wanders into your inbox holding a cocktail. hey is it time for Death Note and Queerness Socratic Seminar on ur blog again? because im SO here to talk about light's use of heterosexuality as a protective performance and the degree to which this might represent intentional queercoding. unstructured ramblings incoming.
i think a point in favor of light's queercoding being intentional is that, during the yotsuba arc, he still is not attracted to misa. it's made clear that his lack of attraction to her is not a function of his "eeeeeevil" but is just. a thing about him. he's not into her. and yes, that could just mean misa isn't his type or something, straight men are allowed to not be into a given women, but as a choice made in a fictional work of art it feels significant that light does not exhibit any attraction to women even when he is not kira. his evaluation of women is purely intellectualized, a part of his edifice, a way for him to build the character of "Light Yagami"—a character that keeps him safe. his association with misa gets him almost caught, but his performance of heterosexuality with her gives him a degree of plausible deniability. misa and takada both become essential to his plans, but they are also threats to him, and things he has to manage...heterosexuality is a weapon and armor he uses, but it is also very clearly a harrowing and restraining thing for him to perform in the logic of the text.
in terms of his manipulation of takada, i think his gendered manipulation actually goes both ways here. yes, hes using his Understanding of Women to reel her in, but he's also using his Understanding of Men to lean on certain gendered assumptions and "bro culture" to kinda. trust that the task force will go along with it, if that makes sense. like, we've talked before about the task force being shitty about light basically cheating on his fiancee as far as they knew, but light didn't even consider the possibility that it would be an issue, and he was right.
the thing about light is that he is subject to constant invasions of his privacy and bodily autonomy. between ryuk and the task force, there is pretty much no point at which he is not subject to scrutiny and observation, and he just. accepts that, in order to either prove his innocence or keep up the ruse, he may have to give up his freedom of movement at any moment. there are literally no circumstances, not even in his most private moments, that he would ever permit himself to drop the facade of heterosexuality, because he knows he is constantly being watched. light yagami is a mask that cannot be allowed to slip. there are three moments post-timeskip that i think he shows actual emotional vulnerability: crying over his father, a conversation he has with matsuda about whether kira is evil, and the warehouse scene after he's revealed he's kira. i think it's very fair to say this is intentional on ohba's part.
[the bouncers start to eye me from the edge of the room]
anyway. it's remarkable that, despite this, light is actually able to keep his physical body intact and unharmed. at no point until the ending does he actually face physical consequences for the actions of kira (the fake execution is an exception but hes not kira at that point), allowing himself to keep those two personas separate, partially using the performance of heterosexuality. it's the gunshots in the ending that shatter that facade.
so you could in fact say that matsuda ruins his heterosexuality by shooting hot loads into him—
hi i don’t have anything intelligent to say about this but you are SO incredibly correct about literally all of this. highlighting and quadruple underlining every single word.
i am ESPECIALLY highlighting and quadruple underlining your point about takada – like i honestly think a lot of light’s dismissal of woman is intertwined inextricably from his understanding of how dangerous men can be. he’s very well-versed in the World of Men, and he sees it imo that a lot of men don’t, because the World of Men is inherently easier for straight men than gay men to navigate. like you have to learn the networks of power if you know there’s a high chance they will be used against you.
ANYWAY all just to say. consigning all of this. also i’m chasing those bouncers away bc you are literally correct about matsuda and his loads too.
theres something about how like. light is very aware of what Type of Man is needed in a situation and is able to play that part. like, with ray, he plays the macho brave type who’s willing to rush a gunman. with naomi, he plays an extremely nice friendly boy next door character. with takada, he plays the suave yet smart romantic lover. he is aware of the trappings of masculinity and they’re all equal levels of performance to him. definitely salient to your point about gay men having to learn the networks of power. its probably fair to extrapolate that light was experienced at this sort of code-switching even before the notebook, given how soon after getting it we see him do it.
also like. ok. deadass i am willing to stake my take that matsuda’s queercoding is intentional. i think it’s all but confirmed in chapter 108 and i think it’s wild that no one talks about it. in a vacuum, i know that ide’s words aren’t conclusive — when he says matsuda was “fond” of light, he uses “suki,” so not necessarily romantic. but the paneling gives matsuda’s face SO much emphasis — emphasis that simply would not make sense if ide was saying matsuda liked light platonically, given that was a known fact and also true for the rest of the task force. they all liked light at some point, even if some of them got sus during the end. this shouldn’t be something that warrants a facial closeup a year after the fact. but it just slots in so well with matsuda being the one to shoot light as the final payoff to light using love to manipulate people.
in the past, i’ve memed about that being a case of ohba being so misogynistic he accidentally made matsuda bisexual, but i think i’m coming around to a more charitable reading. like, if we read light as intentionally queercoded, isn’t that another layer of tragedy? that the person who shoots him in the chest is the only one whose love, in another world, light could have been capable of genuinely reciprocating?
im having emotions now. what was this post about again
you ever imagine being this lonely person. you’re utterly bored in life, maybe even with a sense of existential boredom within, and none of your peers understand that. until one day, you finally come in contact with this guy.
from the moment you meet, you know that you are going to have to kill him when the day comes.
yet, for the first time, you find someone who’s just like you, or at least you like to think that he’s just like you. he enjoys the challenges you bring into his life, because underneath it all, he is also a bored man. you two are soulmates in a certain sense, perhaps, but neither of you will truly realize and accept this until it’s too late.
