Testing out my new matte screen protector and Wacom replacement nib for my s pen with some mild Hunter angst lol. No idea what's happening in the drawing itself, it was initially supposed to just be your generic dynamic pose study so i hadnt thought that far ahead lmao. But maybe a dramatic origin for Hunter's patched jeans in Thanks to Them?
Thinking about how popular Mai would've been if she were a boy. Like, can you imagine?people would've swooned over her like they swoon over, idk, Jet—it just occured to me that I like her because she's so unconventional for a female character.
Girls like Mai exist in real world—but women are rarely allowed to be complex and three dimensional and grey in fiction.
I would argue that Mai is a grey character; she did start out as Azula's lackey. And well, that's a fictional girl; I found her apathy stan-worthy.
I love that she constantly has a bitch face. She cracks dry/dark jokes. Wears black. Is mysterious and stoic. Does everything she can to disregard authority/even though she's not confrontational about it. (There's one difference. Bad boys are usually very confrontational).
All these characteristics exist in popular male characters. (Except for one thing that I've noticed: most of these “bad boy” characters are volatile and yet, are described as broody/stoic, like, dude. That ain't stoic, that's so emotional.)
So yeah. Coming back to Mai. Imagine if she were a boy.
A boy who's apathetic and has no passion for anything. A boy who's constantly bored/a thrill-seeker/has nothing he cares about. A boy who has a shutter for a face and rarely expresses himself, is amazing with knives and hand-to-hand combat and is gloomy.
There's nothing he cares about because caring gets people hurt and everyone wants something and is two-faced so it's safe to be a mask of indifference. Until—hold on—until he meets a passionate, hot-headed girl who's ✨ different ✨and if not anything, wears her heart on her sleeve/is an open book...
Yes, I'm talking about Zuko.
...and oh, oh, would you look at that? Now he has something to fight for!
I mean, for Mai, Zuko (after Ty Lee) is the only other person in front of whom she can be herself.
Reminds me of “he's only nice to her” trope. Sorry.
“You're so beautiful when you hate the world.”
“I don't hate you.”
Just imagine Mai as a boy. People would eat it up. They don't like her 'cause she's a girl.
have I somehow ruined myself for perfectly average movies? I watched both Robots (2023) and The Deer King (2021) and both of them were fine---Deer King was better, but suffered from trying to jam too much into a single film; Robots should have been more black-humored, delighting in its lazy sociopaths and their vaguely squalid world. But that's it, that's all they were---fine. Just fine.
Does this mean I have to watch exclusively Films now? I can't get into a movie unless it's black and white, or two hours of characters speaking sideways and having neuroses at each other?