#zeri/ekko

[questionablecuttlefish]

What are some of the most interesting LoL pairings that you have seen? And have you ever thought about writing for a pairing other than LC?

There are a lot. LoL has a lot of interesting characters with a lot of potential. Just about every pairing has something unique to bring to the table. Some I like, some I don't.

A lot of the pairings I like (CaitVi, Zeri/Ekko, Ezko, KataGaren, Meljay, Jayvik, Renata/Sevika, Renata/Corina, etc) show up high key or low key as secondary or background ships in a ton of my fics already.

Seraphine in my fics is mostly just everyone's queerplatonic best friend, but she works as a ship with just about anyone in her PnZ peripherals and some others, she's such a sweetie, you can pair her up with everyone from Lightcannon to Rell to Zeri to Sona and it works. Not a fan of Renataphine though. Not out to yuck anyone's yums but that one's not for me, thanks.

Sera/Scratch is my favorite of hers, though, "tsundere grunge punk rocker / sugary bubblegum pop sweetheart but they both actually care deeply about the same cause, music-rivals-to-lovers" is peak, adorable, no notes.

MLM ships I'm less familiar with but TF/Graves, Jayvik and Ezko are all great (Ezko is my favorite), I don't have enough of an opinion on characters like Kayn or Sett or Aphelios or Taric to really explore their MLM ships but they seem neat at a distance.

There are few hetero ships that I really like at all in League because most of them are either 'already married' or have some kind of one-sidedness or offputting power dynamic going. But KataGaren, Meljay, EzKaisa, Zeri/Ekko (Flashback!) and as of Ruined King, Yasuo/Ahri are all pretty good. Because they all have interesting dynamics but they're all built on respect and partnership to some degree in ways the ones I dislike are not. I'd ship Braum and Illaoi but Braum's Everyone's Big Ace Buddy energy is so powerful I don't know if I can romance-ship him with anyone.

I also don't really fw with any of Lux or Jinx's het ships. There's just something about all of them that rubs me the wrong way. Their actual character dynamics with e.g Ezreal, Ekko, Sylas are really interesting to me and I like all of those characters. But making it a ship feels wrong to me for all of them and I couldn't just straight up write any of them. Again, not here to yuck yums but not for me.

I have an idea for a Caitjinx fic (and you may recognise that I've already kinda written Caitjinx and ViLux subplots in Heartsick Lovelorn & You, albeit in a fluffy highschool setting) but my actual CJ fic would be very dark and angsty and I don't think I have the spoons to write it right now.

I do also have a surprise LaserLightShow fic in mind at some point. I have already released the prequel fic to it, on the sly, people just haven't picked it yet :)

[arcanetoymakerau]

This would be around Act 6...or 7 (I don't know yet), but anyway...

@tiny-chrys thank you so much for the ask! This is giving me more motivation to draw this love arrow(?) <3

Also, yes, ever since Jinx got Arcane talents, she received a physical boost, too. Zeri has the same physical boosts, btw; it's a detail I added for "humans with Arcane talents" in this AU.

[thomas-jefferson-miku-binder]

Is this League character Trans? Should they be? Here's a tier list!

once again posting a controversial league of legends tier list. did I miss anyone? would you remove any of my picks? what would you change? let me know in the tags!

[redrum-alice]

Powder but as a witch!

[yoshdookie]

idk

[jm-chrome]

Artistic confidence issues suck because a year ago, I literally started making a multiple-paged comic about a High School AU where Zeri tries to help Ekko reconnect with Jinx. I ended up just scrapping it because I wasn't satisfied with how it looked.

Today, I found the file again while cleaning out my pc

[disordercinema]

When Ekko released in 2015 it was so awesome, he had a great voice actor (at least in Brazil his voice is really well known), he had a cool design, fun powers and an amazing backstory. He was a black kid from a poor upbringing who, despite the environment he grew up in, learnt to create incredible things basically out of scrap. He was a genuine hero in a land where most of the characters were bad people or chaotic monsters, he fought for what was right and tried his best to save the people he loved.

Over the years he became the face of resistance in Zaun, every story was about him fighting for the people, every voice line with other champions showed how much people admired him. Fuck, I know it's probably not canon but Azir of all people treats him well in their interactions, that's how cool he is. So it bothers me a little that the freedom fighter/symbol of resistance in Zaun role is being shifted to Jinx in the show.

