Nothing To See Here Just Boyfriends Trading Hats

Idea that I think would make a hilarious fanfic, but can’t formulate into a fanfic well so I make it into a really quick and ugly shitpost

shirt that says "character design is my sworn enemy". anyways some stuff for my sdr2<->drv3 talentswap

Forgive me for hopping on this post, but I can actually shed a little bit more light onto this from a long term Silver fan perspective! Funny enough, I’ve never really read the Archie Comics proper (I’d read whatever the kids in the neighborhood had at the time, which were a lot of the more earlier titles) and have never read a lot of Stanley’s work outside of IDW Sonic, so I hope this can provide interesting context from a general Game-only fan. 

So around the late 2000′s especially and even early 2010′s, Silver’s character was kinda regarded very.... negatively. Which I mean, makes sense as Sonic 2006 was like, the debut game for him and not a lot of people tended to play Sonic Rivals or even know it really existed, but while his debut game very much debuts him kinda being dumber than bricks and like super whiny- a lot of how this interpretation actually came to be was because of the fandom in general directly! 

A lot of fandom content regarding Triple S (the group of Sonic, Shadow and Silver) or even Shadow and Silver as a duo, tended to portray the hedgehogs in like, popular stereotypes. Sonic was the Cool kinda cocky one, Shadow was the Badass and smart one... so that left Silver in a weird spot. A lot of sprite videos at the time took the route of making Silver more of the dumb one, while other content such as early comics and channel-specific content would make Silver more of the pathetic nerd.  The most memorably early example of the former portrayal is from this playlist of the Sonic, Shadow and Silver Show with a lot of reuploads from popular sprite video creators at the time (since a lot of these sprite video creators have either lost or deleted their channels) and later portrayal to me is prolly Shadow and Silver’s Pizza Hut Adventure.  But this type of content was actually super common around multiple creators! Silverknux’s Silver voice is like, always the immediate one I think of despite everything kinda because of these videos I watched growing up haha. 

Not to say that cooler or more accurate portrayals of him didn’t exist at all, they did and they were all very good too! But fandom is fandom, and to simplify a character down to their basic traits is a very common fanon phenomenon when making fan content. 

It actually wasn’t until more of the Late 2010′s where Silver’s more not great aspects of him from the game that everyone remembered were kinda portrayed in more of a less negative light? Like, people on the internet would still make fun of you from time to time if you ever tried to acknowledge that Silver was cool because he was in 06 and 06 sucked harhar and those criticisms of his character still exist and are valid, but among fans it was way nicer to play Silver’s more negative aspects of himself in more of a cuter light. Now instead of sprite vids of him being dumber than a box of rocks or videos of him just being kinda nerdy and pathetic, he was in comics with Amy trying to learn how money works in the modern day or in fanfics learning what a coffee maker does with Espio. Still a lot of the same base traits, but just generally portrayed as cuter if that makes sense. It just kinda spiraled from there.

I believe the Snapcube fandub (not a shocker there harhar) is more of a proper embodiment of how Silver’s character had changed out in time with fandom, rather than a contributor to the general change. Just became its face, I suppose?

It’s been fascinating to see this shift over time, especially as someone that loves Silver, but of course that’s just my perspective! And while I do have faults with Stanley’s writing and sometimes even art despite generally enjoying it a lot (although not entirely off base with Silver being almost a different character in a writing sense, even Stanley admits early GOTF Silver was almost a self-insert at the time compared to the later issues, which I can see bleeding into the official work a bit from time to time), it definitely is FAR away from the earliest or even first popular portrayal of Silver being characterized this way. Just the first more ‘official’ one.

Sorry for kinda hijacking your post with my rambling Greeny, but I hope that this helps! 

Do you know how the misconception of uwu Silver came to be? Was it Archie's fault?

It's a tendency of Stanley I guess. She portrays Silver as off-model and "adorkable" likely out of her own interpretation of the character and the fandom took it and ran with it. Why SEGA condone it is beyond me.

It's so characteristically different to how Uekawa portrays the character and how he's actually depicted in the games that they may as well be two completely different characters.

Also saddest day on this fucking earth is knowing dg-slash is deactivated.

2 and a half men (disown me if you want)

don’t ask they just both seemed really fitting here and it’s been eating away at me for ages…

I cannot believe that the Orre region, the single region where you could 100% absolutely get away with a dex cut with a pretty good in-universe explanation given they literally have to import all their pokemon to the region, has not gotten either a port, a remake or a sequel on the switch.