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@Riot: Sorry, but I have to ask... (long post sorry)

Lord Vec··3 votes·2,515 views

It is primarily about Syndra and Shyvana Lore and the effect of "shipping" and "fanfiction" on them as characters in League.

EDIT: I removed some links because they seemed to be against some rules on these forums. I saw the rules on the side a bit later, my apologies.

What is Riot's plan in regards to this? I did not think anything of it at the time but It is no secret to me now that Riot opened the floodgates when they made Ezreal x Lux canon and pretty much told the shipping community if they are loud enough they can bully Riot into making what they want.

To clarify my concerns: I am a huge Syndra fan and Shyvana is also one of my favorite champions in this game and has been since her release. I am pretty much enthralled by their power, independence, pride and general theme (Mage prodigy with unmatched power - Dragon shapeshifter. and both of them also retain their "neutral" or even "good guy" traits which makes them different from say Xerath who is primarily seen as a villain) And this is where my concerns lie, that Riot will listen to the shipping community and take away from Syndra and Shyvana one of the main thing I love so much about their character. Namely the power, pride and independence.

Shyvana: I can already see it in the community perception of Shyvana, she is starting to be seen as nothing more than a trophy for Jarvan, a fktoy for her "Prince J4 sempai-sama". There is a fan art at Riot's own forums "a billboard". Look at the depiction of Shyvana on the billboard. A happy go lucky Shyvana picture acting as a cheerleader and prompting people to join J4 Fan-club. Is this who Shyvana is, is this how Shyvana players want her to be? Is this how Riot wants the community to see their badass rage-filled dragon character? I most certainly do not.

Syndra: The fairly well know Zed x Syndra comic (I also really like Zed as a champion. Who does not like ninjas?). That depicts Zed and Syndra in a romantic relationship. I read a few pages, really well drawn. As a aspiring comic artist I can respect that, but what I cannot respect is the absolute butchering of any Syndra (and Zed for that matter) personality and defining traits of characters involved. That comic to me personally is a giant insult that mocks Syndra, Zed and their defining personality traits by replacing them with boring, typical anime stereotypes (although Syndra being interesting character is my personal opinion and you may not agree, which I can totally understand). Sadly that comic has evoked shipping community's need to force Riot to make that canon. And a red responding "I can't speak if others would be fond of the idea, but I personally find them appealing. I'll be fighting for 'em. ;D" is just disheartening. Honestly even the whole Syndra-Zed alliance is weird to me. Isn't what Zed is doing to other ninjas (being pretty much the authority figure of ninjas right now and forcing them to accept his rules and doctrine or be removed) exactly what was done to Syndra in her youth and caused her to mistrust and reject Ionian way of life? But on the other had I can see the similarities between them in the way they see power, but it feels forced just so that Riot has a group of dark Ionians for their Ionia event when it comes up.

Conclusion: In my personal not so humble opinion, strong and prideful female characters such as Syndra and Shyvana being depicted in a romantic relationship will only damage the quality of said characters and the only product of such lore direction will be the dirty jokes how Zed/Jarvan is "getting a piece of dat ass". The shipping from Riot's part has already destroyed a character for me before. I am talking about Twisted Fate and Evelyn. Tf will forever be "slimed" for me by that blue abomination called Eve (sorry Eve players I just don't like Eve as a champion aesthetics wise) and can't bring myself to even try playing Tf aynmore.

I am sorry for wall of text, and whoever read it fully you have my respects. It is not my intention to insult anyone (I tried to write with as little malice as possible) and if you are a romantic fanfic/shipping enthusiast even though it is clear I dislike romantic shipping I did not want to come off as judgemental towards your hobby. It is just that I feel your hobbies are starting to impede my fun in the game to the point of me not wanting to play the game anymore. I'd like to think I am representing a part of lol community who isn't vocal and for one reason or another does not want to express their opinion but is rather just stuck skulking around forums and reading feeling rather frustrated how their opinion is not considered or even represented.

TL;DR: Riot, I want a clear answer about your future plans for Syndra (Shyvana too would be nice but primarily Syndra) because I don't think I can handle another Twisted Fate x Eve situation that completely destroyed Twisted Fate as a character form me, or a battle bunny Riven skin that in my eyes also destroyed the champion (personal opinion). I have been playing this game since Vladimir release and I am not a competitive person and this is the first year I was determined to actually play ranked and get better at the champions I really like (Syndra, Shyvana, Zed, Sejuani). However I am starting to fear that Riot's lore direction will destroy the said favorite champions for me who are the only reason I even play this game after all these years and I will end up just wasting time on this game leaving with a bad taste in my mouth.

