Silco Wasn't Good — But He Was Enough
I keep seeing debates about whether Silco was a “good father” — but the more I read, the more I realize that so many people judge him by the standards of our world, not his. Zaun is not a place where gentle ideals survive. It's brutal, broken, and unforgiving. You don’t get to parent in a world like that the way you would in ours. And yet… Silco still tried. That’s what makes his relationship with Jinx so powerful — and so tragic.
So I wrote this — not to excuse who he was, but to try and understand how he loved, and why that still matters. Was Silco a good father?
It’s a question that often divides Arcane viewers — yet too often, it’s judged through the lens of modern, idealized standards, rather than the brutal reality of the world Silco and Jinx lived in. To answer honestly, we have to separate our expectations from the world of Zaun — a place where innocence is a liability, and survival outweighs morality.
Silco was a criminal, a revolutionary, a murderer — someone who acted with cold calculation. But he wasn’t hollow. Fatherhood wasn’t his goal — it was a consequence of a choice made from a place of humanity that, despite everything, still lived in him. He wasn’t capable of being a "good" father in the social sense — he didn’t know how. He had never experienced those ideals himself. He was a man shaped by trauma, betrayal by Vander, years of isolation, and a consuming obsession with Zaun’s freedom. Such experiences warp your moral compass. And still — he tried.
You can’t give more than you have. Silco didn’t know how to love in the way we often expect. He had no softness, no experience of tenderness. But he gave Jinx everything he did have — his time, his attention, his presence, and most importantly, a place at his side. He didn’t shut her out or keep her at arm’s length for her protection. He brought her into his world, made her his equal, trusted her with secrets no one else knew. Their relationship was built on trust and understanding — even if the language they spoke was violence and survival.
And more than that — he tried to give more than he had. Even though he wasn’t built for softness, he still tried to protect her, took responsibility for her actions, justified her choices. He sought stability for her, even when he had never known it himself. He was willing to abandon his dream — the dream he had sacrificed everything for — if it meant she would be safe. That’s not manipulation. That’s love, expressed by a man who had no other way to show it.
Jinx, though damaged, wasn’t passive. She recognized in Silco the only person who never left her. Her loyalty wasn’t forced — it was conscious and deep. And that’s why she became his weapon — not because he made her into one, but because she chose to. He never tried to fix her or force her back into being Powder. He let her be who she was. And in her own understanding of love, she accepted his monstrosity and chose to shield him from the world that would tear him down.
He wasn’t a good father by ideal standards. But he was a good father in a world that had no room for ideals. He gave everything he had — even if all he had were broken things. And still, he tried to give more.
