#i love the dn drama so much

[numbuh424]

The facial acting of these two is soooo good. Their "let's work together to catch Kira" handshakes, except one is Light with his memories of being Kira (on the left) and the other is him without (on the right).

There's a silent declaration of war going on between the two on the left. L is grinning. Light's smile doesn't reach his eyes. An unspoken "I know you know that I know" passes between the two of them.

On the left, that undertone of animosity is gone. Light's expression is genuine, and L can clearly tell. L is searching Light's eyes for Kira. He's not smug anymore because he can't find him.

It's the exact same scene shot-for-shot and yet it's totally different in almost every other way.

[kim-jongin-s]

svt fic recs (mostly nc-17; jeongcheol, verkwan, minwon + other)

JEONGCHEOL

"fuckme.mp3 (a smash hit)". au, underground rapper!sc. oneshot, 2k. nc-17.

It's all thanks to Hansol, really.

"calibration". omegaverse: alpha!sc, omega!jh. oneshot, 2k. nc-17.

“…can tell he really wants you,” Hansol is saying, somewhere nearby, except for a minute it doesn’t smell like Hansol, and Seungcheol blinks, confused, until he sees who’s following Hansol into the room and stops caring about anything else.

"a thousand degrees tonight". oneshot, 3.6k. nc-17.

The novelty has yet to wear off, knowing that he can have someone as strong and sure and dependable as Seungcheol like this- unfocused, needy. Desperate for him.

"babysitting gone wrong". au, babysitter!jh. oneshot, 4k. nc-17.

In which, Jeonghan gets hired to babysit the youngest Choi for the night but ends up sitting on the meaty thick thighs of the eldest Choi sibling.

"amour". au, vampire!sc. oneshot, 7.7k. nc-17. (check out the prequels to fully enjoy this one.)

At some point, Seungcheol had found himself with a collection of all the small, intimate noises that Jeonghan had made for him tucked away in a secret part of his heart.

"praying at your altar". modern royalty!au: bodyguard!sc, prince!jh. oneshot, 8.6k. nc-17.

Above all, the prince is precious.

"stay here with me". au, psychologist!sc. 5 chapters, 31k. r. ♡♡

Eight months after his younger sister's death, Jeonghan is struggling. Barely hanging on. He's tired. Lonely. Wishing he could find one therapist that understands his niece. Then he makes an appointment with newly graduated child psychologist Choi Seungcheol.

VERKWAN

"one day we're gonna get". oneshot, 1.6k. nc-17.

“Come on! As if you don’t know I look at you!” Hansol’s eyes are wide, exasperated. His tone is teasing. His grip on Seungkwan’s arm is so tight.

He’s scared that Seungkwan doesn’t believe it, Seungkwan can tell.

"one pound of flesh". historical!au, omegaverse: omega!sk, alpha!vn. oneshot, 4.5k. nc-17.

A strange marriage, to an even stranger alpha.

"sinking/floating". omegaverse: omega!sk, omega!vn. twoshot, 12k. nc-17.

Hansol presents late. Seungkwan is right there to guide him through it.

"left where the daylight comes". regency!au, omegaverse: omega!sk, alpha!vn. twoshot, 50k. nc-17. ♡♡♡♡♡

“Our dear Seungkwan is engaged to be mated to Alpha Park by the end of the summer season!” Seungkwan’s mother says, cheerily.

The delicate porcelain cup shatters under the force of Hansol’s hand.

"easily (like do re mi)". au, teacher!sk, single parent!vn. 5 chapters, 53k. pg-13.

As a single father, Hansol tends to worry too much.

Then, comes Boo Seungkwan, a kindergarten teacher that occupies Hansol’s mind more than he knows what to do with.

MINWON

"don't mention it". omegaverse: alpha!ww, alpha!mg. oneshot, 2k. nc-17. ♡

Mingyu's preferred person to spend his rut with may not be the most evident choice.

"the trials and tribulations of being accidentally bonded". college!au, omegaverse: omega!ww, alpha!mg. oneshot, 41k. r.

Jeon Wonwoo was supposed to be a Beta. He was also supposed to hate a certain Kim Mingyu with all his might. But, then again, who says life couldn't roughly take you in the ass without preparation?

OTHER

"we". wonwoo/seokmin/mingyu. oneshot, 15k. nc-17.

“Hyung, would you ever want to have a threesome?”

"love so tender (you are my)". chanhan. omegaverse: beta!jh, omega!dn. twoshot, 16k. nc-17.

Jeonghan is good at being in the middle. Extreme emotions are not really his forte. So he is grateful to be born as a beta. Less drama, easier.

Then he meets Lee Chan.

"over and over again". seoksoon. soulmate!au. oneshot, 19k. r.

Soonyoung has the easiest time finding his soulmate - running into him in the hallway at age nine kind of speeds things along. Nothing after that, though, is anywhere near as simple.

[ai-the-broccoli]

lawlight, told through taylor swift songs: a non-exhaustive list

no really, why do so many taylor swift songs fit Death Note (and sometimes especially Light and lawlight) so perfectly?

many others have already made pretty good posts on this topic before, but the parallels are truly kinda crazy, so here's my take on it. the rankings within each tier are not super fixed or meaningful, like honestly everything within each tier is pretty much the same degree of fitting to me.

(yes, I double-checked basically her entire discography for this. no, I still don't think this is a fully comprehensive list.)

Tier S - every single line is a fit

1. my tears ricochet (<- category C: "I Knew You'd Miss Me Once The Thrill Expired")

post L's death lawlight, from L's perspective: the song. nearly every line fits what the hell man. one of my favourites here

-> Full Lyrics

2. hoax (<- category C: "I Knew You'd Miss Me Once The Thrill Expired")

@kiyomitakada pointed this out and... yeah, every single line does fit! it's very lawlight from Light's perspective.

-> Full Lyrics

Tier A - the whole song fits well

3. Blank Space (<- category A: "Let the Games Begin")

we probably all know this one lol. while the idea that it was actually written as inspired by DN is a myth, it very much does fit.

-> Full Lyrics

and GOD did the MV imagery not help. like, I mean...

the MV uses a colour scheme of red/blue/black/white/green-ish, I think, which doesn't NOT look like the first OP of Death Note anime to say the least.

apple imagery. yeah. the above is literally something Light does in said OP. both song videos have close-up shot of biting a very red apple.

the character Taylor Swift plays in this video (who is supposed to be a satirical caricature based on media perception of her as a crazy obsessive jealous 'serial dater' women iirc) is depicted doing a lot of voodoo to torture her lover.

in one scene she seems to be in a great and dramatic frenzy with mixed emotions (sadness, desperation, manic, anger, hate, etc.) over the boyfriend character's... unconscious body? I'm not super sure if it's supposed to be unconscious. but it's like this:

and then after a while of this, we see a shot of her sneakily winking at the camera. but anyway so yeah this entire part weirdly actually reminded me of L's death scene for some reason lol

at the end of the MV there's a short B-T-S trivia clip. there's a freaking black notebook there:

it's titled "My True Loves" and the content has nothing to do with lawlight, because it just contains pictures of her cats... is what I'd say, but actually, if you stretch it a bit, there's a comparison to be made about the fact that J-Drama Light Yagami's actor is a cat lover who actually has a cat named L

anyway this isn't exactly a T-pose but it's not too far from one either

I think I've made my point.

4. Getaway Car (<- category B: ''Now This is An Open/Shut Case")

this is very the end of the Yotsuba arc to me, specifically from while they are catching Higuchi to after they catch him and Light regains his memories. man...

-> Full Lyrics

Tier B - largely/mostly fitting

category A: "Let the Games Begin"

the mind games begin.

