WHERE are you reading the light novels ohmigoodness
In addition to sound dramas and links I mentioned in this post, @1000sunnygo has graciously compiled what I believe is the most extensive master list of TPN material in the English-speaking fandom: https://1000sunnygo.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-promised-neverland-masterlist.html
Love the symmetry of these covers.
I already touched on what can be found in A Letter from Norman, and Sunny already outlined what can be found in the fourth one, so I’ll just briefly go over the second and even more briefly touch on the third since I haven’t read it in its entirety yet. (gotta savor the content 👌😩)
☆ The second light novel, Moms’ Song of Remembrance, released in January 2019, is split into two stories:
1. “The Starry Sky and Leslie’s List” (translated by c72684 here)
Isabella remembers helping Leslie with a list of goals he set out to accomplish before leaving Grace Field two days before he’s shipped out. It’s book-ended by segments set on January 15, 2046, where Isabella briefly chats with Phil, reflects on her relationship with Ray, and finds new purpose now that her children have proven she was wrong about escape being impossible.
(It’s roughly 52 pages in Word at 12 point Times New Roman font single spaced if one is wondering about the time commitment.)
2. “Searching for the Skies of Freedom” (translated by @standreamy and 14thNeah; many thanks!)
(It’s roughly 64 pages in Word using the aforementioned standard)
This was eventually turned into chapter 181.2 that features Krone during her first month of training to be a sister candidate where she reunites with her elder sister Cecile. The gist of the story is kept the same, however, the novel also:
Confirms sister candidates have the electronic chip surgery the day they arrive at HQ.
Expands upon the training sister candidates go through, specifically incorporating scenes of self-defense training and one on medical training. It’s also noted that cooking is not a priority for sisters during their first regiment of training; that’s only if they retrain to become one of the kitchen staff, which is one path of retraining they can take in the event they can’t secure a sister position at one of the plants. Others are teachers, child caretakers, and doctors/surgeons. (The better to keep them stratified and make it more difficult to fight the system.)
Has more scenes between Krone and Cecile.
Briefly looks into Grandma’s thoughts during the panel where she holds the embroidery with the map of HQ on it as a trophy.
Briefly features the scene in chapter 23/S1e07 where Smee gives Krone the Minerva pen.
☆ The third light novel, Records of Comrades, released in October 2020, is split into a prologue and three stories:
1. “Two Paths”: A story about Yugo and Lucas’ time at Glory Bell.
2. “Two Wills”: The story of Nigel and Gillian’s first few days at Goldy Pond. Nigel’s sister, Lala, and Gillian’s sister, Emilia, who are both briefly shown in chapter 77 are featured in here.
3. “Two Destinies”: The story of how Sonju and Mujika first met. Legravalima, Leuvis, and Yverk also appear in here.
(The document I have is 133 pages in Word at 14 point Verdana font single spaced.)
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don is the most underrated character in the entire series and i will stand by this forever. there are characters that deserve more attention and that get less attention than him but the difference between them is they do not have nearly as much presence in the story as don does. don (and gilda but she gets way more love) has the most importance and pagetime in the story besides the trio (you know. the main characters). hes smart and emotional and funny as fuck and his arc is a wonderful story about an insecure boy losing his sister and learning to overcome his insecurities and become more confident so that he can make sure he never loses any of his family ever again and in the escape arc he has one of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching scenes in the entire series. there is NO reason he gets so little attention from this fandom other than racism.
whats your favorite ff trope for the full score trio specifically? your least favorite?
I’m blanking on specific tropes and extremes because the content curation I do for myself mostly avoids this, but I relate to what @officersnickers mentioned in this post a lot:
Things done in fanfic that annoy me: Ray being constantly annoyed with Emma and Norman; listen, he‘s sarcastic and sometimes loses his temper, but overall, Ray always takes time to explain things that annoy him, without too much scolding. In some stories, I get the feeling he doesn’t even like Emma and Norman, the way he acts, or he drank too much edgy juice™ this morning. Also Norman being all bashful around Emma. He‘s certainly not a casanova, but I like to imagine he cooled down over his crush for her and is just as happy as Emma herself to experience new feelings alongside her. That being said, I don‘t really see Emma being either too shy around either of them or drifting into turbo mode when she‘s in the mood. I like her as a complex, more differentiated character and not a child in a teenager’s or adult body. She’s not dumb and she‘s not over the top 24/7.
So I guess it’s the flanderization of their characters for least favorite?
