#trying so hard to save zaun from riot

[higuchisora]

Adding onto my headcanon about Zaun culturally valuing art and literature:

The names in Zaun have meanings. Not just in the "Oh, my name means 'flower'" way. These names are primarily references to poetry or music or literature in some way.

This idea comes in combination with my headcanon that Zaun has a different dialect/sister-language to Piltover (like how the Romance languages share a common origin but are different, or how there are a bunch of different types of Spanish but they're all still considered Spanish).

The Zaunite characters' names seem strange to us because they're either a reference to something, or are transliterated Tolkien-style from Zaunite/old Piltovan (at some point League said Zaun was the original Piltover before it sank).

Which is why we see names like Powder and think, what the fuck? It's because it's a transliteration of a name that doesn't really make sense in our IRL languages. In reality, it's probably considered a pretty normal name. Just like how straight up naming someone "beautiful" doesn't sound normal in English (whereas "Hope" does), but is fairly standard in plenty of other languages (ex. Belle/Bella).

Similar to Ekko and why it's spelled this way. It's not "echo but more masculine/quirky," it's actually a name with an entirely different meaning that HAPPENS to sound like our English word "echo." We see phenomena like this IRL all the time (called "false friends"), of words in unrelated languages sounding similar even though they developed entirely independently.

Vi (short for Violet) works fine because it is, in fact, an easily translated name. But the name itself is also in reference to a classic book/song/poem.

Names like Silco, Vander, and Claggor either couldn't be transliterated/localized or sounded even weirder in meaning than Powder. Mylo either is another "false friend"/cognate name, or is a localization of his actual name. Regardless, all of their names are in reference to literature, poetry, and/or some other artistic expression.

(I'd like to add, before I forget- that Vander's name IS real- according to the Internet, it's Greek for "good man", which might not be real but I'm taking it and running with it as a name from an old play or something).

Googling Sevika's name gave a pretty straightforward meaning- it apparently means "female servant"/maid in Hindi (please correct me if I'm wrong, those who know Hindi). Which. I'm not trying to think about the negative implications of that, though there are many. So I'll try to make a positive spin on her name and say she's another "false friend" name, and it means something entirely different in the Zaunite/ancient Piltovan language.

[lifefragments]

Dark Red

Pairing: Jayce x Reader Genre: Angst, Romance, Drama Setting: Arcane Season 1, after the events of the riots

Zaun’s streets were still alive with whispers of the chaos that had unfolded, but amidst the disarray, there was an unexpected calm that had settled in Piltover. Jayce stood at the edge of his study window, staring out over the city, his thoughts clouded by the events that had transpired. The weight of it all had settled heavily on his chest.

You had always been a steady presence in his life, someone who kept him grounded even when his ambitions ran wild, someone who made him feel like he wasn’t just a tool for progress. But recently, that connection had begun to feel strained, as though something was off, something unspoken.

The argument earlier had shaken him more than he cared to admit. It wasn’t like him to let emotions control his decisions, to lash out at someone he cared about. But the frustration, the pressure, had built up too much. And when you had confronted him about his priorities—about his reckless pursuit of power over the well-being of those who depended on him—he had snapped.

He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so uncertain about the future, so unsure of what was worth fighting for. He had tried so hard to change things, to bridge the gap between Piltover and Zaun. But in his heart, he knew he had begun to lose sight of what truly mattered—the people who loved him, the ones he had been pushing away.

His thoughts were interrupted by the soft knock on the door. He didn’t need to turn around to know it was you. Your presence had always been the kind that filled a room, even without words.

“You still up?” Your voice was soft, a little hesitant, but it made his heart ache.

Jayce didn’t respond immediately. He just stared at the lights of the city below, feeling the pang of regret gnawing at him.

You stepped inside, not waiting for an invitation. Your gaze shifted from him to the window, then back to him. You had always been the one to break the silence, the one who could hold him when he needed it most. But tonight, you weren’t sure where to stand.

"Jayce…" you began, your voice low but firm. "We need to talk."

He finally turned to face you, the weight of his emotions threatening to spill over. "I know," he said, his tone almost resigned. "I shouldn’t have said those things. I… I was wrong."

You studied him, noticing the tension in his jaw, the furrow between his brows that hadn't been there before. "You were," you replied, your words sharp but not unkind. "But it’s not just about what you said. It’s about everything. It’s about how you’ve been so caught up in what you’re trying to achieve, you’ve lost sight of what’s important."

Jayce sighed deeply, pushing a hand through his hair. "I’m trying to fix things, [Y/N]. I’m trying to make a difference. But sometimes, it feels like I’m fighting a battle I can’t win."

"I know," you whispered, your heart aching for him. "But it’s not all about fighting. You’ve been so consumed by your need to prove something, Jayce, that you’ve forgotten what matters most—yourself, the people who care about you."

His chest tightened at your words. He wanted to argue, to explain how hard it had been, how much pressure he had been under to be the hero, the one who could save the city. But all he could do was look at you—look at the person who had always understood him, even when he couldn’t understand himself.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he admitted, his voice breaking slightly. The rawness of his confession hit him harder than he expected. The guilt, the overwhelming sense of loss, made his heart race.

You stepped closer, your eyes softening as you took in the vulnerability in his expression. "You won’t," you said quietly. "But you have to choose what matters. You have to choose where your heart is, Jayce. You can’t keep running from it."

For a moment, there was silence between you, the weight of unspoken words lingering in the air. Jayce took a step toward you, his hands trembling slightly as he reached for yours. His touch was tentative, unsure. He wasn’t sure if he had the right to ask for this after everything he had done, after everything he had put you through.

"I don’t know if I can change," he confessed, his gaze searching yours, desperate for some kind of reassurance. "But I’m trying. I swear I am."

You didn’t answer right away. Instead, you leaned into him, resting your head against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. His arms wrapped around you instinctively, pulling you close, as if afraid that if he let go, you might disappear.

“I know you’re trying, Jayce,” you murmured against his shirt. “But sometimes, trying isn’t enough. You have to choose.”

He closed his eyes, the reality of your words settling deep within him. He had been so focused on the idea of change, of saving the city, that he hadn’t stopped to consider what was right in front of him. What he had almost lost.

"I’m sorry," he whispered, the words almost too quiet to hear. "I didn’t mean to push you away. You matter to me more than anything else. More than any of this."

You pulled away just slightly, enough to meet his gaze. There was sadness in your eyes, but also something else—something that spoke of a love that was still there, though fragile.

"I just want you to remember that," you said softly. "I want you to remember us, Jayce. I don’t want to be a casualty of your ambition."

His heart clenched at your words. You weren’t just talking about the two of you—you were talking about everything that had been torn apart in the wake of his actions. But in that moment, he understood. He understood that his desire to change the world couldn’t come at the expense of the people who meant everything to him.

"Give me another chance," he whispered, his voice low, almost pleading. "Please. I’ll do better. I’ll make it right."

You hesitated, your eyes searching his face. You could see the sincerity in his eyes, the deep regret that had settled in his chest. And for the first time in a long while, you saw the man you once knew—a man who wasn’t defined by his power, but by his heart.

With a soft sigh, you cupped his face in your hands, gently pulling him closer. "I want to believe you, Jayce. But you have to show me. You have to show me that you’re not just running after some ideal… that you’re running toward what we could be."

His breath caught in his throat as he leaned in, pressing his forehead against yours, the weight of his emotions almost overwhelming. “I will,” he promised, his voice thick with emotion. “I will show you.”

In that moment, the world outside seemed to fade away. There were no more riots, no more political games. It was just the two of you, standing in the quiet of his study, trying to find a way back to each other. Trying to find a way back to the love that had always been there, even in the darkest moments.

[madroxed]

[arcane anon from before!] j/v was also my favourite thing from s1, haha, and the fact that they saved the world - several times over - with their love for one another? GAH. i've never won so hard with a show before (and don't think that anything'll top arcane for a long while, either) 🥰 also all the "are you team jayce or team viktor" questions on sm during the first two acts are so funny in hindsight... sorry for blathering! 😅 i actually wanted to ask what else you liked best(/least?) in s2?

honestly i loved their arc through both seasons so much and i will be thinking about it forever, thanks. team jayce or team viktor? i was team 'i cannot wait for this divorce era omfg let's gooo' and boy was i right. full circle soulmates babyyyy.

i mean the jayvik arc was obvs my favourite thing about s2 because they were my whole focus in s1, too, but other things:

ekko!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i cannot express enough how much it was ekko. boy savior in-fucking-deed. literally the only character to have done no wrong, i will fight the world for him.

mel somehow getting a glow up despite already being the most beautiful human already??? iconic honestly. i love her. i'm really hoping we see more of her in whatever riot make next.

episode 7. a work of art.

jayce's beard.

