shipaholic replied to your post:Perpetual reminder that Ohba explicitely...
I think of it as ‘Rem is canonically gay despite the author’s dumbass opinion’ :D
That’s hard for me because I’m absolutely no fun as a person, fhghjjk
I’d maybe be able to do it if Ohba hadn’t literally built in a failsafe. Like, it is one thing to have a text where the issue is like “the author has not intended for this to be in the text but a solely text-focused interpretation makes this view a valid and non-contradictory reading”, but for me it is another to be like “the author realized mid-writing that he absolutely HATES this reading which has accidentally become very plausible and alters his text to make the character explicitly refute it on page”.
That’s not canon anymore. Canon is non-text-contradictiory. This is the author’s homophobia seeping into the text, becoming text.
Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for writing Rem as gay in your stories and ignoring the canon in this one aspect. The anime also removes this line, making anime!Rem pretty gay because that is a very valid reading when this line isn’t added in.... all of that is fine and all.
But ‘canon’ to me implies ‘this is something inherent to the work that you will find in it without squinting when you seek the work out’. And I think that’s just a misleading statement to say about a story in which the author had Rem basically go ‘btw shinigami have heteronormativity and lesbian love is impossible lol’.
tl;dr: I am no fun at parties or literally anywhere, but these are my very personal feelings so I guess I have to suck it up and boil in them.
My favourite is when he screams for Misa/Takada/Mikami to kill everybody in the warehouse despite having memory-wiped, MURDERED WITH FIRE, or burned his bridges with every single one of them.
The one time he actually needs a stupid, elaborate plan, he doesnt have one lmfao
Rating, warnings and no. of words (for fics): R (M for part 2), nuclear apocalypse, 1781 words (this part)
It’s day thirty-eight. The air is yellow and L is still not back.
Light sips his coffee. There isn’t much else to do. The monitors have been blank ever since the bomb hit, and the back-up generator hasn’t brought them back online. Venturing beyond the control room in search of a fix has been deemed inadvisable.
So, this is where they’ve holed up. This bland square space filled with non-functioning tech is all that’s available to them. Light considers his good luck, in spite of it all. Of all the places to be when nuclear warfare breaks out, L’s stupid ostentatious building had turned out to be a godsend. Radiation-resistant walls. The backup generator whirs along and keeps the lights on and the kettle working. A water filter, for L’s million cups of tea. Gas masks.
The only exit to the room is the exit to the building. L goes out to get supplies. Mostly other people’s radios and televisions he’s deconstructed. They don’t need food, for now - the kitchen is well-stocked, and Light has drawn up a plan for rations, just in case. Neither of them suffers easily from cabin-fever. Light learned that about himself during his fifty days’ confinement. As for L, Light wonders if his stint at university was his first time out of doors.
Light takes another sip of coffee. The handcuff chain clinks against the arm of his chair.
Ah, yes. Those. Light had really, really hoped he’d seen the back of those.
L had disillusioned him the first day he’d decided one of them would need to go outside.
—
“Kira cannot be trusted on his own.”
Light had stared at the twin loops dangling from L’s crabbed, pinched thumb and forefinger. He’d pushed down the urge to scream.
“We proved my innocence. You stared at those rules for hours and you couldn’t think of a loophole.”
“I think we’re beyond proof now, Kira-kun. Hold out your arm.”
“I am not Kira. It is impossible for me to be Kira. The policemen of my country have determined that I am innocent. I don’t have to do anything you say.”
L sighed. Light laughed. The sound was sharp and echoing in the metal box they now called home.
“You must be overjoyed, now it’s just the two of us. Nobody can stop you tormenting me now. It was never really about proof, was it? You know I didn’t do it, and that’s why you’re out to get me - because I showed you up. I showed everyone The Great L was wrong. You want to punish me for not being Kira.”
L’s jawline twitched. It was the first time Light had seen an emotion force its way onto his face.
“I went easy on you before, Light.” There is no pleasure on L’s plain, tired face; only immovable dislike. “During our fistfights. A trained martial artist versus a teen with a handful of high-school boxing lessons under his belt? Don’t fool yourself into thinking we were evenly matched. If I’d fought back with no care to your safety, I would have done you a serious injury. Now, I could spend the next few hours laying out why you are Kira, and why those rules in the Death Note are fake, and how you have engineered this situation to provide yourself an alibi. But I am tired, and we are out of time. Hold out your arm.”
