#rambling again... so many thoughts

[dont-be-a-gonk]

Does anyone know if that army buddy Johnny claims to have is real or not cause whenever I look into it the tags just say his own name.

The two main consensus I've seen are that 1. Johnny genuinely thinks the tags are someone he knew due to his memory being damaged or 2. his claim is metaphorical as he views the man he was before deserting as different from who he currently is (ie. Robert's pre-war innocence died and Johnny's new more spiteful self/ persona is what remains).

[hollyberrygarden]

I was thinking over the way Pavlova describes Wildberry's crush. he says (direct quote), "you know well that it won't work out, but you have no intention of giving up!" in their interaction in the kingdom, he also calls it a "foolish" type of love

and I was like. what does that imply about Wildberry's crush?? and how would it apply to Crunchy Chip??

"foolish" implies a lack of good sense or judgment. it's a crush that can only end negatively—heartbreak, fighting, strain, or some other horrible result. Wildberry could either keep his feelings to himself, being unhappy with his own cowardice. he could also confess and get rejected, therefore losing whatever bond he had with his crush in the first place. but he could also be accepted and enter a relationship, but then the worries he has could be true. it could not work out, just like he knows it won't, and it would be unfair to both of them. every possible end result (to someone who is convinced it will not work out) would demonstrate the foolishness of the crush he has. Wildberry strikes me as the kind of guy who doesn't get crushes often, and he deals with them on his own before he chooses to confess, if ever

I'm imagining him in his own head about it, which is why no one else seems to know; it could also be why he doesn't externally react to it when the others are around but pretty much concedes to his worries over it (and openly seems. I guess worried about them!!) when he's talking one-on-one with Pavlova. he has gone over these possibilities to himself without any external input. he is trying to figure out how to make it work, which is the "no intention of giving up" that Pavlova mentioned, but maybe he doesn't have a set answer yet, which is why it's still something he hasn't confessed. Pavlova only knows because it's what he does

I was thinking about why it "not working out" (very generally speaking) is something he would think about, and I wondered what kind of relationship he would want. in an overworld dialogue, Royal Margarine tells him he must be "popular with a tall, muscular build like that." whether it's true is unknown, but Wildberry says he doesn't care about such "trivialities," assumedly being popular. if he doesn't want popularity, maybe he wants something simple?? or steady?? or maybe even straightforward. it's hard to know for sure. he wants something that's actually possible for him and his lifestyle in the kingdom. he's a busy guy who often travels away for important and dangerous business. it would be difficult to be in any kind of steady relationship when that's what you do for work. long distance isn't for everyone

to him, he cannot be with Crunchy Chip because of their duties to their kingdoms. I think it circles back to that. Crunchy Chip is the captain of the cream wolves in the Dark Cacao Kingdom, and he is close enough to the king to travel with him to Beast Yeast. he protects the kingdom every day, as well as the woods surrounding it. Wildberry is a hired bodyguard to the Queen Mother, and he has sworn loyalty to her (and the king and queen of course); he frequently travels for work and is likely gone for long stretches of time, depending. they both have very important jobs that neither wants to give up. during Cookie Odyssey, they each talk about their love for their kingdoms and their respective leaders, even making a bet about who will want to visit the other more. they exchange letters on the regular. Hollyberry herself has noticed how much closer they're getting. he knows how much Crunchy Chip values his position in the Dark Cacaco Kingdom, and he values his own position in the Hollyberry Kingdom. they don't want to leave. they cannot leave. not now, maybe not for a long time. maybe not ever, in a horrible reality

it's foolish in every way fathomable. to Wildberry, at least

[deimosatellite]

[evercelle]

2024 art summary! it sure has been a year

[dragonnarrative-writes]

Feeding your favorite artist's or writer's work into any form of gen ai feels profoundly sad to me. It's like... Taking popcorn we've popped to share with anyone who wants some, carrying a sack of it outside of the room, and feeding it through a machine that produces... stale, slightly damp popcorn. And all of the reasons given are things like "I couldn't wait for the next part" or "I don't know how to write myself" or "I don't want other people involved in my fandom experience, I just want this template."

Do you really dislike us that much? Are we so bad and scary?

Every author that I've ever spoken to by saying "hey, I really love this aspect of your work," has been really kind and excited to talk to me about it. So many people here dedicate hours at a time to talk about their head cannons and play in the sandbox with anyone who bothers to answer a question, via text and art and audio. Not everyone can, but it's fun when we do. And every single one of them would love to talk about their process, how they got to where they are, and any resources or exercises they use.

Is it that you don't believe we don't deserve the time we need to make something we like enough to share it? We should give you content no matter what, on your schedule?

