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silverwhittlingknife · 1 year

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How do you feel about Jack Drake?? What are your thoughts on him and Tim’s relationship?

Anon, I hope you were interested in a novel, because look, I am fascinated by Jack Drake. He’s key to a whole lot of what I find compelling about Tim as a character, and if I were in charge of DC, I’d bring him back to life. This would make Tim unhappy but would IMO make for good plotlines.

Jack and Tim’s relationship is Complicated (TM)...

Jack and Tim hug in Nightwing 20 / Jack impulsively yanks a TV out of the wall in Robin 45 / Tim grieves in Identity Crisis

“I could tell the truth. But I don’t.” - Robin 66

...and it involves a whole lot of Tim lying, and feeling guilty about lying, and thinking about telling the truth, and choosing again and again to keep lying.

And I think that’s great.

Below the cut:

Shorter version - key points about Jack

Really long version - my gentler take (vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports) vs. my harsher take (Jack has some major flaws)

Final thoughts

Shorter version - key points about Jack:

He’s a bad parent. He’s self-centered, he consistently prioritizes his own comfort and interests over his son’s, and when upset, he does things like order Tim off to boarding school.

But he’s never a bad parent in an actionable way. He’s not like David Cain or Arthur Brown, who are abusive monsters. Jack’s not a monster! He just...kinda sucks.

He genuinely loves Tim. If Jack’s aware that Tim’s disappeared or is in trouble, he’s always worried and upset. He periodically resolves to be a better dad, and IMO he’s always sincere.

And Tim loves him, a lot. Tim’s protective of him and worries about him when he’s kidnapped or in danger, and when they’re reunited, Tim’s really relieved and usually hugs him (and Jack hugs back!).

...But they have very little in common, and that’s a problem. Jack doesn’t value the things that Tim values, or respect the people that Tim admires, or care about the things that Tim’s interested in. Tim lies to him a lot, but that’s partly because he correctly guesses Jack wouldn’t respond well if he knew the truth of what Tim’s up to.

The Batfamily is a surrogate family that Tim’s drawn to because of the ways his real family doesn’t meet his emotional needs…but also he feels guilty about that and disloyal. (And to the extent that his dad recognizes what’s going on, he's jealous and resentful!)

Very long version:

(LISTEN I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS)

Okay! So first: Jack’s a character who IMO is pretty up for interpretation. You can interpret him very charitably, and make excuses for the bad behavior, and fill in the blanks sympathetically when situations are ambiguous; or you can interpret him uncharitably, and emphasize the bad behavior. I don’t think either approach is invalid - it depends on what kind of story you’re interested in! I have enjoyed Bad Dad stories and also stories that redeem Jack.

My personal take on canon is that Jack and Tim’s relationship is in a gray area. Jack's definitely neglectful, and he does prioritize other things over Tim, but he’s never so bad that Tim can easily reject him, and he's never so bad that Bruce could justify taking Tim away. He's just...not great. Tim loves him, and feels loyal to him, but it’s a very mixed-up complicated love.

I have a gentler take and a harsher one which I switch between as the spirit moves me. xD

My Gentler Take (tl;dr: vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports)

Here’s the core conflict: Jack and Tim are very different people with different values. Tim idolizes Bruce and Dick and vigilantism, and secretly gets involved, knowing his dad will hate it. He gets increasingly wrapped up in his secret world and lies to his dad...because if his dad finds out, he’ll make Tim quit.

This is a great setup for an ongoing comic. It’s practical, because it provides endless potential for plotlines, and it’s nicely thematic, because it maps closely onto relatable real-life situations with extracurricular activities:

Tim the drama nerd whose dad thinks he’s playing football and not in the school play;

Tim the closeted-queer kid secretly getting involved in his school’s politically-active Gay-Straight Alliance;

Tim the choir kid whose dad only values making money and wants him to go into the family business (and Tim keeps promising himself he'll give up choir soon, definitely soon, but maybe he'll stay in just a liiiittle longer, because they need him, you see, the last tenor left town, so...);

Tim the computer geek with the sports-obsessed dad (this one’s just canon);

etc. etc.

