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riddlerosehearts · 3 months

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silver twisted wonderland is strongly autistic coded and, although most likely completely unintentional, really good autistic representation in my opinion and i wanna talk about why 💚

okay, so. as an autistic person myself, i love to see myself in fictional characters and headcanon characters i can relate to as autistic. i personally feel that you don't necessarily need evidence to do this, but i do like having evidence and being able to back up my headcanons! and i've thought of silver as autistic-coded ever since a couple months after i first got into twisted wonderland early last year, and have been wanting to make a post on his many autistic traits since october. i should warn in advance that this is probably going to be a long post, which is why i'm putting it under a cut. so with all that being said, let's get into it!

silver takes people's words very literally. all the time.

the first time i called silver autistic-coded, in a message to a friend of mine, was when i was sharing my thoughts on the endless halloween/spectral soiree event and i reached this scene between him and jamil:

in this scene, jamil exclaims "you've got to be kidding me!" in frustration and silver misinterprets this as jamil thinking he was trying to make a joke, and then tries to explain what he actually meant. he also does something like this in leona's ceremonial robes vignette, when leona responds to silver's assumption that he and malleus are friends with "you're dreamin'. come back and talk to me once you wake up. or better yet, don't", and then silver replies: "in fact, i am very much awake". and in ruggie's PE uniform vignette, ruggie tries to joke about teaching silver to haggle "if you ever end up on the street" but silver responds by genuinely thanking him, to ruggie's surprise. this type of overly literal thinking and clear difficulty with understanding sarcasm is incredibly common in autistic people and silver does it all. the. time. i'm only giving a handful of examples because it would take way too long to try and compile every single instance of this.

similarly, silver tends to take what people say at face value and assume that others have good intentions where most people would not.

examples of this include the fact that, also in leona's ceremonial robes vignette, silver believes leona without question about having seen malleus in the greenhouse even though it should be obvious that leona is lying. and, in silver's broomquet/bloom birthday card voice lines, when azul gives him a coupon for his birthday, silver is told that there must be a scheme "behind this gift" and responds by saying that there's nothing written on the back of it--or, in another translation, he's told that there's "something fishy" about it and replies that it's not a coupon for seafood. so he not only doesn't even consider that azul of all people might have an unsavory motive for gifting him a coupon, but he also misunderstands a common turn of phrase. these are very common traits that cause autistic people to be thought of as oblivious and naive.

silver has trouble understanding social conventions and nuances in general, and has ways of thinking that seem strange to others.

in silver's birthday boy voice lines, he apologizes to yuu for not realizing why they were asking what he wanted a while back and having answered with "more time for training", and he also thinks yuu is odd for being excited when it's not their own birthday. in his PE uniform vignette he tries to help vil with a film club project by starring as an extra in a short film, but vil ends up getting angry with him because silver can't figure out when he's "supposed" to act surprised. he also surprises and confuses others by treating events like the culinary crucible and beanfest in unusually serious and overdramatic ways, with the latter event causing vil and riddle to discuss how difficult it is to tell when he's joking--during which riddle, who spends a lot of time around silver as a fellow member of the equestrian club, notes that silver isn't the type to tell jokes. jack and jamil have a similar discussion after silver tells them about how he befriended a family of bears as a child, during the endless halloween event. and in his birthday boy vignette, he talks about how ever since sebek grew taller than him, he's been asking sebek to get the dishes from the top shelf, which always causes sebek to get a "triumphant look" on his face. and then, rather than realizing sebek is taking pride in being taller than him, silver says he thinks that he must "get enjoyment out of fetching things from high places".

again, there's way too many examples of silver doing things like this and i don't want this post to be so long that it's impossible to read. but this is all just very autistic of him and these are the kinds of things that cause us to be thought of as weird, stupid, and annoying by our peers.

silver has flat or blunted affect.

the word "affect" refers to how one portrays emotion, through gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. if you have a flat or blunted affect, your emotions will come through very little, no matter how strongly you may feel them, and it can be incredibly difficult for others to tell if you're happy or sad or what you're feeling at any given time. this is something autistic people commonly experience, and silver has this with his lack of facial expression in particular. in-game, silver has extremely little variance in facial expressions compared to every other character, and even his one rarely used smiling expression--while adorable and always a delight to see--is more of a small half-smile.

and it takes a lot to even get this much out of him. he'll often say that he's happy or excited, and seem to genuinely mean it, but not smile at all. i believe that most often he's seen smiling like this when talking to or about lilia (brb while i cry at the thought of that). and this trait of his is commented on several times, such as one of his groovy voice lines when he says the following with his usual neutral look on his face:

or, in his birthday boy voice lines, where he says: "every time someone takes a birthday picture of me, they ask me to smile more. i AM smiling…"

it's fairly common for autistic people to have flat affect and be thought of as robotic, emotionless, and unapproachable as a result. and there's actually a lot more on this topic that i want to talk about, but i'm going to come back to it later in this post.

silver has a love for mushroom risotto that can be seen as him having a samefood.

the word "samefood" refers to the tendency that autistic people can have to eat the same food very frequently for days, weeks, or even months at a time. people who have samefoods might have a strong reliance on routine and/or have sensory issues that make them resistant to trying new foods. and they may often need the food to be prepared the same exact way each and every time. it's common for autistic people to be thought of as picky eaters with bland palates (because samefoods are often, but not always, the kinds of foods that are usually considered bland and plain) because of this.

