out or anything, but I'm glad I read this post. +1
the people who don't think ahri counts as vastayan are kidding themselves there's literally no way any literate person could read the recent post and actually think ahri isn't vastaya
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I'm not a fan of this, cause it takes the uniqueness away from Ahri,
however I don't mind 
or 
being apart of the Vastaya
original lore was too similar to Ahri's in the sense of how he became what he is now.
shrouded in enough mystery, such as his race was NEVER confirmed.
Yordles being spirits doesn't stop them from being Yordles.
Uh, but it makes them spirits, which they weren't before.
It also does so in a very lame way, basically removing most of the interaction they had with the rest of the world. They just made them into another Bard/Kindred/Aurelion, but without things that make them nice. Oh, and when they do interact - the other side doesn't even realize that.
Mind you that this is a huge difference from what they were before: coexisting with the rest of the world, Poppy was an ambassador of Demacia, Heimer/Ziggs were in Piltover, Heimer even had an academy there, Humans coming to visit Bandle City to see where Heimer grew up etc.
Also, making them immortal magical beings makes Gnar, The Missing Link, completely redundant.
Vastaya are certainly in a lower taxon than phylum - I would assume chordata, since they have a spine.
