So who made Thor Drink?

[rbetieh]

Did the mortals do it directly, or did some other God (presumably Loki) convince the population he was a drunk?

Did Thor just appear to the mortals holding an Ale one day or did disguised Loki do it to gain an edge?

Can gods even get drunk, or is it all an act?

[KorvinStarmast]

Did the mortals do it directly, or did some other God (presumably Loki) convince the population he was a drunk?

Did Thor just appear to the mortals holding an Ale one day or did disguised Loki do it to gain an edge?

Can gods even get drunk, or is it all an act? Why do you presume that Thor lacked, or lacks, agency? :smalleek: He's a deity.

[Dion]

Did the mortals do it directly, or did some other God (presumably Loki) convince the population he was a drunk?

I bet Thor convinced the mortals that Loki was a trickster god, so that Loki would trick the mortals into thinking Thor was a drinking god.

Because Thor doesn’t just find excuses to drink. He finds meta-excuses to meta-drink. He’s playing 3D chess while the rest of us play tic-tax-toe.

Or maybe the Oracle set the whole thing up, by changing the future, by deciding which predictions he would tell people.

[HorizonWalker]

Why do you presume that Thor lacked, or lacks, agency? :smalleek: He's a deity.

Because Loki, who is also a deity, is incapable of being honest to anyone but Thor, and with Thor, only in the process of giving Thor a hard time.

Gods, in this particular milieu, really do not have much agency. If they did, there wouldn't be much of a story.

[Schroeswald]

Because Loki, who is also a deity, is incapable of being honest to anyone but Thor, and with Thor, only in the process of giving Thor a hard time.

Gods, in this particular milieu, really do not have much agency. If they did, there wouldn't be much of a story.

But why was Loki believed ridiculously dishonest? Because he was dishonest, he had a personality, it was just heightened by belief forcing him into the box of being completely unable to be honest outside of one circumstance.

[HorizonWalker]

But why was Loki believed ridiculously dishonest? Because he was dishonest, he had a personality, it was just heightened by belief forcing him into the box of being completely unable to be honest outside of one circumstance.

Was he dishonest to begin with? Given that was uncountable flobbity-jillions of years ago when he arrived from beyond the chaos with the rest of the Gods, he might've been completely different then, and all those uncountable flobbity-jillions of being slowly altered and reshaped by the beliefs of his followers could've turned him into a completely different person. Maybe originally Loki was a shapeshifting fertility god, and uncountable flobbity-jillions of years of memetic drift have turned him into an untrustworthy trickster. I mean, it's not even like there's that much distance between the two concepts.

And how this relates to Thor is that, uncountable flobbity-jillions of years ago, he might've been a straight-edge teetotaler who wouldn't take a sip of beer if you put a gun to his head. Sure, he might not've been; we have no way of knowing. But it's possible that's what happened.

[KorvinStarmast]

Because Loki, who is also a deity, is incapable of being honest to anyone but Thor, and with Thor, only in the process of giving Thor a hard time. Gods, in this particular milieu, really do not have much agency. If they did, there wouldn't be much of a story. Agency is not omniscience. All agency does is ensure that there are choices, and consequences for choices made. (Which is kinda the whole schtick regarding the bet: the law of unintended consequences ...)

And I think that this may explain why Thor drinks (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1140.html). Panel two is very poignant. See the previous strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1139.html)for context.

[HorizonWalker]

Agency is not omniscience. All agency does is ensure that there are choices, and consequences for choices made. (Which is kinda the whole schtick regarding the bet: the law of unintended consequences ...)

See, but Loki tells us that he cannot choose to go against his divine nature (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1177.html). That's... that kinda takes away his agency. You know, his ability to make choices and act on them. Which is important for this story, because if the Gods could fix the problems, we wouldn't need the Order of the Stick.

I have no idea what omniscience has to do with this.

[KorvinStarmast]

See, but Loki tells us that he cannot choose to go against his divine nature (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1177.html). That's... that kinda takes away his agency. You know, his ability to make choices and act on them. No, it does not (in re what I bolded for emphasis).
He had sufficient agency to set up the bet. Simply having a constraint, which he describes to Thor, does not remove agency.

(Hmm, and maybe I meant "omnipotence" rather than "omniscience" but your objection to dragging those terms into this is noted and agreed.)

[RatElemental]

See, but Loki tells us that he cannot choose to go against his divine nature (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1177.html). That's... that kinda takes away his agency. You know, his ability to make choices and act on them. Which is important for this story, because if the Gods could fix the problems, we wouldn't need the Order of the Stick.