She, and the Inx (her blue haired followers), are literal antagonists in his game, he has to fight them because all they care about is chaos. I understand though what they are building up to in Arcane and it is very well written, but it makes me a bit sad. Especially because of how I see most of the fandom treat Ekko, most talk about him has to do with Jinx and fair, I guess, Arcane barely gives him solo screen time. But y'know, I wish after this they give him another game or a comic book, Idk. I really don't want Ekko to just become a background character on someone else's narrative.

[riza-hawks-eye]

I am an Ekko multishipper because I love Timebomb and Jinx but I also recognise that Ekko deserves better.

I am a Jinx multishipper because I believe every other League of Legends character deserves much worse. ❤️

[aurelion-solar]

Zaun - Champion Illustration Summoner Icons

[beebo26]

Had a weird idea but School bus graveyard au. Zeri, Ekko, Ezreal, Seraphine, Lux, & Jinx are classmates who is forced to bond together because they got stuck in the phantom world whenever midnight hits and they have to fight off the phantoms that kept chasing them.

[lbulldesigns]

THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR.

Powder slammed her bedroom door shut behind her as she stormed into her bedroom, the various models, robots, and the cases holding her treasured fossils, crystals, and shells on the nearby shelf rattled from the force.

The noise of her siblings and “friends” downstairs stilled as they heard the slam echo throughout the house, but nobody made a move to investigate the sound.

“They would have to actually give a shit about you to do that,” the voice, in her head, sneered nastily at Powder.

The girl brushed it off this time as she went over to her computer to boot it up. As she logged in, breathing deeply to slow down the breakdown that she could feel building up, she could hear the sound of the front door banging shut. Powder stood up from her computer and went over to her window looking out over the street.

Outside she watched as her stepbrothers and sister piled into their cars with their respective girlfriends. With Ekko and Zeri entering Vi’s stupid, four-door, red pickup. All on their way to their couples-only day out at Piltover’s newly opened theme park.

The very one she had been begging her siblings to go to with her for the past three weeks, the one they had all been full of excuses about on how they might not be able to go, the one that Caitlyn “Bitchface” Kirraman had got everyone tickets for. Everyone but her.

Vi had explained how they had just got so worked up in their excitement at the idea of a day-long double-double date at a theme park, that they didn't think that Powder would even want to go.

“Yeah, because when someone doesn’t want to go somewhere they tend to beg to go for three weeks,” and even though the voice was nothing but a figment of Powder’s imagination, she could almost see it roll its eyes at the audacity from her sister.

“We thought you might be uncomfortable,” Vi had lamely stated, whilst rubbing the back of her neck, something she tends to do when she’s struggling to come up with a plausible lie. Powder knew her sister well enough to know that she was just making excuses, so that her picture perfect girlfriend wouldn’t look bad.

Staring down at the street, she watched as the cars pulled out of the driveway, for a split second she thought Ekko might have been looking up at her from the car, with something she wished could be regret on his behalf, but scoffed at the thought.

“Why would he feel regret? It’s not like he’s cheating on you,” the voice sneered, but she could swear she also heard a note of melancholy in its disembodied tone “he only ignored and avoided you, so that he could get his rocks off with Tits McGee.”

Powder took a deep, shaky breath through her nose, her fists clenching at the unbidden reminder.

Ekko, and Zeri in retrospect, have used any excuse they could to avoid spending time with her as of late, too busy with homework, too busy with the community centre they volunteer at with their families, too busy with their other friends who find Powder too weird to be around because she like sharks, and robots, and- “blah blah blah.. Insert reason here. Does anyone really need a reason to hate you?”

She feels stupid now for agonising over why for the past month, and making excuses on their behalf when the truth was there in her face this whole time.

They had abandoned her, just like everyone else seems to be doing lately.

They had gotten bored of constantly reassuring her that they liked being around her, had gotten sick of listening to her woes, and got tired of her being too “childish” as Zeri had been claiming more and more lately. Powder had chalked those comments from her “bestie” as her just playing around. But that, clearly, was not the case.

She had developed a massive crush on Ekko recently and had tried to stuff down the feelings as best she could. Ultimately she couldn’t deny it anymore, she had hoped to tell him at some point, once she had worked up the courage.

