1. Introduction
[1.1] On June 18, 2021, a new official short story in the video game League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) universe was released on the official League of Legends site. "Rise with Me" tells the story of how Diana and Leona, two playable characters in League of Legends, fell in love. It follows Diana and Leona as they go through their training and slowly develop feelings for each other. In the end, the pair are considering going to a festival when Diana reveals:
[1.2] My heart was beating hard in my throat as she leaned her head against my shoulder, but she didn't seem to notice. She looked up, then, at the sky, and smiled. I don't think I'd ever felt so happy before. So I asked her if she wanted to dance with me, down at the Festival. I expected her to say no, but a smile broke across her face, bigger than I'd ever seen her smile before. I want to draw it, but I don't know if I can capture its brilliance. She grabbed my hand and said—and I will never forget this, as long as I breathe—she said, "Not yet." And Leona kissed me. And I kissed Leona. (Shaw 2021)
[1.3] Diana and Leona are two of the over 140 playable characters, also known as champions, in the multiplayer online battle arena game League of Legends (LoL). The gameplay in LoL consists of two teams of players competing against each other on a predefined battlefield, with each player controlling a character with a distinctive set of abilities. LoL is frequently updated, adding new characters, things that characters can do, and new features to characters like different options for their appearance or dialogue. Within this structure, little narrative is contained within the game itself. Instead, the company that produces LoL, Riot Games (Riot), has created official auxiliary material that provides context for the game. A majority of this material includes biographies for the champions and short stories. These exist outside the game on the Universe of League of Legends website. Like updates to the game, Riot often releases short stories to expand on the characters and the universe and update characters' biographies to alter or add more detail to their backstories. For most of LoL's history, the champions have been considered straight and cisgender. The establishment of Diana and Leona as the first official queer couple in the LoL universe, and as such making them some of the earliest confirmed queer characters, signaled Riot's intentions to include more queer representation. Riot preceded the release of the short story with a tweet, announcing it as the first of many LGBTQ+ stories to come (https://twitter.com/LeagueOfLegends/status/1405587652661813250?s=20&t=vo4ZhQ8liJ92neyfjYTK3A), and has continued to confirm characters as queer since. These changes and marketing signal an effort by Riot to diversify the representation included in the LoL universe.
[1.4] The expansion of a story through auxiliary material is nothing new. Media owners, producers, and fans have long engaged in this practice, albeit with different motivations. These differing motivations have resulted in community-specific practices. So while it is not uncommon for media companies to attempt to diversify their content through auxiliary material, what is unique about one of Riot's main strategies for queering characters is that it is similar to a practice from fandom: creating slash fiction. Slash fiction is a subgenre of fan fiction in which fans romantically pair characters of the same sex. As a fan practice, slash fiction often is used to queer characters and present queer storylines in texts that lack established queer histories. While originally it was used for men loving men (M/M) pairings (Penley 1992; Russo 2017), and the term femslash was developed to refer to slash fiction that pairs women (W/W), slash fiction has come to be used for both, and I use it to refer to both M/M and W/W pairings. In the LoL universe, fans were writing slash fiction romantically pairing Diana and Leona together years before "Rise with Me" was written. Fans also brought queer narratives to LoL through slash fiction pairing two male champions, Malcolm Graves (Graves) and Twisted Fate (TF), and two other female champions, Caitlyn and Vi. All three of these fan pairings have now either been confirmed or heavily hinted at in official auxiliary material produced by Riot.
