Equalist Propaganda

((Tarrlok, the cult of personality, and more under the cut.))

With his bending, he was a menace! A dictator! Maybe I was just fighting what I feared in myself…. But I am not sorry for locking his curse away.

Losing his bending made him a better person. It was for his own good.

Don’t.

He was a coward for a long time, but… there was no redemption for us, no forgiveness, nowhere we could go. We would have suffered for the rest of our lives. He saved us from that fate.

That’s what I tell myself. Perhaps he just wanted revenge, or to keep me from hurting anyone else. Whatever his reasons, it took strength for him to do that.

He grew so much in just a few days. I’m… proud of him.

If I had survived and stayed with the Equalists, that could have happened. No, it would have happened. They did not deserve a leader like me, so wrapped up in his ego and his past.

I thought about fighting the Avatar State, and decided it wasn’t an issue. Bloodbending almost defeated Avatar Aang, and I decided it would destroy a less experienced Avatar. And I was right, but it didn’t matter. As I said before, bloodbenders can’t hurt you if they don’t see you coming.

Perhaps I should have died at the Avatar’s hands, or simply allowed people to think I had. The Equalists would become even more powerful, and I would not be around to ruin everything. In the end, I was too drunk on power to consider it.

But even though I am not a martyr, Equality will carry on. That man was right— the idea will never die.

They always knew the world was unbalanced, but they were too afraid to combat it. Why voice your opinion if you think it will do no good?

I showed people there was hope, that they could change the world. I made people pay attention to our ideas. I regret many things, but that is not one of them.