we dig our own graves

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[kiyomitakada]

[ @lawlightweek2026 day 5: ace/love | also on ao3! ]

Light-kun?

I’m fine. I’m just tired all of a sudden.

Light —

I said I’m fine —

Do you want your shirt back?

What? Oh. Sure.

...

...

...

Don’t.

You’re tearing up.

It’s an allergic reaction.

You don’t have any notable allergies, Light-kun.

Yeah, that’s the information you got from before I started working with you all day. I’ve developed a negative proximity reaction to your voice.

Hm. And here I thought we were getting along well.

Ha ha.

...Did I do something wrong?

Huh? No. Why would — no. I told you, I’m just tired.

You seemed awfully energetic just a few minutes ago.

Just stop, all right? Stop talking. It’s late. Let me get some rest and then I’ll do whatever you want in the morning.

What do you think I want, Light-kun?

What people want.

Sugar?

Pfft. — Don’t play dumb, Ryuzaki. It’s not a good look on you.

Do you consider yourself a person?

What?

Light-kun. You don’t have to do what I want. I’m not interested in forcing you into anything.

Oh, that’s funny! What are these handcuffs for, Ryuzaki?

...

...I’m not going to punch you.

Thank you for your generosity.

I don’t want to fight. I’m not — this isn’t — it’s not because of you.

Mm. You don’t enjoy it, do you?

…

You’ve never enjoyed it. But why did you initiate, then?

Thought it’d be different with you.

Oh.

…What are you smiling for?

You must really like me.

Don’t flatter yourself.

…Light-kun? It doesn’t make you any less of a person.

I know that.

Do you?

Yes. Yes, obviously.

...

...

...You’re getting my shoulder wet, Light-kun.

Shut up.

Okay.

[kiyomitakada]

is misa the only one who ever attaches an honorific to ryuzaki’s name because that’s so

[kiyomitakada]

whenever someone says yotsuba is their favorite arc people always assume that it’s because of memoryless light and of course i think that’s critical to and a beautiful part of yotsuba arc but also what about liking yotsuba because misa and rem catch kira together. what about liking yotsuba because L is depressed. matsuda is there

[kiyomitakada]

#also lawzawa divorce (via @aizawashuichi)

ALSO LAWZAWA DIVORCE!!!!

[kiyomitakada]

whenever someone says yotsuba is their favorite arc people always assume that it’s because of memoryless light and of course i think that’s critical to and a beautiful part of yotsuba arc but also what about liking yotsuba because misa and rem catch kira together. what about liking yotsuba because L is depressed. matsuda is there

[tomb-mold]

the problem is i really do love staying up until one billion o'clock. it just cant be helped

[kiyomitakada]

would early arc 1 fem light yagami subconsciously imagine L as also a girl

[kiyomitakada]

i think light would definitely consciously think L was an adult man because who else gets that much power but underneath this belief are two contrasting ones she thinks about less: 1. the gendered nature of being surveilled makes her lean in the direction of L being a guy 2. the similarity between them makes her lean in the direction of L being a girl

[kiyomitakada]

i see your aiber x l and raise you aiber x watari (they bond over having families mentioned exactly once who have no idea where they fuck off to for months at a time)

[kiyomitakada]

aiber: sorry but i see you more like a son

L: oh (1 second of depression) … (0.1 seconds of deduction) you’re having sex with watari

aiber:

L: (scowling) you could have just said so

[kiyomitakada]

#get soichiro in there too (via @applestorms)

you’re so right hang on.

soichiro: i’m sorry but i see you more like a s— er. ryuzaki?

L:

soichiro: ryuzaki?

L: nothing i need to have a conversation with someone. thank you for your honesty yagami-san. [five minutes later over the phone] watari my colleagues are not a dating app

watari: [pointed silence]

L: they’re not YOUR dating app

[kiyomitakada]

would early arc 1 fem light yagami subconsciously imagine L as also a girl

[mellophiliac]

death note should have been a yuri

[xerith-42]

Death Note is a cautionary tale about what happens when you are given the vehicle to let the intrusive thoughts win

[kiyomitakada]

i've been reunited with my L noodle stopper after a week of road trip and it feels like [deletes three different sentences] okay maybe angie sijun lou was right not everything feels like something else. also post canceled why the fuck did i think it was siken who wrote 'jessica gives me a chill pill' it's the first time i've read the full thing it's really good

[frederickchiltonsdivacup]

AO3 Writer Affirmations:

I do not have to reinvent the wheel every time I write fanfiction

I do not have to make every chapter's word count above 1,000 in order for it to be good

It is okay if some things don't make sense

I can write whatever I want

I am writing this shit for free

If people don't like my stuff, they can block me. If they're being mean about it, I can block them.

