Canon, Headcanon, and Notes
Jan. 23rd, 2011 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theletterThis is, of course, subject to edits and the like. This is also a good place to ask anything about my interpretation that you might be curious about or not understand. In no way is this a final draft, in nearly every way a work in progress 'this is what I learn about L' as I go along. It may be further organized in the future as I discover more things to tl;dr about and it gets even more crowded and all over the place. I can tell you now that even with just these two categories there's always bleed through, so I can't make any promises about other such attempts at organizing.
Canon Format: Primarily the anime, but I also draw inspiration and try to corporate what we see in the manga as well. Another Note comes third on my list, and even then I keep it in mind with the fact that the story's been filtered through two different narrators: L himself and then Mello, both of whom are perfectly capable liars. Though when it comes to who is more likely to consciously lie or omit certain things in order to make a point or add a punchline (such as the 'please destroy everything of yours I've ever communicated with you on within twenty-four hours of my hacking it'), I would say that goes to L and from there I can draw even more conclusions about L's motivation to tell Mello this story and what he wanted Mello to get out of it. The movies are an all-out AU, one that I admittedly don't pay much attention to. L was never meant to be the one to finally catch Kira, and in the end he did his best but ultimately accepted death.
Notes: One thing I find interesting about both the original Death Note series and the spin-off novel is that in both L only manages to exacerbate the issue and help create the criminals he's trying to catch. In the manga, he's used as a device to further the plot and make it more interesting. He's there to be an equal challenge to Light, and one could argue that if L hadn't shown up and pulled the stunt he did on television, Kira might have simply become bored with killing criminals without an opponent to shake things up and continually make them more interesting. By the time L does let up on Light, Light has the experience of going against L, the greatest detective in the world, and winning. L helped make Light into the criminal he was, and Light's loyalty to both his ideals as the God of the New World and L's memory is strong enough at the point of L's death that continuing to be Kira is no problem. But at the beginning? At the very beginning, Light had promised to himself that he would do this, but without a challenger to help hone his skills and strengthen his conviction to being Kira, who knows what would have happened?
B is the second example, and L's contribution into making him the criminal he was is even more obvious and direct, considering the reason B became a murderer was to construct a case L wouldn't be able to solve. It's easy to conclude that Watari was the one who thought up the idea of L having successors, went to all the work, and that L was not in these early Wammy kids' lives as anything more than an ideal to reach, Watari is in fact the other half of L the detective. In fact, he's the half who does most of the work, while L remains the brains of the operation. That said, L had little to do with how Wammy's House was run at first, since it began sometime between 1987 (when L is eight) and 1989 (when L is ten), and therefore its running was all in the hands of Watari, who was brilliant enough to think of the idea of having there be replacements for this brilliant kid even early on. In the beginning, A and B were aware of L and even interacted with him, but weren't told that the young kid who was around their age was the up and coming genius detective. B somehow managed to figure it out, and A was actually older than L but didn't realize this until B blabbed about L's identity.
From this it's easy to conclude that L enjoys these challenges more so than he values 'good' or even true justice, something we see plenty of example of in canon. L doesn't necessarily want to see these criminals punished, his main motivation is his drive to challenge himself and end up the victor. Of course, that doesn't mean he doesn't care about justice at all. In fact, I think he very much does, but in the end his motivation for doing what he does is a selfish one.
While L isn't all that social, it's not because he's shy. In fact, he's quite comfortable around other people. It's like Mello says in Another Note: L hides away in order to stay alive, and he's well-versed in how to remain safe when behind a computer screen. Now that he's gone through one death and now resides in Death City in a world where L the detective does not exist, L has become much more lax in his paranoia. Dying the first time wasn't so bad - in fact, he's become comfortable with the idea of being dead enough so that his being a general pest to Light could be referred to as a haunting - and he knows that Kira will not kill him because of the distinct presence of his successors in the city. He knows that any classified information he knows will have little effect if leaked in Death City in comparison to how it is in his home world. The only case he speaks of currently is the Kira case, and that's only because he lives with the two Kiras.
As I said before, he's a recluse because of safety, but it's also something he's become quite comfortable with. Because he's a workaholic and has been denied the readily available supply of cases to work on, he can get antsy at times.
He also has yet to properly grieve Watari's death for a number of reasons: since he himself is here in Death City, it's very possible for Watari to show up as well, and the fact that Watari was always the one to help him sort out his emotional issues and help him with them in the past. L remains alone to deal with his emotions, and he's not doing all that good of job at it.
