Let’s be honest here. It’s probably not going to be a very healthy relationship. (He doesn’t treat you badly, per se; it’s more a case of him not treating you in the first place.)
The reason I say probably is that if you knew each other from a very, very young age and grew up together in Wammy’s House, you both trust each other enough with your emotions and secrets to be more open to each other, and be aware of the other’s needs and habits. In this instance, you may have a shot at having a semi-normal relationship (if we ignore the fact that you hardly ever see each other and are always attending to your respective jobs.)
In any other case, and you meet later, even if L really, really loves you, he won’t open up to you.
Well, maybe he will a tiny bit—he might invite you to help him on his cases and occasionally ask you for any input just to see what you say, but he will never go as far to tell you his real name or open up to you emotionally. One reason may be that he cares about you: knowing all this about him could put you in danger, and if possible, he’d rather avoid that, but the main reason is that he simply doesn’t trust you enough.
Again, if you did grow up together when you were very young, you probably told each other all this before you each became so guarded, meaning that you’re open to each other and already know each other’s secrets. But in any other circumstance, not a chance.
Also (again, unless it’s that particular childhood friends scenario), he’s willing to put you in danger to gather information or solve a case. He will definitely hesitate at first, yes, and try his hardest to find another way around it, but if it comes down to it and there really are no alternative options, he would sacrifice you or put you in harm’s potential way if it means solving his case. He would be very relieved if nothing happens and you come out unscathed, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take if the odds of you getting harmed are low.
(Obviously, he won’t throw you into harm’s way for the sake of it and without thinking through the odds of this plan working, and if the cons outweigh the pros he would never do it, but if there’s a big enough chance for this course of action to work and no other options, he will seize it.)
He’s also very emotionally distant (once again, unless it’s that specific scenario.) He’s very busy and has hardly any time for himself, much less other people. If you have some problem, he will try to help, but this help usually comes in the form of logical solutions to fix your problem, and not emotional support. He may try to make you feel better—perhaps share a sweet with you—but he won’t be very good at verbal comfort. If he’s particularly busy, he will still pick up on your mood with ease, but may not pay any attention to helping you through it until the case is solved.
He makes sure you’re well-attended to in everyday life; he sets aside lots of funds should you ever need them, and keeps you close enough so that he can keep an eye on you when he’s busy, but unless you’re working on a case together, he rarely visits you, and you rarely see him. Sometimes you have the occasional phone call, but mostly it’s silence.
If you are working on the same case, he will appreciate having you near him and working with you, but this happens rarely.
Basically, you need to be ready for him to be this distant—both physically and emotionally—if you want to be in a relationship with him. If you’re someone who craves emotional intimacy and closeness, this won’t work out for you.
By this point, you may think that he doesn’t care all that much about you. However, in what feels like once in a million years, there are brief, shining moments when he shows that he does care. He may come to you after a long case to find some peace in your arms, or ensure that you get a good night’s rest when you insist on staying with him throughout the night while he’s working on a case. Maybe he’ll share some cake with you.
The thing is, L does care. He really, really does. But after a lifetime of only knowing logic and facts, he doesn’t know how to soften himself to accept the imperfect and confusing nature of love. He doesn’t know how to show it, how to show you that he cares besides making sure you’re safe whenever possible and spending the occasional moment with you when he can. He wants to trust you with his identity, with his feelings, with his name; but he can’t. He can never bring himself to, because he just doesn’t know how.
And he does sometimes get apprehensive—scared, one might go as far to say—that you’ll leave. That you’ll finally tire of the unjust way he treats you, and how he seems to care more about his cases and spend more time with his suspects than with you. Somewhere, deep down, he’s afraid that one day, you’ll go and never return.
Of course, he has the means to forcefully keep you by his side; but he could never do that. If you leave, he has no right to stop you or change your mind, because he knows that he’s the one in the wrong, and forcing you to stay would make him no better than those he spends his time—time he should be spending with you—on catching.
Sometimes he wonders why you haven’t done it yet: just walked out and left. It would be so easy. He wonders why you’re still here; why you’ve stayed. He wonders why you love him in the first place.
He is a monster, after all. A liar. And why should such a monster be worthy of love?
Now, these few moments of vulnerability don’t excuse how neglectful he usually is, or how coldly he can treat you; but he does love you. He may not know why—and perhaps he never will—but what he does know is that his feelings for you exist, and they are very, very true.
He only hopes that one day, he may be able to learn how to love like you do.
While I love these headcanons, I find they sometimes miss the input of the love interest's agency and their willingness to help L navigate a healthy relationship. Do they talk about this? Would L break up the relationship after a couple of chats? Would he not be willing to compromise and learn if indeed he loves someone that deeply?