[1.5] While this could be interpreted as Riot appropriating material from fans, that would necessitate confirmation from people at Riot. As such, my focus is not on appropriation. Instead, what is interesting is that Riot's strategy for queering characters is very similar to how fans have historically queered characters. Thus, I focus on how stories that emerge from similar strategies differ based on the context in which they are being created. Riot's strategy for queering these characters is similar to strategies used in slash fiction in how the queering occurs by placing characters without established queer histories in romantic relationships or hinting at the possibility of a romantic relationship. Riot's strategy also involves queering characters in auxiliary material that exists outside of the game, mostly in the form of short stories, much like fan fiction. Despite these similarities, there are historical differences in the motivation to represent queerness between fans and those involved in mainstream media, which often results in queerbaiting from mainstream media and centering queer experiences in fan fiction. However, when producers/developers use a strategy for queering characters that is similar to what is used in slash fiction, there is potential for it to counter mainstream media's historical motivations for queer representation that result in queerbaiting. To understand if this can offer a potential pathway for the queer resistance that is present in slash fiction to emerge in mainstream media, I analyze the official written material about Diana and Leona, Graves and TF, and Caitlyn and Vi within the context of slash fictions about these pairings. Ultimately, Riot's strategy still results in different forms of queerbaiting, but there is the potential for it to diversify content in a way that eventually transforms dominant norms.
2. Motivations behind queer representation
[2.1] Producers' decisions to include queer content in media come from a variety of motivations, which result in different methods for inclusion. Understanding these motivations and methods are some of the goals of queer production studies (Ng 2021). Two motivations that are commonly cited are a desire to draw in queer consumers and a desire to be socially responsible through increasing diversity. In regard to drawing in queer consumers, there is an extensive body of research on the creation and evolution of the gay market. The gay market came from a need for specialized markets that involved "diversity becoming both a social value (however superficially) and an economic imperative" (Chasin 2000, 149). While some good came from the gay market, like an increase in visibility for queer people and a political struggle for rights, the goals of diversity and political action can be subsumed by structures rooted in capitalism, the goal of which is making money, and the gay market's investment in the ideal gay consumer. Ultimately, the gay market promoted sameness and assimilation and left "the structures of capitalism untouched" (166). This can be seen in the evolution of ads in The Advocate magazine, where the content shifted from "political news to an address of the reader as consumer" (Sender 2001, 83). The gay market also created an ideal gay consumer who is a white, middle-class, gay man who does not challenge gender norms (Tsai 2010). This representation glamorizes "queer-chic and the gay lifestyle; yet in no way does it challenge heterosexual and patriarchal domination" (Tsai 2010, 19). This ideal gay man is also desexualized because "selling sex itself risks a lowering of moral capital and the alienation of national advertisers" (Sender 2003, 359). Taken together, what emerged from the gay market was an ideal gay consumer that erased most of the queer community and supplanted political action with consumerism.
[2.2] While market considerations are still important, specific gay outlets have been disappearing. Advertisers are less concerned with marketing toward identities and have shifted to marketing toward consumer practices (Sender 2018). While it is not helpful to make sense of contemporary relationships through the gay market (Sender 2018), this does not mean that the consequences of the gay market are gone. They still influence how queer representation occurs and should be taken into account when considering other motivations behind queer representation and how that representation manifests. Turning toward media, the effects of the construction of the gay market can be seen in its combination with early media regulation codes, like the TV Code of Practices, which allowed for queer representation as long as "such sexuality [was] shown to be wrong or punished by death or destruction" (Cameron 2018, 10). This has resulted in trends like queerbaiting. Queerbaiting has various definitions and is historically and contextually situated, though it is generally understood as "the form of pledging an allegiance to issues of queer visibility without actually delivering on such an allegiance in any tangible way" (Brennan 2019, 1). This means that queerbaiting can also include instances where there is explicit queer representation. This can come from media paratexts and producer/viewer interactions creating expectations around explicit queer representation that are ultimately not met (Ng 2017). Video game examples of this come from Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment, 2016), where like LoL, canonically queer characters occur offscreen in auxiliary material. Mary Ingram-Waters and Isabela Silva (2019) found that fans see these characters as "unsatisfying because those characters are safely, palatably queer" and do nothing "to challenge the characters' presumed heterosexuality" (180). The history around what is acceptable queer representation, through either explicit codes of regulation or trends in the gay market, has often resulted in producers marketing to queer viewers without delivering on queer representation.
