No, Silver the Hedgehog's Personality Has Not Changed: An Analysis
Okay, I'll be upfront about Silver being my favorite Sonic character here so there's transparency. However, I've also either played or watched someone else play every game Silver shows up in and read all the IDW comics (except the Bad Guys miniseries). I am qualified to analyze Silver's personality. This also gets personal in both the tags and towards the end of the analysis, and the post is long, so I'll add a read more break.
So first things first: the stuff people complain about. Here are the main complaints I see:
His personality is completely different from how it was in Sonic 06 and Sonic Rivals
His dorky traits (such as his social awkwardness) have been amplified
Neither of these are necessarily true. Let's start with the first complaint, his personality being completely different. My reasoning for this does tie into the second point however.
Let's quickly go over how personalities work. Under different circumstances, different aspects of a person's personality might be more prominent. For example, I'm a naturally anxious person. Under certain circumstances -- usually being around people I know -- my social anxiety specifically disappears almost completely because of circumstances. This can even be seen in the Sonic series with other characters.
Vector isn't usually aggressive, but he can be provided the circumstances are right, as seen in Sonic Heroes.
Sonic likes to goof off and joke around, but he can be serious if the situation requires it.
In Sonic Prime, Rouge does do a lot of treasure hunting and loves looking for gems, but if the situation puts her in danger, she avoids it; she specifically says "No gem is worth losing my wings over!"
Silver's circumstances are different from his circumstances in 06 or Rivals, and he's developed to realize that he doesn't always need to solve things with violence.
It's also worth noting that from the beginning he's been relatively awkward when it comes to situations where he's not trying to save the world. He's even awkward when he is trying to save the world. He's always been awkward in social situations especially, because aside from Sonic 06 he's been alone most of his life, and even in Sonic 06 he's presumably only ever interacted with Blaze before meeting Mephiles, so he's not used to interacting with other people socially.
I'd argue that it's implied he's not as socially awkward when he's with someone he knows when Blaze mentions in 06 that he's "pretty insecure when he's alone" because I'm the same way. If I'm not around someone I know, I get incredibly anxious and insecure in social situations. It's even directly shown in 06 that he gets awkward in social situations when he's alone; when Blaze is around he interacts with Mephiles and Sonic just fine, but the second Blaze is gone he gets awkward when he interacts with anyone he doesn't know.
This is mainly seen in the cutscene where he first meets Amy. He has no idea how to respond to her throughout the entire exchange, making him come off as awkward. Even as they're helping each other, he's still incredibly awkward.
It's even implied he's not naturally aggressive:
Him questioning whether it's right to kill Sonic to save the world means doing so likely conflicts with his morals. He's so conflicted on whether or not it's right to kill Sonic that he is literally willing to let the future stay how it is if he decides it's not the right thing to do. It's because of Blaze that he continues to go after Sonic, but my point still stands: he had a moral crisis over killing Sonic, implying that sort of aggression isn't in his nature.
Also in Sonic 06 and Sonic Rivals 2, he's shown to be quite the awkward dork when he's not focused on a mission. In the Sonic Rivals duology especially, he's shown to throw hands first and ask questions later, but he does -- again -- take a nonviolent route in his story; his story is the only time Capture the Chao is played in Story Mode in Sonic Rivals 2, and he decides to play it with Sonic instead of fighting/racing him again. The reason he's so aggressive in the Rivals duology is because he thinks everyone's getting in his way. He becomes incredibly docile towards Espio when Espio offers to help him in Sonic Rivals 2. The only reason he was so violent towards everyone else in Rivals and Rivals 2 is because he wanted them out of his way, and this continues to be the case as the franchise goes on, albeit to a milder extent. Listen to his in race dialogue in Team Sonic Racing, it proves my point. He LITERALLY tells Big, IN THE MOST MOCKING VOICE EVER, "Go home to Froggy, Big!"
Speaking of Team Sonic Racing ...
He's shown in both TSR and Sonic Colors DS to be incredibly docile if he doesn't have a set goal (I’m not counting his snark in Colors DS as hostility so don’t bring it up). Remember, in both games there’s no mention of his future still being ruined; in Colors DS, he specified that his future is no different than the present, and the most we get about his future in TSR is a line from Zavok about there “being worse in your future, Silver!” During races he gets non-aggressively hostile because he’s competitive.
His personality only is how it is in Sonic 06 and the Rivals duology because he’s set on a goal and views everyone else as obstacles, with the exception of Espio who is helping him. In every other situation, his hostility is playful/competitive hostility, not necessarily genuine hostility.
So, in summary: Silver’s personality hasn’t changed, but his circumstances have, and he’s learned that he doesn’t need to resort to violence to solve every problem. That’s why his dorky traits are more likely to be highlighted. Those traits have always been there, but his hostility overshadowed it most of the time because he had a set goal in mind and everyone, in his eyes, was getting in his way. Since he’s learned how to handle those kinds of situations without getting overly hostile, his more aggressive traits aren’t as prominent. Those traits end up prominent again when he gets competitive. He’s grown as a person and learned to have more self control. Why is that a bad thing? Why is Silver developing enough to not see violence as necessary a bad thing?
