One of the several unsatisfactory running themes of TLOK Book 3, actually - Everybody Hates Korra Because Spirits Everywhere. The season's very first episode wastes no time in establishing that.

>If that's the case, let's take it one step further. What if the
>spontaneous birth of this sentience is the triggering event for the
>demiplane's creation? Perhaps it tries to manifest its will for a
>balanced, harmonious whole through the creation of the Avatar.

That's a reasonable surmise - in some ways more reasonable, or at least more internally consistent, than the actual explanation given in the 20-odd percent of TLOK Book 2 that the title character doesn't even get to be in. This established, with a giant wave of the retcon wand, that the original creation of "the Avatar" as concept and person was more or less accidental, and that being born the Avatar is basically a curse: condemnation to spend your life walking the impossible and not-even-really-definable treadmill of "balancing the world", because 1) The first Avatar stupidly set himself this task without ever really understanding what it meant and 2) The Avatar Spirit is A) sentient and B) neurotic.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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