[2.3] While the influences of the gay market and later regulations can be seen in the video game industry in how queer representation manifests and is received by fans, as demonstrated by the example from Overwatch, the historic lack of queer representation in AAA games has meant there has not been as much of an explicit targeting of queer audiences as there has been in other forms of media. However, companies will sometimes try to market their material toward queer consumers. As previously mentioned, Riot promoted the short story "Rise with Me" with a tweet promising more LGBTQ+ content. They have also emphasized their attempts to embrace queer players in their annual reports. For example, in their 2022 impact report (https://www.riotgames.com/en/2022-riot-games-impact-report), Riot explained how in developing a new queer and Black champion, K'Sante, "both Riot Noir, our RIG for Black Rioters, and Rainbow Rioters, the RIG for LGBTQ+ Rioters, were consulted to ensure K'Sante is an authentic representation of their communities." While this marketing does demonstrate an interest in engaging with queer players, often the queerness in games is just a reskinning of heterosexuality (Lauteria 2011, quoted in Dennin and Burton 2023) and tailored for cis/straight players to experience what it is like to be queer (Pozo 2018; Ruberg 2020). Riot's demonstration of pride in their inclusion of queerness in LoL and their use of a strategy for queering characters that is similar to what is used in slash fiction makes it an interesting case study for understanding if the broader influences from the gay market and later media regulations, and the historic pitfalls video games have fallen into when including queerness, can be overcome.
[2.4] Shifting to fans, and thus fan studies, the motivation to queer media objects differs from producers in large part because fans do not expect to receive monetary compensation for their work. Focusing on the creation of slash fiction, the motivations are often to reinterpret heteronormative texts and make them queer (Doty 1993; Dhaenens et al. 2008). This difference in motivation and context means that slash fiction does not have as many restrictions on how queerness is presented. Additionally, slash fiction writers queer texts both in the sense that queer representation is added and in the sense that slash fiction offers some form of resistance. In regard to adding queer representation, slash fiction allows fans to create characters and stories that reflect their experiences. These experiences can then be shared with others who are seeking queerness. For example, in having her participants write autobiographic narratives, Jennifer Duggan (2022) found that slash fiction allowed them to "'rethink the gendered and sexual possibilities latent even in the (painfully unmagical)' real world and to find pleasure in 'escapist fantasy' offering imaginative possibilities transcending cultural-material constraints" (714–15). In offering these queer experiences, slash fiction has the potential to transcend just offering queer representation and become a form of queer resistance. While this is not always the case, slash fiction does offer alternatives to "dominant ideas about identity, sex, and relationships" (Russo 2017, 155). In addition, it is slash fiction's capacity to "interrogate the boundaries of a text and to analyze and critique the systems of power that determine who gets to draw those boundaries, whose gaze is legitimate, and whose representation is visible" (162) that makes it a form of queer resistance.
[2.5] As such, slash fiction stands in juxtaposition to instances of queerbaiting. Maghan Molloy Jackson (2023) explains how slash fiction can offer utopian potentials for queer readers. Relating this to queerbaiting, Michael McDermott (2021) argues that the "orientation towards a hopeful, happy future is what provides so many fans with pleasure in their queer readings of these texts, yet it is precisely this orientation that fans argue is being exploited by queerbaiting" (845). This juxtaposition is important to consider in the case of LoL, where Riot uses strategies similar to those in slash fiction to increase queer representation slash fiction. While there have been moments when the boundaries between the media industry and fans have thinned and fans were able to influence the incorporation of queerness (Maris 2016; Trammell 2021), historically the media industry has resisted influences from fans that would challenge dominant norms around sexuality (Schleiner 2017; Adams 2018; Deshane and Morton 2018; Lawrence 2018; Stanfill 2019). However, given that the strategy that Riot is using to queer some of the characters in LoL is similar to the practice of slash fiction, there could be potential for that strategy to counter the media industry's historic motivations for queer representation that result in queerbaiting. If this is the case, then it can offer a potential pathway for queer resistance that is present in slash fiction to emerge in mainstream media. However, what must first be understood is how official content created through a strategy that is similar to slash fiction compares to content from slash fiction.
