#loki is like simultaneously great and terrible at long term strategic planning

[bereft-of-frogs]

sandraharissa replied to your post “Hello! I just wanted to ask; I’m not sure if you’ve addressed this,...”

however loki planning things rather well, with the next few steps thought out in advance is what happened in thor 1, and avengers, rather than things working out for him accidentally like you say happened in tdw

[cw for discussion of suicide, specifically the scene at the end of Thor 1]

I know this is a slightly older post (okay I looked it up, only about a month, but I forgot about it!) but I guess I’ll agree with Avengers, in that it’s a very detailed plan with a lot of pieces falling into one another.

I just still think that Thor 1 Loki is reacting rather than acting. It’s just a headcanon, of course, it’s just the way I interpret some of the lines/face acting. (The ‘we were never meant to make it to Jotunheim’ and the surprised look on his face when they gave him the throne.) I interpret his plan in Thor 1 as originally being: interrupt Thor’s coronation, make him angry/reckless, Thor tries to invade Jotunheim, the guards stop them, Odin yells, Thor’s coronation is indefinitely suspended, Loki’s the favored son for a while because he was being responsible and preventing war with Jotunheim, profit.

And then a bunch of things happen that he couldn’t see coming (the revelation of his adoption, the severity of Thor’s punishment) and the plans kind of spin out from there. (’Thor’s going to kill me once he knows what I am, best keep him on Earth / I have the throne now, I can be safe if I eliminate Thor and be safe / if I destroy Jotunheim that will prove I’m truly Asgardian / oops Thor’s back now I’m just crying and physically fighting him / ah my plans are literally falling into a Void and my Father is telling me I’ll never be enough, guess I should just let go and kill myself then’).

I also tend to headcanon that Loki’s doesn’t really exactly have everything so thought out, more than he last like...dozens of plans going and discards/adapts his plans as needed. Some of them are better than others. The more panicked he gets in Thor 1, the more wild the plans get. (Destroying a planet using the bifrost is like...a really dramatic move. There were probably dozens of less drastic plans, but Loki’s spiraling so he blows past them all and ends up straight at that.)

Anyway! It’s just my personal headcanon, obviously people can think differently but *shrug* just my interpretation! :-) It certainly informs how I write, but no interpretation is necessarily 100% correct.