so is nobody else aware that L and Light's names are technical opposites of one another?
ok, so, this requires a lot of elaboration, so bear with me here.
first thing to clarify is Light's name. without too much deliberation, Japan has this phenomenon (to my western understanding) wherein certain parents will name their children after English words. (this could potentially include other western languages; i am unsure.) as japanese is a syllabary, most of the time, these words cannot actually be pronounced properly in japanese. these names are often also written with presumably completely unrelated characters. light's name is one of these, having to be pronounced as "raito" in japanese, and written (as he so kindly explains to naomi) with "tsuki," the character for "moon."
these names are called "kira-kira names." i am not joking. (that L never made a joke about light's name being literally a "kira-kira" name leaves me with a harrowingly destitute void in my soul.)
last thing we need to do is look at the translation for "Yagami," which approximates (to my knowledge!) as meaning "high," as in "high in power" (not "high" as in "stoned," because that's probably more like L's thing).
so, if we take an extrapolation of this, and replace light's names with their written functions—his forename as being a kira-kira name and being written as moon, and his surname (depending on how it's written) meaning "high"—we can evaluate an interpretation of light's name as being, extensively, "kira-kira moon high."
maybe my fellow death note crazies can see where i'm going with this.
now, let's look at L's name, which is far more self-explanatory. his name is L Lawliet (in case you are somehow on the death note tags and were not already aware), which is pronounced "L low-light." (which, as s a side note, is a hilariously unintuitive pronunciation for his name, implying that Light (if he ever heard it) would almost certainly misspell it (made even more likely as a native japanese speaker, even given how good his english is) and potentially make him immune to a human using the death note by misspelling it six times.)
so, if we put the *phonetic* pronunciation of L's name next to the *written* extrapolation of light's, and reduce light's name to its logical conclusion, we get "L low light" and "Kira moon high." (hyphon in L's name and hyphon + second 'kira' in light's removed, as light himself is not both kiras, and removing the second kira also removes the hyphon in his name, whereafter we then logically can remove the hyphon in l's name. like homoerotic algebra.)
furthering the analogy, and allowing a little leniency (given all the other obvious similarities) that "light" can be taken as the opposite to "moon"—as in, "sunlight," and furthermore, "sun"—we output "L low sun" and "Kira moon high."
if you interpret L as the sun and Light as the moon, then congrats, it's already spelled out for you. if you interpret L as the moon and light as the sun, then it's like they carry the symbolic celestial analogies of one another in the other's name, which is some crazy soulmate shit. if you're like me, and interpret them as being both but in different ways, then both ways are true simultaneously. (to me, it speaks to how similar they ultimately are that you can interpret them as being both the sun and moon, albeit in different fashions.)
either way, they have gay ass little names and i can't believe i've never heard anybody talk about this before. so eat up, death note tumblr. enjoy your meal.
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