1. Ready For It

Knew he was a killer first time that I saw him Wondered how many girls he had loved and left haunted But if he's a ghost, then I can be a phantom Holdin' him for ransom, some Some boys are tryin' too hard, he don't try at all though Younger than my exes, but he act like such a man, so I see nothing better, I keep him forever Like a vendetta-ta

and

Knew I was a robber first time that he saw me Stealing hearts and running off and never sayin' sorry But if I'm a thief, then he can join the heist, and We'll move to an island, and And he can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor Every love I've known in comparison is a failure I forget their names now, I'm so very tame now Never be the same now, now

+ the repetition of "Let the games begin". pretty self-explanatory

2. LWYMMD

I've got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined I check it once, then I check it twice, oh!

...and more. also you know how she T-poses at the end of the bridge in the MV, as she stands over many many other past version of herself?

very lightcore pose. (and this isn't even to mention how she kicks off other, "weaker" versions of herself off the giant T in the same scene, which is... arguably also a symbolic parallel to when Light screams in the helicopter as he regains his memory, if you see it that way.)

3. cowboy like me

And the tennis court was covered up With some tent-like thing And you asked me to dance But I said, "Dancin' is a dangerous game."

Oh, I thought This is gonna be one of those things Now I know I'm never gonna love again

I've got some tricks up my sleeve Takes one to know one You're a cowboy like me

this one even has the freaking tennis mention of all things it could've included

4. Mastermind

So I told you none of it was accidental And the first night that you saw me, nothing was gonna stop me I laid the groundwork and then saw a wide smirk On your face, you knew the entire time You knew that I'm a mastermind And now you're mine Yeah, all you did was smile 'Cause I'm a mastermind

honestly though, this one is more like the perfect Kaguya-sama Love is War Kaguya/Miyuki song. every single line fits them perfectly. but since lawlight also do mind games and all, the song also can be seen through a lawlight lens, although I maintain that it is still the perfect kaguprez song instead of a fully lawlight one.

5. Suburban Legends

I had the fantasy that maybe our mismatched star signs Would surprise the whole school When I ended up back at our class reunion Walking in with you You'd be more than a chapter in my old diaries With the pages ripped out I am standing in a 1950s gymnasium And I can still see you now

I didn't come here to make friends We were born to be suburban legends When you hold me, it holds me together And you kiss me in a way that's gonna screw me up forever

I know that you still remember We were born to be national treasures When you told me we'd get back together And you kissed me in a way that's gonna screw me up forever

idk the vibes here kind of make me think of the entrance ceremony scene lol

category B: ''Now This is An Open/Shut Case"

the Kira investigation.

1. I Can See You

I can see you in your suit and your necktie Passed me a note saying, "Meet me tonight" Then we kissed and you know I won't ever tell, yeah And I could see you being my addiction You can see me as a secret mission Hide away and I will start behaving myself

the MV is important context here again, because actually, the official video for this love song depicts one person watching/"seeing" another person through - guess what - surveillance cameras. in reference to the title which is also a line repeated in the chorus. so that explains it I think. also it's implied to be about a workplace relationship

2. I Think He Knows

He got that boyish look that I like in a man I am an architect, I'm drawing up the plans It's like I'm 17, nobody understands No one understands

[...]

He got that boyish look that I like in a man I am an architect, I'm drawing up the plans He's so obsessed with me and, boy, I understand Boy, I understand

Light's pov. the title line "I think he knows" keeps getting repeated in the song which if you view it through a lawlight lens that might be about Kira lol

3. willow

Now this is an open/shut case I guess I should've known from the look on your face Every bait-and-switch was a work of art

The more that you say, the less I know Wherever you stray, I follow I'm begging for you to take my hand Wreck my plans, that's my man You know that my train could take you home Anywhere else is hollow I'm begging for you to take my hand Wreck my plans, that's my man

L pov-ish.

4. The Tortured Poets Department

You're in self-sabotage mode, throwing spikes down on the road But I've seen this episode and still loved the show Who else decodes you?

And who's gonna hold you like me? And who's gonna know you, if not me?

and also:

Everyone we know understands why it's meant to be 'Cause we're crazy So tell me Who else is gonna know me?

...as well as more lines in the song that expresses the same sentiments, like: Who's gonna hold you? Gonna know you? Gonna troll you?

in any case, "who else decodes you?" is definitely a lawlight thesis. imo. in fact I may have even actually started an essay on it in fic format with that thesis. or not? who knows! maybe one day you'll see...

anyway, this song is post-Yotsuba arc-ish to me, sort of.

category C: "I Knew You'd Miss Me Once The Thrill Expired"

L's death and Light's grieving, eventually.

5. Haunted

from Light's pov, especially in anime canon probably.

12. My Boy Only Breaks His Favourite Toys

My boy only breaks his favorite toys, toys, oh I'm queen of sand castles he destroys, oh, oh 'Cause it fit too right Puzzle pieces in the dead of night I should've known it was a matter of time Oh, oh, my boy only breaks his favorite toys, oh, oh-oh-oh

[...]

My boy only breaks his favorite toys, toys, oh I'm queen of sand castles he destroys, oh, oh 'Cause I knew too much There was danger in the heat of my touch He saw forever so he smashed it up Oh, oh, my boy only breaks his favorite toys, oh, oh-oh-oh

which is quite fitting. moreover, there's this...

He was my best friend Down at the sandlot I felt more when we played pretend Than with all the Kens

...as well as the the original version below:

He was my best friend and that was the worst part I felt more then, in brief moments Than with all the Kens

L's pov. the "Kens" mention here is kinda like Light apparently having like 6 girlfriends in college and not caring about any of them despite being significantly bad at getting over L etc etc I think

8. Hits Different

I actually didn't think of this song in association with lawlight at all before I saw @selfdigestion bringing up the connection, and.... YEAH this is pretty lawlight-coded as well

I trace the evidence, make it make some sense Why the wound is still bleedin' You were the one that I loved Don't need another metaphor, it's simple enough A wrinkle in time like the crease by your eyes This is why they shouldn't kill off the main guy Dreams of your hair and your stare and sense of belief In the good in the world, you once believed in me And I felt you and I held you for a while Bet I could still melt your world Argumentative, antithetical dream girl

and also:

I used to switch out these Kens, I'd just ghost Rip the band-aid off and skip town like an asshole outlaw Freedom felt like summer then on the coast Now the sun burns my heart and the sand hurts my feelings

which is what the song is overall about. (there sure are a lot of Light pov songs in this category man)

and on the topic of "Kens", as it is with the previous time song, in Light's case it makes me again think of all his college girlfriends that he doesn't care about. I'm not going to comment too much on the gender-reverse implications this has for the narrator "I" in the song, but I would think that the original lyrics "bet I could still melt your world / argumentative, antithetical dream girl" with echoing repetitions on the phrase "dream girl" should've already done it for me. anyway. moving on.

10. Would've, Could've, Should've

If you never touched me I would've Gone along with the righteous If I never blushed then they could've Never whispered about this And if you never saved me from boredom I could've gone on as I was

[...]

God rest my soul I miss who I used to be The tomb won't close Stained glass windows in my mind I regret you all the time I can't let this go I fight with you in my sleep The wound won't close I keep on waiting for a sign I regret you all the time

I don't know how to explain this one, but it's... something. I think it only makes more sense as a lawlight song if you want to place emphasis on the age/maturity difference angle, although even without that it would still partly fit.

17. Guilty as Sin?

My boredom's bone-deep This cage was once just fine Am I allowed to cry?

I dream of cracking locks Throwing my life to the wolves or the ocean rocks Crashing into him tonight, he's a paradox I'm seeing visions, am I bad? Or mad? Or wise?

This, plus the fact that it uses similar imagery (dying in a hedge maze, crashing over graves, etc.) as Saltburn (2023), which... has that infamous grave scene that reminded every Death Note fan watching it of Light Yagami on L's grave.

