champions should always be the protagonist of their story, showing their version of good and evil, or ignoring it entirely. Of course it’s still possible to have those who actively know they’re doing bad things, but it’ll tend to be that they’re amoral not immoral. I think riots first mistake is to try and make champions neutral even from a storytelling perspective
In crossovers, multiple champion stories, stories where the champion is the focus but it’s not their perspective, it’s fine to have them be the villain even if they’re good.
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Riot’s second mistake though, that’s a bit harder to explain
(Warning very long wall of text ahead)
So here’s an actual unpopular opinion (rather than just saying the opposite of scathlocke’s literally majority downvoted comment): good and evil are relative in a technical sense but Riot isn’t doing it right
Riot is focusing too hard on subverting our expectations instead of just showing their character fully and letting their differences in views shine through.
By constantly trying to subvert our expectations Riot is actually using our views (which will have a tendency to be similar - aka modern status quo like light being good and dark being bad in all levels except conceptual) and specifically avoiding them. It’s less like “good and bad is relative” and more like “good and bad isn’t what we think it is Oooh spooky”
It’s been said everywhere it depends on culture for example. And it’s true, good and bad is relative in that sense. If we look deeper, the root of lots of morality is that we say are pillars and absolute truths are originated on the common circumstances of all humans:
- There is suffering that we avoid or take lesser suffering for (for whatever reason whether you believe it’s reducible to brain psychology or harm to the soul, it doesn’t matter). This includes the discomfort/pain of non consent of being locked in a room for example even if you are provided food, water physical comfort, entertainment, etc.
- There are things that we don’t know will cause suffering that we avoid (death)
- We suffer when other humans or beings we can empathise with do so.
(And a lot of our conflicts with morality are based off this (euthanising for example))
and this is perfectly fine, (warning controversial opinion) we should acknowledge our morality is from our experiences as humans and not inherent so we don’t fall to entitlement such as “why does the universe hate me” or force them on aliens or even each other (let’s say one nation lives in a hot country and the older lives in the cold. Fur is scarce in the cold country and part of the culture is that if you are given a coat you MUST wear it for at least a day even if you’re already in many layers and have trouble moving/feel a bit too warm. Imagine then doing so to someone from the hot country in their country. And the visitors from your country still follow this practice. Of course it’s easy to say “but they’d just understand” but this is a very obvious case and this is from a neutral perspective.)
So if Riot wants to really wants to look gray and not try hard edgy, they should instead focus on how the character’s circumstance is different from a human in the real world. Instead of focusing on subverting our views they should subvert our experiences. In other words:
What they’re doing: “we want them to be neutral, let’s divide up the good and bad traits and the ones that stand out the most, and what tropes are associated with them. Then let’s make the one that follows good tropes do some bad stuff and the one that does bad tropes do some good stuff. Morgana, you get bitterness and inaction, which are bad but don’t stand out as more passive traits. You then get empathy to all and patience with even the worst. That stands out, you get the dark spooky theme. Kayle you get idealism and fairness given the chance to judge. Those don’t stand out but are good. You also get a willingness to kill and a cold personality that affects your every decision and interaction. Those stand out, let’s give you the light holy theme!”
What should be done: “Okay we just finished Morgana’s dark theme and Kayle’s light theme. Let’s get that out of the way and just focus on personality from here. We want Morgana to relate to people more but can cause harm long term, while Kayle to follow an ideal of justice regardless of individual experience. But how do we stop Kayle from just being a psycho who just thinks she’s good? How do we justify her killing? We as people are biased to see short term suffering as a “must” to prevent and long term as a “should try”. Let’s focus on how Kayle is longer term minded than us, how she sees humans as different from her but how she still cares. Maybe she knows due to being an aspect of justice how her settlement will fall apart as divine knowledge and wants to focus on saving that. Maybe she’s simply entitled and has yet to understand individuals, and only knows academically how justice works. Maybe she sees humans the same way we see our pets or animals (but without the ownership/slavery undertones): we would put down a dog if it killed another dog for no reason knowing it’s going to cause more harm. What matters is we focus on her as a divine being and how she’s distant from us but still wants the best for the world.”
I really think they should’ve tried harder to make Kayle’s view shine through by explaining how she knows morgana’s ways won’t work for example. Morgana gets a pass because she’s doing good now, Kayle is harder because she’s stopping bigger bad before we even comprehend it.