I have no idea what omniscience has to do with this.

Think of it like this: Mortal belief flanderizes gods, it doesn't railroad them. It also takes a long time to do anything, and ultimately is kicked off by the gods acting on the agency that they do in fact have. Thor can choose to smite trees once in a while as target practice, and dwarves can see that and flip out thinking trees are the enemy of their god. But Thor still doesn't actually view trees as his enemy. If the world went on long enough and enough of his followers believed that, maybe he would eventually come to hate trees.

[Schroeswald]

Think of it like this: Mortal belief flanderizes gods, it doesn't railroad them. It also takes a long time to do anything, and ultimately is kicked off by the gods acting on the agency that they do in fact have. Thor can choose to smite trees once in a while as target practice, and dwarves can see that and flip out thinking trees are the enemy of their god. But Thor still doesn't actually view trees as his enemy. If the world went on long enough and enough of his followers believed that, maybe he would eventually come to hate trees.

This. This is what I've been trying to get across.

[HorizonWalker]

The world of barbarians made Odin go senile. Loki was rendered incapable of making what he believed the right choice to be because people think he's incapable of honesty. The gods have a very well demonstrated deficiency of agency. They're not completely devoid of it, but they definitely have less of it than mortals have.

It really, truly could have been someone else's idea that Thor drinks a lot. It could have been his idea, sure, but it definitely could've been someone else's, too, and it's not unreasonable to suggest such.

[Schroeswald]

The world of barbarians made Odin go senile. Loki was rendered incapable of making what he believed the right choice to be because people think he's incapable of honesty. The gods have a very well demonstrated deficiency of agency. They're not completely devoid of it, but they definitely have less of it than mortals have.

It really, truly could have been someone else's idea that Thor drinks a lot. It could have been his idea, sure, but it definitely could've been someone else's, too, and it's not unreasonable to suggest such.

But it is unreasonable to decide that there is no way that Thor could have just liked drinking, like Loki was a liar, and those traits were exaggerated over time, and that's what the OP said.

[Tvtyrant]

The world of barbarians made Odin go senile. Loki was rendered incapable of making what he believed the right choice to be because people think he's incapable of honesty. The gods have a very well demonstrated deficiency of agency. They're not completely devoid of it, but they definitely have less of it than mortals have.

It really, truly could have been someone else's idea that Thor drinks a lot. It could have been his idea, sure, but it definitely could've been someone else's, too, and it's not unreasonable to suggest such.

The question is why they would come to believe that if Thor wasn't already somewhat like that? The influence goes both ways, and we have seen that Thor was at least brash enough to taunt the Snarl before the chain of worlds had really gotten started (but also a blonde somehow.)

[HorizonWalker]

The question is why they would come to believe that if Thor wasn't already somewhat like that? The influence goes both ways, and we have seen that Thor was at least brash enough to taunt the Snarl before the chain of worlds had really gotten started (but also a blonde somehow.)

We've seen people misinterpret Thor's actions pretty heavily before, what with the whole trees thing. Untold flobbity-jillions of years of that could, in fact, produce some pretty bizarre changes that have nothing to do with the original.

[Tvtyrant]

We've seen people misinterpret Thor's actions pretty heavily before, what with the whole trees thing. Untold flobbity-jillions of years of that could, in fact, produce some pretty bizarre changes that have nothing to do with the original.

It is possible, just seems outside of the likely scenario. Hel is always the goddess of death and Loki has always been the god of tricksters as far as we know, and Odin being dumb doesn't make him less the God of wisdom and prophecy.

Edit: The gods in OotS are also anachronistic in many ways. Assuming they came from a blank vacuum in the astral plane, how do they even know what steam punk or cyber punk is? Remember this is the longest lasting world, so it isn't like they made a caveman world and suddenly they came up with computers.

Even the animals were invented by the gods, so Lazarsnail isn't actually weird compared to remaking monkey people again and again.

[Anymage]

...Thor was at least brash enough to taunt the Snarl before the chain of worlds had really gotten started (but also a blonde somehow.)

The story also showed the gods in stick figure form, and said that the current world is only the second world. Having Thor look like his current self is a reasonable reach for the incomplete information that Shojo was working from.