She had told nobody.

Nobody, but Zeri.

“Backstabber,” the voice bitterly and crudely spat.

She hadn’t even told Vi, but considering how more and more consistently hot and cold her sister had become towards her as of late that was, sadly, unsurprising

When Ekko had started pulling back from her, she had feared that Zeri had let something slip but the green haired girl had promised up and down that she hadn’t breathed a word to him, and Powder had trusted her because Zeri had always been reliable and honest.

When Zeri had insisted that she was working on a community services project with Ekko because her parents and Benzo had volunteered their time, and would use the opportunity to gauge whether there was a chance he would return Powder’s sentiments, the blue haired teen had trusted her friend.

When she saw all the hugs, and touches, and easygoing smiles between the two, she had swallowed that ugly, ugly, jealousy clawing its way up her throat from the very depths, back down and cursed herself for being such a horrible person to think badly of her friend.

And when Vi had announced they were going on a couples day out and had invited HER friends, POWDER’S FRIENDS!, she wanted to believe that Vi had simply misinterpreted things between the two.

But the guilty looks on Zeri and Ekko’s faces coupled with the looks Mylo and Claggor had exchanged like they were waiting for her to Jinx Out, a term Mylo had been proud to coin whenever Powder would have a breakdown or tantrum.

“I like to think of it as not taking anyone's shit,” muttered the voice, petulantly.

Powder had to face the truth, once and for all. No matter how crippling lonely it was.

Ekko didn’t return her sentiments, Zeri couldn’t be trusted, and everyone just didn’t want her around, and none of them had any problem with ripping her heart out and stomping all over it.

“And Caitlyn’s a bitch. Knew she had it out for you,” Powder hated when the voice was smug.

She had wanted to rage right there and then in that entryway, in front of her siblings girlfriends, she wanted to slap the smirk off that bitches face that she was trying to poorly hide by pursing her lips and looking at the floor to hell how it would make her sister feel, she wanted to rip out Zeri’s hair and call her a traitor, and she had even wanted to kick Milo in his shin despite the fact he hadn’t done anything wrong… This time.

The voice, only she could hear, was screaming what Powder wished she had the guts to scream, she wanted to call every single one of them out and curse them to kingdom come. But, ultimately, Powder had just felt numb to it all.

Why bother? They’ll just brush it off as another temper tantrum, and, really, do they even care if they hurt her anymore? If they ever did.

Rather than losing her shit, rather than crying in front of them all, rather than exposing her fragile heart anymore than they had already been trusted to and still chose to tapdance all over.

Powder had simply chosen to turn around and go back upstairs, ignoring Vi’s pathetic attempts to “apologise” with her classic “I’ll make it up to you later Pow Pow, I promise” that she never truly ever bothers to keep.

“She’ll come back later all puppy eyed, promising that she never meant to hurt you and she feels soooooooooooooo sad for making you sad. And try to make it up to you with a promise to watch all those shark documentaries that you've watched thousands of times while you spew out any and all shark, and fish facts you know, and because you’re just happy to have any kind of company, you’ll forgive her and then after a few days of undivided attention towards you she’ll go right back to ignoring you for Princess Pretty Pilty and the cycle will begin again,” The voice angrily huffed, Powder could almost hear the sound of it tapping its foot against her hardwood floor in utter frustration.

Powder grabs two fistfuls of her shoulder length hair, pulling until it hurts, hoping the pain will stave off the incoming migraine she could feel scratching at the tippy top of her skull.

Releasing her hair, distantly acknowledging the stands of azure strands clinging to her fingers, she tudges back over to her computer and sits down in her desk chair, idly moving the mouse to wake the screen from its slumber, but only stared at the screen in front of her as she tried to remember why she bothered turning the damn thing on to begin with.

“Probably because this is the procedure whenever you get fucked over. You boot up the computer, beg Little Man to play a few hours of Minecraft with you whilst you sob about how unfair everything is, then feel all warm and fuzzy when he listens and tells you you're amazing and he’s lucky to have you in his life. And then you can forget your worries because even if the others shun you at least you’ll always have Ekko,” The voice recounts for her, the bitterness and borderline disdain that has been present up till then absent, as something dangerously close to being sympathetic bleeds through its tone.

