#discourse lol

[fayewoodss]

I know this subject was beat to death long before me, but when people talk negatively about the dream team (not in a good faith, nuanced critical way, but genuinely just being vitriolic and hateful), the conversation immediately veers into anti-neurodivergent and ableist talking points. It's fine to dislike them and be normal about that dislike. You have that right. But when discussing why you dislike them and you immediately bring up proven lies and disgusting "psychoanalysis" that is literally just "this [INSERT NEURODIVERGENT TRAIT HERE] is bad and evil," you are not being some holier than thou warrior. You are actively harming many people.

I know that being neurodivergent myself leads to projection onto these CCs, but pulling myself out of parasocial land, one of them is literally diagnosed with ADHD and has openly speculated having ASD, one is currently seeing a psychiatrist about ADHD diagnosis, and the last one has had multiple discussions about neurodivergency with the previous two. Not that diagnosis is what makes them "valid," but these are content creators that, for all their privacy, have been very open about neurodivergency and it's challenges, including their own faults. It's clear that people exploit their vulnerability and openness with that topic and use it against them. This isn't uncommon by any means, every neurodivergent person has experienced it, but seeing it get brought up again and again and again is so exhausting and borders on dangerous at this point.

And honestly it's gone beyond dangerous for Dream before, so you'd think people would learn...

[coffee-at-annies]

Is it wrong for me to watch hockey for the blorbos? Like wins are cool but it's more important to me that my blorbos are vibing. Lbr only one team to can get cup each year so it feels more realistic to be blorbo-centric

Hey anon, I want you to know that the desire to just post this with a trap card and call it a day was very strong. Because this is a discourse topic. But I’m gonna do my best to answer you in my best attempt at good faith. May not come across that way, 🤷‍♀️ doing my best.

First off, this is about watching games and interacting with actual sports and its fans online and offline, not fanworks, fanfic, nor rpf. RPF is fine. I’m not talking about it. If you want to be an rpf-centric hockey fan— good for you. I’m talking about watching hockey games.

Is it wrong for you to watch hockey for the blorbos? There’s no right way to watch hockey. There’s no right reason. As long as you aren’t stalking someone or committing a crime, then watch for the reasons you want to watch. Favorite players give the game color and spice. They can lead to new favorite teams or more favorite players if you’ve got an open heart. The problem starts when you say one reason (your reason) is better than other reasons or that every person should share your reason. It’s very easy to talk down to other fans because obviously you’re right. It’s very easy to get talked down to by others for those same reasons, and I’m sorry if that’s happened to you. As you can see, this is where we get discourse.

(I am specifically using favorite players because these are real people and it’s really easy to forget that between RPF and the word blorbo. Hockey isn’t scripted. If you want scripted sports go check out wrestling, I promise queer wrestling is a bunch of fun.)

Lke wins are cool but it's more important to me that my blorbos are vibing. That’s nice. Genuinely I’m glad you get enjoyment out of your favorite players doing well. I care that my team wins. It sucks when the team wins and my favorite player has a bad game and it sucks when the team loses and my favorite player had an objectively excellent game. For me, the two inform each other. I can’t just put my desire to see my team win on the shelf and root for the players when it’s a team sport. Sometimes it works, but not always.

To put all my cards on the table I’m a team-centric fan first, a player-centric fan second, and a sport-centric fan third. What that means in practice is I watch hockey games for my team, then my favorite players, and then for the love of the sport. Take women’s hockey for example. I don’t have a team nor a favorite player which is why I catch one game out of every twelve and don’t always make it through a game. It’s not a value judgement, it’s just a statement of facts. The sport is nice but I care about my team doing well and my favorite players doing well and I care about the team more.

Lbr only one team to can get cup each year so it feels more realistic to be blorbo-centric. Now this^ this is why I wanted to hit you with a trap card and not answer this ask. Because I don’t agree with that. I want my team to win every year. I care that my team doesn’t. I don’t want anyone else to win. I don’t like hockey on its own enough to overcome the seething burning jealousy that other teams are getting good things and my team isn’t, this includes former favorite players. I don’t care that my emotional support depth forward from last season is having by all accounts a fantastic season and is much beloved. He should be having it with my team or not at all for all I care. This is why former players are dead to me. This is not a polite viewpoint, which is why I don’t tend to say it to peoples faces. Part of being a little hater sometimes is wanting my team to win and every other team to non-lethally die in a fire (no injuries pls).