As for the theodynamics of the stickverse gods, I'm going to say that the feedback loop between gods and worshipers causing gods to self-flanderize is probably the most plausible explanation. Partially because complex backstories of gods trying to hurt each other through weaponized myths is something that would have to be ongoing, and we don't see too much of clerics of one religion going out of their way to spread misinformation about other deities in the pantheon. Second and more importantly, the importance of clerics is one of the key tenets of the Bet. The utility of having agents to help spread your message is proving to the key message from all that. If the gods were playing information warfare across the countless worlds, Hel would know that giving up agents of her own was pure idiocy. Hel may not be the smartest in divine terms, but she still has divine level stats and wouldn't agree to a bet that was so blatantly a sucker's game. Any explanation that requires the Bet to be so obviously a bad deal runs into the same problem.

[Rogar Demonblud]

My faith in this forum is for once misplaced. Nobody has posted this joke:

So who made Thor drink?

No one. You can lead Thor to lager, but you can't make him drink.

[deuterio12]

Because Loki, who is also a deity, is incapable of being honest to anyone but Thor, and with Thor, only in the process of giving Thor a hard time.

Gods, in this particular milieu, really do not have much agency. If they did, there wouldn't be much of a story.

Quite on the contrary.

For example, Thor's worshipers consider trees to be their mortal enemies.

Yet Thor goes and fills his paradise with trees anyway and shows zero hate for them.

Then I'm pretty sure that most mortals don't want their gods to destroy the world.

Yet the gods have been blowing up the world for a zillion times.

If Thor can just shrugg off his worshipers rampart tree-hate, then there's zero reason why Loki couldn't shrugg off his worshipers belief that he should be a liar.

Loki is just a lying, sheming, manipulating bastard.

Even before the current world started he was already manipulating his daughter and brother.

But like all lying, scheming, manipulating bastards, Loki will use any excuse for his lying, scheming and manipulation. "Of, those scary mortals made me do it, it's all their fault. Even before they existed lol."

It was the gods that spawned the snarl, the gods that created all the rules that Roy and co have to live for. And Durkon in specific has been puppeteered directly by Thor and Odin and Loki and Hel all his life and beyond.

The order of the stick and all other mortals are the god's toys to play with.

[Anymage]

Dwarves have a hard on against trees. I'm sure that other northeners have some degree of faith in Thor, even if he isn't their preferred deity, and don't give a toss about trees. Ambivalence of belief from other worshipers gives Thor more latitude. Similarly, while most people don't believe that the gods actively want to destroy the world, few of them think that actively defending the world is an intrinsic part of what it means to be a god. Absent an active belief, you again have some degree of freedom.

When most believers are confident about a certain one of a god's traits, that both empowers and limits that god. Loki wouldn't be such a good trickster if he didn't have so much belief enhancing that trait of his, but it also prevents him from acting against his nature as a trickster. (I don't think that Rich has said as much explicitly, but it fits perfectly with the evidence given in the strip.) Clerics are nice because they let a god have a more active hand in which traits of theirs are bolstered to the point of hardening by the stories that their worshipers share, and which thus help shape the belief.

[KorvinStarmast]

So who made Thor drink?

No one. You can lead Thor to lager, but you can't make him drink. Wins thread. :smallbiggrin:
(And I apologize for contributing to the failure ... )

[hroþila]

Dwarves have a hard on against trees. I'm sure that other northeners have some degree of faith in Thor, even if he isn't their preferred deity, and don't give a toss about trees. Ambivalence of belief from other worshipers gives Thor more latitude.
Yes, this. "The dwarves" and "the northerners" are conflated way too often.

[D.One]

My faith in this forum is for once misplaced. Nobody has posted this joke:

So who made Thor drink?

No one. You can lead Thor to lager, but you can't make him drink.

This is the best answer of Ale.

[rbetieh]

Dwarves have a hard on against trees. I'm sure that other northeners have some degree of faith in Thor, even if he isn't their preferred deity, and don't give a toss about trees. Ambivalence of belief from other worshipers gives Thor more latitude. Similarly, while most people don't believe that the gods actively want to destroy the world, few of them think that actively defending the world is an intrinsic part of what it means to be a god. Absent an active belief, you again have some degree of freedom.

When most believers are confident about a certain one of a god's traits, that both empowers and limits that god. Loki wouldn't be such a good trickster if he didn't have so much belief enhancing that trait of his, but it also prevents him from acting against his nature as a trickster. (I don't think that Rich has said as much explicitly, but it fits perfectly with the evidence given in the strip.) Clerics are nice because they let a god have a more active hand in which traits of theirs are bolstered to the point of hardening by the stories that their worshipers share, and which thus help shape the belief.

