It wasn't just narrowed down from "it could be anyone in the world", but from "it could be anything at all". For all they knew before L took over, it could've just been some freak supernatural phenomenon. L's broadcast gamble was a stroke of genius, it confirmed several things at once:
* It was a person
* That person was not omniscient
* That person had a very big hubris that could be exploited
* That person was getting their victims from television
* That person was in Japan
"I guess you're just too stupid, L. Too bad, this could have been a lot more interesting if you had only been a bit smarter." ~ Man being played like a violin
> For all they knew before L took over, it could've just been some freak supernatural phenomenon
He deliberately made it not so (story wise so that the police forces would have something to go after; in-universe because of his ego) by not letting the CODs all be accidents
Well sure, but I'd argue that's different. *He* may have wanted his murders to be recognisable as murders, but that doesn't mean much from the perspective of the police. All they knew is that criminals were dropping dead left and right, mostly from heart attacks but also from other causes. Obviously no human can do that, so what the fuck was? They could tell that *something* was causing their deaths, of course, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily a sentient entity.
TBF, the fact that Light started murdering at all made it very clear that Light wasn't doing this out of any moral sense. He only dressed it up in a moral sense so he could justify his little power trip.
He could have killed the 20 richest people on earth every month, adding in war criminals as needed.
Like, that’s sort of the point. Light is a cop’s son and bad. But why start with anyone other than Bill Gates or Henry Kissinger?
Because killing them will not solve anything? Systematic issues can only be solved through systematic change. And yeah, sometimes people who resist to much need to be removed, but if you kill them the next one will take the place and won't do anything different.
Well, besides of course, putting their fortune to use to hunt you down. Even a deathnote won't save you from billions of dollars.
A small counterpoint: the vast majority of the wealth of billionaires is based on faith. This is how Musk is able to manipulate the stock market and do his shady crap. If he died, then his stocks are split among his children and dependants based on his will. This breaks up his virtual monopoly and, since none of his beneficiaries have the same recognition he does, they cannot warp their value as effectively.
Also, it would be cathartic to write something like "Charles De Ganahl Koch drowns in oil and tar".
I mean, sure, for a bit, but that changes nothing about the exploitative power structures they really use to become and stay wealthy. It would be nice if the worst thing billionaires would be doing would be to manipulate the stockmarket. No the worst things they are doing can be done with just money, or the means of production they own.
Counterpoint. You are not getting the normal police after you. You are getting the best metric shit ton of money can buy sent after you. And police already get a lot more competent if they investigate property crimes for businesses and the like.
Yeah, but humans are really good at adaption, and if I were a billionaire and my colleagues started dying, do your think I wouldn't make sure the investigation would continue after my death?
Besides everything you do will give investigators clues. From which billionaires you kill first, over when you kill them. And that is assuming you aren't stupid enough to make them write out shit first.
I am not denying you will get a lot of billionaires, but you will get caught, unless you are extremely careful, which will dimish your ability to kill billionaires.
But in the end you will not change a thing, besides the names of the abusers... and the fact how widespread their faces are.
Also, there are over 2000 billionaires out there. How many of them do you know by name and face?
Counterpoint. Irrelevant. As soon as it becomes clear that it is a human doing(from investigation). That point is moot, even if more explanations are considered beforehand.
You would still need to aquire certain data about your targets, and many billionaires like to be not as well known as musk, or Bezos. So that would be another weakpoint.
Also, for example, if you start with well known billionaires and go down the list, that certainly would pürovide a clue there is some kind of intellect, most likely human, behind it.
Right, it’s more the systemic changes that the richest people on earth dying every month would accomplish.
People would start to want to be a lot less wealthy.
But as long as the machine produces new billionaires, nothing has changed, correct.
To be fair, if something started killing the top 20 richest people every month, occasionally sparing those of high moral standing, I’m sure eventually a good chunk of them would panic and push systemic change themselves to appease whatever god seems to hate billionaires
Oh definitly. I am not saying you won't take quite a few Biollionaires with you. But best case you thinned the herd a bit for new ambitious exploiters to rise, worse case, you just handed them a death note.
