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goldiipond · 1 year

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ray tpn is autistic and i'm gonna tell you why now

ray is one of the most heavily autistic-coded characters i can think of, and i've been wanting to write up a post going over as many of his autistic mannerisms as i can because there is a lot. this will probably be long because i am also autistic and i am especially autistic about ray, so please enjoy while i psychoanalyze this anime boy with way more scrutiny than anyone would consider healthy <3

body language

perhaps one of the strongest arguments for ray's autism can be made by looking at his body language. ray tries to keep a stoic, neutral expression and voice the majority of the time (though he's often quite. bad at that too) but he is always extremely expressive through his movements and gestures, the most noticeable of which being the use of his hands. pretty much every character uses hand gestures, but ray is ridiculously excessive. it'd take frankly way too long to compile every instance of this (or even half) throughout the manga, so here's a small collection of gestures from s1 of the anime to give an idea:

note that this is not even close to all of them and that he's exactly like this in the manga as well, though the animation and its use of snappy, exaggerated movements does help to make these much more noticeable.

moving away from his hands there's also just a lot of really expressive full-body language as well, such as this friendly chokehold:

this dramatic shrug:

and this even more dramatic flop:

just to name a few. basically, ray has a thing for grand unnecessary movements and no one is surprised.

poor emotional regulation and masking

as i mentioned before, ray tries really really hard to bottle up his emotions and keep a sort of stoic persona during his time at gracefield. he's also really really bad at doing this. not terrible, as he was able to keep up a believable enough front that none of the other kids saw anything odd about his behavior for 6 years, but that's also because he deals with so much more stress once the events of the escape arc actually get going. there is a stark difference between his quiet and detached demeanor while emma and norman are still in the dark about the house, and him nearly having a meltdown every time something strays from his meticulously crafted plans while they actually begin making their preparations to escape over the course of the arc.

just a few examples of this include him nearly having a breakdown when emma insists on taking everyone:

or one of my favorite anime exclusive moments where he strains his voice while yelling at isabella to the point he breaks into a coughing fit:

and it's not just big flashy meltdowns, but little bursts of anger as well. shoutout to this moment in particular where he launches this bucket with enough force to tear up a bit of the damn ground:

this emotional instability can be seen after the escape as well, the most glaring example being how he interacts with yuugo:

their dynamic in general really does a good job of showing ray’s mental state after the escape, because pre-goldy pond yuugo is An Asshole. and ray is so, so easy to piss off and quite frankly tired from bottling up his emotions for so long that every interaction with said asshole is a massive struggle to keep himself from physically attacking him.

as for the topic of masking, that’s what ray’s attempts to hide his emotions feel like to me. ray is constantly in danger of losing isabella’s trust, whether that be by revealing he may be a little more attached to the other kids than he lets on or by showing too much emotion that the other kids start to wonder what the hell’s going on. ray has to constantly hide and cover up his emotions with more palatable ones for others out of fear of looking out of place or being seriously hurt, and well if that doesn’t just describe autistic masking to a tee i don’t know what does.

maybe one of the things that gets me the most about that is that he's essentially been masking for about half of his life, and doing that for any extended period of time is extremely draining. ray has been drained to the point that he will have full meltdowns when put under any sort of stress and when you take into account the fact that he already has pretty severe anger issues as a result of his trauma, it's really no wonder he has such a short fuse.

lack of a filter when speaking

ray is a very blunt person. he speaks matter-of-factly and he wastes no time in getting straight to his point, sometimes with only a single sentence:

the way he talks is also pretty significant, as he generally has a more monotone way of speaking. he really only yells when he gets really worked up which like i said, happens a lot, but there’s almost no inbetween for him. pre-escape, he tries to show as little emotion in his voice as possible outside of his outbursts.

as for post-escape ray, he does seem to show much more emotion in the way he speaks. its a bit harder to judge, as nothing past the escape arc was ever adapted into the anime (s2 isnt real it cant hurt you) but his facial expressions become much more varied and it’s easy to say his vocal inflections likely do as well. however, what we can say for sure is that he remains just as blunt as ever:

no matter how comfortable he becomes with expressing himself, this aspect of his speech never seems to change.

while we’re on the topic of his speaking mannerisms please also direct your attention to these panels:

these need no explanation.

sensory issues. so many sensory issues

briefly moving back to the subject of ray’s hands, i couldn’t help but notice during my countless s1 rewatches that they are almost never just resting at his sides. if he's not using his hands for unnecessary gestures they are either shoved into his pockets, or he's crossing his arms. it's very likely his arms default to these positions because they offer a sort of sense of security, the former keeping his hands covered and the latter keeping him more closed off, almost like he's constantly hugging himself. basically, ray is a 'likes to feel covered and secure' autistic and if he was buried in weighted blankets he'd probably love it.

also tying into the ‘likes to feel covered’ aspect of ray’s autism is this scarf he acquires sometime during the volume 12 timeskip:

it’s a well known autistic thing to get attached to articles of clothing and wear them as much as possible, and boy does ray get attached to this scarf. i can count 2 post-timeskip scenes off the top of my head that have him not wearing this scarf, and the image on the right takes place a full 2 years after the left one in canon. he has no explicitly stated emotional attachment to this scarf and we don’t even know how he got it, just that he almost never takes it off. it could easily be seen as a comfort item, maybe he just likes the way the fabric feels or the extra coverage it offers him. there is post-canon content that depicts him without it, but the fact that he wore it almost nonstop for at least 2 years straight is still pretty significant.

another sensory thing i feel is worth mentioning is that ray seems to have a very specific tolerance threshold for physical contact. he seems fine initiating touch himself, and touches from emma and norman are generally alright, likely because they are the only people he has openly allowed himself to be close with his entire life. sudden touches from others however, are a different story. the one that immediately comes to mind is this interaction with don:

don in particular is someone ray becomes pretty close to, and i would say that besides the obvious growth with emma and norman, don is likely the person we see the most development with with in terms of their relationship. him having this reaction to a hug from someone he’s so close to seems indicative of some issues with unexpected contact.

and finally one of my absolute favorite things the anime added, which is ray experiencing what looks a lot like sensory overload:

this takes place right after the argument with isabella, which ended with him being knocked to the floor and locked up in a room by himself, so its needless to say that he’s pretty shaken up. he gets so overwhelmed that all he can do is yell and desperately reach for any sort of stimulation to keep him grounded, curling in on himself and aggressively ruffling up his hair. i genuinely cannot think of an allistic explanation for this scene.

and basically, he is just so autistic

all in all, theres some pretty damn solid evidence for ray being autistic and whether it was intentional or not, the sheer amount of autism-coding present in ray’s writing is almost impossible to ignore. i love some good projection but i don’t even need to do that much, hes just doing this all on his own. in conclusion:

#skye's ramblings #WELL. IT TOOK ABT AN ENTIRE DAY BUT HERE IT IS. READ MY ESSAY BOY #thank god for tublrs extended image limit am i right. had to switch to my laptop a third of the way through so it would let me add more <3 #and small shoutout to @fullscoreshenanigans for telling me how to make the gifs HGFGKJD #anywyay i had fun w this ray is so dear to me didyou know i love ray. ray #i am going to do something wild (putting a non-art post in the main tags) so hi tpn fandom i talk a lot. here's autism #the promised neverland #tpn #yakusoku no neverland #tpn ray

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