Random Loki headcanons/observations from RPing him

He doesn’t mind not being leader if he doesn’t think he’d be great at it/thinks it would be too much trouble. He also doesn’t mind following someone else’s lead if he thinks they’re more competent at it than he would be.

Being reminded that he’s a Frost Giant is still a huge trigger for him and one of his greatest fears is having that side of him revealed to everyone against his will. If someone else reveals it he’s likely to automatically attack them with lethal force. And since there’s a bodyswap event coming up...

And not really related to Loki but more about rehabilitating the image of Frost Giants and portraying them as something other than monsters who deserve to be contained on their dying world and killed when they step out of line, I started imagining colonies being invited to take up residence on Greenland and Antarctica to help keep the ice sheets from melting.

Loki and Thor meta

I don’t know if many people ask “If Loki was seriously worried about Thor being an unstable brat, why didn’t he try to fix Thor himself instead of coming up with the plan to expose his recklessness?” but I have my own answer.

Basically, I think he did try to encourage Thor to be more thoughtful and careful, and when that didn’t work he brought his concerns to Odin, but Odin brushed them off as “it’s just a phase, he’ll settle down when it’s time”. So Loki gave up on trying to change Thor and just waited for the chance to expose Thor’s faults in a way that couldn’t be brushed off.

And because of that, I think it really stung him when Thor came back from his brief exile such a changed man. Like Loki was thinking “how was it so easy for Midgard and one woman to change him, when I, his own brother, could not?” And the hit to his pride made him angrier and more determined to prove that Thor hadn’t really changed, thus making him push Thor into fighting him.

As for why Thor changed so quickly? I don’t think it was falling in love, and I definitely don’t think it was some genius plan by Odin. I think it was the shock of having everything taken away from him combined with finding new friends who not only didn’t care that he wasn’t the god he claimed to be, but appreciated him for the little he could do, that had the biggest effect. Also seeing Jane, who is physically weak even by human standards, doing everything she could to keep SHIELD from stealing everything she cared about, and then being so overjoyed that he could help her recover just a bit and more determined than ever to rebuild, was an epiphany. I also think that after that night he was looking forward to finding a new life on Midgard where he wasn’t weighed down by the expectations and responsibilities he had as Prince Thor Odinson of Asgard, Defender of the Nine Realms.

And finally, I think that Loki, if given a chance to think about it neutrally, would realize that it was being on Midgard and being free that really did most of the work, and it would help him come to peace with his own failure to reform Thor.

Reading through Frederica Bernkastel poems and deciding which ones apply to Loki (my AU version or otherwise):

Onikakushi-hen: Both. But more someone talking to Loki, probably Frigga or Thor. The second one especially is one he needs to hear and wrestle with.

Taraimawashi-hen: Again, said to Loki, to try to make him accept reality so he can start working towards healing.

Watanagashi-hen: Both. First one is very Frigga to Loki, because she is partially responsible for the whole mess that led up to his fall, and she’d want to make it better for him, but there’s no clear roadmap.

Meakashi-hen: Little girl = Loki, the marbles could be his identity or his goals.

Tsukiotoshi-hen: First one, at least the first two stanzas, are very Loki in TDW.

Tsumihoroboshi-hen: Not the MCU version, and I haven’t read the comics so I don’t know for sure, but if the whole “everything repeats in cycles” thing is accurate, the first could be Loki’s reaction to his downfall and causing Ragnarok happening over and over.

Matsuribayashi-hen: First one, another thing Loki probably has going through his head, when he stops to think the hard scary thoughts. Second one might well be my AU Loki’s mantra now.

I keep going back to Loki’s attempted invasion of Earth at Thanos’s behest, because the more I think about it, the more it doesn’t make sense. The latest sticking point: Why an invasion and not a heist?

I mean, think about it. Loki’s strengths are in subtlety, manipulation, and deception. He had no trouble stealing the Tesseract and getting away with it cleanly. A heist would be playing to his strengths, and if he went in with that in mind he might’ve succeeded before anyone on Earth knew what he was up to. So why go for an invasion? Why didn’t he just deliver it to Thanos? It’s arguable whether or not Loki really wanted to conquer Earth, but as it stands, there’s no obvious reason for Thanos to demand or even allow Loki to use the Tesseract to stage an invasion, since it only increases the odds that his enemies will manage to steal the infinity stones Loki has.

So, my fanwank explanation is that Loki was reluctant to help Thanos for no reward other than his life and his freedom, so Thanos suggested Loki could use the opportunity to claim a realm of his own while doing Thanos’s bidding. Loki agreed to that because a throne was better than being a fugitive and Thanos was probably using the mind stone on him in a Suggestion spell like way. As for why Thanos would agree to the additional risk, I think he knew that even after Loki won he’d be dependent on Thanos’s military aid to keep his throne, and Thanos could use that to force Loki and conscripted humans to join his army when the time came.

What if the snake-stabbing story from Ragnarok, only instead of it being an example of Loki trying to kill Thor since they were kids, it was Loki trying to teach Thor a lesson about caution (”don’t pick up random wild animals just because you like how they look, they can hurt you” and the stab was simulating a snakebite to the hand) but choosing to do it in a very Loki way (i.e. full of trickery and mischief and mild negative consequences)?

 So now that my AU outline for an Avengers where Loki backstabs Thanos and sides with Earth is written out, maybe I should write on what I meant to accomplish with it. Y’know, as if it were a completed story and not a bunch of half-baked ideas with a few scenes I’ve thought out but not written down.

