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My take on Kai'sa

Jacksin·10/24/2019, 12:38:44 PM·13 votes·8,711 views

I'm not saying she doesn't have some flaws, but ultimately I think that she absolutely does not deserve the amount of hate she gets. I can see the depth with her character. I can see how beautiful she really is of a character and how tragically peaceful she really is.

Kai'Sa clearly draws a lot of themes from stoicism and eastern philosophies. "While we may not always have control over the things affecting us, we can have control about how we approach things". The stoic seeks self improvement through wisdom, temperance, justice and courage. Letting emotions wash over you and pass as they do, including happiness and joy, anger and pain. Letting them take their course and then letting them go is fundemental in my interpretation of Kai'Sa.

This is really apparent in her voice, in my opinion. Even something like her laugh I can interpret as an expression of these ideas. It draws you in, so full of life. She's lost in the moment.. Full of laughter. Then it fades out, the present is catching up to her. She's back. Her voice really is a reflection of Kai'Sa taking an approach of clarity and level headiness in life. Kassadin is an excellent father. So many people characterize her voice as boring or un-engaging and I agree at an extremely shallow level it might be, but inspection into her character really shows a depth that resonates with me so warmly. Virtue and self-control is what drives Kai'sa. It is what has allowed her to live all this time.

It's the void though... How do you expect a nine year old girl not to be radically transformed into something that resembles an actual predator This is where I believe her in-game design slightly fails her. The "apex predator" part is a bit too on the nose and isn't reflected well so a lot of people are left with a big question mark with their expectations. However, I could reason that Kai'Sa IS seen like this in the lore. It's evident she is seen and interpreted by Shurimans as an apex predator, a monster, that is evil and whatnot. This could be represented through how she is presented, but is contrasted with her actual personality and stoic attitudes.

The V-neck though... I hate it too, but Riot needs to pay their workers I guess. I have an internal head-canon that the reason she's so physically perfect and clean is that the symbiotic void-spawn wants her to be as healthy of a host as she possibly can be and supplies her body with perfect nutrients she needs to be a pinnacle of health.

Rage, anger, hate. These are all things Kai'sa learnt to deal with. That is why she is so special and why she survived. A feral emotionally driven 9 year old would die quickly. A stable, level headed and strong women survives.

20 Comments

4 Step Cadence10/24/2019, 12:52:39 PM8 votes

Doesn't matter how much logic people like us apply to Kai'Sa. The community will never see her as anything more than an overly-sexualized cash grab champion. They'd rather be narrowed-mind and pessimistic about everything, being incredibly quick to hate something forever, than listen to any reason or logic on the subject. Its sad, but true, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Arakadia10/24/2019, 4:05:57 PM8 votes

To me, I have three major issues with her design. Obviously the waifu body and blatant boner pandering is annoying, but it is apart of a larger issue.

Firstly, she is supposed to be a survivor who has endured, and now come on top. Her childhood consisted of almost total isolation, fighting for her life against alien horrors, and living in fucking caves. Yet we don't see any visual indications that she is scarred, physically or mentally. And sure it's technically possible she was NEVER seriously hurt by another voidborn and that she makes herself look mentally sane, but that would simply be a waste of opportunity. Her struggle in the caves and being a survivor is a huge part of her character, and to not have any visual ties to show she has endured great trauma is ignoring a major part of character design, which is to communicate who the character is.

Secondly, she is rather underwhelming. Fighting the Void's monsters drove the Ascended to madness, but Kai'sa seems very mentally intact. At worst she is apathetic, disinterested, and stoic. They could have taken her character and pushed it so much more but they didn't. I get the point you made by saying her level headedness kept her alive, but it's not very believable she remained civilized and a feral child Kaisa could have in theory thrived as well. I personally wish she had been a feral child, with limited vocabulary whose only known comfort is the quietness between violent thrashing and fighting. That would have been such an interesting personality, unlike anything we've gotten before. But in the end, we got a largely well adjusted and civilized women who speaks eloquently with a new Zealand accent.