(jayce has been my not-so-secret fave since the beginning so i had a blast this season)

the art continued to blow my mind.

jinx in general was excellent. also vi fighting for jinx. just, a lot of jinx.

things i liked the least? eh, look, i love this show, it's great, but i have always just been here for a good time. i didn't need everything wrapped up perfectly, i understood and enjoyed the story they were telling, and i especially enjoyed that they fully queered up a franchise known for being populated with some of the worst people in gaming. it was about the art and the angst and i loved both.

that being said, look, could they have done a little more to bridge acts 2 and 3 especially regarding cait's foray into fascism and the very-much-still-a-huge-factor-actually class struggles between piltover and zaun that were the entire point of s1? yes. obviously. do i understand that they had to wrap it up and that's, like, a three season arc of any other show? yes.

honestly my least favourite thing about s2 was people wilfully misunderstanding jayce's actions and also viktor's actions, like babes, we get it, you imprinted jayce with your jock issues at the beginning of the show so were taking every single thing he did in bad faith and thus misreading his entire character. viktor is wonderful, i love him so much, *knocks his head* you can fit so many layers in this beauty, but also uhhhhh when you're trying to justify the mind control cult to paint jayce as the bad guy even though you know we've still got the flashbacks of how we got there to come, we're probably watching different shows? so that was a fun stint of time between act 2 and the finale.

i keep coming back to the meme in the tag that's like "arcane isn't about justifying the characters actions, it's about which war criminal is your fave" and exactlyyyyyy. be genre-savvy, pals.

tl;dr i'm so glad you loved this season too, anon. may we continue to be blessed with all the stunning artwork in the tag and as many post-canon what-if fics as we can stand.

[pixieswashere]

EXACTLY like that was so so frustrating because even if we know that Arcane is it's own "iteration" or well used to be....(I think it's confirmed canon which um...yeah thats a choice after having a multiverse ep.) In the OG lore, Viktor BECAME the Machine Herald by his own hands....He literally chose that path and while you can argue some of his lore feels like it could be fleshed out. The point is that his rise to glory was....from his own accord and vision.

Viktor's decisions were tested by Piltover constantly taking advantage of him (Professors/ ppl constantly stealing his hard work....from a Zaunite who had nothing.) while Zaun suffered because they still have gas and chemical incidents that are brushed off by the elite. Viktor so far as we know was the ONLY person to come up with his mechanical suit because he knew Zaun was suffering and wanted to aid the labor force.....and a professor stole his idea....his invention. Even after he became the Machine Herald, Viktor wasn't revealed to be... a total psychopath as the rumors in his short story suggest....He just made decisions that were very morally questionable in terms of The Glorious Evolution and he never really forced ANYONE to join....He gave them the CHOICE (Ex: "There is always a choice." - Viktor)

The lost opportunity to have Viktor a tragic anti-hero who is STILL viewed as the enemy from BOTH sides even though he has spent his life helping people (after Piltover is labeling him as a monster) after he left Piltover to cement his legacy in saving Zaun from war and Jayce constantly breaking his trust is actually a really good way to end his arc and way to end off his story (not only does it open for continuations like for Jayvik moments and IN GENERAL, but it's stays true to a satisfying yet promising prequel to show that VILLAINS or rather Anti-Heroes too are MADE....They make decisions influenced by the current state of their world, views, morals, and ect.)

It's a very realistic lens to show how not ALL people are viewed as heroes....or will have their image be ruined in favor of "keeping the peace" (cough Piltover cough) even if they're intentions weren't all bad or they're wrongdoings small. It's a pretty realistic thing that happens in the real world with some political figures or groups (in Propoganda, War, and etc.)

This could've also opened up the explanation for champions like Renata and etc. Bc we could've had her be the person who would take in Viktor after he left Piltover with the proposition of having him as her "co-partner"(but not with the right intentions....mostly ofc because maybe she wants to fund weapons/Hextech to monopolize it and aid it for Zaun too) Which would set off his arc to go on his own path, it makes sense for him to do this and...it's a good way to subverting the original lore.

Compared to having him be a wizard and a magic user this WHOLE time...which in my opinion diminishes a lot of what we've seen him do and is capable of in S1....and feels like cheap way to write him as a Gary Stu. When first of all....if we are to be logical:

1) Ryze is still a wizard and would've known about the events of S2 bc mages/magic users get their power from the Arcane. He literally spen his entire life searching runes and his role as a mage, so he WOULD'VE KNOWN about the warping disarray that was happening and imo, was a robbed aspect to address this as a part of Heimerdinger's backstory/a meaningful redemption arc.

2) Jayce (not even Viktor) DIDN'T even invent Hextech....it was actually Camille and House Ferros (....Nice try Fortiche) Jayce just made it a public revolutionary discovery to Piltover, so in reality Dumbledore! Viktor didn't really "invent" shit bc in the timeline he was only present during Jayce's childhood (Unless Riot retcons that too and says that Viktor was also there when Camille invented it....which is yknow S level writing.)

3) Also the multiverse aspect is so contrived bc if every universe is a parallel universe of "what could have been" or "what if", then this would mean in a universe where he is the mage there would be another parallel were Viktor is a wizard but with differences to what happened. REALISTICALLY, if we are going with this theory....it makes no sense for their NOT to be a universe where Viktor ISNT the Villain. Like this entire Multiverse worldbuilding was so badly written, bc it feels like a poorly excuse to give a reason as to why Viktor is the villain??? (which is very ignorantly ableist argument in my opinion) and it goes AGAINST the Multiverse/Alternate Universe theory bc it's impossible for EVERY universe to have the exact same outcome (It's like they just rounded down the worst outcomes, even tho it's A MULTIVERSE...Dr. Strange level speech excuse.)

So yeah definitely still a Machine Herald fan and Herald of the Arcane fan. BUT mostly a Machine Herald fan because...He doesn't just look good in metal....He's like an actually pretty cool guy, who just wants to create inventions and do crimes in peace...(like a true based introvert), AND HE'S A DAD WHO LOVES HIS ROBOT SON??? (Herald of the Arcane could never...)

P.S. if the creators still wanted a multiverse with the s2 finale ending. They would have to have a 3 to 4 season to really flesh the story more (bc after all the writing pitfalls they shouldve done a 3 - 4 seasons to flesh the plotlines/character arcs out). Or simply have a Convergence spinoff for Ekko (I bet $100 they'll end up doing that shi.)

We didn't even see Viktor do anything with his smart mind in season 2, it's ridiculous.

This man is the co-creater of Hextech and has been building working machinery since he was a child. That man is a genius, and season 1 showed us.

Season 2 however, threw all of that out the fucking window...

[viktormaru]

here are my spoilers thoughts abt act 3 of arcane

SPOILERS FOR ARCANE CLEARLY

First of all so caitvi was heavily implied but they dont even get to smooch and i know why but thats still a coward move when we had fucking JAYCE SEX scene... cant believe Jayce was the first league character to fuck on screen

Second, I fucking love Ekko he looks so good I love him my boy he's amazing and he's getting shit done and he's the one character that was 100% right alright? alright

Jayce had a very interesting arc huh... he's not at all like the character in the game and I like this Jayce better I think, but it's just.... very different from in game Jayce its hard trying to even put those two together

I really liked the story overall, how Piltover and Zaun were treated... very interesting... I feel like it dealt a lot with consequences, often, all the time actually. The price we pay for the things we do.

Now Viktor, my speciality... What do I think of Arcane Viktor....

I think he's a new character tbh, although similar to in game Viktor like I mentioned before, and similar motivations I think act 3 put a major difference between them while drawing from a same theme?? thing?? I'll explain

Act 3 had Viktor start to use desperate, even harmful means to help himself and it worked. But when he was out of shimmer he decided to just keep pushing it. He was desperate, he tasted freedom for a second and he wanted more. And there were consequences, when someone got killed for it. I think it's WILD thats hes just gonna hide that specially cause it didnt seem like anyone would investigate the poor girl just fucking disappearing but ive playing a lot of DD lately and stories of guilt is something i got used to UASHDUHSDA.... But yeah back on topic, he seems to put a stop on his research with shimmer, specially seeing the girl was helping him figure out another way that was less desperate. That's interesting, because the ideia for the Glorious Evolution does come to Viktor when he's at his lowest, after being sabotaged and seeing death and suffering and sinking into an isolated depression, it WAS born of desperation as well, and mental instability, even if it's something that he truly believes him, something that kept him alive and could save lives.

And here's what separate arcane viktor from lol viktor, right? Arcane Viktor seemed to use magic and outside means to achieve his results and in exchange seemed to corrupt the magic or his cells?? in the process. we see the hexcore taking the form of something that resembles the void even. But that says nothing of Viktor's genious. It feels like he just, did something anyone could do?? Like, he's not taking a big leap and creating something new it just feels like he injected drugs did a little twirl and voila, working leg.

I feel like there's much more conviction and ingenuity in LOL Viktor not replicating human limbs, but improving them by merging flesh with metal, replacing flesh with metal with something BETTER, soemthing taht works, and doing it on himself to prove it. The whole magic thing feels cheap to me, and they call it hextech but I dont feel it. Arcane viktor is not a cyborg he just kinda... mutated? Idk the word. It's like he's Mundo or soemthing idk Mundo's lore forgive me.

But you know what, it kinda works for Viktor arcane's little arc abt hubris or something, paralel to everyone elses. "Are you really willing to go that far?". But he says it himself "there's always a choice". And he chose to not go any further with that path, even if it might mean a premature death.

So yeah, I like Viktor Arcane, it's not Viktor LoL but he's cool. He deserves better too, it's hard not to sympathize with him, he's made like that. Viktor lol is a lil bonkers its understandable ppl not sympathizing. Vry interesting choice they made there, wish Riot would give him any content at all like skins and shit but what can you do

also i guess that makes arcane a what if?

like what if viktor didnt became the machine herald

actually no more realisticaly what if viktor and the whole council died by a fucking missile holy shit what

EDIT: Ok adding to this if theres actually season 2 then that whole ending thing i wrote there is wrong actually but hmmmmmmmmmmm will see if it goes somewhere.