Because otherwise the scales are always tipped in L's favour. One of the many things I love in your characterization of L is the way he is willing to learn from Meri and expand his understanding of the world or his tastes so they bond further.
I find that Spiraling Trap actually contradicts these characterisations a bit (in these headcanon posts) and paint L as more expressive and open than people think.
Maybe it's because as a game it has to convey messages verbally, therefore L would be more expressive; as in other material it relies on the expression, action (movies) monologue (fiction) ...etc. But I do think that an intelligent person as L would uphold communication, listening to what others had to say and expressing his thoughts outwardly when he trusts someone, shown in the canon, as communication is a form of gathering information as much as you can, and myself do headcannon that he would communicate with his love interest as well, and maybe even more, as he would cherish the person that willingly enters a relationship with him.
Perhaps it's not contradiction, but to what extent/stage the relationship has developed.
Shocked to find this many reblogs on this old post! I have no idea what fic you’re writing, but it sounds pretty interesting. (With regards to the headcanons themselves, I was trying to keep them focused on L’s initial behaviour, rather than his partner’s—it’s interesting how you noticed that—and leave it the rest to interpretation of whoever reads them… but I do agree that the partner in this case would have more influence than what’s shown.)
Maybe tag me in this fic of yours when you’re finished? I’m curious now!
Hi, so, I see that your analysis posts go pretty deep and I love how you explain and articulate things.
I just wanted to ask for your opinion on L: Change the world. Is it...canon? Do you consider it to be canon? Or if not canon, then accurate for the way you see the Death Note universe?
Thank you!
Hi! Firstly, thank you so much! Secondly, this is going to be embarrassing for me and disappointing to you, but I've never read L: Change The World, and I don't plan to (in the near future, at least). I tend to be very loyal to manga L so anything that strives from that doesn't interest me and/or I don't consider it canon (shown also by my detest towards the two L one shots and HTR13 in many of its parts). For the same reason, I haven't watched any of the live actions or musicals. I have a weird belief around popular media that makes me not want to engage with them. Not even out of curiosity. The only exceptions are Another Note and the A-Kira and C-Kira one shots. Another Note got the same treatment as HTR13, while I like the Near one shots, because Near has never been as popular as L within and outside the fandom. And this is where my weird belief comes in: when a character reaches the popularity of L, anything said about them tends to influence the authors or anyone creating official interpretations of him, that often don't stay true to the character, but caters to the fandom.
Anyway, back to L: Change The World, I don't think I've heard enough about it to even give an opinion on those aspects, so sorry I can't write a detailed answer 🙇♀️
Precisely. Even if I'm a manga girl through and through, I did read it, out of morbid curiosity, several years ago, and it bothered me, not necessarily that he had to die, but that he chose to die, meaning that he wrote his own name in the death note. All because the world had gotten too heavy, now that Light was gone... This is the reason why I absolutely want nothing to do with it. It is as off canon as you can possibly get.
and the second reason is what you mentioned, the ...exaggerate humanization, in a way, there are things that border on caricature as well, but I can't accept the puppy-fied version. Nor the deified, nor the vilified. I'm trying to be balanced about it, which isn't always easy. I'm also trying to imagine between-cases situations as well, which is harder, because absolutely no info (apart from the amusement park, playground and museum reference)....but I'm off topic.
So yeah, L: CtW is indeed heavily influenced by fandom who couldn't handle L in his harsher form and sought to....mollify and palatalize him....
Chiming in so I can give my two cents on the hypothetical canonicity of L:Change the WorLd.
Replying to anon’s main question: is it canon? The short answer, imo, is, not really. Only parts of it.
Something that’s important to keep in mind when it comes to Death Note as narrative, is that, over the years, it expanded into a universe that contains different branches; and these branches themselves have the manga as a base. Sometimes very loosely; which is why the Netflix adaptation exists as an experimental prototype of DN concocted by a western viewpoint. It could’ve been good, but unfortunately the plot was so mediocre (a reflection of the way writing for mainstream media has stagnated across Hollywood-esque environments in the west) and filled with unnecessary tropes, that, yeah. It sucked.
That being said, the Netflix adaptation is an extreme. If we look at the 2015 series, we get a very compelling narrative that not only completely changes Light’s backstory but also makes L into a different character who a) wears shoes, b) dresses entirely in white and c) looks like a supermodel. This variation of L still has some quirks from the original but he’s fundamentally different — even though this L in particular, like in the musical, maintains a more manipulative and sarcastic facet we see in the manga. And it works, because the writing is good.
