#i don't necessarily think i would even label sora as a mary sue

[parachutingkitten]

I’m gonna be honest it just sounds like you’re calling Sora a Mary Sue and I really don’t care for that because of how much the Mary Sue ‘critique’ is rooted in misogyny. I just don’t care at all for the term ‘sympathy card’ in regards to female characters when fandom and even society is just overwhelmingly critical of women. Like Misako for example.

I'm not gonna discount the idea that I don't like Sora because of some sort of internalized misogyny. It's certainly possible, and at the very least shouldn't be eliminated as a contributing factor. But I do think there's a bit more to my criticism than that.

For those who don't know, Mary Sue is a term that sprung up describing a particular brand of bad female character that's often a little too self insert-y. They're good at everything, naturally beautiful, have close to no actual flaws, and generally just don't feel like a real person. For the record, this is bad writing, and are valid things to criticize about any given character. Unfortunately, it has kind of been co-opted by idiots who just want a fancy way to hate on female characters, especially if they think they're 'too empowered'. This is not at all a valid criticism. The most prominent example of this sort of thing is probably Rey in the new Star Wars movies. A lot of people had criticisms that essentially boiled down to "her jedi powers are too powerful" which is kinda whack. Additionally, you'll notice that this criticism being used to describe solely female characters is a bit whack as well. The fact that even the original version of the criticism is specifically about female characters does taint it a bit. All characters can feel fanfic-y, unflawed, and overly bland no matter the gender. For this reason, even if I do feel a character fits the Mary Sue criticism, I try to avoid the term. It's fine that the name originated from a female character, but the fact that it's seen as a female only criticism inherently makes the criticism slightly suspect.

Anyway, back to ninjago.

As for your misako example, I feel like she's a prime target for a mary sue criticism. She's overly kind and composed at all times. She's so attractive that she's the center of a decades long love triangle. She's pretty much good at everything she picks up, and rarely ever has a moment where the narrative criticizes her. That fits a lot of the mary sue criticisms, and I will say that her having a few more flaws, getting into a messy divorce, or being paranoid about how leaving her kid affected him, would probably make her a better and more interesting character. I don't really think she's too overpowered, I think it all seems pretty believable for her circumstances, but if she were to become a more prominent cast member, I could see the need to nerf her a bit. Now, the important thing to note here is that none of this information should make you hate her like... personally, as a character. You should not demonize her for being poorly written. The misako vitriol is way crazy, and though it all sources from some sort of valid criticism, it ends in people making hate posts about her, vilifying her, and blaming her for a bunch of other stuff she isn't even responsible for, when she is entirely a victim of bad writing and nothing else. The way things are presented in narrative, she has done nothing wrong. She made a hard moral choice about her kid a long time ago, which has since been long forgiven, and she's been a saint since then. There is no actual reason to hate her. Again, it's the writers who should be absorbing that frustration from you.

And this is the problem we run up against when talking about characters who circle anywhere near mary sue territory. Most of the time, there are valid criticisms at the core of whatever we're talking about, but if you express them incorrectly, you run the risk of riding a hate train you don't mean to be on. I would like to make clear that no matter what I'm saying here, I don't hate Sora personally. I'm just not connecting with her- and that's fine. Most importantly, in no way do I blame her for that, I blame the (male) writers who had majority control over her portrayal. If anything, I think Sora deserves better.

Now, I listed a lot of reasons I don't like Sora, but admittedly a lot of them boil down to her feeling very main character-y, which is in fact adjacent to a Mary Sue criticism. However, I made this pretty clear in the post that these tend to be tropes I just don't personally latch on to. I hated Lloyd for years while his shtick was the whole "I'm the most important person in the world and it's so hard" thing, but that mellowed out in the eleven minute era and I like him a lot better now! I tend not to like Kai's main character moments. I absolutely despise Jay in Skybound, and Cole isn't particularly interesting in MotM to me. Main characters just aren't my jam. I like Sora much better in season two, when her struggle isn't centered on how important she is, just like all these other characters. So, I think this line of criticism is pretty typical for me, regardless of gender.

The other factor at play is the entire show of Dragon's Rising. I am not connecting with it. I think a lot of the show tends to be signaling the right story beats to gain sympathy and feel deep. It's not a Sora specific criticism. I have a whole long rant about the nightmare scene specifically and several thoughts on how they handle Lloyd's panic attacks which I feel sort of encapsulate my feelings towards a lot of the writing in general. It's surface level. It doesn't have ideas it really wants to share, it has time to fill and some topics they've seen better media cover, and so feel they should include to be meaningful. It feels very by the book. They've plugged in the equation for good storytelling without adding anything to it. And this is how I feel about Sora as well, go figure. I don’t think they wanted to tell a story about a child genius who gets their work turned against them in order to express any ideas or explore any concepts, they did it cuz it's cool, and sounds like a dramatic storyline. It's a bunch of cliche's, unfortunately one's that I'm not partial to, slapped together with no new twist or spark to them. It's fine. It's competent. It's just not interesting to me.

In that way, I think my criticisms are Mary Sue adjacent. It feels a little fanfic-y. The characters feel like they're made to be "ninjago but like with angst you guys!" But this goes for a lot of the other characters too, not just Sora. Lloyd is pretty bad about this in part 2, I'm already getting these vibes from Jay, Arin slips into it in part 2 and I think Nya has it a bit across the board. But Sora, being the main character for season 1, unfortunately feels the most main character-y.

I understand that 'sympathy cheat code' might sound a little dismissive, so if you prefer you can reword my criticism to "does not utilize the backstory tropes they've included in a way that feels genuine or deeper than surface level". But you've got to admit, Sora does have, just a bunch of those feel bad tropes in her backstory, and a lot of the screentime is dedicated to laying that backstory out to you in season one. I am not accustomed to ninjago being a feel bad show. That's not what I'm in this game for. It's the reason I hate skybound. I didn't like it when they did it to jay, and I don't like it when they do it to sora. It just feels a little repetitive to me. None of these cliche's really shine as being particularly well done either, aside from maybe the climax where she turns away from her parents? But even then, I don't feel it was really built up to especially well. The main relationship she seems to care about is Dr. LaRow, not her parents. She seemed pretty secure in her identity when separated from Imperium, so asserting it doesn't mean a whole lot. We don't feel betrayed by her parents, because we never got to like them in the first place. That wasn't a support system we ever saw her benefit from, so her leaving it behind doesn't really mean much. These same tropes could have been played a lot better if they just had a bit more depth to their implementation that actually invited you to care beyond a surface level.

If you've seen the mega video, you'll know I don't typically relate to female characters who have a pronounced tough cynical streak in them, but am sure to make clear that it's just a character type preference. The stem girl isn't a bad character type at all, just pretty overplayed at this point in time (again, because i think male writers see it as an easy way to be clear they want to empower their female characters).

Idk. I think Sora's writing is a little hollow. I also think Dragons Rising's writing is a little hollow. I can see how those criticisms might come off a little iffy in isolation but, the ask was about Sora, so that's largely what I focused on. I think the criticism makes sense within the larger context of my opinions as a whole.