For each of my major fandoms, I do a short writeup talking about how it fits into my fandom history. A fandom qualifies as 'major' if I've written five fics for it, or ten thousand words across at least three fics.

With the toxic soulmates fic I posted yesterday, Death Note now qualifies on both fronts!


Death Note

My first experience of Death Note was reading a very bad fan translation of the manga online, around the age of nineteen. I don't remember exactly how far I got, but I definitely at least reached the Naomi conversation; the version I was reading mistranslated the iconic 'I am Kira' line as 'it's because of Kira', ruining the ending of that scene! I was so surprised when I experienced the official translation of that line.

Fortunately, although I didn't get that far with the fan translation, the translation issues didn't put me off Death Note entirely. When I was twenty, I watched the anime and hugely enjoyed it.

Although I loved Death Note from the start, I didn't actually write any fanfiction for it for over a decade, which is a little unusual for me. I first watched it in 2009; I revisited it in 2020, during lockdown, and that's when I started writing.

Because Light is by far my favourite character (a position he frankly does not deserve), my Death Note fanfiction disproportionately focuses on him. Of my five Death Note fics, Light is the viewpoint character in all of them and the only significant character in three.

I've mentioned this before, but it seems an appropriate detail to include when I'm talking about how Death Note fits into my fandom history: Death Note is a fandom that periodically sneaks up to surprise me. I can go for years without actively thinking about it, and then something will abruptly reawaken my love for the series in general and Light Yagami in particular.

The main spark for my latest Death Note period was seeing Death Note: The Musical on stage. There's no way this won't be terrible, I thought when I learnt that a Death Note musical existed, but it turns out that the musical is great. I've been singing the songs around the house for weeks.

Favourite character: It's always been Light Yagami, by a long way. Writing Shackles, I had cause to ask myself 'if Light were in love with L, would he still try to kill him?' The answer was immediately clear, and it was 'yes, absolutely, with zero hesitation'. There aren't many characters you could say that for. I love it. What a fascinating, terrible young man.
Favourite pairing: Light and L have a really interesting dynamic, and I like their potential for fanfiction, but my Death Note OTP is Light/himself, no question. Try as they might, nobody else could ever meet Light's standards. He's just so egotistic. I'm enchanted.
Number of words written: 10,856