I do not like Confessions Part 3

Part 1 was good. Part 2 was good. Part 3 dropped the ball like a bad habit that was also on fire and then tripped over said ball off of a cliff to faceplant on the ice 30 feet below.

Some quick bullet points:

-Riven's plotline was solved far, FAR too quickly and has been left little room to grow again, if any. -It is way too soon after the war for the Ionians to forgive Noxus, especially given that Riven PERSONALLY slew many of their friends and family. Sure, forgiving her is the right thing to do given her remorse and newfound hatred of Noxus, but people are emotional creatures and are unlikely to forgive when it's a situation this emotionally charged. -I can buy that an old ma and pa that just lost their kids could take Riven in and forgive her since they know her so well, but the fact that the entire town was apparently satisfied with "hard labor on the farm you were already working on" baffles me. Especially given how vehemently they hated her in parts 1 and 2. -Yasuo's plotline is ALSO resolved. He found his Elder's killer and can't bring himself to attack her (although they do mention a battle at some point for some reason, what?) because of who she was. And the magistrate tells him that he only has to forgive himself now? What? Uh, Lady, this man resisted arrest and killed several people sent to capture him INCLUDING HIS OWN BROTHER, he's got plenty of crimes to answer for. -Riven and Yasuo, as we see them at the end of the story, are at relative dead ends for their respective characters. Riven is working on a farm for a family she cares for and now seems uninterested in the "pure Noxian ideal" that was once the core of her character. Yasuo is now supposed to "forgive himself", whatever that could mean.

This feels like how their stories could/should have ENDED, but we never even got a chance to see them START. Yasuo and Riven just recently got their lore updated with the rest of Ionia and up until Confessions they had stayed relatively stagnant as characters. Yasuo was looking for someone else who could use a wind technique, Riven was a wandering swordswoman who probably committed the crime and also regretted her part in the war in Ionia. Yasuo met up with Taliyah (which was great) but otherwise nothing about them advanced. And now... we have their endings. It's too rushed, too abrupt.

And... well, I feel kinda like they're the EXACT SAME STORY now: a warrior who committed a heinous crime in the past is now seeking redemption. Those around them have offered forgiveness but they cannot accept it themselves as of yet. Watch them struggle to find their place in the world and to forgive themselves for their crimes.

If that's the plan, then, why? I don't GET this at all. It was going so well (not the sort of story I'd have told, but still GOOD) and the story was progressing, and we got to feel for Riven and Yasuo and even the people who lost their families and could never...

...

sigh

well, Confessions is out, it's done.

So what to do? Where do our characters go from here? Personally I feel the best approach would be to rewrite Confessions' third part because it's full of problems (they mention damage from a battle but I don't remember any actual fighting?), but I'm assuming we can't do that and also I HATE RETCONS SO MUCH.

But their stories have to advance at some point regardless. So what do?

I've got a few different ideas myself, and there's probably others.

-Riven could get involved with the conflict between Ionia and the Vastaya, offering a unique outsider's perspective. It could even bring her to take up her blade once more, something that (judging by the way the Ionians reacted to it) would horrify the Vastaya. This conflict (or the Irelia/Noxus one, see below) could lead her to see that Noxus' ideal was still pure, but Noxus had fallen far from it. So she starts up her own school of philosophy (not a literal school) in this manner. This would be something very interesting to have in Ionia; an attempt to adopt the philosophy/culture/ideas of an enemy that tried to utterly destroy your own culture/ideas/philosophy. It also helps move Riven forward; she has the goal of preserving the Noxian ideal but now she has something very specific she can do to advance it (spread her ideas, get more students, etc etc).

-Irelia could hear of Riven and be infuriated by the fact that her sentence was relatively light. So she goes to confront Riven. This one I can't really see a future direction for, tho, so... who knows? Maybe she'd demand Riven take up arms against Noxus? It's certainly implied by Irelia's voice line for her. Perhaps it would be something that Riven isn't quite prepared to do as of yet; desertion is one thing but turning your blade on your former home is another. This allows the chance to advance Irelia's storyline in a way that fits with Ionia and Noxus, kinda, but it's very iffy IMO.

-It could be revealed that the Elder's death was no accident; that Riven's blade had been deliberately enchanted (probably by LeBlanc but not actually revealing that) to cause her to seek him out and beg for her blade to be broken. This would drive Riven and Yasuo to find whoever put forth that enchantment to bring them to justice, both thinking that they might be redeemed by this. LeBlanc's reasoning would've been to remove the powerful wind technique from the equation, especially given the vast amount of chemical and gas warfare going on. This one's my personal favorite, though it's not exactly airtight. I admit I might be biased; I wanna see Yasuo and Riven come together in a cool duo cop thing.

-Yasuo now has a connection to Taliyah, so use that. He could go to Shurima and seek her out, as a friend and teacher. (kinda kills the Yasuo/Riven ship but that won't stop anybody). He could learn to cope with lands that don't have as much magic as Ionia, perhaps have to make more use of his blade than pure wind techniques. Taliyah trusted Yasuo, to a degree that she didn't believe he was guilty of killing Elder Souma for a second. Spending time with someone who just has that much faith in him would do good for the cynical lil bastard, I think, and it would give the writers an opportunity to advance Shurima's plotline.

...

Kinda sleepy now. Gonna go to bed.

So, what're your thoughts?