#I'm not saying that IS his deal necessarily but this is an interpretation i subscribe to for multiple reasons i might elaborate on 🫡

[daz4i]

need to write a thing abt dazai being motivated by fear and how reading him this way recontextualizes a lot of his actions

[liskantope]

God, Freddie deBoer can be such a dick. Both this, and a proclivity for uncharacteristically careless and weak arguments, seem to be a risk whenever the triggering (extremely, for him) topic of mental illness awareness culture is involved, to the point that he's defending a ton of questionably ambiguous interpretations of another writer's language, where properly objective analysis would involve a carefuller look at the nuances of meaning of "deal with alcohol abuse"*, "moved to LA to become an actor" (as opposed to, perhaps, "became an actor in order to get to LA"), "embraced an eating disorder" versus "committed to my blossoming eating disorder with the diligence of a pious saint [within the framework of being addled by the disorder!]", and "diagnosis shopping". This kind of thing is incredibly sloppy on FdB's part, and it's hard to say that it's fueled more by his (in my opinion righteous) antipathy towards the "mental illnesses/disorders are inspiring and made me what I am today" ideology than by mean-spiritedness towards certain people who cross him. I'm a paid subscriber who can participate in the comments sections, but I think I'd better stay out of these ones (FdB is not known for his kindness towards commenters who disagree with him either).

I've often compared FdB's triggered behavior around this mental illness stuff to Scott Alexander's triggered behavior around feminism circa ten years ago, but Scott's decreased capacity for even-handed rigor and occasionally overly-harsh language never came close to anything like this. There is such a palpable underlying niceness to Scott that, I think, would make it impossible for him to be this unkind. Scott also was able at times to demonstrate self-awareness about his lack of objectivity.

*No, there's a difference between a young person drinking from time to time in an irresponsible or even abusive way, and a history of "dealing with alcohol abuse". This distinction is somewhat related to my recent suggestion that speech/behavior which is X (in particular for X = some bad thing) doesn't necessarily make a person themself X.

[smartzelda]

How do you think a female light and mello would turn out?

Sorry it took me so long to get around to this ask, anon! But I will give my thoughts as of now

In terms of "female Mello", most of my thoughts on that would actually be explained by this post:

But just in case, the tl;dr of that post is that I think "female mello" wouldn't actually end up all that different from canon Mello, given my interpretation of his personality and environment

But female Light? Good question! I'll put my thoughts under the cut

ㅤ

Okay, so in the post I linked above, I did some comparison between Mello and Light. Specifically, I said that Light, given his place in society and how he deals with his knowledge of societal standards, is more likely to change. I'll touch on this more later, but my general statement on this is that (in opposition to Mello, Near, and L, who are aware of societal standards in different places but use them as tools rather than subscribe to them or feel completely constrained to follow them) Light follows them (publicly at least) to the extent he has to to keep/raise his place in society and keep his image. Even if he doesn't actually believe any number of societal standards, he will uphold them to the extent he needs to (because he also cares about being a "good person" in the eyes of society).

Now, as I said in the previous post I linked above, I believe to get a much more accurate grasp on determining something like "how would this character be if gender swaped" (given death note's setting in Japan in the 2000s) would be to keep in mind *Japan's* societal standards, expectations, class differences, etc at the time. I am no expert on this, and I'm from the USA, so I can only do my best based on what I do know and from my analysis of the story itself. This is to say I'll do by absolute best, just keep all that in mind as you read further

So, to answer your question "How do you think a female Light would turn out?" I'll first have to break canon Light apart a bit.

Starting with his morals, his idea of what constitutes "good" or "bad"/a sense of justice is highly influenced by his father's ideals. Out of the members of his family, his father has the most rigid idea of justice and morality, accompanied with the fact of his occupation. It is not at all unnatural for canon Light to look up to his father (Chief in the NPA) as a "good" and "moral" person.