admittedly, silver does say in one of his voice lines that he's not too picky when it comes to food, but the reason i'm applying this trait to him is because of jade's labwear vignette. lilia comments on the fact that silver is having mushroom risotto again and says he's always been like this and that he needs to broaden his palate, to which silver replies that he doesn't mind eating the same thing every single day. then, when he tries the risotto he gets so shocked that he freezes in place and lilia suspects that he's been poisoned, all because it turns out that the texture of the mushrooms is different that day. lilia says he doesn't see why that matters and asks if silver is sure he isn't just imagining it. this last bit is also interesting to me because autistic people are often overly sensitive to food texture, and get similar reactions as the one silver got from lilia when we try to talk about it. i feel like it's lucky that the changed texture of the mushrooms was one silver enjoyed, because it could've been very frustrating if his samefood was suddenly different in an unpleasant way.

and, i originally wanted to also include sections for some other small things, like how he's mentioned feeling his chest tense up around large crowds and having trouble relaxing in unfamiliar places, or his having a fairly limited range of interests and thinking that he's not fun to be around, or how he tends to communicate better with the animals that flock to him than with his schoolmates, but this post is already getting long so i figure i should go ahead and move onto the next thing i wanted to talk about:

throughout this post i've been saying that autistic people who share the traits that silver has are often thought of as stupid, annoying, unapproachable, and/or emotionless by those around us. we get bullied and looked down on for things that we can't really help. and that's exactly what happens to silver.

here's where i'm going to mention leona's ceremonial robes vignette once again! after the "you're dreaming" "i am very much awake" interaction, leona gets annoyed at silver for not understanding what he meant and says he must have a screw loose, and then ruggie says the following, right in front of silver:

leona then tricks silver with his lie--or, i guess technically it's more of a half-truth--about the greenhouse, an action which causes even ruggie to say he feels bad for silver. and later, when leona goes to diasomnia to confront malleus, this interaction occurs:

this vignette is just one of several examples of other students looking down on silver and taking advantage of his tendency to take people at face value and assume the best of them. not just ruggie and leona, but a significant amount of other students see silver as absent-minded, odd, and bothersome and have given him (along with kalim) an insulting nickname.

also, silver's flat affect and the cruel way that people treat him over it is the entire focus of his dorm uniform vignette. silver gets in trouble with crewel, who dismisses his apology because he doesn't "look" sorry, for falling asleep in class and has to collect everyone's reports. his classmates act polite to his face while he's collecting them but then as soon as he walks away they start talking about him behind his back, saying that because he always has the same expression on his face, he's unapproachable, exhausting to deal with, and probably doesn't even actually have emotions. silver overhears all this and instead of getting upset that his classmates are insulting him, saying completely ridiculous things and treating him like a burden, he puts the blame on himself and starts thinking he needs to change himself to fit in with them. he thinks he needs to be like kalim and tries unsuccessfully to get kalim and jamil to give him lessons on how to be more expressive. it's pretty common for autistic people to not even realize we're being treated unfairly and instead believe that we're the problem. it's also common for us to try and mask our autistic traits in order to fit in, and to try copying the behavior of those who seem socially successful and well-liked.

but, silver has people who understand him, who love him exactly as he is, and who don't believe he needs to change.

for one thing, kalim himself doesn't think silver needs to change. he says he thinks silver is really nice and isn't unapproachable at all, but he'll try to help him be more expressive if it's something he wants to work on. kalim is silver's best friend and has never wanted him to be anyone other than himself. and when sebek realizes what silver is doing he immediately thinks it's ridiculous and instead comes up with a plan for silver to be able to show his classmates that he isn't emotionless. malleus and lilia then spot the two of them training in the courtyard and talk about how much they love and care for silver, and how well they understand him.

also, that conversation that lilia and malleus have is one thing in particular that makes me really happy about this vignette and is a reason why i think silver is such unexpectedly good autistic rep (even though, again, he's not canonically autistic and probably wasn't written that way on purpose). because, when i read the endless halloween event i knew next to nothing about diasomnia, had read hardly any of their vignettes yet, and i said to my friend "i know they probably just want us to think silver is weird because he was raised by fae, but i think he's autistic coded." i assumed that him being a human who was raised by fae would be something you could use to explain away all of his quirks if you wanted to, and say that they're a result of that rather than of him possibly being autistic.

but seeing lilia and malleus talk about how they know that silver is an incredibly passionate and empathetic person, that they know he feels very strongly even though his emotions don't show on his face, and that they don't find him difficult to read at all, made me realize that lilia, malleus, and sebek are all fae (half-fae in sebek's case, but still) who are each very different from silver--and sure, i guess you could say that some of his communication issues might come from his upbringing as he never went to school or interacted with others his age very much before going to NRC. but he did grow up with sebek who, again, is half-human and very different from him. and his flat affect at least is explicitly not something that could come from his upbringing as lilia, malleus, and sebek are all at least as expressive as any human--if not even more-so in sebek's case. and from the way lilia and malleus talk about his inexpressivenesss, it seems clear that they know it's an unusual thing, probably not any more common for fae than it is for humans. it's just not a problem for them, because it's a natural part of who silver is and they love who he is.

and basically silver is just sooooo autistic.

when i originally got the idea to write this post i made a joke to my friend that it would be easier to just post a link to silver's twst wiki page as an explanation of why i think he's autistic. i mean, it really would've been since his autistic traits come through in so much of how his character is written and there's so much solid evidence for it. but instead of doing that i decided to autistically write a... *checks notes* 2500+ word essay overexplaining my headcanon because i just love him so so much. so in conclusion:

#twisted wonderland #silver #twst silver #autistic headcanon #actuallyautistic #twst #silver vanrouge #i almost feel kind of silly posting this because it's so long and i'm sure i'm overexplaining myself #but part of that is because i can't know what vignettes and voice lines people have and haven't read #and also because there's just so much. he's the autistic character ever <3

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