#the joys of fatherhood

[sharkrocket]

I just needed to drop by and say that you drawing Artemy with the little > mouth is one of my favorite things and it makes my heart explode every time I see it.

I'M SO GLAD YOU NOTICED, I love this expression so much, it makes me laugh

Sometimes you can tell what he's thinking, but other times, I don't even know what it means....

#Pathologic #Artemy Burakh #Sticky Burakh #Murky Burakh #The joys of fatherhood

[invisibleicewands]

Michael Sheen: ‘I find it very hard to accept actors playing Welsh characters when they aren’t Welsh’

Has he taken the concept of authentic casting to a whole new level? Ahead of his latest BBC drama Best Interests, the star explains all

Michael Sheen has had it with the Prince of Wales. Not the man, but the title. “I think it’s ridiculous,” he says. “It’s just silly. I see no reason why the title should continue. Certainly not with someone who’s not Welsh.” 

“That’s not the majority view,” he adds, with resignation. “So, whatever the majority of people want, I’m sure will continue.” 

The star of Frost/Nixon and proud son of Port Talbot is chatting via video from a bucolic spot close to his hometown (a deer has just wandered into view), but even at a distance, it’s not hard to see that Sheen is a man ofstrong convictions.

He has spoken in the past about the opportunity to retire the title after the death of Elizabeth II, as a gesture to “put some of the wrongs of the past right”. In 2020, he returned the OBE he was “honoured” to have received in 2009 when he felt it would make him a hypocrite to give a lecture about how the English king Edward I “put a stranglehold on Wales” at the turn of the 14th century. 

When we chat, he’s about to begin shooting his TV directing debut The Way – co-created with playwright James Graham and documentary-maker Adam Curtis, about a family caught in a civil uprising, set in and around Port Talbot. The BBC project is the first from the production company that he set up with Sherlock producer Bethan Jones to focus on telling Welsh stories because, “You can shout about how bad it is, but if you want to see something be different then do it, you know?”

The 54-year-old is one of the actors of his generation, a stage star in his twenties (The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer called him “outrageously charismatic”) who went on to create unforgettable screen portraits of Tony Blair (The Queen, The Deal), Chris Tarrant (Quiz) and Brian Clough (The Damned United), alongside his David Frost in Peter Morgan’s play and film about the 1977 interviews that brought down the US president. Recently, Sheen has gained a whole new tranche of fans playing a very arch angel opposite David Tennant’s insouciant demon in Amazon’s Good Omens – not technically gay characters according to the Terry Pratchett-Neil Gaiman source novel, but seemingly in love.

Tennant and he have a natural chemistry on and off screen, Sheen says, adding that “he stops me being too grumpy”. He is a little on the grumpy side. In one exchange, in which I suggest he is a supporter of Welsh independence, he responds hotly: “Show me where it says that. I don’t believe I’ve ever said that.” Sam Mendes compared Sheen to fellow Welsh stars Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton – “fiery, mercurial, unpredictable”. 

But he shares a warm screen chemistry with Sharon Horgan in Jack Thorne’s moving new four-part drama Best Interests. They play the parents of a child with cerebral palsy, the adorable Marnie (played by Dublin actor Niamh Moriarty), who suffers a seizure that leaves her without brain function. The couple find themselves on opposite sides of an unbearable decision: whether or not to switch off their daughter’s life support. Very few will make it through the drama without tears, but the issues it raises will be familiar to all who have followed recent legal battles over 12-year-old Archie Battersbee and baby Alfie Evans. 

Best Interests is “heartbreaking” at times, he admits, which makes the humour that he and Horgan bring to it all the more important. They hadn’t worked together before. “That relationship had to do a lot of heavy lifting. Sharon and I didn’t know each other very well … but straight from the off, we had a very similar sense of humour and made each other laugh.” Moriarty’s is a break-out performance – one scene involving make-up beautifully captures the parent-child relationship. She has cerebral palsy that affects her legs, a condition called spastic diplegia, but she’s not the only disabled actor in the piece. 

