Last semester, in the Spring, I made this website for a class. It had been over a year since I had really done any academic research or had any discussion with anyone about Loki. During Summer Session 1 (Pop Culture and the YA course), I talked with a fellow peer about villains and Loki and he made me realize something–but as I type this, a part of me is losing the adjustment I made to the character of Loki because…I am talking myself back into anti-villain Loki.

One of the biggest points that I had made in my research, and come to the conclusion to, is that a trickster becomes what is needed at the moment. That is what a Catalyst is, essentially, they become what is needed when it is needed.

Yet, I have always struggled with the concept of the character of Loki as a villain. In my deduction, Loki is not a villain–merely a catalyst that mirrors one but is not actually so. This is where I am struggling here. I cannot accept Loki as a villain because he is a trickster at the core of the archetype, the character.

However, I look back at the title of this Post as well as my memories of American Gods (which will be another post soon), and I think my peer did make a lasting impression on me. Maybe I can adjust my thinking because just like YA literature, Pop Culture is always changing, always transitioning, always adaptation. Just like a trickster. In the MCU, Loki is seen as a villain by all even if under heavy deciphering and analyzing, one can argue something different. Maybe I just need to look at the MCU Loki and various other incarnations of this character in this area as a different type of Loki. The MCU Loki can be built on the core of a tricskster, but writers can change him.

Therefore, the MCU Loki could be a villain of a kind. Maybe a new kind of one. In this new era of pop culture and all the literature that encompasses it, villain does not mean the same anymore. Unfortunately, people still lump them all together.

So maybe my job isn’t proving Loki is still a trickster and, therefore, not a villain. But I should be defining the new type of Loki by a new definition of villain?

After all, haven’t I heard so many times during my Audiobook reading of Good Omens, that nice does not mean the same anymore? Do I not know that many words are not the same as they once were? After all, is that not why I have trouble connecting with classics and literature of a different generation? Because the cultural differences?

I think I have my next project. That and a post of American Gods.