I think to some degree his giving it back also has to do with what he said about "ow[ing] a death."

I think you've hit on something key. Sure, he could have withdrawn his favor from her with her negligence of him. But at the same time, with him being already weakened in an age when the belief in fairies was waning, her negligence could easily directly weaken him. It's a self reinforcing cycle, whether vicious or…

The problem is, I think, that it's hard to make the gods' war plot really do anything until later in the story. They already moved a first confrontation between Shadow/Wednesday and the New Gods way, way forward from where it comes in the book, at least as I can recall it. Given that House on the Rock was going to be…

Because I'm a horrible mythology nerd I'm really struggling to understand how it's legitimate to tie a mythical Irish king to a leprechaun, let alone why a leprechaun would be doing the sorts of things I'd expect more of a brownie or another sort of fairy, but it did make for a great story.

It took me a second to realize he was speaking Irish, but when I figured it out I almost screamed. Thanks for the translation!

…yes?

I can see an argument that what gun users in those contexts get out of guns/"believe in" is somewhat different, but for that to work the show would have had to have bothered to make said argument. Yes, the show as a whole is real heavy handed, but this last episode just seemed kind of like a collection of somebody's…

The original Roman god had a limp.

Yeah, but I'm not worried about white gun owners. They're doing just fine. Being inaccurate about what gay Muslims face, and the variety in those conditions, at the very least doesn't help anything and at worst contributes to the perception of extremists like ISIS being typical.

Yeah, like I said I wouldn't even have said anything about "bin Irem" if I hadn't already been pissed about the other thing. I think I'm having a bigger reaction because I've already been lowkey annoyed at Fuller for weeks as I see him saying this like it's a fact over and over in interviews, and so now that he's put…

See below, thanks for your input

Solid call.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have died, just that if everybody there is gonna get shot anyway it's not much of a miracle

I heard the same thing about episode 9 except that it got bumped for budget reasons rather than story (but that 8 will also be a solid finale anyway, not to worry).

I mean, in one sense he was, just not, um, permanently.

Ah, ok. Clearly I'm due for a reread.

I didn't feel that way this episode, but I very much did in the pilot.

ho shit

They were pretty much saying that, yeah. Especially combined with the border militia guys at the start.

Oh, yeah, there was nothing over the top about it. I found it really wearing, but it's probably better than just pretending like it wouldn't be a thing.