13. cardigan

A friend to all is a friend to none Chase two girls, lose the one When you are young, they assume you know nothing

[...]

But I knew you'd linger like a tattoo kiss I knew you'd haunt all of my what-ifs The smell of smoke would hang around this long 'Cause I knew everything when I was young I knew I'd curse you for the longest time Chasing shadows in the grocery line I knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired And you'd be standing in my front porch light And I knew you'd come back to me You'd come back to me And you'd come back to me And you'd come back

yet another post-L's death lawlight song, this time with L+Light switching povs. with the final line I think of the anime scene when Light sees a vision/ghost/whatever it is of L on the stairs:

And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed You put me on and said I was your favorite

Tier D - honourable mentions

The Prophecy

I got cursed like Eve got bitten Oh, was it punishment?

lightcoreTM

False God

self-explanatory title

You Are In Love

You kiss on sidewalks, you fight then you talk One night, he wakes, strange look on his face Pauses, then says, "You're my best friend" And you knew what it was, he is in love

Mr. Perfectly Fine

So dignified in your well-pressed suit So strategized, all the eyes on you Sashay away to your seat It's the best seat, in the best room Oh, he's so smug, Mr. "Always wins" So far above me in every sense So far above feeling anything

lightcore #2

You're Losing Me

doesn't fit that well lyric-wise, but it sure has got a heartbeat sound effect (sampled with her own I believe) in it referencing the stopping of a heart that sounds a lot like the one used to signal cardiac arrest in Death Note anime.

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

Were you sent by someone Who wanted me dead? Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed? Were you writing a book? Were you a sleeper cell spy? In fifty years will all this be declassified? And you'll confess why you did it And I'll say, "Good riddance" 'Cause it wasn't sexy once it wasn't forbidden I would've died for your sins Instead I just died inside And you deserve prison, but you won't get time You'll slide into inboxes and slip through the bars You crashed my party and your rental car You said normal girls were "boring" But you were gone by the morning You kicked out the stage lights, but you're still performing And in plain sight you hid But you are what you did And I'll forget you, but I'll never forgive The smallest man who ever lived

lightcore #3

Anti-Hero

I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror

lightcore #4

Clara Bow

"The crown is stained, but you're the real queen Flesh and blood amongst war machines You're the new God we're worshipping Promise to be dazzling"

there is a joke I can make here about how "dazzling" is "kira-kira" in Japanese

lightcore #5

(man that's a lot of lightcore songs)

Other songs

...that grieve the loss of a lover,

or mentions a lover being a friend/not a friend;

songs with ghost/death/grave/tomb/cemetery imagery,

songs where the self or the lover is compared to God or a god,

songs that mention a difference in age or has the lover looking down on the narrator's maturity (e.g. illicit affairs, All Too Well),

songs where love is characterized as a game of cat and mouse;

and so on.

taylor swift seems to write about those motifs a lot, so there really are a lot of other examples to pull.

and that concludes my list, I think. there may actually be even more comparisons if you look into her album liner notes and such, but this is what I've got for now

[totheidiot]

i am a billion percent sure that i saw a post like this somewhere a while back but whatever so. i really love the dn musical, i do, but that thing has done irreparable damage to people's understandings of light's character and also kind of indirectly, teru's character as well. musical!light is distinctly out of character from animanga!light in terms of his views on justice, which isn't really a bad thing – other adaptations have made serious changes to all of their characters (cough cough netflix drama cough) and if i really think about it, musical!light isn't so very different from animanga!light in the grand scheme of things. it's pretty loyal except they have pretty distinct views on justice.

musical!light's view on justice? copy paste pre death note mikami. like when the songwriters wrote where is the justice, they accidentally clicked on his scenes and started to write the song based on that. now, i am absolutely terrible at media analysis so take everything i say as unseriously as possible, but i have always felt like light's idea of justice, it's kind of. unclear???? idk i don't know if that's the right word for it. vague? whatever it is, it's different from what mikami and musical!light believes.

musical!light and mikami make their view on justice very clear. they both believe that there is a clear cut right and wrong, black and white, good and evil. there isn't any wiggle room to work around it, all of humankind is exactly sorted into those two categories. that's what they both believe exactly. animanga!light, he believes all of that somewhat but his opinions on it aren't as frigid as theirs are. another way the musical!light strays from animanga!light is that m!light is very clearly frustrated with the current justice system where a!light didn't really have much opinion on that. the reason why a!light uses the death note is because he thinks he can make his idea of justice happen faster and more efficiently but it isn't like pure disdain that m!light feels.

and i feel like what most people perceive light's character and his views is more closely to the musical version, and therefore they interpret light kind of closer to what mikami canonically is. so. yeah.

[13eyond13]

Would you say the DN fandom is getting more toxic in recent years or has it always been like this? Last time I was here it was over half a decade ago and now I've come back and people are being more aggressive to eachother then before. Especially over ships. I've been and still am extremely into Lawlight (one of my main otps fr fr) but I've been seeing Lawlight shippers be so mean to other (much smaller) ships lately as well as really elitist about "the proper way to enjoy DN" which I don't remember happening this much before. Makes me feel second hand embarrassment as a Lawlight shipper ngl. Was it always like this? Or am I just being dramatic? Asking since you've been here for wayyy longer then me.

Hiya! So the last time you were participating in the fandom was 1/2 a decade ago and would've been around 2019ish?

To be honest I don't feel like I've noticed a HUGE uptick in toxicity or anything, but maybe I'm just not seeing the same posts you are or interacting with the same people as you are?

Honestly the main difference I feel now vs. back then are just that I don't feel as involved in the fandom in terms of answering people's asks about the series or fielding their jokes and takes every day in my inbox and whatnot (I used to get those kinds of asks basically every day, like not just about lawlight but about analyzing the story itself and all that, now I probably only get a couple DN asks a month?) And I am not really sure if that's just because I myself am less involved / not posting much DN content of my own or being exclusively just a Death Note blogger now, or because the fandom is smaller and less active, or moving more to other social media platforms, or just a mix of things? I feel like I'm a bit out of the loop because of that.

Also, my memories of the Tumblr DN fandom in 2019 were kinda that it was MORE dramatic sometimes than I find it now, as in I remember around then there was a small group of people who had really intense stances on certain things and loved to vaguepost about anybody who they didn't like and also dogpile with anon hate on bloggers they would agree to target together in their server or something. I thankfully haven't seen much of that lately, either because those people and I all blocked each other or they've just moved on.

The least dramatic and most laid-back and memey the DN Tumblr fandom ever felt to me was before that, around 2017-2018 maybe. Nowadays I'd say I don't notice a lot of drama, but that it just feels a bit more dead here to me now than terribly toxic, maybe?

However, I do agree that I get embarrassed as well sometimes when I see lawlight shippers get extremely defensive and/or act superior toward people who aren't even attacking them about it, as if this ship isn't by far the biggest one in the fandom already and just a super well known and popular classic ship in general. Going into other fandoms for a bit always reminds me that as a lawlight shipper you're actually pretty spoiled with the amount of great fan content and like-minded people you can find about it out there, and it's not like you have to fight for your life to keep the ship alive or something...

[away-ward]

Rank the compatibility in real life of the DN couples. Suppose if they were not based in Thunder Bay which was their "playground ", would the dynamics change... like if Banks and Emmy were on financially equal level with Kai and Will... would the stories still play out the same way?

Hmmm. That's a difficult one. You're asking to change some of the fundamentals of the characters. At the same time, there's an element of 'fated', as there usually is with these types of stories.

I mean, there's no logical reason as a three-year-old, Michael would be completely obsessed with a new born and remain obsessed for the rest of his life.

