(Long) (updated 2016) Death Note Rant

I really hate Mello and Near.

It's not because of their personalities, or even that they don't look nice (I freaking love Near's adorable look. And Mello is kind of really hot in his black clothes. Not to mention Matt, but...). It's because ...

They drag Death Note on and on, when it should really have ended when L died.

From the start, Death Note to me has always been a story about Lawliet and Light, and after one of them dies, it's not the same anymore. I kind of wished that Light could have found a way to resolve everything without killing Lawliet, but ...

I guess it couldn't be helped.

And if it really DID end with Lawliet's death, I would be pissed because I want to know what happens AFTER.

But really.

Death Note's all about Lawliet and Light.

But then again, it's okay in the end, since Light dies as well. (I think it would have been kind of morally wrong or something for the producers or the writers NOT to let Kira die.) Lawliet dies, then Light dies, so in the end they end up in the same place again - hell, heaven (though I'm pretty sure that given those two choices it would have been hell) or even nothingness - so it's okay for me.

I just HATE it when Light has to deal with Mello and Near, so long after Lawliet's death. It sucks. It's like, desecrating Lawliet's name, his death, and even his life (or death). Lawliet's dying scene was THE main event. It signified that something has ended.

And something did end.

But then Mello and Near came along.

I'd be happy if there could be an ending without Mello or Near ever appearing, but I guess it would be almost impossible to construct such a scenario without Mello and Near.

So while I hate them for interrupting what was supposed to be entirely about Lawliet and Light, I love them for ending the story in an acceptable way. (Now, thinking back, I realise that if Light didn't die then it would have ruined everything about Death Note.)

I love Mello and Near. I love Matt too.

Disregarding that fact.

I have found out that a hell lot of Death Note fanfics have no mentions of Mello and Near, much less Matt. It doesn't make me sad; rather, it makes me happy. Nothing but the perverse relationship (if it was even that) between Lawliet and Light - nothing could have been better.

I have also found out that many of those aforementioned fanfictions have Light somehow sparing Lawliet's life. Light and Lawliet somehow falling in love and having gay sex. Light and Lawliet always ends up together.

It's kind of a subconscious insistence, a subconscious refusal to believe that it ended simply with Lawliet's blank stare and Light's unstable act and deranged laugh. It kind of echoes in every single Death Note fan, and even the casual viewers, that please please please give them a happy ending.

I realized a long time ago that it really was impossible for a happy ending in the Death Note canon, so it propelled me to find fanfiction.

And really, the lines of words on my computer screen - the words, that once separated, made no sense at all - sometimes makes me tear up. It makes me happy that the fans are willing to read into the most subtle of hints in the canon universe and turn it into fully-fledged fanfics. Or even an AU fic.

Maybe this long post was the result of me watching Death Note again, after surviving on too much alternate-reality fanfics...

Or maybe it was the result of me browsing kpopsecrets, and mentally tearing up over the SHINee confessions (even if those posts there about 'insane-shawols, stupid-Jongkyung-haters, get-over-it-bitchez, stop-fantasizing-about-them' were kind of an interruption).

I'm currently in the middle of the second episode where Mello and Near appears (even though they only appeared at the end of episode 26, I'll count that in)...

...and I still kind of hate Mello and Near.

Oh well. Just needed to work my thoughts out, I suppose.

(updated 12/12/16)

>>more death note rant about the death note drama that came out in 2015

im back to clarify my thoughts

death note is such a classic, and i think the creators were aiming for an ideological battle. there's the light side and l side, and meanwhile everyone dies in the ideological battle between these two intellectual giants.

anyway.

death note is very precious to me and i'm actually planning on getting a subtle death note tattoo (totally gonna do it, by the way, just a matter of time)

i've always been in the light camp, because i'm a sucker for his type. it's very attractive when someone's good at something and they know they're insanely good at something. light is... like the culmination of everything this society is. like, he's topping the rest of society in qualities like intelligence and beauty and all those qualities that are valued, but he's also topping everyone else in overconfidence and machiavellianism and the bad things. he's not just the culmination, he's also the product, the best product that society could ever produce. he's what happens when you jack someone's stats in everything all the way up.

light is... just literally the best. he's just meant to shine on everyone else from the top, and i've always nursed this intense fangirl love for how appropriate his name is. all the symbolism really gets my blood flowing, me being a lit student with an interest in psych and everything.

l is like the opposite. literally nothing about him is normal, from his birth to his childhood, his education, his job, everything. he's never had to deal with anything the rest of us have ever encountered. if light is the product of society, l is the product of the absence of society. which makes it deliciously ironic how light is the one who wants to tear down society while l wants to be justice and all that, lol.

which makes it also very weird how majority of dn fans are in the l camp. but i guess he's adorable and most dn fans are too young to fully understand the seinen category lol. because any intelligent, normal adult product of this capitalist society would probably empathise with light to some extent.

i really don't know any intelligent person who's never been tempted to game everything in their favour and let everyone else deal with the consequences. by definition of being an intelligent product of society means being exposed to how the selfish are rewarded and no good deed goes UNpunished. adults would understand light and his rhetoric so well.

i guess light's ignominious death was in part due to the creators' moral obligation to the public, and partly because even seinen was too mainstream for that (light not being punished somehow). for light to win, dn would have to tilt all the way out of mainstream animanga and straight into some death game subcategory and shit. some category where the glorification of murder is more ok. i personally think the creators wanted to go even darker with dn, but held back because of how intensely popular it had become, and so also because of the cult following of young people it had gained.

anyway, the light/l relationship is something very precious to me too, because it's one of the few relationships where two people are equally impressive in their own rights, and where both have equally compelling ideologies and are equally posed to make their ideologies come true/make their ideology the mainstream.

they are so perfectly matched that i think it was only inevitable that their fight gradually departed from their respective ideologies and slowly started becoming more about each other than any ideological difference. it was first and foremost a fight between light and l, and the ideologies were only their weapons, as were the death notes and shinigamis. and everyone who died were only casualties of war, and you can really see this given how little both light and l care about those deaths. they really didn't care about them more than a statistic.

it's beautiful. it's so beautiful how something pure and high like justice and righteousness could become something that's technically no different from a fight between two kids in school. it's like the ruination of everything good and it is so poetic. it was amazing how light just casually engineered the death of a GOD, oh my fucking god i cry in awe just thinking about it. it's incredible.

dn was really about how the world fell apart between two intellectual giants.

i mean, did you ever buy into the whole handcuff arc as l really needing light to stay close for the investigation? no, the kinky handcuff arc was really about how they were fucking unhealthily obsessed with each other and just wanted to fuck each other up as bad as they could. or maybe just fuck each other, but any sexual side of their relationship is only a physical manifestation, a side note of the whole intellectual war. the handcuffs were just a metaphor for "i'll fuck you up even at the expense of fucking myself up".

and even though l technically had all the power and was the one who requested for handcuffs in the first place, light was the one who made it possible by agreeing, and the way they're handcuffed just really drove into place how they're of equal status despite how everyone else thought l was exploiting young light with his authority.

beautiful. transcendental.

and anyway, to link back to the old version of this post, i knew one or both of them had to die sooner or later, and i didn't like it, but i understood why they just had to. what i opposed to was how the introduction of mello/near/matt just kept dragging the series on, and it just felt so tired and pointless after l's death (which might also be an extended metaphor for how light felt after l's death, with no one left to truly oppose him and drive him to greater heights), but i also understood how it was inevitable and needed.

sighs.

i still like AU fanfiction versions where they drive each other to mutual ruin but they're also not dead. i don't like my dynamic opposing duo pairs breaking up from death.