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Mogi x Mello secret friends with benefits AU when??? this is so. flirty?

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sorry i gotta say it. i hate how half the fandom can acknowledge that everyone aged in the timeskip EXCEPT near who was first introduced at 13 and is therefore now 12

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Mello for the character ask?

oh silly mello where would we be without your silliness

favorite thing about them: god i don't reread the mello parts of arc 2 enough to pick. uhhhh. i like that he's legitimately brilliant and that he figured out kira can kill without heart attacks on his own just by studying the death rates in the months before higuchi was caught. he's a wildcard but he's also a strategic genius. i also like that he is insufferably extra WHY does he have a christian cross on his GUN

least favorite thing about them: called misa stupid. fuck off

favorite line: "i don't underestimate revenge as a motive." that OR "then i guess i'm going to have to do it"

brOTP: the actual answer is halle and mello but i've talked about them so i am going to say him and matt <3 i am constantly undecided on whether this is platonic or romantic to me but i love that mello is like "okay im going to japan now. follow me" and matt is like "what the hell, sure." what is wrong with them. matt do you not have anything better to do. also matt trying to get mello to take over his job monitoring misa is so funny to me it's such a weird injection of frat bro culture into death note of all media

OTP: meronia forever. love story of all time in, again, death note of all media. truly fucking insane how it's basically confirmed that mello didn't plan the kidnapping to beat near but to save him. mello is the only character! in the entire series! to actually experience positive development! puts aside his inferiority complex because there is no race without near, because near needs him, because he needs near, because they are two halves of one whole and mello has always known something is missing in him and only figures out who it is five years later. what the fuck man. extremely sad that this realization is exactly what gets him killed

nOTP: i have not yet figured out the appeal of mello/light although i am sure i could be convinced. mello deserves the older yagami

random headcanon: i talked about this a little while pondering fem!mello but i like the idea that he got a lot of passive aggression for his haircut in wammy's which made him absolutely determined to keep said haircut forever even when he starts not liking it anymore. and after the explosion he's like [lying face down on concrete, waves of pain racking his twink frame] i……… have an excuse to change my hair now……………

also the blue lipstick is because he heard from somewhere that blue was L's favorite color

unpopular opinion: i don't think of him as catholic :pensive: it's possible that he used to be and is lapsed? or left the faith? but i usually see his extremely aggressive use of catholic stuff as decoration as more of a fuck you to the idea of god than anything. the one thing that contradicts this is the rosary (mihael whyyy do you wear the rosary around your neck in plain view whyyyyy) but i wonder if it's more of a, like… comfort object than anything? if that makes sense?? i don't knowww i don't really see mello as someone riddled with the catholic guilt that most catholic-mello interpretations give him. however i am not a mello understander so perhaps i should read more meta to figure out his Deal first

on a higher thematic level i like this interpretation of the christian imagery for both misa and mello as symbolism of them worshipping a false god (light and L respectively)

and OH WAIT I REMEMBERED MY ACTUAL UNPOPULAR OPINION: i pronounce his real name mee-hyle kale. the way soichiro (english dub) does it. sorry.

song i associate with them: i found this song just last week (i'm late i know) but oh my god

I'm gonna get myself in fighting trim Scope out every angle of unfair advantage I'm gonna bribe the officals, I'm gonna kill all the judges It's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage Our mother has been absent Ever since we founded Rome But there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home, oh

god it's just so. it just sounds like him. it's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage!

favorite picture of them:

im obsessed with the shading on this. it doesn't make any goddamn sense. how did livor mortis set in that fast???? he's drawn with pale skin everywhere else in the manga! he should be turning paler in the first few minutes after death! i know they probably did this to be dramatic but what is going on here!

(also i have feelings about mello dying with eyes open and L dying with eyes closed. nothing coherent but. gestures)

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hello Meronia nation! for my media class i had to make a celebrity gossip magazine and OBVIOUSLY i made it death note themed. like what else was i supposed to do with all this brain rot.

anyway this issue features mello being interviewed about the dating rumors between him and near (which he strongly denies)… except he just ends up making it 1000% worse LMAOO. he’s sooo weird about near it’s insane (same tho).

the writing part was actually so hard bc i’m not naturally a witty person so it took wayy longer than it should’ve BUT i survived 😭.

also this is my first post whaaaat. i don’t plan on becoming a regular poster or anything but i had to share this for the fellow Meronia truthers out there.

