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icyxmischief · 7 years

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Very old Loki headcanons from 2012!

It’s come to my attention that my blog has a whole link to headcanons that are ooooooold. Most of them are still exactly what I think of Loki so I’m going to post them again here but remove the link, as my headcanons and meta tags are far more comprehensive!

Please read however! :3

Loki Headcanons, Character Motives, DiscussionThis list is BY NO MEANS EXHAUSTIVE. PLEASE REFER TO MY TAG “headcanons"

AND MY TAG “meta” FOR ALL DISCUSSIONS OF THIS CHARACTER.1.

Loki wears high-collared clothing even irrespective of battle armor (that is, all the time) because he knows that there is a place on each side of his neck that acts almost like a zen pressure point. If someone clasps his neck it has an odd quelling effect. As an inborn logistician, Loki does not want adversaries or even friends to have that kind of control over him, so he tries to shield access to his vulnerable spot. However, Thor frequently gains access anyway. There are in fact four separate “neck scruff” moments between them (one in “Thor,” in a deleted scene, and three in “Avengers”) and in each Loki is noticeably tranquillized, even, in some cases, dazed. Can you spot them?

Loki’s D&D alliance has changed in the duration between “Thor” and “The Avengers” from Chaotic Good with his family and Lawful Neutral with his country/society, to Lawful Evil against both. He is a salvageable/redeemable character, though, who may revert to a state of “goodness” given enough time and compassionate acceptance. Loki is the epitome of the well-meaning but deeply misguided anti-hero.

Loki’s Meyers-Brigg Personality is some bizarre mixture of Artisan, Rational, and Idealist. He is, at intervals a Composer and a Mastermind (INTJ), with a few notable emotional traits of the Healer (INFP). The only thing he is NOT is a Guardian. In the Harry Potter world, Loki would be a Slytherin with traces of Ravenclaw (he is, when lucid, very curious and cerebral).

Loki is bisexual or perhaps pansexual. Or technically, assigning him a sexual orientation is pointless since he can change genders at will. In sexual relations, whether with a man or with a woman, Loki likes to be “on top” at the onset of the relationship. But with time and painstakingly gained trust, he prefers to be the vulnerable partner. He is capable of being a kind and caring lover, but his partner should be a deeply patient person who can expect a number of arguments based on his evasiveness, egotism, and sensitivity.

Loki claims to be a trickster, to have no concrete ethical convictions, and to be playfully sadistic, but underneath this carefully crafted façade of whimsically cruel nonchalance—and it IS a conscious façade of “who gives a shit what you think, I’m wonderful!”—is a basically serious, somber, rigidly principled, and insecure being who forms ferociously loyal alliances to the people whom he loves. This odd mix of viciousness and sweetness makes Loki a frequently tragic being, as it opens him up for rejection on some level almost constantly. Loki is permanently and severely wounded when he perceives he has been wronged or betrayed (and Loki has very recently developed a bit of a persecution complex, so sometimes those wrongdoings are entirely imagined). He can be completely incapacitated by the belief that someone has been UNFAIR to him, getting emotionally and psychologically stuck on fanatically reliving the unfairness and plotting a way to exact justice. To compensate for a basically weak and insecure constitution, Loki adheres to forced, fanatical beliefs that don’t actually seem to reflect who he is. Doing so gives him psychological armor, however false, to hide behind, and buffers him against the fact that he is completely alone. For instance, his claimed conviction that “freedom is a lie” and “people are happiest when they have someone to bow down to” clashes deeply with his intrinsic role as a mischief-maker and free spirit and, despite his obviously genius-level I.Q., is bizarrely anti-intellectual. In short, Loki lies to himself to feel less terrified of his solitude and personal rejection by others. Engaging in a kind of double-think, he even fully believes his own lies and acts on them with sometimes atrocious results.

