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@Whomever is working on Fiddlesticks VGU, you should read this for inspiration

World King··33 votes·17,786 views

The King in Yellow

Perhaps one of the best works in American fiction in terms of supernatural horror, the King in Yellow is a public domain book of short stories, where multiple stories are connected by a play called_ The King in Yellow_. Anyone who reads the play is doomed to madness and despair, but more importantly, anyone who reads it becomes aware of the King, and the King becomes aware of the reader. I'll leave a small passage here from the Yellow Sign, a short story in the book:

"The gate below opened and shut, and I crept shaking to my door and bolted it, but I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign. And now I heard him moving very softly along the hall. Now he was at the door, and the bolts rotted at his touch. Now he had entered. With eyes starting from my head I peered into the darkness, but when he came into the room I did not see him. It was only when I felt him envelope me in his cold soft grasp that I cried out and struggled with deadly fury, but my hands were useless ... I knew that the King in Yellow had opened his tattered mantle and there was only God to cry to now."

If you want to make Fiddlesticks the scariest guy on the rift, you need to use the strongest and most potent kind of fear there is- fear of the unknown. Before Stephen King, before Lovecraft, Robert W. Chambers created the original in eldritch horrors, the Mac Daddy of them all, the King in Yellow. If you want to set the mood for designing new Fiddlesticks, to get some inspiration, I highly suggest reading this book.

29 Comments

RiotCarnival Knights36 votes

Hah! Love this book. I read The King in Yellow cover-to-cover when I was still in high school, along with most of Lovecraft's library (ironically this is when I realized that Lovecraft was a terrible human being). The kind of horror I gravitate towards these days is many magnitudes more disturbing than "guy with a weird head" or "small yellow goblin man gets mauled to death by cat." Mostly revolving around human psychoses, but also liminal spaces, horrors of the natural world (versus eldritch, outer-space-horror), and plays on religious iconography/ritual that border on exaltation.

Regardless, I have some ideas I'm playing with for Fiddle right now that I hope will surprise you in all the right ways (you pee a little). In my interview five years ago they asked what champion I wanted to write for the most. It was Fiddle then, and remains Fiddle now.

I'm very excited.

World King5 votes

I cant wait!

[sg-lux]

Jacksin1 votes

Yeah wasn't he a racist? If you read into his work carefully you can definitely see it.. Lovecraft's work was so deeply iconic and great, but y'know, separate the art from the artist.

kagepaladin3 votes

that sadly was also a "it was the times he grew up in scenario" not saying its an excuse or right but it's just how things where when he was alive.

Dezarc3 votes

{quoted}

that sadly was also a "it was the times he grew up in scenario" not saying its an excuse or right but it's just how things where when he was alive.

kind of, though he was originally more radical than the average person of his time, and he changed a bit for the better later in his life; his views were also more about culture rather than race for the most part

kagepaladin1 votes

yeah with age comes wisdom, at least that's how it normally goes.

Zëd Lęppelin1 votes

I can't type it here but look up the name of his cat lmao

9mm Valentine1 votes

Hate the artist, not the art. Lovecraft was a fucking genius of horror imo. My personal favorite is the Dunwitch horror.

HopeStartsWithU1 votes

Damn, did you ever play bloodborne?

RiotCarnival Knights3 votes

Yep! I maintain that it is one of the best games ever made. I even own the art book.

HopeStartsWithU1 votes

Holy shit, I fucking love that game. Almost left gaming for good when I bought a PS4 just for BB and it is by far the best gaming experience I have ever had. Especially the OST is insane. Gotta say, I always wished for a BB-like skinline with similar music to it :P Black Scourge Singed and Dark waters Diana are probably the closest to it in terms of looks.

RainbowIcee3 votes

Please, always keep in mind. If we wanted to play a different champion we would have stopped playing fiddlesticks. We still want it to resemble or have the feeling it is fiddlesticks. Please don't just replace the champion with a new one like you guys did with Sion and Galio that turned out to be entirely different even by the role. Warwick Gangplank and Kayle and Irelia got pretty good deals. Even Urgot kind of did. so i hope something similar for our scarecrow friend [sg-soraka]

MrWasjig3 votes

Don't fuck it up....

Tarcathos8 votes

The King in Yellow is certainly an interesting way of looking for supernatural fear inspiration. However, worth noting, they had mentioned that they may be hoping to double down on making him "THE iconic ambusher in League. Catching enemies by surprise is the true art of playing Fiddle..."

Fear of the unknown may play well to the idea, but ambush implies a slightly different tone of scare. The jump scare is certainly different than dread. Which is different from feeling creepy.

IF HOWEVER, the designers can find a way to induce multiple forms of fear, perhaps using some of the inspirations you suggest along with embracing a few other methods to allow them to capture the ambusher play style....then that would truly be a frightful rework indeed.....horrible cackling in the distance building into a cadence of cawing sounds

GelsominoKiller1 votes

{quoted}

The King in Yellow is certainly an interesting way of looking for supernatural fear inspiration. However, worth noting, they had mentioned that they may be hoping to double down on making him "THE iconic ambusher in League. Catching enemies by surprise is the true art of playing Fiddle..."

Fear of the unknown may play well to the idea, but ambush implies a slightly different tone of scare. The jump scare is certainly different than dread. Which is different from feeling creepy.

