Yuki

[yui-hibari]

I just found this on YouTube, and I can't stop crying...

[bl-archivistnpc]

'L lost the battle,but won the war' yeah but do know who lost everything? sachiko and near.

Near first lost his mentor and benefactor. He lost matt and mello arguably the only friends he had and his team. The few he had he lost, At the end of the series he is alone.

And sachiko had it even worse because they were just normal before, she had to watch her young daughter become unable to utter anything, watching her husband die and only for her son to be revealed as the worst mass murderer in history.

In the game of cat and mouse between L and Light, the only people who lost were their families

[smallsinger5901]

i mentioned it in tags before but im still rotating it in my brain so. I think it’s really cool that L’s successors kind of embody the three categories of people that Light wants to rid the world of once and for all. There’s the morally ‘evil’ who commit crime (Mello), ‘lazy’ people who waste their talents not helping society (Matt), and any people who try to stop him from achieving his goal (Near). Theyre quite literally the personification three people he could possibly end up hating the most

[craetor]

I think the meronia community grossly underappreciates how Mello & Near are literally just L's character traits halved and personified. They belong together, no matter what they do. Their hearts and minds are constantly reaching for each other, seeking to be completed. They're one whole seperated in the aether. They're always missing something, and what they miss is their equal. The only reason they're in chronic conflict is because L is conflicted about his passionate, emotional side and his cold, purely logical side, which – if you want another analysis post about that, HOO do I have some thoughts

[maspers]

The difference between L and Near is that L will lead you on a full ARG clue hunt that eventually leads to a rickroll with the intention of gauging your reaction and seeing if you can figure out the prank in advance, while Near will just call your cell phone number and bluntly tell you "you just lost the game" before hanging up.

[corviiids]

death note is an entire series of L and light correctly clocking each other's character intentions trains of thought personality ideals beliefs next moves etc etc etc and then either not identifying or being resistant to taking the most advantageous course of action because they simply cannot resist taking the more interesting path. there are multiple points throughout the series in which either one of them could have ended the game by simply flipping the board but they don't do it because then they don't really win. that's not to say they won't play underhanded or use hidden advantages but if they're going to do that it needs to be something the other could feasibly respond to or else they won't be satisfied. they both need to know, if i continue to play by the rules we've mutually set, could i come out on top? could i outplay him in a legitimate fight? could i beat him if i did it right? and the answer is the reason why they both lose

[corviiids]

i think L should've tried harder to piss light off. provoking light into slipping up would not only be hilarious i also think it would be extremely easy and effective. not saying you could get light to actually confess this way, but he would definitely make more dumb mistakes if, for example, L kept interrupting their homoerotic brain chess matches to insist that kira is actually matsuda because the butts match

[corviiids]

L actually being L's name goes crazy for the implications like. L being the mantle of the best detective in the world and L being a role that can be stepped into and L being a legacy that can be co-opted and L being an identity that can be stolen or inherited all before L was a person of his own. there are multiple Ls. L has heirs. people are in line to become L. there's a second L, a false L, a true successor to L. all that hopping and swapping just totally erasing the fact that L was a man who was alive and who effectively died nameless because his identity was something he wore like a profession or even a costume and left behind when he died instead of taking it with him like anyone else would

[smallsinger5901]

just realised L’s “I may have lost the battle- but I’m not gonna lose the war” line from episode 6 or so basically ends up as a metaphor for the whole series. Sure, L Lawliet, he, dies. He loses the battle against Kira. But L wins. L, the title. Near and Mello.

Lawliet loses the battle, but L wins the war.

[light-law]

i think one of the most important things to me when looking at light as a character is: i don't think he matures at all in any real way from the day he picks up the death note. he's frozen at the emotional state he was at 17 until the day he dies, basically. every day since then he's thinking about what act to deliberately put on so he can pretend to be a version of himself people see as innocent, and not what he actually is- and that means he has zero chances to actually grow up. he's only ever himself in his own company, and every other waking moment is spent constructing the right facade for the circumstance, and never actually interacting with the world as himself. he starts out as someone seen as mature for his age and dies someone who is hopelessly childish because of it. just the cruel and petty kind of childish now instead.

i think about this a lot re: any kind of AU where he survives past canon, because i think what i miss from a lot of works doing that is the feeling of light as someone who in a very real sense never grew up into a mature adult, just learned how to playact one when needed.