Bafta-winner Lenny Rush, 14, who in real-life has a condition that affects his growth, is brilliant as George, who sets his cap at Marnie. Mat Fraser, who plays a legal advocate in Best Interests and portrayed Shakespeare’s Richard III in 2017, has a thalidomide impairment, which likely gave him an insight into Richard’s sense of “my deformity”. 

Thorne, who experienced a chronic medical condition in his twenties, has said in the past that disabled people have been “utterly and totally” failed by the TV industry. In Best Interests, one parent of a child with a disability states baldly that people “hate” disabled people. “I think people can feel very uncomfortable around people with disabilities,” Sheen says. “A lot of the time it’s just to do with ignorance about, ‘Oh gosh, I don’t know, what should I do?’ It can make interaction quite awkward at times, and it can bring out people’s fears.”

The fact that there were several people with disabilities working on the project, he says, was striking because it brought home how rarely he had seen it before. It leads into a discussion of how far actors can credibly play identities they don’t personally inhabit. Sheen has thought about it: “You know, seeing people playing Welsh characters who are not Welsh, I find, it’s very hard for me to accept that. Not particularly on a point of principle, but just knowing that that’s not the case.

“That’s a very different end of the spectrum, but a part like Richard III is such a great character to play, it would be sad to think that that character, you know, is no longer available or appropriate for actors to play who don’t have disabilities, but that’s because I’m just not used to it yet, I suppose. Because I fully accept that I’m  not going to be playing Othello any time soon.

“Again, it’s not particularly a point of principle, but personally, I haven’t seen many actors who have come from quite privileged backgrounds being particularly compelling as people from working-class backgrounds. If you haven’t experienced something, you know, the extreme example is, well, if you haven’t murdered someone, can you play a murderer?”

In 2021, it was reported that Sheen intended to be a “not-for-profit” actor, after selling his own properties to ensure the Homeless World Cup that he had organised in Cardiff in 2019 went ahead when funders withdrew. So, what is a not-for-profit actor?

“There’s no such thing,” he says. “In that interview, I talked about how the ideal I was aiming towards was working like a not-for-profit company. When I put the money into the Homeless World Cup, since then I only owe money, so in terms of profits, there are no profits. I put as much of the money I make as I possibly can into either funding and supporting what other people are doing that I believe in, or starting up projects myself.” 

It’s a measure of Sheen’s confidence that he knows the parts will keep coming. He has become a father again in his 50s; he and his partner, 28-year-old Swedish actor Anna Lundberg, have two young daughters. “My knees creak a lot more,” he says. “It’s a lot harder to get up and down off the floor when you’re playing with the baby.” 

Sheen also has a grown-up daughter, Lily Mo Sheen, 24, from an earlier relationship with British actress Kate Beckinsale. “When my eldest daughter was born, I was still trying to make my way in my career and having to make harder choices about whether to work away from home and how much time to be away and all that stuff,” he says. “This time around, that’s not as difficult as I’m more established as an actor. Physically, it’s hard. But the one thing that is always the same is, you know, poo doesn’t smell any better.”

#Michael Sheen #Interview #Best Interests #the joys of fatherhood #you can feel his enthusiasm #I'm not sure this interview will help him to promote his future projects

[bestbeest]

To absolutely nobody's surprise, Reesie LOVES the puppies. Whenever they cry for milk, he gets all agitated and starts harassing me until I feed them... and then he likes to 'help' feed them (he watches, and if they start crawling toward him away from the bottle, it's Lick Time)

#the joys of fatherhood #beesie #shelter dog tag

[globalriseofblackpeople]

Black fathers

#black fatherhood #black fathers #black boy joy #black boys

[mcchickentendies]

He's in his dad era

#it's kinda funny seeing an old ass fae be reduced to an 11 year old's babysitter #ashen eye experiences the joy of fatherhood #the ancient magus bride #tamb #mahoutsukai no yome #mahoyome

