#its 2024 we don’t have to pretend our characterization of various dn characters isn’t influenced by those & also tithe to hell right

[quicktimeeventfull]

hello everyone. bpd L speaks to me deeply and i have therefore gathered up this entirely unsolicited and non-comprehensive list of fics i’ve written where this characterization was to some degree relevant. some of them are serious and some of these truly are not. anyway. here we go.

stay: light and L are the most toxic kpop fans in the universe. i feel this one is probably more easily recognizable as a bpd light fic but it’s both of them

escape artist: in which L makes his way out of sachiko and soichiro’s bedroom after a delightful encounter

with love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls: in which L seduces his professor, watari

agnus dei: in which L comes to visit beyond at the wammy house. this was extremely vital to his characterization To Me.

puppy dog: in which L, seeking a peculiar kind of reassurance, gives beyond a call.

[quicktimeeventfull]

#its 2024 we don’t have to pretend our characterization of various dn characters isn’t influenced by those & also tithe to hell right#like we can all hold hands and accept that literally 20 years of fanworks have created a semi-consistent scaffolding that we pretty much al#work with right

person who joined the fandom in summer 2024: :0

real talk though, I'll be very curious to read that essay if you ever write one! bpd L isn't something I've been able to picture yet, but it sounds very interesting and I'd love to know more.

based on the two fics mentioned, I do wonder if it might be little bit different from my current view/impression of L? I've read both of those: A Tithe to Hell was amazingly written, and I was enjoying it very much up to a certain point where the characterizations of the two began to deviate notably from my perception of them, and while technically it was still very good, that just took me out completely - something that wasn't an issue for me with Those (absolutely incredibly well-written masterpiece) but mainly because that was thoroughly an AU and I perceive the characters to be different (from "very different" to "extremely and completely different") takes on overall sort of the same "cores" compared to canon characters. in both cases L's characterization is a bit different from the way L currently is in my head. however that being said I am VERY intrigued by the idea of bpd L, also I just like seeing arguments for different interpretations and I can be sold on different ones, so I would love to read something like that! sorry I'm rambling asdghk

oh omg thank you. i should clarify: i meant that less as a statement on those fics themselves than about the fact that death note is old enough to have fairly consistent & identifiable fanon. i do think tithe & the hinterland doctrine (and poison apple) are popular enough that they influence fandom even if a specific person hasn't read them but they also weren't written into a vacuum -- fandom is always interactive, and they all pulled on, popularized and kept alive existing threads of characterization.

i also don't think diagnosing canon!L with bpd makes any sense. like i think there's a fairly easy argument to be made that he has autism and he canonically states that he has depression but he just flat out does not have bpd. i made that up in my brain. that is not Real.

however. i do think that over the course of twenty years fandom has done things with his characterization which makes that a compelling interpretation.

like. along other things, he's a character who is defined by his lack of self-identity, he lives this extremely isolated existence, he's sort of hyper-foused on two specific people (watari and light.) it's also incredibly difficult not to interpret his canon childhood as in some way traumatic and he has this whole thing going on where he's dependent into adulthood on his childhood authority figure. he's profoundly disinterested in his own wellbeing. if you're creating fanworks you need to deal with these things in one way or another. none of them coalesce into a bpd diagnosis but we have decades of works where people are doing various things with these traits & as a result you often end up with fanworks where authors are (quite possibly unintentionally) writing him in ways that would match the diagnostic criteria.

so basically i don't think he has bpd canonically but i think it is an interesting thing to work with given the way that he's been written and interpreted over the years.