Loki. Again.

Okay, so I’ll probably never be done with Loki Discourse. Sue me.

But I got to thinking again and just ... really? Loki is a fuckin’ saint.

I mean, think about it. He got side-eyed, laughed at, mocked, and treated with suspicion by *everyone*. Even the fuckin’ servants, and as I mentioned in a previous post, Royal Servants DO NOT laugh at their bosses TO THEIR BOSS’ FACES. That’s just begging, best case scenario, to get fired. Worst case, hello torture chamber/death. Unless, of course, you have a very, very, VERY chill royal, or the King, you know, blatantly plays favorites and ignores when people treat his disfavored son poorly.

And as we saw in the first THOR movie, a royal servant felt comfortable sniggering at Loki. In front of Loki. So yeah, that’s some next level shit.

Yet Loki’s ‘retaliation’ ? a startling, slightly malicious *prank*. For god’s sake. This guy has been getting shat on for as long as he can remember and the most he does is mean pranks? Fuckin’ saint.

Not to mention that, throughout the MCU, Loki fights tooth and nail and literally to the death/near death for the welfare of the people of Asgard. DESPITE them treating him like shit.

SAINT.

He could so easily have gone off the rails Hela style and killed everyone, or fucked off somewhere and let Asgard stew in its own juices, but no. They may be shitty people but they’re HIS people goddamn it and he’ll do the best he can by them, whether they like it or not, whether they thank him or not, whether or not they even realize he’s acted in their best interests.

And like him, love him, or hate him, Loki DID act in Asgard’s best interests. Odin, through active encouragement in some places and lack of action in others saw Thor turned into a ... yeah. Egotistical, war-hungry numb-nut. I’ve said this before but thor pre-wakeup would have been an unmitigated disaster as King for even a DAY. And Loki knew it.

Loki also knew, probably from bitter experience, that Odin would either ignore anything Loki had to say on the matter or deliberately misinterpret it. Which led to the whole ‘Jotuns in the Vault’ nonsense. Not one of Loki’s better ideas but what other choice had he? And that led to ... well, everything else.

And even then, even dealing with the mindfuck of the millennium, even dealing with that and the after-effects of mind control and torture, Loki did everything he could for a people who flat out hated him.

FUCKING SAINT.

Odin

You know, I’ve been thinking lately. And I had honestly thought my hate-on for Odin was … pretty settled. He’s a bastard, ‘nuff said. Then I got to thinking and realized that, no. I had not, in fact, realized just how much a bastard Odin really was. Not until well after Ragnarok, and I really got to thinking about all of it.

OK, so. Odin has a daughter. Whether she’s his by birth or not, who TF knows (or cares). She is, evidently, NOT the daughter of Frigga. If for no other reason than the fact that literally NO ONE in Ragnarok seemed to know who the fuck Hela was. That says to me that she WAY predates literally everyone but Odin and maybe one or two really old fogies we don’t hear from. And Frigga is visibly a LOT younger than Odin, so it at least works on that level too.

Anyway, he has Hela. They go Realm-stomping together and apparently set up the bulk of Asgard’s hegemony. And then the bullshit starts.

I WILL NOT take as gospel what *any* of the three survivors of that era say happened. One is Odin, who I wouldn’t believe even if what he said came notarized by the fucking Norns themselves. One is Hela, who is batshit insane from who knows how many millennia in solitary confinement, not to mention potentially legitimately evil. The third … well, Valkyrie by her own admittance has spent the last however long drunk off her ass, bitter and angry. Which may have warped her memory of what happened to some degree.

I just find it … interesting as fuck that Hela, who was every bit as powerful as Odin - maybe even more powerful - got thrown in jail the self-same second she outlived her usefulness. Had she gone batshit and/or evil? Possibly. Did Odin see her as a threat and want to get rid of her? FAR more likely, given later events.

Anyway, she gets thrown in jail, and won’t get out until Odin is dead. Which, again, I find interesting as hell. Because Asgard and her people will/did suffer the consequences of Odin’s fuckup, but HE never does.

Then there’s Thor. Who is spoiled rotten. It’s made pretty clear in the first Thor movie that to Thor, ‘consequences’ are something that happen to other people. He’s arrogant and foolish and prideful and just really … yeah. Kind of a shitty person in a lot of ways pre-wakeup call. Having pre-movies Thor on the throne for even a DAY would have been a serious problem. More than that would have been a full-on disaster.