The extracurricular metaphor works pretty well for Tim’s relationship to vigilantism. Tim's involved in his "extracurricular" because he genuinely thinks it's important and fulfilling, and he values it and wants to be good at it. He idolizes Bruce and Dick because they're good at it. He's been collecting information about it since he was a little kid, and hiding it from his parents because he knows they wouldn't approve. And mayyyybe there's also an element of low-key rebellion against his dad, and maybe that's secretly part of the appeal. And yet also as Tim gets more and more invested, he starts to daydream: maybe I could tell my dad and he'd be proud of me and supportive. But he doesn't, because actually he knows his dad would be upset and angry and make him quit.

And - again, just like with lonely kids and extracurricular hobbies - one of the things that happens is that Tim starts getting his unfilled emotional needs met ... by people he knows through this secret hobby. And people like Bruce and Dick start turning into a surrogate family. Which Tim feels guilty about. And also as Tim gets more and more wrapped up in their world, he has to lie to his dad even more, which means the distance between Tim and his dad gets bigger and bigger and more and more unfixable.

I love this dilemma. It's simple, it's recognizable, it provides endless sources for conflict, and there's no obvious solution! Tim can't tell Jack: he'll make Tim quit! And Tim doesn't want to quit, because he loves choir / art / theater / whatever. Yeah, it’s difficult, and there are challenges, and sometimes he has doubts...but at the end of the day, he cares about it a lot. And everything he values is there, and all the people he admires and cares about are there, and all he wants in the world is to feel like he's one of them and belongs there. So he has to lie, even though he doesn't want to lie, and he feels guilty about it...

...but also he ends up lying more and more.

(Sidenote: I think it's important that Tim chooses to keep lying - Tim's narration often glosses this as "I have to lie to my dad," and that's certainly how it feels to Tim, but this... isn't quite true. He has to lie to his dad, because if he doesn't, his dad will get mad at him and try to stop him, not because he literally has no choice about it.)

Other Reasons Why I Like The "Secret Extracurricular" Interpretation

(tl;dr it complicates not just Tim's relationship with his dad, but also all his other relationships)

Tim's problems have some obvious parallels to Steph and Cass, who both become vigilantes while rejecting their evil supervillain dads. But Jack isn't evil. And that means the Tim-and-Jack relationship is ambiguous and complicated in ways that I like. Steph and Cass can just leave their Bad Dads in prison, and say good riddance, and feel very righteous and triumphant about it! Tim’s more complicated. Tim gets into vigilantism ostensibly out of duty and altruism, but secretly, he's also involved for straight-up selfish self-fulfillment reasons. He's lonely, and bored, and his life feels pointless, but he thinks that Bruce and Dick are cool and amazing and he wants to be a part of the things that they do. When his dad gets jealous of Tim’s relationship to Bruce, and feels like Tim’s looking for a surrogate family, he’s... not wrong.

And the ways in which Jack is not Actionably Bad complicate things from Bruce's POV. If Jack was a straight-up villain, it’d be an easy call to keep in touch when Jack finds out and makes Tim quit...but he’s not a villain, not really. So what do you do? Do you try to surreptitiously stay in touch with Tim even though you’re ignoring his dad’s express wishes and thus forcing Tim to sneak around? Do you respect his dad’s wishes and stay away from Tim even though you have a years-long relationship at this point?

Again: a bit similar to the extracurricular analogy. Say you’re the choir director and you’ve built this whole relationship with a kid in the choir, and you’re an important mentor to him and you care about him etc. etc. etc.... and then right before a big performance, his dad finds out he’s been secretly involved, and yanks him out. How would you react? Well, maybe kind of in some of the ways Bruce reacts. You replace him. You’re annoyed with him. You miss him. You want him to come back. You’re also worried about him. You’re upset with his dad. But also... what should you do, exactly?

