#fss chatter

(Chapter 121 | Chapter 122 | Chapter 123)

These panels are especially great for the parallel composition in chapter 114 (@just-like-playing-tag has a lovely edit of it here).

Further underlining how similar they are.

I've seen people lament a shift in Ray's personality post-escape, but that's more to do with the narrative not allowing for as many opportunities for his impish side to surface. The tradeoff is that with Ray's vow to Emma in chapter 38, there's more focus on how he's just as family-oriented as she is now that he can express his affection and care without fear of retribution.

The burden of being the eldest of the escapees weighs more heavily on them now that the safety afforded by the familiar prison of Grace Field is gone. Even Emma isn't immune from the toll it takes on her.

(Chapter 109; excellent panel composition on Demizu's part to have that giant block of text all in the bottom right as opposed to splitting it across multiple panels so it dwarfs and looms over Emma)

And despite living on in part for him, the loss of Norman was devastating for both her and Ray.

(Chapter 64)

Their best friend effectively rising from the dead is nothing short of a miracle, but their time apart has sharpened his ruthlessness.

(Chapter 121)

Like Ray, Emma is logical, even if she's more inclined to entertain ideals. In the face of everyone's joy and relief at Norman's plan, she can't bring herself to speak up. Not with how pragmatic it is, not with how dire the circumstances are. Like Ray, she's willing to put herself last for the people she loves, even if she'll carry that regret the rest of her life, because this is the best way.

(Chapter 122 | Chapter 32)

She does everything she can to squash her feelings down, framing the issue around herself. She's the problem.

(Chapter 121)

If Norman hasn't changed, then they're still on the same path heading toward the same goal, and any qualms she has are irrelevant.

But when Ray offers her sanctuary for honesty, she relents. If there's anyone for whom the ache of Norman's absence and the elation at his return would mirror her own, it would be Ray. If there's anyone who would understand Norman's point of view and all the intricacies and benefits of his plan, it would be Ray. They're both so much more strategic than her, and it's one of the many things she's admired about them.

(Chapter 5 | Chapter 88)

Emma knows Ray has all this in mind, and he's still giving her the space to share her true feelings without judgment or reprimand.

(Chapter 123)

Reminding her that even if there's a deep self-loathing snaking through her veins, paralyzing her with indecision, it's okay to advocate for yourself and the ideals you hold in your heart.

(October 2020 interview with Shirai and Demizu)

(KariNeba [約束のネバーランド 狩場からの脱出 | Yakusoku no nebārando kariba kara no dasshutsu | TPN: Escape the Hunting Grounds] on TPN wiki)

(Anime News Network article on the Amazon live action series published in 2020)

(S1 Episode 9)

You can feel the profound weight of a lifetime of suffering and loss on his face as he grapples with trying to keep his emotions out of what he’ll say next, because he never brings up how what happened in all the years prior made him feel, not even when Emma provides him with an opportunity where she prompts him with speculation about what it must have been like seeing dozens of their siblings off and being powerless to do anything about it in chapter 15/episode 5.

(Chapter 181.1)

He never explicitly colors his recollections with emotions when discussing them with Emma and Norman, how what was happening around him and what he and Isabella did made him feel, and only displays the full anguish of what that did to him when he's speaking with Emma on the night of January 14th. While the two knew Ray intended to kill himself to serve as a distraction for them to escape, Emma never knew how deeply he internalized his self-loathing and the belief that he deserved to die for his actions and inaction until that eventful night, otherwise she would have asked one of the other kids to go talk to him, if not just have said “fuck it” and did it herself, Isabella's watchful eye be damned. She would not have let him suffer to that degree so long on his own; it goes against every fiber of her being.

Ray keeps all of that inside though, because he doesn't want their pity. He doesn't believe he deserves any when he actively chose to become Isabella's informant and which children would be shipped out early due to his experimentation with the trackers, least of all from the two people who are firmly categorized as genuinely good and worth saving in his mind. He loves them enough to squash down his humanity and die for them.

On the other hand Norman….should we go with the hc that he knows that Isabella is Ray's mom…would never forgive Isabella for deceiving them and hurting them yes, but also because he could never forgive her for how she treated Ray

Not sure if you were the anon who sent this ask last year but REALEST SHIT he would be internally livid about how she treated Ray, even without that additional layer of their relationship.