(i also made a matsulight one but it’s not finished yet so i’m holding off on posting it )

ok toodles~

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*when

(For purposes of this poll, if your answer is "flirting", vote for compliment.)

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The best interaction between Halle and Mello is when Mello raises his gun towards Near and the first thing Halle says to stop him is: "If your rival dies, your win won't mean anything" in front of the rival in question and it actually works and Mello is like "Heh. 🤭 Correct. Anyway, where's my photo?"

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Companion

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mellos theme is heartbreaking. unlike L or Near he doesnt have a piano that etablishes his melody, its all carried by a guitar and a bass. but then the electronic boops come in and theyre so painfully not a part of the song, they dont come from him. theyre Near. and theyre in conversation with mello, theyre unfazed by the increasing aggression in his guitar, he abandons his somber melody for a screaming, peaking riff and its in agony breaking itself apart as the boops get more and more frequent, always saying the same dumb blooping beeps, unaffected as always, and mello calms down and settles down for his end. KILL ME.

and then mellos theme B comes in and fucks your mom. its so good its so wild and powerful. death notes second half deserved to be 2 full seasons.

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he does nottt fuck with mello

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Omg I adore Halle and love your thoughts! Regarding your comment:

Halle doesn't look surprised at all so was this a daily occurrence in the week mello lived in her apartment, like, does she just come home to a gun pointed at her every day. why are they like this?

I have a theory if you’re interested. I’ve wondered about this too and having scoured the manga I feel like there’s a hint of explanation….maybe?? Before Halle enters her apartment there is this panel:

Which shows her using what looks like a buzzer/intercom system. Not sure if these are common everywhere but my previous apartment had one that’s basically identical. It buzzes from the lobby to inside the apartment to let the resident know there’s someone coming up to the unit. But why would she buzz her own apartment? She may have done this to signal to Mello to be on alert (bc now she is wearing a wire and can’t just call him and tell him what’s up), or maybe he thought it could be some random person trying to gain access to the apartment, which is why he's armed and waiting by the door and then looks confused when she enters.

Also from a meta sense I’m not sure what the value of including this panel would be if it wasn’t intended to communicate something to the reader.

Anyway, I could be wrong but this is the impression I came away with when considering the same question.

u mentioned halle in one of your asks (not sure which. but one of them. i think the sayu one) and id like to nominate halle for the ask game. please. i miss her and want to hear more about women.

it WAS the sayu one you're right anyway YAY HALLE MY FAVORITE FOREVER

favorite thing about them: i could swear that there's a line in manga canon that says she's chasing down kira as vengeance for someone she knew but i cannot find it for the life of me. (i know it's also in htr, which adds the detail that it was the yotsuba kira specifically, but it was DEFINITELY in the manga… ughhhh)

as an alternative i will say my favorite thing is that she's a wild card. not on near's side, not on mello's side, just wants to stop kira. [mello voice] i don't discount revenge as a motive

least favorite thing about them: this is not her fault but i wish we got more internal monologue while she was being kiyomi's bodyguard :((( can you please tell us. ONE thing you think about this situation. ONE thing about how you are now in a foreign country and isolated from all your colleagues (near specifically says not to tell her where the spk is located in case halle is controlled by the notebook) and work as the most trusted bodyguard of the voice of kira, who you are determined to bring down, alone if you have to. ONE thing. no? no??? god damn it

favorite line: you, near, and i all want to capture kira. we're all after the same goal.

brOTP: her and mello are cute. i like this panel especially

like this is halle right after she walked into her apartment. and mello is just There. pointing a gun at her. what the fuck was this. how long has he been standing there. halle doesn't look surprised at all so was this a daily occurrence in the week mello lived in her apartment, like, does she just come home to a gun pointed at her every day. why are they like this?

