I’m going to give Celine a break on the blender for this one
(I LOVE your angsty Celine stuff 😭 you`re amazing)
(But I also love Celine and the girls and I get so sad watching them suffer lol sorry)
(Also sorry for the spelling mistakes, english is not my first language and I’m not in the mood to check on google translate)
Sooo it kind of came to me on a dream (at least the basics):
What if Celine had a friend that is EXTREMELY head over heels for her?
Like, they met once years ago, when Rumi was yet to have her 8 birthday and Mira and Zoey were not chosen by the Honmoon yet. They met at a party and since they were both young CEO’s they started talking (same age or very close, you guys choose). The two of them hit off quite well so they became fast friends. They talked a lot on phone, calls or chat, because they’re very busy women! That’s kind of the reason why people don’t know that they’re friends. The girls also don’t know how close they are, thinking they are the kind of friends that only talk with each other once every blue moon and when they meet each other at events.
Anyway! The CEO friend (let’s call her Dahee so it’s easier 😭) allways had a small crush on Celine, but never said anything since Celine had once said in an interview that she would only be thinking about daring after the girls get older and move out. (Celine had expressed how she hated the guy’s question, but knew that it was common for these people to try to get viewers out of others. And if the interviewer suddenly got blacklisted out of the industry, Dahee can only shrug and say “good grief” as Celine questions her). And when the girls finally moved out of Jeju, Dahee started her moves, though she only got really into it after the events of the movie.
She’s so good at it too. She sends Celine flowers that she knows that Celine either likes or wanted to get for a long time. She always gets reservations at restaurants that Celine loves (that is if she doesn’t cook for her when they meet at each other's houses). She goes full on research mode when Celine talks about something, or even if she shows the slightest bit of interest in something, just so that she can see the excitement glow in Celine’s eyes and voice. She literally gives Celine and Mira a run for their money for the lovergirl title.
And the girls HATE it with a passion. They thought that they were just good friends, not that Dahee wanted to bang their mom mentor guardian (?). The worst part is that she stopped trying to hide. Even the internet started to catch on, and they are LOVING it, especially the lovesick way that one of the most powerful CEOs of Korea look at her CEO friend. (That and the fact that they’re both very hot middle age women)
(The girls hate it because, please, that’s their mom-mentor! And they’re scared that this woman just wants to hurt Celine! And maybe they’re thinking that it’s their karma for always bothering Celine for help on trying to confess to each other. That woman SUFFERED pre-polytrix)
Huntrix tries everything to make sure that Dahee stops trying to make moves on Celine. They made sure to create scenarios where Celine shows her true wet-cat and sad-kicked-puppy personality. AND WHY DOES THE WOMAN JUST GET MORE IN LOVE AFTER THAT??? The girls, especially Rumi, are SO close to a mental breakdown.
And the best part is that Celine is just oblivious to the whole thing. She thinks her friend is amazing, and smart, and beautiful, and hot, and- But she knows that there is no way in hell that someone like Dahee would ever like Celine. There just isn’t! And every time that someone points out Dahee’s actions, Celine’s just like: “Oh, no! Hahahah! She’s just being a good friend! That’s all!”
(Huntrix cry and start to understand Celine’s annoyance when they said the same thing about each other)
Anyways I thought it would be hilarious!
Omg middle-aged sad cat woman being oblivious as hell my beloved 🥺
(Celine who has been asked, "so about your love life" more times than she can count and lived with speculations about secret lovers her entire life.)
(Celine who is so tired of being asked about her love life ask though that were the most important thing about her)
(Celine who had resigned herself to the idea that it simply wasn't her fate to find love in this life and she had been fine with that she wasn't one of those girls who needed to be in a relationship, who didn't know how to be single --)
(She had a daughter -- three, really -- even if she couldn't actually claim them as such and that was enough for her)
(Dahee was...a friend.)
(One of the very few people she could call friends these days; one of the few who kept barreling into her life after the idol awards, who refused to let Celine isolate herself even when all she wanted to do was disappear)
(And --)
(Celine had lived on this earth for fifty some years.)
(She knew what a crush was)
(Her last crushes were on her sister hunters and that had... gone so well hadn't it?)
(So she holds her feelings close, so tightly to her chest that she can almost pretend that she's smothering it.)
(And if she pretends, then nothing has to change and there's nothing to lose)
Uhm this was not what I meant when I said to get her out of the blender ?!?!?!
CELINE!!! GET BEHIND ME!!!
Jokes aside
I get where you’re coming from. It has a lot of angst potential. Middle aged woman that has spent SO much time living for others that she not only forgot how to live for herself but is also afraid of doing so, since the last time she tried doing that it didn’t end well.
And her inner turmoil for trying to not accept that she fell in love with a dear friend of hers (again!) and not wanting to ruin what they already have. But still thinking she’ll ruin it anyway because that is what she does best, taint others.
(Isn’t that what she did with Miyeong and Third? Isn’t that what she did with her daughters girls students? To Rumi?)
And maybe she’s oblivious not because she truly doesn’t see the way Dahee acts as flirting. But maybe because she thinks that there is absolutely no way that someone who knows her (really knows her, not the “know” by seeing her interviews and photos on magazines) would ever want her like that. Much more Dahee of all people, who had seen her sick, who had seen her cry her heart out after a bad episode, who had seen her panic attacks, who had seen-
And maybe, when she finds out about Dahee’s crush, instead of happy Celine gets devastated, because it would only be a matter of time before her “luck” gets her friend and something bad happens.
Because, really, she had accepted that she was fated to be alone forever. That no one would ever love her the way she loved them. That the moment they even tried, or got closer than they should, something would happen.
(Miyeong died the day she was about to confess to Celine and Third)
(Third left her the moment that Celine refused to be the tool molded by their mentors. Refused to kill a baby her their daughter just because she was half demon)
(That girl all those years ago, from before she was a hunter, an idol. The girl that simply made sure that Celine knew that she was wrong, that she wasn’t normal. Made sure that everyone knew, the school, the neighborhood, her parents. Safe to say, it didn’t end up well)
You gave me a lot of ideas! Would you mind if I used this to make a fic? (It might take a while though 😅)
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 E2 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.