She could almost feel its presence standing beside her, barely touching her bare shoulder, as if to subconsciously comfort her.

And just how pathetic do you have to be when your imaginary frenemy even feels bad for you?

That’s when a sound mixed between a wet sob and incredulous laugh rips its way out Powder’s throat, the action opening the floodgates, and the sixteen year old finds herself sliding from her chair and curled up in the floor, her arms wrapped around her midsection in a desperate attempt to hold in all her sorrows at the unfairness of it all, and wailed into the floor.

It just wasn’t fair.

“If only you weren’t starved for their love,” the voice unhelpfully supplied.

Suddenly, Powder stopped crying, breathing deeply. Her forehead touching the wooden floor.

“Powder”

Slowly the girl pushed herself to her feet, her eyes staring blankly at the floor.

“Poooooowder”

She sits down in the chair, her arms draped limply over the armrest. Lazily she pushes her chair around, until she is facing the large mirror leaning against the corner by her bedroom window.

“POWDER!”

“I’m tired”

“What?”

But Powder doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes and when they open again it isn’t her.

Jinx looks over at the mirror across from her, contemplating the image of the girl lying on the floor, facing away from her where a reflection should be.

Jinx stands up from the chair and takes the few short steps over to the mirror. So that she’s standing in front of it.

Jinx stares down at Powder as she mopes on the other side of the reflection. She scrunches her nose and lifts a finger up to the surface of the looking glass, daintily tapping the tip of her pointer against the smooth surface.

Tap tap tap…

But Powder doesn’t stir.

“Seriously?” Speaking felt really, really, really weird.

Powder still doesn’t stir.

Jinx blinks and Powder is gone. Staring back at her was Powder’s visage.

Short, and skinny, with shoulder length blue hair, with freckles sprinkled across a slightly crooked nose. Courtesy of Vi and her bitch mittens.

She wore a pair of pink overalls over a sleeveless, purple tank top.

Jinx looked exactly like sweet, vulnerable Powder.

However instead of brilliant blue, innocent eyes.

Bright, magenta ones stared back at her.

Jinx huffed out a small laugh.

Well that’s gonna take some explaining.

[questionablecuttlefish]

Okay Fine Let's Talk Timebomb and Season Two.

I do want to talk about this because I have a Lot of thoughts and feelings and it has been building up and building up, not only based on what's happening in other social spaces, but what people keep bringing into mine despite my best efforts to avoid it.

This isn't any kind of hatepost, I don't think I could hate Ekko or the ship if I tried, I just want to explain my very mixed feelings about the whole thing.

My likely-to-be-very unpopular take on Season Two's Timebomb romance is that it left me feeling uneasy and uncomfortable.

Not with what was in the show itself, I feel like that was perfect. Powder and Ekko sold me completely. They made me feel things. I even liked how Ekko and Jinx's story ended. I think it was beautiful, poignant, perfect...

...until.

'The Discourse' since, the way the fan culture has exploded around it, and particularly some of the creators' commentary on it, has made me sour on the whole thing.

It feels like I'm suddenly part of an increasingly small subset of people who saw what they did with S2 Timebomb and applied our media literacy to what was on our screens and got something very different to what the fandom consensus seems to be.

For context, I semi-shipped TB before this. Though I've always been Team Lightcannon, I had a lot of respect for timebomb, I understood it, I had read a few very good fics, I was just in the space of "Jinx has hurt Ekko too much for him to ever fully forgive her for murdering his friends, they might come to an understanding, and there will always be a silent undercurrent of love beneath the hurt, they may fight together on the same side again someday, but whatever bond they had as kids is broken and they can't go back, and both know it."

I respected, and still do, people who shipped them romantically, but I've always seen them as a broken childhood friendship being a much more interesting dynamic, and being hot for each other lessening that to an extent and not really adding anything to it.

All of his interactions with Jinx in season one are violent; she murders five Firelights point-blank in front of him in her intro scene, and Ekko reacts particularly upset to the pink-haired girl, Eve or Eva, whom Jinx shoots in the back. It's clear this isn't even the first time she's fought them. We don't know how many of Ekko's found family she's put on the Memorial Wall or how close he was with any of them.

