Lady Appreciation Post: Mai
*distracted by the ad on this page*
ONCE UPON A TIME PREMIERS SUNDAY?! SO WATCHING THE HECK OUT OF THAT. OH GLORIOUSLY WONDERFUL PRIME TIME FANTASY SHOW!
Anyway, I've been anticipating doing this post for a while now. I have so many Feelings.
"...I believe that Mai is the perfect example of a "poor rich only child", the girl whose entire childhood was centered
around looking adorable and staying out of the way of her try-hard parents." --arelia-dawn (DeviantART)
MAAAAAAAAAIIIIII!!!
<333333
I'm not quite sure if Mai was always my favorite Avatar girl. I think before Season Two, where she comes in, my favorite might have been Suki.
Apparently I have a fondness for elegant and beautiful Badass Normal lady fighters.
I had an interesting experience with the Avatar fandom, in that I knew a fair bit about the show and its characters and shipping wars before I actually got started watching the show. What I knew about Mai, basically, was that she and Azula and Ty Lee and Zuko were all childhood friends, and that Wee!Mai had a crush on Zuko.
Obviously this did not prepare me for the glorious reality of snark and awesome that was Grown Up Mai.
Mai gets a lot of stupid and often baseless hate in the fandom mostly due to shipping reasons which I think is a tremendous pity because she's basically the Raven or Daria of Avatar: wry and dry humor, gothic demeanor, and withdrawn stoic personality. I love everything about this girl. If I may quote myself from elsewhere, "She's a badass knives ninja with a perfect snarky sense of wit and humor (I bust a gut every time I rewatch "The Drill" and hear her completely deadpan and nonchalant "We lost."), she's got stellar aim and skill with her arsenal of various sharp pointy things, she's exotically beautiful, and I love her constant boredom and malaise with everything (except Zuko of course). I love love love her backstory and how emotionally repressed and damaged she is from constantly bottling up her emotions, and I love that she's able to eventually break free of that and start expressing herself more. I love her loyalty and devotion to Zuko, and that she never stopped loving him, even when he'd been banished and sent on a snipe hunt, and even when he'd apparently betrayed their nation. (I have this weird fondness for Mai's sense of patriotism too. She loves the Fire Nation and hated being shunted off to Omashu in the Earth Kingdom, and the happiest we saw her was at home in the capital city. Fascinating stuff that.) Plus... she's just got a very soothing and intoxicating voice. I dunno, Cricket Leigh's just very easy on my ears."
That sums it up pretty nicely but I still feel the need to go into detail.
When we first meet Mai (and I find it fascinating that we're introduced to her before we find out she's friends with Azula, unlike how we met Ty Lee), she is expressing her intense and unfathomable hatred for the Earth Kingdom city of Omashu, which her father has just been made governor of. I was almost immediately impressed by Mai's sophisticated vocabulary. Also, my heart went pitter-pat a little bit at her dry, sultry voice.
Upon re-watches of this episode, I am blown away by the implication that Mai is unbearably
homesick for the Fire Nation, and that's why she's complaining so much.
After invoking the cruelties of storytelling fate by pronouncing that "nothing ever happens here" (a mistake of a phrase to utter in any fictional universe), Mai's party is beset by Omashu rebels, and saved almost immediately by Aang and company whom the party then mistake for the resistance. And Mai doesn't even hesitate, just snaps into action and starts THROWING KNIVES AND SHIT, completely calm and focused.
SHE ALMOST TAKES OUT ONE OF AANG'S EYES EVEN.
And when the action is over, she just sighs all like, "That was it? Oh bother. Guess it's back to boredom again."
Though likely resentful over the attention and fuss her baby brother gets (that she never got growing up), Mai still finds it in her to be worried about Tom Tom when they think he's kidnapped, and tries to comfort her parents as best she can, given how she's been trained to act.
And then, when her loyalty is tested by Azula (someone to NEVER EVER CROSS when she tells you a hostage deal is stupid and they shouldn't exchange a powerful earthbending king for a toddler), she passes the test with flying colors. Many people misunderstand this moment and take it to mean that Mai doesn't care about her brother. While it's true that Mai probably isn't very close to the kidlet, and probably has resentment issues with how her parents seem to care so much more about him than they ever did about her, Mai weighs her options (defy Azula and die, or agree with Azula and take her brother back herself), looks at Aang, Katara, and Sokka and then judges rightly that they won't hurt Tom Tom. And she trusts her aim. She knows she's good enough at throwing her knives to avoid hitting Tom Tom in the flurry of combat.