In regards to my example in the beginning, I do believe L had Misora destroy her laptop, but I also believed he replaced it with one that's equal, if not better, in quality after the case was closed as a way of saying thank you for being my pawn and helping with the case. L would leave this out when telling Mello this story simply because it doesn't have anything to with what he wanted Mello to get out of it. In fact, what we see in chapter 109 of the manga - L saying he doesn't care at all about justice - and my theory on that - bb's a liar - fits with this omission as it makes L out to be more heartless than he actually is.
In fact, as intellectually detached as L is, he can run into issue with his emotions when they do come up, especially if they come up stronger than he realized they would be. He and his emotions aren't necessarily very well acquainted with one another. Even still, L is honest with himself, and he won't deny feeling something (to himself) as or after he feels that way. He'll let himself feel the emotion, but sometimes how strong it is can overwhelm him. If feels the emotion is too difficult to deal with, he may try to draw away from it and to focus on other things. This is how he's been handling the subject of Watari's death, other than of course to make Light's life in Death City as miserable as possible with petty bits of revenge.
I always want to remember and stress the importance of Watari and his hand in making L who he is, who he was, and who he will be. Watari has been with L for 17 years and the two of them have a strong connection and easy love for each other. Watari is the person who knows L best, and Watari is the person who is responsible for the overwhelming success of L. While L is certainly capable of being a successful detective on his own, he would make a considerably less effective one without his companion. Watari loves him unconditionally, and L is forever grateful for Watari's support. In Death City, L has yet to come to terms with Watari's death.
Notes on B: (Basically just going to copy and paste an entire conversation here I had with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
b_as_a_criminal's mun pfff. Though it is edited some to basically just leave what we finally decided on.)
B-mun: So my idea is that - after Watari meets L in 87, he waits a bit, but founds Wammy's sometime within the five years that L was supposedly there (just in case he wasn't lying.) A could have entered any time after 87, my idea is that B entered Wammy's in 89 (when he was 8, according to my headcanon. It seemed to make sense that Watari would be interested in kids about the same age that L was when he solved the bombing.) ... I also like 89 because that's Mello's birthyear and I enjoy drawing lines between the two characters since there's already a lot that exist.
As for when B left, that one's a bit puzzling. The book says that B went missing in May 2002, a few months before the case. But in my headcanon, B was 21 that year, and that's an awful long time to still be living at Wammy's. So I like to interpret it this way:
B left when he was 15 or 16 (used this age because of Mello mentioning his age as an excuse to leave). But he kept in touch with Wammy's and was maybe part of some kind of 'network' of theirs.
L-mun: My thought is that L didn't begin to experiment with quirks until adolescence and solidified the ones he wanted to keep throughout his teen years, so the years B would be studying L would probably be when L was older.
B-mun: Well, that's easily fixed if you assume that L lived in England longer than he said. Because L would have hit adolescence earlier than B, since he's older.
In 2002, [B] deliberately and suddenly vanished from their radar. Because I think the book said that L was looking for him. So I imagine they were like "WTF is this" and expected a problem.
L-mun: So, really, L and B are decently acquainted.
B-mun: Yeah. I think that when L told Misora that he didn't know B, it was either a lie or he was being childish. Or maybe even being metaphorical. I don't know B (anymore, because he's changed) but I am aware of him (that is, aware that this was a potential outcome). Because if we give them a lot more years to be acquainted then I can slow down the whole process, which is nice. I like to think that B only copied L in small ways at first. Possibly not even realizing that he was doing it.
L-mun: I'm thinking L was very much in and out of the country often, but for the most part was able to work from Europe because most of what he does is through the internet and using other people as his eyes and ears.
B-mun: But then when it was the murder case, he was trying to erase his true self, and so he was copying L deliberately so as to say, "This person isn't B. It's some weird person that kind of acts like you." At least, when Misora was to speak of Ryuzaki.
So okay, B and L were acquainted on and off from 89-2002. Well look at that.
13 years
/insert OMG MAGIC HEADCANON POWAHS comments as well as 'I should write this down somewhere'
B-mun: I'm wondering if it would be relevant to decide when A died... B probably was apathetic to it because of the eyes, but... Maybe less apathetic knowing that it was a suicide though. He probably assumed A would be hit by a falling rock or something.
L-mun: I think it would be important. Not exactly sure how, but A's suicide must have affected B at least a little, considering how similarly they were brought up in Wammy's House and how badly it effected the both of them.
B-mun: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. B always knew A's death was coming, but the suicide would shock him. I'm not sure how he'd react outwardly to it though, if at all, but ... the fact of the matter is, B's master plan was a suicide. That's no coincidence. Hmm... Okay, how about 1993? That'd give B 4 years to know him. 1 + 3, and also, that's Matt's anime birthyear and I consider A to be Matt's parallel (in that they both are Wammy Kids with very little information except for the part where they die in accordance to their fated lifespan.) Oh... also, it means B was 13 when A died.
