I’m going to preface this by saying I’ve only watched dubbed, so things might differ somewhat but. Ahem. Why I Think The Marafujis/Truesdales are Mistreated and/or Abused by Their Parents Or At Least By One Of Them (wow, what a title lol): starting simple, it’s joked about a few times in the show when the characters talk about how impressive Zane is that Syrus’s “mom said [he] got the looks.” Their father is not mentioned once throughout the show. Sure, none of the others’ really are either, but again, it’s a lot of small things that add up lol
Second, from Tag Force this time, in the first game, when you choose the right option to talk to Zane about, he’ll respond with “…you’ll listen?” Followed by the “you had a great talk!” blurb thing. When you talk with Syrus, one of the flavor text things that can come up is him rambling about vehicles and such, then apologizing for it. They’re both used to people not caring what they have to say. This might be expected of Syrus, but for both of them, especially considering Zane is highly regarded by literally everyone else, you’d think they’d be ecstatic to listen to whatever he thinks.
They’re both also very socially awkward and bad at making friends. Syrus becomes friends with Jaden early on since Jaden is so social, and he hangs out with others via association, but as for people who are actually HIS friends, there seems to be little to nobody. Zane also had a grand total of two close friends (then later on Alexis since she’s Atticus’s sister), one of which was also a highly popular/social individual, and the both of whom were also two of the best regarded duelists in the academy. Zane is also blatantly shown to be socially awkward in Tag Force, with one of his lines outright being “Even though I always respect my opponents and don’t care about the results, I end up winning. / So I was wondering if you could tell me… what does it feel like to lose? / Did I say something wrong?” And considering both his behavior in general and the confused face he makes at that point, I find it hard to believe that he could possibly be trying to mock the player or something. He genuinely didn’t realize how what he said could be interpreted as rude or hurtful; quite possibly from lack of proper experience. Especially considering how dueling is obviously extremely important in their household (Syrus has super low self esteem as a result of not being a great duelist, Zane is the “perfect” “gifted” “golden” whatever child who always knows everything you could possibly ask about the game because he studies so hard, which leads into another Tag Force flavor text where he basically asks why you’re dawdling and says angrily “if you really want to become a great duelist, you shouldn’t have any time to waste like this!” Wonder where he heard THAT one from) so it would stand to reason that maybe they were intentionally blocked off from others, which is common for abusers to do. It could also be that the parents only wanted the Truesdale kids to be friends with people who would be “good influences” ie powerful duelists liiikkeeee Yusuke and Atticus.
To add on to that (I might not be remembering this one properly, so take it with a grain of salt) as far as I recall, Syrus didn’t seem to recognize Alexis OR Atticus at ALL when he first meets them. He didn’t even recognize Atticus as being “Zane’s friend who disappeared.” It’s like he was never aware of their existence at all. However, as early as the first episode of the show, it’s clear that Zane and Alexis are familiar with one another. We know he’s slow to make friends, so they probably met via Atticus, and outside of school at that, since this is also the first day Alexis would be at the academy. The fact that Zane has met Atticus’s family but the reverse never occurred makes it feel likely to me that he might have been specifically trying to avoid letting Atticus meet his parents for one reason or the other, no?
And changing course a bit here, we all know what happened to Zane in season 2. This would help explain why he got as shaken up as he did to where he continued in with the underground dueling style. If him being a pro duelist was so important to his family, they’d have drilled it into his head. This was his life, this was his goal, this was everything he was meant to be. So what could you have expected to happen when he failed, especially for the first time in his life at dueling? He’d be totally desperate to make it work, and after a major losing streak, underground dueling pushed him into a position where he won. Even with the pain, he’d have thought it a better alternative than disappointing his family. So he kept doing the thing that worked, even at his own expense.
There’s probably more that can be scrounged up and/or that I’m forgetting, but this is what comes to mind right now lol. And yes, I just spent that whole time typing this out 😅