So, of course changing some of the fundamentals is going to change some of their compatibility. But. . .

Kai and Banks are probably the most compatible.. At their core, Kai likes to hunt and Banks needs to feel wanted and desired. Whatever else is going on with them, that will always be true. Kai and Banks also have had the most changes in their lives. Both had a life in Meridian, a much larger city, before coming to Thunder Bay, and both had a period in life when they didn't have money. Changing their finances or location wouldn't be anything they couldn't deal with.

Taking them real world, I think they'd be fine.

But I now love the idea that even in Meridian, even without money, these two would have found each other. In the bonus scene, Kai mentioned that he went to a party in Meridian. That's the perfect set up for an AU.

-

Removing the abuse, the financial inequality, I still think Will and Emory are fairly compatible. They fall into the golden retriever bf/black cat gf. This is a very real dynamic and usually works pretty well. I've talked about how Will is more of a nerd than he appears at first read. They're both movie lovers, both like adventures, and are artistic. Giving Emory less of a reason to be angry and defensive just means they get together even sooner and without all the drama. Check out my high school willemmy headcanons because I think they're fun.

I think Willemmy can go the distance.

-

Rika and Michael are your typical power couple. They're both rich, both did fine outside of Thunder Bay, both have degrees in business. They don't need the town to make them work. Not really understand Rika and Michael means that I don't get what makes them compatible, but they don't have many incompatibilities.

They're also the most basic of all the couples.

Still, I think they might suffer from Michael's ambition, and Rika's lack of direction but refusal to be controlled. Taking away the obsession aspect between them, the friction might be too much for them. They also suffer from huge communication issues. Those two things might make it difficult if they were trying to live anywhere that wasn't Thunder Bay, where they feel comfortable and at home. They need the chaos that is Thunder Bay for them to lose control, which usually leads to them clearing the air. Without the occasional night of revelry that only Thunder Bay can safely give them, those problems would build up as we saw in Conclave.

The might not survive if they were anywhere else.

-

Damon and Winter need Thunder Bay the most to make them work. You start removing the foundation of their story, they start to crumble.

Part of Damon's obsession is because of their interaction as children. But if his father isn't throwing his weight around a small town and intimidating the other families, Damon is not hiding in a fountain and Winter has nothing to teach him.

If she's not blind, she doesn't get sent away and then she's not brought back to be the shiny new thing in TBP. At that point they're more similar to Rika and Michael, in that they grew up watching each other. She would also be much more independent, which is not something Damon would love. He likes that she is strong and outspoken with other people; he needs her to need him.

Even removing the town dynamic, Gabriel is still Gabriel and Damon a Dark Prince and Winter his ballerina. I think they'd be a couple that worked, but you wouldn't know why just by looking at them. On the surface, they're incompatible.

However, Winter being a successful ballerina might take her away before they could really fall for each other, and if Thunder Bay isn't a place that Damon has a particular draw to, he might not be inclined to stay. It brings their relationship and it's longevity into question.

-

I try not to let my biases get in the way, but having a better understanding of Willemmy and KaiBanks is kinda why I like them more, so it's probably inevitable that it seeped in. I also just see more problems with MichaelRika and DamonWinter. I

'd be interested in knowing how other people are ranking their compatibility as real world couples.

Ko

[llawlieta]

What’s your most unpopular DN opinion? (It can be about canon, fanon the fandom)

This is a hard to answer question for me because I don't know that I have many unpopular opinions, or any at all?! So I'm just going to ramble a little bit at you. I hope this is the quality content you were looking for.

I am FAR from confident that my own characterization of Light and L is right, but I sometimes feel like my view of them is an unpopular one because I see different sides of fandom taking certain traits and pulling in totally different directions - Light is either dramatic with a hair-trigger temperament and ready for Violence OR he is very soft and fluffy. (Or, he is either constantly openly and shamelessly putting women down or actually a #feminist.) Same thing with L. L is very soft and gentle and full of angsty feelings, or (and I think the following is a view that some people have adopted as a rejection to the Uwu L ™ characterization that was king in the early days of the fandom, sjsksjd) he is a confident asshole with almost no consideration towards other people beyond what is useful to him to be able to solve a case.

But then of course I know this is a bit like saying nothing because all fandoms will do this to their blorbos, and all characters are more complex than you'd think from a cursory search through their Tumblr tag. I was discussing this with a beloved friend and she illuminated me by mentioning that fandom... just loves Drama and Heightened Feelings... People consume the source material and want more Feels out of it (especially media like Death Note, I'd imagine, which really doesn't spend more time than necessary dwelling on anyone's feelings) and so they take... Light having a yelling fit and make it a very prominent trait of his personality. Or L having a soft moment and fill him with soft feelings that are coming out all the time. Which is a reasonable instinct to have! even though I think the interesting part of those moments in canon is precisely the fact that they are extraordinary in some way.

So I AM saying nothing and this does happen in every fandom, and contrary to what that cursory search through any fandom tag would tell you, a lot of people certainly treat the characters with subtlety and pay careful attention to all of their dimensions. I mean, evidently, most people do it much better than I could ever hope to do!! (In my defense I have to say that if I stress myself out with writing Light and L properly in-character I will drive myself insane, so not doing it is Self Care for me). But, ah! hopefully this is still some sort of answer, anon!

The L thing bothers me more, because he is my beloved boy and because I think people insist a bit too much on the view of him as confident asshole who doesn't give a fuck. Cleverer people than me have discussed this, particularly in the Lawlight server in which I am, but L does in fact Give Some Fucks. I'm noticing it more now that I'm rereading the manga! A lot of soft little L moments are making me sort of understand why people back in the early fandom days really ran with that Soft Uwu L interpretation haha. It's not remotely accurate to reduce him to those traits! but it's not accurate either to reduce him to the opposite ones?

And I feel like the same phenomenon happens with Lawlight, My Beloved Ship. Sometimes it feels like, if people don't portray them as a very soft and fluffy couple, they can portray them as a couple that would be so toxic and unhealthy that they couldn't have a normal, loving relationship without mind games and manipulation always running through the undercurrent of it. Idk we all know these boys are crazy insane but I don't think they'd be quite THAT toxic!!

Rereading the manga has made me have the realization once again that (I think) L and Light honestly just fit together very well, and don't hate each other with nearly as much venom and intensity as one might think, and there's a lot of common interests and genuine mutual appreciation and fun in their relationship. Particularly in a no notebook AU where there'd be no need for 70% of their mind games of course lol, but it's also there just, like, canonically.

↑ they discuss the news and buy groceries together and read different books silently on the couch actually.

[zeglythers]

So happy you are back after taking time off. Your post was right on point. If you don’t like the posts and what is being said here, then please just block and move on. Don’t spread negativity and drama as no one wants it here and it is boring and no fun. Your blog is a Zeglyth blog and we want to talk about T & R and their projects as well any info about them not about hateful/hurtful and mean comments about DN, BB and anyone in general. This is supposed to be a fun safe space for us to chat about Zeglyth. I don’t understand why people are being mean and rude to you and other admins on the other blogs. If it weren’t for you all we wouldn’t be chatting about our favorite performers who have amazing chemistry together. Enough of my rant. Hope you are well admin. Myself and the other crazy kitties appreciate you! 😁

Thank you so much for this! You said it perfectly! This was supposed to be a fun space, and we’re hardly having any fun or even getting to talk about what we actually like and enjoy. Anyway, I have to say, I really love when you drop by and leave an ask! 😭 I think I’ve mentioned this before, but messages like yours remind me that there are people who genuinely appreciate this little space I’ve created, and that makes it all worth it. Again, thank you! Also, I hope you don't mind, but I’m definitely stealing crazy kitties from you!

[nezz-cringe-crib]

Dudeeeeeeeee!