So she fights to try and get Tom Tom back.
And she is awesome while doing it.
Azula recruits her for the mission to track down Zuko and the Avatar, and the last thing we learn about Mai in her introductory episode... is that she likes Zuko.
This is nice and cute at first... and then Fridge Logic sets in when you remember Zuko has been banished and exiled for three years, dishonored, disgraced, the laughingstock of the Fire Nation. And in spite of that, in spite of ALL THAT... Mai still loves him. Even later, when he apparently consciously betrays the Fire Nation to join the "enemy", to actively work against all that their home country has been building towards, she's angry yes, and hurt, and she doesn't understand why he would do such a thing... but she still loves him. And decides of her own free will to sacrifice her freedom-possibly her life-to also defy her nation and help Zuko and his new friends escape. (More on this later.)
Her loyalty and fidelity to him is just too amazing.
Mai returns in "The Chase" and is just generally hilarious and snarky and sarcastic and bored with life and an awesome knives ninja. Then in "The Drill", we see the first hints of her resentment of Azula's authority, the seeds of her eventual rebellion against her princess.
BECAUSE DARN IT ALL SHE IS A CLASSY SOPHISTICATED LADY WITH AN APPRECIATION OF THE FINER THINGS IN LIFE AND YOU WILL NOT SEE HER CRAWING UNDIGNIFIED INTO A PIPE FULL OF SLUDGE TO CHASE AFTER THE AVATAR. NO WAY, NO HOW, NOT HAPPENING. SCREW WHAT AZULA SAID TO DO. AZULA CAN GO CHOKE ON A CHERRY PIT FOR ALL SHE CARES.
"Omg, eww!"
Mai's prissiness greatly entertains me.
Towards the end of Season Two, we already see Mai softening a little, see her character lightening up a few shades from her normal emo malaise. She starts to smile and make jokes. This development is pushed much further in Season Three where, back in her home country and reunited with the boy she loves, Mai's spirits are greatly lifted and she shows off a gentler, more caring, "Starfire-ish" side of her personality.
But she still respects herself enough not to put up with Zuko's shit when he pushes her too far, and openly calls him out on his misplaced anger, grouchy attitude, and general out-of-control temper. She even puts a break on their relationship because it upsets her so much. (And this given that Zuko's the only thing she really actually cares about in the world.)
"Omg wth is wrong with you, YOU MADE STUPID DECISIONS WHAT WHAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
The episode this takes place in, "The Beach", is one of my absolute favorites because of the insight it gives us into Mai's character. Previously we've seen that Mai generally represses her feelings, covers them over with her deadpan sarcasm and boredness with everything. Bottles everything up and keeps it very, very internalized. And in this episode we learn why.
Because her mother literally stifled and suppressed any form of self-expression she had growing up. Confronted by Zuko, Mai gives some of the most heart-breaking backstory ever:
"What do you want from me? You want a teary confession about how hard my childhood was? Well, it wasn't. I was a rich only child who got anything I wanted... as long as I behaved... and sat still... and didn't speak unless spoken to... My mother said I had to keep out of trouble. We had my Dad's political career to think about."
The melancholy and sadness in her voice in this scene is just... LET ME HUG YOU MAI!
This is so heartbreakingly tragic to me, because Mai is so screwed up that she doesn't even recognize the fact that she's screwed up. Quoting myself from elsewhere again, "She doesn't even see the constant stripping of her agency and self-expression as particularly tragic, just a "Oh yeah, this happened to me when I was young." sort of thing. I can't even imagine what it must have been like, all her life being told, "Sit still. Be quiet. Don't speak. Don't make a scene. Look demure. Answer politely. Behave. Be a good girl. You don't want to make your father look bad, do you?" and having to suck it all up and comply." Mai's story moves me the most out of all the character backstories in Avatar, and I adore her in all her dysfunctional, screwed-up glory.
But her tale has a happy ending. At the end of this episode, and in every successive episode after, we see Mai's character growth, see her breaking free from her emotionless shell and expressing herself more. She gets angry at Zuko and Azula. She's happy snuggling on the couch with Zuko, giggling and smiling. She worries when Zuko's feeling down and tries to comfort him and cheer him up as best she can. Mai defies her strict upbringing in order to feel again, in order to be able to be herself around those she loves. She defies her mother's coddling, defies Zuko's misguided attempts to protect her from his turncoat actions, and, ultimately, defies the years of propaganda fed to her by her country-or at least decides it doesn't even matter because even if she can't understand, she still loves and trusts Zuko. And then she stands up to FREAKING AZULA and defies the Fire Nation Princess. To her face.