Ekko is clearly convinced that "Powder" is gone, and the person who replaced her is a cold-blooded killer who can't be reasoned with. Leading to the Bridge confrontation, and this:

This is the first time Ekko catches a glimpse of "Powder", yes, but more importantly, this is the first moment he recognizes Jinx's humanity. He's hurting her, killing her, and he can't do it.

....and she knows he can't do it.

So, to save him the weight, she pulls a grenade, with the intent to kill them both, foreshadowing quite neatly where Ekko/Jinx (but not Ekko/Powder) is going to go in S2.

Fast forwarding from Season One here, Ekko disappears for 2/3rds of the second season, completely offscreen.

When we catch up with him he's woken up in the S2E7 AU; the Powder Timeline.

Here's where I start to get a little confused by the fandom take. Because, you know, I've seen enough Star Trek and Stargate and Supernatural and Batman the Animated Series and Quantum Leap to know exactly what this is.

This is the 'bottle episode', this is the 'Perfect World' trope, where the protagonists find themselves in an alternate universe - or trapped in a dream - or they've died or think they've died and this is their 'heaven' - where they have everything they ever wanted.

This is familiar storytelling and E7 follows a familiar pattern, the protagonist struggles to adapt to the surreal new circumstances, they are seduced by the illusion, particularly falling in love with someone in the Perfect World, but eventually, they start noticing something incongruous - something isn't quite right - (In this case, it's Vi's death, and Powder holding back her genius and hiding her grief to be support girl for others) - that reveals the Perfect World to be not as perfect as it seems.

And the hero has to choose to go home, because he realizes that this isn't real, it doesn't belong to him, he doesn't belong here.

Which is exactly what happens with Ekko in E7.

Which brings is to AU!Powder and Jinx.

And here's where I really start to struggle with the seeming consensus that the romance between Ekko/Powder automatically leads to Ekko/Jinx, like you can just transfer the one to the other.

I'm sorry, fam, I thought my basic media literacy was telling me that this girl:

Is not the same person as this girl:

....and I am not getting into any debate about "Jinx" vs "Powder" as identities within our current Jinx. I'm talking about Powder in the E7 AU.

AU!Powder is literally a different human being.

She may have been the same person up until the explosion in Jayce's laboratory, but from that fork in the timeline, she becomes a FUNDAMENTALLY different person to Jinx, shaped by different experiences, different relationships, different life events.

Powder's physicality with Ekko, as you can see in those GIFs, the casual intimacy, the clear affection, the way she touches him, looks at him, her awareness of him in her space, is so utterly opposite to the way Jinx interacts with him that if anything, it nailed home to me how savagely absent this kind of feeling is from his relationship with Jinx.

Powder loves Ekko. She leans on him, snuggles into him, touches his hands, dances with him, kisses him.

Jinx cares so little about him she barely makes eye contact and would casually kill him without blinking.

And I thought that was the point.

I really thought that was the whole point of E7. Being in the perfect world, getting his perfect love story with his perfect Powder, the girl Jinx could have been, but can never be, drove home for Ekko that his feelings for Jinx, both romantic and resentful, were tangled up in his illusions of "Powder", and it took living those illusions as a physical reality for Ekko to see his mistake.

To be true to himself, and true to her, Ekko had to let that go and go home.

To face his world's Jinx, and be there for her in her darkest moment, even if it meant giving up the love he'd found with Powder, a love that belonged to a different Ekko, for someone who could never love him back.

To me that was Ekko's most heroic moment, an act of selfless sacrifice. But that's what it was - a sacrifice.

Meanwhile, Season Two Jinx is not aware of any of this. The last time she saw Ekko was on the bridge where she nearly killed him, and for all we know she might have thought she succeeded.

She never talks about, thinks about, refers to, or even has scribble-nightmares about Ekko, not even once.

Season Two Jinx is, instead, having a love story of her own.

And Isha was and is a PUZZLE to me. Because she's more plot device than character, she isn't necessary except as a way to give Jinx a villain-to-hero arc and a way to reconnect to her humanity.

But she could have been Ekko.

If they really, really wanted us to have Timebomb Canon, instead of confining the entire arc to a bottle episode in an alternate timeline with a literally, physically different girl, they could easily have given all of Isha's considerable screentime to an Ekko and Jinx romance.

I'm sure Amanda Overton would have been on board with that. But that's not what we got. It's almost like reading two different fix-it-fanfics for the same character, put into the same show and running in parallel.

