"I think my whole narrative arc would have gone better if I'd died with Kira"

Bruh, too soon

This is fantastically well written. :-) I love it. It has this gritty darkness, painting the characters with shades of grey, showing their more human sides, that all of them - even L - have their faults. Thank you! Lovely portrayal of Mello getting disillusioned in his idol. And their subsequent interactions, the love scenes are so awkwardly sweet.

Hey, so I first came across this on AO3 and happened to find it again on here, and after reading it twice I figured I should leave some kind of feedback.

Let me start by saying that I don’t like Mello/L. Like, at all. I don’t think I need to explain why, except maybe that while I agree L can be a scumbag I don’t think he’s THAT scummy. And after reading this I still don’t like it. I also would like to say that I don’t like L/Light either. I just can’t see the sense and reason behind it and I never felt that sort of chemistry between them no-how; it’s like pairing Batman with the Joker. It's frustrating to keep seeing it crop up in otherwise good fanfics.

I know, why am I bothering with this then when the summary clearly indicates what the pairing is? Because you’re pretty good at writing in general. You drew me in. Once I started I had to keep going until the end. You know how to get us into a character’s mind and set a mood—particularly dark and grimy and existential and more or less realistic, although I think you go kind of overboard with this at times and it feels like you’re writing sleaze for the pure sake of it, for instance how do they keep ending up in dirty shacks and hotels when they’ve probably got more money than Bill Gates?—and you do bring up several interesting points about L’s fate. Even if he’d managed to survive and take down Light, something else surely would have destroyed him further down the road. Maybe he would’ve suffered a breakdown and died young, and what relationship he might have had with Mello and Near would have surely deteriorated. I’ve always found that aspect interesting, how he might have gotten along with those two and what affect he had on them, especially Mello. His pain, anger and disillusionment reminds me too much of how I’ve been feeling lately about certain things, though I've never done the things he's done.

But at the same time it feels like the whole story is undermined by Mello and L’s escalating affair. It felt completely unnecessary and as I mentioned already, wildly out of character to me, although I must credit you for at least acknowledging how wrong and sick it is. If these were say completely original characters doing this who are clearly established to have these sort of inclinations then maybe I wouldn’t have had as much of a problem with it.

Also I would have liked an explanation as to how L and Mello managed to survive the Kira case. But I don’t suppose that was meant to be too important in the grander scheme of things.

Bottom like, what I mean to say is you’ve got skills. The problems I’ve pointed out are more a matter of difference in character interpretation than anything.