[mishapen-dear]

bad convincing pomme to eat her cookies

#i dont normally clip things but the way he said it <3 #and the fucking. Struggle he was having the whole time with cookies in general #‘youre like the only friend ive got here’ fucking WUAGHG #qsmp badboyhalo #qsmp pomme #qsmp clips #this is one of the first times if not the first time reset bad showed that he like #is irrefutably affectionate at all towards his ‘roommates’ #i cant say THE first time i havent been able to watxh as much as id like but #but pommes lil :D kills me #they had to ask if he was gonna eat them… #actually no this is definitely One of the first affectionate things #the first affectionate thing may have been him at breakfast giving her the last of the chicken he himself had been salivating over #and feeding her First when he’s such a hungry lil guy #still pomme’s joy at him saying he liked her.. #he doesnt remember loving her yet but even without his memories and the responsibilities of fatherhood #he likes her #and as blase as he is about death in general #he doesnt want her to die

[tosahobi-if]

Since you're a TGCF stan I have to ask: Who's your favorite character?

the green one <3

#anon #something about the cannibal with anger issues #discovering the joys of fatherhood #close second is ling wen! #my beautiful underpaid wife

[journey-to-the-attic]

YK ITS NO LONGER HALLOWEEN BUT!! ddvd luci, zhao, ik doing matching costumes like…think abt it. zhao and ik together can convince lucifer 100%. vampire family?! it works out until ik keeps gnawing on lucifer’s hand,, but yk i think ddvd luci would be very sad and sulky at ik growing up…js a bit when ik dosent need him as much anymore

“do you want to go get icecream? with the three flavors?”

“oh maybe later”

“o h okay”

5 minutes later

“luci it’s fine, she’s just a bit older now”

“IS IT??” as he looks like a sad old peacock man

it doesn't have to be halloween to think about matching costumes!!! love them being a vampire family... ik would be a little baby bat and zhao would hold her high up in the air so she can pretend she's flying and then lucifer would take them all for an ACTUAL flight (alternatively: they all go as dragons and lucifer almost burns down the hol because ik was so excited about him pretending to breathe fire with a spell)

i feel like they'd have a night-time routine that always involves little ik getting a story read to her, and the first night she says she doesn't want it lucifer stays awake for like four hours, staring at the ceiling silently until zhao distracts him with some of mammon's shenanigans

he is so so sad when ik first decides she doesn't want to get carried around anymore... he'll very subtly follow her as she goes about her Very Serious Kid Business, hoping she'll change her mind again - whenever she tires herself out enough to reach for him again, he's absolutely over the MOON and will be in a good mood for the rest of the week

(if anyone other than zhao points out that he's definitely sulking he'll glare at them and/or threaten to ground them. when zhao asks about it lucifer just looks at him with his equivalent of 🥺, which is basically just a frown, but different in a very subtle way that only zhao knows how to decipher)

#answering asks #anon asks #barbatos would make ik her little bat costume and he would nearly cry when ik goes 'thank you uncle!!' #dad in the devildom #zhaolu #first lucifer learns the joys of fatherhood and then he gets hit with the Melancholy #past a certain point he'd stop even pretending otherwise #everyone in the house is equally devastated that humans grow up so fast #it's not FAIR they're supposed to stay LITTLE and easy to rock to sleep #zhao has to be the one to keep everyone afloat #he too feels the Melancholy but he's also juggling stepdad duties so he has less time to brood about it #also of everyone ik's least likely to reject him even once she hits her precocious years #when she's still very little she has a habit of just clambering up into satan's lap while he's reading and taking a nap with him #one day satan realises she hasn't done it in several weeks and he's like 'oh. :('

[apenitentialprayer]

He wanted to know how she knew these things, with the bitter taste on his tongue of his own failure as a father he wondered that at her tender age she could have heard so much of the world's anger and pain and disappointment and tasted so little of its delight, when you have learned joy, he wanted to say, then only then will your gift be complete, but she knew so much already that it scared the words away and he did not dare to speak.