Now I’m gonna get personal for a sec because I was much like Silver was in 06 and Rivals at one point, likely due to my autism going undiagnosed for far too long. I’m no longer like that because I developed as a person.
So I ask again, why is Silver no longer seeing violence as inherently necessary a bad thing? Why is it bad that he’s more dorky and awkward than hostile and aggressive now? Answer: it’s not. He’s developed, and it makes me incredibly upset that it’s criticized instead of celebrated, because his mentality in 06 and the Rivals duology would've realistically led to some incredibly toxic relationships.
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diamant, the horrors chamber, and why he’s just so fun to mess with // the diamant-sertation series
i’d talked a little about this before on twitter about diamant angst and if i’m doing alright (i’m fine just biochemistry major go brrrr) and i just remembered this:
and i wanted to think about this for a little bit. i’m going to try and not retread old ground, but that’s kind of impossible if i want to break him in a realistic way.
but i was mostly thinking about how easy it is to destabilise him. i might be woobifying him too much, but i swear, i’ve been through this rigamarole before with a variety of characters. i’ve hurt characters over and over and over again, testing their limits, watching them bend and potentially break, and diamant has keeled over the fastest. it’s kind of funny in a bit of a twisted way.
but i mean it: why does he bend to easily compared to others?
i think it’s because he Refuses to experience The Horrors, and so when something encroaches on that tenuously stretched self control, he simply cannot deal with anything new, so he shuts down. you’d think he’d have a fight response to new stressors (he is of brodia; if you can’t fight, then what kind of brodian are you?) but i think he’s gone past that point. he’s dealing with enough already as it is, just One More Thing just will set him off. he’s tired, overwhelmed, and bottles everything up because He Should Be Able To Deal With It.
there’s definitely an allegory of being undiagnosed neurodivergent in here somewhere but we don’t have time to unpack all that.
but since diamant is so easily burnt out (which, haha, funny fire trauma go brr), he’s just an easy target to picking at all of his weaknesses and flaws. diamonds have very predictable cutting planes, and if manage to hit one just right, the entire crystal will shatter.
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Can ANYONE at all on this platform PLEASE be normal about Rogu ??
Posts that even do so much as mention the poor guy are scarce as is, but ALL OF THEM that i've seen treat him like he's some kind of shiny new boytoy for gay people or something !! Y'all ??
Does this make NO ONE ELSE uncomfortable ?? How ? The fact that I'm seeing this from the Yujikiri crowd of all people makes me supremely uncomfortable...
He's a child. He acts like a child. He's clearly stated to be the little sibling of the Rulid Trio. His main trauma is shown to be tied to strong abandonment, loneliness and self-worth issues, which he is seeking to heal by forging familial bonds with our main characters, which ends up putting him in the role of a little kid brother.
And people are seeing this character and thinking about how hot he is and the myriad kinks they can associate with him ?? I'm sorry, but what...?
The same people who rave about Eugeo being such a beautiful tragic character and how precious his relationship with Kirito is ? Those people ?
Honestly I feel like I just lost a mildly safe space here ( and I say only mildly because some of the shit some people say is extremely alienating to me as an aro person who yes, loves Eugeo and Kirito's non-platonic relationship. but seriously, how do you gayasses manage to uphold the rules of heteronormativity in your gay ship posts ? there's myriads of types of love and attraction that aren't romance ! you can do better at inclusivity ). Even just for browsing around, let alone interacting.
Truly I chose the wrong character to become attached to after my Lycoris binge.
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Absolutely ridiculous seeing other thin people saying shit like “well it’s okay that doctors ignore fat people’s health problems and make them lose weight before doing anything to treat them because their health problems would be so much worse later if they didn’t lose weight”
like first of all shut the fuck up lmao if you’re not joining the fight against medical malpractice and mistreatment on the side of disabled people fullstop then you have no place in the disabled community.
Second of all that’s not how any of this works doctors should be multitasking. Even if weight was inherently unhealthy (which it isn’t) that doesn’t negate the fact that doctors should be running any relevant tests over the actual symptoms reported and doing immediate things to treat these symptoms in the meantime. Thin disabled people get tests and labs done so much easier and thus are “healthier” because on average they’re not dealing with as much intense medical neglect.
If doctors told a thin person “I’m not running these labs/tests until your other symptoms go away cause it’s probably just this other thing and we don’t need more tests” people would find that ridiculous. Or well, abled people might not but disabled people would.
The way thin disabled people seemingly forget what systematic ableism is when the victim happens to be fat is fucking embarrassing you do not speak for the disabled community shut the fuck up.
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