Sunday Splash Page #441

"Caldera Sunset," in Avatar the Last Airbender: Ashes of the Academy, by Faith Erin Hicks (writer), Peter Wartman (artist),  Adele Matera (colorist), Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt (letterers)

I reviewed this 7 weeks ago, so we're not going too heavily into the story itself. It's about how reactionary forces will argue against changing things, usually on the value of tradition, or the importance of respecting the past. That if you try to change how something has always (for a particular value of "always") been done, you're saying everyone's ancestors were wrong, or the past is wrong, and why do you hate the past? Mostly though, the way things are suits them fine, and they don't want to even risk losing what they've got by changing anything.

That's not exactly news to anyone watching the world around us, so I'm going to talk about Mai. She is, after all, my favorite character in all of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

What, Calvin is fond of the drily sarcastic lady, who is also an ace at throwing daggers? A shocking reveal to be sure.

But I like that she's a quiet character, reserved with her emotions. Not by choice, mind; her parents drilled it into her from early on to be still and quiet and well-behaved, because it would reflect poorly on them if she didn't. In Ashes of the Academy, Hicks shows in flashback that Mai's father encourages her to makes friends with Azula because it would be good for him, before catching himself and saying it would be good for her. Which I think downplays how much her parents regard her a tool for social climbing.

For a long time, years, Mai obeys, but it's malicious compliance. When we first meet her, she casually remarks how there is no fathoming the depth of her hatred for the conquered Earth Kingdom city her father has been appointed governor of. She doesn't say it loudly. There's no physical demonstration. No stamping her feet or wailing or throwing anything. That would be unseemly. But she won't play ball and express any happiness for her father or what this means for their family in terms of status. She remains quiet, reserved, dignified, but also blunt.

Life with her parents is miserable enough Mai is glad for Azula to show up with a mission. It's just swapping out whose thumb she's under, and it's to someone more powerful and ruthless. Which Azula makes clear when she tests Mai during the proposed prisoner exchange. There's a silent beat after she mentions it seems foolish to trade King Bumi, powerful earthbender that he is, for a child (Mai's baby brother), where she watches Mai. Mai watches her back, knowing it's a test. If Mai insists on the swap, she's defied Azula, and revealed her little brother is important enough to her to do that. Which means he's leverage. Which means he's in danger.

Keep in mind, Azula has already tried shooting her own brother in the face with lightning by this point. Whatever her legion of apologists might argue - and they are almost as obnoxious as Vegeta and Scott Summers apologists - Azula is bad news for anyone that doesn't do what she wants.

But at least with Azula, Mai will get to travel and fight and see new things. Which seems to be a big deal with her, she gets bored easily. So it's a little surprising she's settled into working at her aunt's flower shop at the start of Ashes of the Academy. Most of the rest of the cast are roaming the world, settling disputes or rebuilding their homes. Mai's life seems to have stalled. The teaching is an opportunity to try something new, and in her own way, show the next generation there's a better way of doing things than treating your friends as potential enemies to undermine or settling disagreements with honor duels.

Because she does believe in what Zuko's trying to accomplish. She just isn't going to blow smoke up his ass or let him walk over her. She may have stood up to Azula out of her love for Zuko, but she also learns to stand up for herself. Which, given that he's the brooding, morally conflicted guy most of the fandom is hot for, means she takes a lot of shit for not being "good enough" for him. She threw something at him once! Yes, the letter he left behind to break up with her, and never mind that time Zuko threw a guy across the room and yelled at Mai for daring to talk to said guy.

She objected to his keeping secrets from her! Yes, the secret that he was taking advice on governing from his genocidal, abusive father, something Mai would surely have told him was a stupid idea. Because it was. Also, Zuko didn't tell her there'd been attempts on his life, because he seemed to think she needed to be protected from that, after she already risked her life to save him from Azula. But feeling that he doesn't trust her, and that she doesn't have to put up with that, is apparently unreasonable.

They're both damaged teens with basically zero adults to model a healthy relationship so, yeah, there's some hiccups. But Zuko gets googly-eyed basically any time he's around her in Season 3, and is still trying to show he trusts her in Ashes of the Academy, so he's clearly not given up on rebuilding a connection with her. And Zuko's basically the only one who gets Mai to genuinely smile in Season 3, and she does end up accepting the job as teacher, even though he failed to consult with her before nominating her for the position.

