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On Silver
If you've known me in this context for any length of time, or read pretty much any of the fanfic I've written, you know I have strong feelings on Silver, the rival from GSC/HGSS. (I haven't read Pokespe in order to have strong feelings on that Silver, but from what I've gleaned from fanwork, I suspect my hypothetical strong feelings would be similar.) There isn't actually much canon to Silver; there are are around 20 lines of dialogue he says to the PC, a few things other people say about him, and then the HGSS Celebi Ilex Forest event where you see Giovanni abandon him. So it makes sense that different people have different ways of imagining him! I don't claim any authority here, and there's some danger that my picture of Silver is overcolored by the ways I feel kinship with him. Nonetheles here are a bunch of thoughts:
ON SILVER
Silver is a fucked up kid. His father is a mob boss, terrorist, and public figure; his mother is (canonically, as far as we know) out of the picture. While this isn't certain, I believe he was born and raised to be Giovanni's successor; Giovanni inherited the whole shebang from his mother, and it makes sense that he'd want to pass things on. If Team Rocket is meant to be modeled on Italian-American organized crime, his successor wouldn't have to be his direct heir, but a blood connection is pretty important, and Giovanni doesn't have any other family we know of, so Silver's the natural choice. In the Celebi event, the two almost seem to be working together, though contentiously:
SILVER: Number one... You said you were going to be the strongest in the world! Are you just going to quit!? What are you going to do from now on!?
GIOVANNI: If you cannot accept your loss then you cannot move forward... In order to create an even stronger organization, I shall now be alone.
SILVER: What do you mean strong! Even though you were so many, you all lost to ONE kid!!
GIOVANNI: By gathering a large amount of people, you gain great power, that is what an organization is... That is the power of an organization! I've failed my underlings...! One day I will make sure to revive Team Rocket!!
SILVER: I don't understand! I don't get what you're saying at all dad!
GIOVANNI: There will come a time when you'll understand...
SILVER: I don't even want to know! I don't want to become like you! I won't ever be so weak as to rely on others to become strong! I'll become strong! I'll become strong all by myself!
SILVER: All by myself... (credit for original transcription)
So Giovanni abadons his son, who is... at the youngest 7, at the oldest maybe 11 or 12, I imagine 9 if Red is 10... to go into hiding with the hope of remaking his criminal empire. Without his son, in whom perhaps he sees his own weakness reflected. Just straight up abandons him on the road!! In a children's game!
Now, there is no explicit canon evidence that Giovanni abused Silver --- but that's certainly what I believe happened. And Silver just watched the abuser who has always had power over him lose to a kid roughly his age; Red is 10ish at that point. It's hard to believe how young all of these kids are. Silver likely feels energized, like he too can become stronger than Team Rocket, stronger than his dad, not dependent on Team Rocket's simultaneous pampering training and abusive consequences. But at the same time... what happens between then and the start of Ethan/Lyra/Gold/Kotone's adventure? (Kotone's in my head, but whoever.) He doesn't have any Pokemon when he steals Feraligatr. Had he let them go because they were too weak? Had he never had one because he didn't have access to one? Did they die? Were they stolen from him?
I don't actually know, but here's what I think. My guess is that he went back to Team Rocket, because while maybe teenage Silver can live alone in the woods, as precocious as he might be, Silver at 7 to 10 had to go somewhere. TR doesn't hate Giovanni, since they're trying to get him back later; he's vanished. He might have been captured, he might have been killed, but they know he was not arrested and they know he didn't come back tail between his legs. Probably Silver told them he was alive, but not that he'd run away --- too proud for that. So they trained him, and he has this bizarre set of skills for a twelve-year-old by the time he leaves that includes lockpicking and using a butterfly knife but not using a bread knife or being nice to someone. The Rockets respect him, and sort of fear him, but he's also a kid who bears their anger toward Giovanni for losing and abandoning them, so the training is harsh, and he's probably abused more. But that's fine; they are a means to an end. Through their training he will grow beyond their training; strong enough not to need help.
When the game starts, he's just left. Maybe he knows they're planning something and feels he has to leave to stop them, which suggests a more proactive, anti-Rocket Silver, the kind I most prefer to imagine. Maybe he feels he's strong enough not to need them anymore, suggesting a brasher and more selfish Silver. Maybe they kicked him out because he refused to do something terrible. Maybe he couldn't take the beatings anymore and fled. All he's got is his school uniform --- which I imagine he wears to fit in when walking around outside, not because he goes to school --- and maybe a knife and some tools. He needs a pokemon, and stealing one from Elm's lab is way easier than trying to steal pokeballs and throw them at wild Pokemon until one sticks. Ramping up from zero in the Pokeverse is remarkably hard! He's too young to make money, and no one would give him a Pokemon. He's not going to trust random adults. Stealing a Pokemon might actually be his best option.