[2.6] To do this, I focus on slash fiction written before queerness emerged in the LoL official material to ensure I am comparing the official material to fan work that has not been influenced by the queerness now present. As such, I sampled twenty slash fictions for each pairing written before Riot queered the characters. I sampled these slash fictions from one of the most popular fan fiction websites, Archive of Our Own (AO3). I narrowed down my search by only including completed works and pieces with narrative elements in the game world, and excluding pieces that were just about sex or set in alternate universes because these types of stories are not likely to manifest in Riot's official material. I also only chose two to three pieces for each year and one piece per author to increase the variety of stories in my sample. I utilized inductive qualitative coding for my analysis and from these codes developed a main theme for each of the pairings. I then traced how Riot developed the characters in each ship in written auxiliary material (biographies and official short stories) and, in the case of Caitlyn and Vi, from the Netflix show Arcane (2021–24), an animated series that takes place in the LoL universe. I used inductive qualitative coding of the official material that queered the characters and again developed a main theme for each of the pairings within the context of the other official material for each of the characters. What follows is a comparison of the main themes for the slash fiction and official material for each pairing. This allows for an analysis of if the use of a strategy that mirrors slash fiction by producers allows for queer themes present in slash fiction to manifest in the official material and for it to avoid trends like queerbaiting.
3. Diana and Leona
[3.1] The first same-sex couple that Riot officially recognized was Diana and Leona. Their history is archived on the LoL Fandom wiki (https://lol.fandom.com/wiki). Leona was the first of the pair to be introduced into the game in an update from July 13, 2011. It is explained in her original biography that she is the sun's avatar and champion of the Solari, a group of people who are devoted to the sun. Diana was introduced almost a year later on August 7, 2012. In her biography, it is revealed how she came to be the moon's avatar and a champion of the Lunari, an extinct group of people who worship the moon and whom the Solari consider enemies. As a result, Diana was exiled by the Solari. Diana and Leona are the only members of the three pairs covered whose original biographies have no mention of the other. Fans, however, drew connections between them due to their positions as the avatars of the sun and moon, and the first slash fiction pairing them together when searching "Diana/Leona (League of Legends)" on AO3 was posted October 16, 2014.
[3.2] The Diana/Leona slash fictions established them as lovers who became enemies, leaning into the tragedy of their story, wherein they did not choose to be the avatars of the sun and moon and it was the Solari who pushed them into conflict with each other. As such, the fictions often took place at a time in their stories when they had been enemies for a while. However, the authors made it clear that the characters' romantic past still influenced them even as enemies. This involved moments where an author would make it clear that Diana and Leona were in conflict with each other, but one would realize that their feelings for the other were still there. Authors also incorporated flashbacks to establish they were in a relationship through physical displays of affection, expression of feelings, or scenes of domesticity showing the life they had built together. These flashbacks were often used to establish that they still have feelings for each other, which is why the stories either ended on a more hopeful note, with them agreeing to try and find a different path forward, or with them being resigned to the roles they are in but unable to kill each other. Many stories ended with a dramatic moment where one of them was about to deliver a killing blow and emotionally would not be able to follow through. Taken together, the main theme in these slash fictions was Diana and Leona's love structuring the stories for these characters.
[3.3] Riot established Diana and Leona's relationship on June 18, 2021, when they released the short story "Rise with Me." This story takes place before they became enemies, expanding on their time spent studying and training together. However, it soon becomes clear that they are going to become more than friends. For example, in one of Diana's journal entries, she realizes that she misinterpreted a conversation she had earlier with Leona, writing, "I am beside myself with rage. She wasn't trying to preach to me. SHE WAS ASKING ME TO GO WITH HER TO THE FESTIVAL" (Shaw 2021). Diana and Leona do end up attending the festival together, and so that there is no uncertainty as to their feelings toward each other, the story ends with "and Leona kissed me. And I kissed Leona" (Shaw 2021). This story featured many of the same themes that the slash fictions did—gay panic, political tension, physical affection, and romantic relationship—but it was fully contained in the past. This becomes problematic when the story is understood within the context of the characters' biographies. In 2019, their biographies were updated to their current form on the official LoL website (https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_GB/champions/). In Leona's biography, it explains how while she was unable to persuade Diana to accept Solari teachings, "Leona did find a friend" (Lol Fandom wiki, "Leona: The Radiant Dawn"), and in Diana's, "they developed a close friendship" (LoL Fandom wiki, "Diana: Scorn of the Moon"). Their biographies also maintain their conflict, but soften it, explaining that Leona sought to help Diana control her new powers ("Leona: The Radiant Dawn") and Diana sought peace between the Solari and Lunari ("Diana: Scorn of the Moon"). Taking their current biographies literally, there are no romantic feelings between Diana and Leona. They were just really good friends who hope to one day be rejoined. Taking into account all of the official material for Diana and Leona, the main theme in regard to their queerness is a romantic relationship embedded in the past.
