 It Matters: Complete Series Vol 1 by Matti (aka MRSJeevas) - Download the free eBook (totally free of charge) - Use software like Calibre to switch the ePub into the format of your choice | This is directed towards the Mell0/Matt fandom. The rest of you just talk amongst yourselves for a while. How would you like every novel, drabble, short story and scrap from the Matti!Universe tidied chronologically into omnibus editions? And how would you like it if those tales - full and partial - were all properly indexed? Matti knows that you would, because she's been repeatedly asked for something of the ilk by various readers of her fan-fiction over the years. Though the index part is a bit of a bonus. The impetus for finally doing this thing came when those on the He Moves Me Differently (The Fan-Fiction of MRSJeevas) forum decided to read every tale in order, following the internal timeline to see how it all panned out as a whole. Feel free to join them there. Tipped off, Matti quietly opened Sigil and began work. The first volume was completed from scratch, including much hands on imperative tatting and learning via ALL of the mistakes, that the thing might receive that cross-referenced index. Stephen Gevanni surely didn't do so well, when he spent a night copying a Death Note from start to finish. At least he didn't have to teach himself forgery first! The free eBook It Matters: Complete Series Vol 1 covers every tale right up until the end of the '90s. Some have never been made public before, having languished with their existence forgotten and unknown. Vol 2 will be 2000-2009; Vol 3 - 2010-the present day. Eventually the plan is to amalgamate that trilogy into one big, hefty, totally indexed cyber-tome that could figuratively batter binary to death. You're welcome. |
Mello and Matt Fan-Fiction It Matters Series Collected in Omnibus eBook Editions... and Indexed!1/6/2016
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Many thanks to all who took the time to voice their thoughts on Death Note News' Month of... feature. In addition to airing viewpoints on various items relating to the running of the site, and how we deliver content to you, via the completion of last month's reader survey. All comments have now been read. Some whilst blushing and feeling suddenly very coy; others forming a cringing addendum to our discussion agenda and/or directly onto a lengthening To Do list. All were very helpful and wonderfully appreciated upon receipt. There were a few pointers requiring acknowledgement, answers, action or announcements, including the results of who will be featured at the centre of future Death Note Month of... events. I'm here to bring you fully into the loop. Known Issues, Omissions and Pointers for the Death Note News Website
How to Join the Death Note News Team Ask. We're always good for welcoming new writers, or other talented folk, into our team. If it's a regular column that you wish to pursue, then hunt down Matti to discuss what you have in mind. Either way, our contact page has a plethora of ways to contact us. In this instance, an email (via the form) is probably best. Whatever Happened to Those Voice Actor Interviews We Were Promised? Everything has been collated, tidied up, formatted and emailed to the requisite Death Note actors. Each acknowledged receipt of the questions and indicated their intent to answer as many as possible.
In short, we're confident that all (but possibly one) remain winging their respective ways to us and will be made public quickly thereon. Results of the Reader Survey Regarding the Month of... Feature
Another individual thought having a 'what if' month would be interesting, as in 'what would have happened to the characters if Light Yagami hadn't received his Death Note, thus the Kira case never occurred?' I have to say that my imagination has been running overtime in pondering, since reading it posed there. But could we pull off a whole month of it? Probably. Maybe another format would work better. It's one of those added to the staff agenda for mulling over. Nearly all of you indicated that yes, you would like to see a Month of... focus being the forthcoming Death Note movie, released at the end of October 2016. Of those, one person voted for November to be the ideal month. The rest of you didn't mind, as long as it happens. All excepting the single respondent who said no full stop to that and indeed everything about the Month of... events. He/she really didn't like it and wished it would go away. Your views have been read and noted. Thank you for them. Unfortunately, you were outvoted by your peers. Everything in, it was overwhelmingly positive and extremely helpful. Even the person who hated the feature told us nicely! And we were really pleased with the wide array of places where people are finding Death Note News. Particularly as one source was apparently the Archangel Mello pointing this way with his fiery sword. As for the one who asked if being in the Mello/Matt fandom counts - YES! Yes, it does. Most important part of the whole Death Note fandom Mello and Matt. Though I might be biased, given what I write. Forthcoming Characters to be Featured in Death Note News Month of... Focus Lots of fabulous suggestions here. We had Mello, Beyond Birthday, Mikami, Sayu, ALL live-action tellings together, L, Shingami (collectively), Naomi Misora, the LABB murders, and the movie thumbs up for a month closer to the release date. We've decided to start with the one garnering the most votes in that survey. Admittedly to the mild surprise of all here, though we're game for everything. Bring it on! Therefore I can announce that June and July look like this, with more made public when we've finished tatting with the list:
By tomorrow, we should have their submission and questionnaire pages up and ready. In the meantime, do feel free to send in things using generic tools for contributing content, or mentally amending questions pertaining to another character asked of Death Note fans writing, creating art or donning cosplay.
Also by tomorrow, we should actually start Death Note News' Month of Misa Amane. Three items in already. Get a head start on the crowds by chucking in any relevant content now. "Watari, from now on you must safeguard the world with the other Letters." ~ L, L: Change the World, p 17
Death Note Wammy Letters' Alphabet Pt 2 - L-Z Read the first part: Wammy Alphabet A-K Watari, also known as Quillsh Wammy, had used the enormous earnings from the patents of his many inventions to establish the Wammy Foundation, an organization dedicated to building orphanages around the world.
L - Wammy Kid The Last One, or The Lost One - True Name L Lawliet* * This is the name that features upon a collectors' card fitted as a bonus gift inside the back fly-page of manga manual Death Note 13: How to Read. It's also the name recorded in a Death Note, as seen in the Japanese live-action films. However, in the novel Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases, narrator Mello wrote that L was in possession of well over 3,500 names and pseudonyms to hide his personal identity. Mello postulated the theory that even L didn't know his own true name any longer.
Though M (presumably Mello again) subsequently contradicted himself one book on - in the novelization of the movie L: Change the World - when he casually informed the reader that only L and Watari knew his real name. Thus able to facilitate the key plot-line underpinning this variant of the story, wherein L won his war against Kira effectively by committing suicide via Death Note. However, this was an alternate universe to that recounted in the manga and anime, wherein M as Mihael Keehl's Mello never existed, begging the question as to who is writing this novel now. Unless it's Maki, grown a little older and brought furthermore into the Wammy House loop. The fourth generation Wammy to be assigned that code-letter M, in lieu of poor, lost Mello, omitted unmade and erased from the record for this telling. Anyway, onto the plot.
