Black Sheep of the Family

Question: Do you think Loki is as dependant on Idun's apples as the rest of the Aesir? He was quick to give them up and also tasked with getting them back on his own (unless he was also just as aged as the rest of the Aesir).

I wouldn't read too much into Loki being "quick to give up" the apples. Loki's always quick to do things that prevent him from getting dead, and at the time he was being carried around by a giant eagle that was banging him into things and threatening him. It also wasn't Loki's idea to give Thjazi Idun and her apples; those were Thjazi's terms for letting him down without killing him. This is actually not one of Loki's occasional sourceless prankings but a case of him being blackmailed into these shenanigans (not that that's any better as far as the Norse are concerned, of course).

The question of whether or not Loki needs the apples is an interesting one; the answer really depends on whether or not you consider Loki to actually be Aesir. Scion certainly makes him as much a part of the pantheon as everyone else, sharing their Virtues, PSPs and problems, so if you decide he isn't Aesir enough to be part of the apple ritual, why is he Aesir enough to be part of the pantheon with the same PSP and Virtues as everyone else? Loki certainly often plays the role of outsider among the Aesir and is known to be half giant, but the Prose Edda specifically says that he is considered one of them, and certainly the Aesir are not generally averse to marrying and hanging out with giants on a pretty regular basis (not to mention that they descend from a dude created by Ymir in the first place). Add to that the fact that he's Odin's blood-brother and therefore has some of the highest status in Asgard despite the general dislike of his personality, and we can't see how you could accurately claim that Loki isn't Aesir. He may be the pain in the ass of the pantheon, but being a pain in the ass doesn't disqualify you from membership, or else all the trickster gods of the world would be homeless hobos (well, more than they are now, anyway).

So yes, we would assume that Loki is indeed one of the Aesir and that he needs the apples as much as everyone else; he probably would have preferred not to have to give them up and then go retrieve them, but sometimes it's better to survive and have to get a little old than to get killed by a giant to avoid giving up your eternal youth. Living tricksters can fix whatever mess they've created that everyone's pissed off at them for, but dead tricksters are just dead.