#and I'm just not completely convinced that that isn't due in part to unconscious race + gender biases

[jackalmeat]

Mostly just throwing spaghetti at my own mental wall and seeing what sticks, but I have Unorganized And Poorly Articulated Thoughts about the fact that Ekko and Jinx are around the same age, lost their guardians and peer groups at the same time and in a deeply traumatic way, etc.; and yet I feel like Ekko's status as a victim of their broken, oppressive, and exploitative social landscape doesn't receive remotely the same acknowledgment or weight as Jinx's.

While I'm sure that that's due in large part to the fact that Ekko has been successful at building a sense of healthy, mutualistic belonging + community with others in a way that Jinx clearly hasn't, it's nonetheless worth noting that [A] he had to build that and learn how to take care of both himself and others when he was still a child, and the maturity he exhibits is a direct and tragic result of his boyhood being cut violently short; and [B] failing to acknowledge him meaningfully as a victim and a kid, just because he seems to have 'turned out okay' or some-such, reads very distinctly to me like an extension of the documented tendency in our own world for people to "adultify" young black boys due to perceiving them as older, less innocent, and more threatening/less in need of protection than their white peers.