To say it’s more realistic that my team can’t win it all may be true but it’s also the exact wrong platitude to say to me because idk I live in a fantasy land where every year could be our year and then by the time playoffs roll around without my team in them, well the sport is dead to me. I’m okay with that. Even beyond that, if you came up to me and said “I know the pens suck but at least Sid hit another milestone” my first instinct is to say “that’s nice, I wish we won.” Can you see where the disconnect and the arguing starts? If I reversed it and said “sorry your boy had a bad game, at least the team won” would you not feel upset because it may not actually be effective at cheering you up. Thats where the perceived wrongness you’re asking about comes from. People with different priorities offering platitudes that don’t work. Personally I’ve seen enough Sid milestones this season that I do think it kinda sucks if he gets the milestone and we still lose the game. I’m pretty sure the entire team feels that way too which is why it was nice that we won Geno’s milestone game.

Okay. Now this. This is a discourse opinion. A lot of single-player-centric fans don’t care if the team is an on fire trash heap so long as no one says a bad word about their blorbo. Usually you can coexist with these fans, but some of them project so hard onto the player that they then take any criticism as criticism against themselves. I’ve seen people start shouting in the lb because “nobody appreciates [player] the way I appreciate him” and “you should all be ashamed of yourselves.” It makes for an unfun environment to be in. I hang out in the lb because I enjoy the vibes of watching hockey in a group. Not to be yelled at when I say “ugh that was a bad play by [player] and the other team scored.” Which is really fucking mild compared to some of the hate I see get thrown around about other players that I’m not repeating.

So no nothing wrong with being a player-first fan. Just think about how you interact with other fans and what vibes you’re putting into the spaces you’re creating and inhabiting. Are you allowing reasonable criticism? Are you lashing out at other fans for “doing fandom wrong?” If other fans are making you feel like you’re doing fandom wrong, I’m very sorry you feel that way and you should probably block them or find other fandom spaces.

[takemyrevolutions]

.

[utsugi-ren]

"Trans men can't be lesbians" cool wanna see me do a kick flip? (Fails) lemme try again (fails) lemme try again (fails) lemme tr

[thecatamaranlad]

this is the best reaction image EVER. "i think it's fine to point out that if you're really this gullible, internet access is dangerous for you"

Posting all of the pills that make you green comics here now, enjoy? I guess?

regret rates

proof

talking points

you problem

owned

modern invention

unethical experiments

typology

think of the children

side effects

facts

making sense

rushing

drawings

research

this rocks

valid

[deepcoraldragon]

List of ccs publicly supporting Tommy & Tubbo

(or who just spoke out against Dream in general. or both.) as of jan 13

I haven’t seen a list on here yet so here goes (I def forgot some people, and I’m missing a few screenshots but this took foreverrr)

Content creators explicitly siding with clingyduo

Jack

AverageHarry

Ranboo

Phil

Sneegsnag

MaxGGs (could not pick a favorite tweet)

Aimsey

Kwite

SophieTexas

ConnorEatsPants

Krinios

a6d

Bitzel (not that we’re surprised)

Ludwig apparently

RosannaPansino

KyleEff

Dean Withers, coming out of left field

Molly (melinks)

Its_blarg

Mysticat

ItsZoil I think

Michael McChill

Content creators who didn’t say anything explicitly but we can read between the lines

HannahRose

Quackity (idgaf undefeated champion)

Shelby Shubble (see Phil)

Vikkstar

People who aren’t ccs but still get an honorable mention

Sarah Simons (Tommy’s mom)

Rue (Tommy’s old roommate)

Ady Manifold

Andi (Punz's ex) (I had to cut the post, sorry)

And that's everyone I can think of rn! Please add on if I forgot someone, if new people speak out, or if you have more screenshots to share!

Edit: here's the updated version from jan 20th, and the summary list

[eofaquitaine]

People like this need to understand that while there were many aspects of her life that were unfair, she was still a vile person representative of the oppression faced by the French people.

I sincerely doubt anyone with actual historical knowledge criticizing Marie Antoinette nowadays disagrees with the sentiment that it is wrong to ship a young girl off to a foreign land to get married. Nor are we saying that she wasn’t in many ways unfairly judged by her fellow royals. She faced xenophobia and misogyny. When she created a new version of “Queendom” she ruffled many feathers. The trial claiming incest was unfair.