Light laughed again. It was hard to hold back, in this new ruined world. His laugh rolled around and around the room.
He refused.
It was a miscalculation.
—
That was weeks ago.
Light rubs his jaw with the hand not holding coffee. It still twinges when he presses too hard.
In the end, he can’t stop L doing what he wants. A small light of rage burns within him, replenishing every time he looks at L, every hour he spends tied to this chair. But it isn’t defeat, not really. L is just as trapped as he is.
Footsteps sound in the corridor outside.
Whenever L comes back, Light has a shameful urge to prick up his ears and lean towards the entrance, like a dog. He only does it because nothing else happens here. But for an instant that flame of rage gets directed at himself, for feeling anything at L’s comings and goings. Light’s priority is to ensure he stays alive and L dies, and the latter will happen as soon as the former is assured.
The door sweeps open, and a yellow astronaut steps into the room.
The astronaut places a backpack carefully on the ground. It straightens up and removes its helmet. Underneath is L’s head, smaller than usual with his body covered in bulky hazmat-wear.
Light lets out a breath. He hates the feeling of relief creeping up inside him. If L became a shambling radiated zombie, or got his head bashed open by some desperate person, Light’s only reason to mourn would be for his own odds of survival.
“You were gone overnight. I was worried,” he said out loud.
L starts to wriggle out of the hazmat suit. No doubt it’ll be left in a pile on the floor until the next trip. “Apologies, Light. I found an office that was still accessible on the ground floor. It made sense to work through the night.” Just as Light knew he would, he discards his suit on the ground like an old skin. L crouches on the floor and unzips the backpack.
“Well, I’m glad you’re alive. I could do with another coffee when you’ve got a moment.” Light watches L pull bits of deconstructed computer out of the backpack. Unusually for him, he has remembered Light’s request for more toothpaste. A bright pink, half-empty bottle of shampoo, obviously stolen from some teenage girl’s bathroom, is crammed at the bottom. And so are… condoms.
Light blinks as L lays the little box on the floor with the other personal items. Definitely condoms. There’s no reason Light would hallucinate that.
“That’s a little presumptuous,” he says.
L lifts his huge eyes. His dark circles are worse than ever. If he stayed up all of last night, Light calculates he must be nearing hour eighty without sleep.
“It is still possible there are other survivors. In case we end up accommodating more people, I am trying to prepare as broad a range of supplies as possible. These don’t expire for another five years, so that gives us plenty of time.”
Light wants to laugh, but he feels too exasperated. “L, quite besides the fact that no-one else in Tokyo is likely to have been inside, effectively, a nuclear bunker when a bomb was dropped on them with no warning -”
“Breathe, Light,” L mutters.
“- And besides the fact that we now live in a single room, which while spacious, does not provide for privacy or sound-proofing -” Light does pause for breath at that point. L inspires a lot of run-on sentences - “I doubt anyone with the dubious luck of being alive in this hell on earth has sex on their mind.”
“Oh well. I’ll put them with the spare batteries.” L sets the condoms aside.
Light watches him as he sorts through the guts of the computers he’s shredded. He feels vaguely rattled, though he doesn’t know why. It isn’t just because he spent the night chained to a chair, while L was apparently raiding strangers’ night stands for sex aids.
“You’re lying to me,” he says, half to himself.
L’s nimble fingers stop sorting bits of metal. Light’s always found them interesting to watch, the strange crabbed way L holds them at odds with their dexterity. They remind him of spindly pale insects he once saw in a nature documentary.
“I regret, due to the nature of my work, I am frequently lying to you, Light-kun. As ever, I pray you won’t take it personally.”
“Oh, spare me,” Light snaps. “It’s the goddamn apocalypse. Nobody has a job any more.”
The words surprise him. The concept of an apocalypse feels straight out of comic books. It’s not a word he would normally reach for. Still, he realises that this is how it feels. Not just that Tokyo has ended, but the world has.
His New World has died, right when he’d begun to shape it for the better.
