x_X welcome to light's twisted mind X_x

i know i've been heavy on the death note content lately but i mean it's all i can think about right now (blame my autism) so for today, i want to talk about fanon! light yagami, because... he certainly is a character.

it's not that i disagree with people taking canon and making it their personal sandbox - i do the same myself, and a lot of the time it's half the fun of consuming media. but it is a little annoying seeing people take these non-canon personality traits, motivations, habits, etc. and treat them like they are part of the actual, canon character. of course, literary criticism is often subjective but there are definitely certain things that people say about a character - in this case, light yagami - that is just canonically untrue.

the first thing being this depiction of light, from the beginning of the anime/manga, as some unfeeling psychopath who took enjoyment out of slaughtering people from the very beginning. i don't blame anime onlys for this because, well, the anime did sort of flatten his character a bit. and i understand, given his general demeanor and tendency to make ridiculously sinister faces when nobody is looking, the desire to sort of jokerify light. but i dont really understand anybody who read the manga having taking this away from it. i mean, it's disproven almost at the beginning of the manga. upon realising that he's just actually, really killed two people, he vomits and locks himself away in his room for a few days, terrified of what he's done. (it's when we get that panel of light wrapped in a blanket burrito. what a nice panel.) it's the reaction a lot of people would have to unwittingly murdering two people with a magic notebook that you thought was a joke (in theory, since i don't think that's actually happened to anyone). 

so there's the proof. he's not unfeeling to begin with and i honestly dont think he ever does become unfeeling. you can argue that he becomes desensitised, callous, even gleeful about his actions, because he absolutely does. but it doesn't take a lot to figure out that he's feeling regret/grief/anger/sadness/affection in any given chapter. (hint: if he's in the panel, but you can't see his eyes, it tends to be a sign of conflict within him.) so yeah. it's one thing to read too much into a character, but that is canon behavior that we get from light. not really as callous as people make him out to be, at least not in the beginning.

and on the other hand, we have this separation between light and kira. a lot of people love to reference yotsuba arc as proof that light/kira are like two separate entities existing independent of each other, as though light and kira are polar opposites. i understand why; for most of yotsuba arc, light is for all intents and purposes a normal, college-aged boy, under an extremely stressful and confusing situation. but you have to understand - those ideals that make light seem so good and righteous during yotsuba arc are exactly what drives him to be kira. light even admits himself during the arc that his ideals are scarily similar to kira's (because thats u baby). and through matsuda's character, we can see that the way light thinks is hardly a rare or unpopular way to think at all. matsuda is the only one on the task force that points out that kira's existence has reduced crime, stopped wars. etc. and i think most, if not all people would or have wondered, isn't the world better without bad people? without murderers/p3dos and otherwise? of course, 99% of these people don't have the ability or will to kill anyone, and it is a very childish, black-and-white way to view the nuances of what pushes people towards crime, towards the proverbial evil. but we've all felt it, haven't we?

the tragedy of light is that he's really just a normal kid to begin with, deep down. an exceptionally intelligent and capable kid, but a sheltered kid nonetheless. and it goes without saying that light, kira, the two interchangeable, could've been some other person given the same tool, the same opportunity.

so yeah. it does annoy me a bit to see him reduced to sick and twisted cyclepath >:3 but, well. villains are popular for a reason, and he sure does look good in a suit.