I am not okay!!!!

Your hockey boys are SO GOOD! UGH! THE APPEAL! THE EXPRESSIONS! THE DRAMA! Ugh, literally like obsessed with it as a piece of art OUTSIDE of being hockey AU art it’s so fun and pretty and the splash of colour on Light’s cheeks and the gradients under their helmets I AM VERY NORMAL ABOUT IT.

Beautiful. 10/10. Do not know how I am supposed to sleep after this!!!

I shall ask you now what your favourite version of DN is and why (because this is an ask box after all, if I have to yap, so do YOU) and your top 3 fave ships b/c im curious

Okay BYE 💕✨

AAAAAUG DUDE I SAW YOUR SPAM TAG REBLOG AND HAVE BEEN INTERNALLY FREAKING OUT YOU HAVE ZERO CLUE HOW INSANE I AM ABOUT YOUR HOCKEY GUYS I WAS QUITE LITERALLY JUST RAMBLING ABOUT IT TO MY BOYFRIEND TO CONVINCE HIM TO READ IT (seriously though my autism is feral over this fic. i had plans today and canceled them solely because i wanted to reread + draw the chapters and then spin them around in my head for a few more hours. i have never touched hockey in my life but at this point i'm considering committing to the bit and just watching some games atp.)

IM HONOURED YOU LIKE IT!!! THEYRE SO FUN TO DRAW (and i have now learned the art of helmets those things are so wacky)!!!!! also im sorry in advance for how much im gonna be spamming your comment sections man i am not normal about them.

ANYWAYS i'll stop screaming and answer these silly questions YYAAYY!!!!

my favorite version of death note has to be the musical. the jdrama probably comes in a very close second. i adore all the other versions just as much honestly, i like viewing them all as their own separate stories because each of them are just so good in their own rights. the musical wins though because i've listened to that damn soundtrack too many times, i'm a threatre kid, it was the first version of death note i watched, and also because oh my god they're so doomed yaoi it hurts.

the score is so damn thought-out it actually hurts. each actor i've seen portray the silly guys does it so well and OOUGGG THE VOICES OUGGGGH,,, also its ending is my favorite out of them all. (spoilers for this next sentence if you havent seen it) i love the idea of them dying together-- i know it was most likely done because it's a musical and it'd be difficult to pull off a second part but god it's perfect to me nothing beats that amount of "different sides of the same coin" doomed yaoi to me.

only downside is now jeremy jordan has followed me into four different fandoms and that terrifies me.

AND THE SHIPS!!!!

lawlight clearly if that wasn't obvious enough.

lawmane because lawliet is a bisexual pervert and i just think they're neat

anndd lawmassacre!!! again because bisexual whore!!!! and also i just generally adore their dynamic, i really want to see it explored more.

honestly any ship with L is a ship that intrigues me (also all the other ships too since i love seeing the different dynamics but i have a bias for emos). honorable mention is L x soichiro because i think light deserves it.

thank you for letting me yap with you this has been the most therapeutic experience of my life. chucking m&ms at you, have a wonderful day hockey lad.

[findroleplay]

21+ | nb ! looking for literate writers who are interested in plot-centric, character-driven threads that focus on worldbuilding. i don't mind doubling, or writing multiple characters for one thread. i'm also interested in crossovers, one universe bleeding into another (bleach characters popping up in naruto or vice versa for example), or giving canon characters verses. as for shipping — anything flies as long as there's chemistry. i would prefer to stick to canon muses, but well thoughtout ocs are also appreciated! only requirement is patience, i work 2 jobs and also study, so replies may vary from twice a week to once a week, a notice will be given if life gets busy. i mostly write on discord. given that most of the writing is plot-heavy, there likely won't be speedy replies.

fandoms and aus i'm interested in :

☆ naruto (any canon-divergent timeline that excludes kaguya. would love to go back to the original idea of naruto — have more politics, gangs, expand the world a bit. time travel aus are also fun. any modern reinterpretation, we can talk headcanons and so on. verses for bleach, jjk, and other fandoms are also welcome!)

☆ bleach (exploring the early days of bleach, slice-of-life that leads into more action-packed plots. crossovers and verses are really welcome)

☆ jujutsu kaisen (same as bleach, survival aus, too, zombie apocalypse or any aus)

☆ hxh (anything that focuses on the spiders, found family trope, put more emphasis on the license exam, or even come up with our own license exam, au, crossovers and verses)

☆ castlevania (mostly the netflix drama since i'm not familiar with the games, again expansion on world-building and what each vampire brings to the table, we can expand on clans, include more supernatural elements)

☆ x-men (anything from crossovers, verses, aus, including other characters into this universe, i don't really care so much about canon as much as character-driven threads)

☆ dc (as a more noir or gothic setting, focus heavily on the characters and their journeys)

☆ marvel (mostly spiderman, but we can discuss this, same as all of the above)

☆ some cartoons (totally spies, juniper lee, w.i.t.c.h., american dragon, samurai jack, etc)

☆ atla (worldbuilding, crossovers, and canon divergences are more than welcome)

☆ death note (expanding the universe, building our own cases, as with all of the above, one universe bleeding into the other or just giving DN characters verses for other fandoms)

☆ wednesday (exploring the world and adding our own twists, we can definitely talk ocs here)

like this ask and i'll reach out! please don't like this if you're only interested in nsfw plots, i really want to create more with these worlds, and i'm looking for literate writers, we can have separate text channels for anything more light-hearted. thanks!

_

[patchodraws]

so, something that keeps coming back to me over and over is the idea of adapting Life is Strange - or rather, how can you adapt life is strange ?

a lot of other adaptations of narrative games rely on the fact that the game is telling you a straightforward (if not always linear) story, where it doesn’t matter how you get through the plot beats, just that you get through them. but with life is strange, the whole point is that it does matter how you get through the plot beats, and not just in the way that it affects the end choice or whatever: it’s in choosing which plot beats to go to - which decisions to ultimately make - that the player crafts their version of the story, and you can’t get a straightforward story out of that.

the other tricky part is the controversial ending. out of all the LiS games, the first one definitely had the most impactful ending, yet people are still debating which one is the better or more right ending, and that’s just not something you can really get with a traditional adaptation.

just as a thought experiment, i’ve been racking my brain for solutions to this little dilemma, and i’ve come up with a few:

the first is an interactive show, like bandersnatch or all the other interactive specials netflix got obsessed with after bandersnatch. the problem with that is that it’s a lot of resources for just one episode, let alone five; plus, at that point, why not just play the game itself? it doesn’t offer a unique enough experience to justify it

the next idea is an original prequel story. i know before the storm already exists, but there’s still plenty of time between that game and the first one. hell, there’s definitely a story to tell with the time leading up to and following rachel’s disappearance, and given teen dramas are still fairly popular, this could scratch that particular itch. it does unfortunately mean no max caulfield, who is just as iconic as life is strange itself, so it’d be a bit tricky to exclude her and still have it feel authentic.

one potential option is to not canonize any ending, simply finishing the show on max being given the choice and not having made it by the time credits roll. i imagine as much of an interesting artistic choice that would be, though, plenty of casual viewers would probably feel extremely shortchanged by not showing what max chose. of course, you could also canonize one ending, but then you just get the same problem of the original ending being controversial but on a potentially larger scale.

something less offensive could be to make an entirely new ending. DN had indicated before that the original bay ending would see chloe survive the shooting but end up in a coma, letting the story end on max being in the hospital with chloe waiting for her to wake up. on the other side of things, the bae ending could finally get the reworking it’s been owed for years, showing much more of the storm’s aftermath, who survived, what became of chloe and max once leaving the town, all that jazz. it could be new enough to appeal to fans tired of the same two endings from before while also not immediately alienating casual viewers

at the end of the day, this is all just me thinking out loud, and personally i’m not sure if i want a life is strange adaptation. i love the aesthetic and vibes of the original game and would love to see that put onto television/streaming, but this is such a tricky story to adapt like this that i would only want to see it if it was done right and in a way that would respect fans of the original game while also reaching a new audience of people who might’ve never played the game. until then, i’m glad the adaptation that was rumoured to be in pre-production is still, well, in pre-production

[lightyakami]

17, 29 for the writing ask!

hello!! thank you for this ask & sorry it took me absolutely ages to answer it.

17. talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

oh im so delighted by this question.

right now the thing that’s occupying like 99% of my brain is a kpop au in which L and light are ludicrously toxic fans of the kpop idol, beyond birthday, who is a random member of the kpop group RE:4PER. they are both entirely batshit, light perhaps slightly more than L, and have developed parasocial relationships with beyond that would put mikami to shame. 

light is well-known amongst the fandom partially for organizing local cupsleeve events (tokyo is a big city!) but mostly for starting twitter drama with everyone who breathes. he is of the ‘protect the purity of our idols’ variety of fans and wishes to kill anyone who implies they are even slightly imperfect or have looked at another human being with romantic intent. he is convinced that beyond WILL meet him somehow and fall in love with him for real. 

L is well-known for posting beautiful, immediate, and wildly misleading translations. his crown jewel is translating beyond’s infamous “human life has no value to me” as “people have many different valuable things to offer in this life.” light loves his translations. he is, however, ready to murder L because L lives to sexualize his favourite idol. L’s other fandom activity is writing very long, depraved and extremely terrible omegaverse RPF. (has light read them? yes, but — he insists — only because he has to know what the enemy is up to.)

anyway, in their normal lives they are complete messes. L has horrific levels of depression & a certain degree of agoraphobia. he hardly ever leaves his home for anything other than cupsleeve events, concerts or the kpop store where he buys his cds. light is deeply mentally ill & categorically refuses to acknowledge this. i feel like when you write dn fic you need to pick a point on the timeline for light and i have picked The Warehouse. he is at all times one bad thought away from collapsing on the ground and screaming at everyone around him. occasionally he does this for real. neither of them have any friends. light hangs out with his mom a lot, though. 

obviously this is a lawlight au because of who i am as a person, so: L is deeply fixated on light because light is pretty much the only person who ever talks to him, even if he mostly does so to yell at L. one time L invited him over and light did his depression dishes for no reason & with zero judgement — he just felt it was probably difficult for L to use his sink. for like a week after L was able to cook things. he has been secretly in love with light ever since. light, for his part, has a massive crush on L because he looks like beyond. therefore, naturally, they develop an utterly batshit relationship in which L pretends to be beyond and they both convince themselves they are, somehow, not hooking up with each other.

so idk this is!! i guess pretty angsty but the concept behind it is that they come to support each other despite being genuinely very difficult people to be around. which they do! i wanted a story about mental illness in which the people involved behave in painful ways but are also humans with whom one can sympathize with and hopefully this will be that. 

ANYWAY sorry this is probably long enough but. that’s where my brain lives currently. 

29. Where do you draw your inspiration? What do you do when the inspiration well runs dry?

i answered this here BUT i will add onto it to give a special shoutout to twenty thousand hertz, which for some reason always fills me with Ideas, many of which objectively don’t have anything whatsoever to do with the actual subject matter of the episodes. they just do such fantastic interviews and constantly pull out fascinating details and insights about the world!! i think everyone who likes podcasts, audio or technology should listen to this. 99% invisible is also and ideas factory & i think game studies study buddies often has extremely in-depth media analysis which sometimes illuminates points of tension that would be fun to explore in fic.

[dnangelic]

list of my personal canon divergences because i feel like this'll come in handy in the future. for somebody!!

--- i don't take anything from the anime. i can't emphasize this enough. what i write has nothing to do with the dn anime. even if you remember literally nothing else about my portrayal at least remember this. the anime didn't do anything particularly interesting that i care to implement heavily into my portrayal so i don't. the exception to this would be recognizing the anime-verse as a separate universe as the decade drama cds did, which i'm happy to involve for the sake of duplicate interactions. dupes are canon to dn, but the dn anime is not canon to my blog.

--- this one's in my rules but my daisuke is single by default. he still confessed, transformed, and was turned down by risa on his birthday, but he's past the point of overly pining for her for a bit like in canon and has finally accepted in his heart that risa will never like him in that way. they are still friends, (daisuke doesn't hate risa, there isn't any grudge between them, i'm firm about this,) and any interactions with any riku that happens to show up will also be taken as a friends first basis rather than auto-shipping. the same applies to dark; i'll let him string risa along similarly to the way he does in canon, but nothing can ever become 'official' between them for as long as daisuke isn't taken into account by risa herself.

--- likewise many canon events (such as the manga's towa arc or azumano land date arc) can be reframed and adjusted to be platonic happenings instead of expressly romantic. towa, argentine, baku, (alongside other non-manga canon artworks/characters like idea, the snowqueen, as well as sagami + maho) are included in my portrayal. i do not adhere strictly to 'one' line of canon and consider the light novels' and drama cds' happenings as varied incidents across the manga's overall timeline; my daisuke can and will recollect these incidents and bring them up if thread circumstances call for it.

--- my daisuke's transformations are triggered by all forms of love in tandem with his heartbeat, ie platonic, sensual, not just romantic or from just 'one person'. i put a lot of emphasis on daisuke being an agape lover so this is a particularly important divergence to me. personally. for the themes.

--- ^ going with that all canon homophobic dark is nixed from anything i write. idk why sugisaki was shopping for homophobia in the visual kei aisle but it's stupid. it's stupid and outdated. 'oh but he's a perv and has to focus on extending the niwa family line with descendants it makes sense he prefers women and is homop-' IT'S DUMB!! LEAVE THAT IN THE 90S!!! that being said my portrayal of dark in particular is x-gender. my pronoun usage for him is usually only he/him solely because he is, first and foremost an ore-sama character and it's funny to have an ore-sama ojou-sama in my head. his feelings of romance are also nigh expressly controlled by daisuke, junko/dn light novel style. he might seem to have a verbal femme lean but trust us if daisuke decides a guy is hot dark has no choice but to say okay i guess we're kissing boys now and he will enjoy it

--- along with that i don't really care for how sugisaki seemed to waffle so much with deciding whether or not dark was his own individual or a proper part of daisuke in the manga, so i lean towards junko's style of handling them instead. dark's feelings are either outright echoes or inversions of daisuke's, daisuke's feelings are either echoes or inversions of dark's. they're always in sync at their core and share bodies, feelings, memories, struggles, etc, and heavily, HEAVILY influence one another in operation whether they're individually asleep or conscious. 'daisuke' will always hold 'dark' within him and his words and actions just as 'dark' will always hold 'daisuke' within him and his words and actions. this is one of the most difficult parts of my muse to explain, but basically: they ARE the same singular character at their depths, just not always superficially.

--- in canon dark immediately disappears and goes to sleep after a niwa's romance is fulfilled, thereby 'lifting' the niwa curse. for my portrayal, dark doesn't do any of that and lingers on with daisuke even after any reciprocation. even though this can be easily explained in-verse by saying that daisuke and dark have already inextricably 'merged' into one another, (and… because daisuke was truly the first niwa to wholly accept and understand dark into himself/give himself and his life up to dark, they really have,) it's really mostly because i don't think any sort of extended interactions rp-wise with daisuke stuck missing dark from himself constantly would be any interesting, and i like it better for both dark and daisuke to be accepted as they are; as in, each other. del toro vc the monster doesn't need to turn into a boring fucking prince to be loved. i also just think it's rlly funny to watch people put up with the most embarrassing bf in the world (dark.) sugisaki was afraid of having a monster bird boy bf polycule in action but frankly i'm not. you get two in one.

