#; wammy's house

[vorareromantic]

[vamphorica]

i think i will put them in my mouth.

[optimisticgardenhologram]

I feel like there’s something very cultish about Wammy’s House. I looked up common characteristics of cults and found these similarities:

Recruitment: The residents at Wammy's House are some of the vulnerable humans imaginable, not only children who are impressionable and helpless by nature but specifically orphans who by definition don't have anywhere else to go, have no other ties to the outside world such as family or other adults to advocate for them or help guide them in life, and are completely dependent on the Wammy's House for their care. 

Isolation: Recruits are whisked away to an isolated and secretive place which is likely in another country or even across the world, where their pasts are erased, identities are stripped and re-assigned. Like previous mentioned they inherently have no ties to the outside world, which leads into the next trait...

Control over members lives: As a private orphanage/school Wammy's House controls every aspect of its children's lives and they are only allowed the freedoms, opportunities, direction and experiences the institution provides and permits them. It also establishes their life goal for them and monopolizes all their time, thoughts and physical energies in service to the institution's vision.

Us-vs-them mentality: The idea that this an elite and fundamentally special group of people, the world's most gifted children, with a special purpose. Where belonging is proven through the competition in an environment where the kids are publicly measured against each other and with the underpinning implication that their value and potential as humans is tied to their performance. This also raises the question of what happens to a child who is brought in but then fails to perform at the high level expected, are they shunned - cast out back to another orphanage that is perhaps not so materially nice and permissive with its kids?

A charismatic leader: How the entire organization revolves around the veneration and almost religious ideation of a human leader (L) who is the living embodiment of a practically unreachable ideal and to whom members proclaim zealous loyalty.

Apocalyptic thinking: The stated purpose of the house is centered on waiting for the unavoidable cataclysmic event of their charismatic leader's death and about how the new order will be established after.

Conformity and control: All of this happening within a closed-system echo-chamber environment.

..............

So yeah, those boxes get checked. I'm sure it's all fine and none of the orphans will come out of that system messed up at all though, right?

[zimt-deathnote]

Some sweet halloweeney things I didn't get to finish today u_u

[numbuh424]

Wammy Boys and sleepwear 😴🛌

also I changed Near's to this because I liked it better for him and thought him having the pillow was cute

[tinnyfoxts]

[jessaerys]

the word father rotted in my mouth: i. tom stoppard, rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead. ii. nurnehpetsnur iii. anne carson, plainwater: essays and poetry iv. see notes. v. see notes. vi. genesis 4:9 vii. anaïs nin, winter of artifice viii. see notes. ix. slider.xxxxxxxx x. josh alex baker, death wish. xi. see notes. xii. eric larocca, things have gotten worse since we last spoke xiii. death note, c-kira one-shot. xiv. leah horlick, for your own good, xv. death note manga, L's death, mello's death. xvi. ocean vuong, someday i'll love, xvii. woyaocharlie xviii. death note short stories, a-kira one-shot. xix. anna belle kaufman, cold solace.

notes under the cut.

*iv. artist notoriously hard to track, there's several images on pinterest that are clearly the same style, tried with all of them and they all seem to come from a long deleted 2008 photobucket folder.

v. & viii. the oldest source seems to be long-deleted posts from this blog, which were re-posts.

xi. this is the only source i can find but i don't think it leads to the artist ): please hmu if you have any leads about all of these.

part of the mine and the bestie’s delusional headcanon that near and mello (& matt) did have somewhat of a mentor/mentee relationship with L (fuck them other kids….) whom although genuinely fond of them was a willing participant in the amoral watari industrial complex (did he care to be succeeded? did he find it amusing or an interesting long term project? were the tests and mindfuckery and hot/cold unpredictable behavior and purposeful sowing of a rivalry between them the only model of family and mentorship he knew and was capable of? did he ever really love them? will they ever know? etc etc etc.)

i’m handwaving away the “we only talked to L once” story as skillfully edited by near because 1. he loves to lie and 2. his complicated relationship with L and subsequent grief AND resentment is still wrapped in seventeen thousand layers of emotional repression and who wants to get into that. 3. also makes mello’s comments in LABB about not caring if near is hurt that he knows more about L than near does way funnier. sibling behavior

anyway the both of them have a brotherfatherhero complex the size of TEXAS but thankfully they can sublimate that in the bedroom through creative kinky means. i know the usual "don't ship them!" rethoric is that they're foster brothers but unfortunately that just makes them a billion times more compelling. to me

[satorusluver]

Matt pining over fellow Wammy kid reader lives rent free in my head.

Matt, who is one of your oldest friends. The two of you stuck to each other like glue through the hell that was growing up at Wammy's House. Even more so after Mello ran way, leaving what had been your (sometimes tumultuous) trio of friendship behind.