I don't have time to write as often as I would like because I work a very stressful job, and the mental toll can sometimes be... a lot. When I force myself to try to make anything in that condition, I end up with something I don't like. It takes time to get in the right mindset. And then it takes time to actually put the words down - even if I'm not editing much, I only write at about 20hsh words a minute. My boyfriend writes 2 thousand of words in a good day, but when each chapter is 3k+ words that is still more than a day of writing. The author's giving you 17, 18k words per update? They're amazing, and still people. We're not machines, literally, so... Let us have the time?

I think most people who use gen ai would say "no, that's not it!" But I think if that's you, you should ask yourself if you ever actually thought to ask yourself those questions.

[bvckbiter]

fandom talks too little about hylla and reyna. reyna killed her father when she thought he'd killed hylla. hylla dragged them out of puerto rico and found them sanctuary and employment on circe's island AND became one of circe's favorites. then when they got captured by blackbeard hylla also got them out of that situation by out-pirating literal immortal pirates. then in a span of three years, they split up, found their own ways to the amazons and cj, and became the leaders of their respective factions. when hylla's queenship was being threatened by otrera in son, she plotted a counter-coup and defeated an amazon queen who couldn't die two nights in a row in one-on-one combat, THEN led her cavalry to camp jupiter. (ik this woman slept like a corpse for a week afterwards). hylla used reyna as an absolutely ruthless bait-and-switch to capture orion, and all reyna said in response to that was, "bet." reyna carries insurmountable amounts of both guilt and gratitude towards her sister. even though they havent seen each other in a while, hylla still drops everything and does everything in her power to save her baby sister when she knows reyna needs her.

[ishgard]

"The most important thing is that you survive."

[chocobje]

I don't normally check my follower count here but recently I did SINCE WHEN DID I GET 5.3K FOLLOWERS HERE??

TYSMMMM 🥹💞💗

I'm glad people like my work here too <3

[flowerakatsuka]

" just know that i'm always here for you, okay? "

i'm finally finishing up my s2 rewatch and getting to the 24th episode awoke a beast in me. so i wanted to make a fake screenshot based on some of their lore that takes place during that episode. i think they'd end up having a heart-to-heart moment since kuroba went through similar struggles after their grandfather's own hospitalization...

also have a bonus doodle bc i need to even out the balance between serious & goofy with these two.

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

perhaps my most #cancelable videogame take i can post on this website is i think that the kind of people who say that anyone who picks the "morally wrong" or "mean" options in video game dialogue should, as a player, feel bad about their own choices/morals in real life. is that those people are just another flavor of the kind of dudes who play Disco Elysium and get mad for not being rewarded for picking the facist options. both of these groups are reducing games to "a thing I want to agree with me and everyone else who doesn't either suffers or does not have the option to play a character who behaves otherwise" rather than "a medium where you get to (or even Have to) explore different kinds of characters in order to experience the full depth of the story and characters in it."

When I want to pick options in a game that are mean, negative, arrogant, or ignorant, it's because I want to explore what would push a character into becoming that kind of person. Sometimes I want to see how the NPC characters who I-The-Player like/agree with react to someone who is fundamentally different from them. I think it's GOOD actually when the narrative allows you to push limits and especially when it has the option to then punish you for it in some way, such as losing options/routes later on, or companions straight up abandoning you for your choices. It DOES often make me deeply, viscerally uncomfortable to make choices in a game that are so counter to my own, but it means I get to experience that discomfort in an isolated environment and also think about what it means, what would push the character or even yes a real person into actually feeling those things. And I get to play with what ways the narrative could challenge them/make them grow over the course of the game--or on the other side, it can let me make a character who does start off more open/accepting but let the events of the narrative push them into being more reactively closed-minded instead.

I like that we have invented a medium where you can play a game multiple times and experience it differently depending on the character you play as. Books and TV and movies are all static--the greatest draw of games to me is the ones that are responsive, that can tell a slightly different story every time--when other characters in the game respond differently to you because of it, or some paths open up and others don't. And so yes it did disappointment me when a franchise that previously had these elements, Dragon Age, did not include them in the most recent installment. I don't think games should have options where you get to just hit a button to say something racist with no consequences or exploration into why a character would do that. but like, if i can only ever play a game as an upstanding person who is morally right all the time in basically the same flavor for every dialogue. I only get to truly play that game Once, you know? And I only get to see the way the companions react to someone they like and trust. And never really go deeper than that.

