Why I Really Hate Mai From ATLA and Why She's Poisonous to Maiko
I just got done watching the entirety of Avatar: The Last Airbender with Kiwi in preparation for Korra in two weeks. I liked it and my ships are everywhere, but one thing is crystal clear. I really, really, REALLY fucking hate Mai. And I especially hate her with Zuko, 98% because I hate her as a character and ships normally sail better when I like everyone involved.
The sub-title of this blog post should probably also be "And why none of this hate is because she's in the way of another ship".
I don't really have the time or energy to go back and find every little moment, so let me just generalize exactly why Mai is my most hated character:
1) She's flat. Not just in her chest area, but as a character. Even the show itself pokes at how she ~doesn't care about anything~. Oh, except Zuko, because you know it's TOTALLY common for well-rounded characters to hate everything and not give any fucks about anything except the apparent object of their completely random affection, which leads me to my next point.
2) She is not a good match for Zuko. Not a good match at all. She's more-or-less a clone of Zuko in a female body with different life experiences. And she's controlling. God, is she controlling. Although this could be influenced from hanging around Azula too much, that isn't the kind of person Zuko needs to be with and has the potential to be abusive (because seriously what kind of shallow person construes the object of their affection betraying their country as "ZOMG YOU'RE BREAKING UP WITH ME?!" and at the end when peace is finally achieved goes "DON'T YOU EVER BREAK UP WITH ME AGAIN!!!1!!1").
3) She's a very obvious puppet character. What I mean by that is that it's incredibly obvious by the extreme lack of development she has in comparison to other characters, especially other minor female characters like Ty Lee or Suki, that she was thrown in at the last minute for the SOLE purpose of deterring other ships. It feels as if the creators saw people shipping Zuko with Aang or Katara or someone else and went "WHAT! NO! THAT'S NOT WHO YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE SHIPPING!" and threw in Mai to be like "HEY GUYS LOOK! THIS IS WHO YOU SHOULD BE SHIPPING ZUKO WITH! DON'T BE ON THOSE SHIPS THAT MESS WITH THE CANON PAIRING, YOU SILLY FANS!" That. Is Not. How. Shipping. Works.
To me, it felt like that was literally the only reason she was there at all. They lumped her together with Ty Lee and Azula and gave her ONE scene to be kind of awesome, but when considering the other points those seemed to happen as a way to make her SEEM like she had a purpose when really she was only there for shipping deterring and not as her own character.
Being that as it may, it's insanely difficult to try and like her as a character, because there's really nothing TO like. She has little to no personality of her own and is only there to be a mirror of Zuko to appear like his ~one twue wuv~. Which now brings me to my final point.
4) THEY HAVE NO CHEMISTRY. It's really hard to keep a ship floating if characters have absolutely no chemistry. Sure, Mai might say and show that her one and only interest in the whole damn world is Zuko, but there is very, very little to no chemistry between them that actually suggests this.
Their "romantic" scenes were painfully, awfully forced and scripted and just horrible to watch because there was nothing between them to validate those actions. It was like watching two complete strangers make out. It was void of love.
All the scenes they had together and not a single one showed or offered any explanation as to why these two characters went from attacking one another to being all over each other. The flashback scene to when they were kids seemed more like Mai had a common schoolgirl crush on him and Zuko had zero interest in her. And when we saw them together in the present and not fighting, they were randomly all over each other doing loveless, painful things that were painfully scripted! No explanation, no nothing! They just went from being nothing to something. No chemistry build-up at all.
Seems odd, considering ALL THE OTHER PAIRINGS GOT SOME CHEMISTRY. But not Maiko. Because Maiko is not a real ship. It's more like a dummy ship in enemy waters. It is there for the sole purpose of being a decoy to distract and destroy another ship.
Personally, there was way more chemistry built up between Zaang and Zutara than there ever was Maiko. Even Zoph (if that's how that ship name would go) had a little bit of chemistry there near the end.
That's...basically a condensed, slightly jumbled account of why I hate Mai and think she's horrible for the Maiko ship. Perhaps if she'd been developed better and not so obviously thrown in to be a decoy, then maybe I could give her some kind of nod of respect. But since she wasn't, I can't stand her at all.