Sorry But It’s Sympathetic Reading Of Agamemnon Time, Feel Free To Scroll Past This If You Don’t

Hi, I'm not sure if you've talked about this before and it might be silly to ask this, but I'm curious about your opinion:

There was a scene that surprised me quite a bit in episode 6 when Vi escapes. Initially, Silco was sitting calmly, and then boom! Everything explodes. It's understandable, but it's strange because Silco has always reacted in a cautious and calm manner, except for one time in episode 3 when he was talking to Vander. After that, he has been someone who knows how to stay calm. I've seen people say that Silco's reaction is because he's a megalomaniac who doesn't like anything being out of his control, but I don't think that's the case. I think it's something more complex. I see Silco as someone who internalizes everything to maintain control or appears to have it, keeping his thoughts and emotions to himself. That's why you see Silco exhaling or releasing tension before and after meeting with his associates, but I might be wrong. Anyway, I'd like to know what you think is the reason for Silco's actions.

And I'm sorry if I made a mistake in my grammar, I don't speak English very well

Hello anon! Thank you for reaching out and asking me this question... It sends me back to my Arcane meta days with a big smile on my face.

But honestly, I don't know who looks at Silco in that episode, having finished the story, and thinks he screams because he's megalomaniac. Not only does this not go with the rest of his character, it just fails to comprehend his character arc.

Silco doesn't want power. He wants freedom, and he wants his mission to realise itself. Silco has more of a religious fervour to him. He's a zealot. He speaks of the 'Nation of Zaun' with an air of rapture. He believes it, lives only for it. Just because we may not like his ways doesn't change that. I mean look at this guy :

#fully lost in the sauce

A character who really wants power would be Finn. We see him fallen to the trappings of wealth, plotting to uproot Silco from his position. Finn never shows any care for the cause. He only cares about supplanting Silco.

If Silco truly cared about power, then why is he still leaving down deep, on top of a night club? If he's a megalomaniac, why are his list of conditions for Jayce not covering him, but demanding amnesty for his people and equal access to the Gate for commerce?

No. Silco isn't a megalomaniac. He definitely wants to be in control, but that's hardly surprising for a leader. We also only ever know Silco at crazy important moments of his life, where his plans are running wildly or exploding in his face. It's not exactly every day Silco.

Most of the people we see him interacting with also tell us things : of course he needs to be ruthless and in control while facing Marcus. That man would lash out at the slightest show of weakness. Same with the other chembarons, who actively turn on him after the factory attack (that makes him look weak).

Silco isn't a control freak to be a jackass. He's like that because he's a Zaunite, and a Zaunite in a dangerous position of power. He's shaped by his environment too.

Anyway, why does he lose his cool in episode 6?

It's actually a very short answer! It's because of Jinx.

Jinx is his everything. Across my many meta posts I covered how codependent they are. How she physically abuses him, yet he never reaches out with any force towards her. The most violent he is, is after she nearly ruined his life plans and won't listen, and all he does is snatch a pen from her hand to make her pay attention.

They exchange caresses, rest against each other. He keeps her gifts on his official desk and actively uses them. And in the end, he can't accept her mortality, and sacrifices everything he's suffered and fought for his entire sad, fucking miserable life, because he loves her more than his cause.

So why does Silco lose it? Because Vi is alive, Vi is looking for Jinx, and Vi is the only person who could actively take Jinx away from him.

I mean like a day or two prior Jinx lost her shit and nearly killed Sevika because she saw a pink haired girl. Silco takes her to the pilt to try and soothe her and put her demons behind her, the only way he knows how. And then she happily gets to work! She's doing well!

But Silco isn't dumb. He knows Jinx is unstable and unpredictable. And finding Sevika hung like a ham from the ceiling? With a broken arm? Yeah, he knows she knows, and she's pissed... And he KNOWS that he just told her that VI IS DEAD. Which he 100% believed! Since when Sevika tell him about Vi being back he's like "From the dead???" in total horror and disbelief.