- Salman Rushdie (The Moor's Last Sigh, page 60)

#Salman Rushdie #regret #mourning #sorrow #fatherhood #joy #The Moor's Last Sigh #The World #despair #hatred #corruption

[giraffeonstrike]

It's warm today, and cloudy. It rained a little and stopped, thinking about a round two. I had to bring my woodworking inside, and I'm building a wardrobe for my daughter like the one my papa made for my sisters.

I saw that wardrobe every day until I moved out and this one still won't be exactly the same. If he was still here, he would have built it...and it still would be different. It would still be useful, still be loved, but different.

This isn't about the wardrobe anymore is it?

I don't think my papa would like that he's become a shadow in my life sometimes. If he was here he'd tell me, like he did all the time: "be careful of what you're missing, Elias." I was born worried, focused on fixing, and he knew that. He knew I'd have to be reminded that there are things you'll be blind to if you stay wrapped up in your worries. You'll always find something to stress about if you're looking. Lately I've been thinking so much about how it's not possible to measure up to how truly amazing he was. How hard it will be to navigate being a father when mine isn't here to show me.

We never were the same though. What he had to do to make it work isn't remotely similar to the kind of situation I have going on. I'm blessed to have so much more stability, so much less to worry about, generally...and I'm realizing, finally, that I do have the same things that made my papa so wonderful.

He loved us more than anything in the world, and was willing to wake up every day and prove it. I never had any doubt that he would do absolutely anything for us. He left everything behind, his whole life, so we could have it better. My daughter isn't even born yet and I know that for the rest of my life she and her big brother own my ass...that I love them so much I can't even describe it.

So I'll finish this wardrobe eventually, and it won't be the same as Papa's but it will be loved...and so will I.

#fatherhood #parenting #coping with grief #comparison is the thief of joy #life is strange

[invisibleicewands]

The Project - 13/11/2022

#Michael Sheen #The Project #Amadeus #it's nice he's keeping updated about the level of nappies he's changing #fatherhood's joy

[globalriseofblackpeople]

Black fathers

#black father #black fathers #black fatherhood #fatherhood #black boy joy

[mo0nr1se]

ARTIFICIAL

Mom and I made

piles of color coded

lengths of artificial

tree limbs in an organized

scatter creating

pathways; white, grey

black, green, yellow,

but where is the base?

Daddy, where

did you put it?

Somewhere secret with

the Lowe’s folder.

I thought a tree

would be a

tad garish, considering.

The past is gone

Father, you are forgiven. Daddy,

it’s 11:11,

look I’m

light on my feet again.

#tampaflorida #poetry #unexpected death #dissected aorta #fatherhood #police officer #Daddy #processing grief #poetic grief #inspiration #griefspiration #Joy LeeAnn Peterson

[manwalksintobar]

This Home is the Light // Matthew Rohrer

I always dreamed there’d be in my home a fleeting light you catch a glimpse of in forests late at night a light that doesn’t project itself much into the world or seem to care that much outwardly which is the only thing I can offer my kids

It is a secret joy to be perceived as less just taking up your own space not projecting yourself out into everyone else’s you know what I mean you know the people I’m talking about

#poetry #Matthew Rohrer #fatherhood #family #Pigeon Pages #joy #American poetry #loving the world anyway

[joanietidwell]

Oh Captain My Captain!

Oh Captain My Captain!

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” ― Umberto Eco A few years back my friend Lybby invited me to come stay with her at her family’s condo in Kona, Hawaii. She was even gracious enough to allow my parents to come along too, even though they had never roasted a pig or had…

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#Autism #being better #Courage #example #faith #family #Father’s Day #fatherhood #gratitude #Growing #joy #Keep going #love #Parenting #perspective

[apparentlysexy-rexy]

From one burnt out, overtired parent to another: it's ok to eat the snacks you got for the kids, especially if it means you eat today.

#parenthood #motherhood #fatherhood #eat the fruit pouches #they ARE convenient and full of nutrients! #eat the gummies and mini muffins if it gives you a little joy and gets you through the day #those little cookie packs are a quick easy snack and are great dipped in nutella #a cheese stick is a great little bit of protein #take care of yourself by any means necessary #there's not always someone around to fill your cup so take what you need in order to keep pouring into your children's