Instead of reprimanding him and ensuring that he apologized to the kids and teens groaning against the floorboards all around, Mr Wammy thought this rather fabulous. Presumably the other orphans were shortly deprived of familiarity, friends and home by being relocated to sister establishments in the chain of Wammy Orphanages. Meanwhile, L got his own room, a computer and plenty of cooing fuss. L managed to redeem his anti-social behaviour - if such was needed in Wammy's eyes - by perusing stock markets and advising the old man on what to buy and when to sell. In that way, the profits poured right in. That was the year that the eight year old took on the Winchester Mad Bomber and averted World War III.
Being handed such freedom on a plate, with adults to order about too, would be heady stuff for any child. Pair it with extreme wealth and the ear of world leaders and suddenly even societal boundaries are non-existent. The possibilities are limitless, with even torture, killing and the ordering of a condemned man onto live television for his execution are not only on the table, but Watari's logistical and sniping skills will ensure all continues quite smoothly. With a seeming lack of constriction akin to a juvenile Roman Emperor, it's little wonder that L emerges into the Death Note story with a personality self-confessedly childish, but also spoiled and cruel.
Depending upon whether Beyond Birthday ever met L or not, it was either now or five years later - when L was thirteen - that The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans was established with Roger Ruvie at the helm. Employed by Wammy not as warden per se, but as a trained psychiatrist there to gather parentless, genius kids from around the globe, and to reshape them - body, personality and mind; self-identity changed as standard - into clones of L. In a rare moment of introspection, L saw clearly what manner of man he considered himself to be - both inspiring and imbibing the Wammy ethos, as the one most influenced by its engineer. Amongst them all, L had the most direct, one-to-one contact with Quillsh Wammy, who set up the system and let it evolve that way. The current crop of Wammy orphans gathered together to learn what their privileged, pressurized upbringing was urging them to become. L laid it on the line in his famous 'monster' speech. To be L was to embrace the monstrous. Just like him.
There are many types of monsters in this world, monsters who will not show themselves and who cause trouble. Monsters who abduct children, monsters who devour dreams, monsters who suck blood, and monsters who always tell lies. Lying monsters are a real nuisance. They are much more cunning than other monsters. They pose as humans, even though they have no understanding of the human heart. They eat, even though they've never experienced hunger. They study even though they have no interest in academics. They seek friendship even though they do not know how to love. If I were to encounter such a monster, I would likely be eaten by it because, in truth, I am that monster.
Driven home in the hearts and minds of his back-up foster siblings, over whose lives L is able to exert absolute control. Wammy, L and Ruvie colluding with potentially sociopathic abandon, in what can only be deemed 'experimental' upbringings for those children subjected in generational waves to that institution. No soaring IQ necessary to foresee tragic results in such child-raising methodologies, centring around rehumanisation at its core. From suicide to serial killing through to the attempted pathogenic extinction of the human race, via joining the Mafia and martyrdom, Wammy kids answered their psyche's refashioning en masse.
In the end, it didn't matter how many Wammy kids strove to murder L. He beat them there too. No matter which version of Death Note is consulted, L kills himself. His suicide is either openly stated, as per the live-action movies, with him writing his own name in a shinigami's notebook to beat Kira; or else it's so subtle as to be barely acknowledged, hidden beneath an overlong stare at Light Yagami, circa Kira's 'just as planned' exclamation of victory. That L had worked it out is confirmed conversely by his statement of the precise opposite. He dully enunciates that Light is not Kira, and should in fact be the next L. The mystery was solved; the game was over. Though to admit so was to lose the fun. The clash of minds that had begun with a challenge to Light Yagami, which was answered in kind. Without it, L could foresee the futile vastness of his life without that battle enriching all. Already depressed, L said nothing, just concurred with the sentiment of Light's innocence. It prolonged their cerebral sparring a little while longer, but it would kill L soon, as he well knew. It seemed worth the cost in the banishment of tedium and onset of fascination alone. Just to see what Light would do next, and to end the life that kept L trapped - 'a reclusive sociopath' - in Wammy's world of responsibility, self-protection and unceasing investigations. Now doomed to tedium post-Kira, plus the unsolvable crime because he would never catch Kira. He'd already let him go. L's manga suicide was his silence. A final act of justice (belatedly) for his Wammy House brethren was in taking Quillsh Wammy with him. M - Wammy Kid Mello - Mihael Keehl
It's also semi-rewarded, insofar as the goals of the institution are concerned. L names Mello as one of his chief candidates for succession due to 'a nasty look in his eyes' rather than anything related to grades. While Roger follows up both latter acts of aggression with encouragement and/or expectation that the fourteen year old before him take the deceased L's position in the world, at least jointly with Near (a twelve year old). Can we say child soldiers? The bullying isn't all. We also view Mello as a Wammy boy apparently isolated amidst his peers. During L's 'monster' speech, Mello stands alone, away from the children excitedly grouped before the laptop through which L chats with them. When he hears about L's death, Mello's mind flashes back to a moment in receipt of grades (pictured right). All of the other kids are flocking to read Near's paper and see his mark. Mello is left lonely and anxious reading his own. He also apparently studied alone, as the following panel demonstrates. Probably because he's the Wammy House bully and this is the best that his foster siblings can do in their own defence and/or revenge. Not all of them though. Near was quite happy to work with Mello, when their warden Roger suggested it, regardless of the look of utter horror twisting Mello's expression at the same time. Later on, Matt appeared from the peer-group at the Wammy House to partner Mello in the final hunt for Kira. So two people at least could have been, or were, Mello's friends there. That said, even bullies have confederates and/or a gang. Mello goes for the biggest and the best (or worst, depending on how we're phrasing it) gang after leaving Wammy's - the Mafia. Wherein his admittance was assured despite his lack of Sicilian ethnicity (which kept Al Capone out); his posh Winchester/English accent; his youth; and his effeminate attire. All this was over-ridden by his demonstrable intelligence and the fact that he