Going to be traveling and bored meme

[attackfish]

This looks like I can answer with my cell phone keyboard!  (On a side note, please forgive my more numerous than usual spelling mistakes in this.  I don't have spellcheck on my phone, and my spelling is lamentable at the best of times.)

Ganked fromsholio

Give me a character and I'll tell you a piece of my personal headcanon. Any fandom is welcome here, provided that I am reasonably familiar with it.

Comments

[somariel]

Mai

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Like Zuko, I have a lot of headcanon for Mai.

I don't think Mai was the unfavorite child after the birth of her brother. The logic for that fanon tends to be that the real world cultures that the Fire Nation is based on frequently have girls being pushed aside when their brothers are born, but the Fire Nation seems to be pretty big on gender equality. I also don't believe that they see her only as a means to advance their career through marriage because she's a girl. They see her marriageability as a way to advance their careers, but I'm pretty sure they would be pushing to betroth little Mao to Azula just as ardently as they did to betroth little Mai to Zuko. I also think Tom-Tom is pretty neglected himself, because if he weren't they would have noticed he were missing much faster. I just think her parents aren't any good at being parents.

Also, I like to think that Mai is not naturally skilled with people, and instead of trying to teach their daughter the necessary social skills to know what to do and say in a given situation, they just told her to shut up. Azula of course compounded this learned tendency of hers, because it's just safest to be quiet around her. So when she does open her mouth, disaster.

[wolfs-lament.livejournal.com]

This. Mai was her parents' ticket to further their careers. The only time Tom-Tom would have been favoured over her would've possibly been directly after the Boiling Rock, but then she became the Fire Lord's girlfriend so it would have been a moot point.

Fastest way to knock me out of a story is when people make the Fire Nation sexist. There are a lot of things wrong with the Fire Nation, but from what we've seen in the show, sexism is definitely not one of them.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Same here. Why try to paint the Fire Nation, which gave us the Dangerous Ladies, especially Azula, who were explicitly not rebelling against against the established gender norms of their nation, sexist, when it's already incredibly racist and ethnocentric? Also, parents can be absolutely rotten to their daughter without sexism even being involved, the same way they can with sons.

[somariel]

And it's entirely possible for Mai's parents to be sexist without the entire Fire Nation being so.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

That's true, but sexism is usually a societal issue, which is to say society teaches it to its members. Some members may be more or less eager to embrace it, but nobody was naturally made to have any specific prejudice (or to not have any specific prejudice for that matter) and I didn't see any evidence of sexism in her parents, just a lot of evidence for being really bad parents. Seriously! They left a toddler unattended for long enough for him to make his way out of a palace, and most of the way out of Omashu!

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

But you're right, almost every fic I've seen with mai's parents being sexist either implies or states that they are not unusual in this regard. If they are sexist, it's possible to make it because they're old fashioned, or idealogically regressive, or something like that, instead of trying to recast the whole Fire Nation as sexist.