Less excusable is his later stealing of Sneasel from ... Kyle? ... in Cianwood. It's a rare Pokemon with typing that would help him defeat Lance, so I sort of understand why he does it, but I always have this sense of SILVER YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER. I think honestly in believing he should know better I give him a bit too much credit; it worked once, why shouldn't it work again? There aren't any consequences outside of his own head for either of his Pokemon thefts. (Perhaps the authorities are too busy with Team Rocket.) He feels guilty much later, I'm sure; stealing Sneasel seems more about his own personal strength than about taking down Team Rocket. Sonata suggests that maybe after he tries to return the starter to Elm, and Elm points out that his starter loves him, he realizes that Sneasel also loves him and it would be wrong to give him back.
The other inexcusable thing he does during the game is when he assaults the player character, tearing off her TR uniform/disguise. There are, a number of ways to read this, but none of them are good. A couple of people, when I've expressed that I ship Silver/Kotone, have been like "But Silver all but sexually assaults her in game. That's canon." And... yeah! It's pretty fucked up, especially considering he's likely a year or three older than her and should really know what that means. But he only sort of does --- he's still a broken child, unsocialized. He was tearing off the R. It takes him a long time to realize what he did, and when he does, it takes him a while to be able to even look her in the eyes. (In my head, he realizes what he's done because he's raped, and comes to Kotone for help, and she makes a smart remark about this and then he knows and everything is suddenly worse and she has to dump him on Ethan because she doesn't know what else to do. But that's... awfully dramatic. I also have like 3000 words of it, unfinished, tucked in a directory somewhere. Anyway!)
As the game goes on Silver realizes that his strength is not just his, it's his Pokemon's, and it's in the relationship between him and his Pokemon, and in the work they do together. So in some sense he does later understand what Giovanni says he will someday, the Mob mentality remapped onto his relationship with his Pokemon. Which becomes fierce. Crobat can only evolve at maximum happiness --- this is pretty much proof that he's treating his Pokemon well and training seriously with them, because chances are that he was treating Golbat pretty terribly before that. Although! There's another way to consider it where he loved his Pokemon all along and his talk about them being too weak and replacing them was all terrified, Rocket-trauma bluster. I tend to go with the first theory but the second one is really fascinating, Silver with his pokemon after battling Kotone taking them out and apologizing for calling them weak, promising that he'll do better, enacting both sides of his relationship with his father oh god this is creepy and sad. :( Crobat, though, is really important for him, both because Crobat is living proof of Silver's ability to bond tightly with Pokemon and because they seem very well matched --- Crobat is consistently Silver's highest level Pokemon who isn't his starter.
Here's where I'm going to veer off of the "interpreting canon" tracks and ride this train all the way into the I Have Strong Feelings About Silver sunset. The stuff above this point I'd argue based on canon; the stuff below it I'm extrapolating from the above base, but some of it is clearly arbitrarily chosen or based on my own personal preferences of imagination.
Silver has tremendous drive and potential, but not at any of the things other people want him to do. He's not cut out to be the leader of a criminal organization; he has the will but not the charisma, the fierceness but not the calculating head for logistics. (He can get good at that, but never great. Outside of the comaverse I imagine he takes up chess, but plateaus at around 1400 or 1500.) He's not cut out to fight crime; he has the sense of justice but not the sense to apply it to himself, and his emotional investments are dangerous. He's not cut out to be the Champion; he doesn't have the instinct of a Red or an N, he doesn't have the ridiculous ability of a Kotone or a Cynthia, and he doesn't have the supportive infrastructure and grace under pressure of a Dawn or an Alder. (He doesn't even care deeply about the League like a Lance (in my headcanon also Dawn).) If there's any Champion he's like, of the ones I understand, it's Iris. They're very different people, but they both seem like their bond with their pokemon becomes terrifying when they're in a bind.