I'm not crazy, this is what's happening for Ekko in s2;

While this is happening for Jinx at the same time.

But Jinx's love story, too, ends with a tragic sacrifice.

And here's where the two stories finally intersect.

When Jinx is in her darkest moment, her absolute rock bottom, Ekko comes back into her life, a miracle, impossible, a Boy Savior.

But she's still ready to kill him.

Because she didn't dance with Ekko. She didn't invent a time machine with him. She didn't sit and watch the city lights with him and share a tender kiss and a heartfelt gift.

That was Powder.

Jinx and Ekko are resuming right where they left off on the bridge, right back to "I pull this pin and we both blow up".

They've both loved and lost, but their stories are absolutely unknown to each other. Ekko Doesn't Know About Isha. Jinx Doesn't Know About Powder.

It's only when Jinx (a genius, a reminder here) sees monkeys of her own design inside the Z-drive - recognizes her own handiwork, but knows SHE didn't make those - that, I think, sheer curiosity stirs her out of her darkness.

She has to know what that was about. She hesitates, just long enough for Ekko to speak. And, though offscreen, he tells her his story, and maybe she tells him hers.

And it's enough, just enough, to set Jinx back on her Redemption Arc, to become the hero Isha always saw in her.

Maybe even the hero Vi and Ekko saw in her, too. Her new costume is full of references to all of the people in her life who never gave up on her.

(side note, the yellow stars and crowns puzzle me, though - they're quite prominent, but who are THEY for? Isha? Maybe? Yellow isn't a color associated with anyone in Jinx's life, but that crown's identical to the one she scribbled on Demacia in Fortiche's map, is... this a very subtle future Lightcannon tease? Nah. I'm not that crazy.)

I mean her costume is also almost literally both a Fishbones and a Fiddlesticks cosplay, with her hair as Fiddle's tongue, so take from that what you will.

It's clear Jinx and Ekko war painted each other for the battle, but the Firelights are also similarly painted up, and (with Linke even confirming this) there really wasn't time to develop anything else, guys.

And I am, honestly, fundamentally angry at anyone who would suggest that, even if she'd been in any space to want it, our boy Ekko, one of the most genuinely good men in recent fiction let alone in Arcane, would take advantage of a girl he just talked out of suicide.

Moving on. During the battle, Ekko is knocked out and lying not far from Jinx. She doesn't even look at him, she leaps up to defend Vi instead.

And that's their final interaction on the show.

Instead of returning to Ekko, Jinx chooses one final act of sacrifice.

Ekko's final shot of the show is this.

He's sitting, alone, burning a mourning paper, where he sat with AU!Powder - where he and AU!Powder kissed - a place that has no significance to himself and Jinx, whatsoever.

It's little wonder who he's thinking about here, and which name he's burning on that paper. The girl he truly loved and lost.

For all he knows, Jinx is dead. But it's not only her he's mourning.

Or maybe he does know, or suspect, she's alive.

But either way, he's making one final act of sacrifice, too, with that paper burning into the breeze.

He's letting her go.

He's choosing his own story.

He's staying where he belongs.

Jinx may have become a symbol of the revolution, but it's Ekko who is, and always will be, the true hero of Zaun.

And this is Jinx's final shot.

Because let's face it, we all know she's on that airship.

She's "breaking the cycle". She's "walking away". She knows that Jinx has left too many scars on the people she still loves - on Vi, on Ekko, on the cities of Piltover and Zaun - for her to pick up the pieces.

She knows that if she's going to find out what "Jinx" might stand for now, she has to go very far away from everything and everyone. She has to leave it all behind and find something new.

Maybe even someone new?

And ultimately, that's why I feel the Timebomb we got was perfect, they shouldn't touch it, they shouldn't try to force it to be "Endgame", not because it couldn't have worked, but because that's the opposite of the story they told.

For the rest of my analysis, lol, this got a bit long but i have FEELINGS.

Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't buy Jinx and Ekko as a love story if they had actually told that love story. But they didn't. It had no screen time. They have less interactions in S2, maybe even in both seasons added up, than Vi and Loris. Let that sink in a bit.

We know it's Amanda's favorite ship, so she may have intended more, and may even actually give us all more at some point, but please, dear god, let's stop pretending they fucked or kissed or even held hands offscreen.