Loki probably has a “godly” equivalent of one or more of the “Dissociative” disorders. This means that he has more than one discrete “personality.” Each personality (there are at least two) comes out erratically with little known trigger and sometimes is indistinguishable from the other except based on a tone of voice, type of laugh, or type of smile. Loki himself seems to be unaware of this shift of personalities and even slightly confused whenever a shift takes place. He then covers up the confusion with some bombastic display or arrogant declaration, but clearly is disturbed by the feeling of lost control. While this tendency is innate, and probably has a lot to do with being a Frost Giant made to masquerade as an Asgardian all his life, it was drastically exacerbated when Odin confessed Loki’s true heritage and insinuated that he kidnapped Loki from his real parents because Loki would one day prove a convenient political tool. At that point Loki realized he was entirely uncertain of his identity at all, and previously dormant personality traits awoke and vied for control. This confused selfhood is easily mistaken for some form of Bipolar Disorder, since Loki’s moods are volatile and change often. But it is not a true mood disorder because these emotional upheavals all directly derive from his confused sense of self and his uncertainty over how to deal with it. It is also confused with some rough equivalent of Paranoid Schizophrenia, but Loki is often too high-functioning and lucid to totally qualify for a Schizophreniform Disorder (although there are times that I honestly wonder). While in his childhood and youth he was calm, gentle, and reticent, Loki now exhibits pathologically narcissistic and histrionic traits, and he definitely has Borderline Personality Disorder: which is characterized by unstable personal relationships, an unstable sense of self, a tendency to “split” (lionize and demonize at sudden intervals in black and white terms) other people, and a need to deliberately test the patience of others in order to see how much he can “get away with” before he pushes them away and is abandoned.

All this has become instead a discussion of PTSD.

7. (the big one)

Family for Loki is obviously a complicated issue, probably the most sensitive of all issues. It is in fact the issue from which all his pathological traits derive. Loki, or at least one of the “Lokis plural,” still loves his adoptive brother Thor dearly. But in the mess of everything that has happened (“it’s too late!”), in getting in far over his head with increasingly misguided efforts to be accepted and approved of, Loki no longer knows how to act around or relate to Thor. He also genuinely resents Thor for naturally being everything Loki tries, and fails, to be. He is deeply conflicted about his brother—hence actually talking to him without skewering him, then laughing as Tony Stark beats the shit out of him; hence gazing at him tenderly and crying, then dropping him out a steel trap or stabbing him. Despite all this, Thor is probably Loki’s best (perhaps only) hope for a normal relationship with another living person. Loki perennially seems to rediscover this fact and feel remorse about it. In his innermost self, Loki doesn’t want Thor to be hurt and he is grateful that Thor frets for and puts up with him. Loki probably loves Thor the most of his entire adopted family, since he was shown to defend Thor to their formidable-tempered father, and to counsel Thor against being injured by the Frost Giants (again, Loki USED to be the level-headed of the two brothers!). At the same time, a lifetime of living in Thor’s shadow had made Loki resentful enough by the middle of the film “Thor” to passively, and then quite actively, resist restoring his brother to Asgard. Loki also loves and misses his adoptive mother Frigg/Frigga and would be hard pressed to ever do her physical harm. The only person he completely hates in his adoptive family is his father Odin, though even that hatred is the inverse of having once devotedly adored the “All-Father.” In fact, Loki’s first great act of betrayal—to let the Frost Giants into Asgard and then set up a dimensional portal to commit genocide on his entire native race—was a desperate attempt to prove his love and loyalty to Odin, and to finally feel he had earned Odin’s love—genuine, not with practical perks— in return. He was unwilling to let anyone kill Odin, even though to do so would win him the throne of Asgard, and he proudly proclaimed himself a “son of Odin,” before Odin reiterated his relentless disappointment in Loki (“I could have done it, father, for you! For all of us!” “No, Loki.”). It was only at that point, suspended over a black hole between the dimensions, that Loki completely lost hope in earning Odin’s love. It was then, erroneously, that Loki decided love could not be earned, and had to be TAKEN. This is probably the root of his obsessive preoccupation with subjugating others. Significantly, that was the moment when Loki attempted to commit suicide, and when he survived, it was when he became a great deal more malicious.

Loki is a very obstinate person once he gets into “the zone.” He will sacrifice devastating collateral as well as his own wellbeing in order to “win the game” or obtain what he craves. He is also a brilliant tactician, logistician, and strategist. He works in contingencies and despite being violently stubborn about his ultimate goal, will change courses dozens of times to reach it: chameleons change colors based on their environment and easily shed their skins, after all. As everything else, this ultimately goes back to his basic insecurity and personal confusion, and even a sense of self-loathing.

