Mai personality type: ISTP

Mai is the girl who looks bored during a royal invasion, a prison riot and her own boyfriend’s big emotional speech. Then she throws a knife that pins your sleeve to a wall from across the room. The gap between her face and her aim is the whole character.

Her boredom is armor. If nothing excites her, nothing can hurt her. Mai is a Five with a 4 wing, and Fives protect themselves by detaching, conserving energy and watching from a safe distance. The 4 wing adds the gloom, the dark wardrobe, and a private sense that nobody really gets her.

She types well as an ISTP. Her thinking is cool and analytical: she sizes up situations fast, cuts through drama, and has very little patience for anything that does not make sense to her. Then comes the physical side, which is pure precision. Knives, stilettos, timing and perfect aim, all executed without wasted motion. Her dry, sideways humor is the intuition peeking out.

What she was trained to suppress is the feeling side. In “The Beach” she explains that she grew up being told to stay quiet and composed so she would not embarrass her family, and you can see what that did to her. When her feelings finally surface, they come out all at once. At the Boiling Rock she stands in front of Azula and says, in effect, that she loves Zuko more than she fears her. That is the buried function breaking through every wall she built.

Her growth is short and sharp. She spends most of the show doing what she is told with an eye roll. In season three she chooses a person over an order, betrays the most dangerous girl in the Fire Nation, and ends up in a prison cell for it. Not bad for someone who claims not to care. A fair argument says Mai is a Nine, since she goes numb and drifts along with Azula’s plans for years. I considered it. Still, Nines merge with other people, while Mai pulls away and observes. Her detachment protects her inner world, which is a Five move.