Let me say that the DO's motives are most likely found in a Johnny Cash song - that line about shooting a man "just to watch him die." That seems to be the most probable goal - it just wants to end everything (a) because it can and (b) as some form of self-validation. This makes the most sense if the DO is simply blocked from the Pattern's existence, but has ways of amusing itself outside of the WoT's existence. It just wants to throw rocks at the pretty glass house...

But the stumper I've always had is : Why does the Creator create the DO in the first place? Or allow it to continue existing?

But what if that's not the case? If the DO and Creator were two individuals of unequal power that existed when nothing else did, this makes sense. The Creator makes everything, and one of the first jobs is to shut the DO out - either keeping it in the DO's "own" reality, or actually constraining it altogether. The Creator didn't like (or wasn't satisfied with) what existed - itself, the DO, and nothing - so it created a reality that was outside those 3 things. The DO doesn't like being left out of the party, and decides to destroy it.

If the Creator and DO were rival individuals/entities before everything existed, it seems that the DO lost bigtime. So the Creator was powerful enough to make everything, but couldn't finish the job once it won? Doing so wouldn't necessarily destroy creation, because the Creator was making creation at the same time, and the rules of reality don't require a creator...

But does it make any sense that RJ's Creator actually *made* the DO? Why devise a universe while simultaneously creating a vile thing that wants to destroy all your work? At least in the Tolkien series, the most divine entities there actually needed the bad guys to help create some mystical symphony or some such....

Or is the answer that the DO is actually some entity that's totally outside of *the Creator's* dimension, and wants to somehow screw it up? It is possible that some things in existence are purely outside of the Creator's works (which include TaR and the alterna-worlds from the Portal Stones). Then the DO just wants to exert its evil when it a new place.

The scariest option is one that kind of fits the symbolism of the Aes Sedai symbol in WoT : does the Creator comprise "everything in existence?" If the Creator actually IS "everything," then the Creator and the DO may be the same entity, with two different and opposite personalities and goals. One is benevolent and wants to create/observe a timeless universe, a universe that repeats the same patterns in different ways endlessly. The other personality is malevolent and wants the opposite - endless nothing. The question is about two equal but opposing powers that drive the universe (sound familiar?) - yet I can't see how one could subjugate the other. So if the Creator is actually composed of both a creator and a dark one, then perhaps it keeps itself going by playing games with itself.

What makes the most sense, in some ways, is if the DO is actually the personality and power of the "nothingness" that existed before the Creator Created. Then it would make sense that the DO wants to undo the created universe and go back to the way things were - to wit, the DO encompassing everything with its nothingness.

I had this same problem, on a much more personal level, back when I ascribed to Catholicism. I was shocked that I was supposed to believe that any angel could credibly challenge a God with the absolute powers of creation and fore-knowledge.

It made less sense that that God would seal this angel in some prison instead of destroying it. Or that God would actually allow that angel to somehow interfere with its work, despite locking it away. "I send you to a pit of fire, you little punk! But I've somehow made it so you can sneak out of there to mess with my toys/creations..."

None of this made the slightest bit of sense. So I had to wonder if God actually wanted that angel to mess with the world. But then I had to ask "why?" Catholicism tells you that "god's plan is unknowable" and to just accept that; still, I always wondered if that God could've been decent enough to create an evil that doesn't propagate (a) sexual assault, (b) abuse and murder of children and domesticated animals, and (c) torture. I'll take assault & battery, theft offenses, and shark attacks, but please leave the other three out of existence.

Perhaps a whole ton of writers simply take some of the paradoxes of this biblical story into their own work. Or maybe it's a lot easier to rely on circumstances that are so "familiar" to a significant portion of the world population. It sounds way easier writing a variation on a biblical theme than giving a detailed and "new" explanation of what evil is, what it wants, and why it's doing what it's doing.