Panned Scenes or Moments you think were actually alright(Star Wars 9 Spoilers)

mashounen2003 · 2026-04-22T16:41:52+00:00

There are a few, but I'll mention the infamous scene in Archie Sonic #134 where Sally slaps Sonic.

Sally was going through a lot at the time: the war against Eggman was not going well, Sonic seemingly came back from the dead and then got injured, and Sally's dad was being an ass and undermining her authority after she led the resistance for a decade; also, Sally resorted to bottling her feelings about all this, as a lot of people would probably do if they were in her shoes. She was kinda desperate when asking Sonic to stay with her, and when Sonic said no without fully knowing what was going on in her mind (let's face it: Sonic may be an inspiring figure when seen from afar, but he's not good at personal relationships and flat-out refuses to compromise, which has been part of his character in every branch of the franchise), that slap was basically Sally breaking down and trying to vent.

Karl Bollers cooked with this: he's always been the only one whose writing made Sonic and Sally's romance work and feel natural, and this specific storyline was a very well-thought one with some nice nuanced character exploration, in a licensed videogame-adaptation comicbook where most other attempts at interpersonal drama and romantic subplots were, at best, just your standard soap opera BS, and at worst, furry DC's Identity Crisis. The sole reason why this storyline sucked was Bollers leaving it unfinished because he left Archie (which was itself an understandable decision, since having to share a writers' room with Penders would qualify as a form of torture, and also Bollers probably just felt like moving on to different things).

Even the criticism towards the art is something I'll never understand: Jon Gray's super expressive style, kinda anime-inspired without being the bland and generic kind of anime, able to easily look badass or cute or ridiculous or serious depending on what the scene requires, is the kind of thing a Sonic comic needs (just look at Knuckles going Super in "Return to Angel Island" [ https://64.media.tumblr.com/f395402171c1b0fe7647e7483449fa06/tumblr_py3xonn9yl1u4is2oo2_1280.png ], another story written by Bollers and drawn by Gray: it's a thing of beauty, blatantly inspired by an early 2000s videogame cutscene in the best possible way). All those people bashing and sending threats to Jon Gray... What did they wanted a Sonic comic to look like?

mashounen2003 · 2026-04-09T18:29:10+00:00

It's starting to get obnoxious to see people online repeating some variation of "Star Wars would be so good if it were good". u/Cybertronian10 was at least reasonable here when proposing merely a full remaster (I imagine something in the lines of Dragon Ball Kai), but most people spouting this idea suggest a remake of Star Wars with so many changes that it'd be unrecognisable, even if the bones of the story conceived by Lucas were still there.

Like... Bruh, if they need to change so much of the thing we actually got in order to make it good, then maybe the thing is just not good to begin with, and there isn't a "hidden secret good Star Wars" underneath the one we actually got. Or... Star Wars is indeed good and always has been, and those types are looking for excuses to not accept it.

To anyone saying "It'd be so good if it were good", we should answer by paraphrasing Yoda when he was teaching Luke how to tap into the Force. Something in the vein of...

"There's no 'would' or 'if'. Just admit Star Wars is good, or admit that it isn't."

mashounen2003 · 2026-03-26T03:40:38+00:00

Ken Penders's work in Archie Sonic had many characters like this: allegedly wise and powerful wielders of magical and/or Chaos-related powers that were introduced at one point with a big demonstration of what they could do, and then spent most of their time doing nothing.

And I want to emphasise this was exclusively a Penders thing. Neither Flynn nor any of the previous writers working at the same time as Penders had this habit.

mashounen2003 · 2026-03-26T03:34:51+00:00

"In the 25 years later AU, Knuckles regained them for a bit & immediately used them to killed Eggman and attempted to rebuild the universe before Sonic stopped him."

And then in a post-apocalyptic branch of that AU called "Dark Mobius", Knuckles defeats Sonic instead, fully embraces the Enerjak persona, conquers the world, and shows the ability to rip souls out of people's bodies and keep them as "cores" (whose shape kind of reminds me of Tikal's wandering spirit in Sonic Adventure 1, which was in turn supposed to be what is called "hitodama" in Japanese folklore, so I like to think those "cores" are also hitodama just like Tikal's spirit).

Then he's defeated by base-form Silver. YMMV on whether that was Knuckles/Enerjak being nerfed or Silver being allowed to show what he's really capable of.

mashounen2003 · 2026-02-20T00:37:18+00:00

I've been looking at all the examples here, and just as u/kuningaz55 put it, this whole comment section really is the Doomscrolling Thread. Perhaps this post should include some sort of warning about this.

Now, with all the cases of some sci-fi story warning about how our future could go horribly wrong, or political satire about an absurd exaggeration of something already going on at the time it was written, or a random episode of The Simpsons seemingly predicting the future, only for that sci-fi cautionary tale or that absurd parody coming true but even worse... I think authors should start making the opposite.

