I feel like every time I write something down about Ray, not just in tag rants or meta posts, in my notes app and in my live-blogging too, I'm always sort of... circling a point. Not to avoid saying it, but sort of feeling out what I want to say, and hilariously the Ray/Ray post and a nap kind of helped me. And it's because I do think he'd go for it, but not out of sitcom narcissism. I don't think Ray is a narcissist, in the clinical or colloquial way. I've seen Ray described as a hedonist, and while that's reasonable enough shorthand, I think it's worthwhile to point out that his pleasure-seeking traits and behaviors are fundamentally reactive.
The conclusion I've been drawing since the first episode, and I bring it up now and again as my least favorite trope in the show, is that Ray's (or rather Captain Man's) body is essentially public property.
People hurt him all the time. Full stop. His job necessitates being hurt to stop villains and henchmen and general public nuisances, but beyond that it seems everyone from children to little old ladies feel comfortable causing him pain for their own amusement. They do it alllllll the time. It's a common enough gag in the first two seasons, and then it's trotted back out just as I think it's finally died.
Jasper was a big recurring offender—I didn't keep track but in the first episode he breaks a baseball bat on Ray at his birthday party as a party trick (notably without permission), and then continues to purposefully and accidentally hurt Captain Man in further encounters. I genuinely think this is a primary reason why Ray persists in not liking Jasper. Charlotte is also not immune, last noted in Meet Cute Crush when she also beats on Ray with a bat in a failed attempt to kill a scorpion hitching a ride on his back. And even Henry, my beloved babygirl, as recently as part 2 of "Back to the Danger" fills in for Ray's father (and that's a whole 'nother spiel of its own) in unprovokedly smashing baby!Ray over the head after first being densitized. Schwoz also periodically takes great glee in testing out weapons on Ray and/or tricking him into doing it to himself.
I understand that it's a sitcom and the writers weren't thinking too hard about it, but that's why I'm here; and I've got well-documented thoughts about bodily autonomy and agency.
As far back as eight years old, Ray Manchester has been consistent taught and reinforced that his body is not something that gets protected from pain and not something he is allowed to defend against pain. His body isn't his because, as it is indestructible, it now exists for the benefit of others. It's not quite depersonalization, not quite derealization, but having your right to your own body systematically (and literally) beaten out of you does fucked up things to your brain.
Going back to the semi-jokey Ray/Ray post for a second, I opened up a new notes app entry and jotted down an idea before rolling over to nap and now I'm looking at that idea. Because nestled in some parentheses between logistical suggestions is "attracted to himself partially because he's so decoupled himself and his identity from his physical body?" And let's talk about that.
Yeah yeah the joke is that Ray is so self-obsessed and egoistic that he's almost explicitly attracted to himself. He's already very obsessed with his looks as a means of attracting outside validation (again, another talk entirely, partially addressed in failed toxic masculinity post), but I think these are related but still separate things. Being handsome is pretty much (in his view) his only redeeming feature with which to get someone new to care about him. But when faced with both images and literal different versions of himself, there's a strange disconnect. Ray passes the mirror test of course, he understands that those physical representations are him, but in a very real way, he doesn't view his own body as him. Because his body is public property, and it's purpose is to be hurt.
So when he's (barely) functioning in the world as Ray Manchester, he's a pleasure-seeker. He indulges in great amounts of food and drink (including things that he's allergic to, but I don't have time to unpack allllll that), he dates (and presumably fucks) around constantly and seemingly without managing to build meaningful emotional connections, he's constantly learning new skills and picking up random hobbies to keep himself entertained during downtime, he day-drinks in front of children (look me in the eye and tell me the Elevator Incident wasn't coded as Ray being drunk and clumsy), his own actor supposedly headcanons that he does heavy drugs out of sheer boredom (because they can't damage him) to explain his erratic behavior. And he's very, shall we say, territorial about these things; he throws his little sitcom trantrums whenever his pleasure-seeking behavior is denied or disrupted, usually by the plot and frequently by the need to return to being Captain Man.
Captain Man's purpose is to be in pain whenever necessary (and 'necessary' often includes 'for the amusement of others'); so Ray Manchester's purpose is to avoid pain and seek out pleasure whenever possible (sometimes to his, and others', own detriment).
All of this is why the show exists. Why Ray wanted a sidekick, and a replacement, so that he could one day stop being Captain Man (pain sponge) and commit to being Ray Manchester (ostensible hedonist). And then that sidekick becomes not only his best friend, the closest he has to family, but the person around whom he orbits. He accidentally finds someone he's allowed to love, someone he's allowed to keep, someone that not only makes being Captain Man less painful but also, crucially, more pleasurable; it becomes a bonding activity, a way of spending more time with his favorite person, and that's ultimately why it falls apart so spectacularly in the end of Henry Danger and has to be repaired in Danger Force. When being Captain Man becomes less of a burden, he's open to continuing indefinitely, and that's uhhhhhh bad for Henry who's sort of been having the opposite experience with superheroing.
In conclusion, being Captain Man sucks immeasurably and while I don't support accidentally ruining random thirteen-year-olds' lives about it I totally get where he was coming from. And Carl Manchester can meet me in the fucking pit.
...........anway! This has been percolating for a couple weeks now, so I'm glad to have finally pinpointed what I was getting at. All it finally took was putting genuine thought into how likely I think Ray is to fuck a copy of himself if given the chance (and that's not even getting into the man's latent bisexuality and demiromanticism. Because that would necessitate bringing up Henray again and I swear I can make posts that aren't about that).
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