Marcus completely blindsided him, and it's a race against time now.

A race in which if Vi lives and finds Jinx... His Jinx, the only person he thinks he has... The girl he loves more than his cause, even if he hasn't fully realised it yet... Might hate him. She might decide to leave him.

Then he'd be alone again. And uhm... IDK if you all noticed but like... Silco isn't exactly a picture of clean mental health either. He's trauma ridden, set in very harsh ways, and has a solid spark of paranoia (which has kept him alive, but also isolated).

So the Silco screaming and spitting and kicking is a Silco who thinks that potentially everything will be fucked up now. He's stressed about the developing situation (the one where he asked his unstable daughter to basically make a nuke with stolen uranium, while juggling an increasingly strained sheriff and actively traitorous colleagues), AND the potential idea of his ONE person, his one broken, fucked up, twisted emotional bond, potentially being ripped from him.

Last time that happened, Vander was trying to drown him.

So he's just in a Bad Place™️

Cut the poor man some slack ahaha. I think it's normal that the mask finally cracks and reveals his emotions.

Silco isn't a cold character! His speech to Vander shows his zealotry and his passion! He has a dark humour too, and is aggressive and bitter when cornered. Silco wears a mask of cool professionalism when it's convenient, which is very often, as a leader in the undercity. But he also shows lots of emotions whenever suits.

I don't think you can be a cold character and stay riveted on your insane freedom fight for like 20+ years. He's got a big fire burning in there, and the scene in episode 6 is the proof of how hot it gets when he thinks he's about to lose it all. All your examples of him 'reining it in' are great too! He clearly has strong emotions. He just manages them a lot.

I hope this answers your question! AAaaaahhhh look at me, I just went and gushed, didn't I?

Thanks a lot Anon. And your English is better than some native speakers I know, so don't worry! <3

ive been thinking a lot about papyrus lately n how the fandom looks at sans and papyrus’s relationship and like.. i know most people would just take this line as a joke, why wouldn’t they, pap is trying to feed a fucking rock, but like… i think some of it rings true. papyrus is a big naive sweetheart, sure, and sans is always looking out for him, sure, but ppl tend to take that to this extreme where they see it as like “papyrus is too silly and childish to take care of himself and sans has to be the big protective older brother even if pap doesn’t rly notice”.

but…. papyrus actually does rly well for himself. look at him. he’s living a life most young adults could only dream of. he’s got a clean room, a nice house, a good work ethic for a job he’s very passionate about, a positive outlook on life, high self esteem, and even a racecar bed. who doesn’t want a racecar bed? i don’t even like racecars and i’d kill for a racecar bed. like, yeah, he’s kind of got an unusual way of doing things and doesn’t always pick the smartest option, but apart from the occasional possessed murderchild coming after him with a knife, he can take care of himself just fine.

and…. sans knows that too. sans doesn’t try to intervene with every little thing papyrus does, even when he messes up. he mostly just cheers him on from the sidelines and tries to make him happy in all the little ways he can. and sans is a lot stronger and more knowledgeable than he lets on, yes, but in contrast to his brother he does a really shit job of living a healthy lifestyle. he’s messy, lazy, he slacks off at work and overeats and has generally completely given up on being happy. and im saying this as a severely depressed person myself, i get it. i love sans for those qualities because i relate. i just think people give him too much credit, and papyrus not enough.

people talk about how papyrus is the thing that matters most to sans, and he puts most of his remaining energy into making him happy, which is true, sans loves his brother more than anything. but papyrus isn’t something he needs to protect. if anything, i think sans actually envies him sometimes, for being so unwaveringly confident and soft-hearted in such a bleak world. they take care of each other, balance each other out. they’d probably be a lot worse off without each other, but papyrus isn’t a fragile baby and sans isn’t his babysitter. and it matters to me (again, as someone who Relates) to be able to see sans as somebody who’s pretty bad at existing in general, and for people to be able to recognize that positivity isn’t inherently childish… them’s my two cents