and soon enough for you - and not soon enough for him - it has become too late. he dies before you and you watch the light fade from his eyes. you kill him without a bit of remorse, and you’ve known that you would be doing this from the very first day. he knew it too. you get him dead, even when you could’ve spared him. in one version of the story, you ignored him when he – in his own way – asked you to consider picking a different road. you kill him.
and so for the years that follow, you wander ahead in your life like some kind of living dead. you try again to find someone like the guy who saved you from boredom. and yet everyone you find is an insufficient substitute, nothing like the one you had. you can find no one like him anymore. do you regret your action now? even if you do, you don’t realize that. you still cannot realize anything.
in an au where there’s no kira and lawlight really do just meet in college light takes L home for dinner and is like ok we both know i have endless patience with what a weird freak you are due to how much of saint i am as we both know. but please try not to be too weird of a freak when you meet my parents. L’s like yes okay whatever and then spends the entire dinner with his back really overexaggeratedly straight and making excessively normal small talk about american baseball and the stock market and light’s family is bemusedly enchanted but light correctly interprets this as an act of passive aggression and a declaration of war and breaks up with him dramatically over dessert and then cries in his bedroom all night while light’s parents are really confused why their nice son seems so angry with his perfectly polite and normal boyfriend who thanked them so sweetly for the ice cream. and soichiro walks L to the train station and bonds with him about law and then is like light i don’t know why you behaved so shockingly at dinner tonight when ryuzaki (L uses a fake name for absolutely no reason at all in this au like just to be difficult) is such a nice young man and light punches his wall
you know in this instance i actually feel like it’s pretty faithful
ok so basically. first i have to explain some things i noticed while reading death note
first: romantic love is positioned as the only thing more powerful than the death note. it’s the way to kill a shinigami. it supersedes any fear of death misa has, causing her to make the eye deal again with ryuk. there are more examples but im not gonna fully go into it here, just trust me bro
second: light’s willingness or lack thereof to manipulate the romantic feelings that others have for him is explicitly pointed out as one of the main differences between memoryless light and kira light. his willingness to manipulate those who fall in love with him using that love is a large part of his identity as kira
third: death note works on threes. the primary tactics used by light and L, for instance — the first usage sets up the tactic, the second shows us a new way of using it, the third is a Climactic Comeuppance. sometimes there’s more than three usages, but almost never less. as an example: light uses the watch to kill higuchi, then uses it to kill takada, then has it shot out of his hand before he can kill near. L directly challenges Light with the Lind L. Tailor thing, then he directly challenges Light by exposing himself as L, but the third time he tries to call Light’s bluff by testing the 13 day rule, it results in his death. three main characters make the shinigami eye deal: misa, mikami and soichirou. there are three notebooks. no more than three kiras at one time. there are three occasions where something is shot out of someone’s hand, and the third is against light. sneaking into the boardroom establishes matsuda’s impulsive, self-sacrificing desire to be useful, which is further set up by his agreement to go on TV and then subverted when light correctly predicts he’ll volunteer to make the eye deal but souichirou does instead. light “wins” against L and Mello, but it’s the third Wammy heir, Near, that takes him down. mikami is the third person to use the death note to kill for Light, which ends up being his downfall — if Soichirou had been that third person, light likely would have won, because mello wouldn’t have been around to act.
so. there’s a pattern. i think this is why the swapping notes gambit doesn’t work for the audience. it’s set up once, but not twice, whereas there are a lot of other third payoffs in the warehouse finale.
now. given that romantic love is super important to death note’s themes. and given that the rule of at least threes is so important to the structure…
we see light use misa’s romantic love and takada’s romantic love to his own ends. he is totally confident in his ability to do so, trusting that their love for him will result in unconditional cooperation. you could argue that takada is the payoff since she’s sort of a part of his downfall, and that the first setup was the girl he went to spaceland with, but that doesn’t really feel satisfying to me. after all, he was right about all those girls — he was able to totally manipulate them. his manipulation wasn’t what backfired. and in the warehouse, the satisfaction comes from seeing light’s previous tactics turned against him in his hubris. the most satisfying possible thing to happen would be for part of light’s downfall to be him attempting to manipulate a woman’s feelings but being wrong about her loyalty to him. that would be the perfect payoff.
but.
that would require a well-written female character with a fleshed-out moral compass, and none of those exist in death note. to have a woman betray light for ideological or Sensible reasons would undermine the entire premise of death note that women are easily manipulable and physically inferior.
so matsuda shoots light. the one person light trusted would understand him and obey him completely and yet was totally willing to kill — his exact attitude towards takada. matsuda attacks light with the weapon light wanted him to use against others. and then in chapter 108, ide implies that matsuda’s feelings toward light were romantic. (the words he uses in japanese — “suki” — and english — “fond” — aren’t necessarily romantic, but reading his meaning as platonic makes the panelling and dialogue choices make very little sense).
to be clear, i do not think this is intentional. i just think its really funny that, instead of having light fail at manipulating a woman to deliver this payoff, they straight up just made matsuda bisexual
Light is someone who perceives a very strong separation between the body and the mind, and is very disconnected from his own body. And I do wonder if, by nature of them being so similar, this is something he projects onto L as well; & helps him divorce the thought of the death of L’s body (ie. his shell) from the death of L’s mind (ie. his true self). So Light kills the body, the part of L that isn’t really him, to incapacitate his mind, not kill it. He’s compartmentalized it in such a way where he doesn’t have to think of death as being true death.
It isn’t until Light is about to die himself that he is able to mentally bridge the connection between his body & his own conscious existence, and realize what it really means to die.