Canon Format: Primarily the anime, but I also draw inspiration and try to corporate what we see in the manga as well. Another Note comes third on my list, and even then I keep it in mind with the fact that the story's been filtered through two different narrators: L himself and then Mello, both of whom are perfectly capable liars. Though when it comes to who is more likely to consciously lie or omit certain things in order to make a point or add a punchline (such as the 'please destroy everything of yours I've ever communicated with you on within twenty-four hours of my hacking it'), I would say that goes to L and from there I can draw even more conclusions about L's motivation to tell Mello this story and what he wanted Mello to get out of it. The movies are an all-out AU, one that I admittedly don't pay much attention to. L was never meant to be the one to finally catch Kira, and in the end he did his best but ultimately accepted death.
Notes: One thing I find interesting about both the original Death Note series and the spin-off novel is that in both L only manages to exacerbate the issue and help create the criminals he's trying to catch. In the manga, he's used as a device to further the plot and make it more interesting. He's there to be an equal challenge to Light, and one could argue that if L hadn't shown up and pulled the stunt he did on television, Kira might have simply become bored with killing criminals without an opponent to shake things up and continually make them more interesting. By the time L does let up on Light, Light has the experience of going against L, the greatest detective in the world, and winning. L helped make Light into the criminal he was, and Light's loyalty to both his ideals as the God of the New World and L's memory is strong enough at the point of L's death that continuing to be Kira is no problem. But at the beginning? At the very beginning, Light had promised to himself that he would do this, but without a challenger to help hone his skills and strengthen his conviction to being Kira, who knows what would have happened?
B is the second example, and L's contribution into making him the criminal he was is even more obvious and direct, considering the reason B became a murderer was to construct a case L wouldn't be able to solve. It's easy to conclude that Watari was the one who thought up the idea of L having successors, went to all the work, and that L was not in these early Wammy kids' lives as anything more than an ideal to reach, Watari is in fact the other half of L the detective. In fact, he's the half who does most of the work, while L remains the brains of the operation. That said, L had little to do with how Wammy's House was run at first, since it began sometime between 1987 (when L is eight) and 1989 (when L is ten), and therefore its running was all in the hands of Watari, who was brilliant enough to think of the idea of having there be replacements for this brilliant kid even early on. In the beginning, A and B were aware of L and even interacted with him, but weren't told that the young kid who was around their age was the up and coming genius detective. B somehow managed to figure it out, and A was actually older than L but didn't realize this until B blabbed about L's identity.
From this it's easy to conclude that L enjoys these challenges more so than he values 'good' or even true justice, something we see plenty of example of in canon. L doesn't necessarily want to see these criminals punished, his main motivation is his drive to challenge himself and end up the victor. Of course, that doesn't mean he doesn't care about justice at all. In fact, I think he very much does, but in the end his motivation for doing what he does is a selfish one.
While L isn't all that social, it's not because he's shy. In fact, he's quite comfortable around other people. It's like Mello says in Another Note: L hides away in order to stay alive, and he's well-versed in how to remain safe when behind a computer screen. Now that he's gone through one death and now resides in Death City in a world where L the detective does not exist, L has become much more lax in his paranoia. Dying the first time wasn't so bad - in fact, he's become comfortable with the idea of being dead enough so that his being a general pest to Light could be referred to as a haunting - and he knows that Kira will not kill him because of the distinct presence of his successors in the city. He knows that any classified information he knows will have little effect if leaked in Death City in comparison to how it is in his home world. The only case he speaks of currently is the Kira case, and that's only because he lives with the two Kiras.
As I said before, he's a recluse because of safety, but it's also something he's become quite comfortable with. Because he's a workaholic and has been denied the readily available supply of cases to work on, he can get antsy at times.
He also has yet to properly grieve Watari's death for a number of reasons: since he himself is here in Death City, it's very possible for Watari to show up as well, and the fact that Watari was always the one to help him sort out his emotional issues and help him with them in the past. L remains alone to deal with his emotions, and he's not doing all that good of job at it.
In regards to my example in the beginning, I do believe L had Misora destroy her laptop, but I also believed he replaced it with one that's equal, if not better, in quality after the case was closed as a way of saying thank you for being my pawn and helping with the case. L would leave this out when telling Mello this story simply because it doesn't have anything to with what he wanted Mello to get out of it. In fact, what we see in chapter 109 of the manga - L saying he doesn't care at all about justice - and my theory on that - bb's a liar - fits with this omission as it makes L out to be more heartless than he actually is.
