"What's wrong with her?" L questioned, frowning as he sat on the bed beside A. "Watari, why won't she wake up?"

But Watari hadn't spoken in hours. Ever since he had brought A from the coffee shop to the hotel, he had been silent. Did he know something? Had he known this would happen?

"Watari. Why won't she wake up? Is she dying?" L had an excellent poker face, but it was so tempting to let it fall. But he hadn't cried in years. Not since he was younger... He had built walls to protect himself.

The elder man sighed audibly, causing L to glance at him curiously. "She will be okay for now."

L paused, waiting for him to say something else. But he didn't. "For now? So she is dying?"

Watari's face was grave. "I was anonymously informed of this event beforehand. I thought it was some practical joke, but now I see he was being truthful."

"What are you talking about? Who called you?" L had never yelled at his father before. Not once. But it was hard not to. He had known that A would collapse like this, and he had done nothing to stop it from happening. "Who called you, Watari?" L's voice rose.

Watari had never seen this side of L before. It was hard not to be intimidated. He seemed... different. Evil. Capable of anything. "I could tell it was a man, but the number was untraceable, and I couldn't tell who it was."

"When did he call? What did he say?!" L was getting desperate.

"He simply said that A would be delivered to us in a few days time. He said her mind wasn't in the right place, and she wouldn't get better. He said she had the Thorns of Death."

"Thorns of Death?" L asked questioningly. What in the world was that?

"He said she was not who she seemed, and she was dangerous."

Dangerous. A. Dangerous. Those two words didn't go together. A would not even hurt a fly. "You're wrong. She's still the same. Just a bit more anxious and paranoid. Watari you didn't talk to her. She's still the same."

"Ryuzaki, she needs rest. Whatever this is that's hurting her, we need to leave her be for now."

"I'm staying with her. I'm not losing her again."

And Watari didn't argue, for as much as L tried to hide it, he saw that streak on his cheek. He knew L was serious. He never cried, so this had to be important.

"Tell me when she wakes up. I will do some research."

How do you go about finding plot bunnies and beginning your Quillsh Wammy story?
I try to detail almost everything in the story, so that later the reader doesn't ask themselves "Where did that come from?"

In your experience, what are the common mistakes made by fan authors writing about Watari?
I think they make Watari out of character, which is something I try hard to avoid. When he does something that I don't see him doing, it's hard for me to see that scene play out in my head.

Any last tips for anyone reading, who wishes to start writing fan-fiction about Mr Wammy?
Always write things that interest you. If you aren't interested and care about it, then the reader won't either. Just be yourself, and express your feelings in your words.

Everybody wanted Aston Martins these days; all drinking Martinis, shaken not stirred. But they were missing the point. Seduced by the flash and swagger of James Bond, seeing no further than the bravado and charm. Fleming's character had daring, that much was true. Plucky fellow and all that. But it was born of arrogance and the bankroll to fund it. The protagonist's sense that he was too elite to die; not through any true talent. Bond had just enough intelligence to follow his privileged past into an assumption of immortality. False trail. Shoddy thinking.

His imitators thought hedonism set Bond apart from all those other two-bit classy spies - that seemed everywhere from the pulp fiction piles to the silver screen in these days of escalating Cold War news. Ubiquitous in the background; sparking a backlash frenzy of unimaginative fashionable writers pandering to their half-asleep readership. No, the real thing that elevated Fleming's work wasn't Bond himself, but the gadgetry he carried on him.

And that wasn't Bond, James Bond, at all. That was the truly exciting position held by Q. The inventor(s). Bound by nothing but the outer reaches of his - or their - own imagination; boundless really in its lack of brevity. The creative force behind the flashy tapestry of the spy's rich world. Godlike in that way. So mysterious too, that single letter to denote a being controlling Fate from the background.

Q. Like Quillsh. His own first name. Thrilling to it the first time he read Casino Royale - 'see Q for any equipment you need' - twenty-two and suddenly knowing precisely what he wanted to do. Join the British Secret Service Q-Squad and invent things to save the world.

Only the reality wasn't like that at all. He was in. His family connections saw to that. But there was no Q-Squad in MI6 like the novels promised. Just order requisitions in triplicate; more paperwork than vision could withstand. No figure of Q as strode gloriously withdrawn into the shadows of the movie plots inspired by the books. Merely Quillsh Wammy labouring under the surrender of disappointment with petty bureaucrats (and worse, politicians) dictating his work-life with rigid demands. Tedious in their scope. No room for innovation. No Q. Not even a Bond. Just people who wished they were the latter and thought an Aston Martin purchase, celebrated with a Martini, could cut it for themselves.

