#millie.txt | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nbmahoushoujo · 2 years

Text

A Guide to Star Guardians for Non-League Players

So... if you like magical girls and you’ve seen Star Guardians around, you might have wanted to see what it’s all about! The problem is, Star Guardians is a skin line in league of legends so the actual content for it is split up in different places and it’s not clear where to start if you don’t already know a lot about it. So I’ve compiled all the official Star Guardian content that I know of in mostly chronological release order, and I’ll offer explanations and context about each part where I can! Some stuff is links to videos and stories, and some is screenshots from the games for small in-game things. I might over-explain some things so I apologise for how wordy this is!

First of all, I’ll be talking about 3 separate games here:

League of Legends - The main game, has been around for ages, I’m sure you’ve heard of it, very toxic gamers, etc.

Wild Rift - The mobile version of League of Legends, has only been around for a few years so it doesn’t have all the same characters/skins yet, sometime has unique skins that aren’t in league of legends

Legends of Runeterra - A card game with the same characters and world but entirely different gameplay, in this game a “skin” is just different card art and sometimes a single different level-up animation, there’s no character model you play with to put a skin on

As this story universe is based on in-game skins as a starting point, new lore and content comes every time new skins are released, which is usually a new team of guardians.

Since these characters are just skins, no knowledge of the regular characters in Runeterra (the name of the world in the regular universe) is needed! For example: many people will know Jinx from Arcane, but Star Guardian Jinx is an entirely different version of the character made for a different universe. Same goes for K/DA and True Damage members in the music skin universe who a lot of people know only in that context.

When I list new characters, I’ll link to their official character profiles which you can read to get to know them before watching/reading any videos/stories they’re in. Trust me, they’ll make more sense that way!

2016

New Stars - a short story

Now, this is only a few paragraphs long with some images but I can’t for the life of me find where it was officially published. Great start, you’ll have to make do with some screenshots of the same content on the wiki:

Skins released:

Lux (Was actually released before all of this, the whole skin line came from the success of her one-off magical girl skin)

Jinx

Janna

Poppy

Lulu

Burning Bright - Animated music video

Star Guardian Jinx Interactions

Jinx has something called a legendary skin, which is a more expensive type of skin that has more unique features than a regular one. The main differences are unique animations (normal skins have to conform to the animations of the regular character) and more importantly for the lore, unique voice lines. Star guardian Lux, for example, has the same voice lines as regular Lux which has nothing to do with Star Guardians. So this means that legendary Star Guardian skins have voice lines that can give insight into their character. Some will be generic things to say when performing actions in the game, but the lines they say towards other characters are at least worth hearing I think. They’re mostly not technically canon, but basically “what if this character met this one”.

For all legendary skins, I’ll link to videos by SkinSpotlights who kindly compiles them!

2017

Skins released:

Ahri

Miss ‘Sarah’ Fortune (In the main Runeterra universe her name is Sarah Fortune but she’s referred to as Miss Fortune)

Soraka

Syndra

Ezreal

A New Horizon - Animated video

Starfall - Short story

Star Guardian Ahri Interactions

Invasion - PVE game mode

This was only for a limited time which I wasn’t there for, but I found a video of the gameplay.

2018

This year’s Star Guardian skins were a little different in that they were just versions of previous Star Guardians in onesies themed around their familiars! They don’t have separate profiles since they’re the same characters so you can see them all below:

Miss fortune, Ezreal, Lux, Lulu and Soraka

The Slumber Party Summoning - Short story

2019

The Twilight Star - Short story

Skins released:

Neeko

Xayah & Rakan*

Zoe

*The character profiles don’t represent Xayah and Rakan at this point in the story, so I’ll link them later. For now what you need to know is Xayah and rakan were members of Ahri’s original team who were killed, revived and corrupted by Zoe. They now fight against the Star Guardians because they believe that their friends left them to die on purpose. Also they’re very in love, which is why they’re always paired together. Xayah’s Familiar is Saki (left) and Rakan’s is Riku (right)

Light and Shadow - Animated music video

Star Guardian Xayah and Rakan Interactions

2022

Yes that’s right, there was nothing new for two years, only for the biggest Star Guardian Event yet which is only just coming to an end! There’s a lot of content across games which means different stories lines were released simultaneously, so I’ll just be putting it in the order I think makes most sense!

Return to Valoran City - Short animated event teaser (worth watching for the pretty art and to get a feel for the setting)

Before looking at the new skins I recommend reading this first:

Twin Stars - Short story

It introduces a few of the new characters a year before they become guardians and their story starts, and sets up what’s going on with the previous characters currently!

