#the alternative is “a friend who isn't working that day” rather than the excellent daycare facilities that don't exist on Deep Space Nine)

[nostalgia-tblr]

re: my seemingly fringe "I don't think we're meant to think Odin was a dreadful cunt" take, when was Thor 1 actually made? Like... 2010/2011? Because I think Odin is (presumably based on comics canon) meant to be "a bit distant but overall good as a parent" but 2010ish is well after the recent (historically recent, by which I mean since maybe the 1980s) shift in our culture's ideas about fatherhood and what make "a good dad" as well as similarly radical shifts in how we approach disciplining children. MCU!Odin is therefore odd because he's a couple of generations out if he's meant to convince the audience that he's A Good Dad or even an acceptable one. Even the people making the film can't have (all) thought he was any good so with this in mind I'm more open to the idea that Odin is meant to be fairly shit. (But not entirely, and certainly not to the point of him being evil - he's doing his best and arguably the issue isn't him but the culture they've all been born into.)

IDK how old the writer was but there could be an intentional generation-gap thing going on there? An "everyone thinks this is acceptable and even good parenting, but it isn't and everyone involved is getting messed up by it." You don't have to go that far back historically before failing to show regular affection to your kids wouldn't be seen as a significant flaw in a father (whereas it absolutely would be in a mother - v interesting that as the status of women in our society has increased our idea of a good dad has shifted significantly towards an ideal that would previously have been considered "maternal" and thus "unmanly." Oh hey, looks like patriarchy is bad for men too!)

I still think a lot of fanon and fanfic overstates it (which is fine until we're at the point of inventing obviously abusive behaviour and then seemingly forgetting that we made that up), and that Odin is at least meant to be 'doing his best' but yeah Them Thor Films must surely be aware that his best is nowhere near Actually Good, yeah? I mean unless they were written by a man who lives in the 1950s, which they probably weren't. (There is absolutely some generational variation in how far the social change has taken hold but you'd have to look for a long time before you'd find a man of any age who'd say "I really wish my father had been more reserved and had spent less quality time with me" rather than wistfully expressing the opposite of that.)

#mcu tag i guess #that said as recently discussed frigga's characterisation (such as it is) is also quite out-of-date and thus a bit weird #every single thing we know about her comes back to her being a mother to More Important Characters #and nobody seems to have considered this a flaw in the content that they made #anyway i got to this point by realising that there's a now conspicuous lack of childcare professionals in 90s Star Trek so well done me #(most childcare falls to Wife and if Wife is not available then Man may do some in an emergency. but if neither Wife nor Man is available #the alternative is “a friend who isn't working that day” rather than the excellent daycare facilities that don't exist on Deep Space Nine) #generation gap stuff can be fascinating - like how many Boomers will insist that their own parents weren't fucked up by WW2 in any way #“oh but my dad wasn't at all affected by his experiences during the war - i know this because he never talked about any of it” #whereas to my generation that silence on what exactly happened in those years is conspicuous and an obvious sign of trauma #and that sort of thing #thor movies