The field guys called him Q and thought it funny. Wammy enjoyed the shivery honour of the title, at first; then realised the joke was on him and disdained them for it. People whom Wammy wouldn't trust with the key to the office petty change box given free rein with the treasury of Britain. Most of them raised to start wars, not intercept their onset and divert into harmless channels. Playing at national security as they'd arranged their tin soldiers in childhood. Like it was all a game.

It was the way they were raised. Q mused. Those with the wealth and connections to be here weren't those with the common touch to understand why they should change the world. Improve it. Make it safer. Most of them breed out of brain cells several generations back. Too lacking in much beyond what was and what should always be, in their opinion, immutable; and unfair.

In bitterness, Quillsh tried to tip the balance in his own small ways. Bypassing the limitations of that stack of requisition forms by letting his mind soar into the stratosphere of inventive bliss. Becoming the Creator. Q in actuality, not just name.

That earned him a final warning and quite a few dressings down for wasting public funds. So he did it in his own time. Wasting his hours on wandering through ideas, akin to Da Vinci in their scope, and enjoying them immensely. Then finding and patenting one, then more, that stood out as genuinely useful.

Of all the weird and wonderful, it was a tiny stop-lock that made him rich. In his own right wealthy beyond his uncle's wildest dreams. That sour old man for whom money and its acquisition had always taken the place of feeling or reaching further than himself. Who'd raised Wammy in name only as guardian; the reality being boarding school, held back for the holidays, as his uncle found it too distracting to have a child at home. Except for Christmas break, which was achingly boring and way too formal. Quillsh blocking out droning talk of the stock exchange and investment banking with mechanisms of the imagination, built silently as excitement, or diversion to replace the love lost with his long gone parents.

Uncle William was interested in his nephew now. Fascinated in fact, in his prospects and his bank-account. Lectures on the best stock in which to invest at the present time - naturally brokered through himself - didn't get more alluring with adulthood. Uncle William's interest being solely in the interest that could be due.

While Wammy's remained entirely with the Quartermaster.

The first orphanage founded was to thwart Uncle William, and to teach him something too. A little reaching out in assuage of his childhood; plus amusement. So many startled agents learning that power in riches didn't need to come with Martinis on a yacht; the Aston Martin waiting; an endless supply of fine foods and alcohol; the ladies dripping in all they could grab. Power came best in the adulation of young minds under his control, to cater for and educate according to Wammy's wealth and whim.

Such things confused them. Which suited Quillsh just fine. For he was an orphan and so was James Bond. A fact that seemed to miss them entirely. Maybe one day a young Bond might pass within his warden watch; and he could be Q.

All due applause and accolades are directed towards:

Sakiko Rau - who kicked us off with an essay on why she (and we) should like Matsuda from Death Note. She will also be jumping on board as a regular columnist writing from a Japanese perspective.  You heard it here first.

Lua - who did so much in the background to keep the home fires burning, as well as penning a philosophical analysis of Touta Matsuda's importance within the Death Note narrative.

Aerial Skye - who gave us cosplay advice for Matsuda costume creation.

All on the Death Note News Community Touta Matsuda Pinterest Board, for maintaining a steady flow of interesting images and links whatever the month.

Lei K - who turned her considerable talent to Touta Matsuda artwork especially for this event.

Silent Reaper - who allowed us to share her classic comic strip Matsuda's Rant.

Deacon (and the Tuxedo Team), especially Beyond Infinity/Jin - who let us publish their photographs of an amazing Matsui cosplayer.

Ziferonan - who gave us full rein to plunder an extensive collection of Matsuda fan-art, fan-fiction and cosplay too.

Stella Meyer - who not only sent in her Matsuda artwork, but answered questions providing insight and tips on creating the same.

Liam Dodd - who brought an air of the academe to proceedings with a scientific examination of Death Note's infamous Matsuda rescue with a mattress.

Emerald-Moonlight - who let us loose on her gallery and permitted the republication of three pieces of her Matsuda art.