That's honestly a bit insulting to both of these characters, to insist hell or high water that this very important milestone in their relationship happened, but they just didn't even bother to depict it. That an entire love story (because it would be a whole one, remember, Ekko and Powder had a romance but Jinx did not experience any of that, she and Ekko are back at Square One) would just be cut for time.

They both deserve better than that.

Let's stop pretending there was some grand, horny, Forever Love story with 60 minutes of cut footage, all of it timebomb content, somehow left on the cutting room floor of an animated show where every single frame has to be deliberately hand painted.

Because if in some insane universe they had written, storyboarded, voice acted and animated an entire 60 minute additional timebomb storyline and then cut it from the show, that would itself be a searing indictment of the quality of the storytelling in that imagined arc, but that's not what happened. Anyone who knows how filmmaking works would shoot this one down, and the showrunners already have, so let's leave it behind.

I know Timebomb blew up hard, and I get it, but what we got on the screen is not confirmation that there is any relationship at all between Ekko and Current Timeline Jinx. If anything, Ekko and Powder's beautiful romance only highlighted the tragic 'never to be' of Ekko and Jinx.

And it's absolutely fine to look at the art book, look at the creator comments, and imagine what could have been. Draw the fan art, write the fanfic, imagine the what-ifs and the fix-its, those are all beautiful and valid expressions and deserve their space.

But don't go insisting it's "the canon" and going after the shippers of other ships for these characters as "not canon" or somehow offensive for existing, especially toward one particular ship that, yes, has been around much longer than timebomb, is uncool.

I think this is mostly people who are New From Arcane, it's Baby's First Ship and they don't know how to share space. The timebomb fans I knew pre-season two didn't do this, at least not often enough for me to notice or care.

But I'll just say to them, if a Timebomb follow up happens and they actually tell a good love story for Ekko and Jinx, I will accept it. Grudgingly, because I think Lux/Jinx is an untold, untapped story full of incredible character dynamics that would complete Jinx's story in ways that as much as I love Ekko, he's too tied to her past, he can't.

But I love Ekko, and I love Jinx, and I will accept it.

But I'll also say to them, if the followup doesn't eventuate, if things take a turn they don't expect, if Jinx's airship is heading for Demacia, maybe they'll have to experience just a taste of what it's been like for Lightcannon fans for ten long years.

And maybe that's healthy. Maybe that's okay. Maybe our endgames don't need to be 'canon' to have value and that's a lesson we should learn.

Maybe there's a new Light on her horizon, and that's okay too. Maybe Ekko won't be alone forever. Don't forget - until Arcane - his story had nothing to do with Jinx, and there was a whole lot of it.

More with the Firelights, maybe bring in the original Lost Children of Zaun from his old stories, his inventions, his parents, all could yet be in his future. Who knows? He might find a way back to AU!Powder - or she might rebuild what they worked on together, and come to him, no matter what butterfly effects that could set in motion...

But if Jinx is heading for a Light on her horizon, maybe Ekko might Explore some of his possibilities. Find a new Spark of connection. Just saying. Jinx isn't his only ship, either 😌

And it is okay for people to move on, and let go. Maybe, for two characters whose themes are letting go of the past, living in the moment, redefining their identities, and moving on, that's what their story should be.

[arcanetoymakerau]

Happy New Year! Here's the first art: A preview of tm!Jinx through the Acts of this AU!

I promise I won't change her adult design anymore xd if I have another idea, it will be a change lore-wise later in the story.

[alumi-san]

So what I gathered from lol lore, Ekko's parents are alive but held hostage by Renata Glasc (she's one of the chem-barons). Ezreal parents meanwhile are considered dead but he doesn't believe that hoping that he'll find them one day.

Then at some point, Zeri (Ekko's friend) along with Blitzcrank (Viktor’s robot creation) free Renata's hostages including Inna and Wyeth (Ekko's parents).

And here we come to the Ezko angst. Ekko reunites with his parents and while Ezreal is happy for him he's envying at the same time.

[redrum-alice]

Jinx the make-up artist

[burnout-requiem]

⠀⠀⠀⠀❝ zaun is not beneath piltover, ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ no matter how it may appear. ❞

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀★.⠀⠀⠀⠀zaun stamps ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀. . . ♡ + ⎙ + ↻ appreciated !