brought, as an entrance present, the head of a Mafia Don whom even Kira couldn't touch. How literally should we take that 'bringing the head' tidbit? Are we actually talking the decapitated article in a box? Or information thereon? An alternative translation states it in the plural - 'the heads of Mafia dons, who even Kira couldn't touch'. Maybe this is the source of those skulls, with which the teenage Mafia era Mello likes to surround himself. Nor is this the worst that Mello feels justified in ordering during those days. He arranges for the abduction of Japanese police chief Takimura, followed by the same for Sayu Yagami, both as bargaining chips to be exchanged for the Death Note in Japanese police custody. Takimura is killed by Kira in a pre-emptive move; Sayu is left catatonic with trauma. No end of Mafia associates are killed, or pressured into giving up half of their lives to acquire shinigami eyes. Drug routes established. The President of the United States of American coerced into suicide in order to prevent Mello using the Death Note to force his hand. Like making him launch nuclear bombs around the world, thus causing World War Three. The theft of a missile. All but three of the SPK massacred as a test of the Death Note, falling around Near, probably as a show of strength for his benefit. Therein lies the rub. It's all about Near, ergo all about Wammy's House, not really about Kira or Rod Ross's prestige and profits at all. When the pair finally confront each other face to face, the background fades to exhibit instead the stained glass windows from the institution which raised them, and continues to cast its pall over their lives right now.  For Near and Mello, the battle to become L is all. Both are willing to pull out extremities in action, thought and deed to secure the prize Wammy and Roger left dangling for them. Ultimately, Mello will give up his life simply to make it onto the final score-sheet as joint first, once he realizes that the end is nigh and he'll be second in perpetuity. N - Wammy Kid Near - Nate River
Of all the Wammys - with the possible exception of Beyond Birthday and his peer, the institution's first child suicidee A - Near seems to have taken the directive to become L's clone most keenly to heart. He never met his idol, so any physical emulation of his idol was accidental, or an inadvertent consequence of both boys being raised within the same system. This didn't matter. The purposes for which reprogramming children to match the prototype was deemed necessary didn't involve B-like cosplay antics. Before Kira, no-one outside the Wammy Foundation met with L face-to-face, therefore would be hard pushed to identify him in a line-up. There was a brief interlude with Naomi Misora, immediately prior to the Kira case, but L never actually introduced himself. Perceptive Naomi guessed anyway, but she had the huge clue before her of Beyond Birthday making an indelible impression whilst copying L in costume, aspect and stance. Near's task was much more insidiously wrought than just dressing up would have been. He sought to think like L. Submerge his own personality beneath a persona modelled upon that of his predecessor, as Near believed him to be based on this own observations and insights gleaned from L's electronic address to the fourth generation Wammy wards en masse. Near didn't even ask him any questions. They never had a conversation.
Scant enough hints around which to mould a credible likeness in continuation of the L Code. Especially when it has to be enough to to fool world leaders, and high-ranking contacts - networked to no known degree in the past - drawn randomly world-wide from government, military, legal/law enforcement, intelligence, secret services and other offices. Plus those within the private sector, researchers, consultants and experts in fields raising across the academe. With whom did L share a confidence? Who did he know? Detest? Exchange now impenetrable dialogue in language encroached in private in-jokes? All of which Near must know in order to pull this off, or else his failure is outright and absolute. 'Just a loser' in all he worked hard and aspired to be - surviving his nearest rivals; out-ranking the rest - the only source of meaning for his life. He was told. And equally raised to fear, as catastrophic on a global scale, being exposed as a fake L, alongside the real L's death now leaked. World War III would start. Only the actual Lawliet held its inception in abeyance. Crimes rates everywhere would soar, in figures projected to make the upward surge post-Kira seem like an insignificant bump beside the inevitable spike post-L.
A year later, Near's faded from his own world; withdrawing into isolation as a hermit obsessively constructing a whole city out of tarot cards, paranoid about the fragility of his finely balanced reality. One draught of wind or an unwary boot upon Rester's foot might bring whole sections of the edifice down. Near's obvious depression surely a consequence of his attempt to obliterate his distinct and natural self, in lieu of fulfilling his Wammy given destiny to become L. Lawliet. All of this after several years in pursuit of Kira - as the L defined arena in which his prototype Code's pretenders must battle to the death for the right to claim it as their own. Not to mention that it followed on top of a childhood raised in the Wammy House, with its petty rivalries, academic expectations, competitive rankings and presumed early exposure to graphic evidence from crime scenes, as part of the endemic brainwashing forging a strong desire to become L, should a back-up be required. It takes a retracing of his steps back to the start for Near to even grasp the issue. The return sparked by circumstance - a prospective new Kira appearing on the scene - coupled with the urgent messages forged in his own subconscious - Near's arranging for all previously present to reassemble in the Yellow Box warehouse on the first anniversary of Light Yagami's denunciation and death. Another confrontation in the offing, this time with a crime syndicate dealing in drugs. That hardly seems worth the while of a Wammy kid, except that it puts altered realities in Near's frame of introspection.  In the midst of that mix, experienced after twelve months spent dissembling, something had to give. It seems to begin with the sequence shown in the panel above, whereby Hal Lidner affirms to Near that he doesn't need to become L. 'L is L, you are you,' Lidner tells him and Near is momentarily at a loss for words to say in response. He mentally assesses her wisdom in taking such a perspective and is forced to conclude that she is quite correct. I wonder if it's deliberate or coincidental that Hal's further comment - 'we can handle it our own way' - apes Mello's upon leaving the Wammy House - 'I will find my own way'. Near would have heard such echoes of sentiment anyway. Later in the conversation, Hal says quite pointed that Near is trying to think as L would think. Near, who had just accidentally knocked over a section of his tarot card city, asks the pair to leave. He telling adds that they shouldn't topple his towers on the way out. In tarot, The Tower is a card of necessary destruction in the major arcana. It wipes away the old that the new might flourish.