MRSJeevas - who wrote Matsu fan-fiction for this event, though that's not nearly all, considering that in another guise, she is Matti - who researched, edited, proof-read, wrote and caused a backlog on much else that was published this month.

Tarot Mikami - who took us once again into the depths of the tarot's secrets, this time with a distinctly Matsuda Death Note flavour in regard for his monthly focus.

And, of course, all who read and commented, shared links and discussed these articles elsewhere. 

And prepare to do it all again, this time with the focus on Wammy.

Ten years was such a long time to be blinked into passing, while Matsuda was distracted by the close-up minutiae of life. Time enough for academic papers to be produced; published across a range of disciplines in peer-reviewed journals and books; the occasional thesis cropping up amidst an avalanche of dissertations; private reports for classified viewing (some only leaked, glimpsed upon Aizawa's desk, or divulged as a result of his quiet, semi-depressed venting with someone who was there; worse still, stumbled upon online due to a hackers' craft in cyber-theft and sharing). Dry facts delivered with seeming objectivity. The endless debates and analyses so complex as to render distant that whole Kira case. Polarizing conclusions losing something in translation from the academe into common sense.

Like emotion. Empathy. Reality.

It was as if Kira and all he embodied has been set behind glass. Immutable. Divorced from true experience. In the process of becoming severed from that through which Matsuda had lived. And Mogi. Aizawa. Casting them all surreptitiously adrift from involvement in that thing that changed, traumatized in subtle ways, still loomed large over everything, all society, the whole world.

Funny the things that got left in or lost; errors perpetuated into pseudo-fact, until reality shifted and tipped them off its plate. Those Who Were There. The steady drip-drip of Kira becoming a legend through credible channels. He'd long since been legendary among the digital, popular and/or vulgar culture moguls, and masses.  Bellwethers of fashion bringing him in and out of consideration according to their whim. Sometimes it was good to approve of his methods, that strange phantom God who came and went and never came back. Sometimes Kira was to be condemned, the papers said, and all their readers spurted rhetoric stating the same.

And Matsuda felt cold. And contemplated that scar raw ancient moral dilemma for the latest in uncountable time. Boring himself with the stab of angst and indecision before any conclusions ever seemed reached. Just his conscience rocking back and forth on the winds of wondering what was right. Honourable. What Soichiro would have done. Said. Ultimately sided with.

The officer shook off a poised lingering now. This moment was already too laden with potential pathos. Tedious the things that unsettled him so far down the road. More distractions. Distraction aplenty. That's what he needed. Him and the world.

And where was Near?

Matsuda's hand stilled en route to lifting his bottle of beer to his lips. The chill coming white-hot this time. That modern L was the aspect in all of this upon which terror or fury could dwell, not at all muted by time. Made worse by the waiting for his greatest fears in context of that strange Wammy to metamorphose into real life. But either Matsuda was wrong - which was great - or Near's silent psychopathy in secret possession of multiple shinigami notebooks, and all the unfathomable power they afforded him, hadn't yet surfaced in the public sphere. Maybe Near was too clever for them all - which was probable - and they would never know what he did with that divine gift in vault, nor how he managed the death gods loitering in his vicinity 24/7. How he kept them from boredom. Enough to explode an imagination and jolt a mind into terrible places.

The young man continued to engineer reasons for some kind of reunion, usually in Japan, often en situ, on the anniversaries of Light Yagami's death.  Matsuda had only managed to avoid three throughout the decade.

Near liked the Yellow Box Warehouse. He knew it. It was a good place for confrontations.  "Lucky?" Matsuda had asked him once, and Near had sneered. Pure evil, Matsuda thought, surveying the foreigner's features. But Mogi had chuckled at the description, shared later, and Aizawa had merely looked grimly on and said nothing. Well, they could belittle him. They'd earned the right. Near had not. Or had. And Matsuda wished he knew which.

He occasionally saw Sachiko Yagami. She was keeping well. Sayu with her. She was not. It used to sadden him for all that lost innocence and glee. You got used to the most messed up situations given time. That they'd had. Yet Soichiro would have wanted him to ensure they were alright. Keep his eye on them. Of course they were alright. Sachiko was steel beneath the mumsy face and apron. What would dare not be alright with her to face it down?

And he hated that she remained not knowing what happened to Light. That she'd never know what her boy became. Nor yet his true Fate. It wasn't her fault. Kira. Bloody Kira.