In my headcanon, folks like Red and N are born able to communicate with Pokemon --- maybe not fluently, but enough. They don't even need to share words, they just... understand each other. Very strong trainers --- probably not even every Champion, though most, and some Gym Leaders and other wandering aces --- can battle with their Pokemon without announcing moves, just moving together, sharing intent. (Cynthia wants you to think that she's always been able to do this, but she hasn't. It took her years of practice, and some help from Lucario.) What is unusual about Silver here is that he's not able to do this even with all of his own Pokemon (in my head, until training with Cynthia to figure it out), but he and Crobat are as permeable to each other as Red and Pikachu, or N and Zoroark, or similar. More or less, they're moirails, although depending on how you think about moirallegiance they may shade somewhat pink. (In that they protect each other from the world some as well as just protecting the world from each other.)
So what then is Silver good at? I think he's good at putting down roots and stabilizing the things that stabilize him. A lot like Green, I think given something to focus on where he could be a bit aloof and distant but still contributing to something greater than himself, he'd do an amazing job. Green's gym would be a bit too public, but Silver-as-researcher as suggested by kitsuneasika or maybe Silver-as-Pokemon-breeder or something similar would work very, very well once he gets his head on as straight as it is likely going to go. He's also a tree deep enough for Kotone to stay connected to while running around having ALL THE ADVENTURES, and he has deep reserves of patience even if he needs something to funnel off his frustration while he's being patient, because his patience comes from abuse, not from zen. Apparently in pokespe the thing he is best at is evolving Pokemon, and that makes a lot of sense to me, although I'm not sure how one makes a life out of it. Maybe he's the one who, with Crobat's help, actually studies and explains the happiness evolution mechanic?
I imagine that, to get to that point, he has to go through some shit. Postgame I see him as a wandering trainer who makes his money off of trainer battles, alternating between homing in the Dragon's Den and homing in Ilex Forest, although wandering sort of everywhere. (I don't know why Ilex Forest, other than Celebi. It just... works?) I imagine him sometimes crashing high school and college courses and sitting in the back in an effort to learn things, and picking up a weird hodgepodge of knowledge while lacking things others would find crucial. He stays in touch with Kotone and Lance and Clair and maybe a couple of the dragon trainers, and that's about it. At some point he realizes he's queer and maybe tries to go be gay but that really doesn't go well for him and being out of his comfort zone and also uncomfortable there helps him to figure out a little more about what his comfort zone is. And also accept that, those feelings about Kotone? Yes, they're those kind of feelings, it's okay Silver, it will be fine. And then it is fine, or at least, mostly, and the fact that it is is both a tremendous blessing to him and something that lets him be a little bit weaker than he would be otherwise, lets him let down his guard because Kotone has his front and Crobat has his back and maybe everything actually will be okay now. Which is fine, as long as he doesn't end up in the comaverse. Sorry, Silver.
I have more Silver feelings but my hands are hurting so I am going to stop. <3
ON SILVER
Silver is a fucked up kid. His father is a mob boss, terrorist, and public figure; his mother is (canonically, as far as we know) out of the picture. While this isn't certain, I believe he was born and raised to be Giovanni's successor; Giovanni inherited the whole shebang from his mother, and it makes sense that he'd want to pass things on. If Team Rocket is meant to be modeled on Italian-American organized crime, his successor wouldn't have to be his direct heir, but a blood connection is pretty important, and Giovanni doesn't have any other family we know of, so Silver's the natural choice. In the Celebi event, the two almost seem to be working together, though contentiously:
SILVER: Number one... You said you were going to be the strongest in the world! Are you just going to quit!? What are you going to do from now on!?
GIOVANNI: If you cannot accept your loss then you cannot move forward... In order to create an even stronger organization, I shall now be alone.
SILVER: What do you mean strong! Even though you were so many, you all lost to ONE kid!!
GIOVANNI: By gathering a large amount of people, you gain great power, that is what an organization is... That is the power of an organization! I've failed my underlings...! One day I will make sure to revive Team Rocket!!
SILVER: I don't understand! I don't get what you're saying at all dad!
GIOVANNI: There will come a time when you'll understand...
SILVER: I don't even want to know! I don't want to become like you! I won't ever be so weak as to rely on others to become strong! I'll become strong! I'll become strong all by myself!
SILVER: All by myself... (credit for original transcription)
So Giovanni abadons his son, who is... at the youngest 7, at the oldest maybe 11 or 12, I imagine 9 if Red is 10... to go into hiding with the hope of remaking his criminal empire. Without his son, in whom perhaps he sees his own weakness reflected. Just straight up abandons him on the road!! In a children's game!