Which is the sort of theft of control that she should probably resent, given her history with her parents and Azula. Yet Mai only actually gets irritated when she thinks Zuko's checking up on the job she's doing. Basically, when she thinks he's doubting her professionalism and commitment. And the issue is resolved with a quiet conversation. As Ty Lee notes, no knives or firebending! Progress!

Anyway, I'd definitely buy more of these ATLA graphic novels if they'd focus on Mai. I've always kind of wanted to see one where she returns to Omashu to make amends for her family's time as invaders. Partially because it might be good for her, mostly because I want to see what weird tests Bumi would put her through as penance, that were really just him fucking around (and maybe trying to teach her something about herself.)

A Challenging Coursework

As Zuko is the brooding, morally conflicted bad boy of the series, the answer to that question is apparently, "90% of the fandom."

Avatar the Last Airbender: Ashes of the Academy centers around the difficulty in changing a people's culture and beliefs, especially about themselves and their nation, and how that starts with what you teach your kids. In this case, Zuko's half-sister is about to attend the prestigious the Royal Fire Academy. Given how Azula turned out, Ursa's got understandable concerns about risking a second daughter here, but Zuko's used Fire Lord Authority to devise a new curriculum, so everything will probably be fine.

It quickly becomes apparent the headmistress is not on board with the changes, and is still pushing nationalist, imperialist, classist doctrines. So Zuko, again via Fire Lord Authority, hires a new instructor. His ex-girlfriend, Mai. Without first asking Mai if she would do it. After she broke up with him, in part, because he treated her less like a partner in their relationship, and more like an accessory to escape from the responsibilities of leadership. Leading to him withholding important aspects of his life - like assassination attempts, or his asking his genocidal, abusive dickbag of a father for advice on governing - from her out of some misguided notion she needed "protecting."

I know the series' creators stated Zuko and Mai stay broken up for 3 years before getting back together. I don't know how far along they are in that break-up here, but Zuko clearly hasn't learned shit from his past fuck-ups yet (though he makes a halting step in the right direction in the last 15 pages.)

Mai takes the job, despite her own bad experiences at the Academy. Faith Erin Hicks (writer), with Peter Wartman (artist), and Adele Matera (color artist), give us several brief, sepia-toned, flashbacks to Mai's early days at the Academy as a student. Where her father encouraged her to befriend Azula because it would help her get ahead, and that it was better to be the powerful person (or friends with the powerful person) who does the trampling, rather than be the one getting trampled.

(Hicks puts all this social-climbing pressure at the feet of Mai's father, which I think is letting her mother off too lightly. From the bits and pieces we see of Michi in the cartoon, she was just as hard on Mai about behaving like a proper young woman and blah blah blah, think of your father's career, think of our status. Maybe the OGNs Gene Luen Yang wrote established it wasn't like that, or Hicks is making a comment on how Mai's improved relationship with her mother has led her to reduce Michi's culpability in the worse aspects of Mai's upbringing.)

We don't really see Zuko's curriculum, at least not in Mai's teaching. It's mostly when, on her first day, Kiyi keeps correcting one of her other teachers, who's reluctant to read the new, more accurate history of the Hundred Years War. Instead, Mai eschews having them read books in favor of going outside to dig in the dirt and learn about cicada-beetles or learning to walk a tightrope.

I didn't really picture Mai as being interested in insects, let alone digging in the dirt, but the point seems to be to show curiosity about the world around them (and Mai is well-established as hating being bored, which implies a certain level of curiosity), and not react to other people or creatures as threats to be destroyed. Which is contrary to what students were taught when Mai attended, a fact we see in flashbacks that the teachers encouraged - any slight against honor must be addressed in an Agni Kai - and Azula ruthlessly exploited, pitting friends against each other for seemingly no reason than she can. And that thinking has carried over to Kiyi's generation, like it carried from the generation prior, as one of her classmates says her parents warned anyone acting like her friend was secretly plotting to destroy her.

That's what Mai's facing, and in that sense, activities encouraging the students to work on projects together and treat learning as fun, rather than some zero-sum contest where they have to learn the most and apply it most ruthlessly against the other students, make a lot of sense. I do hope she's still taking time to teach them math. It can be used for things other than war and politics!