Had it really been ten years ago?  When the sudden cessation of Kira's regime caused a momentary global hush; as if the whole planet in chaos and ransom awaited with bated breath developments from its tyrant. Then exhaled as one and forgot about him. Overwhelming the void with pretty much a return to everything that had governed before. The Kira case reinterpreted; encased in ways more palatable to the new-old Powers That Be. Plastering over cracks each time the ripple effect marked the smoothness of their political surfaces.

Cementing it in studies too. Kira re-affixed as yesterday's fad; not so much out of vogue now as refashioned into old news - a failed endeavour; a detached legend; a tired topic eased off most fora. Slowly consigned by populists and professors into nothing much at all.

It was in hours like this that Matsuda felt himself falling. Not physically. But inwardly ajar. Survivors' guilt, somebody once said and he'd thought it must be, after a greater period considering it just guilt. Gullible; ineffectual; Matsuda knew he could have done more.

He did all he could. Heroic.

A message from Mogi beeped onto his device. Startling Matsuda into jerking, swept from his darkening reverie into reading it. "Watch that?" Mogi had asked.

Matsuda replied simply, "Yes."

No response to that forthcoming for a good fifteen minutes. Matsuda picked it up halfway to the pub. "Just ignore," Mogi's legend read. It seemed to sum up more. Matsuda didn't answer immediately, stomping bowed and way too serious through night dreary streets that turned suddenly into an onslaught of neon, as he entered the main strip close to his home.  

Bright lights that initially repulsed, then seduced and lifted his spirits tremendously.  He was hailing friends and laughing by the time he crossed the bar to get his drink. Only then he replied to Mogi, "Already have. So should you. Two for one cocktails on special and karaoke being set up. Coming?"

Mogi must have been secretly morose and musing, because his answer came so quick. Less than a minute. Perhaps a mere forty seconds. "Yeah ok. Get them in."

And just like that, Kira was gone; ghost and decades and all.

Anime actors Brad Swaile, Sergio Zamora and Kim Hasper are answering your questions backstage as we speak.  They ALL played Light Yagami, providing the voice for him in the English, Spanish (European) and German dubs of the Death Note anime respectively.

Each actor has a new profile page - which will later transform into their individual interviews conducted by all who sent in queries to be asked.  The buttons beneath their pictures below will take you to that seiyū's profile too.

To make life easier on all, we even translated the question form into English, Spanish and German.  Though any of those languages may be used to ask what you will of all three Light Yagami voice actors.

Death Note News writers and readers alike have been sharing their thoughts and research expertise on all things Yagami. Thus far, we've read profiles penned by us:

• Death Note Profile: Who is Light Yagami?
• Casting Kira: Light Yagami Actors Across the Globe

Philosophy:

• Nathaniel Overthinks Death Note #04: The Utilitarianism of Light Yagami
• The Concept of Kira: Can you Really say Light Yagami is the God of the New World? (Guest Post by Lua)

and Linguistics:

• Why is Light Yagami's Name Read as Yagami Tsuki? (Guest Post by Amaryllis)
  
• What's in a Name? The Reason Why Light Yagami is Called Kira in Death Note (Guest Post by Renchan)

In our aim to uncover the communities, forums, groups and other places where Light Yagami fans hang out - and to give such areas a little boost of publicity too - we had ComicVine's Light Yagami Forum respond, while also bigging up our own Pinterest Community Board for Kira fans.

Let us know if there are more out there!

We've had Kira cosplay galore!  In addition to the fabulous God of the New World above by Fausto the Endless (of whom more later in the month), the whole thing kicked off with Cayanna Carma as Light Yagami welcoming us to this event.

She returned later to answer questions about cosplaying Kira, as did Squad Six Cosplayers and Light Yagami.  We're still to hear from Maru-Light, whose insight is already in and queued waiting to be published.

There's been slightly less of a response from those penning Kira fan-fiction.  Matti gave it a go with Mu Amongst Fools; while the ubiquitous Maru-Light came clean on whatever happened to her co-authored Death Note novels The Redeemer Series.  Fascinating, even if you never read the books!

However, there may be more interest now that we've finally got our Death Note fan-fiction author questions up and running.  Will you be sharing your writing secrets there?

The lovely Tate Forkel started us off with the fan drawn Light Yagami artwork.  Arrowchild added her own to the Redeemer piece already mentioned above. But then nothing more.