WAIT WAIT WAIT

Okay so the triplet’s outfits are their own colors right?? Blue for Julieta, yellow for Pepa, and green for Bruno—

Except I just noticed that while Julieta and Pepa’s outfits are completely their own colors right

underneath Bruno’s green ruana am I crazy or does he almost (or used to?) match Abuela

And by extension what does this say about the triplet’s personalities, relationships with Alma, individualism/dependency/what have you because with how symbolic everyone ELSE’s colors are (like Isabela’s dress being more purple than blue reflecting how she’s Alma’s favorite, etc) it’s gotta mean Something right

Honestly, if Severus had had emotional maturity, he would have realized that Lily always minimized his harassment by the marauders, like "boys will be boys." If I were Snape, I would have cut off the friendship a long time ago. What would you do in Severus' position?

The problem with Severus and Lily's relationship is that it wasn’t built on equal footing. Lily made a friend, possibly like many others in her life, because she came from a structured family with a solid foundation in interpersonal relationships. Despite her issues with Petunia, we know her parents adored her and were thrilled to have a witch for a daughter, so we can assume her emotional role models were quite positive, which helped her build relationships at school and even become somewhat popular. For Severus, though, Lily wasn’t just a friend. Severus came from a poor and dysfunctional family, his father was abusive, and his mother didn’t seem to do much to protect her son from that abuse. His view of relationships and affection was already deeply distorted by the environment he grew up in. For him, being with Lily, playing with her, was a way to escape what was happening at home. It was a moment of peace, of stability, something he wasn’t familiar with. I genuinely believe he developed a very strong emotional dependency on her and her attention, because, from childhood, Lily represented everything good, everything that made him feel safe and important to someone.

Then adolescence hit, and they had very different interests and goals. I don’t hate Lily, but I do think she was a bit shallow. I mean, ending up with a rich, socially successful bully is pretty shallow. And it fits her character, because at the end of the day, she was a lower-middle-class girl in the Muggle world, and a Muggle-born in the magical world—she didn’t belong to any relevant social class in either. So, being pursued and courted by the most popular guy in her year, who was also super rich and from an important family, must have appealed to her. J.K. Rowling said in an interview, when someone mentioned that Lily supposedly hated James, that “Lily never hated James. You, as a woman (to the interviewer), should understand or know that.” She hinted that all the hatred towards James was an act and that she was actually attracted to him, which tells me a lot about Lily as a person and her values. I would never date a bully, whether or not they had attacked my friend. If I saw someone constantly abusing others at school, I wouldn’t date that person, but Lily did. And I don’t think it was because James made her believe he had changed, manipulated her, or any of the nonsense people say. I don’t think Lily was stupid. I think she knew exactly what she was doing by getting involved with someone who could give her social status, a life of comfort, and a position she didn’t have in either the magical or Muggle world.

Severus clearly went in a different direction. He wasn’t doing well at school, and the rich, popular kids decided that picking on him was easier than going after their rich, pure-blood classmates, because those pure-bloods could get them into real trouble, so it was easier, more comfortable, and safer to go after the weakest link—the poor half-blood. They made life unbearable for someone who already felt that life outside of school was equally unbearable. They bullied someone who was already being abused outside of school, and that’s probably what pushed Severus—if he already had an interest in the Dark Arts—closer to more negative influences.

Lily and Severus grew apart as they matured, and this is completely normal. It happens to all of us as kids. We all had those close childhood friends who took different paths during adolescence, and that’s okay. The problem is that, despite everything, Severus still saw Lily as that symbol of his childhood happiness. She was his happy memory (which is why the whole Patronus thing makes a lot of sense), because he probably didn’t have happier moments than the ones he shared with her. And in the midst of all the bullying and questionable influences at Hogwarts, during the early years, Lily was probably also his safe space. But Lily didn’t see Severus in the same way, and I’m not talking about romance, but rather that she didn’t see their friendship as something necessary, something emotionally vital for her. Severus was dependent; she wasn’t.