[3.4] While "Rise with Me" offers a new understanding of Diana and Leona's past, defining their relationship as romantic, it also stops before it can shed any light on their current situation, thus maintaining the 2019 narrative of the pair being separated but hopeful for change. As such, Diana and Leona's queerness and relationship are retroactively confirmed, meaning that the rest of the stories written about them, which chronologically take place after "Rise with Me" but were written before, were not written with the knowledge of their relationship. As such, their romantic feelings for each other have no influence on their current situation. This diverges from the slash fictions, where a key part was embracing the tragedy of their situation and using flashbacks to demonstrate their continued feelings for each other and how it complicates their current situation. The slash fictions weave the influence of their love throughout their timeline by incorporating past and present moments in the same story. Their feelings for each other and the effects of their romantic relationship are constantly felt, even in moments when they are trying to kill each other. In contrast, the official material inserts their relationship in the past but does nothing to incorporate it throughout their stories. So while their queer identities are now canon, and this was done through romantically pairing them together, their relationship exists solely in the past, allowing Riot to establish their queerness without having to commit to it.
[3.5] This distinction between the slash fiction and official material also reveals how the queering of Diana and Leona is a form of queerbaiting. As previously mentioned, the definition of queerbaiting has expanded to include instances where there are canon queer characters but they are prevented from being in relationships. This is most often done through the "bury your gays" trope (Ng 2017; Waggoner 2018), where one queer character in a relationship is killed off, but in this case Diana and Leona remain separated due to the structure of the story. Fans, however, demonstrated how even when separated, their love for each other can still drive their stories and offer hope for a potential romantic reunion. Riot retroactively confirming their queer relationship, while significant, is also a form of queerbaiting, as it does not carry their queerness through the rest of their stories and results in an inconsistent framing of the characters as either friends or lovers. So even though Riot used a strategy that mirrors slash fiction in the queering of Diana and Leona, the significance of their relationship and the influence it has on their stories was not able to cross the barrier between fans and producers.
4. Malcolm Graves and Twisted Fate
[4.1] Like Diana and Leona, Graves and TF were introduced about a year apart from each other, Graves on October 19, 2011 and TF in October 2012. Unlike Diana and Leona, the connection between the pair was established in Graves's original biography, which details how the pair became partners in crime and how TF betrayed Graves to gain magic. Interestingly, there is no mention of Graves in TF's original biography. Despite there only being an established connection between the pair in Graves's biography, fans still gravitated toward them as characters to ship. The first slash fiction written about them on AO3 with the search Malcolm Graves/Twisted Fate was published on December 14, 2013. The authors of the slash fictions analyzed did not rely on flashbacks as much as the Diana/Leona slash fictions and often established that they were lovers before the betrayal, became enemies after the betrayal with Graves wanting to kill TF, and then became lovers again after they made up. Despite having a similar structure to Diana/Leona, in that they are lovers to enemies, the tragedy of their story was not the main focus since they often reconciled.