Come on Kira artists!  We're all dying to see what you have created.  To a given value of 'dying' obviously; thought we'd better mention that, given the subject and circumstances.  You may be interested to note that you have also now got a series of questions aimed at uncovering your artistic know-how!

There's much more to come from whence all of this derived, so keep reading and don't forget that everything Light Yagami related this month is being archived for a permanent display: The C0llected Archives of Death Note News Month of Light Yagami.

And next month, Matsuda.  Are you ready?

The Redeemer Series began as a private passion project between myself and Andariel (Anda-Chan on DA) as we were entering into our own romantic relationship back in 2008. (We’re now engaged, living together and wedding planning).

We were cosplaying often as Light and Mello back then (and later L, B and Matt) and writing together became part of our raison d'etre. It was a full package deal, the writing feeding the cosplay and vise versa. We had a habit of telling our fellow DN friends about this huge fic we were working on, and they began asking us to read it, so after some thought we eventually relented and put Redeemer up on AFF.

From there the series seemed to generate an audience on its own. We rarely promoted The Redeemer Series much outside of our own DeviantArt accounts, and later, our own forum; but on the rare occasion I sought it out online to see if it had some presence, I often came across it on various Death Note fic rec lists, and even a listing on TV Tropes.com. (LOL)

It was fantastic to suddenly have an audience that didn’t just invest in reading our story, but reviewed and even joined our forum to chat all things Redeemer Series. We had fabulous artists doing fan art, we had an active Character Ask section, we were embroiled in discussion every day about the Death Note of our fic world, and we made some truly great and supportive friends (several of whom are still with us.)

So really, what happened?

Later on we had some of our nearest and dearest readers tell us that they could pinpoint just where the series started to fall apart. At some point in the fourth book, Sins of the Father, around the quarter mark, long after we reached what we felt was an apex in the finale of To Be or Not to Be and then cruised through a very alternative continuation supported largely by OCs in Our Time is Running Out, we started to lose momentum. 

We’d been writing about Death Note for five years. However, we were two writers (in my case a life-long writer) who sought to have real-world careers in writing, but were beginning to realize that we were spending all of our time writing about someone else’s work. It was fun, it was engaging, we loved it while it lasted, but we were beginning to long for something more and we weren’t getting any younger.

It wasn’t an immediate revelation. It came slowly as we pounded the keyboard to push through Sins of the Father. After all, we had two more huge books planned. We had enormous story arcs to cover! The nature of Kira’s God-ness was going to be explored in epic proportions! We were heading toward the End of Days!

Instead, what we were actually heading toward was the end of the Redeemer Series.

We were going to write a spinoff called I’m Not Okay (we were having a love affair with My Chemical Romance at the time). The spinoff centered on one of our OCs (his name was Adonais back then) with the Death Note characters as a peripheral presence. The idea was to tell Adonais’ origin story as a flashback novel, and lead into Sins, where he’d been coexisting as a Wammy’s student with the likes of L and Light. It was supposed to be a break for us, a way to get out and play with something new, and hopefully return to the Redeemer Series with renewed vigor. That was our plan.

But what happened was not according to plan.

Not long ago, we came across a blog post somewhere, belaboring our ‘underhandedness’ of ‘tricking’ our readers to read a book about an OC with promises of Death Note and then not delivering. “If they wanted to stop writing Death Note, just come clean and tell us, don’t trick us into reading about your OC.” That was the complaint, or something to that effect.

Let me say, it wasn’t that simple. If it was, we could have saved ourselves a lot of angst. After all, we weren’t lying to our readers; we were lying to ourselves.

Frankly, we weren’t ready to let go. It was a lesson we learned the hard way, writing I’m Not Okay. The more we wrote, the more that book began to do what it wanted apart from Death Note, but we kept trying to force the enduring intent that we were going to bring it all back around to the Redeemer Series. Slowly, our audience started to drop off, frustration began to show in reviews. The longer names like Kira and L and Mello were absent from the text, the less people stayed with us, and the more that happened, the more we began to wonder at what point did we have to accept the truth: that we’d moved on.

The readers that remained and invested honestly in our burgeoning original tale, weathered our indecisiveness, but started to agree that we needed to break it off. Not Okay was becoming its own thing, and to proceed without letting the book organically grow as itself, was proving a hindrance to the work and to our efforts. And clearly it was pissing off the people still holding out for L and Light to make an appearance.