L gives him a look, but doesn’t comment on his odd word choice. “As far as I am concerned, L is a job for life. It’s not as if I was drawing a salary. I am still working a case, even as the circumstances I am working in become… highly irregular.”
“Ah, the case.” Light rolls his eyes and tips his chair back. “Some might call it selfish to fixate on catching one murderer when millions are dead and the world is in shambles.”
“What an abrupt change in Light-kun’s attitude.” L’s voice is sharp. “I recall you giving me a black eye the last time I lost focus on the Kira case.”
“Well, what can I say. Statistically, Kira is probably dead. And if not, he must be having a job locating new victims at the moment.” Light sets his empty cup down on the ground. His eye catches the condom packet and he almost loses his train of thought. “But far be it for me to question your priorities, L. One: acquire as much junk as you can carry. Two: provide for the sex lives of hypothetical guests. Three: chain up the one person who could help you and call them a murderer. Four -”
L drops the bit of piping in his hand to the tiled floor. The crash rings throughout the room.
Light almost jumps out of his skin. He stares from the pipe on the ground to L’s tightly drawn mouth.
“Light. Shut up.”
Light’s mouth snaps shut. He has never seen L lose his temper.
L resumes picking through his stack of parts, while Light’s brain whirs into overtime. It is the condoms that’s bothering him. L’s explanation makes no sense. And everything he does is calculated. Dropping them in front of Light like that… it was a provocation.
The conclusion drops neatly into Light’s head like the answer to a test. He smiles.
“You’re lonely,” he says.
L pauses. He doesn’t look up.
Light’s voice brims with satisfaction. “You’re afraid you’re going to die. So you’re hoping for a pity-fuck.”
L still says nothing. Light doesn’t need him to. His smile widens.
They spend the rest of the hours until bed in silence. Light doesn’t get his coffee. He doesn’t care. The triumph burning inside him, for once, is enough to drown the anger.
I’m your boat driver for the water sailing trip your friend begged you to go on and you scream loud haha -(alternatively) your the friend for the water sailing trip and we can’t stop laughing at your friend oh my god it sounds like a pterodactyl is dying (Feel free to tag me in any fic/drawing I’m a shipaholic and I can appreciate all ships)
Hello :) For the fanfic meme, I'd love to know P, T, W (and optional Z if you have the time)?
P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)
I’m much more a “gardener” in that I need to get some writing on the page and sort out how the characters interact before I can see the plot clearly. I garden, i get my crops, and then I start to build a greenhouse for them to live in comfortably. Generally, once I get a start, I will write out a plotted plan so that i don’t forget where I want the story to go.
T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?
more than I can name, but probably virginal L bums me out the most. anyone writing him as blushing and like, giggling during sex probably doesn’t have my readership. if that’s your thing, cool, but i prefer an L written as capable and not a childish receptacle for an aggro Light, who for some reason has a beyond average sexual prowess despite canonically seeming to have about as much romantic experience and dedication as L does. anyway. i also hate anyone wearing vests or fedoras in fics. quit that. go look at an infographic and learn what collar types are called.
W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?
hm. i like specific prompts because they give me a little more pressure to work under to create something unique, something fresh. however, i do enjoy general prompts because they let me experiment within AU ideas I have, but maybe don’t have a story for. That’s what happened with the hotel AU, where I had a setting and idea but the general prompt of like sex and hotel together brought something out.
i also love weird prompts! not enough ppl just rlly dive in for the kinkier prompts and while i’m not saying i dislike the regular stuff, its so fun when someone just goes for it.
Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?
I don’t generally write it because I’m not usually writing AUs or fic that requires me too. I’ll read it, but not like seek it out. What I dislike about a lot of major character death in fics (that’s not matched-canonical deaths) is that often you can tell its because the author didn’t want to write that character. There’s an author - who i won’t name - that i’ve skimmed a few fics of and they frequently kill both Watari and Near because they refuse to write those characters with a shred of depth. Not that they write any other characters with real ability but......i guess Near just proved inaccessible to them so they just like kill him in a building fire or something. It’s lazy. However, it can be done well and serve a purpose definitely.
Hi there - would you be able to do for L 4, 13, 17, 26, 39 and 45?