And then there’s Loki. Whom Odin permits to be treated poorly - Royal servants DO NOT laugh at their bosses to their faces unless they know they can get away with it. And that sort of allowance would generally be reserved for either a VERY laid-back royal or a servant said royal had known and trusted a long time. Random Servant #% pulling that shit just doesn’t happen otherwise. And a servant blatantly laughs at Loki TO HIS FACE. Loki is sneered at for his magic, treated as lesser, and generally not trusted AT ALL. Now maybe he earned some of that, but all of it? NO.

Putting it all together … makes me come up with the idea that Odin … didn’t want to be surpassed. He wanted to be the biggest, the baddest, the best. Anyone and anything that could be a threat to him had to be dealt with. Hela, he jailed. Thor, who bless him, but as a kid he was clearly gullible as fuck and easily led, Odin indulged to the point where Thor became a menace to society. Loki, who was every bit the threat Hela was, if in different ways, Odin set about defanging in other ways.

By allowing the rampant hatred of Jotuns. Because if Loki outlived his usefulness or became too great a threat, Odin could just reveal Loki’s true parentage and then NO ONE in Asgard would want Loki on the throne, no matter how good a person he’d been up to then. He fostered a competition between Thor and Loki (you were both born to be kings, but only one of you will get the throne), so that they did not think to combine forces. Because together? Those two could do ANYTHING. Usurping Odin would have been child’s play for a united Thor and Loki. Odin permitted Loki to be ill-thought of, whether or not he deserved it. Because I can guarantee you that Thor fucked up prior to the movies, but HE is not held in ill regard for said fuckups by anyone but Loki (or so it seems)

And then we get to the bit where Hela gets free when Odin dies. And whatever she was before, she is now batshit insane from isolation on top of it. And the only way to stop her is to destroy Asgard.

Awfully convenient, don’t you think? That Odin had arranged it such that Asgard’s choices were ‘really shitty king’ ‘that Jotun bastard’ … or NOT EXISTING.

Either way, Odin never gets surpassed.

Loki is not a Villain PT 5

*starts breathing fire*

This … is where I start getting hot under the collar.

Ok, so. Heimdall fucking well commits treason by letting the other Traitors onto Midgard. There’s no escaping this fact. Hemidall himself even confirms (if reluctantly) that he is bound to obey Loki as he is (supposedly, given he betrayed him as well) Odin.

Loki then - as is his right as king - goes ‘LOL NO, BYE!’

Hemidall INSTANTLY tries to fucking kill Loki.

Keep in mind that up to this point, NONE of the traitors have anything more than a suspicion that Loki is up to no good, nevermind actual evidence. Heimdall was willing to *kill* Loki over a mere *suspicion*

Anyone wanna take bets on him knowing that Loki is a Jotun? Especially given his powers? Which, again, says *horrifying* things about Asgard and/or Hemidall himself re: Jotuns.

Then he lets more Jotuns into Asgard. This one is on a lot of peoples’ ‘villain’ lists too, but not mine because HELLO, assassinating the ruler of an enemy country is a time honored tradition here on Earth.

I’ll give Thor a little credit here, and say that he does TRY to, you know, not make things worse. On Earth, he deliberately essentially offered himself as a sacrifice in exchange for Loki not killing folks, too. So he’s clearly learned a thing or three and at this point, I don’t think he’dve CARED that Loki is a Jotun. Before his exile, it was a lot iffier, but once he got some sense knocked into him, yeah. Loki is his brother and that’s all he seems to care about, in future movies. The whole Jotun thing barely comes up at all, and only in Avengers, with that ‘he’s adopted’ remark. The entire time he tangles with Loki in this movie, he’s trying to talk Loki down off the cliff he’s on.

Unfortunately, at this point, Loki’s brain has gone out to lunch and isn’t wanting to come back. He’s more or less completely lost the plot, and deliberately antagonizes Thor into fighting him.

Why?

Loki is suicidal. Or right on the verge of it, at this point. Remember, literally everything he thought he knew about himself and the people around him has been called into question. On top of that, he got made King. Then on top of THAT, he had five people (four of whom purported to be at the very least allies, if not friends) becoming backstabbing traitors.