In a way, I think that, beyond emotional immaturity, Severus also lacked healthy emotional role models, and therefore he didn’t realize that Lily was actually kind of a jerk. Add to that the fact that he was blinded by her, considering her his emotional anchor, and he probably wasn’t able to see her negative traits. That’s also very common.

I believe that if Lily hadn’t died and Severus had had the chance to have a life of his own without sacrificing all his autonomy and independence to serve Dumbledore, over time he would have matured and gained perspective, because despite everything, he was a smart guy. He would have realized that his relationship with Lily was always one-sided, and I think he could have started fresh and become a functional person. But he never got that chance. It’s been proven in psychiatry that abuse victims who don’t process their traumas remain stuck in the time period when the abuse occurred. In Severus’ case, the abuse started in childhood and continued throughout adolescence, so it’s logical and normal that he ended up being a very dysfunctional adult, unable to manage his emotions properly or set limits for himself when situations triggered him too much. In some ways, he acts like a child. The comment about Hermione’s teeth is childish—it sounds like something Draco would say, and Draco is a teenager. The same goes for many of his remarks to Harry or Neville, which are basically sarcastic jabs from a bratty kid being a jerk. I think we see this best (because it happens between equals, interestingly between two people with significant emotional issues) when he has several confrontations with Sirius. Maybe Sirius’ immaturity is more obvious because he’s a loudmouth and pretty extroverted, but Severus also behaves like a brat, which shows that despite not spending 12 years in Azkaban, he hasn’t grown either. If we think about it, Severus had his own Azkaban: Hogwarts. He had to return to the place where he had a terrible time and experienced several of his worst traumas, to teach, even though he didn’t even want to be a teacher, and he had to adopt that jerk persona to mask all the emotions and insecurities he felt being there. You can’t heal in the place where you were hurt. You can’t heal by giving up your life for a greater good. You can’t heal while feeling guilty over the death of someone who was once the most important person in your life. Severus was stuck in adolescence mentally, even though he was an adult. And this happens a lot with victims like him.

Honestly, despite everything, I think Severus was quite level-headed and pretty decent. Or maybe I’m saying this because I’m more of a jerk than he is, but I would have made James Potter and Sirius Black suffer a lot. I would have found out all their secrets and made them public, putting all my efforts into making them wish they were dead and even have suicidal thoughts. And if a friend of mine had acted like Lily, who kind of laughed when Snape was being abused, I would’ve beaten her so badly she’d lose her nose. But well, I have less ethics than Severus and maybe more temper.

Been thinking about Lumon/Kier’s obvious disdain for nature. The aggressive sterility of the severed floor. Dieter’s connection with nature being something to be shunned. His natural sexual urges something to be divinely punished, the punishment being a violent reclamation by nature of his body.

Gemma’s “life” being unnaturally extended into Ms Casey. Gemma always being pictured surrounded by nature, Ms Casey’s office being a thin facsimile of it. She tells Irving that he’s a talented lover, she stops him from sighing in pleasure.

Irving admits that their status as people without histories is “unnatural”. He worships a man made god, and when he finds something organic to love in Burt, they make a secret space for each other surrounded by greenery. It’s as close as they can get to feeling normal.

Persephone the goddess of spring, kidnapped to the underworld. Demeter protests, throwing the earth into an eternal winter, awaiting her return.

Irving saw the outside world blanketed in snow one day. He tries to get Burt back. He wakes up almost half a year later, he’s told. He goes outside again and it’s still snowing.

Blizzard didn’t give me the Sigma skin I wanted so I made it myself u_u

Siebren in Overwatch drabble (I can’t think of a name, again) 

Contains: Not translated Dutch, emotional turmoil, near death.

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