Expansive Writing

Expanding upon the idea of commercial fiction vs literary fiction, the main point that the textbook Perrine's Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense emphasized was the mastery of theme. Throughout the section, the author discusses theme as being a unifying element that reveals an inherent truth or theory about life.

Haruki Murakami notes an interesting trend: contrary to Perrine's bias that literary authors intentionally spread glitters of 'literature' throughout their works, more often literary fiction is just aged writing that have withstood the test of time. In Murakami's Norwegian Wood, the character Nagasawa refuses to read authors that have long since been dead, believing that time is the best judge of quality. 

Calling into question the value of the concept of "literary fiction" in general is John Updike, who claimed that the term suffocated him by placing expectations and generalizations on his writing. Do writers who write commercial fiction have to write commercial fiction? It has long been noted that Shakespeare's plays are clearly commercialized to appeal to a lower class but contain complex themes and layers that can intrigue the more educated.

In particular, I note that worlds that are expansively and creatively built oftentimes fall under the catch-all definition of commercial fiction as defined by Perrine. By no means do action and adventure detract from a story's literary value, but we tend to consider it as such. In particular, the Lore of a particular story tends to convolute the potential themes of a story, as it does in the world of League of Legends.

League of Legends is an extremely popular video game

League of Legends has already attained a vast fanbase- over its gameplay that is. Each player plays as a unique "Champion" with his or her original lore, stats, and skills (sounds like D&D, except in real time). I want to focus on the evolution of the League of Legends Lore as it progressed from its early beta phase into the international phenomenon as recognized sport it is today.

In the early beta-days, the Lore was shoddy and unoriginal, featuring 100% commercialized writing about dwarfs renamed as Yordles to appeal to small children (see lower left corner of the image), random fighting city-states, other worlds that nonsensically intrude on Runeterra, and characters that just... join the League of Legends for whatever reason they have. Compared to characters as simplistic with bare minimums complex layers like Superman (yes, Superman is pretty barebones), a character like Cho'Gath, Terror of the Void is but a butterfly in a hurricane. There seemed to be almost no attempt at complex Lore and every character felt like a means to an end.

As the game moved out of its beta stage, three major changes occurred to the Lore. First, serious characters like Vayne, The Night Hunter (who is a fusion of Bruce Wayne of Batman and Abraham Van Helsing of Dracula) who hunts creatures of the night began to be added. Second, The Journal of Justice, a fictional newspaper in the realm of League of Legends began to describe "current events" as they occurred in Runeterra was introduced. Third, Champion Judgements that described the moment in which a Champion was admitted to the League by confronting their past from a third person standpoint was briefly done for a select number of champions. These elements were Riot Games' attempt at conveying serious Lore that told an ever evolving story compared to the static nature that character bios provided, effectively evolving the characters from one dimensional... to two dimensional.

As Riot admits, this method of conveying Lore has extreme limitations. Characters are very surface-based and lack the depth that we generally associate with literature. So what did they do? They scrapped it all. 

One of the major weaknesses of Champion Lore was that every champion Lore ended with some line about "Why They Joined the League of Legends", making it appear as if the Champion had no meaningful interaction in current life past the League. As such, Riot began removing that clause in their current interaction of Champions as they wanted to focus on "personality and motivation", "more relationships", and "closer ties in the world." Since then, Riot has been finding more creative ways to communicate Lore through interactive comic books, report documents, wanted posters, and websites. But one underlying factor still detracts from the Lore:

It's too straightforward.

Everything that Riot has done up until now is quite amicable as they have successfully expanded their world to accommodate vivid locations, deeper character back stories, and stronger character relations. However, they have actually fallen into a commercial trap- their new characters are actually built completely on their relationship with another champion.

Lucian, The Purifier is defined by his love for his wife, Senna, and her death by the Champion Threshhttp://gameinfo.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/game-info/champions/lucian/

The most recently released Champion; Lucian, The Purifier; seems to be an Vayne with a hatred for Thresh, the undead man that sealed his wife in a spectral lantern. It seems that Riot has actually lost Lore complexity due to this relentless focus on improved character interactions. For example, the next Champion to be released; Jinx, The Loose Cannon; is a child that loves destroying things and has a random grudge with Vi, The Piltover Enforcer. 

Jinx is a one dimensional Champion that has little to no complex motivations
http://beta.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/champions-skins/champion-reveal/jinx-loose-cannon-revealed

Riot is completely missing the point of character interactions. They seemed to have tunneled on rivalry as a generic method of garnering intrigue. But the problem that Riot fails to address every time with their Lore is the character complexity- the layers, the depth, the theme. 

What is Jinx supposed to want? What are her goals? I know her personality well enough- on the surface. But what are the deeper, intertwining and often contradictory emotions that she suppresses on the inside? Surely, there must be some sort of underlying trauma that drove her to this?

Why does Ahri want to be human?

Why does Kha'Zix endlessly pursue evolution?

Despite Riot's attempts at improving the Lore, League of Legends lacks depth because its Champions' Lore is too simplistic, too commercialized per say. I want to think that Riot wants to make an effort at creating complex Lore that doesn't just interest people but entices them. The questions I ask above are very, very basic questions that don't even come close to nitpicking a theme out of a Champion story. 

It's very easy to get caught up in building a world to simply be cool or interesting rather than complex or have depth, as in League of Legends and Eragon. It is not always necessary to tell a story to have depth, but the character bios of League of Legends are so incredibly straightforward and devoid of any indirect characterization that it is impossible to call it anything other than commercial fiction.

But even seemingly childish concepts and worlds can have complexity to them. If League of Legends were to convey character emotions on a higher level compared to this flimsy work and shabby attempt at a character relation, then it can easily become a mixture of both literary and commercial fiction.

My point is that expansive worlds are dangerous because they are susceptible to falling into meaningless rabble. Not every aspect of a world needs a purpose to be there, but the characters that live in it are paramount to its depth. Oftentimes, commercial fiction merely has characters that explore and interact with their world on a surface level, riding the "cool" train that is their world. This is the case with League of Legends and if Riot Games wants the Lore to improve, then they are going to have to feature character interactions as being more than just one-dimensional rivalries.