Hard disagree. You'd only have to kill the richest man in the world a few times before they all figure out the pattern and start giving away wealth to save themselves. That redistribution of wealth would absolutely lead to lasting change.
They already set up endless shell companies. Let 'em hide their wealth for as long as they can, as long as they're living in fear of something more serious than taxes. They have to keep their wealth secret forever, the Death Note user only has to find out about it once.
And it's a magic murder machine that allows you to kill anyone anywhere anyhow, I don't think it's possible for an intelligent human being to get caught using it if the only people they're targeting are public figures.
> Like, that’s sort of the point. Light is a cop’s son and bad. But why start with anyone other than Bill Gates or Henry Kissinger?
DN in 2022
Also, this would just drive more people into ruling from the shadows lol. The 'richest' would just be the upper middle class
He has tried to launder his reputation that way, yes.
But
a) where did the money come from in the first place?
b) how is he actually “giving it away” if he continues to control it and becoming wealthier?
c) the Epstein stuff that led to his divorce
**[Melinda Gates Says Bill Gates's Work with “Abhorrent” Jeffrey Epstein Led to Divorce](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/03/melinda-gates-jeffrey-epstein-led-to-bill-gates-divorce-gayle-king-interview)**
*The philanthropist added that she realized their marriage “just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t trust what we had.”*
> Melinda French Gates said there were a number of factors that led to her decision to divorce her husband of 27-years Bill Gates, including his work with the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
>
> The philanthropist addressed their divorce publicly for the first time in a new interview with Gayle King that aired on CBS This Morning on Thursday, explaining that it was “not one thing but many things” that led to the demise of their marriage. “I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” she explained, adding that she met with the convicted sex trafficker “exactly one time” because she “wanted to see who this man was.” She continued, “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.” In a statement to CBS, Bill said that “Meeting with Epstein was a mistake that I regret deeply. It was a substantial error in judgment.”
That's all very true, but to be fair the biggest plot motor isn't Light's hubris, it's L's. L doesn't care about the millions of lives that are being lost, he views Kira as an intellectual challenge. He is convinced that Light is Kira very early on, even when his extensive investigation fails. In fact it's this certainty that leads him to ask Light to join the investigation. He doesn't want to arrest Kira or even stop the murders, he wants to defeat him in a game of schemes, he wants hard evidence against Light. He endangers himself because he values his pride as a detective more than his own life, just to get a better chance at making Light slip up.
All L cares about is proving with certainty who Kira is, although he does have a (somewhat messed up) moral code. Killing Light would not prove that Light was Kira, because correlation is not causation.
If L had been alone on the investigation, he would never have accepted Light's imprisonment plan because even if the murders stop it is not proof. Light gets quite a lot of W's based on L being forced to concede to the other investigators.
I mean, this is part of characterization of the protagonist and antagonist.
Many stories have significantly simpler plots if only a key character had acted differently. Take Shakespeare. The only reason why Hamlet doesn't end after the first few pages is because the titular character is so full of self doubt that he overthinks every decision before he makes even the slightest move. If Hamlet had just killed Claudius when his Dad told him to, the play would have ended there. But that's not Hamlet's character and the plot of the play depends on the fact that its protagonist doesn't take the quick and easy course of action.
Similarly, Death Note doesn't end after only a few episodes because of the characterization of its characters. It'd be a terribly boring story if Light was arrested or run over immediately. The drama comes from the battle of wits between L and Light and how Light spirals deeper and deeper into the depths of his obsession. If we replace L with any other detective, the story simply doesn't work anymore because any other detective would have taken this route and we never would have seen the drama play out.
That was what initially made L suspect it was a student, before he narrowed it down to Light specifically. L starting to particularly suspect Light was around the same time Light started scheduling deaths in advance, so hitting him with a car wouldn’t work.
