If Tom-Tom were kidnapped now, after she rescued Zuko and reunited and all of that stuff...how would she act?
We don't know. Canon doesn't tell us either way. She defies Azula for Zuko's sake because the relationship she has with each of them. (It's not just love of Zuko or fear of Azula;but the two held up side by side; and you can argue that she only starts fearing Azula after she loves Zuko, not before).
Technically speaking, since Azula is no longer an issue in Mai's future, we'll never know if Mai will ever have defied her for anyone other than Zuko.
And if she had been the kind of person to rescue her brother before, then she wouldn't need the character development. There's as much of a world of difference there as with taking penguinsledding!Aang and putting him on that cliff where finale!Aang waits for the Phoenix King.
But someone can read it that Mai didn't have a character development - she just went from one kind of selfishness to another - as the OP said. Like I said earlier, the worrisome thing isn't so much that Mai does not defy Azula for her brother's sake, it's that she doesn't care to know his fate even after the dust has settled, so to speak.
And if she did change for love of Zuko, that's... OK but it would have been nicer/more wholesome if she had changed because she realized that a, she was on the wrong side of the war; b, Azula was crazy and needed to be stopped; c, she had treated her family pretty horribly in the past. Having her big makeover hinge on Zuko alone weakens Mai as a character defines her by him, her boyfriend alone which is annoying because that was not how she was introduced or presented to us for a whole season. Even as Azula's sidekick, she still managed to be a unique person with her motivations, more so even than Ty Lee. But with Zuko as her motivator, the character of Mai seems to be "flattened" to love interest.
Edited to make some thing a little clearer as I work things out in my mind.
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Date: 2009-02-25 08:41 pm (UTC)We don't know. Canon doesn't tell us either way. She defies Azula for Zuko's sake because the relationship she has with each of them. (It's not just love of Zuko or fear of Azula;but the two held up side by side; and you can argue that she only starts fearing Azula after she loves Zuko, not before).
Technically speaking, since Azula is no longer an issue in Mai's future, we'll never know if Mai will ever have defied her for anyone other than Zuko.
But someone can read it that Mai didn't have a character development - she just went from one kind of selfishness to another - as the OP said. Like I said earlier, the worrisome thing isn't so much that Mai does not defy Azula for her brother's sake, it's that she doesn't care to know his fate even after the dust has settled, so to speak.
And if she did change for love of Zuko, that's... OK but it would have been nicer/more wholesome if she had changed because she realized that a, she was on the wrong side of the war; b, Azula was crazy and needed to be stopped; c, she had treated her family pretty horribly in the past. Having her big makeover hinge on Zuko alone
weakens Mai as a characterdefines her by him, her boyfriend alone which is annoying because that was not how she was introduced or presented to us for a whole season. Even as Azula's sidekick, she still managed to be a unique person with her motivations, more so even than Ty Lee. But with Zuko as her motivator, the character of Mai seems to be "flattened" to love interest.Edited to make some thing a little clearer as I work things out in my mind.