I actually get that reaction with Crest more. He's shy kid, yet suddenly getting fighting skills he also knows how to talk to girls. He seemed cool when he punched the old man out, yet he's also pretty much the only one that isn't okay with how May is. Crest actually annoys me, because he seems consistent and yet most of what he is rings hypocritical. I'm happiest when he is simply in love with Suspiria as he just goes mushy and the glaring flaws in his personality don't pop out as much.
Actually, that's pretty much the consistent part of her. In fiction, I usually write characters like her (I'm a hobby rpgmaker game director) because I hate the silent hero, but I want a character who can respond to anything however she wants. I mean, not the whole split personality but the sort of flexible type that is really not defined. Bern is another good choice, since we have the flawed person who does her best to live according to a code of conduct.
When I was growing up, I had alot of her. The deadpan part. We moved several times, my grandma died, and as a result I lost alot of friends in the first few years. I was shy, almost clingy, and then somewhere along the way my emotions just progressively got more detached. I do alot of sort of calm observation, and notice alot of strange things (that I don't comment on, since nobody seems to notice). At my core, well I'm not really sure, but it seems like everyone else seems to have mastered the art of acting normal. I noticed in college, everyone was getting into special courses and seemed to automatically know what to do. I didn't know until near the end of the last year that the teacher they gave us as an advisor (which btw, I swapped for someone I liked simply by going to him instead) was supposed to help us with jobs after college. I had no normal mode, I couldn't act like I fit in. I was a very walled person. My parents didn't want me to be lonely so I was encouraged (pushed, really) to socialize. These separate parts seem like inconsistencies, but from my experience they were facets that developed through socialization. I started out kinda blank, and originally just sat watching stuff while life kinda passed me by. Then I developed a sort of shyness when life got personal, and later learned to act social because "nobody would like the boring deadpan me" is I'm sure what Maytag is thinking.
I'm not sure if Bern even knows about that. Maytag has been intimate, but that's harder to define. Now, as was covered in the Dark Cell, even the deadpan thing is probably a mask. What's behind it? I think I know.
I was working a job at Amazon, which seemed designed to push us to an emotional limit. The first job, picking, was easy. Find boxes of stuff from the shelf, put them on a conveyor, etc. Then after Christmas, they gave me stowing, which I really could not deal with. The shelves were progressively more full because there weren't any pickers to take them, but we somehow had to make space on shelves. And because we kinda had to choose where to put stuff, it kind of touched me on a personal level. I had been looking at this as a huge metaphor for my life, I didn't know how to choose what I wanted, and crap from life just built around me and instead of coping with it normally, I built walls. Pretty much my stowing style, and it wasn't helping that closer examination of the rules they'd given us as stowers basically gave us no options (you can stow a ton into larger places, but the only "right place" is smaller slots, and then they want you to have "bin etiquette" for other people, nevermind that they don't leave any for you), was making it so that I was progressively getting more and more trapped feeling. One day, after suffering through really slow stowing (this was before I was final warned, and just decided to quit), I was asked by our machine's message system to come talk to the local supervisor if I had any "barriers" to my work progress. Pretty much all I had. I talked to the lady told her calmly that I was just having trouble "stowing the big stuff" walked away, and proceeded to burst into tears. Like literally, raw emotion, that I didn't know how to deal with. It struck me that this deadpan "wall" coping mechanism started as a child when I had trouble talking because I'd get emotional and cry and I was told culturally that it's not okay for guys to cry. This day, I was crying not because the job was tough (well, it was, because the shelves were filled to the point of being unworkable), but closer to tears of joy, since this seemed to be a very cold work environment (our work orders were done by computer, there was no personal supervision) and yet through constant supervision by hidden camera, fake workers, etc someone had gotten to know the real me. At least, I think this is why I was crying.
Anyway, to summarize, the mask May has been wearing since birth, she isn't sure what's under it. She fears she is a horrible person. She might be an extremely raw, emotional person without much personality. Or the girl might be wrong, and there might indeed be nothing there beyond the mask. So, basically, not sure if she likes herself (see the bridge scene, where she tells Bern she's manipulated everyone, and that Bern should stay away), she creates alter-egos to hide what she thinks is her true self. That doesn't mean that is her true self, only what Bern can see. And what she can see is what she's needed to do to try to get people to like her.
http://flipside.keenspot.com/comic.php?i=2251I think this is closer to the real May, but it'll take her awhile to realize this, based on how she currently considers herself.