Badass.
"The Boiling Rock" two-parter has the absolute best moments for Mai. She's deeply hurt and feels betrayed by Zuko's abandoning her to join the Avatar, leaving only a note to explain things to her.
"You don't text-message break up, you jerk!"
But her loyalty to him is unwavering. When he makes a break for it, she tries to run after him. To go with him. To abandon everything she's ever known. And her teary-eyed glare through the door says it all.
"Don't you dare leave me again."
And then, when things look hopeless for our heroes Sokka, Suki, Zuko, and Hakoda, when they're about to be dropped into a boiling hot lake, GUESS WHO SHOWS UP IN A BIG DAMN HEROES MOMENT TO KICK ASS, TAKE NAMES, AND MAKE A HEEL FACE TURN?
"What are you doing?!" "Saving the jerk who dumped me."
Mai, a non-bender, kicks more ass against these dozens of firebending guards than she does in the rest of the series, totally owning them like Batman, and not even wounding a single person. Her mad skills with her knives are sure to be the stuff of legend.
AND THEN SHE GETS EVEN MORE AWESOME.
Azula confronts her about her betrayal, DEEPLY DISPLEASED, and barely holding back her anger. Azula, the most Dangerously Genre Savvy character in Avatar, the one who plans and plots and anticipates everything, never anticipated this kind of thing from Mai. She thought she had Mai all figured out and under her control. But Mai is under no one's control anymore. Not her mother's, not the Fire Lord's, not Azula's. And she informs Azula as much.
"I guess you just don't know people as well as you think you do. You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you."
AND MY HEART EXPLODED FROM LOVE FOR THIS CHARACTER. THIS GIRL. THIS GIRL OMG.
Mai's arc ends with her Character Development complete, with her fully free of the cynical shell that was her protection for so long, rid of the walls she put up to close herself off, and accepted among a mix of new and old friends that value her for who she is as a person.
There's no better ending for her than that.
Oh and it probably goes without saying that I think Mai is utterly gorgeous.
Mai will always have my fangirl's heart. I will defend her character to the death. And squee over her awesome every chance I get.
My, is it hot in here?
ONCE UPON A TIME PREMIERS SUNDAY?! SO WATCHING THE HECK OUT OF THAT. OH GLORIOUSLY WONDERFUL PRIME TIME FANTASY SHOW!
Anyway, I've been anticipating doing this post for a while now. I have so many Feelings.
"...I believe that Mai is the perfect example of a "poor rich only child", the girl whose entire childhood was centered
around looking adorable and staying out of the way of her try-hard parents." --arelia-dawn (DeviantART)
MAAAAAAAAAIIIIII!!!
<333333
I'm not quite sure if Mai was always my favorite Avatar girl. I think before Season Two, where she comes in, my favorite might have been Suki.
Apparently I have a fondness for elegant and beautiful Badass Normal lady fighters.
I had an interesting experience with the Avatar fandom, in that I knew a fair bit about the show and its characters and shipping wars before I actually got started watching the show. What I knew about Mai, basically, was that she and Azula and Ty Lee and Zuko were all childhood friends, and that Wee!Mai had a crush on Zuko.
Obviously this did not prepare me for the glorious reality of snark and awesome that was Grown Up Mai.
Mai gets a lot of stupid and often baseless hate in the fandom mostly due to shipping reasons which I think is a tremendous pity because she's basically the Raven or Daria of Avatar: wry and dry humor, gothic demeanor, and withdrawn stoic personality. I love everything about this girl. If I may quote myself from elsewhere, "She's a badass knives ninja with a perfect snarky sense of wit and humor (I bust a gut every time I rewatch "The Drill" and hear her completely deadpan and nonchalant "We lost."), she's got stellar aim and skill with her arsenal of various sharp pointy things, she's exotically beautiful, and I love her constant boredom and malaise with everything (except Zuko of course). I love love love her backstory and how emotionally repressed and damaged she is from constantly bottling up her emotions, and I love that she's able to eventually break free of that and start expressing herself more. I love her loyalty and devotion to Zuko, and that she never stopped loving him, even when he'd been banished and sent on a snipe hunt, and even when he'd apparently betrayed their nation. (I have this weird fondness for Mai's sense of patriotism too. She loves the Fire Nation and hated being shunted off to Omashu in the Earth Kingdom, and the happiest we saw her was at home in the capital city. Fascinating stuff that.) Plus... she's just got a very soothing and intoxicating voice. I dunno, Cricket Leigh's just very easy on my ears."
