The Psychology of Jinx (Arcane): The Crazy Gothic Nightmare Girl (and Daddy Issues)

And what we get in turn is this heart wrenching scene where this innocent little girl, is made to face to the consequences of her actions. Her ‘helpful’ actions that resulted in the death of two of her friends and the eventual death of her father figure, Vandar.

And the one making her face this reality, is none other than her sister and idol Vi, who on realizing on what Powder has done, hits her and rejects her completely. And it makes us realize that despite how competent Vi is, she too is just a child that lost three people closest to her.

It’s brutal, it’s uncomfortable and it’s masterful storytelling.

This point of abandonment is what truly pushes Powder down the dark path, or more precisely into the arms of Silco, our main Villain and the man directly responsible for Vander’s death.

No way this guy is evil!

But for whatever reason this devil show’s empathy to the abandoned Powder and takes her in. 7 years pass, with Powder under his nurture and care and thus Jinx is born.

JINX: NATURE VS NURTURE (and DADDY ISSUES)

In the title I promised you daddy issues and by Heimerdinger’s bushy Mustache I’m going to deliver. So seven years pass and Powder is now the bat-shit crazy personal assassin for Silco. She has fully transformed into the Crazy Gothic Nightmare Girl we talked about earlier.

This might be a good time to bring up the nature verses nature debate, and also of course daddy issues. Here we have Powder a girl with severe emotional trauma from being an Orphan of war. And we have two surrogate father figures Vander and Silco.

While Vander was little rough around the edges, and he took care of all the orphans under him with equal care with no special treatment given to Powder. But she was still a happy, relatively normal girl under his wing. The other children, especially her older sister Vi also helped in filling the void left in her by dead parents.

Now let’s take a look at Silco’s parenting. It would be unfair to say that Silco did not care about Jinx at all, In fact his irrational and uncharacteristic attachment to Jinx is what makes him so interesting.

Here we have an emotionless and ruthless mob boss that will do anything for power, who took jinx in to be used as a weapon but ended up actually growing attached to her. But man did this guy suck as a father.

Father of the year everybody!

The Sins of the Father (more Daddy Issues)

What Silco did was manipulate her into trusting him and only him completely. After such a drastic and traumatic loss he convinced her that Vi had abandoned her. He also re-established her own fears of her worthlessness and more importantly convinced her that she only had value while she was being useful to him. That is as an assassin.

He also took her away from her old life with the fears that the people would never understand or forgive her for what she had done, creating a rift between the few remaining people that could have been there for her like Echo.

He did all this to ensure that she only had value as long as he said so, which was further solidified by the people that now surrounded her, who were ultimately Silco’s lackeys

So what we have here is a strange case of Stockholm’s syndrome, Where Silco entered her life at her lowest point, when she was abandoned by everyone she knew and gave her a purpose when she had none. And made sure that that purpose revolved completely around him.

So here we have Jinx who want’s to be as useful to Daddy Silco as possible. And what does Daddy Silco want, an assassin that drives fear into the heart of his enemies. And what’s scarier than a crazy bitch with rockets and explosives.

This coupled with her full blown schizophrenia of seeing and talking to her now dead friends gives us the untamable crazy gothic nightmare girl with bright blue pony tails that we know as Jinx. 

THE SISTERS RETURN

Jinx’s story then truly takes a turn when she realizes that Vi is still alive. And not only that but also that her sister never truly abandoned her and had even forgiven her for rather explosive mistake. This creates a sort of  INCOMPACTABLE DUALITY inside Jinx.

Keep My Sister’s Name Out Of Your F***ing Mouth

All of a sudden she realizes that there exists another way and she begins to question if Daddy Silco has her best interest at heart, or even sees her as more than a tool. On the other hand while Jinx is initially excited by Vi’s return, Jealousy gets the better of her as she believes Vi has replaced her with Caitlyn.

And with Jinx’s rather unique upbringing, her old abandonment issues arise and that trauma does not allow for the idea of sharing Vi to exist.

Jinx’s Choice

Which brings us to the ending and what an ending it was.

Jinx asks Vi to make a choice, Powder or Jinx and if she wants Powder she has to make Caitlyn “go away”. Vi agrees on the condition not to hurt Caitlyn and the two sisters ride off into the sunset.

Or that would have been what happened in most other shows.

But instead in a tremendous moment of character growth Silco admits that he truly does see Jinx as his daughter, and that all that they have is each other.

Guns get drawn and in a cruel twist of faith Jinx accidently kills Silco, resulting in pushing Jinx beyond to a point of  no return in her insanity.

See this is what happens when you write your characters with dimensions. You get a tragedy. As evil as Silco was, to Jinx he was still her father. He was more of a father to her than Vander was and as much her family as Vi was. And him dying at especially at Jinx’s own hands reinforces her namesake in her own psyche causing her to truly believe that she is a… no the Jinx.

A Self Manifesting Jinx

So what we have here is a scared little girl who believe herself to be cursed who ends up causing the accidental death of most of the people closest to her including two of her father figures. And after seeing all that can you really blame her for giving into the soothing embrace of her own Insanity.

What arcane has done is nothing short of Amazing. They took this cardboard cut-out of a character, designed mainly to appeal to the fantasies of teenage male gamers, A character who seemed to be designed as a very hyperbole iteration of the ‘bad girl’ fetish and gave her actual depth.

And you should feel bad 😛

They delved into the situations that can truly break a person. The abandonment, the lack of love, the pain of loss and everything in between that truly changed a scared little blue haired girl into the insane ponytailed monster, making you believe that just like her namesake. She truly was born Jinxed.  

Want some Greek Gods instead of Goth Girls check out the New World Odyssey series