Now, when it comes to L:CtW, we need to consider that the book and the movie seem to have been concocted in tandem. I don’t know the exact dates, but sometime between late 2007 (when the book was released) and early 2008 (official movie release in Japan) there was a lot of advertisement for both. And while they are, in essence, the same, each version contains a unique approach to the character of L.
The movie follows the plot from the original two timer DN film series, starring Kenichi Matsuyama. In DN 2: The Last Name, Light dies due to his own ego and L figures out that the only way to end the Kira threat is to write his own name in the DN, thus (hypothetically) making him immune should a shinigami try to kill him. So, in this version, L sacrifices himself. It’s meant to be tragic and a bad ending where everyone loses earlier than in canon.
The book is more faithful to the manga and gives us beautiful insight about L, if you enjoy this possible variation of his personality.
However, due to the medium and the quality of the actors themselves, it’s difficult not to take this version and humanise L (and the others) further. While we’re reading DN in a manga, there can be a certain barrier that dissipates once you shift into a movie with real people. That’s why the purest form of fiction is the original, in paper. Any time an adaptation is made, the perception of the character changes to fit in with a certain idea of the producer and the actors. A lot of material that could potentiate character development is also cut due to budget and time constraints; you don’t have an issue this restrictive extent in a manga.
My guess is that they wanted to make L more palatable to the audience. Or maybe they took advantage of a certain sweetness that Kenichi naturally has. For example, one of the things I enjoy in the original movies is that Kenichi keeps a rendition of L as a listless, introverted genius who is incredibly socially awkward, but he lacks that aggressiveness that L exudes in the manga. The musical does this better, which surprised me.
So, I would say that: some elements of L:CtW can be formally considered canon when they match the base material.
However, anything that veers from that is part of the expanded universe, and an interpretation of the characters that might or might not be supported by the manga. Some things you can infer, others you can explore, but ultimately canon matches the manga UNLESS Ohba comes out of a closet and shouts that it is so. Apparently, Ohba seems to consider Another Note as a close enough canon to the base material, and even that novel has its own set of problems.
To be entirely frank, a lot of this depends on just how attached one is to the base material. I’m rather flexible when it comes to considering the meanders of this particular expanded universe because the material we’re given is not nearly as obnoxious as what you see in, say, the Marvel or Star Wars universes. Or Doctor Who, geez. Those are filled with so many retcons I really just stopped caring. I like my stories linear with tasteful additions, and DN achieves that well enough for me.
For example, Spiraling Trap is very cute and has the nicest dating simulator for L and it just makes me swoon! A lot of what L says in that game is very in line with what I’d consider true canon; furthermore, it shows a very attentive, caring, sweet side of L that we don’t see during the Kira case and that I would at least extrapolate that embodies L's character very well. It falls in line with the concept that L is human and not just a crime solving machine, or a robot devoid of feelings. I like that exploration a lot, which is why AN and L:CtW resonate with me, despite their various flaws. Call it cherry picking haha
Arguably, it makes sense that some parts of Another Note might be considered canon given that Ohba seems to view it as a natural prequel to the core plot of DN. Beyond a couple of strategically annoying discrepancies, it’s a harmless piece of exploratory narrative that doesn’t clash much with canon. Ohba himself said that he hadn’t thought much (or at all!) about L’s past or how he solved previous cases and would like more books like AN:LABB to expand on L’s life.
I briefly talked about it here, in case you’d like to check out some of my thoughts on this topic.
Regarding the scene where L has a meltdown, I would argue it makes sense in-context for this character of L, if you consider how it was built from the foundations of the original movies. Kenichi Matsuyama’s L is a variation from the original inserted in a different plot; he differs from manga!L in many things, including his hypothetical father-son relationship with Watari and how he approaches the interrogation of Misa. It’s still torture, it still makes you deeply uncomfortable, but there’s a different dimension to the danger that Kira and the Second Kira represent and why L resorted to such tactics.
As for over-sentimentality, I would agree with Fu Takahashi, who plays L in the 2020 Japanese version of the musical. He mentions in this interview how there are variations to L’s adaptations, but they all seem to share the same core characteristics, one of them being the way he represses his feelings. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I really love the meltdown scene as a moment of pure angst and liberation, even if I don't consider the premise that L and Light were friends to be true at all.
i found a cool tag game on twitter and i really wanna import it (o^ ^o)
this picrew + the last song you listened to :]
no pressure tags: @blood-loving-leech @overtaken-boredom @lesbianthatyaps @kameonerd566 @hexedvampire @laczki @anonymous-shxtposter @fleurafae @flovqy + anyone who wants to do it <3
Cute!! Thank you for the tag, Diana 🩶 This picrew can actually resemble me enough 💀 last song I listened to was Ink by Plastic Tree!