All of this is true, and I do believe that someone can be unfairly judged and still deserve what they got. Marie Antoinette was a greedy person, although conditioned to be that way, she made no real effort to help the people she reigned over. She may have been a victim in certain aspects but she is directly responsible for the suffering in the lives of almost every citizen in the third estate. Why does her relatively insignificant suffering matter more than the very lives of the citizens of France? Why is her “femininity” more important than the femininity of the millions of women who marched in the streets? Is it because she had her fancy silk dresses while the common woman could not even afford to feed her starving children? Marie Antoinette was a bad person and it’s not “feminist” to ignore that, and the brave women who marched on versailles are ten times the woman she ever was. Not to make this about gender but gender discourse is often a point of contention regarding Ms Antoinette

tldr: No ones saying Marie Antoinette didn’t face difficulties, but they are very inconsequential when sized up against all the awful things she did to the french people and the suffering she was responsible for.

I lose a piece of my sanity every time I interact with Marie Antoinette defenders on yt comment sections. “she actually just wanted to live a simple life in a farm with louis xvi. She even wrote to her mother to save her. The french hated her because she was a woman 😢😢” 1.2k likes in 2 days.

I asked “Has anyone picked up a history book? What the French wrote during the Revolution?”

Then somebody with a Gacha life profile replied “We don’t care what the french think when we can study the real history. I bet you’re one of those people that believe she had incest with her son.”

What? Why did it escalate that quickly. I cannot believe Marie Antoinette has raging fans you’d expect from Taylor Swift. She is dead people <<DEAD>>. What legacy are you trying to salvage in 2025? Kirsten Dunst’s performance is not a biography. The French Revolution in 1 minute does not make you a historian. Don’t believe your history teacher either because they’re skimming over frev to get to the next unit as fast as possible.

They’re teenage girls, stanners, Marie Antoinette is girlyyy pop ✨✨💅🏻💅🏻, “I don’t know what an estates general is!!!” What is a clergy? I am ignorant!! 😁🎉🥳

It frustrates me. It makes me mean. I am no longer engaging in stuff like this. I need to distance myself from negativity.

Where was this information from? Tik Tok?

Case concluded.

[askivv]

okay, but like, who the fuck keeps telling dream he was the reason dsmp was popular ? mfer, ur villain character was outdone by fucking Jschlatt . who didnt even want to be there . You were on the same server as Technoblade . sit the hell down .

[wikiangela]

athena bringing Bobby home to his children, when he always wanted to see them again and be with them again, was such a beautiful act of love and sacrifice. she can't even visit his grave and be close to him without flying to Minnesota, she loved him so much and she knew what he would want. it's such a devastating and heartbreaking choice and an act of love and im forever gonna cry about it.

bathena truly are (were 😭) the best couple ever, nothing will ever compare to their love 😭

[shitpostingsapphic]

Why I don't feel disappointed by Vi's arc, but you might

I usually have pretty strong and polarizing opinions when it comes to my takes on Arcane, but this is one where I wanna open up the discussion a bit more and invite people to my perspective, and it's fine if you don't see it this way.

I think there are two primary reasons why people feel disappointed by the arc of s2 Vi. The first, being that Vi had stronger voiced concerns about the state of Zaun in the first season. The second, being that she spent the whole show wanting to be with her sister and she didn't end up getting that.

Why I actually feel fulfilled in Vi's arc has to do with these two points, and I invite you to sit with what I have to say next.

Both of these parts of Vi have to do with her fatal flaw: her neglect of self.

We know two things based on what the creators have said about the show: the theme of Arcane is the cycle of violence, and the entire show was written together, instead of season 2 being written after season 1 production. From this, I can then ask: what do the creators want to tell their audience about this message, knowing they wrote it all out together, knowing the events of season 2 were very purposeful, using Vi as a conduit for that message?

If violence is a cycle, can one person defy it? No, of course not. At the start of Vi's arc, she wants to be a person that breaks it, though. She wants to change things in Zaun, wants a better life for her sister. As season 1 continues on, she wants to pick up where she left off with Powder without truly processing the gravity of the years between them. She thinks she can hold the world on her shoulders and fix any problem that comes her way. She thinks she can use her fists to make progress, thinks she can physically reach out and create change, but it only contributes to the cycle. And that's not because she's morally in the wrong when she does so, but she doesn't grasp yet that her fists can't fix everything. Vander tries to tell her as such in act 1, and it's a lesson that goes beyond just the literal application.

Vi's tendency to try and fix everything around her leads to her neglect of self. Inevitably, when you try to change things you have no control over, it leaves wounds. It leaves a person feeling like something is deeply wrong with them. And we watch Vi go down this spiral. I actually find myself really brokenhearted watching Vi in the first 2 acts, because I think she represents a lot of us: we see pain and devastation around us, but we don't know what the right thing to do is. We try different tactics and try to fix things and are left wondering why things feel worse than how they started.

