Let’s talk about Silco’s parenting.
An essay. Because the internet is stupid.
The meta is going to touch on the question of manipulation (a commonly raised but moot point), the concept of “good” parenting versus “perfect” parenting, his relationship with Vander, as well as a double standard I see with traumatized people both in fiction and in real life.
My employment of “you” below is addressing waves hand vaguely I don’t know, the unseen masses? Naturally, this isn’t any sort of pointed attack on anyone. It’s merely a meta commentary on talking point trends I have seen over the past couple months and common discourse on social platforms.
First of all, the standard which Silco’s parenting seems most often measured against makes most questions of “good” and “healthy” irrelevant. This is not modern day current culture with access to therapy or education about cognitive reconditioning. This is fiction, there’s magic and fucking talking guinea pigs in government positions and this man is a crime boss who floods the streets with drugs to financially support weapons manufacturing. Let’s keep that in mind, shall we? His atrocities are part of him and I think they’re funny.
Second of all, the argument I see often is that manipulation automatically means bad father. It doesn’t. They are not mutually exclusive. Do you know why? Well, I well tell you because I am so tired of black and white media analysis with zero question of ‘why’ for the characters within it.
Trauma will often be the root of toxic behavior and unhealthy methods of coping. Even being aware of it, we have to actively work against it in ourselves. I was raised in a traumatic environment, I learned toxic traits. These needed to be unlearned with the help of a therapist over time. Because we are not measuring his choices against real life standard, we have to look at intention. That is ALL we can look at because how it manifests is a question of trauma response, a manifestation of genuine belief that stems from hostile experience and a broken sense of safety relationally and otherwise.
Silco’s primary source of relational safety brutally violated that safety.
When he tells Jinx that everyone betrays them, he means it. When he says it’s only them, he means it. It’s not about isolating her. It’s a desperate attempt to teach her what life has taught him through personal experience. It doesn’t matter if its true or not, he believes it is based on what he knows and he wants to offer his daughter lessons that he thinks will empower her to take agency for herself.
Is it healthy to teach your child that the world cannot be trusted outside of your tiny family? No, of course not. Does he lie to her about Vi and claim that she is there for the crystal only? Yes! He does! Whether or not he believes that himself, truly, is subjective and I think both the interpretation of deception on purpose versus his active belief that Vi will abandon her are both perfectly valid.
But that isn’t the pertinent question in the discussion of whether or not he is a good father, the argument itself is irrelevant on the subject of manipulation because the intention has not changed. He is afraid of losing her. He is afraid of what will happen if she is outside of his care. He’s scared. That fear manifests the way it naturally would for someone with his understanding of relationships.
And intentions do matter when we are dealing with people with this level of untreated personal trauma in storytelling, which is the lens were are looking through here. If you want to measure all fictional dynamics against a generalized standard of healthy behavior, then you’re missing the point. We, as people, try to maintain healthy dynamics in our relationships and to be aware. Stories are not real life and characters in Arcane, while realistic, have a different environment.
So, on the question of using a prodigy to further his goals. Does he employ her skills for the sake of the undercity’s sovereignty? Yes, he does. The Nation of Zaun is everything to him. It is the point of his entire arc. The visuals, narrative, it smacks you in the face with his internal conflict at a constant: Jinx or Zaun.
It might see a strange point to raise but I have seen it said many a time that his impressing on her the importance of the weapon, the crystal, all of it somehow makes it so that he doesn’t care about her. But that is... the point. That is his primary character conflict, the undoing of a dream carefully sewn for years all for the sake of her. He battles that continually during the second and third acts.
And do we see, very clearly, over and over again, a man that chooses this child above all else? Over himself, Zaun, without question? Yes, we do. You cannot argue otherwise, you really can’t. I’m sorry but that isn’t a discussion point with anything to stand on. The first glimpse we have is an immediate peek into how much he has prioritized her to the point of losing respect from his own people. He takes time away to ease her fear, he allows her into his personal space at a constant, this girl is precious to him and it shows.
In regard to his operatives? Manipulation is all he knows, he lacks interpersonal skills, he has a cracked view of what it means to trust, and he is under-socialized. This occurs. This happens. This is human behavior. There’s default to manipulation as well as a default to violence. Based on how he was raised, the environment he was forced to grow up in, his experiences with those he loved (Vander) of course that is where he goes when he’s desperate.
Nothing Silco did surprised me in regard to negative tactics. It was all rooted in something I could easily understand and see from his history. But the lack of interest in the ‘why’ of characters with that kind of complexity is telling to me. It seems that characters that aren’t easily sorted in “good” and “bad” are hard to hold so often. So, we simply drop them. We reduce them. That saddens me.
When Silco thinks he is going to lose the only person that he values, trusts, that loves him back and offers him a sense of purpose, does he use what could be described as manipulative language to keep her? You bet! Why the fuck would we expect anything else from him? That does not make him a bad father, it makes him a broken man who has a warped view of the world because he was bent that way. And that man loves this kid more than anything and even through all the cracks in his vision, he tries his best to be what she needs. THAT is what makes a good parent. It is not being perfect. It is the urge to try.
I love this quote by Mitch Albom about the nature of parenting:
All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.
The constant lack of empathy I see in ‘media analysis’ these days alarms me because it utterly lacks compassion while veiling itself as righteousness. A viewer casts judgement rather than looking at the human experience being displayed. There is no true compassion and understanding, there’s only performative, waving a proverbial flag of moral superiority.
The unconditional love and support Silco offers Jinx is deeply profound. His desire to meet her, always, where she is with patience. His allowance of her taking over his life and his personal space, his constant marvel at WHO she is? That? Giving her that despite his complete lack of it in his own life? That’s so fucking beautiful. It doesn’t eliminate the other parts, manipulation, projection, etc., any more than those parts don’t eliminate a father’s extraordinary love. They can coexist. And they do.
I believe Silco made mistakes because that is what parents do. But I also believe that man knew this kid, saw this kid, fostered her uniqueness and offered her a sense of safety in herself where she did not have one prior. Vander couldn’t do that for her, neither could Vi.
He understands how her mind works, that she needs to know she is still trusted after she messed up. He gives her the injection tool as a physical demonstration of that continued trust. He takes her to the river to show her, using sensory experiences that she can hold, that he believes her to be good enough, perfect, loved as she is. She has another breakdown in the last episode and he knows that warm memories for Vi are triggers for her and he wants to stop it.
Silco gets her. He sees her. And for a girl that needs to feel accepted, he offers it despite his own suffering. THAT is a good father.
Silco did his best with the tools that he had. And he died for her and he would do it on purpose as well by accident. If that isn’t perfect enough for you, good luck building healthy relationships with people that have trauma because we all have wounds that will manifest with toxicity despite our best efforts. It’s human.
People say they love a damaged character but then when that character demonstrates realistic consequences of that trauma, they demonize them for it.
What message does that send to people that have similar struggle because of something that was done to them? That your worth is measured by how much you hide the less than savory pieces of you? That if you aren’t without negatives, you’re bad? We all have bullshit, we all have bad coping methods, some of us more than others but its part of recovery.
Like Silco, those of us that have trauma responses to things that manifest in negative behavior fight toxicity in our blood and our bodies and our brains. If you like the “angst” of painful backstory but reject the consequences, you’re fetishizing human pain. That’s all.
TL;DR Silco is a good dad and I love him. A lot.