Loki then tries to Bifrost-genocide the Jotuns. While more or less batshit crazy and *definitely* suicidal as fuck. Which, can we say ‘diminished capacity’. Again, this is not truly ‘villainous’. Wrong? FUCK yes. But Loki is nowhere NEAR being in his right mind and capable of making decisions. Which automatically disqualifies him from villain status. He needs a shrink, some seriously heavy duty meds and a few centuries the FUCK away from Asgard, not a jail cell.

Thor destroys the Bridge to stop the would-be genocide, and Odin fucking apparates out of nowhere to save both their asses. Seriously, how the FUCK did Odin get from his bedroom to the middle of the goddamned bridge in, what, like a minute? Less? He snags Thor, Thor snags Gungnir, and so does Loki.

At this point, Loki is on the razor’s edge. If he’s not actively suicidal already, he’s right on the fucking cusp of it. And then Odin opens his big, fat, hypocritical, lying, scheming, bastard mouth and says probably the one thing guaranteed to finish the tailspin Loki is on.

And Loki tries to commit suicide. He actively *lets go* of Gungnir. His hand does not slip, or anything along those lines. He deliberately, purposefully opens his hand and *lets go*.

And let’s be real here, he was not planning on surviving that shit. Not with a severely fucked up Bifrost beam and the Void below him. He might be able to travel the ‘back roads’ to the various Realms, but THAT was not a back road by any description of the term.

And when it was all said and done, Asgard fucking CELEBRATED. Now, before Dark World came out, there was a lot of speculation that that was, indeed, the proper Asgardian response to death. But we all saw how they responded to the Queen’s death in Dark World, and they for fuck sure weren’t throwing a party. So I’ma call bullshit on that party being their version of a funeral/wake. That, folks, was Asgard going ‘Yay, that fucker Loki is dead!’

Which, again, says *horrifying* things. About Asgard. Because while his last acts were certainly horrifying, he’d been alive for almost a thousand years by this point. I don’t think a handful of bad acts in the last week of someone's life would be quite enough to turn an entire country from even ;eh, he’s all right to ‘Yay! He’s finally dead!’. So it’s safe to assume they thought very poorly of him.

And this is a big ass problem because if you do the math, Loki was *at most* 21 when this shit went down, in human terms as regards Asgardian lifespans. So these folks were being really uber shitty to a KID until about a hundred and fifty years (at the most) prior to this movie (if we use 18 as their ‘age of adulthood’).

Loki is not a Villain PT 4

Just rewatched THOR to make sure I had my facts/timing straight. *eyerolls* Dear god, the ego and hypocrisy of some folks! Yeesh!

Ok, so. the Traitors demand Thor’s return and when Loki says no, they IMMEDIATELY begin to plot treason. One of them even flat out admits what they’re planning is exactly that. And at this point, their entire reason for committing treason comes down to two things.

1) Wanting Thor back

2) Loki is on the throne! (oh, the horror!)

At this point, they have ZERO proof of any kind - even circumstantial - that Loki has done anything wrong. They have only the *suspicion* that *maybe* Loki might have been the one to let the Jotuns in.

Heimdall’s ENTIRE fucking excuse for treason?

1) He didn’t see this shit go down and he’s pissy about it.

That, folks, is the ENTIRE reason Heimdall commits treason TWICE, Once against Odin, and then again against Loki.

Loki sees the Bifrost get activated and figures out pretty much instantly what happened. So he goes down to the Vault to have a chat with the Destroyer. Which is where, again, things get … interesting.

Because two other items that get put on the ‘Loki is a villain’ list are

1) He killed Thor (via the Destroyer) 

2) He destroys the town.

*game buzzer noise*

Loki’s verbatim instructions to the Destroyer were to ‘Ensure my brother does not return’ Which is NOT ‘Kill Thor.’ More importantly, while the Destroyer does indeed backhand Thor into next week, there is no real proof he *died*. Jane sure as hell didn’t do any kind of check for breathing/heartbeat, and didn’t even attempt anything that resembled CPR.

It’s entirely possible that Thor just passed the fuck out. While he’s shown to be vulnerable to things like tasers and Midgardian drugs, he is also shown to still be pretty fucking sturdy (and formidable) physically. He’s just not God Tier anymore. So it’s possible that he was sturdy enough to survive the hit, but not enough to, you know, no-sell it/shake it off and come back for seconds. And from what we saw of him pre-exile, I don’t think Thor is used to getting his ass kicked, and ergo being in a lot of physical pain. He certainly takes a lot of hits in the various movies, but until Hela, Thor isn’t really even shown to *bleed* (not even when Loki shanks him in Avengers) whilst being God Tier, never mind anything more than that. So yeah, not used to that level of ‘fucking OUCH!’