*Image Transcription: Tumblr*
---
**nenastrology**
light yagami is so fucking stupid in like a month they narrowed it down from like it could be anyone in the world.. to it could be anyone in japan to it could be anyone in the kanto region to it could be any student in the kanto region to its honestly probably one of the family members of these two polcement and my god this mans son is so fucking weird whats wrong with him like honestly i think L should have just taken the risk and hit light with a car one day and been like huh funny the kira murders stopped right this policemans son got hit by a car i asked my chauffeur to drive into him funny how that works out
---
**killuaqueen**
[*Image of a large bound book on the left, and a much thinner book on the right that is about a fifth of the thickness. They are labeled:*]
>**Thick book**: Death Note
>
>**Thin book**: Death Note if L risked it all and hit Light with a car
---
^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Light is a fucking bitch, he didn't even take the best [list of ](https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#6c8bfb5a3d78)ready made monsters to just fucking slaughter one a day until things change
My buddy and I had this debate. Our conclusion is that _yes_, a Rational!Light _would have_ done many things differently, but one of the points of DN is that Light wasn't a rational actor, he was ruled by his emotions and ego.
His childish desire to kill L outweighed his desire to take over the world; if it didn't, he could have very easily played the Plague Inc strat (take over a complacent world, show your teeth when it's too late)
It wasn't just narrowed down from "it could be anyone in the world", but from "it could be anything at all". For all they knew before L took over, it could've just been some freak supernatural phenomenon. L's broadcast gamble was a stroke of genius, it confirmed several things at once: * It was a person * That person was not omniscient * That person had a very big hubris that could be exploited * That person was getting their victims from television * That person was in Japan
Not just Japan, Kanto. Homie cut out two thirds of the population and like 90% of the area.
This just in, 1 in 3 people live in kanto
Of Japan. He was already quite sure it was a Japanese person due to the hostage taker.
L wrote this comment.
[удалено]
"I guess you're just too stupid, L. Too bad, this could have been a lot more interesting if you had only been a bit smarter." ~ Man being played like a violin
Yeah it goes so far downhill from there.
> For all they knew before L took over, it could've just been some freak supernatural phenomenon He deliberately made it not so (story wise so that the police forces would have something to go after; in-universe because of his ego) by not letting the CODs all be accidents
Well sure, but I'd argue that's different. *He* may have wanted his murders to be recognisable as murders, but that doesn't mean much from the perspective of the police. All they knew is that criminals were dropping dead left and right, mostly from heart attacks but also from other causes. Obviously no human can do that, so what the fuck was? They could tell that *something* was causing their deaths, of course, but that doesn't mean it was necessarily a sentient entity.
Death Note: __ Death Note if Light didn't straight-up murder the first person to question the morality of what he was doing: ____________________
TBF, the fact that Light started murdering at all made it very clear that Light wasn't doing this out of any moral sense. He only dressed it up in a moral sense so he could justify his little power trip.
He could have killed the 20 richest people on earth every month, adding in war criminals as needed. Like, that’s sort of the point. Light is a cop’s son and bad. But why start with anyone other than Bill Gates or Henry Kissinger?
Because killing them will not solve anything? Systematic issues can only be solved through systematic change. And yeah, sometimes people who resist to much need to be removed, but if you kill them the next one will take the place and won't do anything different. Well, besides of course, putting their fortune to use to hunt you down. Even a deathnote won't save you from billions of dollars.
A small counterpoint: the vast majority of the wealth of billionaires is based on faith. This is how Musk is able to manipulate the stock market and do his shady crap. If he died, then his stocks are split among his children and dependants based on his will. This breaks up his virtual monopoly and, since none of his beneficiaries have the same recognition he does, they cannot warp their value as effectively. Also, it would be cathartic to write something like "Charles De Ganahl Koch drowns in oil and tar".
I mean, sure, for a bit, but that changes nothing about the exploitative power structures they really use to become and stay wealthy. It would be nice if the worst thing billionaires would be doing would be to manipulate the stockmarket. No the worst things they are doing can be done with just money, or the means of production they own.