So like... I just sit and think about the scenes you can get in Inquisition. with Cassandra breaking down, because she fears she placed a would-be tyrant at the head of a powerful organization--that she searched and searched and chose wrong. Of Varric who is desperate to convince you not to become a monster, like the last person he feels betrayed him. Vivienne intentionally pissing you off because she wants to see how far you'll go when angered, how much she has to worry about your reactions. They say so much about the companions, what they fear most, and where they will draw the line. And especially in Inquisition, at these crisis points--you don't have to double down. Your character can have a come-to-Andraste moment where they go "woah... is that really how people see me? is this what i want?" and I think that kind of option can do way more for encouraging actual players to examine the choices they make in stories, more than locking the player into supportive, non-aggressive options does.

now. do i think all games execute these flavors well? no. writers and devs will have their own biases and blind spots, even if they are otherwise well-intentioned. and I don't think the ends of the scale need to extend from "absolute angel" to "horrible bigot", because the real complexity of course lies in the middle. I am not asking for games to let me be bigoted at every turn, what I want is games that let me make the protagonist deeply flawed in one or more ways--fearfully closed-minded to things outside their upbringing, or afraid of change to the status quo, or who want to advance their own aims regardless of consequences to others. I actually agree that the game was correct not to include any options for disrespecting Taash and their personal journey for example, but I do wish... idk maybe that we could have had a scene where if for instance the player character avoided outside-world missions relating to clearing away blight, they could confront us on how this might devastate the natural world and its creatures like dragons, and push us into trying to resolve it. Or in the other direction, if you spend the (currently meaningless) time giving money to background NPCs begging in the cities, Neve could could have a special cutscene thanking you for your attention to people otherwise beneath notice. You know?

And of course not every game can do this, I can write those sentences up there that represent hundreds of hours of dev time, of course they can't do it all. But the prior games usually did have at least a little of this, and that was enough to make me really fall in love. I KNOW the tumultuous development cycle, restarts from scratch, interference from higher-ups all contributed to why Veilguard was unable to hit those same marks this time. And we probably won't ever know how much of the loss of options/reactivity was intention vs a side effect of these things. But I wish people wouldn't frame players who miss these aspects as insane/morally corrupt. When for most of us it's because we genuinely enjoy challenging and exploring these aspects of reality in fiction in a way entirely unlike what we actually support in real life. i fully acknowledge not everyone desires to play this way. and that's fine!!! i am glad people can enjoy doing a "good" run each time that brings them joy. but for me it really limits the potential bounds of my enjoyment i guess. I like media that is complicated and messy and makes me think, and extra so when I get to see how playing that way impacts the greater story around it.

[theunconcernedembalmer]

Purple sop purple sop purple so

[calmlb]

thinking about how Beast!Atsushi is meant to parallel canon!Dazai… the Port Mafia’s White Reaper & Black Wraith

there are so many moments in Beast that stuck out to me as parallels between beast!Atsushi & canon!Dazai, but this is a poignant one for me

[qkmlh]

Do you think the only two things Dean would consider his, wholeheartedly with his entire being, would be Sam and Baby??

[lilybug-02]

Wait so how do you know for sure the sprite is Ralsei? No hate, I do believe you haha, but I too am a lore scientist and I wanna know your evidence. Does it show up in-game? I could definitely believe that I saw it in-game and forgot about it :P

YES. Finding legitimate sprites directly from Toby Fox games can be surprisingly difficult. There are so many fan-made character sprites, that it can be hard to differentiate from the real ones!

Guess how many are NOT fan-made? .....only one 🗿

...(please don't question why google is in italian)

Official Websites like Spriters Resource (Ralsei's Offical Sprite Sheet) are very helpful in this regard :)

They may even include unused file graphics. Like this unused face of Ralsei.

Sprite legitimacy is a big rabbit hole that I personally don't have enough knowlege on :( ((BUT OH MY GOSH The internet is notorious for reposting fan-spriteworks without sourcing. It can be really hard to find the original artist.))

It's also HILARIOUS how many people have redone Ralsei's sprite. It is quite obvious from my Ralsei poll and through his mass of fan-redesigns, that many people in the Deltarune community REALLY LOVE his Chapter 1 sprite more.

Ralsei sprite fan-art is amazing and I personally want to mod it into my game bc it looks so good. Below I have some really cool fan-sprites I found and the artists who made them!

Left (Ralsei Ch 2 redesign- metr0nix727), Middle (Ralsei based off Ch 1- larituca), Left (Full Ralsei Chapter 2 Sprite sheet with Hat- artist unknown**)

**this sprite sheet was submitted through Sprites Resource but I traced it back to TaxeisNotOkay, who I presume to be the original artist. I could not find any other information regarding the full sprite sheet, so feel free to correct or inform me if you find anything!