My last issue is just that so many theories and explanations and excuses have to be made for her design to work. "Well maybe she can talk well because she escaped the caves when she got older and learned." Even though everyone who sees her thinks she's a monster and won't talk to her. "Maybe the Void creature makes her look pretty so she has better confidence!" Or how she conviently and immedialty found the mindless alien horror that actually ends up HELPING HER. Or how they majorly downplayed the Void by saying if she has a little bug attatched to her arm she can resist being corrupted. Her design doesn't have to be realistic but it has to be believable in the world of Runterra. And if you have to grasp and straws and bend the rules of the world to justify your character, then she probably wasn't designed very well. The character design needs to largely speak for itself, it shouldn't need to be explained and defended to be sensible.

HonestJohnTheCon10/24/2019, 2:15:52 PM6 votes

Main reason why I dislike Kai’Sa is less because she’s poorly written and more because she had so much potential and could have been better. I acknowledge that she definitely doesn’t deserve the amount of flak her design and character gets.

Thoughtful post.

rollz310/24/2019, 3:27:44 PM5 votes

Kai'Sa from a design perspective is an interesting one as the Void is largely unexplored compared to other areas if we only look at that alone without any lore however, much like Senna (which if you really need to know my thoughts on her its in a thread somewhere but the TL;DR version is "I didn't like her very much") has a bit of contrivances that make her a bitter pill to swallow for a couple of reasons, her obvious fan service not withstanding.

So to start, she got sucked into the void when she was 8 and had been in there for years (granted we don't know exactly how many but I'd say its safe to say at least 5 years minimum but it's probably more) now much like Senna I have a problem with her appearance. If every case, besides Kai'Sa, when a sentient being and sometimes just even the environment the Void has corrupted them greatly.

Malzahar, Kassadin, and the ex-tidecaller Rasho in Nami's comic had all been mutated and/or driven insane by being near the Void even if it was a comparatively short time (i.e. a couple weeks a most)

Kai'Sa had been there for years and should have something to show for it besides being jaded and hallow (which again fair enough because anyone fighting basically Cthulu for a decade would probably be numb but still) and I feel she got off relatively easy compared to say Kayn/Rhaast who has more obvious signs of corruption were the worst Kai'Sa got was having her childhood robbed from her (which believe me is not a unique story device in the League universe concerning Champs) and an admittedly clingy, form fitting suit but it doesn't really seem like its actively trying to hurt her and could have been interesting if there was a risk of it completely consuming/taking over her body but if that is a factor it isn't well shown ingame or her lore

Again granted, as OP has said she may be seen as a monster to the people of Shurima but they could have done so much more to make her look visually interesting but much like Senna took the easy route to sell skins (any one whos says the KDA line didn't sell like hot cakes is in denial)

So much like HonestJohnTheCon said, I dislike her because she is poorly written and they wasted what could have been an interesting character but sorta made Lucian 2.0 in personality and got off 'too easy' for someone exposed to void longer then anybody else (except maybe Malzhar) and could have been basically Void! Doomslayer but like i said, they wanted the horny teenager money.

Would I say she's the worst? No, Yumi, Senna, Zoe and others I feel have way more problems from a story stand point but saying she doesn't have issues is being disingenuous and she deserves a little bit of flak even if I view her sexualization as the least of my concerns when there's a few more glaring issues that rub me the wrong way more greatly.

But if I had to choose between her and Senna, I'd choose Kai'Sa anyday

Sevens Sin10/24/2019, 3:30:29 PM3 votes

I just really wish they did more with her visuals. When I hear "daughter of the void" I don't think of a pretty woman in a body suit. Even just adding more texture to her skin/void-suit like scars, cracks, etc. would add a lot imo.

roolik10/24/2019, 12:57:25 PM3 votes

Never saw pepole mad cuz of that. I did see pepole mad cuz shes very strong

Forhonor32110/24/2019, 5:44:43 PM3 votes

I have to disagree with this.