[sheriff-caitlyn]

I started this blog in 2014, as the first Caitlyn on tumblr, and obviously I’ve been through a lot of retcons and changes myself, not only adapting to Riot’s own public retcons (from the minor, like her aesthetics, to the major, like the removal of the Institute of War as an integral part of their lore) but also to my own. That’s the thing about playing a character as complex as this, is that you learn more as you go. In your interactions with others and the creation of backstory, history, and other bits of worldbuilding to better understand the world you’re in, a character goes from a handful of images and some in-game voicelines to a fully-fledged person with a complex narrative. Sometimes things change, and that’s fine. But there are some changes which... aren’t. 

For all the fingerprints I’ve put on her, she is still not my character. But I care. Sunk-cost fallacy, maybe, but I care about this character I have been involved in and I care about the direction she has been taken. So, without further ado, I’d like to delve into:

The Recent Caitlyn Update In Piltover’s New Context or, We Gotta Fetishise Police Violence, I Mean, Look At Her, She’s So Hot

Back in August 2015, I went, ‘Oh No, they’re going to try to turn Piltover into Gotham City, aren’t they?’, and lo and behold, suddenly we have Poison Ivy now. But I will get back to that, later. In this particular thread, I noted that many of the characters in Piltover seemed destined for a revamp that would rob them of what originally drew us to them in the first place, and that Piltover seemed destined for a rework that would wash out much of their character. Piltover and Zaun were always meant to be polar opposites, but suddenly we were seeing glimpses of Piltover being ‘not as good as everyone thinks’, which hinted that Piltover and Zaun were destined not to be polar opposites in the future, but indistinguishable from each other. It worried me that the only thing telling these two fascinating cities apart would be the sunlight.

So, when we have so much potential for a clash between Zaun and Piltover, between ‘Science No Matter The Cost’ and ‘We Must Advance The World With Care’, why change Piltover to some murky middleground, turning peace and security into wartime capitalism? A world where the people are shitty, where weapons and profit come first, and the only ones making a stand are the ones who are so embittered they have nothing better to do?

Because it has to be ‘interesting’. We’re going to lose bits that we like, that we’re familiar with. And that’s why I’m concerned.

This was before Piltover and Zaun were squished together in an ugly - and utterly ham-fisted - method of showing How Complex The Future Is. There’s layers, guys! Literal layers to this one single city! That means it’s deep! But when I say ‘bits that we like, that we’re familiar with’, I’m not clinging to a fanon interpretation. I’m saying the things that drew us to the world and to the characters to begin with. I could adapt from Caitlyn turning from brown-haired and brown-eyed to black-haired and blue-eyed, because even through I had been doing art, at that point, the change gave me an opportunity to express and discover more about her character (her eye colour being influenced by her mother’s magic, for one). But some of the more stark changes - to family, to job, to personality, to the city of Piltover itself - these result in a character changing completely. I was worried that the cool detective who literally made the world a better place would be chopped and changed into something unrecognisable. I even expounded on my concerns in November 2016, where I could see some of the ways the writers at Rito might make adjustments in the direction of their lore updates.

All this to say, I’ve been working on her for a while, and I was bracing for some bad news. This? This is kind of the worst.

Caitlyn has always been the Sheriff of Piltover, an authority figure, a representative of the law and order that Piltover is famous for. Piltover’s peace and financial prosperity has been directly linked to Caitlyn’s concerted effort to eradicate crime (not criminals, crime! Which, as I have mentioned particularly in this post from 2014, means she upended and reformed the justice system, from the legal process to the prisons to how people are treated as citizens). The city is safe, people have greater access to personal wealth and development, classism is erased, society is flourishing. Zaun, as Piltover’s polar opposite, is a corporate nightmare, with ‘do as thou wilt’, private bodyguards for the rich and powerful while the poor scramble to survive in a system that barely treats them as human. Vi, as a Zaunite, brings a lot of her ‘violence as a problem-solver’ methodology to Piltover’s law-enforcement, though she seems to have no intention of returning to Zaun and seems to have bonded with Caitlyn (‘teamwork!’) to Get Shit Done. And, apparently, there is still shit that needs to be done, though nowhere near as much as there had been in the Bad Old Days.

Vi was, at the time, the awkward-grit-teeth-grin-ha-ha-um-yeah representation of police violence. ‘Resist arrest’, she cries gleefully, as she beats people and breaks down buildings, and we are supposed to go ‘ha, isn’t that funny’ with varying degrees of sincerity. Of course Piltover is going to have problems: anywhere that has wealth and stability is going to be targeted by the envious and the needy. Peace needs to be protected. The problem lies in how that protection is enacted.

So now we have the recent Legends of Runeterra update to Caitlyn, an update which looked at the context of Piltover needing protection, as well as the modern context of Riot’s California location in the Years of Our Lord 2020-2021, and then decided ‘you know what we need? Police violence, everyone loves police violence’.

MAN I thought the stripper-cop skins were bad but here we go!

Her Yordle Snap-Traps (which I envisioned as from the Yordle Military, rather than a racially-profiling weapon as, y’know, they work on human-and-larger-sized people as well) have now been replaced by electroshock grenades, the intent gone from incapacitation and observation to outright paralysis and destruction. Her net-short is now apparently electro-conductive (admittedly, I have had one (1) single RP where that happened, but it came at both a cost to Caitlyn and to her weapon’s efficiency as a result, a last-resort against a dangerous opponent). Caitlyn’s cards in LoR take her from being a detective coordinating ideas and people and putting together a case to a SWAT team leader. This might be the biggest problem in working for a non-combat-oriented character in a MOBA, or in any fighting game: the game needs to find rationalisations for all of their characters being there, being combatants, being able to kill (even if, as Riot says, the lore is separate from the game). We have monsters and soldiers and ancient powers who of course they know how to spill blood and relish in doing so. But pacifists, like Karma or Bard? Explorers like Ezreal? And a sheriff, a peacekeeper, a law-keeper, someone mindful of responsibility and the importance of saving every life possible, like Caitlyn? They’re stripped of that depth and complexity in-game, but there was always the lore that backed them up. But they’ve done away with that completely. Caitlyn was never special operations. She was never military. But now she is, because she had to be changed to fit better into a fighting game. They had to make her violent, and as a result, they have undermined not only everything about the character that made her interesting to begin with - turning her now into a representative of police brutality, but with long hair, pouty lips, and a thigh gap - but they’re also re-writing the context of Piltover. It was bad enough to squish Piltover and Zaun together. But now, Caitlyn’s update is proof that Piltover has gone from a steampunk utopia to a violent, oppressive and cynical post-industrial world. The depiction of Caitlyn as a SWAT team leader (complete with special-forces beret, because hat! Caitlyn wears a hat! Nevermind the fact that she’s no longer wearing a distinctive tophat but instead a symbol of extreme state-sponsored force!) shows us that Piltover’s ‘army’ is not designed as a defence against outsiders, but as an offensive force against their own people. Caitlyn is supposed to be the representation of how peace and order is maintained in one of the largest factions in League of Legends, and if her method of maintaining order is straight-up police violence against their own citizens, then it’s not really peace and order. It’s authoritarianism at best, and facism at worst.

Piltover was different from every other nation in Runeterra because it didn’t have a military. It had defenders, and it had a powerful economy, and it had a democratic political system. But the Piltover update retconned Caitlyn’s hard work. The gangs were back - though now they’re big powerful families like Clan Ferros - and Caitlyn has been de-aged so that she’s still new to the force, that she hasn’t even had her chance to change anything. Her importance to Piltover is minimised... and why is Vi even there? (Oh boy I guess you’re going to have to watch Arcane to find out! Coming to a Netflix near you soon!) With a younger Caitlyn in a violent society, she has no choice but to be violent herself... even if that undermines everything previously established about Piltover and about Caitlyn. This update has made Piltover just as ugly and oppressive as Demacia, Noxus, and Zaun. It’s just another army equipped to do violence, but now that violence is turned inwards. This isn’t protection, it’s control. It’s fear. It’s oppression. Caitlyn is no longer a peacekeeper. She’s a monster. Chopped and changed, as I feared, into something completely unrecognisable from how she began in a world that no longer looks like what it had been... or should be.

It’s hard to tell what came first, the change to Piltover or the change to Caitlyn. Either way, the changes are inextricably linked. Caitlyn was integral to Piltover’s modern state, and Piltover is integral to Caitlyn as a character. Her (original) drive was to make the city and all its people better; Piltover was a utopia because of the effort of Caitlyn, and of people like her, people who wanted a better world. This new iteration of Piltover - full of fear and violence and hypocricy, layered over Zaun in such a way that makes ham-fisted commentary about the wealth/class divide - undermines the value of the individual. It removes agency. It removes hope, which had been integral to Piltover. Piltover is no longer the CIty of Progress... it’s the City of ‘you better be rich and pretty if you want to progress’. And Caitlyn is no longer a force for good or a representative of responsibility, because those things don’t exist in Piltover anymore. Legends of Runeterra has turned Caitlyn into a bitch, someone to hate. She has a marked lack of respect for people, as demonstrated in her new character traits of ‘casually-racist’ (her lines to Veigar), ‘condescending’ (her lines to Viktor), with some added pride in her violence (’here’s my calling card *shoots gun*’ and ‘I aim to win and my aim is excellent’). She is a representative of her city, and she is a terrible person now. Piltover is terrible. Piltover is ugly. 

But Caitlyn avoids that last part. And she’ll get away with it, because she’s a hot twenty-something.

