#I love Azula but y'all are delusional if you think she's innocent.

[randomaccount12352346]

Azula apologists are stupid

For starters, here's a list of some of the shitty stuff she did:

-attempted genocide of the earth kingdom (she proposed the plan and tried to participate)

-throwing people in concentration camps

-trying to make two old ladies duel to the death

-sadistically smirking when Zuko was maimed and celebrating when Lu Ten died and laughing when Ozai threatened to kill Zuko

-brutally threatening and banishing her own servants for fun (remember the girl who left a pit in the cherry?)

-manipulating her "friends" under threat of death

I could go on, but you get the point.

Some crimes should not be forgivable nor forgettable. Those who would compare her to Zuko or Iroh are comparing apples to oranges; none of their crimes are on this magnitude, and more importantly, neither were motivated by literal sadism and cruelty for the sake of cruelty.

Zuko had a heart and a sense of remorse from the start and it shows. He was banished for advocating against using soldiers as bait. He never harms anyone unnecessarily. He is against stealing from the weak and even distributes food to the poor earth kingdom refugees. Azula proposed the earth kingdom genocide; Zuko was so horrified by it that it compelled him to finally switch sides.

Ozai raised her poorly, and she would have turned out better under normal parents. But genocide is genocide. "I was just indoctrinated/following orders" wasn't a good excuse for holocaust perpetrators and it shouldn't be one for Azula either. There is a point of no return.

Let's be real: if someone did what Azula did in the real world, we would all be (rightfully) calling her Hitler and screaming bloody murder.

Those who excuse her are looking for excuses when there are none. We literally see around 1 minute of her childhood, yet we have wild extrapolating theories about how Ursa and Iroh were neglectful, how she was molded completely, etc etc etc. And the thing is, we only do this with Azula. We don't overanalyze Azulon explicitly threatening Ozai and come up with armchair theories of his abuse. We don't make up theories about how Zhao felt stifled into being aggressive and honor seeking to the point where he was willing to sacrifice his own life.

The truth is Azula showed a disturbing disregard for human suffering from a young age. Nature and nurture both play a role. Mental health is not our fault but it is our responsibility.

The ONLY valid point going for her is the fact that she's an adolescent. Even so, teenagers being tried as adults is not uncommon for crimes orders of magnitudes less severe than what Azula has committed. The wave of people clamoring for an Azula redemption (or, even worse, denying that she did anything wrong beyond "being a bully") is baseless. It probably comes from overzealous devotion to Azula and a soft spot for over-romanticized tragic backstories.

One final point is that speaking practically, it is too much risk and too politically unacceptable to allow a deranged and powerful bender responsible for bringing the world to its knees back into society where innocent people can get hurt. Azula's life is not worth more than anyone else's.

TL;DR: Indoctrination is no excuse for crimes against humanity.