So we decided to call it, and we removed I’m Not Okay from AFF and put the Redeemer Series on indefinite hiatus.

We squirrelled our new work off to our private forum where some of our long-term readers were keen to beta. From there, Pandora’s box syndrome kicked in and we realized there was a huge untapped OC cast with untapped potential just waiting to move in on our little story and blow it wide open.

Because all of this siphoned down from The Redeemer Series, there were initially some similarities between concepts we'd been exploring beyond canon when it came to characters like Beyond and L particularly. Those similarities eventually diluted until we can really just shout out to their original incarnates like a sentimental homage. 

However, as we planned the world of our new original universe, we realized there were still elements we'd incorporated in To Be and its compatriots that we wanted to explore and adapt. We began to pull some of these concepts back in, revisiting ideas we had for the Redeemer Series with new eyes as we constructed a world, while removed from Death Note, was not necessarily removed from our signature subjects.

Our explorations of madness and the asylum culture, our crazed characters who often speak in sing-song~ Our off-beat, anarchist, angst-ridden, pretty boys. That’s who we are as writers, and that’s what we have been building into our new work--The Breaking Across Devotion Series. Literally a tale about rock stars and serial killers. I’m not even kidding.

We made every attempt to spread the word about why the Redeemer books were coming down, but our reach is none too wide these days, and I know there are a great many readers out there who are angry and disappointed. Trust me, I get it and I’m sorry.

The Redeemer Series had a great long run. We had a lot of fun writing it, we had an amazing experience with the audience it garnered. We’re grateful and we thank you guys who latched on to it and enjoyed it so much. Redeemer itself is still public on AFF and won’t be going anywhere. It is undeniably, a Death Note fanfic.

However, I am going to echo what I’ve said repeatedly in statements about the series’ removal: that if you so happen to have downloaded copies of the novels, you are free to keep them for you own reading pleasure. Just please do not share them online, or post them for download, and please do not plagiarize them (have some humanity, I beg you).

Anda and I are hard at work on The Breaking Across Devotion Series (BAD for short) and are very active on our new forum, CocoaCoveredGods.

Anyone is free to join if they want to get in touch with us, want to ask us anything about Redeemer, or want to check out what still exists of the Redeemer Series content regarding the removed books, Character Asks, fan art, etc. And yes, there’s even a thread where we speak to the unsolved mysteries of the series and where future plans were heading, so what was left unfinished can at least have some closure. (Was Matt ever going to die as predicted? Short answer: no.)

We’re also open to betas of the new series. Since we’re planning to publish, it’s not open membership, but if you're interested, come over and let us get to know you, get to know us, and we’ll be more than happy to consider you as a beta. Chances are, if you enjoyed the Redeemer Series, what we’re doing now will be right up your alley. It’s just as dark, and twisted and saturated in atmosphere as books like To Be, Our Time and Sins were.

That last second stretched; a seeming eternity etched in disbelief, lined with indignation. The yawning, screaming chasm of death too easily cast aside. No disbelief so prosaic as all that. I could not die. I lived. Even as Ryuk wrote, my instinct yelped dismissal of the fact. I would survive. For no man with all his clanging faculties ringing - resentment; frustration; raging at their maddening presumption of my defeat - could die like this.
 
Finally the floodgates released on that dammed emotion; overwhelming in the enormity of its hurt.
 
No brain here to match my own. Nothing coming close. Not even Near with his lucky one-off battle win coming courtesy of his back-up, Mello - now dead, consigned to puppetry in pretence of his continued presence. The rest of them laughable. Mute, sheeplike faces staring sullen at my flooring. Coarse feeling showing as life in their expressions, sparked by whatever passed for thought amongst these people. They dared flashes of pity?! Wincing smiles under cringing gazes; standing stock still, stances wooden like scarecrows stuffed into suits. As if this was something distasteful to endure in bearing witness.

It is! It was a disaster for humankind and the world; a precipitant crisis of untold proportions. I was going to save them! I was going to lead them to a better place. A world of security, hope and happiness for all I deemed worthy to continue in my Utopia.
 