In 2015, I drew Caitlyn-as-Swain, as an AU for what might have been. The overwhelming response at the time was ‘aaa she’s so hot I’d follow that leader of Noxus’, prompting a good friend Swain RPer to comment that Swain - who was, at the time, the withered man in green and gold who needed a cane - was just as smart as Caitlyn if not more so, a proven capable leader, but when it comes down to it, sex-appeal will always trump characterisation and storytelling, and that’s disheartening for someone who puts so much work into stories, to context, to something deeper than ‘Just another MOBA’. And here I am, in 2021, looking at how Caitlyn has been stripped of her fascinating and complex characterisation while maintaining her long legs, long hair, and corsetted figure. Now, I do appreciate the fact they’ve given her a better costume than miniskirt and boobtube. She deserves so much better. I even commissioned back in 2015 for a Better Look for Caitlyn; Tom aka FaerieFountain went on to make her new look canon. But she’s supposed to be a detective. She’s supposed to be careful and methodical and mindful of her status and power. Instead, she’s been made gleefully violent, leaving a lot of depth behind in order to become just Hot Cop With Gun. (As an aside, was anyone else uncomfortable with Caitlyn’s high-school skin? Especially when the writer actually tweeted ‘step on me’? Hello? Ma’am? That is a high school student, that is a CHILD you are talking about? But Caitlyn is hot so it’s fine! Sexualise a child! it’s fine, she’s hot, it’s fine!) Almost everyone who has contacted me about Caitlyn’s LoR cards has been excited to see her. Good! She’s a great character! Or, she was. But the enthusiasm about her is tied to how she’s so violent, how she uses her power to abuse those who don’t conform. But she looks great, smoking hot, you know? And when she’s smoking hot, her dangerous and abusive behaviour and attitude are completely excused. An update to a character needs to take into account characterisation as well as the visuals. Her update, sadly, has focused on the all-too-prevalent problem of the viciousness of state-sponsored violence, rather than the complexity of detective work, of puzzle solving and intellectualism, but because she looks hot and speaks in that British accent, no-one’s going to care. Hot ladies can get away with so much, because legs and pouty lips, but I guess she’s also a cop or whatever.

And, as a momentary aside, why is an eco-terrorist suddenly Caitlyn’s longtime foe? It makes zero sense for Piltover and for Caitlyn that someone who plant-based powers is her biggest rival and the city’s biggest threat. Zero sense, until you take into account that Piltover has been stripped of its character and made into something more aligned with modern authoritarianism than the hopeful vibes of steampunk. Environmentalism? Not on my watch! Deploy the police (the good guys!) to silence the protesters (who are obviously the bad guys becase they’re protesting)! Because Piltover and Zaun are one city now, and therefore indistinguishable, we have a fucking Poison Ivy character causing enough trouble in Piltover to warrant entire fucking SWAT teams opening fire within the city limits and around peoples’ homes! Not Zaun, which is the environmental nightmare, but Piltover! With its fresh air and open skies! Yes, that’s a great place for an eco-terrorist to blame and/or try to fix! The whole thing is honestly so backwards! Like they’ve decided to make a cool character in the form of Corina and just shove her into the story, rather than finding a place in the narrative that suits her. The idea that Corina is C makes no sense. Caitlyn vs C is supposed to be Sherlock versus Moriarty, Ganimard versus Lupin, ACME versus Carmen Sandiego, world’s greatest detective against the world’s greatest thief. It focused on the intellectual battle, the need for self-improvement, and - most importantly! - that this was a fight that didn’t result in gunfire or people being put in bodybags. But we can’t have that in our fighting game! We can’t have people thinking, because that’s not the kind of game we have, it’s left-click-shoot out here on the Rift or in the cards. So now we have a woman with plant powers bombing Piltover, and a policewoman kicking down doors and opening fire. And she’s right there, in Caitlyn’s new splash art, within reaching distance of the sheriff!

She’s right there! In hot pink with a flower in her fucking hair! And Caitlyn doesn’t even notice? Looks like one of my major gripes about Caitlyn being updated - Incompetence - is rearing its ugly head. She cannot even see someone not five feet from her. Oooh, look out, Piltover, no-one can figure out why this single eco-terrorist is causing problems for years, but Caitlyn will figure it out! With her gun! Because she’s a cop with a gun, and cops with guns never cause more problems than they solve, right?

Look... I know. I know she’s not my character. I know that everything I’ve done is fan-interpretation. But I’ve worked for so long and hard and done so much research, and things I’ve done have even been seen by - and used by! - the company itself (not just in the ‘oh what a coincidence’ sense, either, I know my link on Hextech as a form of magic made it to several of the writers, some of whom later contacted me). I might be too jaded by all the disappointment to take it personally anymore, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still happen. We know Riot Games could be and should be better. So many people in this community - and people who have since moved on - put so much love and effort into the characters and the world, building up from scraps and guesswork and extrapolation. It wasn’t our world, but we enjoyed playing in it. We enjoyed struggling in it, because it pushed us to be thoughtful, creative, to be engaged and interested. Critical Theory doesn’t have to be negative... but this recent update to Caitlyn’s character and to Piltover as a whole is... it’s a step backwards. They’ve gone for the ‘ooh isn’t this gritty and dark’ approach, and swept away so much of what made the original so interesting, creative, engaging to begin with. They’d rather have controversy than people genuinely enjoying the thing that they’re opening their wallet for. 

Caitlyn was a detective who focused on responsibility, intellectualism, and care. What she is now is not the same Caitlyn they started with, and expresses a set of values that I do not support. This blog will continue to be focusing on the old lore, on what Piltover has been and what it should be: a hopeful utopia, a place for people to grow and be responsible and thoughtful and mindful of their place on the world stage. It’s not going to be perfect, but there’s hope, and there’s people here who want the world, and everyone in it, to be better than it is. I hope you join me, no matter who you are.

[heraldofzaun]

Hi. We’re doing this again. I’ve already spoken a little bit (well, a great bit) about how old lore Viktor wasn’t a stereotypical evil villain, but I keep seeing this interesting trend crop up - especially in the comments of analyses on Viktor’s character - and so I’m going to write about it. That trend is the fact that people seem completely and utterly convinced that only old Viktor “augmented without consent” or “didn’t respect free will” or similar mad-scientist-adjacent claims. This isn't true. The inverse is true, actually.

What follows is the entirety of Viktor’s old lore (I’m using the first - the second variant is the one that snips out his going to the Institute of War, I’m not trying to pull a trick on you or anything), his lines upon release (which are still technically canonical, even if many people believe them to be outdated - whether that is due to Riot still believing that they’re accurate to his character or, more likely, Riot not caring to replace them, I don’t know), and the accompanying blurb to his release comic. I am also including Jayce’s second lore, the one which Riot wrote after Viktor fans pointed out that Jayce’s original lore was contradictory to Viktor’s character. (Which is mentioned in the post I linked above. TL;DR: Viktor fans made such a fuss that Jayce’s lore got changed to paint Viktor as less of a villain, which again points to the fact that old Viktor wasn’t necessarily perceived as villainous by his fans. Of course, fan perceptions can be wrong - but canon was changed, so...)

This screenshot is missing his pick/ban quotes (“Join the Glorious Evolution.”/”Inferior constructs.” - ban quotes were added after his release, so they recycled one of his attack lines) and the quotes for Chaos Storm (“Obliterate!”/”Consume!”/”True power!”/”Behold!”). This is because it didn’t fit on my computer screen nicely.

This was written alongside Viktor’s teaser comic. (I personally really like the teaser comic, even though I’m concerned about Viktor cutting a hole in his laboratory wall.) It is, technically, non-canon material as it was posted on the now-defunct forums rather than anywhere on the client, but as we’ve seen a recent trend of Rioters Word-of-God’ing facts about canon, I may as well include it. There may be more Word-of-God confirmations on those forums as well, but the backup site that they’re currently hosted on doesn’t allow for searches as the original site didn’t either. You can find this on the “Development” tab of Viktor’s wiki page, if you’re curious.

Is there anything in here, besides “Submit to my designs.” and a few other of his voice lines, which should be taken with the context that they were a) written in 2011 and are thus not the highest examples of character-focused writing and b) written under the context of these being things he is saying to opponents on a battlefield, that says “Viktor augments people who are unwilling”? I don’t see it. He isn’t an angel, sure, because he wrecks Jayce’s lab after the man doesn’t want to work with him, but… He’s mostly alright, at least when it comes to the claims I’m investigating. (Also, note that his acolytes are not specified as being under his control or anything like that - they very well may just be people he’s helped, who don’t want a strange man smashing up the lab they were helped in.)

An interesting side-note: Jayce’s first lore does seem to imply that Viktor murdered people, as he “staged a deadly raid on Jayce’s laboratory”. This is concerning. There’s still somewhat of that implication in the second lore, considering the whole “incinerating the lab’s meager security force” line, but I’ve never seen anyone in fandom over the years use that as evidence for Viktor being a murderer, which is interesting. There’s actual textual evidence you can point to to say that Viktor’s a morally awful dude, and yet no one pointed to it when it was canon...I’ve never seen it cited in any character analyses for Viktor, nor have I ever seen anyone make the point that it’s people that Viktor’s incinerating. Food for thought, I guess. Anyways, my personal take is this: it’s security systems, not people. It doesn’t quite make sense, in-universe, for Viktor to murder a bunch of redshirt security guards but only blast Jayce aside - and leave him with no lasting injuries, obviously. Out-of-universe, you can say that it’s because Jayce is a champion, but still… It really doesn’t fit. Of course, I’m an old lore Viktor fan and this is entirely me trying to justify that he’s not a bad guy, so you can definitely take my words as biased. As we’ll see later, even if you take this as proof that old Viktor’s a killer, it doesn’t mean new Viktor is morally spotless.