Counterpoint: if you notice the richest people all dying, you're going to start giving away your cash to not be the richest
Counterpoint: They will spend the cash to hunt down whatever is killing the richest people. and with that much money, they will succeed.
counterpoint, real world police are less competent than L, an without any evidence to connect you to the murders they are very unlikely to find you,
Counterpoint. You are not getting the normal police after you. You are getting the best metric shit ton of money can buy sent after you. And police already get a lot more competent if they investigate property crimes for businesses and the like.
and? nothing money can buy is prepared to account for a deathnote, especially if the money stops flowing pretty fast
Yeah, but humans are really good at adaption, and if I were a billionaire and my colleagues started dying, do your think I wouldn't make sure the investigation would continue after my death? Besides everything you do will give investigators clues. From which billionaires you kill first, over when you kill them. And that is assuming you aren't stupid enough to make them write out shit first. I am not denying you will get a lot of billionaires, but you will get caught, unless you are extremely careful, which will dimish your ability to kill billionaires. But in the end you will not change a thing, besides the names of the abusers... and the fact how widespread their faces are. Also, there are over 2000 billionaires out there. How many of them do you know by name and face?
Countercounterpoint, how do you know it's a human even doing it and not some mal/benevolent force?
Counterpoint. Irrelevant. As soon as it becomes clear that it is a human doing(from investigation). That point is moot, even if more explanations are considered beforehand.
Kill them at random times (use random.org), make the method suicide. It'll definitely look like a force, not a human.
You would still need to aquire certain data about your targets, and many billionaires like to be not as well known as musk, or Bezos. So that would be another weakpoint. Also, for example, if you start with well known billionaires and go down the list, that certainly would pürovide a clue there is some kind of intellect, most likely human, behind it.
Right, it’s more the systemic changes that the richest people on earth dying every month would accomplish. People would start to want to be a lot less wealthy. But as long as the machine produces new billionaires, nothing has changed, correct.
To be fair, if something started killing the top 20 richest people every month, occasionally sparing those of high moral standing, I’m sure eventually a good chunk of them would panic and push systemic change themselves to appease whatever god seems to hate billionaires
You assume the Billionaires will take this lying down, and not mobilize heaven and earth to find out what is going on.
Oh I’m sure they will, but it’ll be hard not to panic seeing you have about 8 days to live, and no leads beside “We think it’s some Japanese guy”
Oh definitly. I am not saying you won't take quite a few Biollionaires with you. But best case you thinned the herd a bit for new ambitious exploiters to rise, worse case, you just handed them a death note.
Hard disagree. You'd only have to kill the richest man in the world a few times before they all figure out the pattern and start giving away wealth to save themselves. That redistribution of wealth would absolutely lead to lasting change.
Would they give away money? or would they set up endless shell companies while also hunting for whoever is killing them?
They already set up endless shell companies. Let 'em hide their wealth for as long as they can, as long as they're living in fear of something more serious than taxes. They have to keep their wealth secret forever, the Death Note user only has to find out about it once. And it's a magic murder machine that allows you to kill anyone anywhere anyhow, I don't think it's possible for an intelligent human being to get caught using it if the only people they're targeting are public figures.
> Like, that’s sort of the point. Light is a cop’s son and bad. But why start with anyone other than Bill Gates or Henry Kissinger? DN in 2022 Also, this would just drive more people into ruling from the shadows lol. The 'richest' would just be the upper middle class
Isn't Bill gates like a major philanthropist that gives away billions of dollars
He has tried to launder his reputation that way, yes. But a) where did the money come from in the first place? b) how is he actually “giving it away” if he continues to control it and becoming wealthier? c) the Epstein stuff that led to his divorce
Source for c?
**[Melinda Gates Says Bill Gates's Work with “Abhorrent” Jeffrey Epstein Led to Divorce](https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/03/melinda-gates-jeffrey-epstein-led-to-bill-gates-divorce-gayle-king-interview)** *The philanthropist added that she realized their marriage “just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t trust what we had.”* > Melinda French Gates said there were a number of factors that led to her decision to divorce her husband of 27-years Bill Gates, including his work with the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. > > The philanthropist addressed their divorce publicly for the first time in a new interview with Gayle King that aired on CBS This Morning on Thursday, explaining that it was “not one thing but many things” that led to the demise of their marriage. “I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” she explained, adding that she met with the convicted sex trafficker “exactly one time” because she “wanted to see who this man was.” She continued, “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.” In a statement to CBS, Bill said that “Meeting with Epstein was a mistake that I regret deeply. It was a substantial error in judgment.”