Idiots! Fools! Trash! Without the intelligence to see what I was to them; what I could have been!  I had to live amongst folk like this. My entire life crushed, drained and in despair of a decent conversation. None with a mind fast enough for interest; mine weaving waves of association, diversion, endless depths of academic inquiry around the shallow scratching of their deepest considerations. Pre-empting all they would say, as many moves ahead as the keenest chess champion. Bored out of my brain.
 
My parents proud of my achievements. My mother clucking over pieces of paper, like that which named me as the highest ranking student in all Japan. As if it was something good - a blessing and a boon. It was not. It merely confirmed that none of my nation's peers could hold their own in discussion nor debate with me. Too depressing to wonder if that extended to other age groups too. Whether another generation held someone able to speak with me without banality in my own language. And if not, to which country might I travel to engage in a decent conversation, a true meeting of minds worth traversing the globe to seek out?  Such accolades as the best ranked student weren't a blessing. They were a debilitating curse.
 
For an instant, a vision of L dances before my outcast inner gaze, and I scoff. Close, but no cigar. If he was the greatest thinker the whole world could offer, then I was truly sunk. I beat him. I won. Superseded the best into the gaping loneliness of nothing much to divert me. Alone with my intellect and the stupefying craving for companionship. To find someone fit to divert me; inspire, teach, conspire, keep pace with me.
 
Nothing. No-one. And those that stare down at me now do so with pity?! Or pique - that I understand and glory within - but pity?! No. Understand what you've lost; that you crucified your Messiah this day. Do that before attempting the higher philosophies in deigning to pity me. with your pathetic minds like peasants seeking to substitute finer feeling for thought. You lost me. You lost.
 
Ryuk snarling sentiments about the rejection of Heaven and Hell. No human pseudo-shinigami can pass into those hallowed Afterworlds; those who used the Death Note get only Mu. Nothingness. Emptiness. The unreality of never having existed at all.
 
Idiot. Chattering, slathering idiot.
 
I've already been there. A whole lifetime spent in training for the death. And I can conceive more in a second than you will through all eternity. You lost, and you are going to be so bored in the prison of immortality. I won.

As many of you already know, there's a thriving Kira Pinterest Board - run by Death Note News - which you may join and post your Light Yagami goodies to the world.  It's open to the entire Death Note fandom, though you'll need us to invite you in before you can pin.

No real rules there.  As long as it's on topic, then you may instantly pin Kira art; cosplay pics; fan-fiction links; commentaries; screen-shots; merchandise; links to your own group or community; photographs of your Kira crafts; or whatever else morally, ethically, musingly or amusingly takes your fancy to do so.

It's like our Death Note Month of Light Yagami every day!

If you follow the Pinterest Light Yagami Death Note News Board, you should eventually get an invitation from one of us anyway.  All a matter of due course and the admin being on the ball.

However, if you want to speed things up, either comment before with your Pinterest name and/or a link to your profile, or else post the same privately via the form on our Contact Page.  The first person to pick it up will rush in and get you instantly up and running.

Incidentally, it's not just Kira Pinterest Boards that we're hosting for the community. We have a growing number of other Death Note character boards, not to mention many other categories of Death Note boards on Pinterest too.  You can hop onto the majority of them as contributors - and/or all boards as followers or folk merely breezing through, passing a moment or two looking at the pretties (then wondering where the last hour went).

Same drill as before, if you want an invitation to any Death Note News Community Pinterest Board.

It's only taken months (years...) but there have been some art updates over on the He Moves Me Differently website.  It's not that the art hasn't been there to update, just that Matti hasn't got round to coding the pages to make it so.

Walls Came Tumbling Down and Ghosting the Street now have fan artwork sections.  In the case of the former, that's just about the only thing it has in it!  In addition there's artwork for the smaller stories by MRS Jeevas too.

They include such gems as these:

There are more pieces of artwork inspired by the It Matters series to be added to the website.  Mostly it's a case of tracking them all down from where they've been languishing on-line awaiting this moment of industrious coding on Matti's part.  However, there's plenty more already up there, in He Moves Me Differently Artwork area, from many artists amassed over many years gone by.

There also promises to be much more to come in the future too.

AquaCola has returned to art after a period of enforced Real Life occurring. She appears to be getting back into the groove largely by sketching scenes from Matti's novels.  You can see her works in progress over various threads in the forum, alternatively find her on Tumblr.

