fajrdrako | (no subject) (Reply)

From

fannish5: Name 5 characters who you think are great parents, or who would be great parents.

The first couple that sprang to mind were Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith, who are the parents of Miles Vorkosigan in the Lois McMaster Bujold novels. In some ways their parenting methods seem a little odd, but it is clear that they are loving parents, and carry through their unshakable sense of honour to their care of their offspring - even offspring as strange and unorthodox as Mark, the clone-child they never knew they had.

One of my favourite passages in the novels tells how Aral, when he was Regent of Barrayar, used to take a full hour's break at lunchtime every day, despite his busy schedule, to talk and play with his crippled young son Miles, who was unable to walk, but was avidly curious about everything.

Equally, I think the adult Miles and his wife Ekaterin will be wonderful parents, because they have the same good qualities as Cordelia and Aral.
The second character I thought of - an individual, not a couple - is another one who is a canonical parent, Captain Cairo Azarcon of the battleship Macedon, in the novels by Karin Lowachee. In the first and third novels, we see how Cairo develops a fatherlike relationship with some of the wayward soldier-orphans in his army. In the second novel, Burndive we get a close-up look at the relationship between Cairo and his troubled, bratty, estranged son, Ryan. I liked the way he handled the situation.
In Torchwood canon, none of the Team has yet had children, except possibly Jack. I think Captain Jack Harkness would be a terrific father, with his talent for being loving and patient; though there are ways in which he might not be a great role model. I don't mean the omnisexuality or the flirtatiousness: I mean the cavalier way he sometimes has with the truth, in his persona as a con man.

The others on the Torchwood Team would be, on the whole, terrible parents: Gwen and Ianto are both too volatile and emotional, and too dedicated to getting their own way; Toshiko is too introverted and obsessed by her work. Owen is too snarky and grumpy - though he might be a good father for a boy: I could see him playing violent video-games and battle games with a son. With a daughter, I think he'd be hopeless.

The Doctor - well, he's been a father, at least twice, though we've seen little of it. The fact that he rejected all responsibility for Jenny at first doesn't bode well: it's the opposite of the Vorkosigan doctrine that biology is destiny and family is an infinitely valuable thing. Still, it's easy to argue that Ten's attitude (and the root of his psychological problems) is a pathological fear of losing those he loves, the belief that he can't afford, and doesn't deserve, anything like family. He seemed to have at last partially overcome that at the end of "The Doctor's Daughter", but the end of "Journey's End" implies to me that his emotional self-destruction is worse than ever. He's great fun, though, in his scenes with children.
Keith Mars in Veronica Mars must be the best father ever.
In the Lymond novels, I think Kate and Gideon Somerville are ideal parents. I think Lymond and Philippa are likely to be just as good. ...And I'm tempted to make a case that Sybilla and Gavin were possibly the worst parents in fiction, and I like Sybilla. Even just sayingthe parents of Lord Darnley - or Joleta and Gabriel. Or Simon de St. Pol. Parents from hell.

On the way home in the car, I asked

maaseru what her answer to this question would be. She cited Bodie in The Professionals and I agree 100% - he could have been one of my answers, too. She added Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG1, and said that though she wouldn't want them as parents herself, she thought Starsky and Hutch would be good fathers.

We agreed that we wouldn't want to be born to either of the Winchester boys of Supernatural.