Loki has several types of laughter that inform the observant person of when he is “lucid” or dangerous. His “real” and innocuous laugh is either a quiet, closed-lipped “HM!” or a calmly clucked series of “eh heh heh heh’”s. His “crazy” laugh is a loud, booming, arrogant, frantic, and abrupt guffaw often accompanied by tossing his head to and fro. Loki’s smiles also determine his mental states. A toothy grin is actually a sign that he is genuinely tickled. He is not aware of these tics, which is ironic, since he is such a fastidious student of other people’s giveaway habits and traits.

10.

Loki is a control freak and has a Napoleon Complex. Again, it comes from a combination of family issues and innate pathology. He hates to feel like he has lost control or had to give too much of himself unfairly to others because he spent his entire childhood and youth doing so to a dysfunctional extent in the vain hope of fitting in and being approved of by Asgardian society. For this reason, something as trivial as losing a chess game causes him to lash out in a resentful rage at the person to whom he has lost. It is not just losing a chess game to Loki; it is literally more evidence of his insufficiency and his unlucky destiny as a being who is constantly used and discarded. Other people frequently misinterpret this as evidence that Loki is greedy, and spoiled, and some crazy hormonal “Drama Queen.” In reality, Loki has no sense of self-preservation at all; he is reckless (whereas he once was very prudent) and sometimes the opposite of self-indulgent, and his violent tantrum-like response to loss of control has a much more tragic source.

11.

Loki hates the sensation of being cold and the sensation of being wet, but this is not because he cannot withstand these sensations; on the contrary the cold is his natural element, and the revulsion is entirely psychological. Both trigger recollections of his actual heritage as a Frost Giant, of which he is ashamed and disgusted. It doesn’t help that he is literally also a runt of his race. He in fact gets embarrassed showing strangers his blue skin and red eyes—unless of course he is in one of his more megalomaniacal states.

12.

Loki is a shape shifter and can change both genders and species, and frequently does so for shits and giggles. When he and Thor were children and Loki began to study sorcery to compensate for his physical smallness, he put on “changing shows” to make his brother laugh, especially when Thor was sad about something.

13.

Loki respects and is strangely fascinated by Tony Stark. In many ways he can relate to Tony, who is like a far saner, far less fanatical, version of him. Of all the “Avengers,” aside Thor, Tony is the individual who Loki can most tolerate. But Tony also makes him the angriest the fastest because Tony is so brilliant, insightful, and unflappable.

14.

When Loki is very tired or dozes off lightly, and is not properly in bed, objects and living things randomly transform and shape shift under his half-conscious powers.

Loki also has difficulty waking up once he has fallen into a deep sleep. It takes him forever to trust his environment enough to fall unconscious, and he hates that feeling of “total surrender,” but once he is asleep, he sleeps like a rock. It is in fact directly after awakening, when still achieving a state of consciousness, that Loki is the most like his childhood self: quiet and gentle. He is also unusually impressionable in that state. When they were boys, Thor recognized this and was very protective of his little brother until Loki had fully awakened. This has not changed, but Loki is careful to be alone most of the time when he expects to rouse from slumber so that nobody witnesses it.

15.

We become what we are told we are, if we are told enough times. Loki, treated with almost a racist bigotry throughout his childhood, and suddenly exposed to the fact that he belongs to a race of hated monsters, believes himself to be an agent of chaos, pain, and subjugation. He believes he must be the equal and opposite foil to his brother. For life to continue, death must exist; for the earth to be fertilized and yield new life, bacterial agents must exact decay. What is tragic about this, and probably the reason for Loki’s obviously forced self-exultation, is the fact that more than anything, he wanted to be one of the agents of good, light, and order until it became clear to him that nobody would ever allow this—and now Loki embraces his role as the doer of dirty work, as the negative inverse in the eternal counter-balance of light and dark, gods and devils, and indeed, on some level, he plays a necessary role in the universe. But this was not what he originally wanted himself to be, and it is still not what he wants to be even now. This is a core reason for why he is jealous of and resentful toward Thor. Thor literally lives the life Loki wishes he could live.

16.

Loki actually enjoys taking the long route to victory. He foregoes easier and more certain methods to achieving his goals solely for the pure enjoyment of fabricating highly circuitous plots and watching them come to fruition with often delightfully surprising side developments that force him to use his wits and ingenuity in order to wriggle out on top. He is a thrillseeker, as most sociopaths are. It’s almost like tinkering with a motherboard to him—one that is plugged into an electrical outlet and could shock him at any moment if he makes the wrong move. He loves that sensation. In another life, he would actually make an excellent vigilante hero.

