lizbee | Sep. 10th, 2011

Or, a proper and srs post about Mai for the womenlovefest.

I've mentioned before that it was this Fandom Wank post that finally got me interested in Avatar. It also got me interested in Mai, because along with the head-shaking at the shenanigans of Zutara shippers, people were saying that it's a shame that Mai was so badly treated in fandom, and she's an interesting character in her own right, and why so hateful, fandom?

So I knew, going in, that there was an endgame love interest for Zuko, and she was hated by shippers who saw her as a rival. That made me curious enough to look out for her, along with Azula, Toph and the other characters I knew weren't introduced until season two. I didn't expect to fall in love with her, but maybe in retrospect I shouldn't be surprised. When I have a male favourite charazter (Zuko!) I nearly always wind up fixating on his female love interest (in the case of Azula and Ursa, it turns out this extends to female relatives in general), and often wind up leaving the poor male favourite kind of flailing in my wake, going, "Hey, remember me? You thought I was pretty great? WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME AS MUCH AS YOU USED TO!"

(Conversely, when I start out with a female favourite, I'm uusally fond of her male love interests, but not all that attached. I realised this year, when I was rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation, that this is almost certainly because I was conditioned as a wee child to expect male love interest characters to be rather insipid, and I apparently extend that even to relationships between regular characters. Although I have to say, Chakotay and John Sheridan aren't exactly interesting in their own right.)

Anyway, my first impression of Mai was that she was the series' Daria, and hence hilarious. All my life I've yearned to be deadpan, when actually I have more in common with Ty Lee. Hence my love for deadpan snarkers.

My second impression of Mai was that she was really interesting. Her parents aren't all that engaged with her (her mother, when she addresses her in "Return to Omashu", just sounds resigned), her best friend is a manipulative bully, and she's been raised with the expectation that what she actually wants for herself will never, ever matter.

This is not my most coherent day ever, so let me cut and paste from a comment I left at donebykorra:

When we first see Mai, there's nothing to suggest she'll be tied to Azula. This foreshadows her later characterisation as being the one to more overtly distance herself from the princess. It's interesting that her introduction establishes her as (a) perennially bored and (b) capable and willing to kill in the defence of her family/search for entertainment. If Aang hadn't been an airbender, he'd have taken a knife to the throat and died in that scene.
I have ALL THE FEELINGS about Mai, so maybe this is a good time to throw in my theory that her attitude of apathetic boredom is an affectation adopted as a defense mechanism. We see in "Zuko Alone" that Azula pounces on her (very restrained) expressions of emotion as weapons to use against her (and Zuko). Between that and her mother's general repressiveness, it's logical that she would assume an attitude that leaves her safe.
We see a very small chink in this armour when Azula questions the wisdom of trading Bumi for Tom-Tom. I know Mai got a lot of hate for choosing the princess over her brother, only -- she didn't. She very clearly takes a moment to look at Tom-Tom and see that he's in no immediate danger. And she must know that if Azula thinks she prioritises her family over her loyalty to the princess -- which, given the nature of Fire Nation politics, would effectively be treason -- no one she cares about will be safe.
This is not to say that Mai's relationship with her family isn't ... interesting. She's fifteen years older than her approximately two year old brother (making her about a year older than Zuko, for the record, and raising the question of just how did her parents wrangle her into Azula's class at school? Of course, I just realised we are only assuming they were in the same year group...) and shows less respect for her parents than any other character in the series. And since the Fire Nation is seen to put a premium on overt displays of respect, and her parents don't actually seem to care all that much about her behaviour, that raises a lot of questions. As a child any misbehaviour or expression of emotion was shut down. As a young woman, more or less an adult in this society, to a great extent she seems to do and say what she wants. Have her parents stopped paying attention to her since Tom-Tom was born? Do they just lack the energy to control her, and Omashu, and everything else? ANSWERS ON A POSTCARD.
Other things about Mai: she seems to take a cruel pleasure in seeing Ty Lee remove Katara's bending. This makes her, I think, the only character to overtly refer to bending ability or lack thereof as a mark of status/capability/power. (Sokka comes close now and then, but without such bitterness.)
She also actually smiles -- it's small, but it's there -- at Azula when they're reunited, and returns Ty Lee's hug. She and Azula even laugh together, which is ... well, no doubt it's a sound that haunt's Zuko's nightmares.

(I realised later, in fact, that Mai doesn't just hug Ty Lee, she hugs Azula. Which is a bit like hugging a snake. Or my cat.)

I enjoy Mai's relationships with the other characters. She and Ty Lee have a very natural-seeming friendship, sometimes teasing, but also sometimes cruel (as in "The Beach" and Mai's "I guess that's why you need ten boyfriends" and Ty Lee's claim that Mai's aura is blah). She seems to like Azula, and enjoys the opportunities that her friendship with Azula offers, but she's also the first to disobey Azula's orders (in "The Chase"), and in "The Headband" she literally side-eyes Azula for coming between her and Zuko's make-out session.

And, please don't be shocked when I say this, but I really, really love Mai's relationship with Zuko. Mai basically comes out and admits that Zuko is almost the only thing in the world that she cares about, but that melodramatic notion and their own respective traumas don't change the fact that they have a really down to earth teenage romance. Which is to say that she knows when Zuko is being self-indulgent and needs distracting, when he's genuinely suffering and needs support, and when he needs his sorry ass dumped because he's acting like a jerk and treating her badly. (Sometimes I see people saying they can't ship them because they're just like the cool kids in high school? And I'm like, are we talking about the same Zuko here? Anyway.)

I tend to hang around the corners of fandom that really, really love Mai, but sometimes I find myself seeing comments on DevArt, or reading summaries at FF.net, or just browsing my own Tumblr dash, and I see Mai hate. Things for which she has been hated:

- sarcasm
- being unsufficiently understanding of Zuko's pain
- not being Katara
- being female in the presence of Zuko
- her hair (too shiny)
- her breasts (too small)
- her privilege

(That last is interesting, because it was in the comments at Mark Watches, and while I think there are interesting discussions and stories to be found in all of the Fire Kids and their privilege, it seems (a) unlikely and out of character for Mai to sit around being Aware Of Her Privilege and (b) a bit unfair to rag on her for that, when a week earlier the same commenter was saying how ~sad~ it was that Zuko was forced to steal from peasants.)

In short, Mai is great, and there is not enough fic about her (even though there is lots), and I like her.

Things I'm planning to do for the rest of womenlovefest: I'm fitting this in around work, travel and other fannish commitments, so nothing too elaborate is happening. There are a couple of fics I'm going to finish up and post, some sketches to scan, and I'll assemble some Mai fic and art recs from my delicious. (Thus revealing my secret love of Mai/Ozai to the world. SHUT UP, I KNOW IT'S WRONG.)