Ok time to yap about Death Note now I guess but I feel like just as the fandom tends to dismiss L's problematic moments in order to fit him into the uncomplicated slot of "good guy", a good chunk of the fandom does the opposite, by making him straight up evil and by that, making him ooc.
Like I know we have several pieces of canon to go through and one is very different from the other, but, at least watching the anime, I never really got where the hot take of "L is a sociopath just like Light! He doesn't care about justice or the people around him, he's just interested in the game!" comes from.
L presents as someone who will do fucked up and morally grey things for the sake of the case, but with every instance there's a hard limit/rule/condition he sets that makes the decision morally grey/morally necessary. It's *not* morally good, but you also can't argue that L doesn't care about morality or justice, his view of it is just the very opposite of Light's, for good and for bad. Light sees some lives as inherently more worthy than others, while L sees *all* lives are equally worthy, and must all be judged under the same principles. His moral dilemmas are never about who deserves to live or die, but are complicated trolley problems about lives saved and lives lost. Yes, provoking Kira to kill an inmate in his place is fucked up, but the trolley problem is there. The inmate only has a few hours to live. Meanwhile, his death could save countless other lives.
There's when Near says they could kill Kira and his accomplice and take the Notebook without sufficient evidence, but he refuses to do this. "L wouldn't be able to rest if we do something like that." Near's vision of L of someone who does care about what actions are and are not justified.
And like, L obviously cares for the people around him. Ukita's death shows us that not only does L care, but it implies he personally feels responsible. That's not exactly sociopathic behavior to me lol.
L's character kind of strikes me as, well.
I've been watching Elementary on an off, a show about a modern Sherlock Holmes set in New York. In this show, Sherlock and his sober companion Joan Watson solve mysteries for the hell of it, because Sherlock is good and because the NYPD asks him to. And it's clear a lot of the reasons Sherlock does this is cause he's bored, because it's an outlet for him, because he loves his work, because he's obsessed with it. He's selfish and a man child and often resorts to very underhanded tactics to manipulate even his closest friends, but never do you get the sense that he doesn't care. He cares about his friends and he cares about the victims and he cares about justice. He's not a good person in this show, but he is not an evil person either, and he does a lot of good and has people who believe in him, in his abilities as well as his convictions.
L strikes me as this archetype of a character. A childish, eccentric, rude detective who is hard to work with and who sometimes loses sight of the justice of the case for the sake of the game BUT. His selfishness doesn't prevent him from caring about the people around him and why he's doing things in the first place.
I find this type of character a lot more compelling. I find someone who knows his worst tendencies are similar to those of the monsters he hunts, and that frightens him, but that fear is what proves L cares about doing what's right.
