#asker wasn't specific so this is mostly plot

[read-watch-sleep]

Okay, so for a 100% Genderswapped Death Note, you have to look at what would change basically from the beginning. I’m using the manga timeline from the Death Note Wiki, which is one of my favourite resources.

Looooong looong post under the cut:

1998-  think Light’s and L’s upbringings are likely fairly unchanged. Light is an eldest sister from a family with two working parents, so she may have felt more familial pressure. Either way, it makes sense that she’d be a tennis champion and then abruptly retire, probably due to an obligation to be at home. She tutors her shithead younger brother, talks with her idol-obsessed friends, and nurses a soul-deep hatred for the state of humanity.

1999- Near, Mello and Matt are orphan genius children/pre-teens with budding rivalries. Mello learns about emotional manipulation and leans into it, hard. Matt’s ADHD goes undiagnosed, and she’s already on her way to burning out. Near speaks very rarely, and is slow but steady in advancing the ranks. Everyone underestimates her. 

2002- Naomi/Noah Misora catches the strange femme fatale Beyond Birthday in LA with the help of a mysterious figure who calls themselves ‘L’. He is one of the few people in the world to figure out that the filtered voice through the computer belongs to a woman. L still takes up capoeira. 

2003- Misa/Masa Amane’s parents die. He begins to develop a complex about his own strength/bravery. He was a teenager– if he was stronger or smarter, he would have been able to save them. Notably, Naomi/Noah Misora does not quit the FBI to get married here, because that was always a weird misogyny thing. Instead, she and Raye/Raya Penbar take leave together to be married, and both return to the FBI. When Light first picks up the notebook, she thinks primarily of killing men. The more strict gender roles of Japan in the 90s would have gotten to her still-developing worldview. Her first murders go about the same as they would in canon, though. I imagine she thinks there’s some kind of poetic justice to Ryuk being a female shinigami, as well. Some kind of ‘women are lifebringers and death deliverers.’ Ryuk knows it’s bullshit, as shinigami are barely gendered, and male shinigami exist. 

The bus hostage scene goes even easier for Light in this universe. Raye/Raya largely underestimates the high-school girl who seems to be under threat– and Light kills her and her team. This is notably the first time Light has actively targeted a woman, especially one who wasn’t a criminal, and marks a turning point in her descent. When Naomi/Noah arrives, he is inadvertently the one who reveals to Light that L is a woman. He also doesn't see the threat that Light poses when they meet, blinded both by his own grief and her act as a helpless schoolgirl. 

When his stalker also drops dead of a heart attack, it becomes a catalyzing moment. He was unable to be strong enough once again, he just froze like a deer in the headlights. When he meets Rem and inherits Gelus’s death note, he becomes convinced that helping Kira is the only way he can make up for his own cowardice. He tracks down Light, and under the guise of asking her on a date, reveals that he’s the second Kira. 

When he confesses his devotion to Light, it is entirely genuine, and it disturbs the hell out of Light. She thinks he’s a neanderthal who only sees her as another pretty woman, especially when he implies himself to be the jealous type. This also marks the beginning of her use of seduction to get her way, and chooses to practise on Kiyomi/Kiyoshi Takada. 

When Misa/Masa is kidnapped by L, he’s a lot more brazen, although not in a particularly helpful way. It builds him up a lot that he’s able to withstand the torture without giving up Light– this is penance to him, he’s being strong and protecting her. 

The yotsuba arc otherwise goes about the same, with the mind games between L and Light and the Girlboss-ified Yotsuba company. Light objects so strongly to the kind of gaslighting that L is putting her through, and it’s more convincing for her perceived “feminine gentleness.” She accuses L of wanting her to be Kira, and at the same time is grateful and hates that she doesn't have Kira’s power. The Murder/Suicide plotline of Sochiro/Sachiko and Light is a lot more meaningful– it’s really deliciously the desperation of a mother who can’t trust her own child, and really puts forth a “You were a mistake I made that I can correct” feeling. 

When L dies, it's just as much of a shock, but it’s still an ultimate act of love. Rem loves Misa/Masa in the way only a gay guardian angel can, and Misa/Masa loves Light in only the way that a young man who believes a woman can fix him and the world can. 

And then… Near, who has begun to dominate as the #1 in line for L’s successor at Wammy’s, and Mello, who has felt like an object all her life and blames Near… they come into the spotlight. 

POST TIME SKIP- 

The major differences in this arc are as follows: 

Mello is a lot more violent in the Mafia. Rod/Rio Ross was a mob wife who’s husband Mello killed, and the two of them inherited the gang and overturned it. She builds manpower through promising other people freedom. When she comes out with the head of a criminal not even Kira could kill, it’s for a human trafficker, and her main loyal crew is of ex sex workers and trafficked kids. They respect Mello, not because she treats them like people, but because she offers them power in a way that most pimps can’t manage.  And because she truly believes that she’s one of them– grabbed as a little girl to be turned into someone’s object, only to escape via blood on her hands. She feels no remorse for blowing them all up, because she believes that all of them, including herself, were going to go out– fighting and in flames. 

Hal/Halle Linder is the only man who survives the initial cull of the SPK, and Near suspects that Mello will try to seduce him, because it’s her usual MO. She doesn't predict that Hal/Halle and Mello already knew each other– or that Mello has been disfigured.

Teru/Terumi Mikami still tracks down Light through Kiyomi/Kiyoshi Takada. She assumes from the very beginning that Takada and Amane are tools that will be killed– I think she’s in love with Light, and also follows that kind of disdain for men that certain toxic lesbians subscribe to. This is important because–

Mello doesn't allow Takada the privacy to kill her. She kidnaps Takada and has no problem stripping him “What, you don’t think I’ve seen anything before, handsome?” And Takada has no bra to hide the scrap of notebook in.

So what happens when the news goes live that Takada has been kidnapped? Mikami scrambles to kill their male co-conspirators. While Light hopes to wait it out and trust him to handle himself, Mikami writes his name in the notebook in order to destroy him, and all the evidence Mello might be able to get. This does allow Stephen/Stephani Gevanni to replace the real notebook with a fake, but it doesn't save Matt, who is still shot by Takada’s bodyguards on television. 

Near realises this has happened when Amane drops dead in her custody. Hal/Halle arrives to find Mello in the burning ruins of her kidnapping. In Masa/Misa’s place, Near sends Mello, in disguise as the male idol, to the Imperial Hotel. Light does not learn that he is dead until she is dying herself. 

Finally, even when they meet face to face, Light is never certain of Near’s gender. While Mello wears femininity like futch was a kind of weapon, Near wears shapeless pyjamas and could as easily be an 18 year old girl or a 12 year old boy. It’s something that enrages Light– to believe that L, her ultimate rival, was replaced by a little boy. 

I'm so sorry to whoever sent this ask (it got lost), but also I could write a 10 page thesis on this, so please be patient for a little longer and I'll add my thoughts on this soon!