Has anyone tried to figure out exactly what agency Town, Road, Wood, and Stone worked for?

Obviously not the CIA, 'cause they were making jokes about the CIA. The FBI doesn't make sense, because that's just too obvious.

I was thinking maybe it's an agency that was formed to keep an eye on gods and folk heroes and such. Anyone else have any ideas?

I think the Agency was just the product of all Americans' suspicions about the various secret agencies - NSA, FBI, CIA, etc. So, because it was the imaginary, cinematic version of those (as depicted in movies and bestselling thrillers), it wasn't really any single one of those - but in a way, it was all of them combined.

But maybe I'm just thinking about it too hard.



- Cho

Yeah, if intangibles and folk heros can take on a life of their own, it's not such a stretch that all the thoughts about secret organizations and fear of the ones out there can spawn a group like the part that Wood, Stone, Town, et al were a part of.

The idea that The Agency is a composite of ALL the deniable black operations organizations is a VERY compelling one. And, like the present
DBO groups dealing with all the strange matters
they're hip-deep in (UFOs, human cloning, remote viewing, Tesla energy technology etc. etc.) they don't have the slightest idea WHAT they are dealing with. Of course, they'd never admit it in billion years and this arrogant attitude is going to rise up and bite
them like a great white shark with apocalyptic
results. When that happens EVERYBODY and everything goes down in flames and blood with them.

I'd assumed that when I was reading American Gods, that they were an agency of our own thoughts.

While I couldn't figure it out, and I'm sure that this isn't the case, I cannot help but like the idea that since we've created all these new gods of highways and television and all- why not a sort of Agency god? Does this make any sense?

I figure it's because that's not what the myth is. It's sort of like how demons and spirits are created en masse; people believe in demons in the abstract, not in any given demon in particular. The new gods are less settled; there's no real specific mythology behind them, so they just manifest as personifications of how people feel about the internet or TVs or whatever. The Agency, being more specifically detailed, has less room for imaginative personifications.

Alternatively, it could just be that Loki's filling the role of God of the Agency. Old gods do new jobs, and all that.