back from the dead

It's not that Light created a God for Mikami to believe in.

It's that Mikami always believed in his selfmade God and Light accidentally stepped into the vacancy.

okay so i was imagining the first when i wrote this but the second scenario is actually hysterical to me —

light: okay they may have caught me with physical evidence but as long as i send another notebook to someone else and the kira killings continue and [insert overcomplicated yagami gambit] i can still get out of here. this new guy just needs to stay far away from me and never interact with me ever so that there is no way for the investigators to ever connect him to me

teru, walking in (internally doing the anime girl run with toast in mouth): hi god i am here to save you from certain death as i am the only person who could possibly do it. this is definitely what you wanted right

I would absolutely love to share the brainworms, actually. (Disclaimer I am not a psychologist etc, this is mostly based on my own experiences.)

The most painfully relatable part of Light in this regard, imo, is how absolutely desperate he is. There’s a need to be good that’s under all of his motivation, and we see through the story how he rationalizes that needing to be good and needing to be right under all of that talk of justice and helping the people. (I could probably make a whole other argument here about Light having high masking autism and the black and white thinking that comes with that feeding into his ocd, but that’s for another post.)

That need to be right, that need for balance, is something that has always been a key part of my experience. With that comes the compulsions - and Light’s seem to pretty clearly be rumination. Yeah, we make fun of his dramatic speeches about making a better world, but they also can slot neatly into the winding rationalizations that I myself have made to keep that sense of balance in myself. I’d compare moral ocd to standing on a sheet of thin ice with cold, plunging water right below you feet. You make your ruminations, your compulsions, to scrabble against the ice and keep yourself on your own two feet without cracking the ice and falling into the current below.

Another one of my compulsions back when i was really struggling was confessions, and while you could argue he steers away from that because it would be acknowledging how what he did was awful, he does fall into that at times. His speech to Matsuda about Kira. He’s acknowledging how what Kira does is evil, and at the same time he’s somewhat searching for absolving. Obviously, this is hindered by the fact that he’s hiding the fact that he actually is Kira, but the pattern is the same. He’s voicing his fears and his rationalizations - because in his mind, his ruminations, they just swirl and swirl without any sort of balance. I’m wondering if Ryuk was a sort of lifeline in that way, though obviously he wouldn’t absolve Light of his guilt in any way. Similarly, I wonder if Light ever gave his confessions and fears to L during the Yotsuba arc - if L somehow became the subject of his absolution. In my experience, they’re generally given to people you trust, but Light didn’t really have anyone he trusted during the Yorsuba arc. L was, unfortunately, the closest thing he had to a lifeline. Much to think about.

Anyway, most of this usually stems from high expectations of oneself and perfectionism combined with a colossal amount of insecurity (the water beneath the ice) (as well as a big imagination - to fit all of those ruminations in!). Sure, Light isn’t really shown to have insecurities at the beginning, but people raised to be perfect generally do - especially considering the fact that Light was hiding so much of himself. Who did he have to talk to? To go through his fears with in a healthy matter? They just sat, and sat, and swirled around like muck.

Sometimes they didn’t even show anyone. Sometimes they showed a few fellow fans.

René Lalique, Jasmin Corsage ornament, 1899-1901.

Some Brothers Karamazov doodles from this week!