#special thanks to my personal mellodramattic council for helping me work out the details

[sunlight-allergy]

SUCCESSORSWAP — a death note AU || for mattmelloweek day 1 - parallels

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the prompt for today got me thinking about a concept I came up with about a year ago… Death Note has its fair share of narrative parallels, but one I don’t see people talking about enough are the ones between the big 3 of the main cast (L, Light, & Misa) and the Wammy’s House kids from the successor arc.

think about it… Mello and Near are very clearly supposed to serve as each other’s narrative foils to replicate the rivalry between L and Light, exemplifying many of the main duo's character traits & flaws... whereas just like Misa with Light, Matt is Mello’s undying supporter who would risk his life for Mello’s sake... we see the vision right??

their narrative roles are very similar but their relationships are COMPLETELY different, and therein lies the appeal. but imagine a world in which their roles were to change places, swapping with the character who’s supposed to mirror them during the second arc… while maintaining those same relationships they have in canon. and you get:

this! an AU in which Mello is Japan's so-called "perfect top student" hiding his identity as Kira, Matt is a famous idol working as the second Kira alongside Mello, and Near (aka "N") is the genius child prodigy detective hunting them down.

it’s like death note but sillier! and in this universe I’d like to think that everyone else meant to parallel each other switches places as well. (Watari and Soichiro, the Task Force characters with the SPK, the Shinigami with each other, etc.)

but since we're focusing on just these 3 for the time being, here's a little relationship tree I threw together for them:

(sorry in advance if tumblr compression makes this unreadable)

Mello and Near hide a complex rivalry behind a facade of begrudging friendship as they work together to catch Kira (all the while Mello is covering his tracks), Matt and Near are bffs because I live for that shit, and Mello and Matt are partners in crime Bonnie & Clyde style, harboring secret feelings for each other that they mask behind a "fake" relationship.

they're fake-dating for the sake of the case (to cover up them working together as Kira) but wish they were actually dating, you guys know the trope. and I think it'd be REALLY funny if, during the Yotsuba arc in this universe, they forget about the "fake" part of their relationship in the midst of all the Death Note memory fuckery... and just start actually dating because they can't remember that it was supposed to be a facade in the first place LOL

Near is naturally very suspicious about all this (his two biggest suspects having such a close relationship is QUITE the coincidence, maybe not the best coverup after all...) and during the whole Yotsuba arc handcuff thing I think he'd probably rope Matt in too (or Matt would make Near include him because "you're not about to handcuff yourself to MY boyfriend without me!!") which would make for some silly shenanigans (and a very disgruntled Mello)

i have so many more thoughts & stuff written out for this AU so let me know what you think about the concept / if you wanna see some of my in-depth thoughts about their backstories/relationships/or even other characters & who they'd switch places with muahahaha