17.

When Loki was a child and ashamed of something, he would cast a spell that made him physically disappear and sit in dejected silence for hours. Only Thor could find him and convince him to become visible again. This is almost like a literal internalization of disempowerment, of the fact that he is constantly told to “shut up” or “know his place” by elders; even Thor snapped this at Loki once, in the “Thor” film, when Loki was only trying to convince Heimdall to let the group through the Bifrost, and when Loki was trying to keep Thor from being killed by Frost Giants.

18.

I am not sure whether or not I agree with this theory, but I will put it as a headcanon for now since it is well-thought-out: Loki originally formed an alliance with Thanos of the Titans thinking “cakewalk!” He was quickly proven wrong and got in over his head with the most dangerous being in the universe while making his bid for the chitauri. The plan, which Loki was now forced to carry out, was to cause the Avengers to assemble and to LOSE TO THEM PURPOSEFULLY (Loki never wanted to rule the “worthless” Midgardians anyway) to have an excuse for Thor to take him home to Asgard (which he still wants to conquer and refashion in his own image). Once in Asgard, Loki will fetch Thanos his payment for the use of the chitauri and the restoration to Asgard’s throne—by handing over the Infinity Glove/Gauntlet that is pictured as part of Odin’s treasury in the “Thor” film. At this point Loki’s feelings about ruling Asgard and harming his adoptive family are mixed, but he absolutely has NO CHOICE but to follow through (the Chitauri said “if you betray us there is no corner of any universe in which he [Thanos] cannot find you” and “you think you know pain? He [Thanos] will make you long for something so sweet as pain”). In the aftermath of this, what Loki will do remains to be seen or even guessed at. Many speculate that this is where his “redemption arc” will take place. In the duration, if “Thor 2” rumors are true, Loki will be either advising Thor against or machinating alongside an Asgardian sorceress and her allies. Probably the latter, as a way to execute his plans to get on the Throne of Asgard and get to the gauntlet that he owes Thanos.

19.

Sometime in the span of the Avengers franchise, possibly in Avengers 2 but probably not as early as Thor 2, Loki will in some way recant his crimes and redeem himself. I have not a clue how but too much effort was put into making him deeply sympathetic in the beginning for this to not take place. It will just be after he stirs up A LOT more shit (since he is technically a Marvel “big bad”). The person who will get through to him will be Thor. No doubt.

I personally am expecting one of the films to end with a teaser to the Journey Into Mystery comics arc, with a reborn child Loki.

Well this happened, yay! lol.

20.

Loki coveted his current wife Sigyn of the Vanir (the Norse Goddess of Fidelity) with his usual possessive and jealous nature, but he also killed and impersonated her fiance Theoric of the Crimson Hawks because Theoric was a controlling brute and Loki, who had taken time and effort to get to know Sigyn quite well, was moved by her bookish and intellectual temperament and her feelings of hopelessness and disempowerment (to which he could closely relate). They are, as spouses, surprisingly gentle and tender, and they baby each other a lot. Sigyn is no pushover, though her nature is quiet and introspective. Loki is a devoted father to his twin sons Vali and Narvi, which makes their ultimate fate in Norse mythology all the more tragic.

Headcanon directly derived from Tumblr user Asgardian-Spook. <3 :)

21.

Loki is a quintessential Scorpio. His moon is in Cancer and his ascendant is Gemini.

His birthday was November 14. He is at least eight-nine hundred years old (the “Thor” film puts his infancy at around 965 A.D.).

22.

Pathological liar? Yes and no.

Loki is capable of sincerity unwaveringly in one form: when he cries. He cannot feign tears and crying is how constantly brewing intense emotions that he cannot quantify or qualify in his typically over-intellectual manner simply broil to the surface.

No other form of deceit is beyond him to execute successfully, however. There is a reason why the God of Mischief is also sometimes called the God of Lies. He did not invent lying, but lying is closely tied to illusive endeavors and so he became proficient at it. It is also important to note that lying is not always a cruel or destructive force. It can be put to kind uses, in the form of sparing someone’s feelings by concealing hurtful truths, and when he was younger, Loki was known to do so. Ironically, if he recognized that Odin, in his own destructively rigid way, was trying to do just that with respect to Loki’s Jotun heritage, it would have spared Loki himself a lot of heartache.

