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kiyomitakada · 3 days ago

Note

How would fem Mello, near, and Matt be ? (Plus l and light?)

holy fuck ive finally gotten the fabled fem MNM ask???? how did you find me did i successorpost too close to the sun???? thank you. i will take this honor with all due seriousness

also near is already a girl to me and L and light could be with [shoves power drill behind back] some work, but i am going to assume you mean cis girls specifically. feel free to send a followup if not i love talking about dn characters as trans girls

anyway this got ridiculously long so under the cut it goes:

mello: since canon-mello is also gender nonconforming i can only assume this mello is butch as fuck. imo part of canon-mello's gender presentation at wammy's is a rebellion against the entire structure he's been trapped in, so fem-mello being a tomboy as a kid makes a lot of sense to me.

also i like to think both of them kind of hate their haircut by the time of the explosion and just cling onto it because they got so much flack for it in the past that it feels like Defeat to alter it now, and that they come to on the pavement barely-alive feeling like a cooked pizza and think to themselves "well i have an excuse to change my hair now." maybe fem-mello grows out her hair a little as experimentation who knows.

for the social aspect, first off it's less expected for girls to physically bully other kids. not that i think mello was a bully exactly but i mean stuff like pulling that one boy's hair while playing soccer ("hey, mello, that hurt!" "ha ha!"). however mello is charismatic and gregarious enough that she could probably get away with it without the usual social consequences.

roger and watari probably wouldn't have expected the two main candidates for successorhood to be girls, but since L is a girl in this reality and roger and watari don't seem to be that in denial, i figure near and mello would still be successors.

re: the mafia, mello would have had to work a thousand times harder to get them to take her seriously. i mean "bringing us the physical head of a mob boss" is pretty impressive already (imagining butch girl mello holding up a bloody dripping head and grinning at her audience like a wolf…) but since women are not historically part of the mafia (and it looks like this is the same case for rod ross's, since the women we see there are clearly entertainers) she would have a damn hard time actually getting a permanent position. she might have to do it from more of a independent contractor angle instead, racking up enough favors that she could have the social capital necessary to ask for their help getting the notebook.

what else… oh. out of the spk she chooses halle to stay with post-explosion because she'd be understandably cautious of staying with rester or gevanni as a girl. near obviously predicts this and so is even less surprised when mello hostage-marches halle back into spk headquarters.

also the kiyomi plan goes exactly the same lmao (stunning display of authorial misogyny but on an individual level i don't think mello was being sexist about it)

from like, a psychological point of view, mello's established need to Prove Herself would be pretty much the same during wammy's but skyrocket during her mafia era on account of the aforementioned mafia sexism. she would be willing to use her perceived gender as a way to get people to underestimate her but she would not be happy about it. (soichiro: "…mello… your name is… mihaela keehl?" mello, mouth pulling to the side: "surprised, yagami?") she would also be somewhat less willing to underestimate misa (who canon-mello calls a stupid girl while tailing her) but not that much less willing because honestly i think she would have a bit of not-like-other-girls internal misogyny in there.

near: speaking of people who have not-like-other-girls internal misogyny! (this is the best justification i have for why she calls kiyomi stupid)

i can't see much about near changing. she's still a loner at wammy's, she still pieces the kira case together by herself, she still gets an audience with the president (which she needed the spk's help for in the first place). i tend to imagine roger and watari with a fair dose of traditional paternalistic sexism so maybe roger would have been a closer mentor to her. then again, maybe not. as per htr, roger doesn't really like kids.

design-wise i think she would grow out her hair, though not to a-kira length. she likes braiding and unbraiding it as a stim but if her hair were too long she would start needing significant time to take care of it and good god she does not have the time for that! she's busy! otherwise i don't think her presentation changes much at all lmao.

i wonder what she'd think of light. would she also call light a stupid woman? would she gloat internally about the notebook swap plan? shrug.

matt: suddenly i understand why everyone makes up so much about matt. oh god. no i have to stay canon compliant fuck fuuuuck

okay yeah, fem-matt puts absolutely no effort into presentation or hygiene. still a gamer. doesn't bother disguising the fact that she's a girl while gaming so while people are saying slurs at her she runs circles around them and wastes them all in expert time. probably tomboyish but not, like, deliberately, her life just shakes out that way.

also she would not be third in wammy's house because her adhd would be undiagnosed. canon-matt says "it's so boring watching something that never changes" and is overconfident to the point where he steps out into a circle of armed guards with no visible fear, the adhd is practically canon and one of the, like, three things we know about him. i figure canon-matt got access to meds in wammy's but his insurance is fucked up so he stopped receiving them after graduation. fem-matt's adhd slips under the radar, as it does for most girls in real life, so she's probably around fifth place just because she doesn't have access to stimulants. sad!

also: matt calls misa "an awfully cute japanese girl" (i tend to think he means this in the way you would say kittens are cute) and says to mello "why don't you change places with me? at least you get to eavesdrop on a cute girl." now you could say that maybe fem-matt would use less objectifying(?) language but actually i choose to believe she'd be just as bad <3

