Gods Need Prayer Badly/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: In a fantasy work, a god's power is proportional to the number of believers he or she has, and how strongly they believe in him or her.

  • Straight: Odin gets stronger the more believers he has, but weaker the fewer he has.
  • Exaggerated:
    • One person's belief gives Odin omnipotence.
    • The gods created by and gaining power through worship create their own gods who gain power through their worship
  • Justified:
    • In the fantasy setting, belief is shown to influence reality enough to allow this to happen.
    • Gods are essentially ideas. If no-one thinks about them, they can't exist.
    • The believers are all Reality Warpers who make him exist when they believe in him.
  • Inverted: Odin actually gets weaker the more people believe in him.
  • Subverted: Odin doesn't lose power when his followers are massacred.
  • Double Subverted:
  • Parodied: Belief and manifestation are so strongly intertwined that a follower of Odin changes their own beliefs just to get to see Odin wearing a tutu.
  • Deconstructed: Odin becomes so powerful that he now has power over the rest of humanity, and begins smiting people who aren't his believers because they cannot resist him.
  • Reconstructed: Odin turns out to be a merciful god, or is taught humility by a brief spell with fewer believers fuelling his powers.
  • Zig Zagged: The authors seem inconsistent over whether Odin needs believers or not to fuel his power - one moment a single believer has total control over Odin, and the next moment a whole congregation's collective belief has no effect on him.
  • Averted: Odin exists whether or not people believe in him.
  • Enforced:
    • Executive Meddling and/or the authors: "The god is too powerful, he's a Game Breaker, but I don't want to tone him down too much. How about Gods Need Prayer Badly? It'd make a nice allegory for belief, too."
    • The writer is trying to justify why God cares about worship so much, without it making Him seem egotistical
  • Lampshaded: A Genre Savvy Character says; "I don't get how believing it makes it true. How do they do that?"
  • Invoked: A Genre Savvy Character tells everyone to believe in Odin so that he can grow powerful and smite their enemies.
  • Exploited: A Genre Savvy Character sabotages belief in Odin and then coerces him into working for him or her in exchange for a revival in belief.
  • Defied: "You think telling people to Clap Your Hands If You Believe will change anything? I'm a GOD, you fool. Cower, brief mortals!"
  • Discussed: "We're losing the war because no-one properly believes in Odn any more. If they did, he'd be a powerful ally, but as it is he can't help us"
  • Conversed: A character who reads fantasy books points out an author who wrote about this effect and compares it with Odin's case.

Back to Gods Need Prayer Badly, and on your way out, would you give just two prayers a month for the guy in the corner? Save The Gods charity fund. Please. Give Blood.

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