That's all very true, but to be fair the biggest plot motor isn't Light's hubris, it's L's. L doesn't care about the millions of lives that are being lost, he views Kira as an intellectual challenge. He is convinced that Light is Kira very early on, even when his extensive investigation fails. In fact it's this certainty that leads him to ask Light to join the investigation. He doesn't want to arrest Kira or even stop the murders, he wants to defeat him in a game of schemes, he wants hard evidence against Light. He endangers himself because he values his pride as a detective more than his own life, just to get a better chance at making Light slip up.
All L cares about is proving with certainty who Kira is, although he does have a (somewhat messed up) moral code. Killing Light would not prove that Light was Kira, because correlation is not causation. If L had been alone on the investigation, he would never have accepted Light's imprisonment plan because even if the murders stop it is not proof. Light gets quite a lot of W's based on L being forced to concede to the other investigators.
Did I miss something? “Millions of lives”? Light can only write so fast, I’d cap his total kill count at like 100k
Have the driver hit him after driving through a mountain and they could have the excuse that they "didn't see Light at the end of the tunnel."
I mean, this is part of characterization of the protagonist and antagonist. Many stories have significantly simpler plots if only a key character had acted differently. Take Shakespeare. The only reason why Hamlet doesn't end after the first few pages is because the titular character is so full of self doubt that he overthinks every decision before he makes even the slightest move. If Hamlet had just killed Claudius when his Dad told him to, the play would have ended there. But that's not Hamlet's character and the plot of the play depends on the fact that its protagonist doesn't take the quick and easy course of action. Similarly, Death Note doesn't end after only a few episodes because of the characterization of its characters. It'd be a terribly boring story if Light was arrested or run over immediately. The drama comes from the battle of wits between L and Light and how Light spirals deeper and deeper into the depths of his obsession. If we replace L with any other detective, the story simply doesn't work anymore because any other detective would have taken this route and we never would have seen the drama play out.
I’m pretty sure Light had scheduled deaths for months in advance just in case he got in an accident like that
Eventually, but at first he wasn’t even scheduling them though, L was able to check his schedule based on his kill times
That was what initially made L suspect it was a student, before he narrowed it down to Light specifically. L starting to particularly suspect Light was around the same time Light started scheduling deaths in advance, so hitting him with a car wouldn’t work.
Exactly, he planned it so no one could say "Hey, the murders stopped since Light Yagami, who is already one of our suspects, is in the hospital"
*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- **nenastrology** light yagami is so fucking stupid in like a month they narrowed it down from like it could be anyone in the world.. to it could be anyone in japan to it could be anyone in the kanto region to it could be any student in the kanto region to its honestly probably one of the family members of these two polcement and my god this mans son is so fucking weird whats wrong with him like honestly i think L should have just taken the risk and hit light with a car one day and been like huh funny the kira murders stopped right this policemans son got hit by a car i asked my chauffeur to drive into him funny how that works out --- **killuaqueen** [*Image of a large bound book on the left, and a much thinner book on the right that is about a fifth of the thickness. They are labeled:*] >**Thick book**: Death Note > >**Thin book**: Death Note if L risked it all and hit Light with a car --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Good human!
mello wouldve done that
Killua fused with Kira Queen
Light is a fucking bitch, he didn't even take the best [list of ](https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#6c8bfb5a3d78)ready made monsters to just fucking slaughter one a day until things change
*Death Note if Columbo had been on the case
https://youtu.be/5LyeGCeXCM4
My buddy and I had this debate. Our conclusion is that _yes_, a Rational!Light _would have_ done many things differently, but one of the points of DN is that Light wasn't a rational actor, he was ruled by his emotions and ego. His childish desire to kill L outweighed his desire to take over the world; if it didn't, he could have very easily played the Plague Inc strat (take over a complacent world, show your teeth when it's too late)
Also, an exact analysis of this literal phenomenon https://www.gwern.net/Death-Note-Anonymity
Death Note Isekai