#arguably league being Not Good тм is what is saving and preserving its goodness lol

[first-only]

i'll probably regret asking since league of legends is known to be Not Good™ but now i'm curious. how is light and darkness treated in league of legends lore? (i've seen arcane but apart from that i know nothing)

(referring to this post and my tags on it)

ok so to answer this first a glimpse into what even "league of legends lore" is, as in the material principle of it. Best part of the entire ordeal is that literally nobody cares about league lore. The dudebros playing dont even know it, it has no active fandom (in the definition of tumblr/ao3 of 'fandom'), there's little cancelling, barely analysis, it's free. Which is great!! bc the authors took this to mean they can do literally whatever they want without scrutiny (or w very little of it) from either side. And they did good, oh did they do good. There's been gay characters since the beginning. There are /so many/ now. There's a trans character! She is referenced as such in-game and her bio tells her writing process and decisions! there's no drama over that! bc nobody knows despite all that lol. And im actually grateful for league's natural toxic defense systems because even the boom of arcane did not get the toxic fandom culture into scrutinizing and nitpicking. in short, there's like 5 of us who care abt this shit.

now the way league lore is conveyed is infinitely better than any other franchise with similar storytelling (looking at u overwatch). it's compact, the company actually puts it all in one official place, there's no word-of-god-ing whats canon is clear. side projects are easily referenced and accessible. did you know one of the trailers for the card game in the same universe kinda gives a hint as to the future of one of the main arcane charas? you could go look at it! (or ask for a link/explanation id be happy to). now, the way we learn about the universe beyound the explicitly shared things about regions and factions (and oh lord there's /so many/ of those - arcane was set in its specific regions because they were underdeveloped before!! imagine how the others are); is through the characters themselves and their personal lore. everyone has at least one (and usually many more + videos and stuff) short stories that explain their origin, connection to other characters, strives and moral dilemmas and relation to their faction and/or region. so we get to learn from a first-person account and. well. there's 162 characters to date. yeh that's /a lot of lore/.

And there's more!! The skins in the game, and especially the skin lines (ie skins for different champions with the same theme) are /canon/. Well, they're AU, in the sense of "what if this character was from this other faction/region/nation instead?" or "what if X had happened in this universe instead?" but the lore behind them is solid and applicable. So from all this we have learned a few things about the universe:

-The world they live in, Runeterra, is technically a "planet", but the universe itself is /definitely/ not like ours. It's not the kind of space we see in our physics and studies. It's a magical world! It's filled with beasts and mythological concepts, not hard mathematics and logic. Which is to say the 'void' of space is, in fact, a place for magical creatures to live! It's alive! it's livable, no concept of oxygen, it's travellable (with the right technology and/or magic to get there). The stars are little creatures that sometimes get lost or weak and 'fall' to Runeterra! there's a whole ass faction devoted to helping them grow and get back up. There's space dragons and 'gods' (which is a complicated concept in this universe but to abbreviate here lets call them that) that /create/ those lil guys!

Look at them!

those lil beasties ARE the stars! being shepherded! The darkness of the night sky is alive! its full of tiny creatures and scary space dragons and adventure and benevolent or mischievous celestials! (girl with the horn is one of them!)

-There /is/ a concept of the actual Void, which is a different... spacetime? Sure let's go with that. It's all consuming, the threat to all living beings, on Runeterra and beyound. It's looking to eat and consume everything, ever expanding. Some characters dont believe it even exists (its kinda on a cooldown, waking up atm); others devote their lives and turn into villains to protect the world from it. The kicker? Not only is it /alive/ itself, made of undulating flesh, but all its monsters and messengers are grabbing hands looking to grapple and drown the world as we know it inside of themselves. It's True Darkness, alive and breathing and looking to Consume.

-the concept of light is a little bit different. it's treated as good and righteous by some factions and characters, as blinding by others. the biggest fans of it, as it were, are however the nation that looks to purge everything unclean and magical, to subdue mages and any expression of things non-physical. their battlecries are 'for the light' (which is often called out by other charas as /magical itself/ ironically lol), as they slaughter and purge the lives they deem unnecessary, leaving the emptiness magic leaves behind it as a remnant. ofc this isnt as clear cut a moral lesson - the lore loves its ambiguity. an angel splits in two (simplifying lol) to 'righteous justice' (=light, punishment, purging) and 'compassionate justice' (=dark, support, helping humans with what they need so they would be kinder). the star shepherding region itself is split in sun and moon warriors. protectors of supposed invasions, shields of the light that let nothing in. and nighttime secretive warriors who do what they can to improve the lives of the little guys, who want to fill the sky and the earth with (moon)light - reflected and thus gentler, subtler, /fuller/. and the leaders of these factions are lesbian lovers who were sisters in the old lore 👀

and honestly thats not even my fav part of league lore lol. the political intrigue, characters seemingly crafted to suit me personally. there's ninja-likes who move in smoke and darkness to preserve peace, opposed by light-shining spirit walkers who seek complacency, control, subjugation! you know i never thought /too/ much abt the whole way it treats lightness vs darkness apart from the more obvious space and void faction, but damn the more i dig into it, the more obvious it is this seems like an intentional thing. there's a shining sun emperor and his servants literally made of light(ning), who created creatures called Darkin in their hubris, and who are being opposed by underground factions clad in black. damn.

(for the record league lore got a rewritten some years ago - before, the game was actually canon and the characters were competing to win the League of Legends in-lore for an ultimate price. since, the writers have decided that the characters tell stories that cannot be contained in those limits, and have turned the game into just a backdrop [it and most other games in the same universe] for the bigger story they're telling in the background. i did grumble abt the decision at the time, but now i see that it's taking a very interesting path and i love following it)