OTP: Don't Even Joke Lad

kiyoharu: you have to headcanon so much into halle for this to work but i do have a soft spot for it. they're around each other 24/7, halle is silently working against her but smiles at her so cheerfully, kiyomi has been warned by light to suspect everyone around her as an spk agent but for some reason halle is her most trusted confidante anyway. Something Is Up. don't say it's because kiyomi's stupid i'll kill you.

hallemisa: i have one argument for this

^ i love that misa remembers halle from her aborted fight with kiyomi. i love that halle says "i'm sorry misa" afterwards using her first name for some reason? in my head they bump into each other in chicago or something post-canon after misa fakes her death and misa immediately shouts I KNEW IT! YOU ARE STALKING ME!

hallenear/hallemello: I Love Unsatisfying Proxy Relationships

nOTP: none? i think? flipping through my brain index. the version of halle in my head is bisexual and likes pathetic people of any gender and since death note is full of pathetic people im sure we could make something work.

random headcanon: this post is full of my halle headcanons so let me try to think of some new ones… i tend to think she feels a little bit bad about kidnapping misa and lying to kiyomi but pushes it down for catching kira's sake. i also think her very obvious -_-’ reaction to near's casual sexism is the exact same type of reaction every 2020s older sister has experienced when their younger brother shows them something on the "pink job blue job" side of tiktok. maybe i could hit her with the szpd beam?

unpopular opinion: w.what opinions are there on halle. uhhhhh i think i saw someone on a forum saying she was trying to seduce mello away from near And I Think That's Stupid

song i associate with them: i don't have anything for her… this is shameful. i'm going to cheat a little bit and say debt collector by jhariah because it is The revenge song

favorite picture of them: i like this one a lot. ignore the murderer

halle: -_- are you done now.

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aizawa: are we sure we can believe mello's claim that the 13 day rule is a lie?

near:

[near voice] yes mello is wonderful and brilliant and he did kill a bunch of people but his heart is pure and true [halle voice] also he hates near [near voice] oh yeah

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rester does NOT wanna do it

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Mello is a primal zodiac tarantula

He is an arachnid, which also means that he is a vagina

He is nature’s vagina

A trap (with a suppressed layer of hysteria)

That’s what spiders are

And I intend that as a compliment

THIS IS SO FUCKING HIM *overall* https://www.primalastrology.com/tarantula.html

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I like how Mello is one of the rare examples of male anime characters who are often portrayed as MORE masculine looking in fan art depictions than in canon.

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its so haunting to me that despite all the awful deaths and wasted lives in death note, the most tragic character is the one that gets to live. Near. He outlives everyone and keeps getting sadder and more broken because the person he is built around being never got to the point he gets to. L died at 25. 27 year old Near has nobody to base himself of off anymore. He collapses inwards under his own weight. And he gets to live.

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Thinking of this part of in the LA BB Murder Cases spin-off novel, which notably is narrated / written in-universe by Mello, and blown away by the parallels to the manga confrontation between Soichiro and Mello.

Particularly relevant in these excerpts (spoilers for LABB).....

☠️☠️☠️

☠️☠️☠️

If you just swap out the names and context, it seems these passages (again which are in-world authored by Mello) are SO eerily similar to the events in the manga confrontation?! It almost feels like an AU flashback of Mello's own experience, like a re-contextualization of lived trauma.

Ok so -

And I can't help but imagine Mello thought a lot about that encounter with Soichiro in the days and months afterwards....about how close he was to being killed on the spot; and how the only thing that saved him was the inherent goodness and mercy of the man who would have (by Mello's own estimation, should have) been his prospective murderer.

A man who, despite intellectually acknowledging and accepting it as a possible duty in his job, has never killed before - and who in the end doesn't have it in him to follow through and pull the trigger when the moment comes. And how that moment of hesitation -borne of this man's compassion and gentle heart- is what gave José the opening to fire leading to Soichiro's own death.

I also think of how after the explosion and his escape from the hideout Mello may have surmised Soichiro died from his injuries, but really had no to way to know for sure or to confirm it either way. Did it hang over his head, did he wonder what ultimately happened to this gentle-natured man, a man who he never intended to die?

I suppose his family or professional associates may have prepared and printed an obituary for Soichiro in Japan, so if Mello looked for it he may have been able to find out that way, but there's no indication in the manga either way.

Relatedly, it's actually pretty sad how completely Soichiro was erased from the story after his death. Like no one ever thought of or mentioned him again until the very end when finally Matsuda brings him up.