Bruce and Alfred and Dick care about Tim as if he were part of their family, but he’s not part of their family, and there’s a lot of interesting tension there.

My Harsher Take

Jack never hits his son. But his temper is a big deal.

In his worst moments, he takes out his anger on Tim’s stuff - wrecking his room, or ripping his TV out of the wall and confiscating it. When he’s worried about Tim, he usually expresses that fear by yelling at him / punishing him / sending him away - threatening to send him to boarding school in Metropolis in Robin III, or threatening to send him to military school abroad in Robin 92, or actually forcing him to go to an all-boys' boarding school post-NML.

This is bad behavior! It is Not Good!

And you can easily connect the dots to a bunch of Tim’s terrible coping mechanisms, like the constant lying and or the fact that Tim’s go-to methods for dealing with interpersonal conflict are 1) repress it and pretend it never happened (most of his fights with Bruce), 2) withdraw from the relationship until he can pretend the conflict doesn’t exist (when his friends get mad at him in YJ, he quits the team for a while), or 3) literally run away from home.

Also, Jack is a Manly Man with firm opinions about how men behave vs. how women behave, and he thinks boys shouldn’t be scared and thinks Tim should date hot girls and pushes Tim to work out and wants him to play football and expresses period-typical sexism, etc. etc. etc. ... and though obviously this wasn’t what the writers had in mind at the time, all of that is certainly interesting to read backwards in the light of Tim as a queer character.

More Disorganized Thoughts on Jack Drake

Tim’s our hero, so we’re naturally more sympathetic to him, but it’s also true that relationships are a two-way street, and Tim doesn’t value any of the things his dad values, either. Jack at various points is shown to care about grades, business, money, boarding schools, archeology, football, a kind of macho bragging-about-dating-hot-women ethos, and a very public and performative kind of caring. Tim tends to respond with discomfort or disinterest or even disgust. When Jack gets on TV to try to rally the government to save his son from No Man’s Land, Tim isn’t touched—he’s mortified. When Jack makes some bad investments and loses money, Jack’s deeply upset and his self-image is majorly impacted, and far from being sympathetic, Tim’s annoyed and kind of contemptuous of the idea that this is a problem. Jack thinks fishing in the early morning and going to tennis matches is a fun father-son activity; Tim finds it exhausting and tedious. And so on.

This means that Tim often longs to be closer to his dad in theory, but this longing is more tied to fantasy than to reality. He rarely seems to enjoy spending time with His-Dad-The-Actual-Person. So for example, when Tim’s deadly ill with the Clench, he has an extremely poignant fever dream about telling his dad the truth and getting hugged…even as he insists in real-life to Alfred and Dick that he does not want them to tell his dad what’s going on.

The same is true of Jack, who IMO genuinely wants to be closer to his son and is continually declaring that he’s going to turn over a new leaf and get closer to his son…and just as continually backs out of activities or loses his temper when faced with spending time with his actual son.

Tim and his dad sadly get along best—by far—in Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder situations. When Jack gets kidnapped or is in danger, Tim worries for him (and Tim grieves him deeply when he dies). When Tim disappears or runs away, Jack’s genuinely worried about him. So e.g. they have a really moving emotional reunion and hug when the earthquake hits Gotham, and Tim panics about his dad’s safety and comes running home (and meanwhile Jack’s been panicked about Tim’s safety!). It’s the day-to-day, regular life stuff where they don’t connect.

Jack's written quite differently by different writers. Mostly, Tim's parents are at their least likable in his early appearances and early miniseries (this is where you get, for example, Jack and Janet being nasty at each other while a pained employee looks on, and Tim disappointed to once again get news of where his parents are via postcard - "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they’re going to be–or when–or even how long!” - and Tim alone on school break, and Bruce and Alfred thinking there's something weird going on with Tim's parents, etc. etc.). Jack's more sympathetic but still often unlikable in most of Tim's Robin solo, and he's almost invisible (but positively treated if he does show up) in Tim's team books.