--- my dark's appearance is (arguably?) canon divergent. his eyes will always be "daisuke's red" (instead of occasionally...randomly... purple) to go along with the fact that he and daisuke are meant to 'look at things with the same eyes([in the same way.])' his canines are sharper and pronounced giving them a fanged look, his eyes are always slit,(unless it's daisuke simply in a wig/disguise) and he does have the natural ability to extend his nails into talons/claws. he doesn't have fingerprints, his palm lines are faded/removed giving his hands a marble statue-like appearance, and his body temperature is always extremely cold. this is another important divergence to Me and it's not just to make him freaky monster hot (though it does do that yes tru) but also to put more emphasis on his operation as a beauty and the beast, beast archetype character. he is very NOT human no matter how deceptively close he gets to looking it; this is sad for both him (who wants to be human) and daisuke (who doesn't want to be a monster.)

--- for the wings in particular here's my wing meta. tldr though, wiz can still be used as a spare set of wings like in canon, but dark/daisuke have their own. in canon they're magic so they can just kinda materialize at will sometimes, but in my portrayal, they're very real and come from daisuke's back splitting open in a freak fashion. they can be touched, they can be held, etc, etc, love and gently brush your weird bird boy today.

--- daisuke being able to properly isekai and world jump (even through the arts) is technically canon divergent, but it works so well with him thereby becoming thematically a literal 'fallen angel' from 'another world' that i refuse to give it up. here's shoujo satan from my middleschool romance manga come to rapture your fine arts back to heaven/hell azumano.

--- ddn doesn't exist to me and i take nothing from it either. here's my post canon verse.

[whoseafraidofliloleme]

my exams are finished 😁😁

nd yes picking what to watch next is so 🥴🥴 literally i spend like 2 days or sometimes more when I need to pick out what to watch next

ndd yesss IM GONNA WAIT FOR U TO RELEASE THE NEW CHAPTER

nd it's okay we all have different tastes dn different favorites in romcoms

nd yes I'm gonna sleep peacefully finally nd relax cuz my exams are finished nd exam seasons 😞😞

hope u take care of yourself nd it's okay take ur time to answer these asks the only thing that matters at the end of the day is u answering them <33

Yay!!!! That is something to celebrate!! 🎉🎊

Lol I know the struggle, controversial opinion I started but then dropped King the Land... It just wasn't giving what I wanted to give 🤷🏽‍♀️ but I am now OBSESSED with Perfect Marriage Revenge and I'm eagerly waiting for the final episode to air tmrw so I can binge it in peace. Its so unhinged I love it so far. Very much giving me desi soap operas that I loved watching on Star Plus 😂😂.

Well your in luck, chapter 1 for Angels Roll Their Eyes is ready and will be posted at 6am tmrw so you better tell me what you think of it🫣🫣....

Romcoms just gotta hit that spot for me. I am very picky with my dramas to begin with as well.

Good enjoy the post exam bliss, that is another feeling knowing that exams are over... I do not miss that 😂😫.

Aww hun, I take care of myself, you better be doing that too🫰🏽🫶🏽!!. I love answering the asks so don't worry about that, I love asks and answering them does make my day. You take care, stay hydrated and have fun post exams 💜🫶🏽🫰🏽!!!

ps yes it is missing Jin hours for me😭😭😭....

[13eyond13]

What makes Death Note special to you? Like, why do you love it?

BOY, I don't know if I can think of everything to list everything all at once. But here are a few reasons off the top of my head:

• it's one of the funniest things I have ever read/watched while also being pretty thought-provoking and angsty/horror-ish too. It makes me laugh as well as be serious and sad and scared simultaneously all at once and nearly constantly, which is a fairly rare experience for me with anything I read or watch. And I can't stress enough how refreshing it is that DN is extremely far from pretentious or overly self-serious despite all its heavy subject matter and the big questions it explores! It's just as goofy as it is grim, and it pokes fun at itself and its own characters all the time, which I think adds to its longterm appeal and palatable-ness so much

• I love how lonely and kind of pathetic most of the characters are in certain ways while also just being very fun to look at and drawn so pretty and attractive and cool. Super relatable and endearing to me how awkward and lopsided most of their relationships with each other are, and how rarely any of them are ever actually having a good time or a successful social interaction or whatever lol

• I also love how much inner monologuing this series has, and how so much of the emotional stuff is always going on under the surface or secretly inside everybody's heads or left up to interpretation instead of just explicitly spelled out and said. It feels incredibly true to life for me, maybe because I'm a pretty quiet person with a moderate amount of social anxiety 😅

• the blend of realistic mundane real-world normie stuff like office drama and high school drama with the fantastical shinigami and notebook stuff is incredibly fun to me. I think it feels more dramatically impactful to have the supernatural things going on in a human world that feels very grounded and real (most of the time... at least in the Japanese world, I think it gets a little more cartoonish and unrealistic in the Wammy's/American settings haha)

•genuinely interesting and well-written cast of characters and a plot that gave me some iconic shocking-in-a-good-way twists. And I love that I didn't ever feel overly manipulated by the narrative into feeling one way or the other about most of the characters - like it never tried too hard to make me feel sorry for anybody who I might find really unsympathetic because of their behaviour or something, which would probably annoy me a lot

•Light is one of the most fun and dynamic protagonists I've ever come across in fiction thus far. He's definitely a love him or hate him kinda guy, but I fall pretty staunchly on the love him side (though no, I don't think that he was valid/right)

•it's just an unusually enjoyable series to be in a fandom for, I think? There's so much here for fans to work with and explore and experiment with and meme and elaborate upon, it's just endlessly reworkable for some reason. And all the funny and smart and kind and interesting people I've met through the fandom over the years are definitely the main reason I continue to stick around and find it a very homey place on the internet to be

[away-ward]

Thank you for your reply, KO! This is the anon from #asked and answered 176.

1 yes i like your fics, i like no apologies the most because we had insights to emmy's career and life in sf. Emmy might find herself boring, but ive always been a busy body reader so i would eat up everything about her personal and professional life in sf. I still hated will there, but thanks to you i hated him 5% less

2 "Ummm. I do think it’s a little weird that you’ve read multiple PD books, and even finished the DN series… especially since you were looking forward to Will. Because I hated Will for the first three books and if I weren’t curious about Emory, I wouldn’t have finished the series at all."

KO, you've underestimated a loyal hate reader's journey of hate reading 😂 i love pd's writing and i love some of their books that were not DN because of the chemistry of the main lovers (theyre not bad as many have said actually), but i still hated the ongoing misogynistic dynamic that they always had in their books. Its like having an author that you majorly like what they do, but their side mistakes were big enough to irritate you so you remember them, kinda thing. Do you have these kinds of author that feel like this towards? To answer this simply: pd's books are like worms for brain for me. Like when i read books by Colleen hoover, or hd carlton, sophie lark, lauren asher, or susanne valnti &peckham. It's the kind of toxicity you need from time to time but still get mad and disappointed by your low expectation at their shit ass plot and mfcs and fmcs anyway, yk. 

KO, i cant lie, im just a hater first, a hate reader second and a reader third 🤣 once i stop, i cnat quit. Like damon torrance, that punk ass devils night philosopher said, sometimes you just want to feel everything including the ugly ones you know, and like michael crist the logician, you just gotta own it, before it owns you, GOD HAHAHAH i cant believe im using them as my metaphors right now!! Please bare with me here.

