I honestly think that Ekko's trauma is often overlooked or outright pushed aside and ignored by a large section of the Arcane fandom.
Now this does make sense to some degree, Ekko is a side character so it makes sense why he's not as discussed as the main characters of the show but it feels like even as a side character he is often cast aside.
It feels like everyone analyzes every other character thoroughly and for good reason, these are very multi-layered characters but it also feels like with Ekko they barely even give him a side glance and when they do talk about his hurt it seems like they only extend to Jinx. While Jinx is a very large piece of it (seriously they have a whole other thing going on) she definitely is not the only thing lingering on in his mind. I mean he saw his basically uncle get killed in front of him, he is the leader of a resistance group and he also basically lost his entire family in one night, like have you seen the bags under his eyes, that boy is stressed out but it feels like these aspects of his character are ignored by the community.
Honestly his treatment within the fandom mirrors what a lot of black people go through our trauma and hurt is brought up. It is either brushed aside or outright ignored with it often being countered with "that was a long time ago" and this is especially seen with little black girls and boys. The fandom analyzes almost everything within the show from full blown characters to little background details but yet Ekko is often left out of the equation in these discussions and it just makes me a little bit annoyed.
Ekko also suffers from what a lot of other black characters in media do which is the almost bad faith criticisms or misinterpreted thrown them. It feels like a lot of black characters are held up to a standard that no other character gets held too and where their actions are taken in the most negative light on purpose. I haven't seen this that much but I have seen it a handful of times, where people will villainize Ekko and say that he is "getting in the way" of Zaun's liberation which is wild because Ekko out of everyone in the show is the only person that positively effects Zaun and it's people. You even see this in shipping where Ekko is label an abuser or aggressive.
Overall I know this probably doesn't really matter and most of the fandom probably likes Ekko but I just wanted to vent a little bit 😭 and I just hope in S2 they flesh out his character and that the fandom starts to take more notice of him.
Thanks to @letters-to-rosie for helping me think about this more.
Dad Ekko wouldn't mind wearing the sloppy flower crowns Bee made for him while on patrol. He would even pin the flower Bee grew in her own mini tin can garden
Jinx lets Bee stick the flowers on her mom's hair bc its fragrant whenever the wind blows it :3
P.S., Jinx misses using spray paint and bunch of her neon art, but ever since living with Ekko and having Bee, she limited her use of spraypaints because it was toxic for her pregnancy and stepped up with markers and painting instead.
She helped her toddler paint her tin can garden and enjoyed having her decorate her braids with whatver flowers she grew :P