For obvious reasons, Jack's remembered way more sympathetically after his death. Tim's completely devastated by Jack's murder, which he arrives moments too late to prevent, and he basically never gets over it. We see him grieving Jack again and again in Robin, and also in Teen Titans, and also in Resurrection, and again in the Halloween Special, and again in Batman: Blackest Night, and all the way up to the end of Red Robin. Tim also grieves for an extended time over Janet - he hallucinates a happy reunion with her when he's feverish in Contagion, and hallucinates her in the final issue of Robin, and the reveal-your-buried-emotions song in Robin 102 brings up his grief for her too (meanwhile, other characters dance or laugh or otherwise get giddy). Tim’s grief over his parents’ deaths is intense and long-lasting.

I'm not going to clip comic panels because this is long enough, but if you're curious, here's a nice and fairly lengthy compilation of comic panels with Tim and Jack.

If you're interested in a Jack-centric story with a softer-but-still-recognizably-canon take on Jack, I really like the way Jack’s narration is written in the one-shots Heart Humble (set shortly before Jack dies) and Never a Hero (Ra's resurrects him during Brucequest, and Jack's archeology skills turn out to be unexpectedly useful).

#tim drake #jack drake #ask tag #i wrote this ages ago and now i can't remember what i was going to add to it so oh well draft amnesty? sorry for the long wait anon!! <333 #anyway i kept this carefully on topic and virtuously did not derail into talking about the other blorbo but tags are for disorganization SO #for me this kinda half-in half-out place where tim is with the batfamily is SUCH an interesting part of his relationship with dick #and i never stop turning it over in my head #he's kiiiinda replaced dick in that he's robin - but in a very real way he *hasn't* - he's NOT bruce's new son the way jason was #and early!tim makes a BIG POINT of how bruce is not his dad #and i think this relative distance from bruce is a huge factor in why dick is able to build a close relationship with tim at all #(because dick's still pretty estranged from bruce!)#and there's such interesting tension there when dick starts jokingly calling tim ''little brother'' or when villains call them brothers #because they're NOT. increasingly they would both LIKE to be brothers! but dick has zero official standing in tim's life #if tim got hit by a car in his civilian identity bruce and dick wouldn't even be able to visit him without his dad's permission #which jack would be pretty unlikely to give! jack doesn't like or trust bruce!#or like. this is morbid. but if tim died. dick wouldn't even be invited to the funeral you know?#and there's such interesting tension there for me in the contrast between this vigilante relationship that's very very close #but in their civilian lives no one would assume they're anything in particular to each other #anyway the 1st half of tim's robin solo has this thread of tension between tim's family life vs. his vigilante life (plus his mom's death)#and then the second half + red robin has the thread of struggling with grief in a world that's not fair + feeling lost/alone #and these two threads are a big part of my interest in tim as a character! jack's the backdrop that makes a lot of stories possible

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mitchtheficus · 2 years

Text

A Golden Lovers Timeline

PART 19: STRONG STYLE EVOLVED

okay two last things about the confrontation in the locker room (Feb 2018 - LINK) before we move on:

The lovers have a brief conversation in Japanese that ends with Kenny saying “shall we go home?” and Kota replying “let’s head home” (mithen translation LINK)

And THEN. (and i have absolutely nothing to say about this do not speak to me about it.) the scene ends with the camera zooming in on the open closet behind the lovers

ANYWAY.

after the confrontation with the bucks, Kenny goes to the states for a bit (we’ll get to his misadventures there in a later part) leaving Kota all alone in Japan where he competes in the New Japan Cup (March 9-21, 2018)

when njpw does tournaments they divide the tournament matches up so that half of them happen every other night. during the wrestler’s “off” night they do a multi-man tag match against their next opponent, and then the next night they have their singles match

and what that means is that Kota’s in need of some tag team partners!!!

and so begins a time I like to call Kota and the In-Laws.