Light’s original goals for the future pre–the death note also build off of this concept (his relationship with and admiration for his father). He's an intelligent kid, and everyone knows it, including him. He's always far surpased his peers and worked through school unchallenged. Even if his father didn't particularly push for Light to follow in his footsteps, it's also not at all unnatural for others to see this intelligent boy who seems to take after his father and get to talking. Light’s smart, he already takes after his father, and he's even helped out the police a couple times himself, so it would be *natural* for him to follow in his footsteps, right? And, as far as I'm aware, the concept of potential still exists. So, even if Light doesn't necessarily pursue his father's occupation, if he doesn't make something of himself, go to a high end/prominent university, use that intelligence for something, use his gifts to do something most people can't, that's a "waste of potential" isn't it? So, to me, it's not at all unlikely that this mindset and Light’s boredom go hand in hand. Everything is the same, people are the same, society is going down the drain (yadda yadda), and he's taking a pathway (a pathway without the challenge and stimulation he so craves) because "he should".

Because what else would he do? It's not like he's interested in anything else, and anything less would "be a waste".

Now, as for female Light, it isn't impossible for all this to be similar. While it's easy to say that she'd be more like Sayu or Sachiko, and I can't say for sure that she would connect to her father the exact same way, I maintain that it's not impossible. While there is the idea that's it's generally sons who take after their fathers and seek their approval, this can still happen with female Light. Now, any aforementioned talk from before would most likely change a little bit due to the gender change, but even if more people doubt her due to this, Light is stubborn. If she already has it in her head that following in her father's footsteps is natural for someone as intelligent as her, giving up simply because someone said it would be hard to move into that position as a woman would be well...a waste to her. Plus, given that she would also rarely feel challenged intellectually, as canon Light seems to (given his reaction to finding a rival in L) she would most likely see a challenge in working up to high positions in the NPA despite her gender.

But, of course, given his knowledge of society, you may be wondering. *What if* she comes to the conclusion that surpassing her father is actually impossible to do (or impossible without compromising her current ideals)? Well, then I surmise if she's still helped out the police a bit and taking after her father, she'd find some sort of higher position connected to this idea of helping out the country/common people as adjacent as she can get.

After all, even if Light actually has no intrinsic passion in following in their father's footsteps, pre death note they NEED an endgoal.

That all being mentioned as well, I have no idea whether you would see women in the NPA at the time. Even in adaptations of Death Note that take place later in the 2000s or early to mid 2010s have maybe one or a few onscreen NPA members. So I can't tell you whether it's possible or how possible it is that female Light would get into it around 2010 or earlier. All I can say is that if it's not impossible, there's a chance she'll try.

BUT, whether "female Light" follows in her father's footsteps are not, there are some plot points we know that could still occur. Namely, Light’s getting into To-Oh university.

Luckily, Death Note delivered us Kiyomi Takada, who I personally believe to be a good frame of reference for a fem Light (it's no secret in my friend groups that I feel that Takada shares personality traits with him). Because of her, I feel comfortable saying that whatever fem Light chooses as an occupation, she will still inevitably end up at Toh-oh, still inevitably take the top score on the exam and outperform her peers (and still date men for the image of it, but most likely not more than one, given that dating multiple people most likely makes canon Light a desirable successful man in the eyes of society, but it would leave fem Light labeled as a slut, counterproductive to upholding her image. So while Light dates multiple before sticking with Misa, I think fem Light would try to stick with the same person for as long as possible).

Now in the Mello post, anon asked if I think that fem Mello would hate men, and I answered that she probably wouldn't more than canon Mello does. Would Light, though? I think so.

Now, the jokes about Light Yagami being a misogynist, we've all seen them. But before I explain why I think a fem Light would "hate men", I'm going to have to explain my take on Light being misogynistic first

The popular take on Light’s Misogyny is that he's always been like that, coupled with the idea/joke that he's gay *because* he hates women. In all serious, though, I find the former a bit more complicated, and I feel that the latter actually influences his growing misogyny.

