For most of us, pop culture and kid-friendly reinterpretations of mythology are the very first exposure to pagan deities. With that comes a lot of oversimplifications and misinterpretations of their stories, so that they fit more comfortably into modern biases and are easier to understand.

The downside of this is that people tend to lock in on first impressions, and therefore they lock in on the oversimplifications. Speaking for myself, Loki was that weird guy who made mischief, and who forced Jim Carrey to behave like…well, Jim Carrey, but cranked to 11.

The Mask (and the majority of his other portrayals) really didn’t care to go into the complexity of the Trickster archetype, or the fact that Loki isn’t quite a trickster–he deviates strongly into and out of quite a few archetypes.

And I think it’s the oversimplification of Loki’s character that sets people up with the wrong idea about what Loki…