Now, there is no explicit canon evidence that Giovanni abused Silver --- but that's certainly what I believe happened. And Silver just watched the abuser who has always had power over him lose to a kid roughly his age; Red is 10ish at that point. It's hard to believe how young all of these kids are. Silver likely feels energized, like he too can become stronger than Team Rocket, stronger than his dad, not dependent on Team Rocket's simultaneous pampering training and abusive consequences. But at the same time... what happens between then and the start of Ethan/Lyra/Gold/Kotone's adventure? (Kotone's in my head, but whoever.) He doesn't have any Pokemon when he steals Feraligatr. Had he let them go because they were too weak? Had he never had one because he didn't have access to one? Did they die? Were they stolen from him?
I don't actually know, but here's what I think. My guess is that he went back to Team Rocket, because while maybe teenage Silver can live alone in the woods, as precocious as he might be, Silver at 7 to 10 had to go somewhere. TR doesn't hate Giovanni, since they're trying to get him back later; he's vanished. He might have been captured, he might have been killed, but they know he was not arrested and they know he didn't come back tail between his legs. Probably Silver told them he was alive, but not that he'd run away --- too proud for that. So they trained him, and he has this bizarre set of skills for a twelve-year-old by the time he leaves that includes lockpicking and using a butterfly knife but not using a bread knife or being nice to someone. The Rockets respect him, and sort of fear him, but he's also a kid who bears their anger toward Giovanni for losing and abandoning them, so the training is harsh, and he's probably abused more. But that's fine; they are a means to an end. Through their training he will grow beyond their training; strong enough not to need help.
When the game starts, he's just left. Maybe he knows they're planning something and feels he has to leave to stop them, which suggests a more proactive, anti-Rocket Silver, the kind I most prefer to imagine. Maybe he feels he's strong enough not to need them anymore, suggesting a brasher and more selfish Silver. Maybe they kicked him out because he refused to do something terrible. Maybe he couldn't take the beatings anymore and fled. All he's got is his school uniform --- which I imagine he wears to fit in when walking around outside, not because he goes to school --- and maybe a knife and some tools. He needs a pokemon, and stealing one from Elm's lab is way easier than trying to steal pokeballs and throw them at wild Pokemon until one sticks. Ramping up from zero in the Pokeverse is remarkably hard! He's too young to make money, and no one would give him a Pokemon. He's not going to trust random adults. Stealing a Pokemon might actually be his best option.
Less excusable is his later stealing of Sneasel from ... Kyle? ... in Cianwood. It's a rare Pokemon with typing that would help him defeat Lance, so I sort of understand why he does it, but I always have this sense of SILVER YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER. I think honestly in believing he should know better I give him a bit too much credit; it worked once, why shouldn't it work again? There aren't any consequences outside of his own head for either of his Pokemon thefts. (Perhaps the authorities are too busy with Team Rocket.) He feels guilty much later, I'm sure; stealing Sneasel seems more about his own personal strength than about taking down Team Rocket. Sonata suggests that maybe after he tries to return the starter to Elm, and Elm points out that his starter loves him, he realizes that Sneasel also loves him and it would be wrong to give him back.
The other inexcusable thing he does during the game is when he assaults the player character, tearing off her TR uniform/disguise. There are, a number of ways to read this, but none of them are good. A couple of people, when I've expressed that I ship Silver/Kotone, have been like "But Silver all but sexually assaults her in game. That's canon." And... yeah! It's pretty fucked up, especially considering he's likely a year or three older than her and should really know what that means. But he only sort of does --- he's still a broken child, unsocialized. He was tearing off the R. It takes him a long time to realize what he did, and when he does, it takes him a while to be able to even look her in the eyes. (In my head, he realizes what he's done because he's raped, and comes to Kotone for help, and she makes a smart remark about this and then he knows and everything is suddenly worse and she has to dump him on Ethan because she doesn't know what else to do. But that's... awfully dramatic. I also have like 3000 words of it, unfinished, tucked in a directory somewhere. Anyway!)
As the game goes on Silver realizes that his strength is not just his, it's his Pokemon's, and it's in the relationship between him and his Pokemon, and in the work they do together. So in some sense he does later understand what Giovanni says he will someday, the Mob mentality remapped onto his relationship with his Pokemon. Which becomes fierce. Crobat can only evolve at maximum happiness --- this is pretty much proof that he's treating his Pokemon well and training seriously with them, because chances are that he was treating Golbat pretty terribly before that. Although! There's another way to consider it where he loved his Pokemon all along and his talk about them being too weak and replacing them was all terrified, Rocket-trauma bluster. I tend to go with the first theory but the second one is really fascinating, Silver with his pokemon after battling Kotone taking them out and apologizing for calling them weak, promising that he'll do better, enacting both sides of his relationship with his father oh god this is creepy and sad. :( Crobat, though, is really important for him, both because Crobat is living proof of Silver's ability to bond tightly with Pokemon and because they seem very well matched --- Crobat is consistently Silver's highest level Pokemon who isn't his starter.
