#i know the five year skip was supposed to show us how fast kira consumed the world and how quickly corruption spreads

[grimalkinmessor]

Light's end has always bothered me for multiple reasons (the biggest of which is it not actually being his fault that he lost therefore robbing me of a greater poetic justice but you can't win 'em all), but I think one nobody really talks about is that,,,Light wasn't afraid to die.

Well—he WAS, at the beginning, but part of the reason I'm so obsessed with his relationship with Ryuk is because Ryuk's existence was a constant threat to Light's life. And yet Light never once seemed afraid of him, or tried to cozy up to him, or even attempted manipulate Ryuk into doing things for him. Sure, he bribed him sometimes into going along with his plans, but he was friends with Ryuk. Or—as close to friends as I assume a Light Yagami and a Shinigami can get.

But before Light meets Ryuk, he 100% believes that he's going to die. His frenzy those first few days can be attributed not to any moral righteousness, but to a desperate sort of resignation. Light thinks that he's sold his soul after killing those first two men, so instead of destroying the Death Note, he immediately sets out to make as big of an impact as possible. He wants to go out with a bang! He wants to be remembered! Light is afraid of death in those first days—but he also comes to terms with it somewhere between killing Otoharada and Ryuk showing up. He was ready to go with Ryuk quietly if he was there to take his life or his soul.

But then—he learns that he's not going to die.

The face of a boy excited and relieved.

Light learns that there are no consequences to using the Death Note.

THIS is when he starts getting cocky, when he starts to actually convince himself of all that moral stuff he spouts.

But he's still not afraid of death.

Oh he's afraid of being caught, for sure, and after L humiliated him on live television, he might've even been afraid of execution. Because he'd seen firsthand just how quickly L could turn the tables on him, how he could make Kira look foolish. And Light definitely does not want to be remembered as foolish.

I don't think Light was afraid of actually DYING though, because when Ryuk says "You know I could just kill you", Light laughs. Literally laughing in the face of death. Light KNOWS that Ryuk will eventually kill him, but as long as he goes down the way he wants—on HIS terms—it's fine. Ryuk claiming that he'd be the one to finally end Light might've even been a relief, considering how Light's mind works. A god can only be killed by another god, etc. etc. 'Killed By A Real-life Shinigami' sounds metal as FUCK. Top-tier way to die if you're as much of a gloryhound as Light.

And one thing that irks me is that—the five year gap kind of,,,,takes that, from Light. Light spends so long on top of the world with no real challenge that by the time that Near and Mello show up, he's far more arrogant than he was when he was up against L. Light is, once more, afraid of death. He's lost that tolerance he built up in those pivotal first few days, and he goes out, not in a blaze of glory like he wanted, but clawing and pleading to live like a dog.

Light lost his recklessness, his impatience, his acceptance of the inevitable because he believed that he could now change the inevitable—all somewhere in that five year time skip.

This makes him less likely to get caught, yes, but it also takes away that—that teenage dauntlessness that he had at the beginning. Pre-skip Light feared L and L alone. Only the idea of being caught by someone who could truly tear him down frightened him. Not even death compared.

And I suppose that Light's spiralling at the end is a sort of poetic justice in this case?? But it's not the one I wanted.

I wanted Light's recklessness to blow up in his face. I wanted his carefully curated plans ruined by his own impatient hand. I wanted him to go down much as he probably first intended—in a blaze of glory. I wanted his fall to be explosive and terrifying to the audience. A moral of the story that shoots you right in the chest and really makes you think.

Instead he was reduced to just,,,,another criminal, begging for his life.

Which, yes, I suppose, is also a message in and of itself (all evil figures throughout history have only ever been human, have only ever been men that bleed red at the end of the day, and nothing they've ever done or said will change that), but I also find that....exceedingly boring.