That sums it up pretty nicely but I still feel the need to go into detail.
When we first meet Mai (and I find it fascinating that we're introduced to her before we find out she's friends with Azula, unlike how we met Ty Lee), she is expressing her intense and unfathomable hatred for the Earth Kingdom city of Omashu, which her father has just been made governor of. I was almost immediately impressed by Mai's sophisticated vocabulary. Also, my heart went pitter-pat a little bit at her dry, sultry voice.
Upon re-watches of this episode, I am blown away by the implication that Mai is unbearably
homesick for the Fire Nation, and that's why she's complaining so much.
After invoking the cruelties of storytelling fate by pronouncing that "nothing ever happens here" (a mistake of a phrase to utter in any fictional universe), Mai's party is beset by Omashu rebels, and saved almost immediately by Aang and company whom the party then mistake for the resistance. And Mai doesn't even hesitate, just snaps into action and starts THROWING KNIVES AND SHIT, completely calm and focused.
SHE ALMOST TAKES OUT ONE OF AANG'S EYES EVEN.
And when the action is over, she just sighs all like, "That was it? Oh bother. Guess it's back to boredom again."
Though likely resentful over the attention and fuss her baby brother gets (that she never got growing up), Mai still finds it in her to be worried about Tom Tom when they think he's kidnapped, and tries to comfort her parents as best she can, given how she's been trained to act.
And then, when her loyalty is tested by Azula (someone to NEVER EVER CROSS when she tells you a hostage deal is stupid and they shouldn't exchange a powerful earthbending king for a toddler), she passes the test with flying colors. Many people misunderstand this moment and take it to mean that Mai doesn't care about her brother. While it's true that Mai probably isn't very close to the kidlet, and probably has resentment issues with how her parents seem to care so much more about him than they ever did about her, Mai weighs her options (defy Azula and die, or agree with Azula and take her brother back herself), looks at Aang, Katara, and Sokka and then judges rightly that they won't hurt Tom Tom. And she trusts her aim. She knows she's good enough at throwing her knives to avoid hitting Tom Tom in the flurry of combat.
So she fights to try and get Tom Tom back.
And she is awesome while doing it.
Azula recruits her for the mission to track down Zuko and the Avatar, and the last thing we learn about Mai in her introductory episode... is that she likes Zuko.
This is nice and cute at first... and then Fridge Logic sets in when you remember Zuko has been banished and exiled for three years, dishonored, disgraced, the laughingstock of the Fire Nation. And in spite of that, in spite of ALL THAT... Mai still loves him. Even later, when he apparently consciously betrays the Fire Nation to join the "enemy", to actively work against all that their home country has been building towards, she's angry yes, and hurt, and she doesn't understand why he would do such a thing... but she still loves him. And decides of her own free will to sacrifice her freedom-possibly her life-to also defy her nation and help Zuko and his new friends escape. (More on this later.)
Her loyalty and fidelity to him is just too amazing.
Mai returns in "The Chase" and is just generally hilarious and snarky and sarcastic and bored with life and an awesome knives ninja. Then in "The Drill", we see the first hints of her resentment of Azula's authority, the seeds of her eventual rebellion against her princess.
BECAUSE DARN IT ALL SHE IS A CLASSY SOPHISTICATED LADY WITH AN APPRECIATION OF THE FINER THINGS IN LIFE AND YOU WILL NOT SEE HER CRAWING UNDIGNIFIED INTO A PIPE FULL OF SLUDGE TO CHASE AFTER THE AVATAR. NO WAY, NO HOW, NOT HAPPENING. SCREW WHAT AZULA SAID TO DO. AZULA CAN GO CHOKE ON A CHERRY PIT FOR ALL SHE CARES.
"Omg, eww!"
Mai's prissiness greatly entertains me.
Towards the end of Season Two, we already see Mai softening a little, see her character lightening up a few shades from her normal emo malaise. She starts to smile and make jokes. This development is pushed much further in Season Three where, back in her home country and reunited with the boy she loves, Mai's spirits are greatly lifted and she shows off a gentler, more caring, "Starfire-ish" side of her personality.
But she still respects herself enough not to put up with Zuko's shit when he pushes her too far, and openly calls him out on his misplaced anger, grouchy attitude, and general out-of-control temper. She even puts a break on their relationship because it upsets her so much. (And this given that Zuko's the only thing she really actually cares about in the world.)