So Riot, an honest answer, yes or no? Am I packing my bags? If the answer is yes just say so and spare me time I could invest elsewhere, I am a busy student and have trouble finding time for League and my gaming friends as it is, so the last thing I want is later on regretting the time invested into this game. Don't get me wrong I love this game and am really invested into it, but I would rather see my champions nerfed to 35% winrate (I actually kinda enjoy playing weaker/less popular characters lol) than their lore being "destroyed" (again, personal opinion).

PS: If anyone want to leave a comment, please be civil. Yes I know it is kinda weird to care so much about random seemingly unimportant pieces of lore but it is the kind of person I am and have always been. I can't play games without fully involving myself with the world and the characters in it.

17 Comments

Gapybo5 votes

None of what you mention is considered canon. Shyvana doesn't have a teen crush on Jarvan and Syndra is not romantically involved with Zed either. Those are all community creations, fanfics. There was no official lore hinting at those kind of relationships between the champion. Battlebunny Riven has nothing to do with her lore-wise, like most skins, it's completely irrelevant to the champion story. Basically you should blame the community for this but who are you to do that? Do you really expect Riot to ask the community to stop creating fanfic?

DG Ashabel2 votes

As the OP says, there is official artwork on old Riot forums that portrays Shyvana as an oversexed cheerleader with a schoolgirl crush on J4 and the leader of his fanclub. Riot actually does tend to feed into that unfortunate stereotype.

Granted, Riot also cannot seem to agree on anything between themselves, no matter how much the narrative team insists otherwise. If you look at that wallpaper and Malphite's splash art, you'll realize they can't even agree on what size he is.

Gapybo4 votes

Just because that artwork is on the forums it doesn't mean it's official or that it even reflects the lore. It's obviously a comic piece and worth as much as the next fan art they feature on their official site.

Lord Vec3 votes

Quite true. Ofc I would never even consider asking people to stop making fanfic (would be stupid and pointless). But try to understand it from my point of view.

There is a ZedxSyndra comic? Zed and Syndra are listed friends afterwards There is a LuluxVeigar thing? (I think so?) Lulu and Veigar are listed as friends afterwards Lalala Demacia (I think that is the name) which is basically AhrixWukong is made? Ahri and Wukong listed as friends afterwards Now this all may as well be random coincidence and I may be reading too much into it or the date of making of some of these friends lists by Riot is before the actual fiction which makes my point void. That is quite possible.

But when a red post straight out says he is a fan of "such and such" pairing and will see if skins can be made that are direct acknowledgment of the fanfic. Then yeah, I am sorry if I am being a little paranoid.

Omnipherious5 votes

It is not weird to become invested in characters or the finer details of things. Having such passion is what helps people to create greatness from what would otherwise be mediocre.

As for your personal interpretations of the situation, I will just say to each their own.

I do not believe that romance automatically removes power from any party, male or female. Poorly executed romance can ruin characters for some and cause feelings of betrayal (due to perceived investment, ownership, etc). However, I believe relationships between characters in general (regardless of whether it is romantic or not) only add to the depth of the story so long as these relationships serve a purpose.

Sure, some champions that the community have shipped are listed as "Friends". Friends grow apart, relationships fail. Exploring the hows and whys of these things is what brings characters to life. Love, loss, betrayal, redemption, all mean nothing if they just stay words. Great tales are told over time, not overnight.

I too love me some strong female characters. I also hate when strong females turn submissive for no good reason other than they are in love. But if a story arc was presented that explained why such a change occurs while staying true to the character's nature, then so be it.

As I said about 5 or so months ago after dreaded retcon occurred, I do not believe the retcon is a problem; the true problem was what followed. I think I described it as 'too great a change too soon'; most disagreed because of the previous long lore silence. By too soon, I meant before the replacement lore was ready. Now that 6 months have come and gone, I can say with reasonable confidence that I was right.

The retcon had the best intentions but the worst execution.

The new stories weren't ready. We were told the world had changed but weren't given even a sketch of a map. Communication between us and Narrative had its ups and downs, which is to be expected but the fact remains that we never received any real world building.

You want the hard truth? People aren't mad because there are 'technical difficulties' with delivering the stories or that the 'technology isn't working yet'. People are mad because that is a bullshit excuse.

It does not fucking matter if you are having difficulties. Every champion right now has a space for bios. Did the human race lose the ability to read? If every champion had their old text bios removed and replaced with lore presented in dot points, it would still be new stuff AND it would have allowed people to speculate, imagine, create, communicate, question, dissect.

But no, we get basic descriptions and promises that one day Soon™, there will be a link to the relevant stories.

You wanna know how easy it would be to make people happy?

