five favourite fictional fathers
In celebration of today’s occasion here’s five of my favourite dads who are not real, in no particular order:
Harry Osborn
If you’ve only ever seen the Spider-Man movies you may not know that Harry Osborn is a Dad, but he very much is. He has two sons, Normie and Stanley. Normie is named after Norman (Harry doesn’t seem to have ever gotten a chance to rethink that, oh well) and Stanley is… possibly named after Stan Lee? Who knows. Stanley is also never drawn as mixed race even though his mother is black, sigh.
Yeah you can probably tell I don’t really do comics anymore but I love Harry in almost all his forms and he deserves more recognition of the fact that he managed to be a pretty good dad when his own childhood was abusive as hell.
Rory Williams
Rory is more on this list for what was, sigh, his eventually almost completely untapped Dad Potential. We knew he’d be a good dad. Amy knew he’d be a good dad. Then he BECOMES a dad and nothing. He gets one scene with a baby and barely gets more than a couple scenes with his magic time-travel now-adult daughter. It’s so terribly unfair, why? God season six of Doctor Who was a MESS.
Thankfully the showrunners did at least release one canon story of Rory being a dad, this from the Doctor Who Lockdown project. Arthur Darvill came back and everything. That’s something. But gah.
Jean Valjean
I shall ignore the BBC’s Les Mis adaptation, as you should, and focus instead on the JVJ/Cosette relationship as portrayed in the book and musical. It is probably not exactly HEALTHY but it is good. It is also of course very, very Miserable.
“And remember, the truth that once was spoken, to love another person is to see the face of God…”
Simon Petrikov
EVERY DAY I FEEL SORRY FOR SIMON PETRIKOV! He had SO MUCH bad stuff happen to him, not least the actual apocalypse, and yet he was still a good adoptive father to Marceline for as long as he was able. Please watch Adventure Time if you want to see one of the most tragic character arcs to ever exist in cartoon form.
(There are many people who think that Simon’s condition is a metaphor for Alzhemier’s or dementia and I’m among them. Sadly the real thing can’t be taken away the way it was in the show. :( )
Yondu Udonta
Ah, Yondu. Forever my problematic fave. He is not remotely deserving of a World’s Best Dad mug but hey, he knew that, and he did his best to apologize to Peter before the end, and basically just oh my god his death scene I can’t even now I just dissolve into a puddle of tears.
(There is so much meta about Yondu and his arc all over this blog, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.)
Bonus round! All the Star Wars dads. I can’t really choose between them because since Star Wars is basically a story about fatherhood they all have their roles to play. So a little shout-out to Anakin (the other problematic fave), Han Solo, Bail Organa, Qui-Gon Jinn (read Jedi Apprentice ok?), Jango Fett, Galen Erso, Lando Calrissian, Owen Lars, and so many more I forgot.
Happy Father’s Day!