trying not to be too much of an asshole about the vayne lore rework because:
we don’t yet have the whole story
there are things that do work for me, both in the design and the first motion comic, and that make me- maybe not optimistic but definitely a bit hopeful
BUT at the same time i find it hard to feel anything other than contempt for this new creative direction riot has taken, which has only been worsened by firing good portions of their creative team. the consequences of those numerous lay-offs are starting to show and the situation is pretty dire when you look at how they handled zaahen and yunara (who i find very uninteresting as characters), xin zhao’s death (nonsensical, for shock-value), or the numerous other retcons surrounding the demacia season (such as jarvan iii being alive and lux now being 14)
the story they want to tell is MCU-esque in essence. everything must be connected… which immensely weakens the world-building and cohesion of the universe they have constructed over the years. cool concepts are present… but we never explore them further or do anything interesting with any of them because, not only do we find the general public too stupid to engage meaningfully with the stories we so want to tell, but we also don’t want to upset our beloved shareholders with things like moral ambiguity or compelling narrative conflicts.
so we’ll say sahn-uzal was a feared leader, but we’ll never meaningfully engage with the trauma caused to his inner circle, for example. or we’ll do some superficial take on war being bad with the demacia storyline, where seemingly the mage rebellion doesn’t have a place in any longer.
so vayne isn’t a symptom of a larger problem of demacia’s anti-magic policies fueling a revenge-driven path of destruction after a very real tragedy… she’s now an heir to the demon hunting family business where her vocation-choice precedes her parents’ death (now less of a tragedy and more of a direct consequence of their meddling with magic). we’re talking less batman and more winchester. and i’m not saying that in itself is bad, and we don’t know for sure wether they’ll stick with the more morally-reprehensible (and interesting) aspects of her character, like the murder of her master, or if she’ll stay demon-cursed for the rest of her narrative, or if god-forbid they make her narrative conclusion be become a sentinel of light
it’s less thought-provoking, less engaging, more “i don’t trust the general public to read more than two paragraphs without any colorful images”. and i do like the comic work riot has done over the years. warmother is phenomenal and there are some great bits splattered across the lux comics too (despite the other, not-so-great majority). the artwork has been consistently gorgeous across these new motion comics, too, but if arcane season 2 has taught the league fandom anything is that pretty visuals and great art are not enough to tell a good story. you need good writers. you need A Lot of writers. it’s a shame riot fired like two-thirds of them.