Love overthinking this panel from chapter 174 and how Norman appears in it. It could easily just be due to knowing Ray had a unique relationship with Isabella from being her spy for years, but why not throw more angst in given his knowing and somber expression? Out of all the kids, he seems the most likely to piece things together on his own, especially with all the time he had to pore over things in Lambda. All the oddities he noticed between Isabella and Ray but chalked up to other things at the time, and isn't that so incredibly like Ray to keep that kind of conflict and pain to himself, either to spare others or because he loathes pity. There's a sad fondness tinging the thought.

(Norman also would have by then revisited the way Ray and Isabella behaved around each other and connected the dots and the blank spaces, hating the picture and feeling more and more sick as he got a glimpse of Ray's headspace on that terrible night before his birthday)

Again I think he would feel this way regardless, but presumably they read stories at Grace Field featuring biological parent-child relationships and probably pondered what those kind of ties could entail and feel like. It's knowing both were aware of those ties and that Ray hoped it would mean something to Isabella only to have that hope crushed in such a cruel manner that evokes additional ire from Norman, centering how Ray was feeling over the general expectation that sharing blood somehow elevated their relationship/made it more special with how at odds that feels with the themes of the series.

But yes, somehow them arriving at the topic (a number of ways it could come up, ranging from the more pointed to the more subdued), and Norman revealing he put the pieces together because he had a lot of time to think at Lambda, citing a few instances that made more sense to him because of it, and in an echo of their exchange in chapter 13/S1 episode 5, Ray responds with something along the lines of "I really can't get anything past you, huh."

Norman's intelligence is one of the many reasons he's fond of and cares for him, how capable and attentive it can make him, but there's bittersweetness and grief tinging those words due to the situation in general and at the thought of having been obvious about things back at the house that all circle back around to him loathing the idea of pity directed at him when roughly sixty of his siblings at Grace Field plant #3 suffered a worse fate under Isabella's care, a few of them as a direct result of his choices.

1.) Sonya

Feel like she's the least noteworthy/gets the least to do, and while not appearing the most gravely injured during the attack, she still took a beating.

(Chapter 85)

Lamentable in that I would have liked to see her bond more with Lucas as a fellow cane user after those events.

(Chapter 111)

2.) Paula

When I first read the story, I thought both she and Sandy died based on the amount of attention paid to how severe their injuries while receiving less spotlight than Oliver, who was also badly injured but seemed like he would be saved by virtue of his more prominent connection with Lucas.

(Chapter 85)

Reading through it quickly it looked like she'd been speared almost dead center through the neck instead of in her shoulder, but still very plausible to be a fatal blow left unattended for so long.

And then she and Sandy are both sleeping it off in chapter 96, so it's like, okay lol

(I've talked about this before here but this isn't actively wishing for the death or brutalization of children who are already victims of the farm system but wanting to see lasting consequences that have weight to them and seeing how characters cope. Sandy loses an eye, but much like Emma losing her ear, we never see him note his long-term struggles with that loss, such as having a larger blind spot, the anxiety and anger that would understandably result in, or even minor annoyances that when stacked together weigh on him. Compare to Lucas who, while still a very capable character, does reflect on how the loss of his arm impedes him. tl;dr was just hoping for a bit more from this, you feel me?)

3.) Sandy

Pretty much covered this in my reasoning for Paula.

(Chapter 85)

Like my guy not looking good.

Bit of a difficult placement though because he's my favorite out of my six choices due to this moment:

Touched on this before here, but one of the reasons the bonus scene from chapter 75 is among my favorites is because it's such a rare moment of insecurity that Emma lets slip about something concerning only herself. She tries to lightly laugh it off, but Sandy immediately recognizes how much it bothers her. After that initial moment of realization, he swaps to being upbeat without a hint of pity or tutting coloring his response. In this act, not only is some of Emma's inner turmoil over her missing ear alleviated, but it's another instance of her regaining that kind of elder sibling relationship she lost when all the older kids at Grace Field were shipped out.

I also like how he steps in to help soothe the younger children after Gillian and Ray argue in chapter 110 about whether to go after Lucas and Yuugo.

So this is what puts him above Paula for me, even though with all the blunt force trauma Nous was dishing out, he probably would be the first to die between the two of them.

4.) Theo

Honestly right after losing Jake and Monica he shouldn't be here, but this is a case of "I didn't want to sacrifice anyone else," so sorry Theo. 😞 Feels like you just vanish after the arc though.

5.) Pepe

He has more grounds to die than Theo due to being injured in the attack, but I like him being chef buddies with Ray and Mark. 🥺

(Chapter 84 Side Story | Chapter 98 | Chapter 110 Title Art)

6.) Nigel