Looking back at Ralsei's Chapter 2 head sprites..... they just don't look as good as they could in my opinion. I dont like them :(...uhhh NO HATE OF COURSE!!..ahklasdkflansdf I'll go jump in this hole now.

[fist-of-vengeance]

thinking about how essentially every relationship john locke formed in the early seasons of lost has completely disintegrated by the time of his death.

of course there's his relationship with jack, which starts tense but manageable and culminates in jack pointing a gun at john's head and pulling the trigger. but even his smaller, less narratively prominent relationships either implode or drift apart. he bonds with walt in season one but then walt leaves the island, which is itself a severing of their bond since it was mainly based on being the only two people who wanted to stay. still, he goes and visits walt off the island so this is probably john's most successful relationship. I dont think i need to explain how he fucked up with boone, "the sacrifice that the island demanded." charlie viewed john as a mentor and claimed to trust him more than anyone on the island, but after the events of fire and water, that trust is destroyed and charlie despises him. at the same time we get john bonding with claire and having a pseudo-paternal dynamic with her, but their closeness basically drops off the face of the earth as he gets less and less involved with the other survivors.

his arc in the series is essentially a gradual distancing from everyone around him. it starts when he abandons hunting (providing for the others) in favor of trying to get the hatch open (it's extremely clear his primary motive isn't any survival applications but getting answers to the mystery). when they do open the hatch, he spends more and more time inside, underground, cut off from other people. he spends more and more time interacting with ben, a human mystery box that he's obsessed with cracking even if it gets him killed. he follows the proverbial white rabbit deeper down the hole and leaves his connection to humanity behind. the island and its mysteries become more important to john than anything or anyone else.

then in season three we get him claiming to go undercover with the others only to unceremoniously tell sawyer that he's actually going to join them. and it doesn't feel shocking, it feels inevitable. because john has spent the entire series becoming less and less connected with the people he arrived with. in that sense he actually makes a fascinating foil to juliet, who is introduced as one of the others and yet never really fits, she's increasingly sympathetic and kind in a way the rest of them aren't, her redemption arc feels so natural that she actually starts referring to her old people as "the others" like she's been one of the crash survivors from the beginning. her and john basically have inverse arcs, which is probably accidental but very neat.

in season five john tries to convince everyone to go back to the island, and fails spectacularly. and of course he does, because he was so consumed by obsession that he stopped maintaining his relationships, and in many cases actively alienated people (this is also basically what happened with helen) and now he can't wrap his head around why they're all so hostile to him. i am forever obsessed with the scene where he confronts kate and she brutally calls him out for wanting to return to the island because he doesn't love anyone. it actually struck me on rewatch how well the two of them got along in season one, and how badly their relationship has degraded by this point. john repeatedly casts aside interpersonal relationships in favor of his obsession with destiny, so when said destiny actually involves persuading the people he once shunned, he's at a loss. this is because john treats purpose as a supplement for connection, destiny as an alternative to love.

as an aside, this aspect of john's character kinda ties into my opinion that several lost characters can be read as allegorically neurdivergent under a certain lens. i know this was absolutely not intended, but as an adhd former gifted kid who struggles socially, there is something uncomfortably familiar about a character who allows their relationships to burn around them because of a single-minded obsession, especially as a result of being promised the fickle status of "special."

tl/dr: john locke is a doomed idiot and i love him

[applestorms]

@jessaerys ok shit this took a while but WHATEVER. wammy's lore collection here we go :3c less analysis this time, this is mostly just to archive the main known details we have in canon about the house, and also the people from there more generally. however much you wanna accept all this/take it at face value is up to You, Dear Reader (and tbh y'all should just read all these if ur curious since they're all pretty short + have Interesting narrators. i'll include links to free versions). do whatever you want forever etc. etc. also, SPOILERS. obviously.

LABB: (listen here)

no this book isn't written by ohba. yes i'm including it. shush. anyways, most of the lore in this comes from mello's vague comments about beyond's backstory, but there's a Lot of interesting things established in this, so. here's a bunch of notable quotes. if you're not already familiar, please keep in mind that the narrator of this novel is mello, writing at some point shortly before his death.