Also, if you speak a language other than English and want to kill time, feel free to write in with what Jayce’s old lore says he did if you can find a translation of it. (If you go to the League wiki you can find other language versions of it, and from there you can poke around on Jayce’s page to see if it even has his older lore at all.) The Polish version apparently doesn’t imply people, but the Russian version uses “guards”... or so I think, my knowledge of Russian is pretty small so it was me and Wiktionary against the world. I think that League lore translations, especially from 2011, aren’t exactly the best material for textual evidence, but it’s an interesting curiosity. (I’m genuinely fascinated on how this was never a point of argument, and also to the fact that it was made much more ambiguous in Jayce’s post-outcry lore… but not removed.)

Anyways. Of course, you can take his lines and general character to a logical endpoint and say that it is implied that he doesn’t care much about whether or not people consent to the Glorious Evolution, but at that point you’re arguing interpretation and need to say as such. The cases I’ve seen in which people say that old lore Viktor was lopping people’s limbs off without consent or what-have-you just say that, without citing any textual evidence or saying that it is possibly implied by his character and lines. It’s pretty hard to take those claims seriously when there’s much more textual evidence that current-canon Viktor doesn’t seem too keen on respecting autonomy. Let’s begin with his own lore, which is written to favor his perspective.

Please keep in mind that this Viktor got his start selling automative technology to businesses in Zaun. The Zaun that is full of corrupt chem-barons. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he only sold to good businesses. (Also, fascinating that a common complaint about old Viktor is that his status as a pioneer of his field is that he’s “unrealistically accomplished”, and that other people would have figured out the same technology - just as it seems to be the case in current lore, with the Church of the Glorious Evolved existing pre-Viktor (except that it probably didn’t at the time of this lore’s release, as there’s a paragraph later on in his lore that talks about a “quasi-religious cult” that is unnamed but… Who else would it be?) and augmentations being common on the NPCs on the Universe page. Yet someone who’s 19 having their inventions be commonly used in Zaun long enough for the term eventually to be used in reference to the next stage of their life is perfectly acceptable. Anyways…)

What we see from this is clear: even if there is a “good” reason to control the divers, there is no mention of them consenting to the procedure. Considering the previous quotation, Viktor seems to deal more with the bosses than the workers and doesn’t seem to consider the potential job-removing impacts of his work (how many people lost jobs due to being rendered obsolete?), which doesn’t bode well for him caring much about what the workers think. But of course, this aside about dealing with bosses is all interpretation, so you can ignore it if you’d like. There still is, however, actual, textual evidence that new Viktor does not care about consent if he believes his idea is what’s best for you.

Ignoring the writer misusing the term “psychotics” - par for the course in fiction unfortunately - here’s Viktor kidnapping people “for their own good”. Nothing is said in his lore if he’s contracted to do this, or if he’s just Zaun’s version of a Good Samaritan out and about chloroforming people. While I’m not saying that the moral choice is to not intervene, he is drugging people here and performing brain surgery on them. Please note the “in a manner of speaking”. What does that mean? Is it in reference to them having permanent brain damage? Or is it in reference to him being all well-and-ready to transfer their bodies into robots that presumably weren’t designed for them? (Speaking of, if Viktor can transfer the consciousnesses - or at least brains - of people… why is he still in a fleshy mortal body? Yes, it would require a VU to update him to be fully robotic, but none of his written media seems to imply that he’s on his way. His color story has him integrating technology directly into his arm, for example. Why aren’t you getting into the robot, Viktor?)

Anyways, two options here: either the automatons had enough of their former programming to react to Viktor giving a kill command, or the consciousnesses of the people Viktor is “saving” are in these robots and are under his sway enough to commit murder. Either is bad (and negates any moral superiority over old Viktor’s maybe-implied-canonical-murder), but the second is horrifying. And, obviously, non-consensual. (Because the damage is reversing, I don’t believe there’s room for a justification of the second option in which these people are still violent and dangerous.)

Anyways, last bit. It’s pretty bad when your ethics are panned in Zaun, the nation host to rampart corruption and also people like Singed. Let’s now move on to his color story, which is what a lot of fans point to as evidence for new Viktor having a heart or a moral compass.

Yay! Moral win: your cyborg isn’t cutting off the head of a child without his consent. (Also, again, is this proof that Viktor can put brains or consciousnesses in robot bodies? Admittedly, he might be joking since this Viktor is a little softer than he is in his biography.)

Moral… win… your cyborg is augmenting a child… Anyways, joking aside, this is unethical. How’s Naph supposed to consent to something like this? I know that we can’t expect fictional characters in a fantasy setting to abide by modern ethical standards, but I think we can critique them from an out-of-universe context. This is bad. Viktor gives very little context, could very well be lying (he isn’t, hopefully), and sends the kid off with his version of a pat on the back and tells him to come back if he wants more. (The “Oh yes” is also… creepy.) A kid’s decision-making abilities aren’t developed to the extent that they can be reasonably expected to understand or consent to a procedure that removes a pretty crucial emotion. If Naph comes back and wants his fear gone permanently, will Viktor oblige?

Also, fear is something that is very important to survival and judgment calls. Without fear, a kid in Zaun might take dangerous risks that could end up with them dead. I can’t really see how people interpret this as a morally sound decision - Viktor’s pretty much giving mood-altering drugs to a child and telling him to come back if he wants another hit. Just because he got Naph’s okay doesn’t mean that he got informed consent.

Let’s now turn to the black sheep of Viktor content: his Legends of Runeterra lines. There’s two of interest.

Armed Gearhead’s card art is of a man whose only augmentation is his arm, which he says he broke in another line. (I suppose he didn’t want to wait for it to heal?)

Viktor is talking about messing with his head, here, because Armed Gearhead is… too emotive, I’d guess. He is “not yet complete”. A statement which Armed Gearhead seems rather apprehensive about, if you listen to his response.

I know that LoR Viktor is one of the more “comically villainous” depictions of Viktor we’ve seen, so if new Viktor fans would like to ignore his lines I have no issue with that. But these lines certainly seem to imply that what Viktor sees as Armed Gearhead’s end state isn’t necessarily what he sees as his, and should be considered if people want to take them as canonical.

Not necessarily needed, but here’s Jayce’s present lore. One of them is definitely lying - Jayce’s lore says that he doesn’t strike until after Viktor gives the kill order, and Viktor’s says that he gave the kill order in response to Jayce smashing up the lab. Either way, Viktor is ordering automatons (that, in this version, are outright stated to be housing the brains of the people Viktor is trying to keep alive) to kill Jayce. Not a good look.

Viktor’s new lore gives significant textual evidence that he doesn’t care for whether others willingly consent to his ideas, so long as he believes that his ideas are for the greater good. This is in contrast to the vagueness of his original lore, meaning that any individual who speaks about how current Viktor is someone who cares for consent in contrast to the “unethical mad scientist”ness of old Viktor is unfortunately mistaken. I have to imagine that general fandom interpretation, combined with the fact that his bio and color story are very tonally different, have made it so people believe that this version of Viktor is much more ethical than he canonically is.

Interpreting Viktor as sympathetic and actually morally grey is fine, of course! Riot wrote his narrative very poorly when he was updated, which is why I’m still finding bones to pick with it in comparison to his original and more open-to-interpretation lore. The issue is stating that this is canonically the case, which it isn’t, and/or stating that the current iteration of Viktor has the moral high ground over his previous incarnation, which he doesn’t. I think that much more interesting character conversations can happen if people acknowledge that Viktor as he’s currently written is roundly unethical - how can that be improved upon for a more complex character, does that mean that Jayce’s behavior was right, etc. For all my dislike of new Viktor, I’d be genuinely curious to read a take that actively acknowledges his pre-college work in automation and how that affects his standing in Piltover and Zaun. (Is he well-known in industry? What do workers think about him? And so on…) And, well, on a personal note: I think that acknowledging current Viktor’s moral failings would be nice, because it would mean that people would stop using old Viktor as a strawman.

Anyways, I suppose that’s the post. Thank you for reading!

[poltergeist-punk]

A Fickle Thing by Jae_Cillian

Summary:

Silco was floating. Calm. At peace for but a single moment in which his entire body was weightless, supported in the water’s gentle caress. With his next breath, though, it hit him all at once. The constriction of his lungs, the toxins searing the open flesh of his gut, his chest ablaze as he choked.

The flutter of his heart raced as the image flashed before him of water made wine dark by his blood, of large calloused hands squeezing his throat and holding him under. The shadow of a man—his friend—hung above him, but when he flailed to scrape his nails into the wrists choking him, his hands found nothing—no one—save the tendrils of blood mixing further with the waste of the river.

--

In which, unbeknownst to anyone, Silco survives being shot by Jinx. Feeling conflicted and lost—unsure if revealing himself to Jinx would hurt her more than heal her—Silco finds himself drawn to the old mining shaft. He finds more than the dusty letter with his name on it when a beast shoves its way in. Not just a beast. Vander. And when Jinx, Vi, and Isha track that same beast to the mines, what should be heartfelt reunions are clouded with the pain their decisions inflicted on each other.

(not done yet but it’s sooooo good like sell my kidney good like i adore how they wrote silco and focus on his perspective, protective dad silco im feral)

Forward - Part Two by Rimeko

Summary:

It started differenly. Worse. But maybe it means it won't end the same way - in water and blood.