In an effort to incorporate Ray’s cheekiness/playful teasing that’s most prominent during his time at Grace Field (which I do enjoy and feel like circumstances lead him to refrain from doing this more post-Goldy Pond, both in-universe and metawise), some writers will go overboard and have it descend into almost sketch comedy levels of antagonistic hijinks. Which is fine if people want to write it since it’s all in good fun and they’re exploring things with these characters that appeal to them, but I don’t vibe with it very much.
I do like to think that side of him would resurface more once he’s in the safety of the human world, especially among those he’s closest to.
(Chapter 161; whenever I look at this too quickly I think Ray’s lightly yet exasperatedly slapping Norman instead of Norman being so excited and invigorated by Emma’s speech that he accidentally bonks into Ray and Ray’s reflexively shielding himself djfkdjs)
Norman’s love for Emma being misconstrued into extremes ranging from being embarrassingly and uncharacteristically nebbish to a yandere is also annoying (covered in this post by @princesscringe with some additional tags I also felt were relevant). Again chalking this up as more of a balance thing because young love can be intoxicating and overwhelming, and when you’re specifically writing fic where the focus is the ship, greater emphasis on those feelings naturally happens. But to the point where it’s all-encompassing and Norman neglects other people who are important in his life or seems to lack any ambition outside of the relationship is so off-putting. That’s part of the significance of his first exchange with Emma upon their reunion in the final chapter:
He starts off by emphasizing how, through mutual effort and support, the cattle children have been able to finally start thriving in life instead of merely surviving, and stressing how they’ve all been well, because Emma would hate if out of worry and fear for her they weren’t able to create some new happy memories and appreciate the freedom she sacrificed so much for.
While also showing he’s taken to heart what she said about being honest and vulnerable around others by openly acknowledging how even with all the good that came from this and the fulfillment he found in other pursuits and interactions, he still missed her terribly and wanted her as a part of his life. (If this arc was longer I would have liked to see the children struggling with conflicting feelings of bitterness over Emma’s choice to do this without consulting anyone after how the narrative repeatedly stressed against this level of individual self-sacrifice, but with the amount of pages Shirai had left I’m happy with what he chose to focus on.)
I do enjoy him being briefly stunlocked/flustered by something Emma or Ray say or do because that’s more in tune with how they’re all dynamic characters who are constantly changing and challenging each other as they grow older, tying into the emblematic “I’ll show you something cool, so shut up and follow” line infused with an infectious optimism for the future.
Emma being shy for a prolonged period of time is also off for me with the amount of self-confidence she displays. When there’s something she wants and believes it’s correct to do so, she just goes for it. (It’s why I always maintain she’s the last one to consciously realize and articulate her feelings in a relationship because once she does it’s like, “wait, why aren’t we together? We should fix that,” and the progress on it dramatically picks up lfjldj I love her respectful tenacity and ambition.) Yet pigeon-holing her as a genki girl is also dishonest to her character, even if she is incredibly exuberant and plucky in her default, unstressed state; she’s energetic but it’s with an acute awareness. (This is something I give more leeway to in individual short comics with the hyperbole being used to quickly and clearly deliver a punchline with a limited amount of time and space).
For favorite…does hurt/comfort count as a trope or a genre? I like them taking turns with that for each other. 🖤🧡🤍
AAAA tell me about your post canon raydon hcs!! if you please!!
answering this a few days late bc my brain is full of bees but AWWWWW HELL YAH THANK YOU!! THEY MEAN THE WORLD TO ME so!!