However, Near's concluding statement in the L speech was a denunciation that was never heard from Lawliet's mouth, nor anything akin to it. But it mirrored entirely that famously enunciated by Near to the first Kira - 'You abominable murderer'. It was Near's personality emerging in full strength t0 wipe away the vestiges of Lawliet. This time, when Rester repeats Hal's assertion that Near is L, Near does not hesitate to concur. We get the wide view and see that the Towers of L aren't so much zones of intimidation. It's Near demonstrating full well his altered world view. He doesn't have to be Lawliet, because he's Near.  All of this is a far cry from the Death Note anime, which simply skips over the issues Near endures post-Kira. Or the Death Note movies, which only features Near in the third film (L: Change the World). There he's a very young child when L dies, delivered to Wammy's House as L's final act of salvation before the detective dies. It will be a long time, if ever, that Near will have to take on L's mantle in that alternative timeline. Or you can opt for the timeline altered once more in the novelization of L: Change the World, which omits the Thai boy entirely, to reinstate a more commonly rendered Near in cameo as the end. Only this one doesn't have self-identity issues, nor any compulsion not to tell the US President that L is dead, and he is now L. This telling establishes L as a team effort rather than investigated in one figurehead, albeit one with the same initial as the overall group. Here Near comes across as Puckish, in fact almost angelic.
Well, angelic only if we recall that Lucifer was also an archangel; that Gabriel's horn topples city walls; that Samael was an Angel of Death and Destruction; and that Michael wielded a fiery sword to wage war on God's behalf. Near stating that he'll murder a man, then destroy the Death Note in one breath, followed by a threat to kill the President via it, sometime in perpetuity, seems nothing next to all that. Even if he did get caught in a lie from his own tongue within seconds of stating it.
If Matsuda's theory is correct, then Near went much further than what was less than subtly implied in the pages of the manga. The new L was a serial killer, whose victims could well have included Mello, and whose continued possession of the Death Note AND the L Code makes him a dangerously all-powerful influence upon the modern world's movers and shakers. Just as he learned at Wammy's House. O - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in CanonWe don't currently have a canon assignation for the Wammy group letter O, just the usual known candidates: Matt and Linda, plus Wammy House created and raised L clone Ryūzaki (from Death Note: Light Up the New World). P - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
Q - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; Unless Strong Probability: Q - Wammy Kid Matt - True Name Mail Jeevas
It is a truth universally known and recognized throughout the Death Note fandom that Matt is good with computers. On his Death Note Wiki page, where cited facts tend to be cross-referenced back to source, we're told '(Matt's) specialty is technology, and he is tasked by Mello to monitor the activities of Misa, Mogi and Aizawa.' The information is devoid of citation. Matt's geek prowess in computing and 1337 cyber skills are implied in canon. Nevertheless it may surprise most to realise nothing in manga, manual, anime or elsewhere explicitly states anything of the sort. Unless we're missing some reference somewhere, Matt's technological genius is pure fanon. What we are told - or shown - by Death Note's creators Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata is that Matt likes video games. He's rarely seen without a PSP or Nintendo DS in hand, and/or other consoles trailing in the background, unless he's driving a car, wielding a gun, watching Kira over the road through a camera or chatting to Mello over his phone about Misa, boredom and the unchanging nature of brick walls. However, there are quite often computers in the vicinity too. Multiples thereof. Whole reasons in fact why fanon latches onto this notion that Matt is Wammy's technological genius, not least because of the sheer amount that surrounds him at every (woefully scant) view we get.
Whether the case is made for Matt being Q or not, he's likely to be the figure behind a Wammy letter. This correlation between implied official/widely accepted fanon facets of Matt with those known about Q is as close as canon has come to assigning him a letter thus far. A major insight into the mores of Watari is afforded us through the added information about Q . The Wammy House computing adept has created at least two highly useful programs. They belong to him/her - unless the geek's own Hacker Ethic has seen them released as freeware online - and could be patented for personal profit outside the Wammy Foundation orbit. Yet they have not. Moreover, Watari feels warranted passing those scripts onto a personal friend as a gift. There could be quite innocent and laudable reasons for this, or it could be that all those high flying skills possessed by Wammy letters are never quite their own to utilize. Their gained wealth and honours fly straight into the Wammy coffers to be used as a common treasury for all within the House and its Foundation. Fuel for fan-fiction writers anyway. As for Matt himself, he's yet another letter coming from the Wammy House into that deathly battle against Kira. After assisting Mello in some surveillance work in the USA, Matt flew with him to Japan. There he further helped out, this time firing a CS gun from the driver's seat of a red muscle car, creating a smokescreen to facilitate the abduction of Kiyomi Takada. Matt was killed shortly afterwards, when cornered by Kira supporters and shot dead. He was nineteen years old. R - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
S - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in CanonTo date, there is no known Wammy Letter S in canon, which isn't to say that one doesn't exist. The usual candidates apply here too. T - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown T is known only from his/her entry on L's call/mailing list in L: Change the World live-action movie. However the initial is faded out to grey, implying that T is dead (see R.) U - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon There is no Wammy U letter assigned in any canon source to date. V - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name UnknownAnother included on L's Wammy Members' Group mailing list in the film L: Change the World. V's initial is greyed out, it's owner presumed dead. W - Wammy Letter for Watari - Quillsh Wammy Himself It's difficult to know the motive for Quillsh Wammy in creating The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans in Winchester. Mostly in manga, anime, novels and live-action adaptations of Death Note, the altruism is played up in the persona of L's handler (as Tsugumi Ohba described him). But the Death Note author also stated that Wammy cultivated those kids as detectives 'for fun'. Even if Wammy's orphanage and the lettered foundation to follow were established for the best of reasons, gathering genius children from across the globe - for the most part relocating them to another country - then stripping them of their names and other indicators of self-identity robs all concerned of their birthright. Held up to the light of the UN's Rights of the Child (international law) and Wammy's House is shown sadly lacking for all its wonderful provision. That document was certainly ratified in England, where Winchester is situated. Some government officials, and those in the local authority too, must be turning quite a large blind eye, or else Hampshire Social Services would be traipsing all over the premises. Closing it down too because, for all its bright and glorious intentions, Wammy's House is an illegal concern by universally declared human rights laws. Obviously those politicians in Winchester, Westminster and in the offices of other world leaders too consider it expedient to let the institution continue existing - taking the Stalinesque position that the ends justify the means - but that's by the by. The question here is what Wammy himself thinks he's up to, and how he's squared it with his conscience (if, of course, he knows his operation to be criminally negligent and cares about that).