"L. The century's greatest detective. In light of his staggering mental abilities, L died an unjust and untimely death. In the public record alone he solved over 3,500 difficult crimes, and sent three times that number of degenerates to prison. He wielded incredible power, was able to mobilize every investigative bureau in the entire world, and was applauded generously for his efforts. And during it all, he never showed his face." (pg. 10)

"So, what you're reading now are my notes about L. It's a dying message, not from me, and not directed at the world. The person who will most likely read this first will probably be that big-headed twit Near. But if that's the case, I will not tell him to shred or burn these pages. If it causes him pain to discover that I knew things about L that he did not, then that's fine." (pg. 10-11)

"I am one of the few people who ever met L as L. When and how I met him...this is the single most valuable memory I have, and I will not write it here, but on that occasion L related to me three stories of his exploits, and the episode involving Beyond Birthday was one of these." (pg. 11)

"Obviously, it never came to light that L--and more importantly, Wammy's House, which raised me until I was fifteen--was deeply connected to the matter, but in fact, they were. L, on principle, never got involved in a case unless there were more than ten victims or a million dollars at stake, and this is the real reason why he belatedly, but aggressively, involved himself in this little case, which only ever had three or four victims. I will explain further in the pages that follow, but for this reason, the case of the Los Angeles BB murders is a watershed event for L, for me, and even for Kira. It was a monumental event for all of us. Why? Because this is the case where L first introduced himself as Ryuzaki." (pg. 11)

"For any one else but those two [Near and Kira], my identity may be of no interest, but I am the old world's runner-up, the best dresser that died like a dog, Mihael Keehl. I once called myself Mello and was addressed by that name, but that was a long time ago. Good memories and nightmares." (pg. 12)

"She [Naomi Misora] briefly considered the idea that Raye Penber, or someone else, was playing a practical joke on her, but she found it hard to believe that anyone would be so bold to sign their name as such. L never revealed himself in public or in private, but Misora had heard several horror stories about what happened to detectives who tried passing themselves off as L. It was safe to say that no one would dare use his name, even in jest." (pg. 18)

"This was L, so he was undoubtedly solving several other difficult cases all at once. Cases all over the world. For him, this case was just one of many parallel investigations. How else could he maintain his reputation as the world's greatest detective? The century's greatest detective, L. The detective with no clients." (pg. 35)

"L had earned a certain degree of hostility from other detectives, and the jealous ones called him a hermit detective, or a computer detective, but neither of these is a particularly accurate representation of the truth. Naomi Misora had also tended to think of L as an armchair detective, but in fact, L was quite the opposite, a very active, aggressive individual. [swoon.] While he had absolutely no interest in social connections, he was certainly not the kind of detective to shut himself up in a dark room with the shades drawn and refuse to come out. It is now common knowledge that the three great post war detectives, L, Eraldo Coil and Danuve were all actually the same person. Certainly, anyone reading these notes is almost certain to know...though they may not know that L engaged in a war with the real Eraldo Coil, and the real Danuve, and emerged victorious, claiming their detective codes. The details of this detective war I will save for another occasion, but in addition to those three names, L possessed many other detective codes. I have no idea how many, but there were at least three digits' worth. And quite a number of those were fairly public detectives--just like, as anyone reading these notes must know, he appeared before Kira, calling himself Ryuzaki or Ryuga Hideki. Of course, Naomi Misora had no way of knowing this, but in my opinion, the name L was, for him, just one of many. He never had any direct connection to that identity, he never thought of himself as L--it was just the most famous and most powerful of the many detective codes he used during his life. The name had its uses, but lacked obscurity. L had a real name that nobody knew, and nobody will ever know, but a name which only he knew never defined him. I sometimes wonder if L himself ever knew exactly which name was written in the Death Note, which name it was that killed him. I wonder." (pg. 43-44)

"If we must discuss why L so adamantly refused to reveal himself, we can explain it very simply: doing so was dangerous. Very dangerous. While the world leaders should make efforts to ensure the safety of all the finest minds, not only for detectives, the fact is that the current societal systems do not allow for this, and L believed he had no choice but to protect his mind under his own power. By simple arithmetic, L's ability in 2002 was the equivalent of five ordinary investigative bureaus, and seven intelligence agencies (and by the time he faced off against Kira, those numbers had leapt upward several more notches). This is easy to think of as a reason to respect and admire someone, but let me say this as clearly as possible: that much ability in one human is extremely dangerous. Modern danger management techniques rely heavily on defusing risk, but his very existence was the exact opposite. In other words, if someone was planning to commit a crime, they would greatly increase their chances of getting away with it by simply killing L before they began. That was why L hid his identity. Not because he was shy, or because he never left the house. To ensure his own safety. For a detective of L's ability, self-preservation and the preservation of world peace were one and the same, and it would not be correct to describe his actions as cowardly or self-centered." (pg. 69 nice)

"So whenever L was working, he would usually have someone else as his public face--and in this particular case, the FBI agent Naomi Misora was filling that role." (pg. 70)

