#questiontocertaintyofreality

I've said this numerous times before how I'll give more leeway to individual short comics with the hyperbole being used to quickly and clearly deliver a punchline with a limited amount of time and space (like in the chapter 91 "Hayflick Effect" → "Hey! Flick!" bonus comic), but I hate when Emma is stripped of all her nuance to facilitate familiar shipping formulas. I understand how this snowballs from innocuous offhand jokes in the fandom, but it's unfortunate when these things overtake popular perception of her. She's emotionally intelligent and cunning (we see this early on when she's brazen enough to muse what Conny's up during her confrontation with Isabella in the hallway, all while keeping up the most cheerful front), so I always enjoy reading fic that keeps that balance in mind.

Beautiful, a simply beautiful exchange of greetings.

The preestablished Noremma is absolutely delightful. Another thing thing I've mentioned before is my dislike of Norman being extremely uncharacteristically nebbish or aggressively confident and suave when pursuing relationships that' works in tandem's usually packaged with Emma becoming bizarrely demure. Again, I understand the appeal of stock scenarios, but it's not something I enjoy reading for them. I adore when they reach this level of knowing, playful banter with an underlying thrum of challenge, bred of familiarity at which boundaries can be teasingly skirted and which are low blows and off-limits, and founded on them being equals (after both of them, to different degrees, placed each other on pedestals).

I generally have two default outlines for how I see REN getting together: all together at once, or NE getting together first before roping Ray into the relationship. Here it's clearly the latter, though with a bit of a twist in that NE isn't as intimately familiar with Ray stemming from a shared childhood, but there is an awareness of him being out there. There's also the layer of longing that I personally vibe with for him and incorporate into my interpretation of the ship that can be summed up as "Ray is first to know, last to go, and Emma is last to know, first to go." (Because when there’s something she wants and believes it’s correct to do so, she just goes for it. There might be some delay in trying to find the correct timing, but the progress on it dramatically picks up when she realizes, "wait, why aren’t we together? We should fix that." lfjldj adore that respectful tenacity and ambition.)

With Ray, there's a denial born from years of steeling away his heart so he would have the mental fortitude to see off multiple children on their shipment days and a bone-deep belief that after everything he's done, he doesn't deserve such love. He is committed to the vow he makes to Emma in chapter 38 about living on to protect their family, and multiple times he's at the center of discussions what's the best path forward to secure the safety of his friends and family. He can be in the spotlight for that, but when it comes to advocating for his own wants, he falters; accepts that internal strife born of self-loathing as penance for everything he's done to reach this point, prostrates himself to the idea that Emma and Norman are beyond him when it comes to matters of the heart, and attempts to twist and contort to himself he's content to live the remainder of his days with this secret if it means they'll be happy together. (I'll also do a quick shoutout to @salsae's vowsverse for the ultimate breaking down of this wall; simply spectacular culmination of all the build-up over the years.) But all this is underlined by a desperate clinging to the hope that a future with them is possible, a hope that he would never dare put to words but still subconsciously lingers as he tries to extinguish it.

Tying that long tangent back around to this AU, again, Ray doesn't know the two as intimately as he does in canon, but there's a spark of hope at the thought of a different future for himself that he wrestles with, griping over the ludicrousness at the pair's goal and fighting them tooth and nail with each step of their approach, yet he's still the one to initiate their game and can't help but want to meet them to see if there's a foundation where his hope can bloom.