I am a person who has a non-conformist relationship with Loki. There are a lot of spouses (according to the interwebz) and there are quite a few children. I'm sure that there are other people who fit different relationship dynamics with him. But the 'standard' relationship of my being subservient to him (because he IS a deity) is not exactly how it works. He has been with me since I was a small child. At one point, my brothers and I got into a fight as to which deity was cooler (Thor, Odin, or Loki, I think you can guess who was in Loki's corner that day.). I was devious and managed to turn it into my brother's fighting each other as I lit off for elsewhere because the noise was drawing my parents' attention. I still maintain to this day that I was the victor. My brothers, however, have long forgotten this three way battle royale.
I've always been the one who pointed out how Loki wasn't bad per se but that he was neutral and did what worked best in a given situation. I also always felt that he got shafted by the Aesir in that story of his binding. As time has gone on, other things have been revealed to me and the weirdness factor of the world increased significantly, thereby making that story stranger as time has gone on and my perspective change from being upset with the Aesir to being disgruntled. I used to be really angry about it. Then Loki and I sat down and had a heart to heart on the topic. A bunch of what he said went over my head but I came out of that conversation realizing that everything being in a state of flux means that he is both bound and free at the same time and his sons are living unharmed and in the catastrophic state that the Aesir put them in. (Let me tell you, that last point really stuck in my craw for a while.)
For a time, when I was confused about everything, I tried out atheism. But it didn't make sense because Loki was still there. Then I tried out agnosticism. But, again, Loki was still there. And it wasn't like Dea's quiet presence. Loki is the antithesis of quiet (except for when he is not). He would show up and do random things to help with a situation. He'd show up and cause weird things to manifest around me (which is why I have been dubbed a chaos magnet). And he would show up just to talk. As a shapeshifter, his arrival was different just about every time.
Because I was really unsure of myself, convinced that my spiritual experiences were signs that I was going mad, I tried to ignore Loki. Well, remember "No body puts Baby in a corner"? No body ignores Loki. Somewhere along the way, I gave up on trying to will my experiences to be 'normal' and stopped avoiding Loki. And we fell back into the rhythm of making terrible jokes, conversations in fluent sarcasm, and him acting as one of my closest friends.
At times, Loki acts like the weird, crazy uncle who somehow always manages to pull off the coolest stuff in ways that you genuinely believe break physics. At other times, Loki is the cohort who helps me plan mischief. (This happens mainly in my gaming sessions because life has gotten in the way of other mischief.) And then there are the times where Loki is the quiet, serious minded friend who tells you exactly what is wrong and how to go about fixing it. He also has no qualms about telling me when I am being an idiot.
I guess some 'normal' people would say that I have an invisible friend in Loki. If that's the case, I'm cool with it. I know that my invisible friend is a ton of fun, smart, sassy, and at times frighteningly inventive. He's rattled my cage a few times. I've seen his World-Breaker guise. It was part of what pushed me to accomplish much of what I have so far in my life. I've seen him as a father figure, not towards myself personally but for others, and it is a beautiful sight. I've even gotten advice from him on how to deal with pregnancy (seriously, some of the best advice on how to handle morning sickness came from him).
Loki is amazing. He is complex, vibrant, and unpredictable. I also love him to pieces because of it. Some people say it's not safe to be friends with Loki and that he is a walking disaster. Those people don't know Loki. Yeah, there's the chaos engine that is Loki and friendship can lead to some really uncomfortable situations. But the benefits of the friendship are so, so much more than what you get from being in the 'blast radius' of a Loki event. And sometimes, the place to be is right in the epicenter of that blast because the damage to you is a lot less then it would be outside of it. And dealing with any god, there is no complete safety (except for when there is, but that's a different post topic).
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