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@Onisaru: Zed's not your morality strawman.

Raxistaicho··9 votes·1,019 views

Our Champion Publishing team chose Zed to show that Rakan and Xayah aren’t totally villains. Their cause leads them to operate in some morally grey areas, but they ultimately seek a noble goal. Zed corrupting vastayan wild magic with his shadow powers was a clear way to show what Xayah and Rakan stood against.

Yeah, sorry, you can't use 3-4 years back established characters as whipping men to demonstrate that a couple of chaos-loving racist xenophobic anarchists are anything but villains. Maybe the memo should have reached the writing staff for their dialogue before stuff like:

Xayah- "Mages. Too insufferable to live." "Okay. Who invited the Yordle?" "You want to be mortal? You are [a] (race-traitor)." "When I'm done with Ionia, I'll come for Demacia." "I want your happiness to evaporate." "Violence is my favorite form of negotiation." "If our existence is everyone else's chaos, so be it." "Humans. They're so very blind." "Ionians never learn." "Sometimes people die for a good cause - namely, mine. That's why I'm an optimist."

Was written. You can TELL me that Xayah isn't completely villainous, but you don't SHOW me anything else. I've never seen a character spout such loathsome misanthropic dialogue as she does.

Rakan, however, isn't nearly as bad as she is (and admits to not WANTING to like killing), but this one line as chilling as twenty of Xayah's:

"If Xayah says someone has to die, they die - and they deserved it."

Because look at Xayah's character and realize Rakan's ideology is taken completely from her.

And to make things even better? Even if Zed were a Total Monster, Xayah and Rakan being his enemy doesn't mean THEY aren't.

13 Comments

Sharjo11 votes

And to make things even better? Even if Zed were a Total Monster, Xayah and Rakan being his enemy doesn't mean THEY aren't.

...that's kind of the point.

Zed's actions help Ionians, but harm the vastaya. Xayah and Rakan's actions do the opposite.

It's dependant on which perspective you're looking at.

Craxsian1 votes

How Zed's action are helping Ionians? We don't know what he is doing with the magic which he is stealing.

DR34DN0UGHT1 votes

Can't really tell if he's doing it willingly or stealing it or whatever, IMO. If I recall correctly it seems like his shadow-jutsu-stuff is corrupting it without him really paying much attention to it, regardless of whether he cares or not. And it doesn't seem like Zed is actively provoking Xayah and Rakan, since it seems like they just busted into his place while he was doing whatever.

Rebonack2 votes

{quoted}

...that's kind of the point.

Zed's actions help Ionians, but harm the vastaya. Xayah and Rakan's actions do the opposite.

It's dependant on which perspective you're looking at.

The difference, I suspect, and the one the OP is trying to drive home, is that Zed's cause is purely utilitarian. He has no particular dislike for the vastaya, he just wants to help his people and is either unaware or unconcerned with the impact that'll have on a bunch of weird animal people he hasn't met. So depending on what Zed knows (or believes) about the situation his actions would fall somewhere between neutral and (not actively malicious) evil.

Xayah, by contrast, is deeply misanthropic. She hates humans in a clearly bigoted fashion (willing to blame all humans for the actions of Zed. Such wide-brush characterization is the hallmark of bigotry). Violence is her go-to answer for furthering her goals and if humans suffer as a result of that, all the better, as there don't appear to be any innocent humans in her view. She's even willing to visit violence on humans that probably aren't even aware of the existence of vastaya (Demacia) due to their insular nature. She's a dead-ringer for chaotic Evil.

Sharjo5 votes

I never said that Xayah was better than Zed, just that depending on how you look at things and who you favour, either one of them could be the villain. I do agree that Xayah's disdain borders on/is full blown racism and as such I really, really dislike her. There's also the counter point to consider though; while Zed works to ensure Ionia's future, there's other ways of going about it that are potentially less harmful, or at least you'd assume there are and I know I do. Xayah fight is for the ability for the vastaya of Ionia to even exist in the first place. In her mind humans chose themselves over the vastaya, so she's returning the favour.

I mean at the end of the day neither Xayah or Zed are really right in what they do, but us commenting on that is a privelage we have as readers; in universe this issue will never be this simple.

This argument's also difficult because we haven't seen what length's Zed's went to in his goals beyond taking the magic.

And to put a head on this; mentallity wise I agree with you; I think Xayah's much, MUCH worse than Zed. At least at the moment.

Rebonack1 votes

{quoted}

I never said that Xayah was better than Zed, just that depending on how you look at things and who you favour, either one of them could be the villain.

I know, I figured it would be worth taking a shot at doing some clarification and going into how people consider the two champs. Quite a bit hinges on Zed's motivations and knowledge, neither of which we know. But I can totally see how a Zed fan who wants to think the best of him might feel a little put out by the cinematic.

I do think, however, that it would be interesting to get some more information on how humanity is making trouble for the vastaya. We know they need high ambient magic like a fish needs water, so Zed gobbling up a bunch of it for... whatever Zed was doing... would be bad for them. But does that extend to less intrusive uses of magic?

We know Ionia is a pretty magical place and that there's plenty of magic to go around. But does someone like, say, Master Yi need to draw on ambient magic to use his physically impossible abilities? What about Lee? Or the Ninjas? It has been quite a while since I made that 'What IS magic?' topic, and we've gotten a few more details since then that dance around an answer, but we still don't really know for sure.

Chromatic Eagle1 votes

How is Xayah worse than Zed?

Sir Poodle1 votes

It's a matter of perspective, but Zed is pretty utilitarian in his evil, fitting the profile of a sociopath. In contrast, Xayah actively dislikes, mistrusts, and even hates all of humanity.

On the other hand, Xayah's cause is unarguably more noble.

Pretty much a matter of perspective.

Wrathof3008 votes

There are no such things as villains, only people with problems they are trying to solve. You are blowing Xayah's "emo" personality out of proportion to justify to yourself that Zed isn't a bad guy. She is very negative and tunnel visioned but this is the grounds for her character to develop, not everyone can be afforded a happy go lucky back story/ purpose, same with Zed first we don't even know what he is doing much less can we assume his is doing good or bad. Obviously, to the Vastaya what he is doing is bad, but it may be beneficial to the well being of others, remember Zed was also training to become the eye of twilight, in his eyes he may have been restoring some form of balance.

In Shen's story even, he killed a priest because that priest was capturing spirits and killing them, because he thought they were the root of the village's problems. Was the priest wrong, not entirely, simply misguided, was Shen wrong, no he was not. So instead of making assumptions that wait until the bigger picture is revealed.

GreenLore2 votes

While Xayah has some villanous qualities,her cause is rather justified,thus they wanted to show that she is not all bad,which is why they chose Zed as their enemy,mostly because he looks so evil that it made Xayah look heroic(not to mention that as they said,Zed is accelerating the drain of magic)

Placentas1 votes

We don't truly know Zed's motives right now or what exactly he plans on doing after.

GrievousFetus1 votes

Counterpoint: Zed has always been a stupidly camp cartoony villain on the level of captain planet antagonists. I mean he's literally storm shadow from G.I Joe in regards to his and Shen's backstories.

hahahahahahahaha SPLAT

IamHuuVan1 votes

U know, Riot corrupted Zed, the one who was shocked when he saw Jhin's theory about murdering art

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