And we get several shots of the town towards the end of the fight. One street. ONE STREET gets messed up pretty good, between the Destroyer and Thor (which is impressive as fuck considering Thor uses a fucking tornado to help him kick the Destroyer’s ass), but the rest of the town is explicitly shown as being almost entirely untouched except for maybe some debris that lands on the streets to either side of the ‘main drag’ where the fight occurs due to the tornado.

Loki is not a Villain PT 3

Now, we get to one of the moments not on my list that a lot of people point to as a villain moment for Loki.

Him getting the throne.

Point number one: This was not his idea, at all. It was Frigga’s call, of all things (which brings up SO MANY QUESTIONS). SHE is the one that makes the call to put him on the throne and *willingly* hands over Gungnir.

And from here on out? Well, Heimdall, Sif, and the Three become the Traitors Five. Which does absolutely *nothing* to help Loki’s rapidly shattering sanity and a fuckton to make it SO MUCH WORSE.

Loki is the legitimate King Regent (or whatever title the ass that warms the throne while Odin sleeps wears) of Asgard. Heimdall especially would KNOW THIS, since he ‘sees all’ and would have seen Frigga give Loki Gungnir and the throne. Sif and the Three have a bit more of an excuse to not know, but still.

From the start, their only concern is to get Thor back. They don’t care that he singlehandedly slaughtered who knows how many Jotuns. Which, frankly, says horrifying things about a) how Jotuns are viewed in Asgard and/or b) horrifying things about Sif and the Three’s sense of right and wrong/morals. They were going to demand that ODIN reverse his decision, which WOW. Talk about ego.

And they get uber pissed when Loki says ‘no’ to their petulant demand.

Now, Loki has Gungnir, and he does have magic of his own, but we have no way of knowing if even that would have allowed Loki to reverse what Odin did to Thor, and I’m betting even the Traitors didn’t know either. And lets be real here, even if Loki *could* have reversed what Odin did, actually *doing* it would have resulted in Loki getting his ass kicked (verbally at least) the SECOND Odin woke up, because Loki *dared* to reverse the Revered AllFather’s decree. And at that point the Traitors would probably have turned on Loki as well and blamed everything on him. Loki literally could not win on this one. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

Loki is not a Villain PT 2

So, the whole ‘Jotuns in the Vault’ thing was … wrong, definitely, but not done out of malice or because Loki felt like being evil.

Which disqualifies it from being proof he’s a *villain*. He was trying to save his country/Realm from disaster. If things had happened just a little differently, he’dve ended up being hailed a hero.

So. Thor throws a tantrum (literally, the dude overturns a TABLE at one point), and decides the ONLY way to address the ‘Jotuns in Asgard’ ‘problem’ is for the Prince to go there and … ? Thor is remarkably unclear on WHY he is so adamant about going. It’s entirely probably he didn’t actually HAVE a plan for once he got there and was face to face with Laufey. The sheer ego of this ‘plan’ is staggering, but something I won’t go into here since this is about Loki.

Thor then proceeds to start slaughtering Jotuns by the dozen over an insult. Which, WOW. And Loki gets grabbed by a Jotun in the melee that follows and *doesn’t* get a case of frostbite (or whatever that turning black thing was), and starts freaking right the fuck out on the *spot*. Seriously. Loki is jittery and twitchy and jumpy as fuck from that moment until the second Vault scene.

And here’s where Odin’s douchebaggery both comes to light and is … utterly horrifying.

Loki goes down to the Vault and via the Casket, confirms he’s Jotun. Odin pops up and tells the tale of how Loki came to Asgard. Now, remember how, in Part 1, I reminded y’all that Thor had been taught that Jotuns were basically the root of all evil? I sincerely doubt he was the only one on Asgard to be taught such.

Odin brought a Jotun kid to a world that basically wants to commit genocide on Jotuns, and clearly never did a goddamned thing to even TRY to get people to chill the fuck out. And even if Odin put the brakes on his douchebaggery enough to not explicitly teach *Loki* that shit (which I honestly doubt) Loki still grew up hearing this shit from *everybody*. Including (perhaps especially) from his own fucking brother.