Canon Light is very aware of his place in society, his presence, and how he can influence people with his looks and his talent for words. He's very intelligent (the most intelligent one in his class even), he's bored (given his absence of a rival/something to truly challenge him), and has always kept all his "friends" at arms length. We even find early on that he considers certain women (Yuri for example) as one of his "friends" as well. There's no proof that Light early on (even pre death note) hated women or thought of them as inherently lesser than men. In fact, I'd argue that Light Yagami is one of those "I hate you all equally types", or, in this case, "I treat you/think of you based on how stupid you are, and gender has nothing to do with it". My prime example is him having no trouble telling Misa AND Matsuda that they're being stupid in areas they can hear (and of course he doesn't nail Matsuda nearly as much as L does, but by comparison tbh L mostly nails Matsuda while Light nails Misa when it comes to "being stupid". It...evens out one might say)

So let's add this to Light’s file. He starts out being annoyed/more unfair in analysis of character towards those he finds to be "dumb", regardless of their gender.

Pre Death Note Light is also a "good kid" (heck, even post dn and Yotsuba arc Light tries as hard as possible to keep the emotions in and the mask showing out). He's not the type to needlessly insult people or tell everyone what he's thinking about them to their face. A little joke? Sure, but I think you're more likely to find him channeling his annoyance and using his words in such a way that they come off less as an insult and more as an observation intended to help them out. If he's tutoring his peers to help out and one of them makes a glaring error, he's more likely to think "they are so stupid", and more likely to act in such a way that "Here. This is the *right* way you should do it so you don't make stupid mistakes. Remember this. You don't want to make dumb mistakes". Basically...a kind of hidden insult if you will with a bit more of a constructive framing.

Now, second thing to add to his file. Superiority. He's smart. He knows it. He's never really been challenged or found a "true friend" because of it (and because he's constantly putting up that mask of the good moral teenage boy that requires him to look good in the eyes of society, which also requires society to not see and know the him without the mask). It's not unlikely that he would develop a sort of complex in which he values intelligence while simultaneously believing that he's above everyone for being the smartest (because no one can challenge him, right? And because everyone thinks so), so it’s not unlikely that he would place people in a metaphorical heirarchy based upon his analysis of their character (which is influenced by how intelligent he believes them to be).

Now, I also sort of hinted at a moment ago that I believe it's "he's misogynistic because he's gay" (if I had to reduce my take as much as possible down to a simple phrase) over "he's gay because he's misogynistic", or that his being gay is something that makes him more misogynistic as the series goes on. This is a pretty long post as it is, so I'm not going to make an entire breakdown on why I think Light being gay (for the record, I personally feel that he's gay and aspec) is a valid interpretation of canon. So if you don't agree with me on it, have fun. If you decide to keep reading, know that what I'm about to say is said upon the basis of this being true.

As mentioned earlier, Light is very aware of his place and influence in society. He's aware of how his looks affect others (and he has no problems using them to his advantage, even in canon. Adding that to the file), and he's combined them with his words in canon to win over characters no matter their gender. What matters (especially when he becomes Kira) is that society *sees* him as a good person, which means often that he can ignore his own actions/feelings that don't fit society's ideals of a "good moral person" as long as no one knows/can see it (because if no one sees it, it may as well not be real) or as long as he believes it *will* become accepted in society. It's a very pointed choice that Light Yagami does not date anyone (and in fact, canonically tells his family that he's too busy to right now) pre death note, even though he makes it clear that he has girls' contact information and COULD initiate a date if he wished to. This is why his jump from dating no one, to going to Space Land with Yuri, to dating a bunch of girls at once is...interesting behavior.

But he's under suspicion of being Kira. We know the lengths he goes to so he can come off as normal teenage boy material (like *cough* reading porn mags on camera), and dating all those women at once is no exception (because it's totally straight behavior to make excuses about why you won't date anyone to jumping to dating a bunch of girls at once so you seem like a totally normal girl crazy teenage boy /s).

He thinks that he understands society and how people act fundamentally (as shown with how he talks to Ryuk about how society will respond to Kira over time). And while there's no proof that he believes that junk that all women will inherently be drawn towards men (comp het, and some other things), given that he uses his looks to his advantage regardless of gender or romance, he is aware that he *can* win over people with his looks (and with society as it is, especially at the time, whether he has male admirers and knows it doesn't matter in terms of his dating life, because dating men will *not* contribute positively to his "good normal teenage boy" persona), it's true that he does use a lot of women in pursuing his goals.