"Beyond Birthday had the eyes of a shinigami congenitally. It was not particularly difficult for him to track down people with the initials B.B. or find people who were fated to die on a certain day at a certain time." (pg. 94)

"Normally contact with a shinigami was a prerequisite for acquisition, but Beyond Birthday had traded nothing--he had seen through those eyes since before he could remember. He knew your name before you said it. He knew the time of death of every person he met." (pg. 94)

"You might think [the eyes] would hardly be useful without a Death Note, but that is simply not the case. The ability to see someone's remaining life is the ability to see death. Death, death, death. Beyond Birthday lived his life unceasingly reminded that all humans would eventually die. From the time he was born he knew the day his father would be attacked by a thug and die, knew the day his mother would die in a train crash. He had these eyes before he was born, which is why he called himself Beyond Birthday. Which is why a child as strange as he was taken in by our home, sweet home--Wammy's House. He was B. The second child in Wammy's House." (pg. 94-95)

"The competition between L and B. L and B's puzzle. 'If L's a genius, then B's an extreme genius. If L's a freak, then B's an extreme freak. Now it's time to get ready. There are things I must do before B can surpass L. Henh henh henh henh.' This thought was the only thing that made him laugh without needing to think about it. And those that know will recognize the laugh of the shinigami. Still grinning to himself, he faced the mirror, brushed his hair, and began applying his makeup. The reflection of himself in the mirror. Himself. As always, he could not see his own time of death. No more than he could see the death of the world." (pg. 96)

"We were raised at Wammy's House in England, in Winchester, as L's successors, as L's alternatives, but that does not mean we knew anything more about L than anyone else. Including myself, only a few of us ever met L as L, and even I knew nothing about L before he met Watari--Quillish Wammy, the genius inventor who founded Wammy's House. Nobody knows what's going on in L's head. But even so, I know how Watari felt. Looking at L's incredible talents from the perspective of an inventor--of course he wanted to make a copy, of course he wanted to create a backup. Anyone would feel the same. As I have already explained, L never appeared in public. L knew that his own death would increase the crime rate all over the world by a few dozen percentage points. But what if they could copy him? What if they could make a backup? That was us. L's children, gathered from all corners of the world.

"But even for a genius like Watari, creating a fake L was easier said than done. Even for Near and I, who were said to be the closest to L...the more we tried to be like him, the closer we got, the father away he was, like chasing a mirage. So I hardly need to tell you what it was like when Wammy's House was first founded, when he was still experimenting. The first child, A, was unable to handle the pressure of living up to L and took his own life, and the second child, Beyond Birthday, was brilliant and deviant. B stood for Backup.

"But B tried to surpass L, not become him...no, that might not be right. I have no way of knowing the inner workings of his mind. He...their generation was not like the fourth generation, with Near and I, all the children bound only to the code with the serial L. They were prototypes, never even given the L code, expected to fail. I prefer to refrain from idle speculation based on my own experiences, but, well, Beyond Birthday may have thought something like this: As long as there was L, B would never be L. As long as the original existed, the copy was always a copy." (pg. 104-105)

"The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases. L.A.B.B.--L is After Beyond Birthday. This reading is why I think this name is so much closer to the killer's intentions than the Wara Ningyo Murders, or the Los Angeles Serial Locked Room Killings. I wasn't talking about the names on a purely stylistic basis. Whether Beyond Birthday had put that much thought into it I have no idea, but if he had a specific reason for choosing to commit his murders in L.A., then that is probably why. I am sure he had a much more personal obsession with L as an individual than Near or I ever did. I can understand why someone would become a criminal in order to fight against a detective, which is why I can write something like this, but even so. What did he hope to accomplish by killing unrelated people? Or perhaps B simply wanted to meet L. Then he could use the eyes of the shinigami he'd been born with and see L's real name, see when L would die. He would be able to figure out who L was. Beyond Birthday had never told anyone that he had the eyes of a shinigami, and it would not surprise me at all if he believed himself to be some kind of shinigami." (pg. 105-106)

"Beyond Birthday challenged L. And L accepted the challenge. To put it bluntly, the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases were nothing but an internal struggle, a civil war within our home, sweet home-- Wammy's House. Unfortunate for the victims that got mixed up in it, but even if Beyond Birthday had not killed them, all those victims were fated to die that day, at that time, for some other reason, so logically and morally, their deaths were unavoidable. So in the strictest sense of the word, the only one who really got mixed up in their war was Naomi Misora." (pg. 106)