Zaundads bingo event - "Rescue"

(haven’t read the first part but it’s pretty good as a standalone! the dynamic is very sweet but in an actual realistic way)

Memories of Bedrock by Renlukun

Summary:

Deep in the mines of Zaun, Silco fought every day to survive. When he crossed paths with Vander, he assumed he was just another man seeking to use him. What Silco never anticipated was how fate would reshape his life—from finding his greatest love to sparking a revolution.

Part I of a series that will explore how Vander and Silco fell in love, started a revolution before and after the Pilt River incident in the Alternate timeline.

(haven’t read the lastest chapter but it gave me brainworms, silco my princess with a disorder!!! okay but srsly i like how it characterized young silco to be more rough around the edges IM SO ILL)

Drown Me in Your Memories by starsniper

Summary:

A haze of red floods Silco’s vision. He inhales, but he can’t breathe, and when his legs threaten to buckle out from underneath him, he clings to Vander’s shoulders, desperately trying to still the tremor in his hands. The cigar he’d been holding falls to the ground, forgotten. Silco hears it splash into a puddle.

---

There are some memories that can never be buried, no matter how hard one tries to forgive and forget. Silco knows this better than anyone else.

(the characterization and the angst is just *eats dry wall* very realistic and i need to chew on them both, like the dynamic, the ptsd, the messy process of healing RAHHHH)

Undertow by ringfinger

Summary:

“Slapping me?” Vander slurred, and the grip on Silco’s hair tightened, mean enough that his scalp burned. It felt good. Silco struggled against him, pushed against his shoulder. “Like I’m some kind of dog?”

“A dog would be better behaved,” Silco shot back, and that was what earned him the sock in the jaw that sent stars scattering across his vision and blood filling his mouth. He choked on it, coughed, splattering Vander’s face with flecks of spit and blood. “Case in point.”

(THE 👏 CHARACTERIZATION 👏 i’m telling you i love when they are fucked up, like so fucked up im so sososososo normal i think i hauve covid-)

Blood and Water by Rauchendes_GNU

Summary:

See, Silco had always had a strange relationship with danger. It made him a fearless leader of riots and uprisings. When going on a heist, he was the first one in and the last one out. He’d learned to pick locks and disable simple, and later more complicated, traps. Silco was the one they sent to negotiate because he wouldn’t let anyone intimidate him, no matter if their opponents wore masks and armour and carried guns. Silco was fearless. Silco flirted with death.

(i really like the characterization and angst (again) but i have to admit the depictions of trauma and coping mechanisms i found really realistic like even the messy ugly feelings)

don’t at me about my reviews i know what i like and i stick with it, so they all sound the same 💀 also it’s not letting me embed links rn sowwy

HEY FREAKS

GIMME ZAUNDADS FICS AND MY LIFE IS YOURS

I BEG OF YOU

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

[mwplanet]

Holiday Binge List

A list of our top films and show recommendations to watch this winter break!

By Karissa Cruz

With the winter break dawning upon us, Christmas spirit is not the only thing lingering in the air. The holiday season is often seen as the most busy and stressful time of the year. Exams and culminating projects take up a great deal of our time - add Christmas shopping for loved ones and you’ve got a list longer than Santa’s nice list! Rushing to submit all your modules as soon as possible before the end of the semester and researching the perfect gifts for your friends and family can be a lot to grasp at once. That being said, we at the Mary Ward Planet have come up with the best ways for you to unwind in the midst of all the pressures that school and the holiday season may bring. The Planet has come up with an amazing list of 14 films and shows that you should binge watch this winter break as a reward for all your hard work this semester!

Photo via Deadline

14. Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Need a new comfort show with a unique set of characters that you will undoubtedly find hilarious? Why not try binge-watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine! The story is set in Brooklyn within the 99th Precinct. It highlights the adventures of talented yet immature NYPD detective, Jake Peralta, as he and his coworkers endure difficult situations. The show is ranked in the top 20 list of shows by gen Z and millenials alike, according to a survey by YPulse, as it addresses real-life issues, challenges, societal norms, and celebrates diversity. Furthermore, its hilariously relatable cast is the cherry on top!

Photo via Riot Games

13. Arcane (available on Netflix)

One of the most talked about anime right now is Arcane, so why not see it for yourself? Arcane, whose plot is based on League of Legends, takes place in utopian Piltover and the marginalized underground community of Zaun. It follows the journey of two highly important League champions, Jinx and Vy, in their attempt to stop the spread of the dangerous drug that turns humans into monsters and the tensions that threaten revolution within Zaun and Piltover.

Photo via Nefarious Reviews

12. Orange

Looking for an anime tear-jerker? We’ve got you covered. Orange is a high school romance about a girl who receives a letter from herself 10 years in the future, telling her to watch over a new transfer student named Kakeru Naruse. As the days pass, she and the rest of her friend group get more and more letters from their future selves, instructing them what to do in order to make Kakeru feel loved. The show comes to a shockingly emotional close, leaving viewers in awe of the heartbreak. This show is perfect for anyone who is looking for a show that's characters will have you attached and a plot that will keep you wondering.

Photo via Almost Ginger

11. The Princess Bride

This 1987 film is a classic in the fantasy genre. Set in the mythical kingdom of Florin, a beautiful princess and the love of her life are forced to overcome extreme obstacles in order to save her from harm after being apart for a very long time. This movie is perfect for anyone looking for a chance to escape from reality and immerse yourself in an adventure that you’ll never forget!

Photo via Market Research Telecast

10. Demon Slayer

Marked as one of the most popular shows on this list, we have Demon Slayer. This anime highlights the experiences and adventures of Tanjiro, a young boy whose entire family except for him and his sister was attacked by demons. Furthermore, his sister is slowly turning into a demon as well, thus leaving Tanjiro no choice but to become a demon slayer in order to save his family and cure his beloved sister. Demon Slayer is currently a “must-watch” anime, so why not see for yourself why this show is worth the watch?

Photo via Ripple Foundation

9. Dead Poets Society

Set in a private all boys’ highschool exclusively for rich prodigies whose future aspirations have been set by their parents, this film highlights the importance of following your own dreams rather than working towards meeting the expectations of others. Their professor, Mr. Keating, played by the late Robin Williams, plays one of the most important roles in this film alongside Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard. Dead Poets Society is perfect for anyone looking for a film that inspires them to step outside their comfort zone or simply shed some tears.

Photo via SoBros Network

8. In the Heights

Written by the legendary Lin Manuel Miranda is this inspiring musical that touches on the importance of incorporating ethnic representation, political advocacy, and gaining a greater understanding of the struggles that immigrants in North America continue to face. With its incredible acting, dancing, and most importantly, singing, you’ll never see a dull moment throughout the film.

Photo via Gold Derby

7. You

Are you into chilling suspense films with unreliable narrators playing the main character? Check out You on Netflix! This thrilling show highlights the journey of Joe, a man with a heartbreaking past whose terrible childhood reflects on his obsessive approach to relationships as an adult. His misogynistic and overly protective ideals lead him to situations that keep you at the edge of your seat the entire time. Before watching, make sure you’re aware of potential trigger warnings, as the show can be rather graphic and explicit at times.

Photo via Digital Spy

6. The Haunting of Bly Manor

Looking for a psychological thriller that will have you asking questions to the very end? Then The Haunting of Bly Manor is definitely for you. This ten episode show on Netflix will not only terrify you at the most unexpected moments, but it will also make you fall in love yet break your heart at the same time. Furthermore, this show features LGBTQ+ representation, thus making it not only cinematically intriguing, but also socially inclusive. This show will “haunt” your dreams, hence its suggestive title. Before watching this spine-chilling series, make sure to be aware of potential trigger warnings as there are quite a few disturbing scenes.

Photo via Viki

5. Strong Woman Do Bong Soon

In the mood for a sappy romance? Check out Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, a Korean drama about a woman born with an unusually extreme amount of strength. This show is about a young woman whose abilities land her the position of a bodyguard for an extremely wealthy businessman, but results in several dangers due to those who cannot begin to fathom her superpowers. Strong Woman Do Bong Soon highlights the themes of feminism and finding love in the most unexpected places, and we highly recommend it for anyone who is looking for something to warm their hearts this winter season.

Photo via The New York Times

4. How I Met Your Mother

Feel-good sitcoms are great for binge watching, especially during the busy holiday season when all you need is a pick me up! How I Met Your Mother is a nine season show on Netflix that highlights the adventures of Ted Mosby and his friends in New York City as he attempts to find a soulmate. In this show, Ted and his friends continually seek out new and hilarious adventures as they chase their dreams. Although you may not finish the entirety of the show in one month, it’s definitely worth starting as it may become part of your list of comfort shows!

Photo via CNBC

3. Encanto

Disney’s strive for more diverse and inclusive cultural representation was definitely displayed in this heartwarming animation. Encanto tells the story of an extremely gifted family called the Madrigals who reside in their magical house located in a town called Encanto within Colombia. It highlights the life of the protagonist, Mirabel, who, unlike her extremely gifted family, does not have a special talent. If you’re looking for a heartwarming film that you may relate to, we highly recommend watching Encanto in theatres right now!