It's strange though... enough belief turned his hair yellow and now he apparently can't get it turned back to red even though he remembers it being red. How many of those tree-slayings might be due to belief and not to whim?

Then there is this... there is enough soul power among the Dwarves to have Hel blow past the rest of the pantheon in power.... but there is not enough belief among the dwarves to make Thor shoot trees all the time? Is it that the other major Thor-recognizing people believe he totally does not target trees out of some adversarial nature?

This kind of reminds me of Who wants to be a millionaire, except you are forced to ask the audience and they sometimes take away the answer you want...

[Schroeswald]

It's strange though... enough belief turned his hair yellow and now he apparently can't get it turned back to red even though he remembers it being red. How many of those tree-slayings might be due to belief and not to whim?

Then there is this... there is enough soul power among the Dwarves to have Hel blow past the rest of the pantheon in power.... but there is not enough belief among the dwarves to make Thor shoot trees all the time? Is it that the other major Thor-recognizing people believe he totally does not target trees out of some adversarial nature?

But... Thor doesn't think trees are evil, we know that for a fact. So we have to base our facts off of that, everyone in an entire world believing you are one way can mess you up (we know that for Odin), but everyone in one race believing you are one way is not, therefore its that everyone else in the world doesn't believe this that make him not a tree-hater.

[Emanick]

It's strange though... enough belief turned his hair yellow and now he apparently can't get it turned back to red even though he remembers it being red. How many of those tree-slayings might be due to belief and not to whim?

Then there is this... there is enough soul power among the Dwarves to have Hel blow past the rest of the pantheon in power.... but there is not enough belief among the dwarves to make Thor shoot trees all the time? Is it that the other major Thor-recognizing people believe he totally does not target trees out of some adversarial nature?

This kind of reminds me of Who wants to be a millionaire, except you are forced to ask the audience and they sometimes take away the answer you want...

I think it's just that it takes millennia of most mortals believing something to alter a god's nature. Nobody in this world thinks Odin is an idiot, but he's still struggling to get over the effects of the last world, and that was ages ago. The lag time seems to be incredible.

[RatElemental]

It's strange though... enough belief turned his hair yellow and now he apparently can't get it turned back to red even though he remembers it being red. How many of those tree-slayings might be due to belief and not to whim?

Then there is this... there is enough soul power among the Dwarves to have Hel blow past the rest of the pantheon in power.... but there is not enough belief among the dwarves to make Thor shoot trees all the time? Is it that the other major Thor-recognizing people believe he totally does not target trees out of some adversarial nature?

This kind of reminds me of Who wants to be a millionaire, except you are forced to ask the audience and they sometimes take away the answer you want...

That's because all the other northerners would be split up by which god they personally worship, but they all believe Thor exists and most of the nondwarf ones probably don't think Thor hates trees. Same with all the westerners and southerners too, they're probably at least aware of Thor's existence but only the most learned of them probably know he smites trees at all. The dwarves, on the other hand, all, unanimously, every single one of them, go to Hel because of the wager instead of the gods they personally worship.

[mucat]

So who made Thor drink?

"A woman drove me to drink, and I didn't even have the decency to thank her."
- W.C. Fields

[Xyril]

But... Thor doesn't think trees are evil, we know that for a fact. So we have to base our facts off of that, everyone in an entire world believing you are one way can mess you up (we know that for Odin), but everyone in one race believing you are one way is not, therefore its that everyone else in the world doesn't believe this that make him not a tree-hater.

I think you're taking a very specific interpretation of Thor's speech on belief as a form of sustenance and conflating it with a more general idea of belief.

Thor explained belief as the knowledge that a deity exists in a particular form. The Northern barbarians didn't believe that magic was a thing that existed, which undermined their belief that Odin, the god of (among other things) magic, was a being that existed. This obviously did a number on Odin. However, you seem to be arguing a more direct causal effect: If the majority of worshipers believe a deity exists in a certain form, they are forced to take on that form. I don't think the evidence supports that theory.

In fact, the main bit of evidence you cite is actually a counter-example. You argue that since belief shapes the deity, the only reason Thor isn't a tree-hater is that a majority of his worshipers don't believe Thor's a tree-hater. However, if that's how the whole Belief thing worked, then Odin wouldn't have gone senile from lack of Belief--he simply would've become Odin, the God of Not Magic, Because Magic Is a Silly Superstition, because that's a deity those barbarians could get behind.