"Omg wth is wrong with you, YOU MADE STUPID DECISIONS WHAT WHAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
The episode this takes place in, "The Beach", is one of my absolute favorites because of the insight it gives us into Mai's character. Previously we've seen that Mai generally represses her feelings, covers them over with her deadpan sarcasm and boredness with everything. Bottles everything up and keeps it very, very internalized. And in this episode we learn why.
Because her mother literally stifled and suppressed any form of self-expression she had growing up. Confronted by Zuko, Mai gives some of the most heart-breaking backstory ever:
"What do you want from me? You want a teary confession about how hard my childhood was? Well, it wasn't. I was a rich only child who got anything I wanted... as long as I behaved... and sat still... and didn't speak unless spoken to... My mother said I had to keep out of trouble. We had my Dad's political career to think about."
The melancholy and sadness in her voice in this scene is just... LET ME HUG YOU MAI!
This is so heartbreakingly tragic to me, because Mai is so screwed up that she doesn't even recognize the fact that she's screwed up. Quoting myself from elsewhere again, "She doesn't even see the constant stripping of her agency and self-expression as particularly tragic, just a "Oh yeah, this happened to me when I was young." sort of thing. I can't even imagine what it must have been like, all her life being told, "Sit still. Be quiet. Don't speak. Don't make a scene. Look demure. Answer politely. Behave. Be a good girl. You don't want to make your father look bad, do you?" and having to suck it all up and comply." Mai's story moves me the most out of all the character backstories in Avatar, and I adore her in all her dysfunctional, screwed-up glory.
But her tale has a happy ending. At the end of this episode, and in every successive episode after, we see Mai's character growth, see her breaking free from her emotionless shell and expressing herself more. She gets angry at Zuko and Azula. She's happy snuggling on the couch with Zuko, giggling and smiling. She worries when Zuko's feeling down and tries to comfort him and cheer him up as best she can. Mai defies her strict upbringing in order to feel again, in order to be able to be herself around those she loves. She defies her mother's coddling, defies Zuko's misguided attempts to protect her from his turncoat actions, and, ultimately, defies the years of propaganda fed to her by her country-or at least decides it doesn't even matter because even if she can't understand, she still loves and trusts Zuko. And then she stands up to FREAKING AZULA and defies the Fire Nation Princess. To her face.
Badass.
"The Boiling Rock" two-parter has the absolute best moments for Mai. She's deeply hurt and feels betrayed by Zuko's abandoning her to join the Avatar, leaving only a note to explain things to her.
"You don't text-message break up, you jerk!"
But her loyalty to him is unwavering. When he makes a break for it, she tries to run after him. To go with him. To abandon everything she's ever known. And her teary-eyed glare through the door says it all.
"Don't you dare leave me again."
And then, when things look hopeless for our heroes Sokka, Suki, Zuko, and Hakoda, when they're about to be dropped into a boiling hot lake, GUESS WHO SHOWS UP IN A BIG DAMN HEROES MOMENT TO KICK ASS, TAKE NAMES, AND MAKE A HEEL FACE TURN?
"What are you doing?!" "Saving the jerk who dumped me."
Mai, a non-bender, kicks more ass against these dozens of firebending guards than she does in the rest of the series, totally owning them like Batman, and not even wounding a single person. Her mad skills with her knives are sure to be the stuff of legend.
AND THEN SHE GETS EVEN MORE AWESOME.
Azula confronts her about her betrayal, DEEPLY DISPLEASED, and barely holding back her anger. Azula, the most Dangerously Genre Savvy character in Avatar, the one who plans and plots and anticipates everything, never anticipated this kind of thing from Mai. She thought she had Mai all figured out and under her control. But Mai is under no one's control anymore. Not her mother's, not the Fire Lord's, not Azula's. And she informs Azula as much.
"I guess you just don't know people as well as you think you do. You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you."
AND MY HEART EXPLODED FROM LOVE FOR THIS CHARACTER. THIS GIRL. THIS GIRL OMG.
Mai's arc ends with her Character Development complete, with her fully free of the cynical shell that was her protection for so long, rid of the walls she put up to close herself off, and accepted among a mix of new and old friends that value her for who she is as a person.
There's no better ending for her than that.
Oh and it probably goes without saying that I think Mai is utterly gorgeous.
Mai will always have my fangirl's heart. I will defend her character to the death. And squee over her awesome every chance I get.
My, is it hot in here?