Azula explicitly considers herself a monster. She says needlessly cruel things to her brother and friends. She kills the show's twelve-year-old protagonist and masterminds the idea of burning down the entire Earth Kingdom to force them to submit to Fire Nation rule. I have absolutely seen people get called abuse apologists for thinking she's a cool character. But she's also a (canonically) mentally ill fourteen-year-old who was raised by her father to see her ability to be weaponized as her only value. Her mother, arguably the only adult in her life who could have had a positive impact, had a strained relationship with her because she was more difficult than her brother, and then disappeared when she was nine. Her uncle, who was her brother's main healthy role model, took absolutely no interest in her. She watched her father belittle her brother for years and eventually throw him away when he failed to meet his expectations, so that was a threat she was always facing. She really had no chance. And she also has moments that suggest she wants some sort of meaningful connection with another person. She lets her brother take credit for killing the Avatar so he can come back from exile, even though it means she'll be bumped back in the order of succession and offers him advice that seems genuine. Her spiral into a mental breakdown starts when her friends betray her. She's just a much more interesting and multifaceted than a lot of the fandom gives her credit for.
XUE YANG
he's evil and kills like hundreds, maybe thousands of people, for like not super good reasons (like killing the person who wronged you as a child? understandable in the setting of the story. killing every single person associated with that person? perhaps a bit overkill baby). tricks a character he's obsessed with into murdering a lot of innocent people including that guy's best friend. that all being said, I love him to death like that's my special little babygirl yeah he commits atrocities but have you considered that maybe he just needs someone to love him? or even that he looked cute while committing the atrocities? but nor fr I was kinda surprised when I got to the fandom stuff and realized that there were people who really hated Xue Yang because I just felt sorry for him and wanted to pat his head or something.
it's no surprise that the protesters who were outside the DNC last night (Nov. 15) are being slandered and accused of "rioting" when there's video evidence of protesters being brutalized and thrown down the stairs by cops.
Have you ever sat in a library reading forbidden books after the dark and see a man sneaking in the library, wet and breathing hard and then you realize he looks like one of the characters of the book you were just reading? I have not and I'm sad about it!
I'm not saying I'm insane about wei wuxian I'm just saying I desire to clamp my teeth around him and shake him back and forth like a dog with a chew toy