What good alignment is Thor?

[zimmerwald1915]

He's the one who had to busy himself crafting the Dwarven society,

Part of being a god in this world is demiurging. Thor would demiurge in the new world regardless of the bet. Furthermore, that he was not completely free to demiurge as he would please is no harm, because he would not be so free even if the bet had not occurred. He would be constrained by others' prior decisions and whatever other rules are in place.

not to mention arguing on their behalf against Hel

]
As opposed to what? What would he rather be doing for those few minutes? Admittedly, a loss of free time is some harm, but he doesn't seem to lose very much of it over the course of eternity.

[woweedd]

Part of being a god in this world is demiurging. Thor would demiurge in the new world regardless of the bet. Furthermore, that he was not completely free to demiurge as he would please is no harm, because he would not be so free even if the bet had not occurred. He would be constrained by others' prior decisions and whatever other rules are in place.

]
As opposed to what? What would he rather be doing for those few minutes? Admittedly, a loss of free time is some harm, but he doesn't seem to lose very much of it over the course of eternity.

I would argue that, regardless of whether Thor was harmed, he was still taken advantage of: He was held to a deal that he agreed to whilst he was in an altered state of mind. Whether he should have been in such a state is immaterial: The fact remains that the makers of said deal KNEW he was not in full possession of his faculatie, and did it anyway, tricking him into a deal he would not have agreed to were his mind unaltered. That is exploitation, and thus, victimization, regardless of the actions that allowed the victim to be exploited. I'm no lawyer, but i'm fairly certain that a verbal contract, agreed to while drunk, wouldn't hold up in court, even if the other two parties were sober, wouldn't you say?

[Fyraltari]

"Moments like this, I'm a little jealous of your mortal limitations. I can count them. I remember everyone who's ever worshipped me."

It's also a bit disingenuous to call Thor a "victim." He hasn't actually been harmed by Loki's machinations, while Hel and the dwarves both have, in different ways and to different degrees. If anything, Thor has come out ahead of where he was when he started.

How has Thor come ahead, exactly? Remember it isn't a Hel/Thor binary and there are still enough Odin worshippers that heir High Priest lives in the capital and at least at one point was more magically powerful than Thor's.

[zimmerwald1915]

I would argue that, regardless of whether Thor was harmed, he was still taken advantage of: He was held to a deal that he agreed to whilst he was in an altered state of mind. Whether he should have been in such a state is immaterial: The fact remains that the makers of said deal KNEW he was not in full possession of his faculatie, and did it anyway, tricking him into a deal he would not have agreed to were his mind unaltered. That is exploitation, and thus, victimization, regardless of the actions that allowed the victim to be exploited. I'm no lawyer, but i'm fairly certain that a verbal contract, agreed to while drunk, wouldn't hold up in court, even if the other two parties were sober, wouldn't you say?

This is Lucy v. Zehmer, which everyone reads in a first-year contracts course and a good example of why moral intuition is not a substitute for knowledge (viz. the bold). At common law, contracts made while intoxicated can indeed be enforced (there are of course degrees of intoxication, but Thor was not insensible). The issue is not the one party's state of mind, but what the other party reasonably believed them to have agreed to. Put another way, consent to enter a contract is not considered the same as consent to enter into a sexual encounter, and the rules from the latter are not applied straightforwardly to the former. Presumably this is because the commercial realm has different considerations and priorities than the bodily realm.

Tellingly, Thor has not ended the bet by pleading he couldn't have agreed to anything. Which, if the objective is to ensure the most dwarven souls go to their "proper" afterlives, would be the obvious thing to do. Hel would probably even agree to it, given the state to which the bet has driven her. Presumably, Thor either considers himself locked into the bet (which would be very Lawful), is going along with it for his own reasons (in which case he is putting those reasons over the souls of the dwarves and the health of his niece), or tried to plead that he couldn't have agreed to anything and lost (a likely scenario, given the No Backsies rule).

[zimmerwald1915]

How has Thor come ahead, exactly? Remember it isn't a Hel/Thor binary and there are still enough Odin worshippers that heir High Priest lives in the capital and at least at one point was more magically powerful than Thor's.

I didn't say "ahead of every other god," I said he had either broken even or come out ahead of where he started.

[Emanick]

I mean, one could argue that getting drunk whilst anywhere within the vicinity of Loki is a bad idea, but, honestly, the BEST idea would be for the gods to have some restrictions on verbal contracts, particularly ones formed with the signaotry was in an...alternated state of mind. But that was never going to happen, given that 1/3rd the Gods find "fairness" actively repellent, and another third are indifferent.

Agreed. Of course, I imagine the Northern gods have the ability to instantaneously visit one another whenever they want, so for all we know, Thor may have gotten drunk while alone and Loki simply showed up, saw Thor was hammered and took advantage of the situation.

[Fyraltari]

I didn't say "ahead of every other god," I said he had either broken even or come out ahead of where he started.

No, you didn't, you wrote "If anything he came ahead of where he was when he started".
How is that true?

