About Aesthetics, Edgyness, Target Groups or whatever...

Sleep-Deprived Media Studies-guy mumbling. Potentially a lot of text, not sure how long this will get. You have been warned.

And no this is not necessarely a thread complaining about "too much edge" in the game, although this might play into this, if ever so slightly. The problem with the "edge" is not the specific hate for a black/red color scheme, or a general distaste for bloothirsty characters, it's rather that the pile of aesthetics that fall into it kind of target a specific age group that is... well, at the point where you start getting vocal about your tastes and start viewing what you like as part of your idenitiy, but also at a point where a lack of experience and exposure to various forms of art, style, and aesthetics still cause an absolute lack of what the general public would consider "a good taste".

You know what's the utter irony of teen-edgyness? It's rebellion - packed and sold to you like all the other normal stuff too, just with different colors. It's like that one Southpark episode where that one kid starts hating the "mainstream kids" and wants to become a goth, but they are also just a variant of the "mainstream" functioning in the absolute same way, even if they wholeheartly try to convince themselves otherwise. And the inability to see through this also falls into a certain age, fascinatingly kinda into the same as the thing above, which I take as a source me, and my three siblings, and all my school friends, I had seen growing up through that phase.

It was kinda the same with the versus event: "Eh I'm gonna go Evil because EVERYONE goes Good, it's so lame." Yeah and so everyone chose Evil and you still are in the lame mainstream, congratulations. What a shame given how pretty the Riven skin was (and how ugly the Yasuo one. You seen these windwall particles? YIKES!)

What wonders me is that with the recent releases of champs, the aesthetic seems to be clearly directed at that rather young age-group. Xayah and Rakan are not an ideal relationship - they are how someone who has never had a relationship - in this case due to relatively low age (the imagined relationships of someone never been in one at a higher age look a bit differently) - imagines it. They are an in-love-couple as seen by young teens: annoying, superficial, and downright cringey to look and hear at.

Galio might be less of a good example, but the eternal guardian mourning the death of his master and his greatest failure as a protector is now the "happy smasher fight guy". Don't get me wrong, I do like the new Galio, but it fits within this theory that the target group seems to have shifted to a younger demographic. And in general the recent champs seem to be more appealing to a younger crowd, save for Camille. Ivern and Kled are walking memes or jokes, and Taliyah simply fits in because of her relatively young age (age is an important part of appealing to a certain group. That's why in old superhero-comics they had all these annoying kiddie-sidekicks.).

And now we got the new dude who literally falls into every shonen "cool character anime clichee". And these clichees are sadly based on a massive chunk of psychology. The industry of anime and manga is a cruel and unforgiving place, moving at ever higher speeds to the damage of creators and workers. In this high pressure enviroment you need to know EXACTLY what patterns and characters works or don't work, and the moment something works, it gets copied mercilessly to the point where it becomes an archetype that gets more and more refined.

These shows where such characters appear try to appeal to a very specific age group as well, and try to sell their character to them as "cool".

And now with Riot creating a character that literally fits into every nook and cranny of this archetype while at the same time having the personality depth of a puddle (at least until now, we have not seen his lore yet)... it makes you wonder if they slapped out the character just for the sake of appealing to their newfound priority target group.

To be honest as a player that is a bit older than the target group that seems to be aimed at, if feel a bit left out. That in itself is nothing bad, why should Riot design the game specifically for me after all?! I'd be an ignorant and selfish fool for requesting this. I'm a bit more fearing for the quality of the overall aesthetic.

Remember what I said about this group having the worst taste due to inexperience mostly (and because of a brain that's not halfway finished developing yet)? I wouldn't want the crowd to judge my work to be the guys with the lowest requirements who cheer as long as predictable indicators of a certain archetype are met. That's not how you make good design, that's how a maker of fine cusine degrades himself to a junk-food provider.

I think the game can handle some Darkin-Edge clad in red and black or a cheesy couple, but only as long as it is balanced out by other champions that specifically fall not into this kind aesthetic.

Or maybe I'm just imagining things, because I'm an old fart who has left the times when demons of black and red were all the rage long behind as just another embarassing episode of my youth and doesn't like to be reminded of it. Maybe, maybe not, I'm honestly too tired for that level of self-reflection now. So instead, dear reader, feel free to take it on from here. Do you agree, disagree, or what is your stance to the whole aesthetics thing? I'm curious ^^