So, let us set the stage, shall we? We have a man who doesn't respect very many people, nor does he find anyone worthy of his level intelligence wise. He makes judgements on people's character influenced by how smart he believes them to be. He's never had an actual close friend before. He's a man who likes men (who may not know that he likes men) and values intelligence, who surrounds himself with women (and women he dislikes at that)

Even if he needs this to be true for his goals, I doubt Light finds many people who fall for his manipulation of them (aided by his looks) to be very smart. He doesn't believe all women are inherently stupid or lesser, just that none of the ones he's met are worthy of him (not to mention that because he's not a woman himself, he doesn't fully grasp their place in society/how society affects them as much as he thinks he does)

Most people are stupid (no one is as smart as me) -> people are so easy to manipulate -> I keep manipulating women, women are easy to manipulate -> I dislike women being obsessed with me. Why? She is a bit stupid. I have to dislike her for a reason. I dislike her because she's stupid and therefore not worthy of me -> women are stupid

(And even then, as I said, he still doesn't really think women are inherently lesser in the end. I think his reactions are just heightened here by the fact that he just does not like Misa. I mean, heck, when he gets angry he throws men under the bus too (sorry Mikami). I think our perspective is a bit skewed given how much time he spends with her. Even if he was acting about it, it's telling enough that he recognized that Takada *is* intelligent)

So, what would this all mean for fem Light? Well, to keep her experience largely similar (or to keep her as close to the original as possible), let us assume that fem Light is a lesbian. Of course, given her status as a woman, she's going to face a bit more hardship and actually be impacted by misogyny herself this time around, but she has a supportive family. Light Yagami is a "good normal teenager" you see.

She may have told her parents she wouldn't date boys because she's focusing on her studies before, but when she comes under suspicion of being Kira by L, she needs to seem like a "normal teenage girl". She goes on a date with a guy who'd asked her out or a guy friend she knows likes her to initiate the bus jacking incident. She could still read porn mags on camera, although I surmise that just talking about how much she definitely likes guys or making collages of hot shirtless men from regular magazines could do the trick. She picks someone to date long term until getting into university (in which she'll tell people that it just wasn't going to work out because they were going different places after high school). She gets the highest score on the entrance exam to her university of choice (To-Oh of course) and finds another long term boyfriend from her university (or the equivalent of Takada, given that she was intelligent AND pretty, miss To-Oh herself). She already kind of doesn't like men based upon her experiences, but we enter into the second Kira event. Assuming the plot beats are mostly the same and our masc equivalent of Misa still demands to be her boyfriend, he becomes an obsessive obstacle in Kira's path, earning her ire for being an obstacle and because it annoys her "for some reason" that he likes her. It's so easy to get boys to do whatever she wants given her looks and charisma, so they can't be too smart. And of course all the ones she's surrounded herself with she has been annoyed at for them liking her so much. It can't be for no reason, so it must be something else. So clearly none of the men she's dated/dating are worthy because they're stupid and men are stupid.

You see where this goes.

Like I said, Takada happens to be a great frame of reference. She's smart, intelligent, loves Kira. If intelligence is why he could not love Misa, then surely Takada is his type, right?

Mikami is another great frame of reference. He's smart, intelligent, worships Kira obsessively (hmmm curious how similar he is to Misa in that regard and yet he doesn't find *him* annoying) , looks like L is very pretty. ...Light picks him after only seeing his looks on tv and doesn't appreciate any of his other pawns/allies just as much

Anyways, I digress. I've Light essayed you all enough

Tl;Dr, I think it's entirely possible that a fem Light could turn out largely the same (just maybe a men disliker instead of a women disliker or with a different occupation), just because gender would not really change his values morally or in terms of intelligence, nor how he interacts with society. Heck, even if she would have to be more wary of getting exposed about it, fem Light could very much be a femme fatale type (I think canon Light already has the vibes) given that she would use her looks to her advantage as well. She would face naturally a bit more or different hardship than canon Light, but it’s not impossible for her to turn out largely the same with a couple things swapped about her.

