If you were feeling a bit ignorant when Victory Timely called Chicago the “schadeocracy capital of the world” in the fourth episode of Loki‘s second season, don’t worry, it’s not actually a real word.
It makes sense that you didn’t know what the heck Jonathan Majors was talking about during that scene. Maybe you picked up on its meaning from the context, or maybe you were like me and instantly googled “schadeocracy meaning,” to no avail.
What does “schadeocracy” mean?
While only the Loki writers or Victor Timely himself could say for sure what this funny word means, we have an educated guess. The Kang variant’s full quote was “I’m from Chicago, friend. The schadeocracy capital of the world. I don’t trust anyone,” said in response to Loki and Mobius asking him to trust their plan and help them with it.
While the “-cracy” suffix is easy to decode, as it pertains to a form of government or social organization and is used regularly in our daily language, it’s the “schade” bit that might have you scratching your head. A bit of research led us to the German loanword “Schadenfreude” which, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, defines the “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.”
Our best bet is that Victor Timely was making a comment on how Chicagoans — and these are his words, not ours — can sometimes be self-serving and ambitious to a fault. As they step over others to achieve their goals, they take pleasure in watching them fail. Similarly, if someone is frustrated and can’t get out of their own rut, they may also feel better seeing that others are just as desperate and unmoving.
In the end, however, Victor Timely did have good instincts in following the good guys instead of Renslayer and Miss Minutes, even if that did eventually get him turned into gory spaghetti. We’re not “schadenfreudistic” so, even though he’s a Kang variant, we were not happy to see our friendly wordsmith Victor die such a cruel, disgusting death.