#s2 did ruin me btw how is everyone doing

[ed3lsgard]

My two cents on Silco + him and Jinx

Uhh I have a lot of thoughts and feelings after s2 and I wanna get this off my chest lol. Seeing Silco appear as a hallucination in Jinx’s cell like activated something in me. This will be kinda long.

I’ve always found Silco’s character fascinating, he’s one of my favorite arcane characters. He’s set up to be the antagonist but there’s more to it than that, it’s not black and white. The whole point of arcane is that every character has a reason to do what they do, they are supposed to be morally grey. If you had to pick a villain for reason one, yes it would obviously be Silco. But again, everyone has a reason to do what they do.

Silco’s ultimate goal was to establish the independent nation of zaun. He wanted to free his people from their ties with piltover, to get rid of their control. Now, did the way he go about that was ethical or humane? No, he caused many people to die, he spread shimmer to the public, causing them irreversible damage. Silco, though he had his reasons to do what he did, “for a greater cause”, regardless was still not a good man.

But his relationship with jinx if you ask me, somewhat redeems him, or at least makes him much more likable. It’s adds a depth to his character. In all honesty, his relationship with jinx was mostly of a toxic and manipulative nature. He enabled her behaviors, manipulated her for his cause, and is a huge part of the reason why jinx grew up to be so unhinged and unstable. Was he a good man? No. Was he a good father? No not really. But there is one undeniable fact. He loved jinx unconditionally as his daughter. Everything he did for the future of zaun, he did with her at mind. With the context of season two, we find that Felicia tells him and vander to figure out this zaun thing for her, and especially for her kids. This information sheds a new layer of light into Silco’s motivations.

This is highlighted by the fact that when he went to negotiate with jayce, when Jayce asked for jinx in return for the independent nation of zaun, the one singular goal he dedicated a massive chunk of life to achieve, for the first time he hesitated. The one topic he never would have thought to be unsure of pursuing. Because he was doing all of this for jinx, as he tells her himself. But if he had to give up his daughter for it, the nation he was trying to secure not just for everyone, but for her, what good will that do? Just as he tells the statue of vander, “is there anything so undoing as a daughter?”. This is when everything falls into place for him. How he presumably started from using her and manipulating her for his cause when he first took her in, to then truly seeing her as his daughter, loving her enough to choose her over his dream. He finds himself finally understanding vander, why he was so reluctant to fight in order to protect his kids. Again, as he says: “oh it all makes sense now brother. Is there anything so undoing, as a daughter?”

Silco was not a good father, because he was too traumatized and too damaged to know how to be one. This is not meant as an excuse for him, it is just a fact. The traumas he endured (fallout with vander, losing Felicia, the oppression of zaun etc) probably rendered him incapable of being the proper, stable father figure jinx needed. But he still loved her, truly saw her as his daughter. If the circumstances were different, if he was normal or if they both were, he probably would have been a good father.

There is a distinct difference between him and vander as being jinx’s fathers. Vander saw himself in vi, as he was once like her, understood her wanting to fight for their city, for family, against piltover ect. Him and vi were more similar and alike. But silco saw himself in jinx. It is the reason why he was quick to take her in. Because he had been in the exact place she was, abandoned by the older sibling, left all alone. He empathized with her.

In the end, despite how manipulative he might have been, how he only enabled her decline, it wasn’t done on purpose, it was just how it was. he still loved her unconditionally. Loved her enough to give up his dream for her, to take her bullets and to die for her. His dying words to her was telling her she was perfect. Not as jinx, as he had said before in the river “jinx is perfect”. As he was dying, he didn’t know if she would choose to be powder or jinx, (since she had pulled out both of the chairs with the names on it, whichever one she would sit on would be who she would be). But instead he said she was perfect, insinuating as whoever she chose to be. His dying words to his daughter were to validate her.

Do I think they had a healthy normal father and daughter relationship? No. But I love the complexity of it, how both of these individuals are so broken and traumatized due to what they have been through, but can take comfort in each other due to a mutual understanding.