silco really did just force his own unhealthy coping mechanisms onto jinx, thinking it was the only way to help her.
the "eye of zaun", the "jinx", they're both turning their traumas into a brand. silco's fixated on the river he almost drowned in, framing it in his mind as not trauma, but an important lesson. a baptism. a rebirth. all to avoid the fear he actually felt. he can dismiss the pain and terror as the emotions of someone other than himself entirely, some other version of him that he let die, so that he never has to actually confront it.
and he thinks that that's what jinx needs to do too. to let powder die, to become someone else. reframe her trauma, make it her identity. and she does. she names herself jinx, she draws the things she has flashbacks about over and over again until her room is covered in the proof of her "rebirth" as jinx.
but it doesn't work for her the way it "worked" for him. she's younger, she was way younger when it all happened to her, it's imprinted into her brain in a completely different way. she can't repress it the way he does. all of the reminders only do that; remind her. she hallucinates and has breakdowns and none of this is healthy for her. she can't recover, not in this environment of constant triggers.
silco doesn't understand that, because it "worked" for him. he wears his trauma as a role, a mask, a brand. the eye, a very real permanent disability of his, becomes a logo and a signature. the river becomes a metaphor for rebirth and change, instead of what it actually is: a large body of water full of toxins that he almost drowned in. sort of off-topic, but this is the main reason why the song "dramaturgy" reminds me of silco so much: he's performing his own trauma as a role. he's purposefully leaning into the dramatics of it, the themes, he's turning his own life into a compelling story. because that's easier for him than confronting the actual horror of what he went through.
there is, however, one moment in s1 where we see silco express a raw sort of terror directly because of his trauma, and that's when vander wraps his hand around his throat in episode 3. only for a moment, the reality of it all sunk in again. he'd spent years wearing his trauma like a costume, but right then, he was forced to acknowledge once again that that costume was him. vander's hand wrapped around his throat, and he was that boy again, terrified and choking, drowning, lungs burning, being beaten to a pulp and strangled by someone he thought he could trust. for just a moment, that elaborate coping mechanism he'd built for himself crumbled. the eye is just an injury. the river is just a river. drowning isn't rebirth. he's just that traumatized boy. he'll always be that traumatized boy.
until the mask slips back on, and he forces that meaning into his own suffering once more. now he's the eye of zaun again, and he has to kill vander. that's a compelling story, isn't it? and it has to be. it has to have meaning. he'll make sure it has a meaning.
titsay
turnnoffyourmind
gamechangershow
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
germansingergirl
romaincrisis