fair warning this is really long. i don't know how this happened. what. <3
i like to think they start dating probably a few months after getting to the human world. they had developed romantic feelings for each other a while before that (likely sometime during the vol12 timeskip because they had a lot of time to grow closer while traveling <3) but it took them both a bit to realize those feelings especially due to being a bit preoccupied with. all the problems <3 they were obviously still really close and important to each other regardless
ray was probably the first to realize the way he loved don was different from the way he loved everyone else. he probably didn't really think much about the way he got butterflies whenever he was near don until he took a moment to be like oh. fuck. a more funny alternative to this is him offhandedly mentioning the way don makes him feel to emma and norman (i am looking away from emmas memory loss i do not see it <3) n being like 'yeah that's weird huh. anyway' and they just sit there like. i know what you are
it's not that don is oblivious, at least not to his own feelings. i think it might take him a bit longer to realize his feelings for ray because he's just. always allowed himself to love everyone so much more openly and freely than ray has. don has soo much love that he is constantly giving to others that he doesn't really. see his constant desire to be near ray as anything unusual for a while. he does notice how uncharacteristically shy he gets around ray, and his thought process was probably a gradual shift from 'well i didn't really get to have a bond with ray like everyone else growing up so i don't really know what he's okay with' to 'well of course i'm nervous. ray's so cool and smart and amazing so anyone would be nervous. this is true' he's a dork but he does figure it out eventually <3
after getting to the human world they naturally start hanging out with each other a lot more. once they both have some idea of their own feelings they take every chance they can to hang out together because being around each other just feels so nice. they're very sweet <3
i talked abt this in the tags of the post that prompted this ask hsfgfg but its really sweet to me so!! i think after ray's reaction to the hug in chapter 148 don makes sure to be more aware of and respectful of ray's boundaries regarding physical touch. he tries to make his intentions clear before hugging him and give ray a chance to say no if he doesn't want to be touched at the moment. the sheer amount of affection don had to give was really overwhelming for ray at first, but as they hang out more he slowly becomes more comfortable with don's touch and eventually builds up the confidence to start initiating contact himself as well <3
adding on to that last sentence, don has no idea how to react to this at first. he is so much more used to giving others affection than receiving it that when ray holds his hand for the first time his brain just factory resets. it's not like he's not used to receiving affection at all, but he's just. a very affectionate person so when someone, especially ray, initiates instead he just gets super emotional <3 it is not hard to make don emotional and ray is at least partially responsible for 3 separate instances of don crying happy tears in the manga so. he just loves him very much ok
don would probably be the one to confess his feelings! it was something he spent days hyping himself up for and then finally did on one of their hangouts. i can imagine don stumbling over his words even though he rehearsed them several times and ray doesn't know what he's talking about and he's trying not to laugh because man he's just so cute. and then don takes a breath and just gently takes ray's hands and says 'i like you, ray. i've liked you for a really long time.' and ray is just so taken aback he's just. absolutely speechless. and don asks if he'd like to go on a date sometime and ray just loses his composure completely and starts crying and all he can manage is a shaky 'yeah...' and don is a little shocked because its so rare to see ray cry like this but then he's just so overjoyed he hugs ray as tightly as he can and they both start laughing and AAAUGH. sorry what. my demons
it might take them a little bit after they first start dating to really 'act' like a couple? they're both new to the concept of dating as a whole and have no idea what they're doing but i don't think it'd take too long for them to sort of go back to the level of comfort and familiarity they had before. ray has some lingering feelings of self-doubt over whether he really 'deserves' someone as amazing as don but being around him just feels so right and don's affection is typically enough to reassure him at least a little. if he ever voiced these feelings to don i think don would go off on a massive tangent about everything he loves about ray and how he means the world to him and probably get a little too emotional and ray wouldn't really know how to react but he would be touched to say the least and he'd probably think about don's words a lot for. a very long time
while a lot of don's poor self-esteem is resolved over the course of the series, i think he might still experience some self-doubt on rare occasions as well, and he might have trouble opening up to ray about his problems at first. don has always been very open about his emotions, but when it comes to ray he knows all the shit he's been through and his own issues might seem. silly when compared to ray's? he isn't afraid ray would judge him, but he also doesn't really feel like he's 'justified' in causing ray to worry about him when he's been through so much already. but at this point ray knows don well enough to sense something is wrong and when he gets don to eventually tell him this he just explains that he never wants don to feel like his needs aren't as important as his own, and that he wants to be there for don the same way don's always there for him. then he pulls him close and softly says 'tell me what's wrong, don.' and don just breaks and ray just holds him and lets him get it out and its just. very very sweet jdastsadgdsghgdfggfdfghjg. i;m unwell