IF HOWEVER, the designers can find a way to induce multiple forms of fear, perhaps using some of the inspirations you suggest along with embracing a few other methods to allow them to capture the ambusher play style....then that would truly be a frightful rework indeed.....horrible cackling in the distance building into a cadence of cawing sounds

I wholeheartedly support "professional jump scare mememeister fiddlesticks", and firmly reject the "Lovecraftian unspeakable horror fiddlesticks".

A maddeding truth and an Eldritch appearance aren't the kind of fear I expect from a scarecrow.

It's a much mundane, classical kind of horror: weird, sinister, unclear, murderous, evil.

SpecterVonBaren5 votes

I imagine a story with Fid to be more inspired by SCP stories if they're taking the tone from his original story for the new one. Fiddle fits in well with the mold of anomalous one of a kind thing that sits in a room that "we don't go to anymore".

RiotCarnival Knights7 votes

Ironically this was his de facto old lore. An evil scarecrow someone summoned that they didn't know what to do with, so they just kinda left him in a closet. He ended up being an execution tool, as the Institute of War would tell people they didn't like to go grab something from the closet and then Fiddlesticks would come to life and kill them. I imagine that conversation went like this:

SUMMONING COUNCIL: you have been found guilty of breaking the laws of the institute. your punishment... is to grab us a broom from the old closet on the second floor.

DEFENDANT: the closet people have been vanishing in for, like, three years?

SUMMONING COUNCIL: nobody vanishes from that closet. we don't know what you're talking about.

DEFENDANT: you send people in there all the time. just last week you sent a guy in there for a doran's and we all heard him yell, "Oh no, please don't murder me in this closet!" then he got murdered.

SUMMONING COUNCIL: sounds like a janitorial issue.

DEFENDANT: it's not a janitorial issue.

SUMMONING COUNCIL: we said it sounds like one, not that it was one. you should pay attention to the way we say things.

DEFENDANT: i'm not going in the closet.

SUMMONING COUNCIL: GUARDS, PUT THE DEFENDANT IN THE MURDER CLOSET.

AbiwonKenabi2 votes

GUARD: Look, its either this or you end up getting killed by some other Champion we keep around here. Remember Nocturne? Cho'Gath? Brand?

...Yeah, now that I think about it, a lot of Champions were just sort of contained. Institute of War was basically part UN, part SCP containment.

The fact that you know the old lore so well makes me really happy for some reason.

SpecterVonBaren1 votes

It makes me happy too, it means he'll probably keep the spirit of Fiddle's original lore when making the new one. What I always find most interesting about reworked lore isn't what is changed but what they manage to keep the same alongside massive changes.

For example, while I don't think they tapped into it enough, I like that Galio still has some kind of connection with Poppy and they were able to have it be because Poppy is the only person that is still alive and there when Galio wakes up after dozens or hundreds of years.

SpecterVonBaren1 votes

Oh I know, I was just saying that an evil scarecrow is perfect for the lore he originally had. I'm glad that you're knowledgeable about his old lore, gives me hope for what you come up with.

Xenos von Faneli1 votes

please, for the love of all that is right in the world, please do your very best to get the murder closet into the game in some form or fashion, be it a joke line of someone referencing fiddles or and emote or recall or even a ward I don't care, this needs to be a thing

4 Step Cadence1 votes

Fiddlesticks is basically just SCP-173. Stands there when you stare at him, moves incredibly fast and kills you when you look away.

The Old Cthulhu3 votes

Make meh boi da spookiest boi

kagepaladin3 votes

or as a more modern take get some Junji Ito up in this bitch. the one where everyone had there own hole in the side of the mountain is fucked up by a fair bit.

Zabulus1 votes

I Imagine fiddle sticks with a nocturne R for one person and then kind of like a kayn passive where he envelopes you into darkness and a special effect called confusion is allowed. to where the enemy can attack their own teammates out of "fear"

ModRowanstar1 votes

I have a theoretical question: How can any champion (even undead and demons) be scary to us players? After all we also have powerful champs that decrease the horror of someone like Nocturne, since we can fight them. A normal human with no powers would be terrified but not us.

BLACK REALM GOD1 votes

{quoted}

I have a theoretical question: How can any champion (even undead and demons) be scary to us players? After all we also have powerful champs that decrease the horror of someone like Nocturne, since we can fight them. A normal human with no powers would be terrified but not us.

simple. you take control from the player. there are several games that are severely horrifying and traumatizing, but in actuality the entire thing is in your head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Darkness

eternal darkness is a game that messes with the player in ways that were once thought unimaginable for a game. the game in a sense breaks that 4th wall and creates a feeling that the game is watching the player.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSXcajQnasc

La Bello2 votes

{quoted}

I have a theoretical question: How can any champion (even undead and demons) be scary to us players? After all we also have powerful champs that decrease the horror of someone like Nocturne, since we can fight them. A normal human with no powers would be terrified but not us.

you cant the most scared I have ever been of a champ was old Rengar. Before his ult had the "!" indicator and multiple sound cues. because I didnt listen to music back then and because no stealth characters ever opened up with a loud ass "REAWAAAR" sound. I would just be casually strolling the rift listening to the old LoL VGM lulled into a false sense of security and then suddenly he would jump and delete my champion.

no Champion in LoL has ever scared me apart from the jumpscare champs gawd release Rengar used to give me fucking heart attacks jfc.

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