Nate River stan

A common complaint about the second arc - and Near particularly as a successor is that he doesn't respect L enough which is hilariously wrong for a bunch of reasons but two kind of stick out to me as a bit ridiculous. To start with, tossing a bunch of L's inheritance into a crowd of Kira worshippers and Demegawa. This isn't just a cheap trick using L's hand-me-downs, he's making a point to the world watching Kira's followers. Namely, that Kira is willing to use people who don't give a single shit about his ideals to win - and that those same people will immediately turn on Kira and each-other (the manga shows the aftermath and there sure are quite a few corpses) all for the sake of something shinier dangled in front of them. On top of that, L spends... god knows how much money on a giant skyscraper high tech headquarters and proceeds to move there and not investigate or do any work for months. The man didn't value his money. This is exactly the kind of stunt L would have pulled. The other is wearing the paper L mask to the warehouse meeting with Light - who has been operating on the thinly veiled premise that he is L's successor and not, you know, what he actually is. L's murderer. It's just a not so subtle fuck you to Light because Light has been figuratively wearing L's identity as a mask and dragging his name through the mud. If you think Near served as a copy of L outside of the story, sure - but literally in universe Light is the one that stole his identity and used it to facilitate his murders. Near is aware at this point that he's not actually able to match up to L, he needed Mello and now Mello is gone, and that imposter syndrome follows him into his mid to late twenties. He's also aware that no doubt Kira must have been thinking the same thing - that he's just a pale reflection of L pretending to match the real thing. Why not rub salt in the wound by doubling down on it?