[4.2] Instead, the focus was on the physicality of Graves and TF's relationship. Almost every story had some sexual content. Whether it was kissing or something more, their stories involved at least some physical intimacy. There were also some slash fictions where it was unclear if the two had any ambitions for a romantic relationship. This often involved the two messing around with each other and then deciding to have sex because there was nothing else to do. In one story, Graves requested that TF get alcohol because he did not want to have sex sober, implying that there were no real romantic intentions behind the act. In another story that took place soon after their reunion, Graves and TF had sex, and afterward, the author made it clear that Graves did not want to think too much about what was happening. Despite these uncertainties, the focus of these stories was still the physical moments shared between these characters. Given this prevalence, the main theme for these slash fictions is physical intimacy.
[4.3] As these stories were being written, Riot followed a clear, chronological path in the evolution/continuation of Graves and TF. In updates to their biographies and the release of more short stories, Riot fleshed out the characters and their stories without any hint of queerness. The confirmation of their queer identities and hinting at feelings for each other came on June 21, 2022 with the release of "The Boys and the Bombolini." In this story, Graves and TF are in the middle of a job when their enemy, Bombolini, attempts to distract them by claiming that the pair are a couple. "'He thinks we're together,' whispered Fate. 'Like, together-together. A couple. Romantically'" (Rosen 2022). After escaping, they sit down together to talk, and Graves starts to realize that he might be attracted to TF, realizing that TF "was an objectively terrible person, but maybe the right kind of terrible for…Uh-oh, he thought." They continue talking about how Bombolini was wrong in saying that TF has terrible taste in men, and TF claims that "no matter the size, shape, make, or model, none can resist the charms of Tobias Felix." Then TF asked, "with a tinge of poorly concealed jealousy, despite Graves having been gay for the better part of four decades," about some woman with whom Graves had gone on an adventure recently. The story ends with them "each imagining various swashbuckling criminal misadventures while sitting at an awkward physical distance apart. 'But, you know, as, uh…partners,' Graves specified. 'Yes, obviously. Partners. In crime,' Fate added. 'Nothing else.' 'Nope.' 'Nada.' 'No sir.'" While the characters' queer identities are confirmed, they also do not act on their feelings for each other. As such, the main theme for them in the official material is queer feelings.
[4.4] While "The Boys and the Bombolini" served to confirm TF's and Graves's queer identities and that they have feelings for each other, it does not go as far as to place them in a romantic relationship. Additionally, Riot has announced that they are deliberately moving away from short stories and so this is the end of TF and Graves's arc in this form. This again demonstrates Riot's lack of commitment toward showing characters in established queer relationships. While it is true that many of the slash fictions also did not have the pair end up in an established relationship, they did show something that the official material did not: physical intimacy. It is not surprising that their physical intimacy did not manifest in the official material given the context of the development of the gay market and television codes discussed previously. Gay men were presented as desexualized to not alienate consumers and advertisers and to maintain a certain morality. While the gay market is not necessarily present anymore and codes surrounding the representation of sexuality are gone, their effects linger. The inability of the main theme from the slash fictions for Graves and TF to manifest in the official material points once again toward the official material being a form of queerbaiting. Riot avoids putting Graves and TF in a relationship, thus avoiding the enemies-to-lovers arc that was present in much of the slash fiction, and denies readers the satisfaction of seeing them be physically intimate with each other, demonstrating that both their relationship and the physicality of it were not able to cross the barrier between producers and fans.
5. Caitlyn and Vi
[5.1] Caitlyn was introduced on January 4, 2011 and is the oldest of the champions discussed here. Vi was added over a year later on December 19, 2012. Caitlyn's original biography contains no mention of Vi, demonstrating that, unlike Graves and TF, Riot may not have always intended for the characters to be paired together. Instead, Caitlyn's backstory details how she became the sheriff of Piltover ("Caitlyn: The Sheriff of Piltover," https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_US/story/champion/caitlyn/). With Vi's release, the connection between the two was minimally established in how she caught the attention of the sheriff, Caitlyn, who decided to offer her a job. This connection, however, was enough for fans to start writing slash fictions about them, with the first under the search Caitlyn/Vi on AO3 appearing on January 20, 2014. Most of the slash fictions for Caitlyn and Vi indicated that they have been in a long-established relationship that began when they started working together. This was revealed through moments that referenced how long they had been dating or where one would call the other her wife/girlfriend. Many of these stories also showed them in domestic moments. Some stories revolved solely around these domestic moments, like when Caitlyn and Vi ended up on the roof of their apartment building after a Christmas party and spent the rest of the night dancing. Others weaved these domestic moments into larger stories. In one such story, Vi was concerned about someone from her past reappearing but still took the time to think about making Caitlyn breakfast. Here, the author took the time to establish that even when threatened, Vi was planning these more intimate moments with Caitlyn. Therefore, the main theme for these slash fictions is an established relationship with domesticity.