L: looks The Exact Same. acts The Exact Same. i actually can't talk about fem-L for too long, i will explode. uhh. everyone in interpol is under the impression she's a guy because of her voice modulation. watari is more protective of her and more frequently chimes in during discussion over the computer during yotsuba arc, which L does not appreciate (even though she likes watari), she can handle herself fine, thank you.

backstory-wise, watari definitely took longer to catch onto how smart L was. "invest 1 million pounds please" "er… let's start with a thousand, perhaps." L is annoyed by this. possibly this means L as the detective identity was established later than it was in the canon timeline?

does she have internalized misogyny… tilts hand. i like to think she has less of it than the others, because the only indication we have in canon is her comment that naomi worked her way up in the fbi with "surprising speed for a woman" which you could just as easily take as acknowledgment of sexism in society. on a related note she would not put misa into torture bondage. (or would she……… hm. probably not.)

the task force would also take her less seriously, but oddly i think the dynamic shakes out similar to canon, in that soichiro (in this au where light is also a girl) would be the one to convince the others to listen to L (which is already his role in canon). she reminds him of his daughter and his daughter is wicked smart.

light: ahahahahahahahhahaaaaaa

okay. you should read original sin the cis girl light fic of all time. but here are my other thoughts:

light is gender conforming. i like to think she'd put her hair in a ponytail to come across as a Serious Girl™ but she wouldn't cut it short. she's mild. she's polite. she would not be able to get away with the shit canon-light does (like pointing at L or saying all receptionists look the same or, more seriously, pulling the seduction gambit with kiyomi) because she's constantly on the lookout against being perceived as a karen, a snake, a bitch, so on and so forth. i can't imagine her RSD would be any better than canon-light's so she does not cope well with being called any of that. the masking is raised to 1000.

"would fem-light be a misandrist or a pick me" both. she silently hates men like shibuimaru and she still helps with cases (notably Girl Detectives are a whole genre ala nancy drew) and in a deeply light yagami-esque simplification she sees that men are more likely to be registered as criminals and concludes that men are more likely to commit crimes because of socialization and therefore men are terrible. however she also hates girls like the ones in chapter 1 going out to drink alcohol with a burning passion. the world is so against women already, why are you playing into their stereotypes, she wants to scream, while she plays into the stereotypes herself (but that's Different because she knows she is doing it for a Good Reason). she's light yagami and she sucks. what im saying is that she hates everyone

also i think an underrated part of canon-light is the way his first arc sexism often manifests as chivalry. ("this is the first time i've ever seriously wanted to punch a girl…") fem-light, on the other hand, is also fiercely protective of her family but in less of a gendered way. canon-light's conviction that he can decide what's best for the entire world is So reminiscent of "men of the house" deciding what's best for a family (jabs finger at soichiro). i think this is less true of fem-light, who, to make up for not being as motivated by this, is just a ball of sheer rage all the time. how dare the world be like this? why can't anybody see? why is everyone so fucking stupid? like canon-light but even worse. in fact i can see the cis girl version of manga light starting out like anime light, glaring out the window instead of just staring quietly.

much like mello i don't think light would be able to stomach pulling off the "of course i'm not a murderer, i'm just a girl!" shtick. (i'm of the opinion fem-light would feel murderous rage about people who say "i'm just a girl.") however she does invoke it constantly by dressing nonconfrontationally, gender conforming, etc etc — which is all stuff she did before becoming kira, so.

part of why she fixates on L is because L seems to look past the entire good-girl act to be like well yes yagami-kun is probably a murderer. she would feel even more weirdly seen than canon-light already does.

misa, upon meeting light, would be shocked that light's a girl. immediately sizes light up as a potential threat because other girls are less taken in by her whole cute demeanor than men are… i will not go into this i think the first!kira kiyomi post touches on mostly the same points (although unlike with kiyomi i think misa would give fem-light her death note still)

also, light has to work harder to convince the task force to let her take over L's position after she kills L, since the task force is like nooo light-kun this is Dangerous why would you Do This you can go back to a normal life now!! light cannot afford to play "idk if i really should…" the way she can in canon, she will have to be like "I Am Going To Avenge Ryuzaki."

the task force's suspicion of her in the second arc would also be extremely gendered i can't explain how but the vibe would be so different. also matsuda would attempt to flirt with her. and of course the entire kiyomi seduction arc goes off the rails so badly that i'm not sure light would even try it in the first place, she would probably just do it from a "reunion between college friends" point of view?

oh and mikami! hmmm. i wonder if fem-light would want to pick a woman to send the death note to. can we cisswap mikami too i really want girl mikami… i will not clog up your ask with this though. i feel like fem-light would get more high off worship than canon-light does because fem-light doesn't get validation as easily. i also think that phone call they have would make mikami go god is a woman??? and spend 5 seconds having a crisis about this before folding it into his worldview like well of course she is. i knew that.

and uh… her ponytail unravels during the warehouse confrontation, 'cause symbolism

that's all i've got for now i think. thanks for the ask!

#i can't think about cisswap aus for too long i get too overwhelmed with longing for this version of dn to be canon #death note #asks #anon #mello #near #matt #l lawliet #light yagami #also i sincerely dont know if youre one person sending all these asks or if multiple people are doing it #but thank you i always enjoy reading people's different responses

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