Skins released in League of Legends:

Kai’sa

Akali

Taliyah

Ekko

Sona

Rell

Quinn

Nilah

(Star Nemesis) Morgana

(Star Nemesis) Fiddlesticks

Everything Goes On - Animated music video

This sets up the simultanious stories, with Kai’sa as the main character in League of Legends and Xayah in Wild Rift. Next I’ll list the League of Legends content, and we’ll come back to Wild Rift.

Another Sky - In-game visual novel

This is the meat of the content, it has 5 chapters including the epilogue for the main narrative, and shorter side stories for each individual member of the team. The visual novel is only available in the game client, and after the event it won’t be playable anymore, so I’ve linked a playlist of uploads to youtube.

This does mean you can’t see all the different dialogue options, but I couldn’t find an upload that shows all of them so I’ll update this if any pop up. There’s only a few different lines after each different choice before it goes back to the same content. It’s not a “your choices have consequences” kind of thing.

The main story and character stories are mixed together weirdly in this playlist, but the video titles are clear enough. The side stories can be read in any order, before, during, or after the main story.

Shadow of a Doubt - Animated Video about Akali

Set around the middle of the visual novel, but it doesn’t really matter when you watch it.

Star Guardian Kai’sa Interactions

Star Guardian Akali Interactions

Taliyah Sessions - A playlist of copyright-free music by a mix of artists with Taliyah as the face of them. This is something riot’s done with other champions, Vi and Diana, and it’s good music for studying and stuff like that! If you don’t listen to it I hope you at least watch the section with the song ‘SIDE 2 SIDE’ so you can see Taliyah’s cute little dance moves. She’s the best. I love her.

Skins released in Wild Rift:

Seraphine

Senna

Orianna

(Redeemed) Xayah

(Redeemed) Rakan

Wild Rift Visual Novel - In-game visual novel

This is the other main story, following Xayah’s newly-formed team and taking place at the same time as the other visual novel.

New Dreams - Vlogs by Xayah’s new team:

Seraphine

Orianna

Senna

Star Crossed - Comics adapted from the same story as the visual novel. It covers mostly the same events, plus Xayah recruiting the members of her team at the start which was not in the vn. In my opinion it’s the better version of the story!

Skins released in Legends of Runeterra:

(Gwen is the only Legends of Runeterra exclusive, the others all overlap with the other games so I won’t bother linking to the same profiles again!)

Gwen

Jinx

Lulu

Soraka

Kai’sa

Quinn

Taliyah

Senna

Legends of Runeterra has less content overall. Each character has 2 pieces of art with flavour text, as their art changes when they level up. A few of them have unique level up animations too. Here I’ll share my own screenshots from the game to make sure the flavour text is included!

Star Guardian Gwen Level-up Animation

Star Guardian Jinx Level-up Animation

Star Guardian Kai’sa Level-up Animation

Additionally, Star Guardian Kai’sa is the only lor skin so far to have unique voice lines, but they’re really not much. Here anyway:

Star Guardian Kai’sa Voice Lines (Starts at 14:21)

Thank you for reading this! I hope it helped, I just had fun talking about the characters I love!

I’ll finish off with other related info/trivia and thoughts that I want to share:

Star Guardian ages are confusing. Some of them are teenagers who have just become guardians, while others are hundreds of years old and just pretend to be a regular human age. It’s not always clear which is which to be honest! Lux’s team is mostly teenagers but Janna is implied to be much older. Ahri’s original team seem to be a lot older, but I’m not entirely clear on her new team. Syndra, Zoe and Gwen are from the original first Star Guardian team so they’re the oldest. What confused me was that Xayah’s new team is made up of old guardians according to the comics, yet they all pretend to be high schoolers and then complain about high school as if they didn’t choose to disguise themselves that way??

A lot of people were really getting their hopes up for the return of Star Guardians PVE because apparently it was really fun in 2017, but alas we just got some other regular game mode that no one cares about. Apparently PVE doesn’t drive engagement enough for riot to do that anymore even though everyone wants it. Video titles that aged like milk:

Similarly, from the teasers a lot of people thought Kai’sa and Akali were going to be a couple in this universe. With all the hand holding and gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes, it was a little disappointing that they went with the ‘very close gal pals’ route. It would have been wild to make Akali canonically queer only to ship her with anyone but Evelynn, considering Akalynn was the biggest ship before Arcane came out.

Regular Taliyah was originally intended to be trans by the writers/artists that worked on her, but as is typically the case in this game, they weren’t allowed to do that. In more recent content there’s been a clear effort to code her that way. When Neeko was released she got a voice line towards Taliyah that says “Neeko not the only one who changes”. Neeko changes because she’s a shapeshifting chameleon, so in what way does Taliyah change? 🤔 I think Star Guardian Taliyah has the most clear trans coding so far with her whole thing about wanting to figure out who she is, and feeling more herself when she transforms, etc.