There's really minimal evidence that believers undermine agency in any meaningful way--at most, they might impose constraints, as Korvin noted, but it's still up to the gods how they react to those constraints. So the mortals believe in Thor, the tree-loving ginger teetotaler, and that's enough to give Thor all the Belief he needs, but one day, for whatever reason, they decide that Thor is blonde. Maybe this starts turning Thor blonde, and there's nothing Thor can do about it, but given the amount of power and free will the gods have shown thus far, this seems less likely than the second possibility: Thor still benefits from their Belief, but that Belief is infinitesimally less efficient than it could be when all the details were right.

So this leaves Thor with a choice (agency). He can use his divine hair dye to more precisely align with his followers' Belief. He can keep going his own way, knowing he's suffering a slight trade off for it. Or he can use his clerics to help spread the gospel of Ginger Thor again. Assuming a generally strong crop of believers, a deity can probably afford to have his worshipers fudge a lot of the details without suffering malnutrition. In fact, the conduct at the Godsmoot seems to imply that the gods--with the exception of the more openly/obviously 'bad' ones--are far more apathetic/ruthless about the mortal lives of their individual followers than the versions that those followers Believe in, and those gods all seem to be doing fine. Over time, however, these details add up, and the deity has to react to keep up with the changes. The mortals start believing in blonde, drunken, tree-hating Thor, producing Belief imperfect enough to jeopardize Thor's health, so Thor decides that hair color is superficial anyway, and that he's always wanted to take up alcoholism. (But the tree thing is ridiculous enough that he's willing to take the hit to Belief.)

Loki being the God of Lies is such a big detail that that going against it might cost Loki far more than it would cost Thor to have the "wrong" hair color to his worshipers. If that's the case, it would be a logical for Loki to choose not to make that sacrifice in order to level with his fellow deities--especially when the most likely outcome is that those gods don't believe him anyway, due to the whole God of Lies reputation. This is Loki demonstrating free will by trying to pick the best of several options, not Loki being compelled to be a pathological desire because that's how the believers see him.

If the nature of Belief could really undermine free will, then Loki would never have been able to talk honestly to Thor about everything. Like any free-willed being, Loki reacted to changing circumstances, and decided that a new opportunity (the chance to beat the Snarl for good) was worth the sacrifice (betraying his daughter and going against Belief) that was previously unthinkable.

[RatElemental]

I think you're taking a very specific interpretation of Thor's speech on belief as a form of sustenance and conflating it with a more general idea of belief.

Thor explained belief as the knowledge that a deity exists in a particular form. The Northern barbarians didn't believe that magic was a thing that existed, which undermined their belief that Odin, the god of (among other things) magic, was a being that existed. This obviously did a number on Odin. However, you seem to be arguing a more direct causal effect: If the majority of worshipers believe a deity exists in a certain form, they are forced to take on that form. I don't think the evidence supports that theory.

In fact, the main bit of evidence you cite is actually a counter-example. You argue that since belief shapes the deity, the only reason Thor isn't a tree-hater is that a majority of his worshipers don't believe Thor's a tree-hater. However, if that's how the whole Belief thing worked, then Odin wouldn't have gone senile from lack of Belief--he simply would've become Odin, the God of Not Magic, Because Magic Is a Silly Superstition, because that's a deity those barbarians could get behind.


A lot of your argument hinges on the assumption that the barbarians thought magic didn't exist. That was not what the comic said. It said they thought magic was "Dumb nonsense for fool and simpletons." You can think something exists and also think that thing is silly and not worth bothering with, and in fact it never even occurred to me until just now that that passage could be read as them thinking magic does not exist.

That said, which hangs together better, given everything else the gods have said about belief and how it shapes them:

The barbarians thought magic existed, but only that stupid people bothered with it, and as a result the god of magic's mental capabilities suffered.

The barbarians thought magic didn't exist, in a world where magic presumably exists (Were there worlds where magic actually didn't exist? What would that do to Odin?). And rather than turning into a god of lies or dropping magic from his portfolio, Odin's mental faculties suffered as a result of this lack of belief in magic.


As to your theory about gods matching details of their follower's belief in order to benefit more from it... Why is Odin still acting loopy? This specifically runs counter to what mortals think Odin is like, given Minrah's reaction to it.

[Xyril]

A lot of your argument hinges on the assumption that the barbarians thought magic didn't exist. That was not what the comic said. It said they thought magic was "Dumb nonsense for fool and simpletons."


That's a valid point. "Pointless/useless" is certainly one valid interpretation of "dumb nonsense." I decided to go with the other one ("fiction/superstition") after reading the full context of what Thor said: "Belief is when mortals know that we exist, in these specific identities." Also, "He's getting better as he absorbs more Belief from your world."

