It is like the litecoin supporters feel they are also entitled to the success if bitcoin. I think this is a bad attitude to have. If the founder and the developers of LTC want success then they should double their efforts to get everyone interested in the coin. With bitcoin it was a combination of cleverness, hard work and luck that made it what it is today.
I don't think it's that... They say imitation is the best form of flattery. Charlie copied and improved Bitcoin after seeing it function in the wild for 2 years. He noticed there could be slight adjustments creating the perfect POW balance and also wanted to become the "silver" to Bitcoin's gold. I'd assume that's why people are willing to speculate and maintain some kind of price floor for it.
The problem with the silver branding analogy is that the marketing efforts are not so exciting... It's more sensational to say XYZcoin is going to overtake Bitcoin and dominate the world with xyz features. Whereas with Litecoin it's like saying... "Hey, come join us and forever be considered the #2 coin!" ROFL do you see how ridiculous that sounds?
So what works for Litecoin is to instead piggy back off the success of Bitcoin (and I know they hate that) basically allowing LTC to become the inheritor of their efforts both in marketing/development. Charlie refers to it as Bitcoin being the test bed for Litecoin (so then I refer to it as the official BTC diaper). When the next price rise occurs people will be looking around for that second option and LTC will be there as usual.