Here's where I'm going to veer off of the "interpreting canon" tracks and ride this train all the way into the I Have Strong Feelings About Silver sunset. The stuff above this point I'd argue based on canon; the stuff below it I'm extrapolating from the above base, but some of it is clearly arbitrarily chosen or based on my own personal preferences of imagination.
Silver has tremendous drive and potential, but not at any of the things other people want him to do. He's not cut out to be the leader of a criminal organization; he has the will but not the charisma, the fierceness but not the calculating head for logistics. (He can get good at that, but never great. Outside of the comaverse I imagine he takes up chess, but plateaus at around 1400 or 1500.) He's not cut out to fight crime; he has the sense of justice but not the sense to apply it to himself, and his emotional investments are dangerous. He's not cut out to be the Champion; he doesn't have the instinct of a Red or an N, he doesn't have the ridiculous ability of a Kotone or a Cynthia, and he doesn't have the supportive infrastructure and grace under pressure of a Dawn or an Alder. (He doesn't even care deeply about the League like a Lance (in my headcanon also Dawn).) If there's any Champion he's like, of the ones I understand, it's Iris. They're very different people, but they both seem like their bond with their pokemon becomes terrifying when they're in a bind.
In my headcanon, folks like Red and N are born able to communicate with Pokemon --- maybe not fluently, but enough. They don't even need to share words, they just... understand each other. Very strong trainers --- probably not even every Champion, though most, and some Gym Leaders and other wandering aces --- can battle with their Pokemon without announcing moves, just moving together, sharing intent. (Cynthia wants you to think that she's always been able to do this, but she hasn't. It took her years of practice, and some help from Lucario.) What is unusual about Silver here is that he's not able to do this even with all of his own Pokemon (in my head, until training with Cynthia to figure it out), but he and Crobat are as permeable to each other as Red and Pikachu, or N and Zoroark, or similar. More or less, they're moirails, although depending on how you think about moirallegiance they may shade somewhat pink. (In that they protect each other from the world some as well as just protecting the world from each other.)
So what then is Silver good at? I think he's good at putting down roots and stabilizing the things that stabilize him. A lot like Green, I think given something to focus on where he could be a bit aloof and distant but still contributing to something greater than himself, he'd do an amazing job. Green's gym would be a bit too public, but Silver-as-researcher as suggested by kitsuneasika or maybe Silver-as-Pokemon-breeder or something similar would work very, very well once he gets his head on as straight as it is likely going to go. He's also a tree deep enough for Kotone to stay connected to while running around having ALL THE ADVENTURES, and he has deep reserves of patience even if he needs something to funnel off his frustration while he's being patient, because his patience comes from abuse, not from zen. Apparently in pokespe the thing he is best at is evolving Pokemon, and that makes a lot of sense to me, although I'm not sure how one makes a life out of it. Maybe he's the one who, with Crobat's help, actually studies and explains the happiness evolution mechanic?
I imagine that, to get to that point, he has to go through some shit. Postgame I see him as a wandering trainer who makes his money off of trainer battles, alternating between homing in the Dragon's Den and homing in Ilex Forest, although wandering sort of everywhere. (I don't know why Ilex Forest, other than Celebi. It just... works?) I imagine him sometimes crashing high school and college courses and sitting in the back in an effort to learn things, and picking up a weird hodgepodge of knowledge while lacking things others would find crucial. He stays in touch with Kotone and Lance and Clair and maybe a couple of the dragon trainers, and that's about it. At some point he realizes he's queer and maybe tries to go be gay but that really doesn't go well for him and being out of his comfort zone and also uncomfortable there helps him to figure out a little more about what his comfort zone is. And also accept that, those feelings about Kotone? Yes, they're those kind of feelings, it's okay Silver, it will be fine. And then it is fine, or at least, mostly, and the fact that it is is both a tremendous blessing to him and something that lets him be a little bit weaker than he would be otherwise, lets him let down his guard because Kotone has his front and Crobat has his back and maybe everything actually will be okay now. Which is fine, as long as he doesn't end up in the comaverse. Sorry, Silver.
I have more Silver feelings but my hands are hurting so I am going to stop. <3