Meanwhile, Chiroptera is on her fifth read-through of Matti's Mello and Matt fan-fiction novels.  The muse has most definitely taken her, with the three pictures above, another two artworks in progress AND a thread asking for requests from the rest of the readership.  You can catch up with Chiroptera (and glimpse even more works in progress) on her Tumblr account.

In fact, during the time it's taken me to write this, she's sketched another - fairly risque - image of Mello and Matt, which would certainly hold resonance in the Death Note Matti!Universe.  Hurrah!

So you think you've read (and probably own) every book about Death Note? Check out our store, you might be surprised.

We certainly have been.  During a whole weekend of hunting down errant manga and other literary Death Note works, there were tomes we'd never heard of, let alone read.

And coming from a gang of such Death Note obsessives, that's quite saying something.

For example, did you know about L: File Number 15?  A canon book of short Death Note cartoons created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata.  Half of our team did not.

Or what about Notes of Reasoning, the Chinese novel by Zao An Xia Tian? Which may or not not be a canon work taking the Death Note universe and adapting it to a Chinese setting.  Or it may be an elaborate and published piece of fan-fiction.  We don't know. None of us speak Chinese.

How about the hardback special editions of Death Note manga that exist out there in the English language?  Some of those even took us by surprise, missing our radar entirely.

As you may have surmised, this weekend has been a time of skipping interesting things and putting our nose to the grind of finding, collating, formatting and arranging  Death Note books everywhere, in various languages, across the board of genres.

All now beautifully arrayed in the Death Note News book shop.

It's worth nipping inside, if only to discover what you may have missing from your own library collection.  But also to purchase a volume or two to help with the costs of running this website.  Enjoy!  And if you buy, thank you.

In addition the anime/movie Death Note store has been tidied up, hence will be easier to open, load and navigate.  While the music merchandise has had one or two updates too.

Too young to have known the impact of Bowie in the 1970s, I can only imagine. It must have been immense. By the time the ripples reached me - in the early noughties, thirty years on - they still sounded as a sonic boom, even then retaining power enough to rock my world. Representing one less battle for me to win, because he'd already owned it on our behalf and done it with aplomb.

Bowie brought colour to a monochrome world. Without him, all would have remained painted black for me, in counterpoint to my rival's white.  Splitting our idol's hues into two; dividing them one apiece. Like they were all that existed in the rainbow prism of a fabulous spectrum.

I wore red for Bowie. I wore feathers, leather, mascara and kohl. I wore whatever I Goddamned liked, because he made it possible for all men to do so without sacrificing one iota of masculinity. Whether we traced it back to source or not, it was Bowie who took male beauty into a cosmetic artform and gave us the glitz and glamour previously only available to ladies.

If he could do that in working men's clubs, I could do it in the Mafia. He made Metrosexual sexy. He made self-pride alright. He made it so no-one could say a blasted thing about it and not seem silly in the saying.

All this while gay men were still being beaten by police in raids on shady bars. All of this out in the open, where conversations could be had over dinner-tables watching Bowie on TV.  All giving courage to countless legions of gay and bisexual individual, and those who saw gender in its glorious fluidity, and those who simply didn't care a damn.

As writer Mark Simpson - 'daddy' of the Metrosexual - put it back in 1994, “(David Bowie) gaily refused to conform to 'masculine' expectations and provocatively appropriated ‘feminine’ styles, fashions, cosmetics and sensualities – anything that would make him look and feel fabulous, and piss off 1970s dads. He understood perfectly that the world was an increasingly visual culture and sired the New Romantics, who went on to invent the 21st Century.

“The glamorous seeds he sowed back in the Seventies have borne strange and wonderful bisensual fruit, enjoyed by everyone, regardless of gender or orientation.”

There is no 'feminine' anymore. No 'masculine'; no 'androgyny'; no 'unisex'; not after Bowie. There is just us and what we will be. Each of us with the potential to be heroes, rebels, leper messiahs or stardust, but mostly the potential to be whatever we want to be. He blurred boundaries until there were none, only that which we set ourselves. He normalised the weird; domiciled aliens; made diversity the new normal.

Moreover, Bowie taught generations since that it's ok to reinvent yourself, and reinvention does not have to mean losing one atom of that self.

You may know me as Mello, 'the best dresser who died like a dog'. But it was a Diamond Dog, with a fabulous wardrobe made possible by the prior bravery of Bowie. We can be heroes, he told us, and we were.

RIP the legend that was David Bowie (1947-2016)