parabola
Yukio flips a page in his textbook, listening to the soft scratches of Shiemi’s pencil across paper.
The mid-afternoon sun flows over the interior of the shop like a layer of swaying silk, warming the wood of the table. It’s quiet, with only the flourishing houseplants in their company. The room smells fragrant, filled with the scent of a jasmine plant blooming on the counter.
He’s fortunate enough to have two hours of spare time today, working through a worksheet of derivatives to the side as he answers occasional questions from Shiemi. Perhaps it’s a welcome distraction.
Small tremors run through the table as Shiemi erases a row of equations.
Yukio lifts his eyes cautiously.
The delicate red tassel on Shiemi’s hair clip sways when she tilts her head. Her lips have pressed together in concentration, pulling into a puzzled frown as her pencil traces along the curve of the parabola Yukio penned in her notes. When she flips back to another page, a pleased smile lifts her cheeks. A minute later, she moves diligently onto the next problem.
She’s been working hard and has grown so much in the past few months. All she needs is a bit more confidence in herself.
As Shiemi rests her chin on her hand, a few strands of her hair slip from behind her ear. Several red spots of petechiae peek out from under her collar, like pinpricks, left behind from the grip of Mayuko’s hair. They’ll fade in a few days. Even so, it must have been painful.
Yukio flips another page, running his thumb along the waxy texture of the paper of his textbook without reading any of the print. “Yesterday,” he begins, “I was really impressed by you and Kamiki-san.”
Shiemi’s eyes meet his, just a shade brighter than the mellow green of the aloe sitting behind her. “Really?”
To read more on Ao3 :)
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It's a shame they changed the Franc letters so much tone-wise because they gave Gortash a lot more nuance in his methods than what's going on in the patched version. Sure, those may be more banite but I always liked how in the original, the tyranny was not in the relationship between both characters but rather their acts committed together.
I enjoy Gortash as a character so much because he subverted the expectation of what a Chosen of Bane would be. His approach is deeply Machiavellian. The idea of him working his way up through the ranks of aristocracy by both cultural impact that is unignorable thanks to his machinery and a force of personality that disarms his targets emotionally and turns them favourable towards him on an interpersonal level instead of forcing them into submission via fear and threats(as one would expect) made it compelling. It made way for tyranny harder to uproot than one built on aggression because it would not just subjugate people, but change them. A person who fears you is closer to betrayal than one who loves instead. It is an alternative way of subjugation and I like to think that's what may have differentiated him from other Banites so much it made him a Chosen.
And those letters showed how that could've played out. They were deeply manipulative. Threats, if there were any, were in the beginning and faded into the background with the overpowering charm that continued on. The newer version falls flat in comparison. They start and end with thinly veiled threats and that's just not as powerful.
It sucks because I considered them a potential window into how the past relationship of Gortash/Durge could've started out too (regardless of how you interpret the nature of it). I don't think they could've gotten so close as to prompt something like the prayer of forgiveness like this simply because I can't see a Dark Urge responding to threats, fearless avatar of murder and all that. But the first version? Shallow flattery to get the foot into the door and appealing to their wants (like some good old torture racks) to ultimately foster an emotional attachment so severe it borders on heresy for at least one of them? That's awful. I like it.
In the patched letters he's just…evil. A more open and diplomatic (and perhaps more in line with bane) version of it, but also one a lot more predictive. Shame.
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I'm seeing people point out that the Craving (at least the single version) is about SAI being perceived by a lot of people as a flop album & I think that's probably correct but I also think it probably applies to Lavish, because I truly cannot imagine why else they decided to include it on the album? Like don't get me wrong I love Lavish but narratively it reads as the most 'expendable" song on the tracklist. Yet Tyler allegedly wanted to leave off Navigating (which they gave the lore video to, lmao) and kept Lavish. Which is fair because it's a banger and a nice break from everything else, but it's also just telling to me that they very intentionally did a song about industry bullshit on this album, the most direct they've gotten since Lane Boy.
Like either their label or someone in the industry did something to piss them off that we don't know about, or it's a generalized frustration. I have to imagine it would hurt to be Grammy noms/winners two albums in a row and then be paid dust the minute you do something a little different. Or (purely speculating here) to experience label pressure to have another album cycle like blurryface, when that's virtually impossible to replicate unless you're, like, taylor swift specifically, and when it inevitably doesn't happen they start pulling back on financing/promoting you/helping you get nominations the same way they used to. They're fucking you behind your back and you can't really do much about it because they're the ones with the money and the influence, and you're supposed to trust them to take care of/care about your work. Like tøp has never been a band that values itself on award or critical recognition, it's always been for us, but creatively speaking the whiplash of going right from your most commercially successful album, to your most critically acclaimed album, then to your most criticized - and to a degree you now just assume your time as a critical/commercial darling has passed, which Tyler seems to - would have to hurt. It would have to.
Honestly tho he probably just knew he cooked with the proctologist line and needed everyone else to know too
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The whole royalty meets a peasant romance trope but its Lizzie leaving the ocean, forgetting her memories and washing on the shores of Mezalea and being taken in by a fisherman.