Before reuniting with Kenny, Kota had been tagging with the loosely aligned collection of babyfaces that sometimes call themselves Taguchi Japan, but now that he and Kenny have renewed their vows, NJPW has started booking him with Bullet Club

Kota finds this very confusing

[ID: Kota in post match comments. A reporter asks “What about your thoughts on tagging with Bullet Club?” and Kota says “I don’t even know, I may be one of them... Did I end up joining Bullet Club after partnering with Kenny? I’m still listed as neutral, right?” End ID. LINK]

it’s honestly the best, because the BC members who are in Japan for the Cup aren’t any of the BTE guys, they’re all the Tongan faction (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa, and Yujiro) who have stayed out of the Cody/Kenny feud up to this point. they don’t really know Cody bc he’s new to njpw, and their relationship with Kenny is uh.. complicated at best. they respect him for his skill as a wrestler, but they’re all too aware that Kenny doesn’t respect them or the bullet club as a whole.

but njpw books them as Kota’s teammates for this tour, and even tho he’s literally no one to them, just the husband of the boss who just got coup-ed, and even tho they’re also pretty confused about this booking, they take the responsibility seriously.

during this whole tour whenever they tag with Kota all of the bullet club comes out to Kota’s music instead of their own and they always invite him to join the two sweet even tho Kota always refuses

[ID: three gifs. Tanga Loa and Yujiro are doing the two sweet while Kota looks at them. They invite Kota to join but he kind of makes a ‘no you go ahead’ gesture and takes a step back. in the next gifs he shakes Yujiro and Tanga Loa’s hands. Yujiro is friendly and amused, Tanga Loa is uncertain but not unfriendly. End ID. LINK]

it becomes a running gag during the tour

[ID: gif of a match, a BC member puts up his hand for the Two Sweet gesture, Kota cheerfully high fives it. End ID. LINK]

We hear from David Finlay that Kota is even spending time with BC outside of the ring, hanging out in their locker room and going out with them after shows

During one match when Finlay is on commentary we get this nice moment:

Kevin Kelly: “If you'd have told [Kota] three months ago, 'hey you're going to be teaming with bullet club' he'd have looked at you like you had horns growing out of your head.”

Finlay: “Well he might have been happy tho!”

Kevin: “Because that would mean that he'd have reunited with Kenny?”

Finlay: “Yeah, so I think a little piece of him would be like "yeah, i hope so."”

Then a little later we get Bad Luck Fale on commentary and he’s just super chill and understanding about Kota being kind of confused about this whole situation. He makes it clear that whether or not Kota is a BC member isn’t something that has to be figured out rn, and when Kevin points out that Kota doesn’t seem interested in taking part in BC-esq activities like cheating, Fale just replies "He's still probably trying to figure out what's going on himself."

It’s just this really lovely time where Kota is completely and utterly himself, not making any special effort to be accepted by BC at all, and yet this collection of heels who could have made the tour about their issues with Kenny, instead look at Kota and go “well i guess we just? Adopt him? idk?” and never look back.

And this takes us all the way to the end of march.

The bucks have been building up to the GL vs YB match in the meantime, making it clear that Nick is worried and uncomfortable with fighting Kenny, not sure if he can even hurt his friend (Nick Jackson!!! Professional monster boy!!! Unsure!!! If he can cause harm!!! Because of how much he loves Kenny!!!!!), and Matt is just bleeding feelings everywhere