I think there can be characters who are stoic, but those I feel would better come from Ionia, a place that heavily is based in Eastern styles and philosophies. The Void, however, is more or less the equivalent of a Eldritch plane of existence. It's a place were unimaginable creatures are formed and crawl into our world, causing havoc and destruction. Everyone who has interactions with it (Kass, Malz) has heavily changed in both appearance and mind.

Kai'Sa on the other hand has none of that. At most she sounds hollow than stoic but even that just makes her sound bored to me in almost all of her interactions and line. She survived by essentially a Venom-like suit that _supposedly _ feeds off her if she doesn't feed it, but that's not represented in her VO or even gameplay (like having some abilities cost health, maybe if she's out of mana). In fact, from what I understand, it actually becomes more of a friend of hers than trying to keep to the Void nature of consuming and destruction of Runeterra.

There's no worry of her to keep the thing fed to keep her alive, no paranoia of being in her old world or worrying about Void creatures popping up, no sheer hatred towards Void champs from being around them for so long, nothing. This was a 9-year old isolated in a very scary and deadly place for YEARS. I doubt that she would be stoic in trying to survive, she'd be freaking the fuck out and go crazy like everyone else.

Then there's her appearance: it's bland. It's literally the same cookie-cutter, hot look we've seen already with most of League's female characters. The V-neck yes is bad but, again, she's suppose to be from the Void. Malz and Kass were changed physically in some way. Kai'Sa still remains mostly human and hot because of the parasite on her, which doesn't make sense. It should of merged with her and we got League's version of Kerrigan, or keep the hooded version of her up and make her a bit more Void like, less human. That would of fixed a few things to bring more variety than just 'OH LOOK! MORE HOT DREAM WOMEN!"

Everything with her seems to bend the rules or is convenient to have the way she is. Need to survive? Here's a Void parasite to help you. In a world full of nightmarish monsters? No worries, you'll just sound empty and still be perfectly sane. Still need to look hot? VOID PARASITE ALSO COVERS THAT APPARENTLY!!! She's essentially getting to the levels of a Mary Sue, in my opinion. Not fully one but still feels close to one.

She's a missed opportunity as to what a survivor of the Void should of been: constantly paranoid, perhaps a little mad, from years of isolation in hell and constantly trying to keep alive from deadly monsters in that realm and a parasite attached and feeding off of you unless you satiate it. Instead, we just have what we have now and just feels such like a disappointment.

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOO10/24/2019, 1:16:11 PM2 votes

the league community’s popular definitions of what makes a good character tend to be limited in their scope and variance. This is a thoughtful analysis, .

Hammermancer10/24/2019, 4:39:40 PM2 votes

I just wish like.. her arm was all fucked up and long with putrid vestigial shit going on, she shouldn't be hot, she should be a horrifying mutant.. but then again they went for sex appeal on Elise instead of cool horror themes(yeah the spider chick) so why should I care.

Riot, not every female needs to be a babe, they can be hideous. Like just make a character as ugly as singed but as a female.

edit I'm not saying i don't want to see any babes, just like... they're all so meh now, they alll look so babish that it's meh, horrifying spider lady and void abomination lady would actually make the babe champs stick out as attractive moreso

Dead Anime Dad10/27/2019, 1:38:55 PM2 votes

Boring visually with an overloaded kit. Malz and kassadin spent significantly less time in the void IIRC and they are more corrupted by it than Kai'sa.

Jaspers10/24/2019, 4:05:25 PM2 votes

It comes from expectation, many acknowledge she is strong willed and resourceful. She wouldn't have survived if she wasn't, yet there is the underlining idea that she went through a massively traumatic event, a Void creature grafted to her skin and she was alone for upwards of 10 years or more (suggestions are she's 30 so 20 years of being alone) and shes fine. If anything she has control of her suit (so why doesn't she hide it all), she looks human and talks like a captain of a field hockey team.

This is the best thing I can think of as to where many might have wanted the direct of her character to go, a quote to Jinx: "You want crazy?"

Yes, we do. Jinx is nuts, she talks to her guns. She has a living Void creature on her body that if she doesn't feed will feed on her, and she's like "We live and survive together... ooh peaches!!!"