23. (how did Loki get from “Thor” to “Avengers”?)

As confirmed by Tom Hiddleston, the immensely skilled actor who portrays Loki in the Marvel films, when Hiddleston referred to a conversation with “Avengers” director Joss Whedon:

In the end of “Thor,” when Loki essentially attempted suicide and fell into a dimensional wormhole between the realms, a kind of liminal “seventh circle of hell” (Hiddleston’s words), the temporal flow was different than it is in the “real” world, and he spent years there in total solitude staring at stars and supernovas and black holes and reliving over and over how terribly awry his life had gone before becoming lost. In this period Loki’s memories were severely distorted and he began to remember the last moments before he let go of Mjolnir’s handle in a warped way (for instance, he remembered Thor “throwing him” into the abyss rather than letting go himself while Thor frantically screamed his name, as he states in “Avengers”).

This was followed by being discovered by the Chitauri, who scried his most intimate thoughts and tortured him for sport and sent him to witness suffering and evil in every conceivable reality, realm, and universe (including earth, where he made contact with Eric Selvig and saw the Tesseract), and told him he was right in believing there was no value in freedom or love.

At this point Loki completely snapped. He bargained retrieval of the Tesseract for release onto Midgard, which the Chitauri were to, in turn, help him conquer. After contacting Thanos, the Chitauri agreed to this. Loki decided this was a win-win. Either he would rule Midgard and finally be a rightful king just like his brother and force his way into Asgard to get the Infinity Gauntlet for Thanos, OR he would fail, and be taken back to Asgard as a prisoner, and stillget the Infinity Gauntlet for Thanos.

This explains many things about Loki. It explains why he was so sickly and gaunt when he returned to earth, as well as so much more markedly insane and cruel. It explains his belief in himself as some savior-pariah: “Freedom is life’s greatest lie” because the freedom to aspire as an individual is also the freedom to fail, to be found wanting, to be thought inferior: just as Loki himself was found inferior by his family and society. So essentially, Loki’s raison d’etre is a kind of warped and twisted megalomaniacal “philanthropy.” As Hiddleston put it, “Every villain is a hero in his own mind.”

Addendum: Because of this purgatorial experience in outer space, twilight and evening, and the appearance of a clear starry night sky in general, cause Loki to become nervous and depressed, though almost no one is aware of this.

24.

Loki finds rain and thunderstorms relaxing and uplifting, even in spite of himself.

The reasons are obvious even to him. <3

25.

When Loki is extremely emotionally agitated, to calm himself, he either cups his own neck with his hands, or he jiggles his left hand at his side frantically.

26. Everything Loki and Sigyn can be found in this post: http://icy-mischief.tumblr.com/post/32629880715/logyn-headcanons-master-post-mostly-sweetdreamr-for

27. Everything Loki and Tony (not a pairing, but a character comparison) can be found in these posts, which I will add to as time permits:

http://icy-mischief.tumblr.com/post/33117237448/tony-and-loki-are-alike-and-different-1

http://icy-mischief.tumblr.com/post/33125946272/tony-and-loki-are-alike-and-different-2

http://icy-mischief.tumblr.com/post/33129217327/tony-and-loki-are-alike-and-different-3

http://icy-mischief.tumblr.com/post/33130071948/tony-and-loki-are-alike-and-different-4

28. The following post is a proposed list of Loki’s internal monologue during the film “Thor,” since we all know how labyrinthine his mind is, and how often he changes his course: http://icy-mischief.tumblr.com/post/35072821755/strategy-shift-ok-im-actually-curious-and-i-think

29. I was asked by a follower to compare Loki to Magneto and this post is what I came up with: http://icy-mischief.tumblr.com/post/35374292652/loki-vs-magneto

30: Loki and the Body Politic (an essay by another writer that encapsulates many of my beliefs) : http://pleasantvilles.tumblr.com/post/54144354420/chaos-theory-on-lokis-experience-of-embodiment

31: MY THEORY OF THOR 2: http://icy-mischief.tumblr.com/post/55192114069/so-what-do-i-think-will-happen-in-thor-2-you-ask

#headcanons #Loki #Loki meta #meta #save tag

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