And incidentally, their guardian is dead, along with their idol. The one they were raised to emulate to the point of becoming in a very literal sense. Its director's cut movie length double bill - Relight - adds the darkest element yet in L's 'monster' speech, as recalled by Near. Whatever else anyone thought the Wammy Foundation to be, L was in it for the lulz. Apparently. Then Mello, as narrator in Another Note, takes the matter of Watari's motives and the institution's reality plummeting to whole new levels of criminal insanity and horror. Herein, Quillsh Wammy emerges as a mad inventor, dehumanising children to the level of machines, psychologically repackaging them as carbon copies of his prototype child. Then placing them on a conveyor belt onto martyrdom or becoming L mark 2. Thereafter, things lighten up considerably. Wammy suddenly transforms into a kindly benefactor, personally concerned in realising the potential in each of his wards, coupled with a genuine zest to save the world - or change it, as the movies and their novelisation strangely phrases it.  Though this overtly compassionate soul doesn't stop L, to all extents and purposes, committing suicide by writing his own name in a Death Note; F dying with a smile on his face in Thailand; and K building a biological contagion to wipe out all humanity. All directly or by proxy sent into the situations that killed or unhinged them by Wammy himself or one of his assistants at Wammy HQ. Not one of them elicited a word of censure or damage limitation from their guardian either; nothing of consolation nor urging them to put their own safety and well-being above the perils of the case. F's death 'couldn't be helped' (L: Change the World movie). K was never approached with the key information that she'd been assigned and kept not only her letter, but Watari's own esteem (L: Change the World novel, p 176-177). While sight of L's name in that Death Note almost prompted words in reaction from the man who'd raised him and continued to be a constant presence catering to his every whim. But Wammy stopped himself speaking 'and closed his eyes to contain his feelings' (ibid, p 16). For that matter, though L was on the trail of Beyond Birthday enough to contact and advise Naomi Misora, Watari did not take the first available flight to Los Angeles in an attempt to calm his wayward, suicidal ward. With all L's considerable sway upon the movers and shakers of most nations - the USA topmost on the list - no apparent intervention was made on behalf of the badly burned Beyond Birthday. He was left to languish in a LA prison, until Kira killed him. (Nor then had the Wammy Foundation ensured his anonymity regarding face and name, as Near did for Mello. B lost and thus was excluded from the fold. It's unlikely to be an appalled father figure washing his hands of the 'back-up'. Watari covers up or fixes the carnage from no end of criminal acts, up to and including murder, as enacted by his other wards. Like Near/Mello, in the Death Note TV drama (2015), phoning to announce that he's just killed Yudagawa. Wammy's reaction being to retrieve Near from the scene, arrange the clear up and cake. Near's favourite at that.  Finally back to the manga's original story and timeline, wherein Watari, firmly entrenched in the perils at the front line of the Kira case, never once thought to phone home to tell Roger, "You know, this might be too dangerous for the kids. Plus they've got the onset of puberty looming on the horizon, which is going to play havoc with their thought processes and deductive reasoning. If anything happens to me and L, be sure and keep Near and Mello safe indoors, eh?" Instead, he doesn't even deign to indicate a name for L's successor - news which every child there spends every second of their existence in conditioned striving to become - partially because he knew L had already named Light (more important information for the cohort in Winchester, perchance?), and also because Wammy's own death was so sudden. Yet surely this ultra-efficient man had made provision? Given his wealth, responsibilities and current condition in risk of sudden death by Kira, it seems the most obvious rolling course of action for the Wammy House founder and father figure. The only insight we get to the mindset of Quillsh Wammy, in regard to the ridiculously short life expectancy of those in his care, comes from his musing in response to the fait accompli of L's suicide - deferred by twenty-three days as per the extremities of the Death Note's limitations. In the knowledge that L would have contemplated every move available to himself before acting thus to checkmate Kira, a conclusion is reached - 'this was the choice L had made. How could Watari object?' (L: Change the World (novel), p17) How could he not? When each tragic loss to the Wammy House cohort, met without comment, reaffirms the normality/inevitability/expectancy of such choices made, his objections should be paramount. Especially as L - with his own demise fixed and irreversible - instantly acted as though a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. A burden that the novel later articulates as, ... L did not and could not forget the face of thousands of victims... The chronically rounded shoulders, the inevitable dark circles, the eccentric tastes - L suppressed the pain of being a champion of justice, but the evidence of the pain was molded into his very body. L tore out his hair and howled at the sky, unleashing the agony inside his soul. It's a life that Watari chose for his favourite ward to live, when the boy was way too young to know what it could possibly entail. A whole Foundation was constructed around facilitating and perpetuating it, complete with staff-members tasked with replicating L upon the raw matter and vulnerable psyche of a steady procession of living children. The majority of whom L, at just twenty-seven years old, has already out-lived. His guardian, mentor and carer Wammy hasn't left his side in over twenty-one years. Two decades of reaffirming to L that what he's doing is necessary and the only thing he could be doing. Acting like this is normal and right. Intimating that L perhaps owes him something for this relentless support and companionship, with so much time, wealth and world peace tied up in the detective going on as before; his burden bending his shoulders and adding dark pits around his eyes. L looked up suddenly... with the worried expression of a child. "Watari, have I fulfilled you expectations?" Watari answered with his usual serene smile and uttered one simple unerring word: "Fully."
X - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; Y - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown; and Z - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown... I heard from L: the story of the detective war between the three greatest detectives, all solving that infamous bio-terror case, with guest appearances from the last of the alphabet, the first X to the first Z from Wammy's House. X, Y and Z were all Wammy House children who assisted L, as he battled for supremacy over the original Eraldo Coil and Danuve. Emerging victorious, L wasn't content to merely take the top spot in investigative global ranking. He took their detective codes too, hereafter able to call himself by their names; as evidenced in the battle against Kira, when he announced to the task force that he was in fact all three detectives now. Aiber was able to pose as Coil, in L's stead, when the Yotsuba Group hired the supposed 2nd placed detective in order to investigate the first. Yet none of this explains what happened to X, Y and Z afterwards. Mello never tells us in Another Note; nothing more beyond that snippet quoted above. Nor do they turn up in the B case, or the fight against Kira which follows on. Then again, that quotation can be read another way and perhaps they weren't assisting L at all, despite their Wammy House credentials. It seems unlikely that one or two WERE the original Coil and Danuve, challenging L for the chance not to be his backup nor copy. That would place them centre-stage, not cameos. But nothing there says that they weren't the instigators of the bio-terror case under investigation. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that something like that was spawned from the dark corridors of the Wammy House to be unleashed upon the world. In which case, all precedent says they're now tucked up safely inside their laboratories within the confines of the orphanage, welcomed home with an attitude akin to respect and a jolly well done. But for the fact that none of the trio factor upon L's calling screen in L: Change the World - plus Mello refers to all as 'the first' of their names in Another Note. The implication being that these three Wammy kids no longer exist, even within the institution out of public view. Moreover, those who supplanted them in their allocated initials potentially were lost too. That is if we're taking all Death Note stories as one amalgamated canon, even where their time-lines clash. The Wammy Alphabet of Death Note Letters  Those names greyed out are already dead by the end of all iterations of the Death Note canon. Those inverted represent Letters whose allocation is currently unknown. Leaving just D, E, G, H, K, N and P still alive.