The rest of my post was a pre-emptive response to you saying "he gets more souls because most dwarves go to him" which wouldn,'t be supported by the comic.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

That is an obvious stretch. Feeling sympathy does not make one a victim. A victim suffers some kind of harm.

Emotional harm is still harm. Endless cruelties have been built on it. As any mother whose children have been disappeared by totalitarian regimes.

Grey Wolf

[zimmerwald1915]

No, you didn't, you wrote "If anything he came ahead of where he was when he started".
How is that true?

That "if anything" is doing a lot of work. It means "if his position changed at all, then. . . "

The rest of my post was a pre-emptive response to you saying "he gets more souls because most dwarves go to him" which wouldn,'t be supported by the comic.

And no, he wouldn't get more dwarves by the terms of the bet, but even if he didn't get more souls upon death than he would had the bet not been made, he would get extra worship in the meantime because of the outsized role he played in shaping dwarven society.

Emotional harm is still harm. Endless cruelties have been built on it. As any mother whose children have been disappeared by totalitarian regimes.

Comparing Thor's sympathetic but distant reaction to dwarven suffering, which is akin to the sympathy one might feel for war or disaster victims on the news, to a visceral cruelty like the disappearance of a family member, is crass and beneath you.

[Fyraltari]

That "if anything" is doing a lot of work. It means "if his position changed at all, then. . . "

And now you've completely lost me. His position on the bet? Why would it have changed? And how would it influence his gains.

And no, he wouldn't get more dwarves by the terms of the bet, but even if he didn't get more souls upon death than he would had the bet not been made, he would get extra worship in the meantime because of the outsized role he played in shaping dwarven society.

That I will grant.

[zimmerwald1915]

And now you've completely lost me. His position on the bet?

His power relative to where he started. That's what the bet was about, remember, "who becomes more powerful in the new world, Thor or Hel."

[Fyraltari]

His power relative to where he started. That's what the bet was about, remember, "who becomes more powerful in the new world, Thor or Hel."

But how do you know that his new focus on dwarves hasn't come at the price of his focus on humans or others? After all, Thor is theoritically in the Bet as a control group of sort agaisnt which to weigh the results of Hel's new deal and we've never seen human worshippers of him while we've seen some of Loki and Freya for example.

[Kish]

No creature can operate at 100% attention 100% of the time. Thor being blindsided by Loki's machinations with a third party during a downtime is not "horrifying irresponsib[le]", it is victim-blaming.

Grey Wolf

There's a huge gap between "at 100% attention" and "blotto." If mortals who have a fraction of what would be Thor's responsibilities if anyone was holding him actually responsible for them get one-tenth as drunk as he routinely is while actively holding those responsibilities, they get fired, whether anything bad actually happens that time or not.

[zimmerwald1915]

There's a huge gap between "at 100% attention" and "blotto." If mortals who have a fraction of what would be Thor's responsibilities if anyone was holding him actually responsible for them get one-tenth as drunk as he routinely is while actively holding those responsibilities, they get fired, whether anything bad actually happens that time or not.

Yeltsin smirks at you from beyond the grave, knowing from long experience that this is not true.

[zimmerwald1915]

But how do you know that his new focus on dwarves hasn't come at the price of his focus on humans or others? After all, Thor is theoritically in the Bet as a control group of sort agaisnt which to weigh the results of Hel's new deal and we've never seen human worshippers of him while we've seen some of Loki and Freya for example.

We've seen Haley, and apparently at least part of Minnesota.

[Fyraltari]

We've seen Haley, and apparently at least part of Minnesota.

If Haley is a worshipper of Thor, I am a Nigerian prince who needs your help accessing his treasury.

[Kish]

Yeltsin smirks at you from beyond the grave, knowing from long experience that this is not true.

Yeltsin...<rest of post elided because of no-politics rule>

[zimmerwald1915]

If Haley is a worshipper of Thor, I am a Nigerian prince who needs your help accessing his treasury.

Nigeria is a republic.

And if you don't like that example, Roy worships "the Northern Gods," presumably invoking whoever is appropriate to any given situation, if not terribly seriously. I'd venture a guess that this type of religiosity is the norm among Northern non-Clerics.

[woweedd]

There's a huge gap between "at 100% attention" and "blotto." If mortals who have a fraction of what would be Thor's responsibilities if anyone was holding him actually responsible for them get one-tenth as drunk as he routinely is while actively holding those responsibilities, they get fired, whether anything bad actually happens that time or not.

I agree that Thor was and is irresponsible and often drunken when he shouldn't be. I just disagree that The Bet was one of those instances. He, explicitly, was NOT actively doing anything at that time. That's all on Loki and Hel.

[Fyraltari]

Nigeria is a republic.

I included a direct link to the Nigerian Prince scam's wikipedia page!

And if you don't like that example, Roy worships "the Northern Gods," presumably invoking whoever is appropriate to any given situation, if not terribly seriously. I'd venture a guess that this type of religiosity is the norm among Northern non-Clerics.