Renekton Renekton was once a staunch gatekeeper of ancient Shurima, but in the centuries since the fall of that once-glorious empire, he has been consumed by madness. Now, he is little more than a rage-fueled beast who seeks to kill his brother Nasus, who he believes is to blame for his current state of mind.

  1. Gatekeeper, Hero
  2. Sacrifice
  3. Corruption
  4. Emperor reborn or impostor?
  5. The Butcher
  6. Brothers united

Those 5 extra lines in his bio can spur god knows how many discussions, and those are just headers/titles of the chapters in his story so far. Hell, since they are only titles, they can be changed if Narrative decides on a new direction internally.

This is the sad truth about the state of lore right now. Seriously, you could put a bunch of headers in bios and people would get to talking. They don't even have to be specific or make sense in order for people to speculate. Hell, the Void creatures could have shit like "dsnvlsjgl", "gubhve", or "shbsl", and some fool somewhere on these boards will devote an ungodly amount of time trying to make sense of it going back an forth between bio texts.

I understand that you love certain characters and do not wish to see them become something they are not. To that I say, I don't think Riot would sacrifice the integrity of their characters just to make a community ship canon. Despite their problems, they have good intentions.

I understand that Riot has problems and are working on fixing things slowly. To that I say, do what you can now. Characters who looked like shit got texture updates and maybe some minor tweaks, good. You got plenty of stories lined-up but the tech isn't ready? No worries, feel free to take your time to get it working properly and delivering awesome BUT at least make better use of the bio space. We really don't need much at this point.

Lord Vec3 votes

Good read. I fully agree with what you are saying. But to touch on "relationship" part for a bit: Yes I agree a good romantic relationship can make a character even more developed and I would never argue otherwise. But, heres my beef with it in Riot's lore. Personally while it is very possible I do not think Riot is capable of pulling it off. Such character development takes time and lots of lore, not just "one chunk of text or a pair of skins and we are done". Lets be honest, Riot cannot afford the time and attention to focus so heavily on two characters especially when they have so much other more important lore to make. And in the end I am not sure if Riot will be ever capable of affording such heavy focus on few character just to make a good romance. League is a moba, every character gets a little piece of story. There are no 10 pages of lore just for a single champion let alone 10 pages of romance/friendship focus for champions. In the end League is a game that I think can not and should not try to make romance.

I have seen in time and time again in writing of other games/series etc. Writers are at loss of content and what they do is make some quick bad romance and call it "character development", it is just bad writing imo. Now what sparked this whole thread of mine is the fact that I read a red post commenting on a Zed x Syndra fanfic stating how he loves the pairing and will try to see if skins can be made that are a direct link to fanfic. Now if Riot wants to make any romance at all (and I am quite frankly skeptical it would be any good) the least they can do is come with the idea themselves and do it because they saw a good opportunity to make it, not because some random fanfic on reddit that got slightly popular.

Now I may be too harsh on the gentleman/lady red post and he/she maybe does not even have a say in lore/skin department for all I know, but I'm sure I don't have to remind rioters that whatever they post, whatever they say and how they say it carrier a big weight. I am pretty sure this was explained to them in great detail when they got the job. I would not put it past Riot to try and make some quick fanservice. I remember hating the guts of journal of justice, half of that show was nothing more than fanservice. What is Janna wearing in her bedroom? Who is Nidalee dating this time? Does Irelia have a crush? Find out in the next episode of journal of fanservice, ugh. Now don't get me wrong there was some really good lore in there but I am like a passionate bull I guess "I only see the big bad red in my face".

Motajo2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lord Vec,realm=EUNE,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=tbsKXRBU,comment-id=00060000,timestamp=2015-03-03T13:39:06.084+0000)But, heres my beef with it in Riot's lore. Personally while it is very possible I do not think Riot is capable of pulling it off.

This is my biggest gripe with Riot's shipping. It comes from nowhere, and I know full well that there isn't going to be enough content and depth in something like romantic pairings for it not to be trite.

Omnipherious3 votes

Fair points.

My stance on fan service is the same as romance, it is valuable when done right and I agree that the JoJ had some very tabloid-esque pieces in there but hey, that's kind of what it was anyway - 1 part news, 4 parts ???

I agree that when a Rioter says something it tends to carry more weight, but then again we also have to consider their job description. Take IronStylus for example, I'm sure he just absolutely adores half of the ships/stories/nonsense from the community that he comes across because he is still a fan regardless of his position at Riot Games. In such situations, he might feel moved enough to say something positive as a fan; he might even try to use his employment status to pass the idea along and see if it gets traction around the office. I'm sure all it took for DragonFist Lee Sin to become a reality was for somebody around the office to start saying Bruce Lee Sin or for someone to go "Oh my glob, did you see that Bruce Lee version of Lee Sin RiotArtJesus did?".