However, this is just one run through from all known canon data. We have indubitably got a mix-match of generations here. A, B, X, Y and Z are known to have been amongst the first. M and N were definitely fourth. L, H and W held their letters throughout. K's letter survived at least two generations in its allocation. It has to be assumed that for a letter to be reassigned (four times for four generation of alphabets filled and started again), the previous recipient is dead. How many Wammy kids must have died then, for the latest as semblance of Wammy Letters to exist? A vague straw-poll based on the configuration seen above suggests that, of the overall proportion, 73.1% are dead. It may be presumed that Ryūzaki, Linda and those nameless Wammy kids in the background of flashback scenes all bore an initial apiece. A single letter displayed upon a white screen when they called - stark black in an Old English font, in lieu of a real name. And where were J, X, Y and Z on L's calling screen in L: Change the World? A possible 4-7 more dead or disappeared. J to a burning ship in the middle of a pixel ocean; the latter three implied dead by Mello's comment 'the first to hold those letters'. And of the remainder, one planned to destroy all humanity but was brought back into the Wammy fold. Not before K had already killed thousands, obliterating whole villages along the way. While, if Matsuda's theory was right, another is a secret serial killer in possession of a Death Note's great power, in addition to holding the L title that every one of Wammy's children coveted. As L's successor, N beat them all to what amounts - in practicality, wealth and influence alike - to world domination. Quillsh Wammy, the genius inventor who founded Wammy's House... looking at L's incredible talents from the perspective of an inventor - of course he wanted to make a copy, of course he wanted to create a backup. Anyone would feel the same. ~ Mello, Another Note, p104 Little is known about Quillsh Wammy the man, nor what he truly intended for the children in his care. Though intriguing clues litter the canon sources with enough material to keep the fan-fiction writers going for an age. Often, if you can't see the thing itself, then observing the ripple effect provides a proxy view enough to hazard a guess at what lies beyond. What remains mysterious about the benefactor of that strange chain of orphanages established in Death Note manga, anime, novels, movies, TV drama and games, might just show in the Fate of orphans raised within their alpha home - The Wammy House for Gifted and Talented Orphans.
List of Wammy House Letters Discussed in General Terms  We cannot reconstruct the whole canon alphabet of Death Note letters, even via our current ploy below of amalgamating disparate versions as if they were one cohesive and extant source. However, it's not bad how few Wammy letters exist without a known correspondence or link in any canon Death Note universe. There's just a handful assigned without furnishing the fandom with clues pertaining to the person here represented. Even then they may be discussed in general terms, applicable across the board. Not least the assumption might be made that someone raised or based at Wammy's House in Winchester was, is or will be in possession of the code required to utilize all that this letter represents. Not anonymity in public communication - no matter how much it's used for that, such usage is just a bonus - but access to The Wammy Foundation, its administration, resources and infrastructure. Doors don't open because someone sat in GIMP messing around with Cloister fonts and single letters centred in Old English. If they did then I'd be L by now. Government offices allow access to restricted lines; military manoeuvres are initiated by request; Interpol meetings are infiltrated; and intelligence agencies are directed or else willing to share classified information, because that Wammy letter alphabet gets used set within a certain context. Further codewords or numbers may allow verification of its user's authenticity.
A call from a Death Note Letter to Wammy Headquarters (i.e. the Winchester orphanage in which they were raised) could summon the word spoken into an ear, heavies, intel or finance to oil passage into a myriad of locations, ways, clubs or meetings, as necessary to solve the mystery at hand. It could rescue that clever detective from dangerous places, or let him/her secure whatever was uncovered that now needs safeguarding. Sensitivity in no questions asked, efficient fixing; unlimited funds able to be wired wherever a masked voice asks for such to be. Plus so much more besides. It's not each iconic initial that's key in those calls. It's the apparently boundless support and open doors that such icons represent. Wammy's Foundation has an incredible reach throughout the planet and into the hidden powerhouses unknown to most. Where global movers and shakers meet with their identities gleaned incrementally on a need to know basis. Where influence is strong and disagreements could potentially cause or avert World War III. Yet none more able to direct the flow of world affairs than Quillsh Wammy himself.
Then if all else fails, those clever and dangerous Wammy Letters - living so far beyond any laws to proscribe their actions - probably know where to find and press the requisite levers to get blockages removed. No doubt such reminders prompt the machinery of co-operation into instant, unfettered movement by any given government and their agencies, accompanied by renewed guarantees that this status quo will remain so indefinitely. Uttered upon expensive, elite lips belonging to those who know they can keep their promises. Just as Mello did in the Death Note manga, compelling an American President into acting in accordance with that Mafioso Wammy's will. Threatening to use a Death Note to gain US compliance anyway, with its President's actions subject to unstoppable remote control, until his inevitable death a few days on. That wasn't the Mafia man talking, however close the sentiment might seem. It was the Wammy speaking as Mello this time. Another day it could have been L or Near, as also happened in canon, outlined as dialogue in the novel L: Change the World. And THAT has to be how they were raised for President Hoope seemed to expect it. Evidently he's dealt with Mr Wammy and his alumni many times before.