3 "I also find it equally weird that your first impulse after finishing a series you hate is to go to the tag of the character you hated the most? I mean, I’ve definitely clicked on hot-takes I know I’m going to disagree with and hate-read things, but it’s not my go-to."

hmm? KO, i think... youre just not as toxic of a reader than me, ohmygod, im so sorry! 🤣☠️ im really of those people that will immideately look up one and two star ratings on goodreads so that i know my feelings and thoughts were validated by other haters, lmao! Do not mind me, its not a good thing, but like damon torrance said, live, love, laugh, and hate, you know 🤩

4 thank you so much for your recs, i also actually grew up watching hana yori dongo! I watched the kdrama version too but idk if i'll watch the thai version. I have less patient for dramas now unfortunately, and the last drama i watched was "celebrity" on netflix, and i still havent finished it, even after 3 month ☠️ I used to love kdramas and lee minho was so popular back then, so i also watched him in "the heirs" too. Ohmygod his hairsyles in both dramas (boys over flowers and the heirs) were so funny, but i remember enjoying these stories a lot. I believe these two kdramas were released during the time where kdramas were having a lot more angsty romantic relationship than platonic ones and they both stood out among many others, not only because of lee minho, park shinhye and bunch of k-idols acting there, but also because of the friendships and platonic relationships shown that were fun to watch. It's a break from other dramas like moon embracing the sun, or my love from another star that were romance-heavy, yk. But tbh, i prefer my love from another star and moon embracing the sun more than bof/hyd and the heirs. If there are two recs i'd like to give you, they would be "hotel del luna" and "sky castle". God damn, i cried in every single episode watching these two dramas. They really touched my soul, everything was so good!

5 i havent scrolled through your blog and notice your recs for sempre, but from your recs, i checked and saw its goodreads rating and it's pretty high! Maybe i'll check it out if im interested. Seems like a mafia gang story? I need to be in the mood to be reading mafia stories because my first ones were from reading kpop mafia fanfics from years ago and the latest and the last one were the made series by danielle lori. The made series were entertaining but i noticed that i didnt care much about mafias? Hahahahah idk, and idc much about vampires, and wolf stories either, but i like faes. Not Sarah j maas type of faes, but holly black's and cassandra clare's. The ones that are beautiful, creepy, complicated and loves/have to lie but cant. So yeah, thanks for recommending sempre!

6 as for alex, im tired of her, and honestly i dont want to think about her anymore. I'll pretend nightfall alex never existed, and nightfall will grayson fucking died a gruesome death, becoming of two stupid selfish best friends who think theyre the only suffering in this world. You know this reminded me of a quote by madeline miller's Circe that really fits will's selfish behaviour especially in blackchurch: “He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.” thats exctly how i felt throughout blackchurch. Because emmy always had to heavylift whatever bullshit that alexwillaydin put out to her. And as someone who was so used to just move forward and not caring about her small losses because she had suffered worse, emmy just had to act like she was okay with all the little hurts and cruelty cause by people, just because she loved them/will and wanted to not give up on him and give him a second chance, because he was hurting and she understood that he cared then (🙄). Good thing, she admitted she was at fault partly too, but god, i hated when she felt like she need to go above and beyond for a man who admitted didnt care enough about her. Gods, these mf men need therapy frfr.

7 "I truly am sorry that it was such a bad experience for you. You’re welcome to stick around, but I’m sure since you hated so much, you’re ready to move on after unloading like that. But it’s all good either way. I hope you’re on to better and better things." 

No need to be sorry, but you're right, i'm starting some new reads right now, and idk why, but kandi steiner, liz tomforde and laura pavlov really do be hitting with their releases!! Like their stories are not dark romance so tat cleansed me from devils night series a bit, and they are so fun to read! They gave me melanie harlow's vibes. If anyone's interested, i suggest checking out Blindside by Kandi Steiner, Right Move by Liz Tomforde, and all of these four authors backlogs tbh. Kandi Steiner even have like a college frat series? Which i havent checked out but it sounds fun, and its called Palm South University series.

I dont have anything else to add as well, thank you for reading my rants, have a nice day! I think this will be my last one, so goodbye!

KO, you've underestimated a loyal hate reader's journey of hate reading

Hey!! Okay. This is very helpful! Thank you for the insight. I’m not a stranger to hate watching/reading and (used to) do it frequently. And I would complain to all my friends about all the horrible stuff that was happening, but they knew I was having a good time.

It’s harder when I don’t really know who I’m talking to, to tell if I should take it seriously or if they’re enjoying the trash like me. We’re completely on the same page in that case so ignore very thing I said about not getting it. If you’re having a good time hating it, I got you!

i think... youre just not as toxic of a reader than me, ohmygod, im so sorry!

I might not be anymore but I definitely used to be, ngl. And I don’t know if you can end up running a DN blog without having some toxicity left in you??? I mean. We’re not here because this work was a masterpiece, am I right?

I don’t currently have any authors I must read/hate-read. Like I’ve said, I haven’t had the time to get into a lot of new stuff lately, and my tastes have changed. They could always change back, since reading is a mood-based activity. For now, though, I’ve left the dark and toxic behind for something that makes me feel good about the world.

i also actually grew up watching hana yori dongo! I watched the kdrama version too but idk if i'll watch the thai version. I have less patient for dramas now unfortunately

Oh my god the Kdrama! It was my first Kdrama. Fond memories. And no worries, I haven’t touched any drama in years. Truthfully, I think the only reason I can get into the Thai version is because of the familiarity.

but from your recs, i checked and saw its goodreads rating and it's pretty high! Maybe i'll check it out if im interested. Seems like a mafia gang story?  

It is, kinda? But it’s really layered, with a good plot and great characters. I could ramble about it for a while, but I don’t think anyone is interested currently, so I won’t burden you with it 😂

holly black's and cassandra clare's

I did really like the folk of the air series, and I read the spiderwick chronicles in middle school, but I haven’t gone back to holly black in a long time. I did want to read the new one but haven’t had the chance.

--

Oof Alex. Now that I know where you’re coming from, I can completely agree. I’ve been re-reading and analyzing her intro in Nightfall and how weird it was; how it derailed everything in the worse way. Sometimes, when writers are stuck on where to go with a scene or plot, there’s a tactic that’s recommended: have someone walk in with a gun. It causes enough of a upheaval to keep the plot moving. I’m not sure if that was what Alex was supposed to do, but it really didn’t work for me for a lot of reasons.

Because emmy always had to heavylift whatever bullshit that alexwillaydin put out to her. And as someone who was so used to just move forward and not caring about her small losses because she had suffered worse, emmy just had to act like she was okay with all the little hurts and cruelty cause by people,

Yes! She had to work so hard just for a little, and what killed me the most is reading her scenes where she agrees with them.

She has the moments of clarity, where it seems she remembers why she did what she did, and she's not sorry, and that she wasn’t to blame for what happened to Will. Then next minute… she’s back to blaming herself for no reason? I’ve said many times before that Emory’s guilt is misplaced, and at certain times, it can’t be ignored that it was really PD pushing this “Emory deserves this” narrative, but I just can’t jive with it at all. There's a question on her good reads page where she says that she thinks Will is the most justified in his hatred.

And just... no. He's not. Literally none of them were justified in their hatred. They had the right to feel wronged. Sometimes we feel wronged, even if we carry some of the blame for what happened. But to say they were justified is just over the line. I really wish PD had more balance when it come to assigning blame. I think this series would have benefitted if one of the themes of the story was that everyone makes decisions, and right or wrong, we have to living with them. These are the consequences.

Like their stories are not dark romance so tat cleansed me from devils night series a bit, and they are so fun to read!

Yeah, it’s always nice to find something new that works! Thanks for the recs. I hope if anyone is looking, they’ll look them up. Sorry I didn’t have more strong female friendships, but they can be tough to find in todays romance climate.

I totally get you not coming back. It was absolutely a blast talking to you and thanks for the clarification! It always helps.

Have a great one, KO