We know Sigdi worshipped Thor above the others even before Durkon was a Cleric, same with that random ssoldier who served as an example of the 4 godly nutrients. And if you're saying that dwarves are special and without the Bet the Gods are only worshipped individually by their Clerics, wouldn't Hel already be in the lead soul-wise?

I would bet that henotheism is the most common option, with people worshipping mostly the god most relevant to their profession/identity/background/centers of interest and occasionnally worshipping others whenever appropriate

[Peelee]

Nigeria is a republic.

Well sure, once they deposed the king and locked his son out of their bank accounts!

[zimmerwald1915]

I included a direct link to the Nigerian Prince scam's wikipedia page!

And I gave a reason why anybody who falls for it is lacking the least bit of worldliness and probably deserves to.

[Fyraltari]

And I gave a reason why anybody who falls for it is lacking the least bit of worldliness and probably deserves to.

That's most likely intentionnal on the scammers' part.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Comparing Thor's sympathetic but distant reaction to dwarven suffering, which is akin to the sympathy one might feel for war or disaster victims on the news, to a visceral cruelty like the disappearance of a family member, is crass and beneath you.

And now you're seemingly referring to some other comic, not OotS. You have no leg to stand on, clearly.

There's a huge gap between "at 100% attention" and "blotto." If mortals who have a fraction of what would be Thor's responsibilities if anyone was holding him actually responsible for them get one-tenth as drunk as he routinely is while actively holding those responsibilities, they get fired, whether anything bad actually happens that time or not.

None of which changes he was in downtime, and thus like a human, getting drunk would not get him fired. The worst that he can be accurately accused of is not having the predictive understanding of how bad it'd be, while drunk, while on a break. He is not Odin, he is not all-knowing, nor all-powerful, nor a perfectly emotionless robot that can be required to be guarded against CE all the time.

Grey Wolf

[Rogar Demonblud]

I included a direct link to the Nigerian Prince scam's wikipedia page!

What, you couldn't link to Irregular Webcomic?

[Kish]

None of which changes he was in downtime,

Yeah, it does.

Look, with massive power comes some trivial amount of responsibility. If you can catastrophically alter billions or more other people's lives with one syllable, you don't get "downtime," defined as "you can cheerfully get so drunk you can't process anything other people are saying." It's hardly a gross imposition on Thor to say that if he chooses to indulge his rampant alcoholism, it says something bad about him if he also remains in a position where he can hurt other people while drunk. There's no proper analogy for Thor because even the President of the United States doesn't have access to the nuclear codes during downtime (and while countries exist where one person can declare war unilaterally regardless of state of sobriety, let's just say that analogizing any of those rulers to Thor would not be a defense of him), but, most places I know have laws against driving while drunk, even during "downtime." And trying to convince me those laws should be repealed rather than made much more stringent would be entirely futile.

[woweedd]

Yeah, it does.

Look, with massive power comes some trivial amount of responsibility. If you can catastrophically alter billions or more other people's lives with one syllable, you don't get "downtime," defined as "you can cheerfully get so drunk you can't process anything other people are saying." It's hardly a gross imposition on Thor to say that if he chooses to indulge his rampant alcoholism, it says something bad about him if he also remains in a position where he can hurt other people while drunk. There's no proper analogy for Thor because even the President of the United States doesn't have access to the nuclear codes during downtime (and while countries exist where one person can declare war unilaterally regardless of state of sobriety, let's just say that analogizing any of those rulers to Thor would not be a defense of him), but, most places I know have laws against driving while drunk, even during "downtime." And trying to convince me those laws should be repealed rather than made much more stringent would be entirely futile.

That position is "existing as a deity". Again, the best position would be to change the god laws so that verbal contracts forming whist one of the parties was in an alternate state of consciousness aren't able to be enforced, but, then, the powerful trickster god caucus wouldn't stand for it.

[Fyraltari]

That position is "existing as a deity". Again, the best position would be to change the god laws so that verbal contracts forming whist one of the parties was in an alternate state of consciousness aren't able to be enforced, but, then, the powerful trickster god caucus wouldn't stand for it.

We don't know that the contract is solely verbal though. Maybe Loki had Thor and Hel sign stuff too.

[woweedd]

We don't know that the contract is solely verbal though. Maybe Loki had Thor and Hel sign stuff too.

I somehow doubt it. Loki doesn't seem like the type to bind himself to written terms, and Thor would refuse were he vaguely sober.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Yeah, it does.

No, it really doesn't. What you are suggesting as the alternative is guaranteed to render any caring individual either catatonic or insane. Since the gods can't be fired, denying them the ability to downtime and instead expect of them eternal guarding or be accused of causing the problem they were in fact the victim of would turn these people into even more monstrous versions of what they are. At least this Thor cares. Force him to never be able to have time to cope, he'll stop caring, and then instead of a vaguely dysfunctional pantheon, the OotS would end with Cthulhu's Elders. And none of what you said in any way explains why in this scenario you continue to focus on blaming the victim rather than the actual cause.

Grey Wolf