On Tumblr and people in ‘the outside world’ there are those who see Loki as not a full on villain. Most, but not all, of the people who apologize with Loki are dealing with only the film. Even though, there has been clear evidence in both ‘Thor’ and ‘The Avengers’ of Loki murdering people in cold blood.

 In ‘Thor’ he committed genocide by murdering an entire planet of Jotuns, all due to the fact he discovered he was one. He even attempted to murder Heimdall, who protected the realm AND tried to murder his brother Thor.  These were exposed plots, with no hidden motive.

In ‘The Avengers’ they claimed he murdered ‘80 people in 2 days’  and on screen they showed him killing a man just to get his people, and trying to kill all the avengers even brainwashing Hawkeye .He also brought the Chithari into Earth to take over it.

Many users ask ‘Why do people sympathize with Loki when he has clearly done these awful things?’

In psychology there is phenomenon describing this, it is called a ‘Physical Attractiveness Stereotype’. A stereotype is a belief held about a certain type of people. This stereotype basically states that we believe people who look beautiful, will act beautiful. 

Tom Hiddleston is an attractive person to most, even if there are some people who do not think so.  While he is playing Loki, he makes Loki physically attractive. Viewers watching ‘Thor’ and ‘The Avengers’ are aware of this, even I find him to be attractive while killing others! Seeing a ‘beautiful’ person engaging in acts of violence conflicts with our stereotype we have that good looking people do good things. This may lead a large amount of people to come up with explanations in their minds that ‘he was treated badly a child and deserves revenge’ or ‘he was being controlled by thanos and was not doing the murders of his own free will.’  Even if they do not realize they are just doing based on the fact that Hiddleston!Loki is attractive.

This can also be applied to the comics; Before Simonson’s run Loki was drawn many ways, including not so attractive:

In the response letters there was not as many people feeling bad for Loki, since he was much portayed as just a classic villain and drawn to be more unattractive than Thor. This also explains why Thor is drawn so attractive and why most heroes in Marvel comics are (there are of course exceptions) good looking.  In most situations, the hero will always look better than the villain, partially due to this stereotype.

However, Loki apologist’s letters started appearing during the 80s, after Simonson’s run where Loki was drawn to be more attractive:

Loki here has been acting pretty much the same as all those previous, however he looks much better while doing it! This could explain why people like these could have surfaced:

More people identify with Loki because he looks better, and we see him as being better.

Even Loki used this stereotype to his own advantage! In Straczynski’s recent run, Loki stole Sifs body and became a female. He became more attractive to the men (whom felt threatened by the trickster) and use the female stereotype of being less angry and more reliable on fellow Asgardians.

Even now in his current run as a child, he is playing into stereotype on how we perceieve children as good and incappable of evil.

This is just one of the reasons many people see Loki as a tragic character and not completely evil, even though it has been shown on screen and MUCH more in the comics that he is in fact a horrible person. It also may explain why there aren’t as many Mole-Man apologists around:

(sorry mole-man!)

-Audrey (spacehamsters)

References:

Psychology of Personality 5th Edition by H. S. Freidman & M. W. Schustack