[5.2] Riot continued to update Caitlyn and Vi's biographies and released three short stories about them in 2019, solidifying their connections to each other. However, Riot has not used any strategies that mirror slash fiction in their written material to queer the characters by establishing a relationship between them. Caitlyn and Vi are also the only pair of the ones examined here to have hints of queerness in the game itself thanks to Vi's dialogue. In this dialogue, Vi will sometimes flirtatiously refer to Caitlyn as "cupcake." While the other pairings do have dialogue with each other, they are not as diverse or potentially flirtatious. Vi's dialogue further stands out because language is carried over the TV show Arcane, where it is used to hint at potential romantic feelings between the pair. Arcane is a Netflix original series, released on November 6, 2021, that takes place in the LoL universe, with two of the main characters being Caitlyn and Vi. Their backstories remain fairly similar to the ones in the game except Caitlyn is not sheriff yet and Vi is imprisoned for years after an attempt to save her father figure goes disastrously wrong. Caitlyn, who has aspirations of being sheriff, releases Vi from prison so that she can be her guide in Zaun, the criminal undercity to the rich Piltover.
[5.3] Throughout the show their relationship develops; Vi begins calling Caitlyn cupcake, Vi asks Caitlyn if she prefers men or women, and Vi later sees Caitlyn relaxed and talking with a woman in a brothel. They share many intimate moments, and in the end, Vi is willing to go against her sister, Jinx, in order to save Caitlyn. While the show is not the main focus here due to it being incomplete at the time of analysis, it is important to bring up because, after the first season, where there were many hints of their queerness, there were changes made to the game. On November 17, 2021, shortly after the release of Arcane, Caitlyn's dialogue in the game was updated to include five specific dialogue options referencing Vi: "first move: 'I'm glad you'll have my back, Vi. Let's keep the chaos to a minimum, shall we?'"; "first encounter against Vi: 'I never thought I would stand opposite you again, Vi…'"; "killing Jinx: 'Perhaps Piltover can rest easy without you, Jinx. But Vi…'"; "killing Vi: 'I never wanted this, Vi…'"; and "death: 'Tell Vi that I…'" (https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Caitlyn/LoL/Audio). This is the only time that Riot updated the game to reflect the queering that is happening in auxiliary material.
[5.4] Unlike the first two pairings, as of right now, Caitlyn and Vi's relationship is continuing to develop. As such, claims to the effectiveness of using a strategy that mirrors slash fiction in Arcane cannot yet be made. However, it is still important to include this here because what has already occurred in Arcane suggests that there is potential when strategies that mirror slash fiction are used in auxiliary material that will reach a broader audience. Instead of using short stories, material that will only reach a subset of people who play LoL, Riot turned to a different form of mainstream media to queer Caitlyn and Vi. Arcane is a TV show that has reached people far beyond the players of LoL. With this comes fans who have never engaged with LoL seeing a relationship begin to develop between Caitlyn and Vi, making it harder for people who just want to engage with the game to ignore. In addition, Caitlyn is the only character to have gotten updates to her dialogue that match the subtle queering occurring in auxiliary material to the game. While there is still the possibility of queerbaiting, the strategy of queering Caitlyn and Vi in a way that mirrors slash fiction through television demonstrates the potential of having queer content reach a broader audience than just the fans of the original media object and bring change to that object.