"L was said to never move on a case unless there were more than ten victims or a million dollars at stake. The only exceptions to this were cases at difficulty level L (extremely fitting), or when L had personal reasons compelling him to get involved. The Los Angeles BB Murders were both of these. I hardly need to point out the difficulty by this stage of the story, and L was essentially fighting his own dead copy. [harsh, dude.] The current head of Wammy's House had told Quillish Wammy/Watari, who had told L about B's disappearance in May, and ever since L had been looking for him even as he solved other cases. Wammy's House only knew him as B--they did not know his real name, Beyond Birthday, so this search was near impossible, but L knew who the killer was. He had not been looking for a killer so much as he was looking for a case. L had been waiting, expecting Beyond Birthday to do something to challenge him. L could move any policeman in the world, but in this case, he could not ask anyone for help except Naomi Misora...more than likely, for this reason. I don't think L really put that much stock in honor, but everyone is embarrassed by their own sins, and nobody wants those missteps to become public knowledge. L was the goal of everyone in Wammy's House. Every one of us wanted to surpass him. To step over him. To step on him. M did, N did, and B did. M as a challenger, N as a successor. B as a criminal." (pg. 116-117)

"No matter what she did, she had no way of knowing. That this killer, Beyond Birthday, could tell someone's name and time of death just by looking at their face, that he had been born with the eyes of a shinigami--she had no way of knowing that fake names were useless with him, completely and utterly pointless. How could she have known? Even Beyond Birthday himself could not explain how he had been born with the eyes of the shinigami, how he could use them with no payment, with no arrangement. Neither Misora nor L knew why, and, obviously, neither do I. The closest thing to an explanation I can offer is that there are shinigami stupid enough to drop their notebooks in our world, so there might well be shinigami stupid enough to drop their eyes." (pg. 193-140)

"'So, Naomi Misora...' said L, wrapping up. But Misora hastily stammered, 'Um, er, L...' but then she hesitated, not sure if she should ask this or not. 'You...know the killer, right?' 'Yes, as I said. He is B.' 'I don't mean like that...I mean, he's someone you know personally?' On the 16th, L had said that he had known the killer was B, and she had sort of known ever since, but two days before, L had said something that changed her guess to conviction. Whatever you do, please catch the killer. The century's greatest detective, L, would never say that about some ordinary indiscriminate serial killer. And the way his letter was just one letter long... 'Yes,' the synthetic voice agreed." (pg. 144-145)

"'I have nothing to do with him,' L said. 'To be completely accurate, I do not even know B. He is simply someone I am aware of. But none of this affects my judgement. Certainly, I was interested in this case, and began to investigate it because I knew who the killer was. But that did not alter the way I investigated it, or the manner in which my investigation proceeded. Naomi Misora, I cannot overlook evil. I cannot forgive it. It does not matter if I know the person who commits evil or not. I am only interested in justice.'" (pg. 145)

"My great and respected predecessor, the man whose actions were a strong influence on me personally, B, B.B., Beyond Birthday--obviously, I need hardly explain again that the murders themselves were not his purpose. So what was he doing? Again, I hardly need to explain--he was challenging the man he copied, the century's greatest detective L. A matter of winning or losing. A contest." (pg. 159)

"Since L could solve every case no matter how challenging, if he created a case so difficult that L as unable to solve it, B would have defeated L." (pg. 159)

"He knew that the moment he took action Wammy's House and Watari would alert L, so he did not even bother trying to stop them. He could only guess at which stage of his plan L would start to come after him, so he prepared things carefully, ready for L's entrance at any point." (pg. 159)

"B approached Naomi Misora, calling himself Rue Ryuzaki. Rue Ryuzaki--L.L. For anyone from Wammy's House, there could be no higher goal than identifying yourself with that letter--and Beyond Birthday seized this case as his chance. even Naomi Misora knew what had happened to detectives falsely identifying themselves as L, and B was from Wammy's House, so he knew this better than anyone--so this choice suggests the strength of his decision. He never once intended to survive--had had made up his mind. He was ready." (pg. 160) [trans. note: the name "Rue" in Japanese, ルエ (ru-e), is an anagram of エル (e-ru), which is how L is pronounced.]