I acknowledge that I'm making one important assumption here: If Odin requires "good" Belief from our world to get better, that implies that his affliction is a result either insufficient or deficient Belief from the prior world. That assumption absolutely isn't supported in the text anywhere. It's an arbitrary system written by the Giant, and for all I know it's a weird Rock/Scissors/Paper system where Belief repairs damage from lack of Worship, Worship fixes lack of Dedication, Dedication fixes lack of Belief, and Souls just keep the lights on.



You can think something exists and also think that thing is silly and not worth bothering with, and in fact it never even occurred to me until just now that that passage could be read as them thinking magic does not exist.

That's absolutely true, and (this was ages ago, so I can't be sure, but) I probably parsed it the same way that you did on first reading that panel, before I read the entire comic and gave it all a moment to sink it. In context, however, (and obviously, accepting my inference that Odin was suffering from Belief malnutrition) one interpretation makes far less sense.



The barbarians thought magic existed, but only that stupid people bothered with it, and as a result the god of magic's mental capabilities suffered.


Does this fit in with Belief? It sounds much more like Worship or Dedication to me, because the barbarians obviously Believed that Odin existed--probably as a God of Magic--but simply didn't care much for him.


The barbarians thought magic didn't exist, in a world where magic presumably exists

I don't want to get political, but we live in a world where a ton of stuff exists, yet a majority of people don't believe in it. Also, remember that even our best science doesn't "know" anything for sure--it's all essentially models of reality that we accept as useful (perhaps even "real") because those models have been validated for their predictive value time and time again. We live in a world where God or gods exist for the majority of people, yet "magic" does not for many of those same people.

For barbarians who similarly believe in higher beings, but not "Magic" (however you want to delineate that), it would be pretty simple for them to explain away any real Magic they see as either divine intervention, unknown technology, or plain trickery.


(Were there worlds where magic actually didn't exist? What would that do to Odin?).


That's a good question. Presumably, they wouldn't create such a world, or they would try their best to build a new domain for Odin into the DNA of that world. Remember, Odin's domain of Magic might be more than mere personal preference: There is a robust yet intricate body of law delineating the powers each deity have when acting within their own domains and the restrictions imposed on them when dealing with the domains of other deities. This is once again an assumption on my part, based on how my knowledge of real life legal systems and game design, but I doubt this system makes it that trivial for a deity to change his or her domain. The whole delicate balance of power would hopelessly untenable if, for example, Balder could do a great PR push convincing his followers that he's in fact the omnipotent monotheistic God of Everything, and the rules require that the rest of the pantheon must defer to Balder's domain of "Everything."



And rather than turning into a god of lies or dropping magic from his portfolio, Odin's mental faculties suffered as a result of this lack of belief in magic.


You raise a valid point... I touched on it a bit in my last post. Superficial changes to appearance and behavior are probably easy. Most mortals can learn to take up drinking in less time than it takes to earn an undergraduate degree--it's certainly plausible that for a god, it would be just as simple. But what about deeper personality traits? If you're the God of Uncontrollable Temper and Inappropriate Explosive Outbursts, and suddenly your believers think that you're the God of Serenity and Measured Responses, what happens then? You know you must change enough to align more closely to their Beliefs to stay healthy, but how easy would it be to change a personality trait that has defined you for millennia?

The real world is full of people who know on a rational level that they must change in order to achieve some goal: Be less timid in order to advance at work or get dates, control their temper in order to avoid being fired, stop procrastinating in order to get decent grades an finish their degree. A great many of these people fail.



As to your theory about gods matching details of their follower's belief in order to benefit more from it... Why is Odin still acting loopy? This specifically runs counter to what mortals think Odin is like, given Minrah's reaction to it.

My theory is that the gods can consciously choose to change their appearance or behavior if it becomes helpful to their continued survival, much like you or I might consciously choose to be more polite at work or improve our grooming habits in order to remain gainfully employed. But what happens if we've been out of work for years, and suffering from ill effects? Even if we know we need a suit and tie for work, our best clothes might be old and threadbare from our years of neglect and poverty. Our physical ability to improve our appearance and to act like the alert, energetic, and composed employee people want might be constrained by years of malnutrition and lack of adequate physical and mental healthcare. Getting back in the workforce wouldn't be impossible, but it might take a lot of time and more help than a single warm meal.

Remember, Odin's basically senile. His free will has been subverted in the way that malnutrition or mental health disorders have the power to subvert free will in real life.