I’ve done this before.  I’ve played this game.  I’ve led this dance.  This was meant to be a review, but that’s not my true calling.  I examine.  I unfold.  I look for motive in mischief.  I want the layers to peel apart.  Reviews rarely do that.  Reviews entice the fence walker or naysayer to witness, but I need not do what countless others have already managed.  The mere fact I am writing about the Avengers should tell you that it is of value.  I do not spend my pen in pettiness.  I do not waste my words on whimsy.

When you are considered beautiful the rules are different.  No matter how heinous your crimes there will always be a devil’s advocate to speak in your defense, but do not mistake my sympathy for forgiveness.  It is possible to feel sorrow for a fiend and not condone his actions.  The title of evil is as easy as it is incomplete for it merely describes a villain, but gives no reason as to why he is.  It both vilifies and exonerates every dire action for evil has no wavering.  It tells us nothing, but merely circles the perimeter whereas delving below the surface unmasks the meaning behind the monster and the dark motive that lies at its heart.

Loki, the main antagonist of the Avengers, is gothic, gorgeous, and beautifully portrayed by British actor Tom Hiddleston.  His goal is the subjugation of the human race by means of an otherworldly army to satisfy his need for power.  He is a god with no worshipers and in truth his motives are more for validation to prove he has a purpose in the universe.

Loki is of Asgard, the highest plane of the World Tree Yggdrasil, In the movie Thor, both he and the titular character are sons of Odin who tells them that each were born to be kings, but only one of them will rule.  Though Thor must prove his worthiness for the throne by losing his powers and being banished to earth, he is clearly the true king of Asgard for it is revealed that Loki is really the son of Laufey, the frost-giant king of Jotunheim.  Odin took him from the temple during the final war when he was just a babe in a failed hope of one day forming an alliance between the two words.  Thus the seeds of dispossession are sown.  Loki was stolen from the kingdom he was owed by birth and his adopted one belongs to another.  Despite the fact that he murders Laufey to save Odin and in his head be worthy of Asgard, there is no changing this truth.  When such twisted logic failed him the desire for what he is due burns ever deep.  He forsakes Asgard and falls into the abyss between the worlds to a fate seen only as death.

In Avengers we see the abyss is not so empty for therein Loki finds a shadowy “other” who gives him an army to win him the earth in exchange for the tesseract, a source of dark energy and limitless power.  Since Loki cannot have Asgard he will rule Midgard fulfilling his “birthright” of kingship, but there is no doubt that the consequences of his failure would be dire.  The “other” promises that he will “wish for something so sweet as pain” should he fail or should the tesseract be kept from them.  There is none so desperate as one who has nothing to lose.  There is no horror with which to frighten him; there is nothing with which to bargain for Loki has both the undying need for validation and the threat of otherworldly torture, which is greater than any chip the Avengers could hope to play.

Loki is the trickster, the god of mischief and the silver-tongued.  It is the latter that makes him most dangerous.  He can make words that are poisoned taste so sweet as his speech to the kneeling populace in Germany readily shows.  Submitting to power is so much easier than rising above, and it is still the idea of power he invokes after his subsequent capture.  He taunts Nick Fury with the truth of S.H.I.E.L.D’s intentions.  How it burned them to come so close to real power to use it only as a “warm light for all mankind to share.”  Humans are not so magnanimous nor will they ever be.  A clean, sustainable energy of such magnitude would never be used for such innocuous purpose, and it is these words that cut a rift in the already wavering solidarity of the Avenger’s team.

Loki is the force who deals in mischief and mayhem and we need not see the horns on his Asgardian garb to realize what concept he enfolds.  The darkness that gnaws at the heart of the world and whispers lies with enough truth to spark men’s desires.  His power lies in his silver-tongue and golden promises.  He is the trickster and the deceiver, but he is also right.  Humans are warmongers and without law or code to guide us, we would be at each other’s throats even more than we certainly are.  The allure of the villain can lie not only in beauty but also in truth.  Humans make war; therefore, he will bring peace.  It is the peace of slave to master, but it is peace nonetheless.

The most horrifying thing is that he is not wrong in his sentiment, only wrong in his approach.  Yes, humanity is warmongering and unruly, but this would not end with his reign.  The mistake is in the arrogance that he is better than we and therefore he must rule over all.  Thor tried to impart this to him.  The very reason a throne would “suit him ill” is because Loki thinks he is better.  It is the reason Thor himself was sent to earth.  To learn the humility that Loki never did because he was already humiliated to live in his brother’s shadow.  He is the Luciferian villain burdened so heavily with false dispossession burning with the desire to take back what was never his to own.

There is a misaimed fandom arising from this though I truly detest that term.  If one has enough followers to obtain a fandom then can it truly be considered misaimed?  Regardless of what the creator of the work intended, if enough people see something in a character that they themselves may have missed, then I believe that something of value is there.  Something that deserves praise and perhaps a little bit of the worship that Loki so desired and as a fifteen year follower of a misaimed fandom, I find great satisfaction and my own sense of validation in this truth.  Who is the naysayer to demand this interpretation is flawed if a thousand hearts think it true?  Who is to say the devil does not deserve some pity, which does not equate acceptance of his misdeeds?  Some minds are too small to conceive of such duality.  This then I say was not written for ones such as you.