Matt, who followed you to America like a lost puppy the moment he graduated from Wammy's because where you are is what feels like home to him. He may have lost out on the L succession, but he wasn't going to lose you too.

Matt, who is more than just your roommate - he's your found family.

Matt, whose smile falters ever so slightly when you tell him he's the closest thing you've ever had to a brother.

Matt, who you suspect has feelings for you that are more than platonic. You have for years now; it's hard to miss the way he looks at you like you hung the moon in the sky. But you're both the only constant the other has in this world, and both of you are afraid to take that step and risk losing that bond. So you don't dare ask him, and he doesn't dare tell you - even as the lines between platonic and romantic are slowly becoming blurred.

[nearlycassidy]

wammy babies 😐👿😎

[neallo]

also idk how realistic it is but i think it is sort of cute if wammy's involves occasional educational trips here and there. like oh you can sign up for one little summer trip depending on your age group and then you go with a teacher and a handful of your classmates to some european capital and see art museums and go to the opera or to see an orchestra perform. you get a little bit of pocket change to buy a souvenir. everyone would think they were just a normal school doing a normal field trip but secretly all their passports are fake and some of the kids are horrible little pickpockets competing with each other to see who's the stealthiest.

[boobook3ys]

currently thinking about Wammy's house and how it ruined the kids in it and it's making me sad :(

[vamphorica]

How would a female Mello, matt, and Near be?

absolutely wonderful question, anon, thank you so much. if you've been on my blog for any length of time, it is probably not surprising that i've given this a lot of thought and, putting aside my intricate transgender speculations for the time being, let's gender swap the wammy's creatures, and consider how that could impact their narratives within death note.

note: i will still be referring to all three using he/him pronouns, but this is not intended to be intentionally contrary. feel free to substitute whatever pronouns your heart desires throughout.

♀ mello -> mihaela may be a little bit obvious, haha, but if mihael is a croatian name that means 'who is like god', and we need to retain the letter 'm' for obvious reasons, i think it works well as a feminine alternative name. mello is relatively androgynous as an alias, if not slightly masculine, but i think it is fine given what i'm about to talk about.

mello's canonical gender expression is already nonconformative, so it is interesting to speculate what he would he look like if he were a girl. one of my absolute favourite genderbent depictions of mello is this piece by thekatzone because it still retains mello's visual ambiguity but in the opposite direction. i do think he would dress more masculine as a woman not only because his subversive appearance is a very significant aspect to his character, but also because of how it might relate to his position in the mafia.

mello spends a significant amount of time in the manga and anime in hypermasculine environments despite his presentation, and i think it is important to retain this idea even if he were to be genderbent. i do think mello would have had a much harder time, if it was at all possible, in attaining a leadership position within the mafia as a woman. the women who frequent the base are implied to be sex workers, and so i'm genuinely curious as to whether mello would have felt able to approach the organisation as a masculine presenting woman, or whether he'd seek out a different group. in which case, what would that group be? would he have been able to effectively carry out his insane plans in the same capacity?

i have very little doubt mello would still have been ambitious, but i actually don't think that he would have been able to pursue his goal to catch kira before near as he went about it in the series. certainly light would not have taken him seriously if the voice he heard down the phone was higher pitched, and that alone could have greatly impacted how sayu's kidnapping played out, as underestimating mello could have easily resulted in her death.

♀ matt -> apparently mail as a name means 'pleasant', and that is very funny to me. i quite like the name maille, which is irish, so fits nicely with a vague headcanon i haven't fully developed. i also learnt it is the name for a brand of mustard, and i think he would appreciate that. matt as a pseudonym might have to be changed to matilda, or martha.

while i am under no illusion that matt would be the kind of girl to give a shit about their appearance, i do think in another life, he would have made an excellent e-girl twitch streamer. i can imagine him wearing cat ear headphones and miniskirts, and referring to "chat" every five seconds. rest in peace, mail, you would have loved twitch subs.

regarding matt's gender identity in the canon series, i think that it worth considering how he might have responded differently to surveying others as a woman rather than as a man. i think matt's approach to watching others is very informed by his own personal biases, which I think are definitively masculine. The most clear example of this is how he describes misa as "an awfully cute japanese girl" which, while isn't necessarily the worst thing said about a woman in this godforsaken series, demonstrates that matt's perspective on women is superficial at best. this isn't helped either by the fact that he completely fucks up when guessing misa's age, even going so far as referring to her as a "child".

i think a female matt would probably feel the most overwhelmed of the three by societal expectations of women, and may even distance himself away from femininity. i'm not trying to suggest here that matt's comments imply he's misogynistic, but i actually think matt is the most masculine of the wammy's kids, which may be controversial, i don't know. i believe that he retains his masculine personality in this genderbent scenario.