I think that's something a lot of viewers could benefit to reflect on: I think in watching a show with strong political messaging, we yearn for a message that tells us the answers to these big problems. Truthfully, most of us don't have a fucking clue what we're doing. We want change but don't know how to see it through. That includes the writers. This isn't a show about the solution to political strife. It's about the cycle of violence. It's about not knowing how to change something that's been continuous throughout history in some form.

If we put ourselves in Vi's shoes, it would eventually take a toll on us to try and change something that isn't within our ability to change. Vi can't fix the problems in Zaun. Vi can't change the way time and distance and pain has warped her sister into someone else. In season 2 act 1, she's still trying to take responsibility for things that are outside of her control. She blames herself for the way Jinx has changed and has to tell herself that the only way to fix it is to end the cycle with her own fists. She teams up with Caitlyn because she's convinced herself it's the only way she can help. She sees how violence has devastated not only Zaun but innocents in Piltover as well, and she feels responsible for it.

BUT SHE IS NOT AT FAULT. And she cannot fix it any more than she could have created it.

Perhaps people may feel Vi's arc is lacking because they wanted to see more of her involvement in the revolution of Zaun. They wanted to see her be able to change the situation with her sister and for them to live happily together. But because of the circumstances surrounding both, for Vi to do so, she would inevitably lean into her fatal flaw. She cannot do either of those things without neglecting herself. That's not who she is.

The whole point of a character arc is for someone to be a changed person from beginning to end. If Vi starts out as someone passionate about enacting change to the point of self-destruction, what would a resolution for a character like that look like?

Vi needs to choose herself. Vi needs to release herself of the responsibility of changing the world. She can't do it. There are ways to contribute to positive change that don't involve putting the world on your shoulders, and Vi has yet to put herself first in any situation. Vi choosing love is how she does it.

Amanda Overton, one of the main writers that contributed to Vi's character and the Caitlyn and Vi dynamic and relationship, said about Vi: "If she has no one left to protect, she would fall in love". If Vi finally lets go of this crutch of hers to protect, to fight, to take responsibility for things that aren't her burden to bear, she would fall in love. She would finally be able to choose something for herself.

This is why I find her arc fulfilling. I feel like it's not an arc we really see a lot. It's not every day we have a character that starts out like the classic anime slash marvel protagonist, and instead of being the person that saves the world, they accept they're not a superhero and it's okay to choose love and personal happiness.

If it applies, and you're reading this, I want you to ask yourself: are you perhaps disappointed with her arc because you expected her to be the superhero? And would you be okay with accepting that she isn't and doesn't need to be? That it would be better for her to choose herself?

[ponett]

Sorry for the Sonic mention in here, but did you see the Umineko reference in IDW Sonic #75?

I didn't! I also can't find it upon rereading the issue. I was like "oh that sounds 100% in character for Nathalie" (who was literally drawing Sonic characters as Umineko characters not long ago), but I couldn't find anything like a Battler mobian in the background in the pages she colored, or anything anywhere else. Please enlighten me

[radpool]

I just think logan deserves to bottom after 200-ish years of being both touch-starved AND pigeonholed (so to speak lmao) as a strict dom top 🫡

(or so I imagine because cmon. who doesn't expect The Wolverine to be a dominant animal in bed?? give the man a break, wade is more than willing to step up to the plate and help logan catch up on all that time wasted not getting railed to within an inch of his immortal life 😜)

uncensored piece on bluesky (same username) 😘

[bixels]

For a moment I forgot Tumblr’s still radfem headquarters.

[mourning-at-night]

jace i don’t feel good was so funny but also made me so sad. like that’s a teenager with a strawberry squishmallow keychain and a tamagotchi and she doesn’t feel good and she's tugging on a teacher’s sleeve about it. a teacher who should have been responsible for protecting her in the first place and didn’t. who is manipulating and using her and her friends to help fulfill the desires of a wrathful power-hungry egomaniac. porter and jace it’s on sight >:(

[lacystar]

the issue with the dream smp being named after dream is that . its too narratively fitting to change. it is Dream's smp. and that has the unfortunate consequence of it being named after a scumbag and all of the legendary acclaim and art it gave us being directly linked to him just by name alone. but narratively . its c!dream's smp. "its not Tommy's smp or Tubbo's smp!" HE WAS RIGHT. ITS NOT. THAT IS THE ENTIRE DRIVE OF THE CONFLICT. OF HIS CHARACTER. IT WAS HIS SMP. and now he's just an owner of nothing . of some land but of no subjects. he never had the control wilbur or schlatt or even fucking tubbo had. the server is named after him. so what? there is nobody around him that earnestly depends upon him. nobody that cares. this is All he has. a name. a title. hollow and empty.

[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.