I know a lot of people actually like her Deception ending. Not me though. I hated it. I don't get her character. Granted that ending was non-cannon, still, it made no sense at all. To see this character go from being a slave, to a person who has a chance to defeat two sorcerers, to an almost enslaved Dragon Warrior, to a more defining warrior, to being Onaga's... whatchamacallit... I have no idea what the hell this character is actually supposed to be.
She began as a slave who worked to construct Shang Tsung's palace. Quan Chi seemed interested in her for some reason and offered her and her people freedom if she wins the tournament, even though we know when villains offer stuff like that bad things usually follow afterwards. And during Deception when Shujinko trains her, he tells her that her chances to win against the Deadly Alliance were slim. Okay and that was right because she gets somewhat enslaved in the Dragon Warrior zombie thing until Bo Rai' Cho saves her. He then trains her where she becomes a better fighter and then we just see that get thrown away because she'd rather have some "hey hey" time with a dragon. I mean what was that? I thought for a while this character had some great potential of being a great female character, but when I saw that Deception ending I literally just dropped my controller, turned off the game and just walked away. I was like, "what was that?" And I still question it every day on these sites. I know that people will like things I don't like, but I don't get how people are actually a fan of this ending.
And I cannot see this character being evil. I really don't. Tanya was one of those characters who was written well to where we thought she was originally a good character. She seemed innocent in her avatar, we assumed that she would be good because she's from Edenia, and her biography didn't seem like she was evil at all. But when we beat the game with her, we find out that she's not that good as we all thought she would be. That was really well written and I was stunned to see that she is in fact, an evil character. But with Li Mei, to turn on all of the Earthrealm warriors, I just didn't think that was well written at all. I had no idea what that was because I couldn't see the connection as to why she would just turn on everyone to be with Onaga.
Her biocard literally says that she's a fighter who fights for her enslaved people and persecuted souls everywhere. And granted that at the very end of her Deception biography, it says that she's attached to this strong power that's taken control of Outworld, but I don't get where this love story comes in with Onaga. Why would she fall in love with him? Because of the power he possessed? I'm just like... hating on this character because she makes no freaking sense. The direction that she was always given was that she was a slave who had a chance to fight for people, but when you see this ending, does everything she stand for just went away? Does she not care about these people of hers anymore? Because I doubt Onaga would care that these enslaved people she once belonged to were trying to be saved by her. And I doubt that she would influence him to spare these guys because she was once apart of them.
Li Mei, I don't get you, probably never will either.