I think Loki is more related to Prometheus than Hephaestos. He opposes the leader of the pantheon, and ends up bound and tormented. He is quite interesting. Odin, by the way, who is cognate with Mercury/Hermes as god of the dying, and a trickster himself, shouldn't be the major god. Thor should be, and did survive in pagan belief much longer as the god of farmers, and I gather that the change was due to the relative power of the worshippers - the devotees of Odin having the weapons and the authority in society. One strand of evidence about Loki not being well regarded was that he had no temples, but I spotted that he was in all the temples, all having fires. I was then told by an Indian that Agni has no temples, because he is in all temples.
I found once on the internet that until quite recently, when the fire crackled, people would say that Loki was punishing his children, and offer the skin of the milk as a libation on the fire. The writer had the idea that this was a worthless offering, but I would have felt hard done by without the opportunity to have the stuff on my cereal as a child. We had no fridge, and Mum would scald the milk to ensure it lasted overnight. The skin was like clotted cream. You don't offer that to someone you don't respect.
Hephaestos was one of the few in the Greek pantheon who was concerned for humanity, and worked with Athena, Hermes and Prometheus for our good. All outsiders. Two concerned with crafts and two tricksters. Does Hermes son Pan count as disabled?
(Did you see Percy Jackson - where two characters were hiding their differentness as disability? Before I realised that was what was going on I thought it was pretty positive, but when they turned out not to be disabled at all, it was a bit of a let down.)
Penny