"Naturally, his face and fingerprints would burn as well--he had always disguised himself with heavy makeup while he was with Misora, and he never left a picture behind, so even if someone directly affiliated with Wammy's House inspected the body, they would have no idea that Rue Ryuzaki/Beyond Birthday was B from Wammy's House. He had left nothing to connect Beyond Birthday to B." (pg. 162)

"B was presenting the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases to L as a case that could never be solved. That L could never solve. In other words, he had never prepared any clear solution to it--since the killer had committed suicide, disguised as the fourth victim, there was no longer a killer to catch, and no clues left to catch him with." (pg. 163)

"My poor, poor predecessor. Not only was he utterly and completely defeated, but he survived, driving home his embarrassment...he must have longed for death. Accept my condolences, B." (pg. 169-170)

"If I had space left over I had intended to carry right on into the other two stories I heard from L: the story of the detective war between the three greatest detectives, all solving that infamous bio-terror case, with guest appearances by the last of the alphabet, the first X to the first Z from Wammy's House; and the story of how the world's greatest inventor, Quillish Wammy, aka Watari, had first met L, then about eight year's old--the case that gave birth to the century's greatest detective, the Winchester Mad Bombings that occurred just after the third World War. But however objectively I look at things, I do not have the space or the time. Oh well." (pg. 170)

"She had spoken to L only once after the killer was arrested. He thanked her for helping to solve the case, and told her just a little about the background of the case. That B had been a candidate to succeed L, and that the pressure of that had driven him off track." (pg. 171)

"And a few years after his arrest, on January 21st, 2004, serving a life sentence in a California prison, Beyond Birthday died of a mysterious heart attack." (pg. 173)

C-KIRA: (read here)

near grief :pensive: pretty sure this was animated in the anime movie thing?? tbh i still need to watch that. Very interesting as some of the most recent post-main story lore we get about wammy's imo. less quotes now + more summarizing since these are just comics

near has apparently only "talked" to L once (in quotes since he didn't actually say anything, just sat in the back of the room doing a puzzle the entire time. real asf girl)

during this "conversation," roger or one of the orphanage heads set up the usual L screen + a camera/mic so that L could see all the kids and answer their questions.

notably, mello & near didn't ask any questions, just lurked in the back watching L with a "nasty look in [their] eyes," which near assumes is what made him pick them to be his top successors, considering the fact that he didn't actually look at any of their data. (somewhat seems to imply that L didn't actually give a shit about grades or anything like that when picking his main successors?)

while answering questions, near is caught off guard by one of L's answers. to transcribe it all directly here--

NEAR (NARRATING): At the time, I didn't think L would put it so bluntly. L: It's not a sense of justice. L: Figuring out difficult cases is my hobby. If you measured good and evil deeds by current laws, I would be responsible for many crimes. L: The same way you all like to solve mysteries and riddles, or clear video games more quickly... For me too, its simply prolonging something I enjoy doing. L: That's why I only take on cases that pique my interest. It's not justice at all. And if it means being able to clear a case, I don't play fair, I'm a dishonest, cheating human being, who hates losing...

not quite the monster speech, but fascinating all the same. near seems to imply that this answer sent some kids into a despair spiral, but it actually caused him to like L more and more, feeling that he was, "exactly the kind of person who wanted to achieve his own goals." kinda goes against the HTR13 ohba comment? shrug

The Wammy's House/L's One Day: (read here)

honestly i interpret these comics as like. canon crack fic. but anyways, here's the established L lore included in these two.

L was taken into wammy's as a nameless orphan at an unknown but likely quite young age

very soon after arriving he beats up all the other kids he meets--

he is "utterly incompatible," with all the other kids and monopolizes all the things he likes simply cause he's stronger than them and presumably could fight them for it-- naturally, he ends up usually just playing by himself

notably, this all establishes that L isn't the first kid at wammy's, that there was already at least one generation of older kids living there before he got there (and could eventually turn it into an L successor creating machine)

once watari realizes that L has some outstanding mental abilities, he gives him his own private room and a computer. afterwards, L spends most of his time sitting in front of the puter by himself

L requests that watari buy 1 million pounds with Japanese yen and tells him which stocks to buy, causing his assets to reach "almost 20,000 times the original amount," in two years. visually this is depicted as happening when L is still quite young

several years later, L stumbles across a serial murder case in the news, which is the first he solves, starting his new career path

-

L can stay awake for 100+ hours and then gets over it by sleeping for like 17 hours. pictures also may imply that he doesn't actually sleep in a bed, but just lies down sideways in his chair. RIP yotsuba light's perfectly designed sleep schedule

L also shits/pisses in the same position he usually sits in (frog-pose), facing the tank south park style

he is a big fan of cleanliness!! human washing machine etc. etc. honestly i think this is just another way for him to hold that same crouched position

text says he always has, "ten or so identical sets of clothes prepared for him," since he's picky about it, but the art itself shows way more than ten. also rare shirtless L moment?? (watari helps)

L does in fact go outside!! he likes roller coasters/theme parks, swinging, art galleries, live music, etc. though most of the time he just sits in his room thinking thru shit n solving cases.