In Defense of Sally Acorn: A Flawed, yet Strong Female Character
Like Elise, Big the Cat, Chris Thorndyke, and several other characters, Sally is a character that is misunderstood and overhated. The reasons as to why she gets hated are this; "She's inappropriate because she's naked", "She's bossy", "She's useless because she doesn't have any superpowers", "She's a Mary Sue", "She's a selfish bitch", "She's mean to Amy", "She stole Sonic away from Amy", and she slapped Sonic, therefore, "she sucks and is a terrible character".
To start off, the whole "She's naked" argument doesn't make sense. I mean, I kinda get it since the majority of the female characters in the Sonic franchise are fully clothed, so it makes Sally stand out. But at the same time, I don't get it. You don't see any explicit details on her design on parts of her original design. Sally is an anthropomorphic squirrel-chipmunk hybrid that's covered by her fur.
And during the Post-Super Genesis era of the Archie comics, she got a redesign where she's fully clothed, with a sleeveless crop-top and shorts. Also, Sally isn't bossy. She's confident, decisive, and a natural-born leader. Just because Sally doesn't have any superpowers, doesn't mean that she's useless. Characters from other media such as Batman, Robin from the 2003 Teen Titans series, The Turtles from the TMNT franchise, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow from the MCU movies, Bow and Catra from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Marco Diaz from Star Vs The Forces of Evil, Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and many more don't have superpowers either, but that doesn't make them useless or unreliable in fights.
Sally is very agile, acrobatic, and athletic, is skilled in hand-to-hand combat, martial arts, and armed combat, is highly intelligent, and is a skilled hacker. Also, do you even know what a Mary Sue is? A Mary Sue is a female character that is absolutely perfect. They have no flaws or weaknesses whatsoever, and are loved by nearly every character. Sally's isn't perfect; she can be stubborn, self-righteous, judgemental, and can let her emotions get the better of her and/or cloud her judgement.
Despite her flaws, Sally is also down-to-earth, mature, level-headed, logical, has a strong sense of duty and justice, playful, compassionate, tomboyish, brave, and protective. And you know what? I can think of another character who's selfish most of the time. Anyway, Sally is many things; selfish isn't one of them. She can be selfish at times, but so is every other character.
Sally is a very selfless person who cares about her people, her family, her loved ones, and her friends. She even sacrificed herself to destroy a world-roboticizer to save countless lives and the world, which resulted in her getting roboticized into Mecha Sally. And I don't know what you're even talking about when you claim that Sally is mean to Amy and/or that Sally stole Sonic from Amy. Sonic isn't romantically interested in Amy despite Amy being obsessively in love with him. He doesn't own Amy anything just because she's infatuated with him.
Sonic is not a prize to be won. Period. In the SatAM cartoon and the Pre-Super Genesis Wave era of the Archie comics, Sonic shows romantic interest in Sally, who also feels the same way about him in a more healthy and non-obsessive way. Sonic and Sally's relationship isn't perfect, but they respect each other, trust each other, and balance each other out very well.
In the infamous #134 issue of the Archie comics, Sally did slap Sonic in the face, but it's because she didn't want to lose him again. Short summary; Sonic had previously "sacrificed" himself and was presumed dead for about a year. By the time Sonic returned a year later, Sally was still dealing with the trauma of loss along with other things. And the slap was written and drawn by someone who hates Sally and wanted Sonic to be with Amy instead.