#such extensive lore even from that period of his life and yet i totally forgot to make him look all that different.

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

realizing i have to give my older ocs haircuts when they were younger that might even be different than their current ones....

[deathnoting]

thank you for your explanation, i agree that the crowd sourced nature of Ls character is very interesting. making a big post of them is actually a pretty cool idea. anyway, i would love to hear aforementioned self indulgent characterizations lmao

hi anon!! sorry that it’s taken my 6 decades to answer this ask. i’ve been extremely busy because i have that personality type where if i’m not booked up at least 6 days a week i start having existential crises. (also my sister was visiting

i was hoping to give you a response as extensive as the last one but i’m not running on too much steam so bear with me. bullet pointed list bc my brain runs on those

self indulgent l lawliet headcanon characterizations

spooky orphanage childhood. i like to peel back the top layer of death note’s technological-era crime thriller genre to reveal the victorian gothic just below the surface. L’s detective status is near-mythic (he’s a glorified sherlock holmes with a flip phone) and what’s hinted about his backstory (bells, stained glass, orphanage, etc.) invites us (or me, anyway) to assign him a creepy, dickensian upbringing. my headcanon wammy’s house is a spooky old manor house in the english countryside, complete with empty wings, attics, secret passageways, extensive grounds, and extensive haunting lore. a prime spot to breed some mysteries. throw in some mid-ninteis technology and a stifling ego and you’ve got my ideal l lawliet aesthetic

obligatory beyond birthday bullet point. this would need its own post tbh, but anybody who knows me can tell you that lxb is the foundation for my L characterization. there’s no canon for their relationship/acquaintance to one another, although all hints point away from the direction that i skew dramatically in. basically, for me, L & B grew up together (with A) at roughly the same time/age (i hc L as two years older than B, one year older than A) at wammy’s house when it was still just quillsh & roger’s experiment for a better world. my B has his own extensive vibe, genre, & motivations, but for the purpose of brevity i’ll shorten it down to say that B, being half-shinigami, was just born feeling strange and misaligned with reality & human understanding and expectation, went to wammy’s house as a young child, was given L as the prime example of how he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to strive for, and basically created/collapsed his identity around that. L never treated him or A well, was just competitive and dismissive and self-absorbed, and in his adult life sort of carries the dejected weight of having fucked up something really crucial when he was too young to know the difference. i think he views B as both a mystery he couldn’t solve and a victim he couldn’t save. and a bit of a dirty secret that he’s not sure how to ever make peace with.

who the wammy in wammy’s house!? it’s ya boy quillsh. i have a very specific impression of L’s relationship with watari that doesn’t align with either the benevolent grandfather characterization or the abusive child-exploiter that the fandom seems to be limited to. i think that their relationship is somewhat exploitative, but knowingly. all L’s power comes from watari’s money and the fact that he took him in and gave him a home/direction, but all watari’s power comes from L’s genius. without the other, neither of them would have gotten far with the world’s greatest detective thing. i think their relationship is probably tinged with equal levels of respect and resentment, a father/son thing mixed in with a boss/employee. except the father is the employee….. maybe (?) don’t @ me.

lxlight!!! i think that L probably views light as this sheltered kid who totally misses the point. doesn’t view him as an equal at all and just sort of constructs this narrative around their supposed friendship to entrap light in a situation where he has to be amenable. i mean, that’s practically canon. what i’m trying to say is that i think the fic trope that has L and light thinking of each other as ~each other’s only equal~ is boring. i think that light feels that way about L, but L just coyly pretends while subtly jabbing at light from every angle, which only makes light more eager to win/prove his superiority. to me, L views light as this plucky and sort of terrifying kid who should in no way be capable of the things he’s capable of, and keeps being caught out by the magnitude of light’s power/mania/competence, to the point where it. you know. gets him pretty hot

my favorite L characterization, as anybody whose ever read any of my fic would know, is post-series “L lives and doesn’t know what the fuck to do with himself.” i really like exploring the emptiness of cycling constantly through locations and people and triumphs. i do think the only people L really forms relationships with are criminals that he obsesses over for a period of time and then abandons. there’s so much in B dying quietly in the background while L hasn’t even caught up with light yet that just hurts. i like to imagine L visiting B in prison, making peace with both of their mistakes. i like to imagine L finding a way for light to live in the world even after he’s gutted it, not because light deserves forgiveness but because L doesn’t want to be alone. i like seeing him as this kind of unjust authority of justice who collects criminals because they’re the only people who he can connect with, arbitrarily bestowing mercy and then taking it away. L is presented as such a machine (powered by donuts…..?!?) and i really like exploring the breakdown of the machinery and the revelation of tender human loneliness and terror beneath

oh! i almost forgot. let me talk at you about power bottom L! to each their own, i really don’t care about top/bottom dynamics in general bc? switching rules? but i feel really strongly about bottom!L. i think as a character with such absolute power over the circumstance of other characters, seeing him wield that power over literally anyone i ship him with (light, B, misa, mello, aiber, wedy. yes. i ship him w/ everyone) in a sexual context is just a little uncomfortable for me and a lot boring. a favorite fic premise of mine, i’m sure ya’ll have realized, is situations where L is basically light or B’s sugar daddy/boss/the only thing keeping them out of prison or execution but also he bottoms. light or B fulfilling the role that watari took for L? like driving him around and doing his laundry and meeting with his clients and shooting his enemies with sniper rifles? my #1 kink forever.

sorry this is so scatter-brained and also not as deep as i want to get. i just have so! many! L feelings! if you want me to expand on any of this, hmu.

thanks for the questions, anon. and for your patience.