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okay so I know this is probably, like, the exact opposite of the showrunners’ intention, but they gave us basically zero information on President Loki so I can do what I want
and what if he was either more onboard with Thanos’s plans due to being even more messed up, or he had a more specific plan of his own that involved Midgard uniting a lot more voluntarily under his rule to fight Thanos, so he decided–-no big showy invasion. he’s going to get people to choose him, and it’ll take a lot of lying and manipulating but he’s a prince, he’ll figure it out, he knows how to put on a show. Thanos is willing to be patient because Loki convinces him things will work out better this way.
the thing is he starts in America, and it’s 2020 because of reasons, and he starts out with a lot of assumptions about how things are because he’s at least mildly familiar with Midgard, and he’s not American so he hasn’t actually bought into the propaganda that the US is the Greatest Nation On Earth™ but he figures there’s probably some truth to it, enough to make use of it.
so he starts his campaign, and he’s kind of taking it seriously but also not really because they’re just short-lived mortals and they’ll be easy to fool and honestly the stakes are high but this will still be the most fun, low-pressure thing he’s done in decades
except starting his campaign means he actually has to…talk to people
and he’s like. wait. wait hold up. I know from imperialism and propaganda but at least Asgard mostly takes care of its people?? and massive numbers of you have basically bought into the idea that you’re the Greatest Nation On Earth™ because, what, you’re free to work yourselves to death so a few billionaires can use suborbital flights as dick-measuring contests?? you’ve let yourselves be convinced that the regulations protecting you–-that in many cases people literally died for, not that long ago–-are somehow infringing on your rights because they sometimes prevent those billionaires from working even more people to death?? you’re being ravaged by a literal plague and the response from a significant portion of your various governments is basically “the poors can just die, who cares,” and a lot of you are okay with this?? you’re letting billionaires destroy your planet and you’re also kind of okay with this?? you’re essentially held hostage by a single religion that screams about oppression when they’re required to treat queer people like people?? you dump massive amounts of money into a broken healthcare system because you’ve let yourselves be convinced that anything better is Evil Communism, and you’re okay with a huge proportion of your tax dollars being wasted in a bloated military and an equally bloated militarized police force instead of literally anything else that might make your lives easier??
what the fuck???
so he’s like, I knew this place was ridiculous but this is so much worse than I realized, what the fuck does Thor think he’s doing acting like a few instances of superheroism are actually making a difference when everything about just this one country is so cartoonishly fucked up, I am actually going to fix a whole bunch of these problems and people will actually love me for it, and he starts building his platform on things like universal healthcare and a living wage and mandatory paid sick leave and strong protection from discrimination and making the obscenely rich pay their fair share and actually fuck it, universal basic income
and at first people are like…well a lot of this sounds nice but these are pipe dreams. except he does have plans, actually, and they make sense, and he’s good at debates, and he’s really good at uncovering hard proof of shady shit his opponents are doing, and his support just…keeps growing until it becomes obvious that he’s likely to win
…which is when the TVA steps in, prunes him, and resets the whole timeline, because him winning and making a lot of people’s lives better and uniting Earth against Thanos isn’t part of the Sacred Timeline and so it isn’t allowed no matter how many lives it would save
and Loki, who is still pretty messed up from his time in the Void and his time with Thanos, finds himself in a different Void with no hope of a way out or even a way to improve his situation, and he realizes that this is it, this is his purpose in life, he’s only ever allowed to be the villain and if he tries to do something different, fight his fate, win people over, do something good, he just gets sent here to die
and he kind of…loses it a little. maybe a lot. he refuses to die here out of sheer spite but there’s also no point to anything, and all he can think to work toward is the throne of this Norns-forsaken place. it’s a throne of ash and rusted metal and charred plastic and it’s completely meaningless, but so is everything else. so is he.
it’s nothing more than what he deserves.