You’re wise not to get deep into the fandom, because the misogyny among so many other issues, ugh. Some Zutarans think Katara would have been oh so gentle and sweet to Zuko in that situation, which. Like. Have they met Katara.
But yes, Mai is amazing, one of those characters along with Zuko, Ty Lee, and also Finn from Star Wars who give me a lot of hope and inspiration.
Before we begin, I think it’s important to unpack what this comparison really means and who is actually being compared. No one is saying that Padmé, a woman of high ideals and deep convictions, who believes in the power of ideas, words, and compromise and who holds democracy as sacred, is very much like the taciturn, cynical henchwoman to a despot, whose entire life has been shaped by the power she is all too aware does not have. And no one is comparing emotionally tortured, perpetually uncertain Zuko to Padmé either. Nor is anybody comparing carefully controlled and seemingly unemotional Mai to Anakin Skywalker (though I will get back to this one later). No, the two characters actually being compared are Anakin and Zuko. As for why comparing Anakin to Zuko is painfully inaccurate, buckle up folks, I have visual aids.
I don’t see how people can make this comparison, Padmé and Anakin were torn apart by Anakin’s fall to the dark side and Padmé was unable to stop him. This was no fault of her own, though I do side-eye her covering up his mass murder–not because any of Anakin’s actions at any point were her fault but because it was something she herself did wrong.
Mai and Zuko on the other hand were ultimately brought together happily because they both did what was right and had the courage to break free of Ozai’s and Azula’s abuse, where Anakin was lured deeper and deeper into Palpatine’s manipulation and ended up abusing Padmé as well.
So I can see them as mirror images/happier reincarnations, but they’re obviously not straight parallels.
Umm Zuko is FAR from the only source on Azula being abusive to those around her. If these fans you mention are talking about the flashback scenes in “Zuko Alone” being Zuko’s memories, where’s this purported distortion from Zuko when Ty Lee was threatened into leaving the circus and joining Azula’s mission instead? When Mai was forced to choose between getting her brother back and obeying Azula? Zuko was not the viewpoint character in these scenes, and was nowhere near these events in fact.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that Azula is a one dimensional character or some poorly defined and often ableist stereotype of a “psychopath.” She was herself abused by Ozai and has a complex psychological profile. She was also controlling and hurtful to the people closest to her in a maladaptive attempt to deal with the abuse. (For the best discussion on this, see @attackfish ’s Three Pillars Theory of Azula).
Azula is brilliant, badass, inpiring and funny. She is, in her way, a patriot. She is a daughter and a sister. She is a whole person with history, traumas, relationships, and life. And yes, she is an abuser. She is not a one-dimensional caricature–she is frequently sympathetic and has many redeeming characteristics, including the possibility, if slim, to change. That’s the way abusers often are in life. None of her human qualities makes her actions less bad, because it’s real human beings, fully realized people who you might love and have complex feelings for, who do evil things.
“She did evil things” and “She is a three-dimensional person” are not mutually exclusive statements. I struggled my entire life to reconcile these statements and I will always speak against the harmful idea that the two are mutually exclusive. We can recognize an abuser’s humanity and her evil at the same time, and we have to.
1. Mai was nine the first time she realized she was in love with her best friend. It was only a handful of months since Azula had started school, met them, and claimed them for her own. Mai remembers it distinctly, because she was sitting under a tree in the palace garden, watching Ty Lee and Azula tumbling. She remembers the giddy anxiety that had bubbled up inside her as Ty Lee had leapt into the air, and flipped and somersaulted turning in the air like a wheel on a string, until she landed perfectly, arms raised in triumph. And she remembers the anxious outrage she had felt as Azula knocked Ty Lee to the ground.
2. In some ways, Mai’s almost glad Azula noticed, as unbelievably stupid as that is. Azula noticed and she couldn’t stand it. Jealousy isn’t the right word for it, but Mai doesn’t know if there is a word for it. It’s not that Azula wanted Mai to be in love with her, it’s just that she couldn’t stand that Mai or Ty Lee felt or thought anything about each other that didn’t come from Azula or under Azula’s control. It was all so confusing, such a jumble of longing, fear, and pain, her strange feelings a new vulnerability for Azula to exploit, a way for her to humiliate Mai and Ty Lee both. Azula delighted in getting Ty Lee to blame Mai for their mutual humiliation, or in making Ty Lee join her in making fun of and laughing at Mai. And making Mai make fun of and laugh at Ty Lee. Maybe if either of them had had the freedom to, they would have run aeay, avoided each other, and Mai could have blotted out her feelings in peace, and it all would have been forgotten under a veil of unpleasent history. But Azula didn’t allow that either, and Azula’s attacks meant at least Ty Lee always knew how she felt.
3. Ty Lee was thirteen the first time she had to make herself look away as Mai gets dressed, her lithe pale flesh disappearing behind silk layers of deep red and inky black. She remembers that when she realized, she couldn’t even breathe for a moment, mortified and afraid. She’s the first one who first realized this was not a normal way to feel about her best friend, that this was forbidden, even illegal. And she knew Azula knew, which meant Azula had one more hold over them, and there was one more reason they would never be free.
4. Ty Lee is the one she met first. They were friends first, before Azula started school. There were time that this was the only thing Mai had to cling to, during those dark school years, the knowledge that they had been friends before Azula, that Azula was not the only thing that tied them together, and underneath Azula’s influence, there was a real friendship there. And when they meet up again, when Azula drags them together again to hunt her brother and the Avatar, when Ty Lee all but pretends she doesn’t exist, slamming down every wall of distant bubbly pleasantness she has ever possessed, Mai clings to this again. It’s not until she finally turns against Azula, to protect a little boy who reminds her so much of her own brother, and waits knife in hand for Azula to strike her head, it’s not until Ty Lee sends Azula tumbling down to the ground, that she has any idea what Ty Lee feels for her.
5. Afterwards, everything has already fallen apart. Every wall, every safeguard either of them ever had just to keep the sun rising and setting and the world spinning, to keep Azula happy and the noose from their necks, is suddenly worthless and unnecessary. There is nothing to keep them apart now.
No one cares about what two women who will spend the rest of their lives in prison do.
They are locked away together, and they have all the time in the world, if they can just figure out what to do with it.
L.J.'s Obsessions 