#jimmy ford
I have a lot of feelings about this quote. But beyond all the obvious ones about the whole his father would be proud of him for murder thing, which is a serious but obvious issue, the bit about the ice cream says a lot about Nate’s relationship to his father.
Now, I’m not sure how it goes in other families, but in mine, ice cream stopped being a standard way for my parents to show they were proud of me long before I was an adult living on my own. That’s just not something that comes to mind for parents wishing to express pride in their grown up kid. Ice cream is something used to reward young children. And that is exactly why its mention here is so interesting.
It could indicate a kind of child-like lost feeling in Nate at that point. The line is meant to draw a link to his childhood because of how he feels at having lost his last remaining parent. And we don’t know when his mother died, but if it was when he was young, and I tend to think it was, then this could draw a link to how Nate felt at that point.
It could also imply that, true or not, the last time Nate actually felt like his father was proud of him was when he was young enough that ice cream would have been usual reward. Given their interaction in The Three Card Monte Job, I think this may be accurate. So to Nate, ice cream is synonymous with parental approval, even though at that point Jimmy Ford would have been more likely to buy Nate whiskey than ice cream.
#see this meta is surreal to me because i never received anything for parental approval ever#i mean like. for a specific act/event#but this sounds like a reasonable meta conclusion#and like. knowing what we know of jimmy ford from Three Card Monte#i feel like nate ford at ice-cream-age wouldn’t be getting much parental approval#because that’s the age that’s between#‘he’s a baby so i wont be hard on him’#and a point where you’re actually old enough to do what your demanding parent asks of you#esp b/c nate’s dad treated kid!nate as someone who should be cunning in a way little kids can’t usually do#so there’d be more of 'u are terrible if u cannot see through my card trick’ than ice cream#parents like that (in my experience) treat kids 7-12 like they have the physical/mental skills of young teens#so maybe the ice cream is tied to a particular remembered event?#given the circumstances. likely kid nate getting into a fight#i just. have feelings all over the place#that flashback scene reminds me more of my father than anything i’ve ever seen#so if u want an estimation of jimmy ford as a parent u can ask me (tags via @darkmetiknight)
That makes a lot of sense. I like the idea of ice cream as a show of approval tied to a particular event because it fits even better with the flashbacks to Nate’s childhood in The Three Card Monte Job, and getting into a fight makes a lot of sense for that event. It even ties in further to the line from The Last Dam Job because it ties Jimmy Ford’s approval to Nate committing violence. So Nate here is not guessing that his father would buy him ice cream for committing violence; he is recalling a specific time this happened.
