I saw that you mentioned a genderbend lawlight fic and I need to know all about that immediately šš
okay so yes the genderbend lawlight fic is real and unfortunately i have made it extremely difficult for myself lmao.
the basic set-up is an AU with no Death Note, no Kira etc. Light is working in the police/legal world, kind of Casey Novak inspired in the sense that sheās young and brilliant and very put-together and already good enough at her job that everyone knows it but still very aware that sheās a woman in rooms full of older men who are waiting for her to either prove sheās exceptional or prove sheās overreaching. So sheās at the police station a lot, Soichiro is there, Matsuda is there being painfully Matsuda, Aizawa is there having blood pressure issues, etc.
L is still L, but in this AU sheās not just randomly brought in when a case gets difficult. Sheās part of the NPA in this very specialist consultant role, so sheās not the chief and sheās not technically running everything in the normal way, but she has this weird unique power because everyone knows sheās brilliant and impossible and occasionally the only person in the room who can see whatās actually happening. Sheās also older than Light and already an established colleague of Lightās dad, which makes the whole thing so much worse in the best possible way because Light is very much aware that this woman is not some random mysterious rival she can compartmentalise neatly
Also itās not just me going āwhat if lawlight but lesbians.ā I mean. It is that. Obviously. But itās also not just that because the second you take away Kira and the Death Note, their whole dynamic changes anyway. Even if they were still men in this AU, it would already be different because canon lawlight is so built around Light being the thing L is hunting. The suspicion, the surveillance, the murder chess, the fact theyāre both performing at each other constantly. If thereās no Kira then you have to find a different engine for that obsession.
and then making them women changes it again, especially Light, because canon Lightās whole thing is that he is perfect. Perfect son, perfect student, perfect face to show the world, polite and handsome and clever and respectable in this very clean socially approved way. But if Light is a woman, that performance has a completely different rulebook. She canāt just be brilliant and polished, she has to be beautiful in the correct way, feminine in the correct way, ambitious in the correct way. She has to know exactly when to smile, when to soften, when to let someone think theyāve underestimated her and when to punish them for it. Too pretty and sheās vain, too clever and sheās arrogant, too charming and sheās flirting, too cold and sheās a bitch.
So sheās still doing the Light Yagami perfection thing, but with the extra nightmare layer of being a woman who knows everyone is reading her face, clothes, hair, voice, body language, all of it. And because sheās Light, sheās like okay cool, I will simply become terrifyingly good at this.
Misa is also still there, but as Lightās boyfriend. Heās still a model/actor and very beautiful and dramatic and Misa about everything, and Light is basically the final boss of 'I hate my boyfriend' except it also works perfectly for her because having this very public, very pretty boyfriend helps preserve the image sheās built of herself as this perfect straight girl with the perfect life. Like yes, she finds him deeply irritating, but heās also useful, and Light Yagami would absolutely stay in a relationship partly because it looks right.
L is hard for a different reason because Lās weirdness also changes when sheās a woman. Male L gets away with being strange because heās a genius and everyone sort of files it under eccentric detective behaviour. Female L being blunt and unsettling and not remotely interested in being pleasant has a different social weight to it. Sheās still rude and brilliant and sleep-deprived and impossible but people react differently to a woman who refuses to do any of the little performances that make women easier to tolerate.
and then, because apparently I enjoy giving myself problems, Light and L do start secretly hooking up. So you get this extremely messy thing where theyāre having this affair and then going into work like normal, except Lightās literal father is there, and Light knows sheās sleeping with his colleague, and sheās also hiding the fact that sheās a lesbian, and the case and the affair start bleeding into each other in a way thatās very normal and healthy and definitely not going to ruin anyoneās life.
so yeah, the inspo is very Casey Novak/Olivia Benson procedural women being insanely competent in horrible rooms, plus Jenniferās Body for the whole toxic girlhood/what if looking at another girl too hard ruined your life of it all. The general vibe is toxic lesbian psychological warfare with a murder investigation happening somewhere in the background and everyone pretending this is about the case.
I do love it, itās just very much one of those fics where every decision has twelve consequences and then I have to go lie down, but pls let me know if this is something anyone would actually read!
amandla
theartofmadeline
titsay
2087
ellievsbear