Wammy Letters seemingly above the law: (Clockwise l-r) Televised death of Lind L Taylor (L); NYC stampede for $10m (N); Misa Amane tortured (L); US President David Hoope driven to suicide (M); NPA President Takimura abducted and tortured (M); lethal pathogen unleashed onto colleague, then the world (K). Which makes you wonder what else we can see in the stories of the rest; to illuminate the inner workings of Quillsh Wammy's mind and the processes underpinning the ways in which his Winchester institution is run. A great man, as Matsuda once said, or the monstrous child-thief - as he's intimated to be by L, Mello, B and Near's testimonies? Hinted in separate instances, dotted about various canon sources - Watari brainwashing proto-detectives, from kids raised in his care, to enter into deadly games of rivalry and puzzle-solving, all for fun. More of those children's stories might provide some insight into the manner of this man, whom even Tsugumi Ohba his creator called 'terrible'. Death Note Wammy Letters Alphabet
A - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown... even for a genius like Watari, creating a fake L was easier said than done... I hardly need to tell you what it was like when Wammy's House was first founded, when he was still experimenting. The first child, A, was unable to handle the pressure of living up to L and took his own life...  When Quillsh Wammy determined that he needed to 'copy' or 'back up' L, he chose a live child to mould into aping his prototype model. Imagine that for just a moment - someone, anyone, being taken into strange premises and told that all you are and were no longer matters. You have no name, or purpose beyond becoming somebody else. Not in the military we-will-make-you-action-man sense, nor in any manner of self-improvement, like going off to university, or training to run a marathon. This isn't even the refining of a Swiss finishing school. This is taking a presumably orphan child and stripping him of all form of self-identity. Not a name to call himself, just a letter. No personality traits that can't also be found in L. No lesser intelligence than what that incredibly once-in-a-lifetime type genius mind than attain. Telling a boy that everything about himself is so worthless that nothing will do but to reject it all and become the clone of another boy deemed more valuable. And they wonder why he committed suicide. B - Wammy Kid Beyond Birthday - True Name Unknown
 After attempting to imprint L's whole being cookie cutter style upon poor A's flayed psyche, Quillsh Wammy then turned his attention onto a second child for experimentation. He was seeking the same result. He got it. By which is meant that Watari's zest to 'copy' L drove another orphan in his care to conclude that the only way out was suicide. Only Beyond Birthday didn't attempt his own end with the supposed quiet lack of drama that beset the tragedy of A. (At least Mello didn't deem it worth gossiping about the fine detail later.) B opted for self-slaughter in perhaps the most dramatic, loud and all encompassing manner he could stage manage. Downright theatrical in fact, in that he performed it in costume, caked in thick make-up, complete with props. Assuming a role in scenes orchestrated and arranged by himself. The part that Wammy had always wanted him to play. Indivisible from L; a carbon copy. Albeit with a few heart-breaking, pointed and rather grisly differences in the reality that played out. Not least that Beyond knew that L could count on the support of Wammy's House, and he could not.
C - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon Although nothing is known about this individual at the present time, it doesn't necessarily follow that we do not know them. Some characters associated with Wammy's House never had their call code letters made public. This covers Matt, Linda and Ryūzaki from the forthcoming movie too. D - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown
E - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown E is another Wammy letter assignation known only from L's mailing group in L: Change the World. (See above) F - Wammy Kid F1225 - True Name Unknown Wammy letter F is known to us entirely from the movie L: Change the World. He doesn't even turn up in the book of the same name. In the movie, he is portrayed by actor Kakuzi Namioka. Wammy F's character name in the credits is displayed as エフ Romanised as Efu.  We first see F peering through the slats into a rural home in Bangnum Village, Thailand. He is observing a whole population stricken by some unknown pathogen, all dying horribly and in agony with sores, blisters and frothing mouths. It appears to have been quite a sudden onset with a 100% mortality rate, and the scientists have just turned up to investigate. They are exempt in theory from contagion, clad from head to foot in bright yellow protective clothing. They speak with American accents and seem unsympathetic to the suffering of victims all around them. Moreover, brutal in their dehumanising pronouns - 'deal with that', one says, indicating a man nearby. Another pushes a mother surrounded by four dead children roughly away from him. F flees. There is no explanation as to why he was there. Nor why he's so certain of his immunity from contracting the unspecified pathogen, that he's willing to risk exposure to it. The only clues come from a future scene, wherein we're told he was working undercover for the Watari Foundation near Bangnum Village, and that the biometers aren't responding. Though whether that fact pertains to F's presence isn't clear from the context. He was certainly there 'in the line of duty'. However, he's presumably on some kind of Wammy House directed rescue mission, as the child waiting at the location F flees to - in the ruins of ancient architecture just beyond the village - is Near. Though evidently Thai, Near does not appear native to Bangum. "This village is over for us." F tells the child, interrupting him mid-mathematical flow, with formulae chalked all over the mossy stone walls. They have perhaps gained sanctuary there with Near seemingly unperturbed by events. Abandoning his calculus without fear nor apparent regard for the destruction down below, in order to join F in flight via the older Wammy's Land Rover.  The instructions F gives to the boy focus upon how to contact Watari. This transpires into a moment of sheer delight and wonder for Team Wammy Death Note fans everywhere - F gives us the Watari phone number: 0105928147218. Whereupon we are directed to tell them F1225 told us to ring it. So, has anyone done so yet? To whom does it connect? Are they very sick of random people calling from all over the world, demanding to speak with Watari? "Watari will protect you," F informs his young charge, wearing an ethereal kind of smile as he says so. The future Near, it has to be said, surveys him right back with the world's most dubious expression over a long, drawn out stare. Already too clever for his own good, that one. But a look which surely seems like presentiment when, in the next instant, an American military helicopter arises from the bushland track behind them and starts shooting holes from the road in front. F steps on the accelerator of the Land Rover he has weaving all over this Thai dustroad-turned-Formula-1-racetrack. Yet a close look at him reveals the sudden appearance of lesions on the side of this face. Not so immune to disease after all, though Near is in the clear and remains so. F knows that he's personally not going to survive this flight through the bushes, thus in a poignant moment takes the necklace bearing his Watari letter F from around his neck and places it around Near's instead.
Back behind the wheel, with an expression of sheer determination, F hurtles along the road in his Land Rover, leading the military away from the spot where he abandoned Near. But he knows he can't out-drive them. He has to have known he was due to die as soon as he couldn't shake them off before. This race away from Near is deliberate though. Himself less important than the child left behind, despite F's presumably high intelligence and top class education rendering him a supposed benefit to the whole world as a Wammy letter. Surely more so in that horrible choice between himself and an untutored youngster with much potential. Because whatever Near is, or may become, right now the boy is an unknown quantity. Yet somebody somewhere within the Watari Foundation judged it worth risking F's life to send him into that dangerous situation in order to extract the kid. By his actions, F certainly concurs. The helicopter descends before the Land Rover, blocking all egress. F stops the vehicle and surveys in horror what waits ahead. There's momentary horror and fright for F. Not ready to die. Then he is, eyes closing and a tiny smile touching the corner of his lips. Like this is acceptable.