Has the character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?
oh probably all the gruesome details of the murder cases he’s done. i wrote a fic a while back called “tell me i’m good” where i mention L seeing a rlly nasty scene of a deer hit by a car and how its an image that stuck in his head. he started detective work at a rlly young age and involved himself in some rlly mature subjects like, uh, murder n’ such. i would think he had to change from all the crime he consumed, all the adult world he had to puzzle thru bc that’s how geniuses have to be. canonically, i imagine the only person who “knows” is watari and he avoids mentioning it. headcanonically, i think he tells Light abt the first case he worked on with body mutilation and how he didn’t sleep or eat for three days bc every move he made reminded him abt the torn limbs and cut muscles he saw.
Is the character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?
no. he got bloody noses for a straight two months at sixteen and it desensitized him. L is like that one John Mulaney detective bit where he sees blood and is like “hm. gross. mop it up.”
What was the character’s favorite toy as a child?
bright colored geometric stacking toys, like weird shaped blocks that he could pile on top of each other into skyscrapers in between boring printer paper case work.
How does the character behave around children?
he likes them, thinks they’re smart and worth listening to, but he doesn’t want to actively deal with any children bc they’re more likely to disagree with him than adults. he is, surprisingly, very patient with children when they do interact.
Has the character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?
nipped by a cat on his finger and he just shrugged like yeah that was on me. i did put my finger in your face. he gave the cat two more treats than necessary to make up for it.
What does the character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?
before the kira case, he believed nothing would happen and that was just how things were. L, despite being logical, didn’t altogether believe he’d actually die ever. he felt just as immortal as Light did. but then he found out death gods and a death note and that maybe, maybe things were waiting after death. the solid fact of death being longer than a moment rlly fucked with him.
Ooh I got some Qs for Lawlight - 1, 6, 12 and/or 18 please?
If you had to change the pairing’s very first meeting, how would you change it?
if i had to change it, i’d want to keep their first meeting just as dynamic as it is in canon. i love how meeting L is the first time we see Light thrown off balance. he rlly reacts in a big way. i’d maybe move it so they meet in passing before either of them knows who the other one is and have them agreeing on something. Like they pass by a newspaper decrying crime and both of them share a small moment of like “ah yes. crime is bad.” then later once all the kira stuff happens, they’re both thrust into realizing the other person exists outside of their respective justice-related role. or something like that. tbh it’d b real hard to beat L ruining what’s supposed to be this great triumph for Light (re: getting into the top school) by revealing himself at that moment.
Least favorite canon moment of them?
i like most of their interactions because i think it’s all so important to defining their characters, esp for L who is defined mostly by his opposition to Light. i think my least favorite canon moments between them are when Misa is involved. not bc i dislike Misa. i just don’t like that she’s usually reduced to a hetero-pretty girl block, almost a comic relief that reminds us that L too can think girls look cute. those scenes are also some of the more saccharine moments in the series which i don’t enjoy.
If you had to take them and plunk them into another fandom, what fandom would that be? Why?
yugioh! i want to throw these two like hyper-individualistic assholes into the yugioh world where everyone is literally always saved by the power of meaningful and loving relationships. death note is a series so focused on how nothing matters that it would b thrilling to watch L and Light try to make it in a world where everything matters. also, bc i want Light to meet Kaiba and suddenly burn with a need to be tall and rich.
Hello... I like ur blog. and I am here to ask: would you ever write trans L?
Hi! glad u like my blog. yes i’ve been thinking abt writing trans L lately. i mean i headcanon him as non-binary so tbh i already see him as trans but i definitely think there’s not enough trans man L fic out in the world.
tbh, i think a rlly fun fic to do w trans L is just a dumb short piece of him and Light shit talking their cis taskforce teammates and keeping count of every bad apology matsuda gives when he dead names Light (i love matsuda but he’s definitely a cis who does that shit where they over apologize for misgendering and/or dead naming you). idk. nothing huge.
i just feel like. idk. i want to write trans L, but i don’t feel like there’s a particular story that would suit that better. honestly, i’d just write it the way I write trans Light; he’s just. trans. L solves crime and wears a packer. thems the breaks kids.