Given the known infrastructure for lore right now, I would say you are right and it is difficult if not impossible to afford the necessary focus to characters effectively and consistently; the most compelling premise doesn't mean diddly squat for as long as we don't get follow up.

Ever since the DOTA 2 and Dawngate comics, I have maintained that Riot should adopt a similar approach for lore. They cost much less resource-wise and pages could be released at a much steadier pace.

Don't get me wrong, the cinematics and all those promo materials for special events or champion releases are cool, sure, but surely that can't be the only medium of presentation right?

Let's consider the Pentakill album and recent Music of League. I think there was a lot of wasted potential there.

We got great Pentakill group poster, music but not much else. No JoJ-like medium-res image of them performing in front of a crowd, not even an animated Pentakill login!

The Amumu music video was real cool and the other music that shipped with it was too. So why did I have to watch the entire Frequencies documentary just to catch a glimpse of the new marble/limestone Demacia? Surely that would've been a good opportunity to release some concept art about the landscapes mentioned in song titles?

If they are capable of outsourcing splash art, surely they could send a simple script or scenario to one of the many talented comic artists on Deviantart or elsewhere. Can you imagine how sick the destruction of Shurima would look drawn out?

Something needs to change. We always get a bunch of stuff at once, a Q&A session, then we're back to nothing. That may work for champion releases and events, but at that rate we'll be old by the time the story starts and long dead when it's halfway.

Lord Vec3 votes

Oh don't even remind me of Dawngate. I did not play the game much, just a few games with a friend and had a decent time. Ofc between Lol, other games and real life obligations I simply did not have the time to even entertain the though of playing yet another moba. But the Dawngate lore. It was pure joy to read about my favorite characters from Dawngate. I am a massive fan of Zalgus and Ashabel.

Ashabel was like an Ahri that I never got in League. She was everything I expected Ahri to be when I first saw Ahri's splash art years ago. The pure elegance, presentation and dignity of Ashabel's character was simply amazing to me.

On the other hand, Zalgus is my favorite moba character by far (Honorable mention: Ashabel and Invoker from Dota). Zalgus as a character for me was a piece of art, I could write a whole wall of text how much I loved everything about him and his relations with other characters.

Sad times, RIP Dawngate. You gave it an honest try, but it just goes to show that lore does not carry moba games (most people just don't care)

Centuros3 votes

Pretty sure Syndra doesn't have "neutral" or "good guy" traits. She's power-mad and wants to kill Ionia's leaders...

Not sure where enough lore was posted to actually make Ez x Lux canon, but riot does some strange shipping already. There was one Journal of Justice article about Blitzcrank's Fleshling Compatability Service, though all I remember from that is Rammus x Cactus (another satisfied customer!).

Lord Vec1 votes

hm on Syndra I do not agree. She is chaotic and neutral in my opinion. Power hungry? Yes absolutely. But she seems more like "don't get in my way and you won't get hurt" type. While not the paragon of all good and justice I would not lump her into evil section. Honestly her character is up to interpretation and will more defined when Ionia event comes up I bet.

As for Blitzcrank's Fleshling Compatability Service, that is from journal of justice. Boy did I have a party when they canceled it. As you may imagine I was not a fan of the series. To be fair, Demacia/Jarvan/Leblanc story line was pretty good.

Sneak Dog2 votes

Don't get your hopes up, Riot hasn't shown any particular kindness to preserving characters as of late, as indicated by Trundle and Xerath (and I think more, but I bothered to be certain these were changed).

Lord Vec1 votes

Right. Which is why I am looking for a possibly honest answer. And yes, Riot tends to do that with characters. Udyr was made a resident of Freljord (Was not too fond of that change but I suppose it could be worse)

Narasimha2 votes

If Riot listened to the shipping community, we'd already have Ezreal x Taric by now.

And honestly, kind of glad that isn't happening. Poking fun is one thing.

IMTOOJUICY1 votes

??

Ez x Lux came out of nowhere, iirc. Fanfiction tends to pair Lux with other women -

Oh wait, it all makes sense now.

Lord Vec1 votes

Oh? I see. To be honest I am not too familiar with Ez and Lux as both of those characters do not interest me. But I thank you for the correction if that is indeed the case.

libraryseraph 1 votes

Wait, so you don't want to insult shippers, you just think our hobbies are "impeding your ability to play the game" and that we are automatically erasing interesting female characters into "fktoys" and anime stereotypes just to ship them with men? You certainly have an...interesting way of not insulting people

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