She then meets King Joel in the marketplace and they hit it off, becoming fast friends, but eventually she starts to feel the ocean calling to her, but she doesn’t know why
So she sets off to discover herself and eventually set up her empire
And I just think the transition from royalty and peasant to royalty and goddess is very funny
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At what point in time do you think the original timeline McFly family started being dysfunctional? I’m sure George and Lorraine were fully in love at first, and Lorraine even still in the 80s seems to look back fondly when recalling how they fell in love. But I do wonder when exactly it started to go downhill, when they started having kids? Just with age? Or maybe it was never really great to begin with before Marty got involved
This is a really interesting ask, and it's something that I've thought about a handful of times. The Twin Pines McFlys fascinate me.
As for my own headcanons about when the dysfunction started, I think it was always there. Dysfunction within families is complex, though, so it likely ebbed and flowed and morphed over the years. Some thoughts! (hehehe, analysis and theories incoming)
I 100% believe George and Lorraine were fully in love at first and are even still in love when we meet them in 1985. It's just that life has beaten them both down in various ways, and they've lost touch with each other and fallen into a pattern of being resigned to (and maybe even comfortable with) all the disconnect within their family. But there's no mistaking the fondness with which Lorraine begins her story of how she and George met and the way it shifts to such sadness within just a few seconds. Her question of, "It was the night of that terrible thunderstorm, remember, George?" is such a clear bid for connection with him. A hope that he'll smile and recall that night and join in on her story. That's what Lorraine wants! But George doesn't even acknowledge her (not on purpose, I'm sure; he's just so wrapped up in watching The Honeymooners), and you see Lorraine gradually deflate from there.
It's so sad because you can see the emotions shift so suddenly in her! That first gif still holds such affection as she recalls their first kiss. It's like she's a girl again, feeling that overwhelming sense of love and all the possibilities for their life together. But then it changes. She's brought back to reality and all the unhappiness, the disappointments, the realization that life isn't what she imagined for herself.
By the last gif, she's a woman who clearly feels trapped. Now stuck with this guy for the rest of her life. And what makes it so awful is that you can TELL Lorraine still loves him. She longs for that happiness they once had, but it takes two people putting in effort to make a marriage work. She can try to reach George all she wants, but if he can't be emotionally present, it isn't going to work.
Also, I'm sure that George loves Lorraine as well, but he's got a whole plethora of issues that just. Haven't been addressed. George has no self-worth. He's meek and lets people walk all over him and is so completely anxious about everything in life that he's mostly shut down. He's trapped too, with no way (that he can see) to change things. So he does what he can to survive, which consists of doing Biff's bidding and retreating to an inner world at the expense of shutting his family out.
I don't think things were always to this extreme, though. For a while I'm sure things were okay, maybe even good. They were young and in love, and while George was still George, I don't think life had defeated him yet. They got married, really established their little life together, and I can see them as both having hope. And even if there were moments that seemed shaky or hinted that things might be difficult down the road, it was easy to brush it aside. They were still finding their footing, and they were young and had their whole future together to make things better. In all honesty, Dave probably got to experience the "best" versions of his parents for the first several years of his life.
However, each year and every hardship (big and small) likely chipped away at the McFlys and brought about additional dysfunction. I don't know if Biff and George started working with each other right out of high school or if they came to work those jobs later on, but I'm sure that was a huge factor. It offered no escape from Biff for either George or Lorraine. Just a predictable cycle of George having to do whatever Biff told him, Biff invading their home whenever he pleased, and everyone having to watch George immediately tuck his tail between his legs.
As I said, I think things gradually kind of unraveled in their house. As the state of their family became more solidified, Lorraine likely began drinking more and withdrawing. I do think they still had their good days, though! Moments that brought them together and where they felt that happiness they once shared (I mean, they had three children together, and it's clear Dave, Linda, and Marty ARE loved and were raised well.) But the state of the McFly household is probably all Marty has known for the majority of his life. I can see situations arising where maybe Dave has told him, "They weren't always like this, you know."
Dysfunctional as they are, George and Lorraine really are trying. I think they can absolutely see the cracks and the flaws—perhaps even the potential damage being caused to their children—but they just have too much brokeness inside themselves to do better. So, they do what they can, which for George involves trying to protect his children's feelings by discouraging them from taking risks. He doesn't want them hurt or sad or disappointed, and his solution is to have them form shells around themselves. Better to save yourself from all the headaches life brings.
Lorraine does her best to protect and guide her kids by way of warning them away from the very things that brought her to where she is in life. We see this manifest in the form of criticism mostly when she's talking to Marty.
Lastly even with Lorraine seeming as downtrodden as she is, I can see her clinging to the possibility of change. Hoping and praying that eventually, George would say enough was enough and stand up for himself. He'd put his foot down, step up as a husband and father, and things would become what she always wanted. She was the one always telling herself, "Someday. Someday..." until the point we see her at during the dinner scene, where she knows that "someday" isn't going to ever happen. Things are just the way they are, and she has to deal with it.
This was a lot, but I have a lot of feelings about the McFly family and how they operated in their day to day life. Especially the implications of the McFly sibs (Marty in particular!) being raised in such an emotionally disjointed environment. Ugh, those gifs of Lorraine make me so sad. The whole thing is sad.
Thanks for the ask, though! I want to write another Twin Pines McFly fic now.
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