[imarson404]

I’ve talked about this before but thinking about the taskforce getting older over the years and realising more and more how young light was. 50 year old Matsuda thinking about how he shot a boy barely out of his teenage years. Them at 60 with grown up kids considering how light started his murder spree before he was even out of high school, thinking about how their biggest worries for their kids were exams or social drama. Aizawa with teenage Yumi suddenly understanding why Soichiro couldnt possibly imagine light as Kira, because who would think that that man who had been a child just a blink of an eye ago was capable of that? And suddenly Light is frozen in time and the older they get the further away he drifts

[arbitraryappellation]

Thinking about parallels between Misa and Light. Both of them present themselves as these conventionally attractive, ideal archetypes of people: Light is the police chief’s well-mannered son, a popular student at a prestigious university. Misa is a beautiful model, singer, and actress (and oh, does she act). The idea of either of them being a mass murderer is incredibly dissonant with their presented identities, and they’re able to come off as less suspicious the more they perform.

Kira stuff aside, they've been performing since before the Death Notes got involved. Not covering up murders but putting a lot of effort into editing their personalities, exaggerating desirable traits and hiding unflattering ones. Light played the role of a good-natured student when he was really arrogant, annoyed with his classmates, and disillusioned with his life in general. And as a woman in the entertainment industry, Misa constantly has to present a version of herself that is altered to be more cute and palatable. I think it’s safe to assume she does this outside of her job too, especially when it comes to interacting with men who underestimate her or trying to make Light love her.

And then there’s the way Light holds on to self preservation—he refuses the eye deal over and over because he wants to last as long as he can in his new world—while Misa cuts her lifespan in two again and again. (and still manages to outlive him, and still decides to jump off that building.) They take opposite actions that come from the same core desire to be part of something meaningful, something that can fill the voids inside themselves. Light wants something he can live for, Misa wants someone she can die for.

Misa devotes herself to Light wholeheartedly while Light doesn’t care about her beyond being able to use her. Misa is willing to destroy herself for the pursuit of love, while Light is willing to destroy the parts of himself that crave love. And sure, you could argue that Light was never going to love Misa in the first place (especially if you read him as gay or just uninterested) and that his lack of feelings for her isn’t due to repression. But in chapter 30 Light thinks to himself, “I can’t develop feelings. That’s how most idiots screw up.” I’m thinking of this restriction he gives himself, rather than the absence of feelings he has for Misa in particular, when I talk about Light not allowing himself to love.

Speaking of love, L and Rem die at the same time. Light loses the only person who’s ever fully known him, while Misa loses the only person who’s ever shown her unconditional love (not counting her parents since we don’t see them onscreen). They’re left with each other: two people chasing after ideals that they’ll never reach. Light will never love Misa the way she wants him to, and Light’s new world will never come around. And maybe they don’t even truly want these things; maybe they just tell themselves that they do.

[kiyomitakada]

still thinking about that bit in htr where ohba says if soichiro had lived then light wouldn’t be able to kill him and so the 13 day rule would be disproven… can you imagine. can you imagine looking your child in the eye and knowing that 1) he is the mass murderer you have been chasing for five years 2) the only reason you’ve caught him is because he loved you too much

[turochamp]

dreamt that i went to a car dealership and Light Yagami and L were there and I saw L first so I went "woah are you L death note?" and L went "L what?" and light went " L WHAT."

[uglygirlstatus]

sorry I had to draw this

[galgali]

it is absolutely true that every character in death note is in a completely different piece of media from every other character. light thinks he's in law and order. L is in columbo, as columbo. misa is in a sabrina carpenter song and rem is in a chappell roan song. to ryuk this is all the three stooges. soichiro is in taken and matsuda is in brooklyn 99 and aizawa is in disco elysium. this is mikami's silence of the lambs and you're living in it. mello will either make this whole situation into twilight or die trying, and near? well. near is in death note.

[corviiids]

the best death note joke format will forever be L asking light a simple question in which logical answer A might increase the likelihood of light being kira and logical answer B similarly might increase the likelihood of light being kira and after a short internal struggle light comes up with answer Y, which no human being has ever thought of as being a normal response in all of living history

[corviiids]

it's also imo an error to think of stories like death note as being a battle of wits in the sense that you should expect the characters to make optimal decisions. that's a flawed approach to any text, but death note in particular i think tricks people into thinking it's about a highly optimised game of chess specifically because the characters are highly intellectual and their game is likewise very thoughtfully planned and stepped out. however that's a misdirect. it's almost never about a battle of wits, it's always a battle of personality. the question "who's smarter, L or light" has almost nothing to do with who could reasonably be expected to win their fight. L is smarter. L can't win, not because of his intellect but because of his character. L can't win because light is his opponent and they are so well-matched in personality that neither can resist making a tactically poor move because it would be the "right" move in their game and they need to see if the other is going to match them. it's not chess, it's poker. it's a tango. it's a game of tennis where the goal isn't to score a point but to rally as long as possible. it's almost a team game. near doesn't beat light because he's smarter than light or L, he beats light because light steps up to do a choreographed dance and near just shoots him with a gun. the reason near wins while L can't is that L and light are playing each other's game to play, but near isn't playing, he's just trying to win