And he just found out he is one. That, all on its own, would be a mindfuck of epic proportions. But it gets worse. Because this calls into question literally EVERYTHING Loki knew or thought he knew about himself and the people around him. Who, besides Odin, knew what Loki really was? Did anyone actually give a flying fuck if he lived or died or had it all been an act? among other things.

And Loki’s mind goes ‘crunch’. Or at least starts to. From here on out, he’s operating under ‘diminished capacity’, to say the least.

Loki is not a Villain PT 1

I will go to my death saying this and defending him. And here’s why.

Let’s go movie by movie on this one.

THOR

What he does that is bad/wrong:

Let Jotuns into the Vault.

Try to destroy Jotunheim.

Now, y’all are probably noticing there’s a lot of stuff NOT on this list. There’s a reason for that, but we’ll get there later.

Okay, so. The Vault incident. This is, quite literally, the ONLY Bad Thing (tm) that Loki does *in his right mind*. And even here, quite frankly, there are mitigating circumstances.

Because Loki was COMPLETELY RIGHT about pre-exile Thor being on the throne. That had major disaster written all over it. But Odin being, well, Odin (ie, a hypocritical douchebag of epic proportions who is only eclipsed by fucking THANOS), Loki even trying to say something would have been taken entirely the wrong way (ie: that Loki wants the throne, which no, he didn’t. More on this later).

So the only hope Loki had of averting disaster was Thor proving beyond any question of a doubt that he was NOT ready for the throne even on a temporary basis. Somewhere where Odin sees *everything* and can’t pretend the situation is anything other than what it really is (or receive false reports from Sif and the Three).

How to do that? Odin apparently doesn’t leave Asgard anymore. Loki clearly didn’t want a Realm-wide slaughter or anything to prove his point. So … set something up under relatively controlled conditions. As part of the royal family, he’d have known about the Destroyer. So he knew the Vault was protected. More importantly, the place had next to no one in it, so casualties would be minimal on Asgard’s side.

More importantly (and heinously, if you stop to think about it), Thor has CLEARLY been taught that Jotuns are Asgard’s equivalent to the love child of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Hannibal Lecter. Hell, we’re shown how he, as a kid, swore to KILL THEM ALL. So Thor was predisposed to be completely unreasonable about anything related to them.

Thoughts on Loki, Part 2

Ok, so this series is going to get posted faster than the Harry Potter one. My feels are twinging. So. We have an already isolated, bitter, angry and possibly having-self-esteem-issues Loki on our hands - seriously, check his reaction to his magic being dismissed as 'tricks' by Thor, and the servant snickering. That whole scene is TELLING AS FUCK. Servants in any house, much less ROYAL servants only do/say what they KNOW they can get away with without getting in trouble. That a servant feels safe LAUGHING AT LOKI TO HIS FACE means that that sort of behavior is condoned in the palace. All Loki can do is snipe back some way or other - in this case by magicking the wine into snakes to freak the servant out. Just how messed up he already is is hard to tell. And the reason this matters at all is that people who have a solid base of support, healthy self-esteem etc are a LOT harder to knock on their ass when shit hits the fan. Loki was already on somewhat unsteady footing even before he found out his true parentage. Worse ... he had pretty much no one he could go to for support. Frigga was *involved* in the whole mess, negating her as a source, and it didn't look like Loki had ANY friends of his own, nor did he seem to be married at all, much less to a truly sympathetic and supportive spouse. Anyway. Everybody troops off to Jotunheim. Shit hits the fan because Thor is a moron, and in the melee Loki gets grabbed and his arm turns blue. He understandably freaks the fuck out. Seriously, watch him from that moment until he's in the Vault. He's wigged out as all fuck and completely out of sorts. He goes to the Vault, and that whole mess happens. *breathes through the urge to rant for days about Odin's assholery in that scene* *mutters to self 'I promised less Odin ranting!'* *exhales* Ok, I'm better. In all seriousness, from the MOMENT Odin confirmed Loki's parentage ... anything and everything Loki does does NOT fall under villainy. Here's why. Literally EVERYTHING Loki knew or thought he knew about himself, his 'family', EVERYTHING just got ripped out from underneath him. His relationships with Odin, Frigga, and Thor are all brought into question - did they actually give a fuck about him, or had it all been an act? Among other questions. Worse, Loki is having to deal with the fact that he is a Jotun. As I said back in my anti-Odin rant, the closest equivalent we here on Earth have to the situation is a devout Jew, raised in a devout Jewish home, suddenly finding out they're actually Hitler's son, or some shit like that. But even THAT doesn't really cover it, because while Hitler and the Nazi regime were horrifying ... it only lasted a few years. And Hitler et all were human, just like the Jews ... so there were really only idealogical/religious differences at hand, where there are a LOT more issues between two entirely different SPECIES. If something like this happened on Earth? Virtually any competent lawyer on the PLANET could make a damn near ironclad case for diminished capacity, temporary insanity, or any of a number of other mitigating circumstances when it went to court, and get their client tossed in a secure psych ward rather than Death Row. And a LOT of people, while hating what the person did, would sympathize with them going off the rails under the circumstances.