In fact, as intellectually detached as L is, he can run into issue with his emotions when they do come up, especially if they come up stronger than he realized they would be. He and his emotions aren't necessarily very well acquainted with one another. Even still, L is honest with himself, and he won't deny feeling something (to himself) as or after he feels that way. He'll let himself feel the emotion, but sometimes how strong it is can overwhelm him. If feels the emotion is too difficult to deal with, he may try to draw away from it and to focus on other things. This is how he's been handling the subject of Watari's death, other than of course to make Light's life in Death City as miserable as possible with petty bits of revenge.
I always want to remember and stress the importance of Watari and his hand in making L who he is, who he was, and who he will be. Watari has been with L for 17 years and the two of them have a strong connection and easy love for each other. Watari is the person who knows L best, and Watari is the person who is responsible for the overwhelming success of L. While L is certainly capable of being a successful detective on his own, he would make a considerably less effective one without his companion. Watari loves him unconditionally, and L is forever grateful for Watari's support. In Death City, L has yet to come to terms with Watari's death.
Notes on B: (Basically just going to copy and paste an entire conversation here I had with
b_as_a_criminal's mun pfff. Though it is edited some to basically just leave what we finally decided on.)B-mun: So my idea is that - after Watari meets L in 87, he waits a bit, but founds Wammy's sometime within the five years that L was supposedly there (just in case he wasn't lying.) A could have entered any time after 87, my idea is that B entered Wammy's in 89 (when he was 8, according to my headcanon. It seemed to make sense that Watari would be interested in kids about the same age that L was when he solved the bombing.) ... I also like 89 because that's Mello's birthyear and I enjoy drawing lines between the two characters since there's already a lot that exist.
As for when B left, that one's a bit puzzling. The book says that B went missing in May 2002, a few months before the case. But in my headcanon, B was 21 that year, and that's an awful long time to still be living at Wammy's. So I like to interpret it this way:
B left when he was 15 or 16 (used this age because of Mello mentioning his age as an excuse to leave). But he kept in touch with Wammy's and was maybe part of some kind of 'network' of theirs.
L-mun: My thought is that L didn't begin to experiment with quirks until adolescence and solidified the ones he wanted to keep throughout his teen years, so the years B would be studying L would probably be when L was older.
B-mun: Well, that's easily fixed if you assume that L lived in England longer than he said. Because L would have hit adolescence earlier than B, since he's older.
In 2002, [B] deliberately and suddenly vanished from their radar. Because I think the book said that L was looking for him. So I imagine they were like "WTF is this" and expected a problem.
L-mun: So, really, L and B are decently acquainted.
B-mun: Yeah. I think that when L told Misora that he didn't know B, it was either a lie or he was being childish. Or maybe even being metaphorical. I don't know B (anymore, because he's changed) but I am aware of him (that is, aware that this was a potential outcome). Because if we give them a lot more years to be acquainted then I can slow down the whole process, which is nice. I like to think that B only copied L in small ways at first. Possibly not even realizing that he was doing it.
L-mun: I'm thinking L was very much in and out of the country often, but for the most part was able to work from Europe because most of what he does is through the internet and using other people as his eyes and ears.
B-mun: But then when it was the murder case, he was trying to erase his true self, and so he was copying L deliberately so as to say, "This person isn't B. It's some weird person that kind of acts like you." At least, when Misora was to speak of Ryuzaki.
So okay, B and L were acquainted on and off from 89-2002. Well look at that.
13 years
/insert OMG MAGIC HEADCANON POWAHS comments as well as 'I should write this down somewhere'
B-mun: I'm wondering if it would be relevant to decide when A died... B probably was apathetic to it because of the eyes, but... Maybe less apathetic knowing that it was a suicide though. He probably assumed A would be hit by a falling rock or something.
L-mun: I think it would be important. Not exactly sure how, but A's suicide must have affected B at least a little, considering how similarly they were brought up in Wammy's House and how badly it effected the both of them.
B-mun: Yeah, that's what I was thinking. B always knew A's death was coming, but the suicide would shock him. I'm not sure how he'd react outwardly to it though, if at all, but ... the fact of the matter is, B's master plan was a suicide. That's no coincidence. Hmm... Okay, how about 1993? That'd give B 4 years to know him. 1 + 3, and also, that's Matt's anime birthyear and I consider A to be Matt's parallel (in that they both are Wammy Kids with very little information except for the part where they die in accordance to their fated lifespan.) Oh... also, it means B was 13 when A died.