[sunstriderling]

I'm just curious but are you Kin with hanzo? You have so many cool ideas and what seem like personal connections to him, and I was curious

Oh. Hello.

No. I don’t know how to put this gently so that nobody gets their fingers stuck between the door here, but I don’t subscribe to the fictionkin thing. You do you, it just isn’t something that I believe.

However, I have an entirely pathological thing going on with this character. Look - Hanzo is what I describe as a comfort character. That means a bunch of different things, all of which more or less relate back to things that are not okay with me. Everything underneath this line should be said at a therapy session, not online, but alas - I can’t access therapy, so.

… do mobile readmores even work? Guess we’re about to find out.

Firstly, I feel that Hanzo, for one reason or another, is safe. “Safety” is a big fucking deal for me. It doesn’t mean the obvious - I’m perfectly aware that I just called a born and raised yakuza assassin who gutted his own brother “safe”, but that’s actually. Irrelevant. He’s an older male whom I for some reason just happen to trust. That’s what matters.

Think of what meaning the term “big brother” has, not in relation to Hanzo or any actual brotherhood but as a concept. A big brother is someone male, someone older but not by that much, someone more experienced, someone who’ll protect you and stand up for you, someone you can trust, someone who’ll always be there, someone safe.

That’s what Hanzo, as a character, is for me. These aren’t necessarily traits of the character himself, but something I feel the character does for me, which brings me to point two.

I process things through this character, particularly things that are painful or scary. Hanzo is the buffer between me and these things. This only works because Hanzo either directly faces the same issues as I do, or it’s very likely that he does, or could; plausibility and believability are keys to this shit working out for me. It has to be authentic. The way it functions is that essentially, Hanzo is the person standing between me and something that wants to hurt me. It’ll have to go through him before it gets to me, and…

I know that he can deal with it. He’s stronger than I am. He’s more equipped to deal with it than I am. He’s been through more than I have. And if he can do it, despite all the odds, then I can do it, too. If he can survive it, then it’s survivable and I stand a fair chance as well.

I press Hanzo’s gender in the beginning for a reason - he’s not the first character (or person) that I form this attachment to, and they’re all specifically male to replace the male role model in my life that I, as a man, never had. I’m hella patching up those daddy issues here, not even gonna lie. If you don’t know what it’s like to grow up not having something that crucial present in your life, it might be funny, but the truth is that it really isn’t. I have so many fucking problems with other men that I literally cannot associate with them in the real world. It’s great, 0/10 would not recommend to my worst enemy. Finding a safe male that I can trust - and know that they won’t break that trust or turn against me - is. You know. Fucking life-changing, is what it is.

I look up to Hanzo, and I respect and love him. I don’t know why my shredded brain chose him over some other character, but it is what it is. As a result - I’m a writer, it’s my main therapy tool, so obviously these two go together a lot. Hanzo is my favourite character so obviously thid means I’m going to be writing about him a lot, and as a writer, my goal is to keep him as in-character and faithful to whatever original portrayal we have as possible. This together with the previous means that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out who he is and why he does what he does or says what he says, which, naturally, gives me too much shit to talk about whenever someone makes the mistake of asking.

I try not to add much of what isn’t there already, because it’s explicitly who Hanzo is that made him this important to me. Of course, with this amount of projecting going on versus the non-amount of canon to base on, I’m going to blur some lines here and there, but I try to stay objective, and I’d like to claim that for the main part, I manage it pretty well.

The downside is that I often take things regarding Hanzo quite…. personally, especially in terms of the character I’ve written, and easily become very uncomfortable when forced to view content of him that is either Unsafe(trademark) or goes against my image/interpretation of him. I just try not to see it, and when I do, not to mind it or at least not to dwell on it, but, you know.

Anyway, how’s that for oversharing.

ETA: It's probably also worth mentioning that I don't imagine any personal relationship between myself and Hanzo or any other character. He does the shit I see him doing either by existing in his story as he is, or when I deliberately insert him into a different one where I can control my own exposure to the subject matters both via writing them according to my own comfort limits and by facing them through him.

Hanzo's like a freaking patronus charm, not my imaginary friend. Just clearing that up.