♀ near -> i love the japanese pronunciation of near's name, nia, as a girl's name that he could use as an alias. natania has the same meaning as nate – 'gift of god' – which does not match his character at all, haha, but that is what i managed to come up with.

near is the easiest to consider gender swapping because to me, he's a girl anyway. you can point to his female voice actors in the anime, or his long hair in the 2020 manga one-shot, but he is also so clearly coded as a feminine character, a contrast from not only mello's aggressive impulsivity, but the masculine environment of law enforcement. with halle as a notable exception (who herself is very masculine, but another post, perhaps), near is markedly different from every other character in the series. some might say he resembles his predecessor, but i think they are very distinct from one another as characters.

my personal opinion relating to mello and near's gender identities (which you may disagree with) is that mello expresses his gender ambiguity externally whereas near does so internally. essentially, if we interpret them both as androgynous, mello's appearance is far more expressive of this, whereas near's behaviour is his more nonconformative trait. this can be a slightly tricky area to navigate as it's important not to dive headfirst into gender essentialism, but i think near's mannerisms can, and should, be explored here.

girl near would still be able to work as head of the spk, without the disadvantages girl mello would face to become head of the mafia. i really don't think there would be much in the way of significant plot deviance if near was female, other than maybe light freaking out over the fact he was caught by a woman, which would be very funny. in the one shot, near's internal androgyny has manifested itself as a more external expression, and i really like that decision.

to conclude, i do love the concept of the wammy's girls, and i think it invites some interesting discussions relating to how femininity is often dismissed in death note. there's a lot of creativity in genderbending characters. mello, matt and near each have complex and interesting traits that are very fun to explore when thinking about them from this perspective.

[wammypilled]

Successor Trio HCs in No Particular Order let's gooo

Matt is a lefty, Near is ambidextrous and Mello is right-handed. On that note, Mello's handwriting is a Rosetta stone worthy nightmare, Near's is so neat it looks printed, and Matt almost exclusively types bc dysgraphia.

All Wammy kids used fake names instead of their aliases when on trips. Near, Mello and Matt's were Nyx, Melvin and Manuel. Guess who'd gotten to choose his own, and which one had been assigned by Roger.

All three are some flavor of trans bi. (I could elaborate and give backstories but it'd probably take a wall of text)

Near was the first (and only, until Matt's arrival) person Mello bonded with when he got to Wammy's, as he taught the older boy the ins and outs of life in the House and in turn Mello would tell him stories from the outside.

Mello had known for years one of those days he'd end up running away, and had managed to put away some money by trading cigarettes for objects or money with other kids and stealing little ornaments from around the House to then pawn.

Matt has insane auditory memory. He doesn't even need to pay attention, if he's heard it it'll just come back to him. Whenever he actually needed to study something he either went to the teacher and gave them the ol' puppy eyes until they explained it to him or he'd ask Mello or Linda depending on the subject.

While never really being friends or understanding each other much, Matt and Near never truly disliked each other either and though they never really asked, one would happily help the other out, need be.

Jealousy aside, they were both too smart to blame each other for their failing friendship with Mello -> he was obviously the problem.

They're all pretty messy, but while Mello still knows exactly where everything is and Near likes to tidy up every once in a while, Matt has definitely had to buy new goggles only to check the freezer for fries months later and find his old ones half-buried in the ice.

Both Near and Mello are picky eaters, but in opposite ways. Near feels personally attacked by strong flavors and Mello hates anything too bland. They do agree on which textures are good or bad, though.

So, Matt can't really cook, but he's learned how to distill spirits for funsies. He likes to come up with ungodly concoctions and taste them like fine wine.

Mello is quite a good actor, and being so high-masking he's developed a bunch of personas to serve different purposes throughout the years. But on the other side of the coin it's become almost impossible for him to genuinely connect with others, which is why Matt seems to be his only real friend despite his very social nature.

Mello has a pretty high alcohol tolerance, but one time Matt dared him to chug a glass of one of his experiments and it completely fd him up, took him out for hours.

This is pretty much fanon I think, but Near is one kinky mf.

[zimt-deathnote]

Okay, look. I read @mihaelkeehl s tag under my recent post about M2 in their 30s and I had way too much fun with the idea--

I threw a whole ass Netflix page together for them lololol

[god-of-this-new-blog]

The Wammy's House (ワイミーズハウス) 

Anna Kamienska/Franz Wright/Sainticide/Tracy K. Smith/Fatimah Asghar

[tinnyfoxts]

BB