#AmericanGods the novel: Isn't it odd that this country has so many eccentric roadside attractions?
#AmericanGods the TV series: Isn't it impressive how fucked this country is, on a fundamental level, to literally mythic proportions
#AmericanGods the novel: the New God of Technology is an insecure kid who likes expensive trenchcoats
#AmericanGods the TV series: the New God of Technology is a YouTube personality who, in a moment of spite, orders a lynching
#AmericanGods the novel: When the protagonist first meets an Old God who has adapted well, it is Easter, a hippie mom figure in San Francisco
#AmericanGods the TV series: The first Old God they meet who has adapted well is Vulcan, who feeds on literal human sacrifice and runs a Virginia town based on gun violence and Fascist imagery
#AmericanGods the novel: Media is a vapid newscaster, the generic common denominator of perky and chipper morning-show hosts
#AmericanGods the TV series: https://icosahedron.website/media/akbR_Nvt0hurCJLLGTI
#Sandman: All other religions are projections of humanity, but the Abrahamic God is the Creator; Hell and Lucifer are real.
#AmericanGods the novel: OK, have a vague gesture that there might be a Jesus who is like the other gods, hitchhiking around somewhere
#AmericanGods the TV series: ALL THE JESUSES HAVE A PARTY AT EASTER'S HOUSE
One line of dialogue implies that young-Earth creationists have, by force of collective belief, willed into being a Jesus with a pet dinosaur.
Inter alia, the #AmericanGods adaptation to an extent addresses a criticism I've seen people have of the novel, that we don't tell stories of the New Gods in the way that past civilizations had tales of the Old. We may sacrifice our "time and attention" to Media, but we don't tell stories about Media's childhood and family.
So, in the TV show:
I kinda doubt this was planned, but in giving the character of Media more, well, *character*, the TV show makes her into a kind of syncretic deity. One being, who takes on a variety of aspects, in the way that a deity who was originally a storm god could gain the role of creator, or a local nature-spirit could be reinterpreted as a persona of a major player in the pantheon. And we *do* tell and retell myths about those aspects.