On the topic of Neeko voice lines, Neeko was the first out lesbian champion in the game, I love her very much, please listen to her! I wish she had more Star Guardian content.

If you know Akali, Kai’sa, Ahri and Seraphine from K/DA, you may notice Evelynn’s the only K/DA member who’s not also a star guardian. It doesn’t mean anything, but there’s been a lot of memes about her feeling left out and a good few Star Guardian Evelynn fan designs!

If you only know Jinx from arcane and wonder who that random blonde girl is that people keep shipping her with, that’s regular Lux. They’ve never met in Runeterra, but their dynamic in Star Guardians translates well to the base characters too. To sum it up, Lux thinking “I can fix her” and Jinx thinking “I can make her worse” is why they make a fun pairing in any universe!

Ezreal is boring and he's the worst Star Guardian. This is just opinion but I’m right. /j

Gwen was a doll who became human, but her joke animation in league lets her transform back into the cute little dolly version of her. In Legends of Runeterra, you can have this doll as a guardian (little buddy who sits next to your cards and does cute stuff if you click on them) and there’s a Star Guardian variation:

If you’re interested in learning more about League of Legends lore and it’s alternate universes, check out Necrit! He’s known as the lore guy at this point.

If you’re interested in the character designs and animation you’ve seen, check out TB Skyen! He’s done some animation breakdown videos of Star Guardian Stuff and recently done a stream ranking and talking about the skin designs.

#millie.txt #star guardians #lol #hey i did it! i did the thing i said i would for once!#magical girl mutuals enjoy #i'm not double-checking all those links so let me know if any don't work or take you to the wrong thing

139 notes · View notes

nbmahoushoujo · 1 year

Text

Characters you should vote for according to me and my objectively correct opinion:

Bea

I literally got Hero Hours Contract days ago after receiving a single submission for the main character, and it’s so cute and charming I added her in! Bea is a magical girl who fights zombies, but is also on strike against the magical creatures that employ magical girls. She has no chance in the polls I'm sure, but a vote for her would be nice anyway!

Kokoro / Heartful Punch

I was surprised by how many submissions she got, amazingly the same amount as Doremi who she's up against. Y'know, THE Doremi. Some things to know about Kokoro:

She punches monsters

She's dating the main character Undine and they're peak awkward teenagers trying to figure out their feelings together

She has a pet cat called Kicks

She has good life advice

Momo Chiyoda

No one ever talks about this anime it's so good why does no one ever talk about it I have to tell you about it-

Machikado Mazoku is an anime about a girl called yuko who wakes up one day to learn that she is a demon, descended from a line of demons, when she sees she suddenly has horns and a tail. Her mom tells her that their family is cursed and to break the curse she needs the blood of a magical girl. Luckily there just so happens to be a magical girl who goes to her school, Momo. Unluckily, Yuko is incredibly weak (physically and magically), has no clue what she's doing, and couldn't hurt a fly. Additionally, Momo is inhumanly strong and offers to help Yuko train out of pity, with no real fear that she'll ever be an actual threat. Naturally they're very in love and every episode of the 2 seasons that are out it gets more and more obvious. It’s one of the best comedy anime I’ve ever seen!

Momo is a stoic girl who really cares about protecting other people but doesn't always take care of herself properly. She's been a magical girl for years and is tired of the whole acting cute thing, usually trying to resolve conflicts without transforming where possible.

Some things I love about Momo:

She’s obsessed with her city’s mascot character and can be bribed into anything with merch for it.

She gets embarrassed about transforming and saying her attack names and stuff. Not in a way that would imply the show is making fun of magical girls as a concept, but more like regular teenage embarrassment at your younger self in a magical girl context.

Her cats is essentially a retired magical companion who used to be able to talk but now just occasionally says the phrase “the time hath come” for no particular reason.

She literally turns to the dark side to save Yuko from an upsetting few days stuck in a magic nightmare. Not like mortal danger, just that she’d be unhappy for a bit and then wake up. Momo wouldn’t let that happen and literally turned to the dark side for a while to get her out.

She’s so bad at cooking she just like me for real.

Momoko / Hyper Blossom

Powerpuff Girls Z feels like a fever dream from my childhood. I totally forgot about it for a while because just the existence of an actual Powerpuff Girls magical girl anime is so funny. But I remember really enjoying it and it’s genuinely so cute!

#millie.txt #please vote for my girls i love them so much #i have ''always roots for underdogs'' syndrome #there's other favourites i have too but these are just the one i think will struggle in round 1 #and of course taliyah's still getting her own post #polls

19 notes · View notes