The most important part of writing fanfiction is having fun

Writing fanfiction is supposed to be fun

I do not have to appeal to people

This shit is fun

I am doing this all for free, and anyone who objects can go eat wet sand and worms from the sidewalk

[kiyomitakada]

i always feel inexplicably not allowed to start working on fics for an event until the day of the event. it feels like cheating or something… this is why they’re always so short

[kiyomitakada]

it’s not that there’s no non-affectionate explanation for light saying “as long as we have [this chain] we die together, right?” like i do think this is a coping mechanism for the stress of being handcuffed to someone else 24/7. light needs to make sense of his entire life so he romanticizes. it’s not that he accidentally killed two people, it’s that he’s cleaning the world of rot. it’s not that he’s stuck at the side of someone who thinks he’s a murderer and is preventing him from any semblance of a normal life, it’s that they are working to catch a murderer together and are bound together as one both in life and in death. it just happens that the first thought process is laid out in his internal monologue for us to read and the second is mostly offscreen. but regardless you have to appreciate that the beautiful lie yotsuba light attempts to operate on for two timeskipped months is that he and ryuzaki are soulmates forever like what’s wrong with him

[kiyomitakada]

the way his eyes are hidden… man.jpg. oh light. this is right after L is talking about how light is even smarter than him and would be a great successor when L dies, etc. the actual genuine betrayal in that flinch. #1 expert in stockholm syndrome light yagami.

[kiyomitakada]

the fact that “this world is rotten” in the original jpn is “this world is rotting” is so interesting because it seems to imply light thinks the world used to be better which is naturally a very alarming sentiment especially in our two-decades-later times but it never really gets brought up again like it doesn’t factor into the rest of chapter 1 at all. light wants to make the world better but he doesn’t mention wanting to make it better “like before” or anything. the only other time i can think of this idea being brought up is during the warehouse speech where he mentions “we [humans] were actually regressing” (in the viz translation, i haven’t read any other version of that scene) which makes me think it’s at least somewhat relevant to his ideology but again it is not brought up again in the rest of the speech.

it’s fascinating though because ryuk echoes this sentiment in ch5 when he says the shinigami realm really has gone to the dogs these days, which is in jpn “the shinigami realm really is rotting” (ryuk and light use the same word). but with ryuk we know that it’s factually true that the shinigami realm used to be more active and more involved in the human world (rem mentions this independently to misa at some point); ryuk is dissatisfied with the current stagnant state of things and by dropping the death note one could argue he’s kind of trying to bring back that era, but again he never puts it in those words.

anyway i don’t know anything about 2000s japanese politics but i wonder if this was a common sentiment at the time? dn was written very contemporarily (one of light’s friends mentions the ongoing 2003-2004 recession) so maybe it was a frequent enough feeling/idea in the public consciousness for ohba to not feel the need to elaborate?

[navigatorsghost]

I can't speak to the Japanese politics side of this topic, but I do think you can definitely describe something as "rotting" even if you aren't drawing a comparison to a prior state. A maggot hatched in a corpse is aware of the rot around it even if it has no conception of the life that preceded that state, right?

Personally though I think it's interesting that when Ryuk is talking about the decay of the shinigami realm, Light goes "so look at what you see here and use that to fix it!" in one of his most sparkly-eyed moments of the whole series, so clearly he has some thoughts about the potential for improvement in both worlds. But he never really mentions the past or shows any signs of a nostalgic bent, so I don't actually think he's coming from some conservative-reactionary "things used to be better" standpoint tbh. It's more like he thinks it's always been like this (certainly in the human world), but he still doesn't believe it has to stay this way. Plus he does specifically adopt the title of "god of the new world", which makes me think he's mentally starting from scratch with intent to go forward, rather than looking for a template in the past.

Ryuk on the other hand might well be thinking back to an objectively better era of his own world, assuming his memories go back coherently that far (we don't know how old he is and we don't know how well shinigami memories work, so there's really no data there). But he seems at the same time to have a more nihilistic viewpoint than Light - he'd certainly like things to be different, but he looks so surprised and delighted when Light is just like "so fix it then!" As though it hadn't occurred to him before that anyone would think that was an option but he's definitely thinking about it now, which... honestly I find that scene one of the most adorable ones between them for that moment alone.

(Sorry, I'm not sure what point I'm getting at either, I'm rambling XD I just thought this was a really interesting post and wanted to poke at it!)

[kiyomitakada]

the fact that “this world is rotten” in the original jpn is “this world is rotting” is so interesting because it seems to imply light thinks the world used to be better which is naturally a very alarming sentiment especially in our two-decades-later times but it never really gets brought up again like it doesn’t factor into the rest of chapter 1 at all. light wants to make the world better but he doesn’t mention wanting to make it better “like before” or anything. the only other time i can think of this idea being brought up is during the warehouse speech where he mentions “we [humans] were actually regressing” (in the viz translation, i haven’t read any other version of that scene) which makes me think it’s at least somewhat relevant to his ideology but again it is not brought up again in the rest of the speech.

it’s fascinating though because ryuk echoes this sentiment in ch5 when he says the shinigami realm really has gone to the dogs these days, which is in jpn “the shinigami realm really is rotting” (ryuk and light use the same word). but with ryuk we know that it’s factually true that the shinigami realm used to be more active and more involved in the human world (rem mentions this independently to misa at some point); ryuk is dissatisfied with the current stagnant state of things and by dropping the death note one could argue he’s kind of trying to bring back that era, but again he never puts it in those words.

anyway i don’t know anything about 2000s japanese politics but i wonder if this was a common sentiment at the time? dn was written very contemporarily (one of light’s friends mentions the ongoing 2003-2004 recession) so maybe it was a frequent enough feeling/idea in the public consciousness for ohba to not feel the need to elaborate?