6. Queer production studies, fan studies, and video games
[6.1] The presentation of characters' stories in LoL has made it ideal for producers to incorporate queerness through a strategy that mirrors slash fiction. Slash fiction allows fans to queer media objects by taking characters who have historically not been presented as queer and romantically pairing them with characters of the same sex in auxiliary material. In the LoL universe, the development of characters' stories and worldbuilding is done through auxiliary material, generally short stories. More recently these short stories have been used to queer long-established characters by establishing/hinting at queer relationships between them. This demonstrates that a blurring is occurring between fan work/practices and mainstream media production and that a combined queer production studies and fan studies approach can help scholars understand this blurring. In this case, it reveals the differences in queer themes that exist when producers queer characters by pairing them romantically together versus fans. These differences in large part have to do with the influences that the historical motivations for creating queer content have had on producers and fans. For producers, it means that queer representation more often results in a form of queerbaiting. In the case of the first two pairings examined here, the queer themes established in slash fiction differed from the queer themes in the official material and revealed how the official material resulted in different forms of queerbaiting. That Riot's use of a strategy that mirrors slash fiction still resulted in queerbaiting is unsurprising, but what a combination of queer production studies and fan studies reveals is what is unable to be translated from fan work into mainstream media and the historical barriers that prevent this translation when similar strategies for queering are used.
[6.2] However, the third pairing examined, Caitlyn/Vi, does point to the potential of producers using a strategy that mirrors slash fiction in attempts to queer characters. While not the focus of this analysis, Arcane is the only form of queering that resulted in changes to LoL that reflect the subtextual queering in the show. Additionally, the written auxiliary material will most likely only reach a subsection of people who already play the game, while television adaptations are much more likely to reach a broader audience. As such, changes to the story and characters are more likely to occur in television adaptations because their audience is less invested in the source material. These changes then have the potential to be adapted into the game to maintain continuity between the game world and the television world.
[6.3] As such, there is a lot of potential as more video games are being adapted into television to understand how fan practices can be utilized to bring diversity to the show that can then end up emerging in the game. Video games have been an understudied medium in both fan studies and queer production studies, often with specific games being a case study as opposed to the medium being considered critically. Video games are a rich site for this type of work because they are rarely a finished product even when released. For example, in a game like LoL, updates are constantly being made. Even for games that do not receive consistent updates, it is common for extra content to be made in the form of downloadable content (DLC) that will continue the narrative. Additionally, recently television shows that have been adapted from games have been very popular and successful. As this trend continues, it is important to attend to strategies that are used for diversification that mirror fan practices, how the results compare to fan work, and what changes are made to the game as a result.
[6.4] One limitation of this work is that the fans' slash fictions were not analyzed in terms of their alignment to queer resistance. Seeing how the queer themes in Riot's materials differed from those in the slash fictions, this analysis was not necessary considering the present research goals. However, as producers continue to use strategies that mirror fan practices as a method of diversification, it is possible that the themes in fan work can emerge in mainstream media. If this does, the resistive capabilities of both the queer themes in fan work and mainstream media must be critically examined. As previously mentioned, slash fiction has the potential for resistance, and if themes from these made it to mainstream media, that resistance could continue. However, slash fiction is not automatically resistive and is often influenced by dominant norms that center homonormativity (Woledge 2006; Russo 2017). In addition, there are a lot of issues surrounding race and the representation of race in fan communities that result in the centering of whiteness in slash fiction (Pande and Moitra 2017; Pande 2018; Stanfill 2018). Producers and media companies are also historically resistant to adopting ideas from fan work that are too outside cultural norms (Schleiner 2017; Stanfill 2019). It also might be the case that resistive queer themes from fan work cannot exist in a more distinctly heteronormative structure. A combined queer production studies and fan studies approach can help scholars understand what themes from fan work are continuously left out and what norms are being supported by this erasure. It remains to be seen if these strategies can chip away at those structures enough to allow for the full incorporation of resistive queer themes from fan work, or if that is even something fans desire.
7. Acknowledgment
[7.1] I would like to thank Darius Devitt for introducing me to "Rise with Me."