I tag @phan-chan @queen--of--maggots @sashaisnotokay @purplink8 @stupidsexpotflanders and whoever else sees this and wants to do it and tag their friends!
Thanks for the tag! I like the addition of the song to the game.
(The full name of the piece is La Vallée des Cloches—The Valley of Bells—by Ravel. He’s one of my favourite composers and I’m going to try learning the piece… we’ll see how that goes.)
Q: Have you ever cooked a dish in your life for at least once?
A:
(last spring we with @nnenteyn-new and our secret friend :> tried to start DN ASK just for fun! (also i created the bot for generating stupid questions for us) the idea died quickly due to our poor free time, but at least we tried lol 😸)
A question for anyone who’s interested: how high (or low) do you think L’s self-esteem is? Is he as arrogant as Light and too proud/ affirmed of his intelligence? Or does he harbour insecurities about feeling inadequate beyond his intellect (like in terms of emotional matters and humaneness), like his intelligence is his only saving grace? Does he waver between the two? Is he perfectly in the middle; critically and objectively aware of both his strengths and his shortcomings, but comfortable enough in those strengths to not be bothered by his flaws? If he’s very self-assured, does he ever doubt himself?
He calls himself a ‘lying monster’, but does the word ‘monster’ mean anything to him on an emotional level, or is it merely an objective statement which doesn’t make him feel any worse about himself—but then why would he choose the word ‘monster’ specifically, with such connotations of hatred, fear and disgust, as opposed to some other word? (And so it goes on and on…)
I still haven’t reread or rewatched Death Note, but I’m left speechless by some posts lately that claim Misa is a “poorly written” character.
For me, Misa is one of the deepest and most complex characters in the whole Death Note.
I don’t like her, but through the story I think I see her.
I see a lost girl who desperately avoids taking responsibility. She wants someone strong and safe to lead her. She craves love and connection, but doesn’t know how to get it in a healthy way - or maybe she knows, but is terrified of rejection, to the point that she lies to herself (remember her coming out of that meeting with Kyomi, telling Mogi that she “won”).
Really, a genuine question, is Misa really “badly written”?
Saying Misa is “badly written” is ironically in itself a poor choice of words to describe her. She’s cohesive, consistent, her motivations and what drives her are clear, she’s nicely designed. Conceptually, she’s a great character. The narrative just primarily portrays her as obnoxious and delusional and doesn’t try to endear you to her despite her having all this depth and turmoil behind her behaviour.
It mentions the death of her parents maybe twice? And then mostly makes a mockery of her resulting trauma and codependency by using her as cheap and distasteful fanservice and comic relief. It doesn’t have too much interest in her besides the fact that she’s obsessed with this fantasy she projects onto Light, and doesn’t really care to explore what kind of person Misa was or could’ve been without the death of her parents.
Doesn’t mean she’s badly written. She’s just only really used to drive the plot forward, not make a meaningful or deep statement of any kind with respect for what she experiences. It’s lame in terms of personal taste, but not “bad” in terms of cohesive writing. Agree lol
Without thinking too deeply about this one, I’m going to say the 1980-90s, because that’s when most of my favourite song artists were active (and alive).
34. What’s your favorite flower?
I don’t think I have a ‘favourite’, per se, but the mythology behind narcissi is cool, and the flower itself looks quite nice. I like red spider lilies, too; they’re so striking in appearance.
what is your eye color. what is your favorite color. what is the color that appears most frequently in your wardrobe. what color is your favorite blanket. what color is your water bottle.
I had this dream that I was around eight years old and playing around in a forest, and I got into some danger only to be helped out by L, who was also around eight years old, and living in the forest, so he knew his stuff (what to eat, what not to eat, places to hide; all that stuff).
whats a stereotype for your country that you absolutely do. mine is that i unironically go "eh" and apologize a lot and i often drink maple syrup straight
As well as the fact that ENTJ has Fi (introverted feeling, which is all about following your own moral code rather than trying to maintain social harmony with other people’s) as its inferior function… like, Light’s whole motivation is, whether for better or for worse, pursuing his own twisted morals. He’s convinced that he knows better than others what the ‘right’ thing to do is: that’s the whole reason he picked up the Death Note. He’s motivated by his own sense of what’s ‘right’: Fi can’t be any lower than a secondary function, in my opinion, and it’s certainly not his inferior one.
turnnoffyourmind
prguitarman
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snowghoul
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
gummygunk
izzy806