Thoughts on Loki, Part 1

Might as well go here, since I'm thinking about it. I've seen a lot of people claim that Loki is an irredeemable monster/supervillain/general asshole in the MCU. I strongly contest this. Do not get me wrong - Loki does some VERY BAD THINGS in the MCU. I don't contest that AT ALL. But I don't think he's irredeemable ... and I don't think he's an actual villain. Now, I mentioned some of this in my post a long while back about Loki, but this one will be more in depth and less about Odin and more about Loki and Asgard in general. Let's start from the top. Asgard was at war with Jotunheim for an undisclosed length of time, but probably a considerable length, given the apparent average Asgardian and Jotun lifespan. The Jotuns APPARENTLY did terrible horrible things. I say apparently because we only ever really see the Asgardian side of the story. And as any historian or history buff will tell you ... people do NOT write unbiased stories about life events. EVER. Yes, the Jotuns came to Earth and started freezing stuff and people, and yes, that was very bad - but that is the only thing we see that the Jotuns did. Now maybe they did do more, and worse, or maybe they didn't. We just don't know. Whatever the case, the Jotuns are VERY ill-thought-of in Asgard. VERY. Like Nazi-level poorly thought of. And Loki grew up in this environment. He learned to hate/despise/fight Jotuns at Odin's knee right alongside Thor. Which is horrifying. I promised less about Odin in this post, so all I'll say is I cannot BEGIN to see how Odin justified making Loki hate his own people. Now, let's look at Loki. Regardless of his appearance, he is in fact Jotun. An entirely different SPECIES from Asgardians. They clearly either have more magic or a closer relationship with magic than the average Asgardian ... or one hell of a neat purely physiological threat response (the ability to grow ice blades on their arms). Now, we here on Earth know it's possible for at least mammalian mothers to raise and nurture the young of other species. A few birds pull it off too. That said ... no amount of raising a squirrel with a cat will make the squirrel a cat. The same basic thing goes for Loki. He's not Asgardian. He was NEVER going to manage to BE a perfect Asgardian. Yet it is clear that he was expected to be so. Anyone who has tried and failed to live up to unrealistic expectations can tell you how much that fucking sucks. It is also made clear - IF the MCU is following the Norse mythology as to Sleipnir's parentage - that Loki is very poorly treated. Because if you don't see something wrong with his KID being forced into becoming the king's mount ... yeah. Just ... no. It's more than a little horrifying. I can only PRAY that Sleipnir is the only kid of Loki's to exist in the MCU, or that if the others exist their lives went a bit differently than in the mythology, because if they didn't and the rest of the Avengers EVER find out, Thor's going to end up squashed flat and Asgard's going to have PROBLEMS. Because I cannot see any of the other Avengers being ok with what happened to Fenrir, or the twins. Just ... yeah. Hell fucking no. Now, let's deal with Thor and the Avengers movie. The Thor movie ... gah. *whimpers* My sympathy is entirely with Loki. Yes, he does a stupid fucking thing by letting the Jotuns into the Vault. Not arguing that in the least. That said, he was ENTIRELY right about Thor. Thor pre-banishment on the throne, even for a week, would have been a DISASTER. I seriously doubt that Frigga and Loki didn't know this and try to talk sense into Odin, mostly because the whole Vault thing IS such a desperate, fucked-up move. If Loki is half as clever as he is made out to be in the mythology and the comics, he'd have tried something a lot saner and less dramatic first. And then things go STRAIGHT to hell.