Mai fic recs

Belatedly for day 3 of the womenlovefest.

Hearts and Shells by icybright
High school AU.  Zuko and Mai collaborate on a class project: raising an egg-child.

Yes, I'm starting out with a high school AU.  And yes, it involves the most cliche of all high school AU cliches.  But I love it for the way it translates the kids' various traumas, and Mai's approach to the raising of their egg.

(Incidentally, this fic came out of a Mai/Zuko fic exchange in 2008, which imho is something that should happen again one day.)

Adagio for the Revolution by birdsarecalling and Folie á Deux by rawles
AU where Aang failed and died.  Mai and Zuko meet once a year, but this year is different. 

So this whole AU concept is kind of amazing, especially considering we only get tiny glimpses of it.  And I love the way Mai is written here, older and even more cynical and still drawn to Zuko even though they're fighting for opposite sides.

Reign Within by rawles and To Cover A Bruise (the rainy days remix) by fahye
AU [I JUST REALLY LOVE AUS, OKAY?]: when Zuko is banished, Mai's parents offer her to Ozai.

Mai/Ozai is one of those pairings that's inherently problematic on every single level: the differences in age and power, Mai's relationships with his children.  It's a vast cavalcade of WRONG.  So, of course, I love it, and I really love the subtle but powerful ways in which rawles and fahye address these issues and their ramifications for everyone.

(I only know of one other Mai/Ozai fic, "Meet Me on the Solstice" from last year's Avatar Big Bang.  Being a longer fic, it had a lot more going on plot-wise, but I felt like maybe everything to do with Mai's relationships wrapped up a little too easily, with hardly anyone needing years of therapy.  But I did enjoy it, mostly, so I guess this is a half-rec?)

An Ounce of Blood by Rebecca Hb
Mai is eight, and she should be starting school.

Hey, look, it's not an AU!  This is just a neat, sad and plausible glimpse of the parts of Mai's childhood that didn't revolve around the royal family.

This is really just a tiny, tiny representation of all the Mai fics out there, but I once I made the choice to exclude more ship-heavy fics, my selection dwindled somewhat.  And really, I couldn't just rec everything rawles wrote.  (But she was really good when she wrote Avatar fic!  So you should go read her stuff!)

VID: Somewhere in the Middle (AtLA, Mai)

Title: Somewhere in the Middle
Character(s)/Ship(s): Mai, Mai/Zuko
Music: "Attagirl" by Bettie Serveert
Notes: This is not new content! Back when white_lotus was running its Lunar New Year ficathon, I created this for noldo, who asked for fic about Mai's political ideas and motivations, or possibly a vid about Mai being awesome. This was anattempt to combine the politics with the vid; whether it succeeded is ... well. Anyway, back when it was first posted I meant to come back and add a downloadable version with a vidder credit. Typically, I didn't get around to it until now, but I'm totally cheating and including it for the womenlovefest.

Attagirl from Ninja Vidder on Vimeo.

Password: maiisaninja

Download here. Private server; please right click/save.


Also, a rec. If, after that, you want to go watch an actual good vid, piecesofalice has a great one for a Japanese series called SPEC. I haven't watched the show, but between this vid and our kitchen conversations about the plot, now I kind of want to. And it's just really good. SO YEAH.