Loki:

Obviously this is focused on him. I’ve seen theories that Loki was trying to sabotage the invasion, but I can’t get on board with that because he didn’t do a very good job, and even if he did, that doesn’t excuse all the collateral damage. So I thought about how he could sabotage the invasion competently (and also not kill a lot of people because that’s a big sticking point for a lot of people), but also do it ICly and not because he thinks it’s wrong. I do think that Thanos’s bargain with Loki was a bad deal for him and if he were thinking clearly he’d come to the same conclusions, so that’s easy. I got the idea for Loki making nice and feigning weakness until he can sneakily brainwash and steal from another AU, ironically one where he’s actually acting like a villain. I’m probably having him in a better state of mind than canon did, to think things through well enough to come up with his own plan and also realize that he can’t be completely unfettered if he wants to succeed.

I’ve called this a “heroic Loki AU” before, but in my mind Loki isn’t quite a hero yet. At the start he’s dancing on the line between hero and villain, and even as a hero he’s more about looking good than doing good, he’s mainly selfish. Him resenting being coerced into a bad deal and then turning around and coercing someone else into a bad deal is very deliberate on my part and part of Loki still flirting with villainy, but he doesn’t realize the hypocrisy (yet) or appreciate how he’s lucky Fury and the Avengers are more willing to compromise when coerced than he was.

I’m not sure if it’s a character arc, but my purpose with Loki softening as things unfold is showing that a little trust and validation goes a long way. Obviously neither he nor the heroes trust each other that much at the beginning, but they do both decide to trust enough to make cooperation plan A and not default to betrayal, and that pays off for both sides by the plan going off perfectly and nobody dying. Loki also gets thrown off-balance by Thor not hating him like he expected, and while he’s still mentally re-evaluating Thor by the end he’s decided to appreciate Thor being in his corner.

Thor:

I said that Thor 1 is pretty much the same, but reading more meta, I realize that his humility in that movie is more genuine and he actually learned to be less paternalistic towards humans. I also think (at least in my AU) that he was starting to enjoy being on Earth with people who didn’t have high expectations for him that he felt like he had to meet. So while he’s glad that he’s been reinstated as prince and can return home, he’s also a little sad that he didn’t have more time living that new life.

I’m not sure about canon Avengers Thor, but this one is definitely very willing to admit his shortcomings and mistakes even to “mere” mortals. He’ll readily admit that he doesn’t know Loki as well as he thought and accept their assessment of his character as valid, because he wants to understand more than he wants to be right. Sometimes I feel like in Avengers Thor backslid a little on his character development, and I want to counter that and build on it instead.

Thor’s probably over-forgiving of Loki, but it’s not blind. Rather he’s hoping that with positive reinforcement, Loki will continue to reform. It’s very optimistic, but it is paying off. And he does genuinely feel guilty over missing how Loki’s resented him for so long and not realizing how overbearing he was, so he’s willing to meet Loki at farther than halfway, as long as Loki reaches out a little bit to him.

Avengers and SHIELD:

Yeah, the heroes get short-changed for the most part. Sorry. Comes with being focused on Loki and to a lesser extent Thor, and also cutting out a lot of Loki’s antagonistic actions. But I’ve always thought of it as Fury taking center stage more, too, as the pragmatic leader to the Avengers’ more idealistic heroism. Also I hope I’m giving Nat some time to shine by getting information out of Loki that she actually puts to good use (since in the movie her realizing that Loki was going to provoke the Hulk didn’t really do anything to hinder his plan).

Odin:

I’ve realized I’m holding his canon actions against him even though the worst of them don’t actually happen in this AU, which might not be entirely fair. Oh, well. Anyway, my impression is that he’d written Loki off as a mistake after his apparent death, but considered his death to be the end of things. So he wasn’t happy when Loki showed up in Heimdall’s sight again (which was a deliberate move on Loki’s part, he wanted Heimdall to see him seemingly threaten humans and have Odin send someone to deal with him), but he did consider himself vindicated in writing off Loki. Thor probably suggested that maybe Loki could be persuaded to give himself up and Odin brushed it off as too unlikely to bother thinking about. So when Thor comes back touting Loki as the hero of the day, Odin’s not happy that he was wrong about Loki. He tries to hide it by just ignoring Loki until Thor forces the issue by trying to get him acknowledge Loki’s heroic actions. He does have a point about how Loki saving *Earth* doesn’t mean much for *Jotunheim*, but he’s also not very interested in actually making reparations to Jotunheim, just reasserting what he considers a just punishment. I think that after Thor he handled the Frost Giants by telling them the one who wronged them was dead, and their king had been attempting an assassination, so if they considered the matter settled with Loki’s death he wouldn’t hold Laufey’s actions against the new leadership. Loki not being dead meant he might have to negotiate a new deal and maybe even acknowledge and fix the damage Loki did, and he doesn’t want to have to do that.

I’m also having the pedestal that Thor put Odin on start to crack when he sees how Odin’s still dismissive of Loki. It’s nowhere close to broken and not really unstable, but Thor does start thinking about it and realizing Odin has a blind spot and a double standard where Loki’s concerned, and it makes him start wondering where else Odin might fall short. I also want to have a contrast between how Odin and Thor handle being wrong; while Thor is overjoyed and embraces learning better, Odin tries to force things back into what he expects.

Jane and Selvig:

This is all blatant fix-it set-up for the next “movie”, because fuck “Jane’s moping over Thor and doing nothing” and “Selvig’s trauma drove him insane and now he likes being naked and isn’t it all hilarious!”. Also throwing Jane a bone by letting her hear from Thor again, if only secondhand. And showing that even when he’s not being a villain/antagonist Loki is still a little shit, because he was totally stalking Jane before he left the message for her.