I adopted that motto in Buffy fandom, to account for the massive angst and potential pain of characters, the torture characters went through, and the meta fact that writers block sucks ass and being a devoted enough fan to write fic means you have to be somewhat masochistic.

Well said. And I really enjoyed 'love like a ruin', by the way.

More spirit stuff would be good. And you're right, it's not totally integrated into the regular world (I bet is was more so in Aang's day).

I guess I'm trying to say that I wish there was more magic in the ATLA world. All the magic it has, though, has to do with bending.

*nods* And I think that somehow, having the it's magic/bending makes it harder to get successfully worked up about randomly banging doors and cold spots - you have to make sure you've got bodies killed messily in a locked room.