plagiarizing my tags from my most recent art of them but their first real kiss was initiated by ray! theyre probably cuddling a bit and just talking about whatever and he doesn't really realize what he's doing until he has don's face cupped in his hands and suddenly his heart is pounding and his hands are shaking and he can't even make eye contact and he just says really quietly, 'can i kiss you?' and don is so absolutely awestruck that all he can manage to do is pull ray closer and nod and its just so. it's about the little burst of confidence after a childhood of self-loathing its about the soft tenderness they both deserve so so much it's about [stares into the ocean
OKAY those were long (<- unwell) time for some more general hcs [strikes a pose]
ray is gay and don is bi! don's line about wanting to date a cute girl in s1 plays and then ray walks into the frame and don's like oh. a cute boy is also good
they're also t4t because all of my ships are t4t. you understand
while i mentioned him being more mindful of ray's boundaries, don is just soo physically affectionate that he doesn't even realize he's doing it sometimes and it makes ray's head spin. i can imagine them walking together and don just sort of grabbing ray's hand without really thinking about it and it taking him a good moment to notice 'hey ray's face looks a lot redder than usual wonder what's up with that' and then taking just a bit longer before being like OH. fool <3
MORE PHYSICAL AFFECTION YAYY anyway ithink they cuddle a lot. ray is 'i need to be swaddled and snug at all times' autism and don is 'if im not constantly holding or snuggling something i'll die' autism and thats why they are the perfect couple
once they do get more comfortable being a couple i think cheek kisses become a very common occurrence among the usual affection, especially from don. they both get flustered pretty easily, but when don kisses ray's cheek he just melts. this also creates a scenario where if don's on ray’s left he'll push ray's fringe to the side so he can kiss him. don did this once and whispered 'my emo boy <3' and ray almost died of laughter
adding onto that last scenario, don likes to think of the most unbearably cheesy pet names specifically to get ray's reaction. if it came to serious ones though i don't think don would use them that often if at all because he just really loves ray's name <3 ray lovingly calls don a dork all the time though
don really likes playing with ray's hair. goes with my hc that ray grows his hair out a bit and his hair is also probably really soft and don loves it. the feeling of don running his fingers through his hair is really calming and comforting to ray and don's probably the only one who could get away with touching it for any extended period of time
they have movie nights with emma, norman and gilda (because im weak for the 'group of best friends ends up living together' trope) and they all usually end up falling asleep in a big pile on the couch. ray usually snuggles up against don and ends up using him as a pillow <3
speaking of friends i have a really funny hc where it was very very common for ray to playfully tease norman when he had a crush on emma, so once he notices how hopelessly smitten ray is with don, norman is an absolute menace. they are the besties ever to me
don absolutely adores ray's singing. ray hums to himself while cooking and don will just come up behind him and wrap his arms around him and just listen to his voice, and sometimes he'll ask ray to sing for him and listen with this look of just. pure adoration <3 ray's not that confident in his singing and i think it's something that's very personal to him as he really only did it as a coping mechanism growing up, but seeing the way don lights up when he sings is really really special to him and i think it'd get him to appreciate his own voice more as well <3
on the other hand ray really loves don's laugh. it's just very loud and unrestrained and genuine like everything else don does and ray's heart absolutely melts when he hears it. ray will find any excuse to make don laugh <3
ray has come a long way with his healing in the years since the gracefield escape, but he still has lasting scars from that trauma that will never fully go away and don will drop everything to comfort him through his more emotional moments and the rare panic attack. it means a lot to ray that he's finally able to cry freely and openly and don will hold him as tight as he can and run his fingers through his hair and listen to him for as long as he needs. im very emotionally stable about this incase you were wondering
ray is a serial clothing thief. don's sweaters just feel warmer somehow <3 ray will walk into the room in the morning wearing a pink t-shirt with a bunny on it and the others instantly know it's not his HDSFG
don canonically gets warm really easily so i think if they were somewhere outdoors and ray got cold don would give him his jacket without question. ray felt bad leaving don without anything to keep himself warm and knew don wouldn't take no for an answer so he settled on giving don his scarf as a compromise. don got really really emotional over ray offering him such an important comfort item and tried to decline but ray also wouldnt take no for an answer so he ended up accepting it <3 it meant a lot to both of them
don is prone to going on long enthusiastic rants when he’s excited about something and his joy is so contagious for ray he just can't help but smile and laugh along with him. he can absolutely talk ray's ears off and ray adores every word and sometimes they might even start happy stimming together <3 autistic love its everything to me. you understand
OKAYTHATS. ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT FOR NOW <3<3<3 i definitely have more but i'd have to dig for them and i feel this post is really long so <3 but yeah they mean a lot to me. here's a kinda old little doodle i'm still really fond of as prize for reading this ridiculously self-indulgent rant
i know ice said this multiple times but i loterly love your pfp ssoososo much he looks so squishy everytime i see u on my dash he makes me smile. my friend don<33333
YAH YAH YAAAAYY thank you bestie ilove him too <3 he was soo fun to draw and he makes me smile too <3 icon beam of happiness you love don soooo much
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