My interest in the character "Snively" was not as much of a tempest as

a slow, steady, intriguing trickle into his psyche: a personality that

seemed startlingly enigmatic and complex when placed in the context of a kids'

Saturday morning cartoon.

Each morning as an artistically aspiring ten-year-old (translation: a

kid who drew a lot of animated characters in her spare time rather than joining

the softball team or the hopscotch squad), I remember tiptoeing into the

den at 8 am, the accursed early time slot that ABC dealt the Ohio broadcasters,

my heart already pounding with the excitement of retreating into the Mobian

world for a half hour. Like a beautifully written children's book, one unadorned

with false, saccharine buffers to the real sorrow and darkness of life, and

yet somehow brimming with hope at the same time, Sonic SatAM had an almost

sacred quality to me when I was very young. I fellowshipped with it all by

myself, with the lights off and the TV volume just barely audible, before anyone

else in my family got up from bed.

Each time I watched it there was Snively crouched like a praying mantis

over the Robotropolis computer monitor, face coated with a gray-ashen

apathy: the bitter hopelessness of the underdog who'd sacrificed his principles in

order to keep his head above the water of his world's blackest decade. And

those EYES: They had an eerie quality, both grieving, deep and

piercing--electric ice, and numb, pale and weak, like the face of a specter. He was the only

character with such entrancing, striking eyes; they said everything about his

simultaneously venomous and withdrawn character. At first, I was

disgusted by the sight of his cowardice in the face of injustice.

It was on the morning that I saw the episode "Sonic Racer," and after

that the morning I saw "Heads Or Tails," in which his character took a more

active role in the show than the sparse dialogue "Yes, sir," that a strange

question popped into my head: WHY?

Now, wait! Think about it for a second, reader: Snively was "spared"

robotization during his uncle's coup, damned twice as much to the hell

of conscious awareness of his own wicked deeds under his uncle's command. He was

somehow preserved by his uneasy, if not abusive, birthright as Robotnik's kin:

his whipping boy, the one who could constantly remind the tyrant of his

superiority because his nephew by contrast was so small, so weak, so pathetic.

Snively was awarded two "honors": that of the FREE-WILLED, and that of the

scapegoat on which Robotnik projected his own insecurities, and self-loathing, by

both verbal and physical abuse. HE WAS AWARE OF HIS OWN SLAVERY. So why, if

Snively was the only creature in the entire city that still maintained his free

will, DID HE CHOOSE TO STAY A SLAVE? This remarkable inconsistency of

intellectual awareness and emotional choice, almost a preference, it seemed, for the

miserable status quo when change COULD be even worse, serves as a

powerful symbol of the whole show's meaning: Snively is the worst kind of slave because he

thinks that only POWER brings freedom, and that any other kind of

self-liberation is too risky to chance.

What a rich, complex mind to delve into! What hurts and pains fueled

this poor young man's decision, and his choice to retaliate with betrayal,

arrogance and anger to King Acorn, who took him in as his own? What biological or

socially engrained flaws? What damnations? What injustices done to him

by heroes, peers or elders? And could he be saved from his own self-inflicted

punishments? What portion of him was inherently evil, what portion

able to be redeemed, cleansed, corrected? And thus began the obsession ,LOL! :D

While he is specifically an interesting and unique character, Snively

is sympathetic most markedly because he represents the NORMAL person's

reaction to the scenario in Mobius: A war-torn planet, resembling in many places a

filthy, starving third world country or nuclear wasteland, its honorable

refugees all in hiding, its only recognized leader a tyrant: of the same race--the

same BLOODLINE, in this case--as oneself. Snively faces the psychological

scenario of the individual with the enemy nation's race and heritage, "guilty by

association" as the term goes, among the land of his foes--given very

little quarter for the benefit of the doubt. One might argue that he would have been

hated just as much if he had denied his uncle's legacy as he is accepting it.

Thus while Sonic and Co.'s bravery and determination render them

larger-than-life, more archetypical heroes than real people, Snively reacts to danger and

personal stress the way MOST of us would: with fear, confusion, and

disillusionment.Because there is both a courageous Sonic and a terrified Snively in

all of us, we can't help but like both of them--and we can't help but forgive

the latter, over and over again, for being a fallible human being.

My favorite episodes involving Snively showcase his complexity, matched

by few other characters in the show: Sally, Bunnie, Uncle Chuck, Ari, or

perhaps the King, but the rest of the regular characters remained within their

engrained (albeit wonderful) roles--except for the time that Sonic shed that

infamous tear over the loss of his uncle in "Ultra Sonic" ;^).

The episodes in which Snively flashes through multiple character facets are typically during

Season 2, when it became clear that the overthrow of Robotnik necessitated a

multiple-dimensioned, equally disturbed heir: And Snively, with Naugus

looming over the horizon, had always been the candidate. His desperate ambition to

overthrow (and yet to finally make proud) his uncle mixes strangely with his

likeable, sympathetic cynicism, his frank "aw, cut the bullcrap!" judgment

(often his snarky mumblings in season 2 echo exactly what the viewer wants to

shout in Robotnik's face, making him almost the vessel of the audience's

feelings) and a sad sighing expression of "I'm in it deep NOW, aren't I?" in episodes

like, "No Brainer," "SpyHog," "Cry Of the Wolf," "Sonic Racer," "Heads Or

Tails," "The Void" (come on, can you resist watching him laugh until he falls off a

chair? ;) ), and of course the ascenscion of the birthright at the end of

"Doomsday: "Now it's my turn!"

It'll ALWAYS be Snively's turn in my book!! X^D

~"Ealain VanGogh"/ Amber S., proclaimed Insane Snively Fan!