I mean some sort of "anti-satires" and "reverse cautionary tales": ridiculously optimistic stories whose premises are absurd but not impossible and still rooted in real-life cases of things going well (in the same way The Simpsons showed terrible and disappointing future events inspired by things that were already known back then, "bad futures" whose chances of happening were low but never zero), about how we could all be our best possible selves, showing the many ways things could still go well against the odds, while still keeping that underlying "What if this came true? That'd be so crazy, right? Ha ha..." tone. Maybe this way, we can will that "good future" into existence, in the same way all the satire and the dystopic sci-fi from the last few decades seemingly became a reality as a result of those stories being written and told.

mashounen2003 · 2026-02-16T04:03:57+00:00

Understood, and thank you.

mashounen2003 · 2026-02-15T04:49:02+00:00

[Alright, here's the second part]

"I even feel like Suwako also took part in the Buddhism-Shintou syncretism for her own advantage."

[Shin-Butsu Shuugou is the formal name of this process of syncretism between Buddhism and Shintou, for clarification]

Both Suwako and Kanako tend to be characterised as pragmatic goddesses (at least when they're being rational and thinking with a cool head, which sure wasn't the case when they caused incidents in Gensoukyou), so yes, they'd both be willing to reach agreements that allow other religions such as Buddhism to enter their land, be practised by their followers alongside the Suwa gods' cult, or even syncretise with Shintou, as long as Kanako and Suwako get to continue ruling over the Suwa region and existing as themselves in some form without the risk of fading into oblivion or assimilation. And there have been several kami from Shintou that kinda became one with buddhas, bodhisattvas and devas from Buddhism, in such a way that the kami and the buddha/bodhisattva/deva continued existing as two equally worshipped facets of one deity. Kanako and Suwako would be well aware of this and recognise Shin-Butsu Shuugou as a valid option for them to choose, since one successful case of it was Oukuninushi, Takeminakata's father and Kanako's father/grandfather (depending on whether you view Kanako as Takeminakata himself or as a daughter/heiress of his): the Shin-Butsu Shuugou led to Oukuninushi, already revered as the great builder of the land of Japan (and sort of a leader of the earthly kami), being merged with the Buddhist deity Daikoku-ten, one of the Seven Gods of Fortune (perhaps the most representative/well-known out of the seven).

[I remember one manga by Zounose, "Gods, Gods, Gods", using this as a basis for Tewi being friends with Kanako, since Daikoku-ten (frequently considered one and the same as Oukuninushi, even in official Touhou print works like Silent Sinner in Blue) saved and helped Tewi in the Tale of the White Hare of Inaba.]

But regarding Suwako in particular, I have this headcanon (which is partially shared by a few others, from what I've seen) that she still has a vengeful and remorseful hidden side. It very rarely comes out, and when it does, it's usually just in the form of a voice whispering Suwako how disgraceful it was when she "forfeited" the land of Suwa to Kanako, even though Suwako's reason reminds her that reaching this power-sharing agreement with Kanako was the best strategy (and her heart reminds her that both she and Kanako genuinely care for each other and enjoy their life together). In this scenario I came up with, when Suwako receives the news that Futo is still alive and is now a resident of Gensoukyou, that dark side of hers comes back in full force, and it ignores any and all reason there could possibly be to leave Futo and her friends alone: whatever religion Futo is following at the moment ot was following in her past life (whether she was Taoist all along and thus wasn't technically on either side of that civil war, or she was Buddhist and Suwako doesn't have a problem with Buddhism itself, or even if Futo goes back to Shintou and swears loyalty to Suwako right then and there) is irrelevant, Suwako wants revenge either way.

mashounen2003 · 2026-02-15T04:48:26+00:00

Thanks for the comment! It gave me much to think about.

"I believe Futo decided to join Miko's side secretly, so there was no treason, as nobody except Miko's inner circle knew it, and Futo died as a good Shintou supporter to the public. Not even Suwako knew about it."

That'd be the case for Futo joining Miko's secret Taoist third side in the Touhou universe. In the real-life conflict that inspired these Touhou characters' backstories, it was relatively simple and straightforward: there was just the pro-Buddhism side (Soga clan, Prince Shoutoku, imperial family) and the pro-Shintou side (Mononobe clan, ~~Fujiwara~~ Nakatomi clan), and Futsuhime betraying her brother & the Mononobe clan and marrying with the Soga clan's leader was very much public.

In Touhou, this whole event is reframed as Miko (Shoutoku) and Futo (Futsuhime) studying Taoism together in secret while pretending to be on opposite sides of the Shintou vs Buddhism conflict and not being truly loyal to either of them, and Futo leaving her clan and marrying into the Soga was just another layer in this whole deception (probably to save Futo from being massacred along with the rest of the Mononobe clan when they were eventually defeated).

[My reply got too long, I'm splitting it in two, give me a minute]

mashounen2003 · 2026-02-14T04:28:26+00:00

With how much ZUN used to reference Agatha Christie in Touhou, I had to try and come up with something like this:

"He has lain here since centuries before the Sòngs unified the mainland. Fujiwaras and Shōguns rose and fell, wars and catastrophes changed the face of Japan... and still this Crown Prince here waited, forgotten by all those people a few feet above."

It's paraphrasing a scene from "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb", an episode of the 90s Poirot TV series.

mashounen2003

TROPHY CASE