[ID: screenshots of BTE. Matt sits with his young daughter and son at their house. Matt: “Do you know who daddy's wrestling this weekend?” Daughter: “Uh huh, who are you wrestling?” Matt: “Actually, I'm wrestling Kenny.” Daughter: “That's not cool, isn't he your friend?” Matt: “Yeah, actually. Actually, yeah... Kenny's my good friend, but sometimes-” Son: “Uncle Kenny?” Matt: “Sometimes you have to wrestle your friends and sometimes you have to wrestle your family. Maybe at the end of the whole thing we’ll love each other even more.” End ID. LINK]

in the BTE episode for the SSE show [LINK] we see that Kenny watched NJPW’s interview with the bucks (where Matt admits to feeling jealous of Kota LINK), we see him looking at the two golden wings on his new gear just as the interviewer asks “Kenny and Kota Ibushi’s relationship right now, do you think they're too close?”

Speaking of his new gear!!! Kenny has this gear made in his old DDT colors: green, orange, and gold. On the butt are two full golden wings, and between the wings are a golden omega symbol with a golden star inside it. “G” and “L” are written on his kneepads. A lone feather is attached to his right hip, and below that it says “best bout machine”

seeing Kenny with two wings again...yeah.

finally, just before the show Cody gives all the BTE guys these belts with their names on them. i guess they’re like weight-lifting belts? Matt makes a comment about crossfit idk, but for the purposes of this story they’re a symbol of alliance with Cody, and Nick hates them and does not wear his.

[ID: screenshot of BTE episode. Matt has his Cody belt over his shoulder, Nick looks down at his own belt with distaste. End ID. LINK]

and now it’s time for The Saddest Match Ever

Strong Style Evolved - March 25th, 2018 [Official LINK, Unofficial LINK]

The GL vs YB match is the main event of Strong Style Evolved, NJPW’s show in Long Beach, CA, and the match that they put on is complex and unique

there’s no heel or face alignments here, and half of the participants (Kenny and Nick) desperately do not even want to be here doing this. Kenny and Nick’s horror at the prospect of hurting their friend

[ID: gif of Kota stamping on a prone Matt’s back and Kenny rushes into the ring and pushes Kota away from him. End ID]

[ID: gif of Nick super kicking Kenny out of mid-air. after Kenny falls to the ground Nick just sits for a minute, with a thousand yard stare. End ID]

combined with Matt’s desperation to both hurt and be hurt

[ID: gif of Kenny stamping on a prone Matt. Matt yells at him “that feel good, Kenny?” End ID]

is extremely painful to witness

(And meanwhile the whole time poor Kota Ibushi is just Trying To Have A Match, like he’s just trying to do some wrestling here and everyone else is being so weird about it)

Kenny and Nick have to be won over to participate in the violence of the match, both of them really only finding the stomach for it after seeing their partner being hurt, but there’s never a moment when hurting their friend becomes easy for them

[ID: Kenny drops Matt’s back over his knee, his face own face twisted with misery. He pushes Matt off him and just sort of sinks down and stares at the ground. End ID]

theoretically this match is about finding out which team is the best in the world, but even though the bucks lose, it’s so clear that it’s not because the GLs were “better.” it’s because Matt Jackson is emotionally and physically compromised

his back hampers him throughout, made worse by the GLs’ targeted attacks, and it gets to a point where he can’t even do most of the YBs’ moveset without help

but he’s never really focused on winning. matt’s focus is always on hurting Kenny and Kota (not beating them, inflicting pain and insult), and making Kenny hurt him back.

because the pain that Matt’s feeling would be so much easier to bear if he knew for sure that Kenny doesn’t love him. It’s the lingering hope, the fear and uncertainty, that make it so unbearable. so he wants Kenny to put an end to any doubt.

again and again in this match Matt lets the worst parts of his heart direct his actions, and through it all Kenny loves him.