Photo via The Indian Express

2. Call Me By Your Name

Christmas spirit doesn’t have to be the only thing in the air this year! Looking for a heart aching love story that provides representation of the LGBTQ+ community? Check out Call Me By Your Name. Featuring heartthrob Timothee Chalamet, this film depicts the life of a young Italian boy who struggles to come to terms with his feelings for an exchange student who comes to stay with him and his family. Throughout the film, Timothee’s character faces the challenge of accepting his sexuality and at the same time, hiding his true self from everyone he loves. This story of obsession, fascination and desire is filled with romantic tension! Its bittersweet ending will definitely leave you wanting more. We highly recommend this film for any hopeless romantic searching for a love story that will change your life.

Photo via Forbes

1. My Name

Looking for an action-packed crime K-drama that will be sure to pack a punch? Check out My Name. The plot of this story follows Yoon Ji-Woo, a resilient woman whose goal is to put an end to the corrupt nature of the Korean police force and a dangerous drug ring as a result of, seeing her gangster father be murdered in front of her own eyes as a teenager. This revenge saga will have you hooked from the first episode.

[infinite-xerath]

Runeterra Retcons 3: Warwick

Warwick is one of the oldest champions in League of Legends, having been added all the way back in 2009. As a certain other content creator is fond of saying: “Older League champions were made to embody an archetype, not undermine it.” Warwick was made to be League’s resident werewolf. That’s about where the concept for his character begins and ends. Despite the simplicity of this concept, Warwick has a rather interesting history in that he’s been retconned no less than four different times since his debut.

Luckily for us, his first few lore states are all fairly simplistic, written before a time when champion bios were more than a couple paragraphs long, if that. I’ll include a link to the wiki for those who are curious, but I’ll also do my best to summarize each of prior bios and their respective issues before moving on to the Warwick we now know today.

In his very first bio, Warwick was a mercenary who was pinned down in a cave while trying to defend an Ionian citadel. He made a potion using things he just happened to have on-hand to give himself a strength boost in hopes of turning the tides and saving himself, because he was also an alchemist, apparently. This potion had the nasty side-effect of turning him into a big angry wolf man that let him slaughter his enemies. Warwick then proceeded to just… Return to being a mercenary, I guess, because apparently being a werewolf-for-hire is a very lucrative business.

I don’t think I need to elaborate much on why this version of the lore is lackluster; it offers no context or characterization for Warwick beyond him being a mercenary and an alchemist. The wolf transformation doesn’t even pose any kind of tragedy; if anything, it makes his mercenary career soar, so what’s the issue? It’s a poorly-written bio, but in all fairness, all of League’s lore from those days was kinda bad. Still, Warwick’s was so bad that he was apparently what of the few characters Riot felt the need to retcon even before the 2015 reboot. Let’s see how he handled his next lore, shall we?

Alright, well… That was a thing. Now, I wanna be clear and state that I don’t mean to just roast the writers here; that’s not what Runeterra Retcons is about. Still, it’s… Kinda hard not to make fun of this, let’s be honest. The only thing it does is give a bit more context for Warwick’s alchemical background and change his transformation from a potion gone wrong to a curse, and by Soraka no less. “Ah yes, this human is indirectly killing people with chemicals, so I’ll force him to kill them directly with teeth and claws as a werewolf.” Good… Job?

Obviously, this was from a time when Soraka was new and she didn’t have much of a fleshed-out lore either, though it does introduce the idea of Riot trying to paint a sort of rivalry between the two, as well as attempt to actually make Warwick’s transformation seem like a tragic fate… Even if it’s more tragic for the people he kills than anything.

Alright, third lore. Let’s see how they try to fix him this time.

OK, so, Warwick is no longer a mercenary, but rather a full-time alchemist. He’s the mentor of Singed, another alchemy-themed character, and he worked with Noxus during their campaign on Ionia. Once again, Soraka cursed him into becoming a werewolf as punishment for his crimes, but… Again, he kind of doesn’t seem to care because it ultimately works in his benefit.

Alright, by this point, a pattern is starting to become apparent. Warwick’s transformation into a werewolf is supposed to be tragic; a literal case of him losing his humanity in pursuit of power. In each of his respective bios, though, the transformation never seems to negatively impact Warwick. Turning into a wolf-man pretty-much just makes him stronger and more dangerous than he ever was, and Warwick doesn’t seem to have any desire to turn back; his final bio even says he’s THANKFUL for the transformation.

The werewolf trope is one of the oldest we have in modern storytelling, dating all the way back to Greek myth. It’s a simple concept, really: you are forced to transform into an unholy union of human and dog, driven by primitive instincts to murder and eat other people. It’s really not hard to see how such a transformation can affect someone, ruining their psychological state and causing them to viewed as nothing less than a monster in the eyes of other humans. The typical response to becoming a werewolf is to seek of a cure of some kind; a means to end the curse.

It’s such a simple concept, one of the oldest cliches in the book, and yet they somehow botched it on four separate occasions by making it work completely to Warwick’s benefit. He doesn’t want or need a cure, so… What does he want or need? Simple: he just wants to hunt and kill stuff. While Warwick’s not necessarily the first nor the last character in the game who causes bloodshed merely for the sake of it, there’s no grander purpose behind it. He doesn’t do it for revenge or hatred or even simply to revel in it; he’s just an animal with no clear goals or motivations. It’s not hard to see why Riot kept trying to retcon him, though it’s also kind of hilarious how they kept making the same mistake.

All that being said, there’s another pattern that starts cropping up in Warwick’s lore here: they started trying to connect him more with other Champions over time. First it was Soraka, then Singed. I believe this was done because, since Warwick lacks a clear character arc of his own, Riot had probably been hoping to use him in others’ stories more than his own. By making Soraka a clear-cut enemy he needs to hunt down and making Warwick a teacher/colleague of Singed, it offers more organic opportunities for interactions with fellow Champions. Unfortunately, this story no longer works for a few reasons, not the least of which was the retcon to Soraka and Celestial beings as a whole in the League universe.

Alright, now that we have all of Warwick’s prior backstories out of the way, let’s take a look at his current lore and see, at last, what the Wrath of Zaun brings to the table that the other bios didn’t.

Alright, so here we have the story of a man turned into a monster forcefully through experimentation. Gone is any mention or connection to Soraka, and now Singed is an antagonistic character rather than an ally. I think, conceptually, these changes work, though I still have a number of issues with how this particular version of the story is written.

For one thing, we know basically nothing about Warwick’s actual backstory. He was apparently a criminal seeking redemption for his past deeds, only to SOMEHOW find himself captured by Singed. It feels like Riot didn’t really know what to do with his origin story as a human, so they left it as vague as possible and tried to use the fact that even Warwick doesn’t know his own past to cover that up. While the experiments performed on him are certainly horrendous, it’s harder to sympathize with a character when we don’t actually know. Where did he come from? What did he do as a gangster? Who was the little girl? His daughter? A past victim? The story is meant to evoke pity, but it’s difficult to feel anything but confusion when new questions are raised with nearly every other paragraph.

To that end, let’s talk about the experiment itself. Singed wants to “awaken the beast hidden inside a good man.” What does this mean? It’s… Not clear. It almost sounds like a sort of Joker mentality, trying to prove that anyone can turn evil after just one bad day, except “one bad day” is literal weeks if not months of actually physically trying to turn Warwick into a monster using some unexplained chemicals and augmentations. What was Singed’s actual end-goal here? What did he hope to create? Once again, we don’t really know. He wants to try to transmute a human, but to what end? How did he figure out this method? Can you only transmute “good people?” How does that work?

To me, Warwick’s new bio is frustrating because it feels like they tried to cling onto the whole “man transforms into a werewolf thing” while also attempting to justify the new cyborg elements implemented into his design. This, to me, was the beginning of a larger issue in League’s lore that I like to call: “The Vastaya Problem.”

For those unaware, the Vastaya are basically a race of animal people on Runeterra, like the Faunus in RWBY or the Beastmen from BNA. The Vastaya as a concept were introduced with the addition of Rakan and Xayah, and this new race of animal people was actually a rather ingenious way of retconning multiple characters all at once. See, as mentioned before, Champions back in the day were made to just be stereotypical fantasy races to throw into the game; Nami was the mermaid, Trundle was the troll, Alistar was the minotaur, etc. This, of course, led to a lot of different races and creatures that had basically no representation or explanation beyond the single Champion chosen to represent them, not unlike the Darkin from our previous entry.

For example: Ahri is your kitsune. She was a nine-tailed fox that wanted to be human for some reason, and she effectively became human by just… Wishing for it really hard when she found the body of a dying mage. Rengar was a tiger cub taken in and raised by a hunter, who over time gained a human-like anatomy because… That’s how that works, right? And then there’s Wukong, literally just Wukong from Journey to the West. Born from a magic rock, goes on a quest to become the strongest warrior, you get the idea.

The whole point of the Vastaya was to retcon these animal people into a single, explainable race… Well, maybe not “race” as Riot calls them more of a Genotype with individual types of vastaya being their own race, but you get the idea. Wukong is a monkey Vastaya, Ahri is a fox Vastaya, Rengar is a tiger Vastaya, and so-on. It seemed like this was going to be how they explained all the animal people in the lore (except the Ascended because they were already made into their own thing back in 2015) going forward. The term “Vastaya” was literally made to be a free retcon for the animal-human hybrid champs, and then they just… Kinda… Stopped using it?

Like, take the minotaurs. They’re bull-people. That means they’re Vastaya, right? Well… No. Apparently minotaurs are just their own thing entirely. What about the Ursine, a race of polar bear people in the Freljord? Well, no, see we’re actually turning Volibear into an elemental thunder deity and the Ursine is now just a name for people who follow him. Well… What about Neeko? She’s a chameleon girl Riot added into the game, and she appears to be Vastayan. Is she? Well… Kind of. She’s actually an Oovi-kat, which is like an ancestor race to the Vastaya?

