#exmicha dn

i do think having light also be autistic adds such a fascinating dimension to their contrasts. light who is able to pretty much fully mask and in the ways it is still evident he is praised and celebrated. compared to mikami who is autistic in a way that society tolerates but does not approve of. his perceived shortcomings ridiculed and his great efforts and positive traits only minimally recognized. he has scraped himself up into a respectable position in adulthood, but he had to fight tooth and nail to get there, and despite his success he still lives an isolated and singular lifestyle.

so interesting, then, that their worldviews turn out so very similar, yet different. mikami whose black/white thinking was encouraged and strengthened by the injustice he experienced in his youth and further compounded by his experiences at this one thing where his oddities were tolerated and even praised. compared with light who is praised and celebrated, yet is deeply isolated from his peers, a friend of all and a friend of none. his worldview shaped from that mostly opposite experience. that they are uniquely positioned to understand each other like few others would ever be able to, and yet still in all likelihood never would, in many ways due to their similarities.

mello primarily dealing with morality-related obsessions, but having intermittent bouts of severe contamination obsessions that he never recognizes and never handles well. he's up all hours of the night trying to fend off whatever is haunting him, trying to repent, trying to excuse himself, so on, so forth.

matt's presents typically as very severe paranoia. he runs in cycles between being far too depressed to scrounge up the energy to be anxious, and checking locks obsessively and unplugging the entire house for fear of an electrical fire. mello often comes home to a bare fridge and days at a time where matt won't eat or drink for fear of spoilage or tampering. it's rapidly changing and impossible to predict.

and they play off each other so badly. matt's a slob, which makes mello's contamination-related anxieties pick up badly to the point he's spending a half hour washing his hands and eating standing up in the kitchen with gloves on. it is not entirely uncommon for him to get to the point where he's seeing infestations where there aren't any. mello keeps strange hours, keeps bad company, and generally praises matt for his paranoia, making him feel validated in it, and in turn making it worse. if mello thinks it's a good idea to check the locks every hour on the hour sleep be damned, then matt's probably right to. as he sleeps less his paranoia gets worse and his compulsions get more nonsensical, tied to superstition and folktales.

matt's also liable to crack jokes and throw barbs that set off mello's moral obsessions. sometimes it's just thoughtless banter and sometimes it's fully intentional. it can leave mello locked away praying until his knees are bruised. they're both far more aware of the other's ocd than their own, and not necessarily against pulling each other's strings to their own advantage.

if you haven't already, i wholeheartedly recommend sorting through this page to see what you'd be interested in. there are 40 different comics linked here (all of the ones i have checked so far have working downloads as well, even all these years later), across many different ships and ratings, many of which have even been translated to english. the art is beautiful, and a lot of the tropes, a/ns, t/ns, and so on are a perfectly preserved snapshot of what death note fandom, and anime/manga fandom at large, was like back in the 2000s.