Kenny has failed to be a good friend to Matt recently, he has taken the bucks for granted, he has failed to treat them as his equals, but in this match, when Matt is testing him, when Matt is demanding cruelty from him

[ID: three gifs. in the first matt uses the belt that Cody gives him to whip Kenny’s back, while kenny kneels on the mat. in the second Kenny is now standing and it’s matt who is on the ground. Kenny picks up Matt’s belt and looks at it. in the third Kenny stands before Matt with the belt and throws it away. End ID]

Kenny refuses.

he hurts Matt but he never crosses that line. and every time he refuses, every time he hesitates, you can see that it’s almost worse for Matt than if Kenny had just done it, because it proves over and over that Kenny does care about him.

the truth that Kenny loves the young bucks genuinely but imperfectly, loves them, but not enough to give up Kota for them, almost feels worse than if Kenny had never loved them at all. because at least if Kenny never loved them Matt would have the cold comfort of his own righteous anger. at least if Kenny never loved them, this pain could be over. this could be simple. he could cut Kenny off and try to move on. but because Kenny loves them, that means it’s possible to fix this, and that truth is so much harder to face

when Kenny finally pins Matt, he doesn’t let go after the three count.

[ID: gif of the GLs laying on top of Matt for the pin, after the count Kota slides off them but Kenny just clutches Matt closer, crying. End ID]

he just holds Matt and cries. he just loves him.

and he doesn’t ask anything from him. after winning, Kenny leaves the ring without reaching out to the bucks again.

but the events of the night aren’t over yet.

after the lovers leave, Cody comes to the ring and starts yelling at Matt for losing, and when Nick tries to intervene...

[ID: two gifs. In the first Cody turns towards Nick and shoves him to the ground, a perfect mirror of Kenny doing the same thing to Matt at New Beginning. In the second Cody aggressively removes his jacket. End ID]

It’s a perfect, deliberate parallel of the events of the Golden Lovers’ reunion, except that Kenny was shocked and horrified to discover he had pushed Matt, and Cody is ready for more

But just like New Beginning, matt and nick are saved by a run-in from someone who loves them.

[ID: gif of Cody seeing Kenny coming and starting to back away, while Matt holds his brother and sinks down to sit on the mat beside him. End ID]

Kenny chases Cody off and then he offers the bucks his hand, just like Kota reached out to him. Nick accepts

and Matt doesn’t

[ID: two gifs, Kenny offering his hand to Nick who takes it and gets pulled up. in the second Kenny offers his hand to Matt while Nick looks on. Matt looks at the hand and then at Kenny and turns away. End ID]

Matt can’t let it go. Not yet. Not in the immediate aftermath of a match like that.

And you can see his refusal break Kenny and Nick’s hearts

[ID: gif of Kenny and Nick reacting to Matt turning away from Kenny. Both are crying and devastated. End ID]

but where Matt goes, Nick follows

[ID: gif of Nick leaving the ring following Matt while Matt and Kenny look on. End ID]

but even tho this night didn’t end with the Elite’s reunion, something has shifted. Matt’s not ready to forgive Kenny, but he’s seen the care and love that Kenny has for him

and he’s gotten his first glimpse of Cody’s true face

[PART 20] [ALL PARTS]

#bte out here doing CLOSET SYMBOLISM i cant stand them #golden lovers #goldenloverstimeline #kota ibushi #kenny omega #the young bucks #nick jackson #matt jackson #there's so much in the strong style evolved match about the bucks' relationship with each other that i didn't get into #so much stuff about the way nick reacts to matt in pain and to kenny hurting matt #if you havent watched the match i definitely recommend it #it's so hard to describe the way matt is during the match his feelings are just so big and out of control #it really took me a long time to try to put it into words #and im still not 100% satisfied #but hey! this is the hardest part! its all up from here! this is the saddest this story gets #the thing about being upset that kenny loves them but not enough to give up kota is like the irrational part of jealousy you know?#like matt would never give up nick for kenny and that doesnt mean he doesnt love kenny #but kennys never had someone like that in his life during his friendship with the bucks #there's no good guys or bad guys in this story and especially not in this match #mestuff #myGLgifs #reunitedera #myomegagifs #mykotagifs #myyoungbucksgifs #always with you

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