You probably see where I’m going with this. Riot literally gave themselves an out for all the animal people they were going to have to retcon in the new lore, and then just stopped using it. Warwick’s human origins don’t really even factor into his story all that much, so could they not have just made him a wolf Vastayan that Singed captured and experimented on instead? Apparently not, because Riot wanted to keep his human-to-wolfman transformation even in his new lore.

Alright then. If we absolutely MUST keep Warwick’s origins as a human, then I think I can compromise. Without any further ado, and after several rewrites, I present to all: my proposal for how Warwick’s new lore SHOULD have been handled in his newest retcon. Enjoy.

For many, the Noxian invasion of Ionia was a living nightmare. For Warwick, it was an awakening.

Once an Ionian mercenary, Warwick sold his skills to whoever could afford them.  Warwick harbored a talent for hunting down elusive prey, be they human, vastaya, yordle, or even spirits. What fates befell his marks, Warwick neither knew nor cared. It wasn’t long until Warwick himself became a wanted man by Ionia’s elders, but not even the Kinkou Order was able to keep track of his movements for long. Soon, those who knew of Warwick and his reputation began referring to him by another name: The Prowling Wolf.

When the empire of Noxus came to Ionia, Warwick saw it as an opportunity. He offered his skills to both Noxian and Ionian forces alike, profiting from both sides of the war while ensuring his clients remained none-the-wiser. To the Prowling Wolf, this conflict was nothing but a chance to strike it rich. That perspective quickly changed when Warwick bore witness to the horrors of Noxian chemical weapons.

It was meant to be a simple mission: capture a Noxian messenger and bring him to a small resistance force near the coast. The messenger had been carrying information on a new weapon the invaders had brought from overseas, which Warwick was certain Noxian forces would pay well to have returned to them. With the transaction complete, Warwick left the seaside village behind him. An hour later, he heard the screams of the dying carried on the wind.

Warwick watched in horror as the entire village was bombarded by toxic fumes, granting a slow, painful death to everyone within. This, he realized, must be the new Noxian weapon. As Warwick watched the chaos from a distant hillside, he soon spotted the source of the bombardment: a large metal ship drifting in the distant sea. Horrified by this act of extreme cruelty, Warwick realized that he alone now knew the secrets of this Noxian weapon, and vowed to help his countrymen fight against it.

Warwick allied himself with the growing resistance forces that had banded together under Xan Irelia, putting his talents and knowledge of Noxian movements to use as a spy and saboteur. With his aid, the resistance learned that the deadly chemical weapons were produced by a single man: a foreign alchemist called Singed. Determined to put an end to the madman’s production, Warwick led a group to sneak aboard Singed’s ship, aptly named the Deathmaker, and either capture or kill the alchemist.

Things did not go as planned.

Warwick and his allies were skilled, but they had never encountered anything quite like the Chemtech defenses aboard the Deathmaker. One-by-one, Warwick watched his allies fall to mechanical abominations equipped with spinning blades and hoses that spouted searing acid. Soon, Warwick was alone, trapped aboard the mad chemist’s vessel with no hope of escape. As the horrid machines closed in, Warwick felt something awaken within him: a latent power that lay dormant within his bloodline for years.

Miraculously, Warwick’s wounds began to close themselves. A strange bloodlust filled the Prowling Wolf as he fought with inhuman strength and speed, tearing through the Zaunite defenses in pursuit of their twisted maker. He hunted Singed through the metal corridors of the chemist’s own ship, finally cornering his prey in the engine room. Just as Warwick prepared to rend the chemist to shreds, however, a strange feeling of nausea washed over him. Too late, he noticed the canister on Singed’s back, which had been spouting toxic fumes wherever the chemist ran. Warwick had fallen right into Singed’s trap, and the last thing he saw was his adversary’s gaunt frame looming over him, a wicked smile plastered on his skeletal face.

When next Warwick awoke, he found himself strapped to a cold table in a strange room. He recalled only hazy memories of being trapped in a cage and administered strange drugs. Before he could make sense of his surroundings, Warwick saw Singed staring at him from a glass window on the other side of the room. Above him, strange instruments like those that had killed his comrades whirred to life. Warwick demanded to know was happening, yet Singed only replied with a chilling promise: that he would transmute Warwick into the beast within.

For weeks, Warwick’s life became nothing but agony. The Ionian found himself pumped full of strange chemicals as his limbs were replaced with grotesque prosthetics. Warwick begged and pleaded for death, yet Singed only watched on with intrigue as his captive’s body twisted and convulsed. As suspected, Warwick held latent Vastayan genes within him, and Singed was prepared to do whatever he must to awaken them. He was convinced that pain would be the catalyst needed to set the beast free, but in the end, Warwick’s heart gave out before the transformation was complete.

Disappointed, Singed stored Warwick’s body within the depths of his laboratory, convinced the experiment had ended in failure. It was only on the brink of death, however, that Warwick’s latent ancestry finally began to surface, spurred on by the strange chemicals that now replaced his blood. The Ionian’s body twisted and grew, taking on the likeness of his former namesake. In a fit of rage, Warwick burst from his containment and tore apart the lab, escaping into the streets of Zaun below.

Now, Warwick prowls undercity, driven by feral instincts and scattered memories of who he once was. The only thing Warwick recalls clearly is his desire to track down the man who had transformed him, and the Prowling Wolf always finds his prey…

I will be honest here: it’s not my best work. I’ve gone through a couple drafts by this point, but I mainly wanted to show off the general ideas I had for Warwick’s backstory. Is it perfect? No, far from it, but I think it at least illustrates the general themes and ideas that both I and Riot wanted to execute on with Warwick’s new lore.

Firstly, I wanted to expand on Warwick’s whole “criminal-seeking-redemption” thing. He starts as a mercenary willing to play both sides a war to strike it rich, only to form a proper allegiance to Ionian after witnessing the extremes that Noxus will go to for the sake of victory. Of course, I imagine that the turn-around wouldn’t be immediate; it’s more-so the realization that Noxus is willing to kill innocent bystanders and even their own for the sake of victory that makes him realize that they’re just dangerous to fight FOR than against. After three years of witnessing the horrors of these chemical weapons, Warwick slowly but surely becomes more and more devoted to the cause, willing to risk his life to bring down the madman responsible for them.

Now, I concede the that sudden awakening of dormant Vastayan genes might seem like a bit of a cop-out, but here me out. We already have a precedent for mixed human-Vastaya offspring. That’s Sett’s whole deal, after-all. I’d like to think that Warwick himself is a descendant from one such human-Vastayan couple, as I HIGHLY doubt Sett’s parents were the first to intermingle over literal centuries. I mean, Vastaya themselves are said to have been made from humans mingling with shapeshifters, so I don’t think it’s THAT big of a stretch.

I also wanted to elaborate on how and why Singed captured Warwick in the first place. Singed’s entire gameplay gimmick is running away while enemies chase him through a poison trail he leaves behind, and Warwick’s all about pursuing you like a hungry wolf chasing prey. I honestly would have liked to stretch out the chase sequence a bit more, but the bio was getting long-enough as-is and I feel it does a decent job incorporating their respective gameplay styles into the story itself.

Also, I’d like that the dormant Vastayan genes make Singed’s motivation for capturing Warwick infinitely more feasible than just wanting to “awaken the beast inside every good man,” whatever that means. Now, you might be asking how Singed even knows about the Vastaya in the first place, since there aren’t any living in Zaun or Piltover that we know of. Well, the man was aboard a ship just off the coast of Ionia for nearly three years; I’d imagine at some point he might catch wind of things happening on the mainland, which is how he learns of these strange animal people.

Alas, Singed isn’t permitted to leave the ship, as the Noxians need him to keep making bombs and don’t wanna risk Singed getting captured or killed by sending him ashore. Imagine the Mad Chemist’s surprise, then, when a man comes aboard his ship and starts tearing apart his defenses like a feral beast moments before being torn apart himself. From there, it’s just a matter of capturing this man and keeping him contained until Warwick can be brought back to a proper lab in Zaun and experimented on.

The last chance I wanted to make was Warwick just being discarded into the street when the experiment seems to fail. I mean, Singed equipped Warwick with all this undoubtedly very expensive Chemtech, only to literally dump it all in a gutter when the experiment doesn’t work? I mean, I’m no scientist, but I at least know that you’d probably wanna hold onto the failed samples to see what went wrong. Plus, Warwick breaking out makes the story of Singed coming back to find his lab in ruins a lot more plausible, rather than Warwick coming back, wrecking the lab, and then just… Leaving again when he finds out that Singed has left, at least to me.

Warwick is a very simple character with a very complex history. Not many Champions can claim to have undergone so many retcons over the years, and yet Riot has never found a way to give him a backstory that actually works. You can give the first one a bit of a pass, since everything from that era was kind of sloppy, but the 2015 reboot was Riot’s chance to finally give Warwick something more cohesive, and just… Messed it up again. I’m not saying you HAVE to make him a Vastayan, but so much of his current lore raises so many questions that it doesn’t even try to answer.

It’s honestly very similar to the issues I have with Thresh’s rework: the story is more concerned about rushing to tell us how Warwick became what it is that it doesn’t seem concerned with fleshing out who or what he was before the transformation. In the end, it ultimately feels like the bio was written to explain why Warwick went from being a normal werewolf to CYBORG werewolf, and no other thought was put into it aside from that.