We watch the Watari prodigy F die by proxy - a close up on the missile emerging from the helicopter's launcher, then a long shot of Near witnessing the blast from around the corner, expressionless and wearing F's letter necklace. Another Wammy kid dead. Another left knowing from the onset what the far future has in store for him, though also still lost in the immediate sense.  What's interesting about F's reaction to all of this is that undying faith in Wammy and the Watari Foundation. Adamant to the end that Watari protects his wards, a sentiment spoken even as the patently unprotected F remains trapped in an environment rife with pestilence and bombs. He's not going to survive this, yet surely it was Watari - or a representative thereof - who sent him there. Nevertheless, F will ensure another child follows in his footsteps and smiles as he dies. Some inner conviction sated in the certainty that his premature demise was worth it. Perhaps the ethos wherein this genius Wammy House orphan was raised. One we'll return to time and again in the biographies of Wammy kids. Dulce et decorum est pro Watari mori... G - Wammy Kid Pseudonym and True Name Unknown The Wammy letter G is another whose canon existence consists solely of an entry on L's email list in the movie L: Change the World. (See D.) H - Wammy Headquarters Letters - Roger Ruvie (presumed)
We see more of what Roger's position at The Wammy's House - Wammy Headquarters - constitutes in this same scene. Following immediately on from the death of F, Roger calls Wammy to inform him of their ward's death. Though cut off, his text communication is curt, emotionless and to the point.  This isn't a telegram, yet it seems like Roger goes out of his way to conserve characters in his abrasive wording. F's death is afforded equal precedence to HQ's report about the biometers being out of commission. His main concern seems to be who to send out there next. No waxing lyrical in commiseration and regard for a young man killed, whom both must have known intimately, as a boy raised by themselves and for whom responsibility did not stop in adulthood, as he remained one of their lettered agents. It's a similar pattern of feeling - or lack thereof - as seen in the manga, whereby Roger's first act upon hearing the news of L and Wammy's demise is to call in Mello and Near, thus to settle the succession. No question that such a continuation must occur. Nor apparently did he race after Mello, when the boy announced his attention to leave home and work alone in catching Kira. This is a fourteen year old stepping out into a frigid December night, in a barely adequate jacket, yet his guardian did not shift in his recall. Back to F and the news of his death. It's never clarified who alerted Roger to that particular tragedy, though we do get to see Wammy and L react to the same. Wammy's look of sadness and shock tips off L, who gently enquires if it is bad news? His guardian answers in hushed tones that F was killed in Thailand. There follows a pensive moment, wherein the old man sadly states, 'It was in the line of duty, so it couldn't be helped but...'  But what? The sentiment is never answered verbally, nor addressed by the creator of this system at all. The contemplative silence draws out for both with the sentence never actually finished. Left lingering in the air as simply that - something which couldn't be helped - while H's missive remains on the screen focused upon who to send in next. The answer to F's death comes in reality from L's actions. This is the final piece of information to push the detective into writing his own name into Misa's Death Note, thus effectively committing suicide. Why? 'To take control over my own Fate is the only way to outwit Death.'
A reaction echoed in part by Mello's own reaction to the compulsion to take L's place jointly with Near, as Roger's major consideration upon the loss of L. No doubt feeling similar pressure to surrender all say in his future to those willing to sacrifice it, Mello - like L - had the knee-jerk reaction of yanking control of his own destiny back from Wammy HQ. "I'll do it my own way!" He bellowed in retort, a fourteen year old leaving the sanctuary of his childhood home in the dead of winter.  The only facet not being questioned by anyone was why two boys (Near not even a teenager) suddenly had the burden of stopping a global killer. Children asked to assume such responsibility as duty, in lieu of, say, any of the world's governments, military, secret services, not to mention their associated law enforcement or intelligence agencies. Neither did L feel able to just walk away. At least in the minds of themselves, as nurtured in Wammy's home by Watari and Ruvie, this was their inevitable duty. As unfortunate as any death might be in the line of such duty, it couldn't be helped. An ethos surely carried by the warden, as Roger swapped his letter H (Wammy Headquarters) for a W (Watari in his turn).
I - Wammy Letter Not Assigned in Canon Though again there are candidates, as Matt and Linda remain unassigned letters in canon too. Ditto Ryūzaki, who will appear in Death Note: Light Up the New World in October 2016, and has already been named an alumni of Wammy's House. J - Wammy Kid Pseudonym Unknown - True Name Jeffrey Miller
However help is at hand in the shape of a communication device and L at the other end. The detective will advise on solving puzzles to open the doors, as long as he's adequately provided with sweets, cakes and other confectionery. You will eventually traverse all of those dangerous rooms in order to encounter the baddies. Enter J. Apparently another Wammy kid turned murderous in pursuit of L. Now ready to engage you in a boss fight.
As the game was only issued in Japanese, with no English transcript to be found on-line, it's difficult to analyse the dialogue for further clues to J's identity, motivation or the influence upon him from his supposed Wammy House education. Beyond what might be surmised by the fact that he's attempting to blow L up. Though he is wearing a lab coat, hence probably falls within the science spectrum of Wammy alumni specialities. All that can be said additionally (until our Japanese translators turn up and, of course, assuming any of them have actually played this game) is that our last glimpse of J seems to be aboard a stricken cruise ship, which L has just caused to explode extensively right across its middle section. Presumably then J is now lost, presumed drowned or else caught in the ensuing inferno. About par for the course for a Wammy kid. K - Wammy Kid Keep Your Way - Dr Kimiko Kujo "Please understand, Watari. This is the only way I believe I can change the world," she said, as much to convince herself.
Her story forms the central backdrop of L: Change the World - movie and book both - with L spending his last twenty days on Earth in a bid to halt her crazy antics in a laboratory. The premature release of her deadly virus upon test subjects in Thailand had already led directly to the demise of another Wammy letter - F. She would have taken out Near too, before he even made it to Wammy's House, had the wonder-boy's natural immunity not kept him safe from contagion.
It transpires that K's role within the Wammy Foundation had been to '(mobilize) the law enforcement agencies of the world'. During an operation, she had successfully rescued a child held hostage by terrorists, only to discover that had been her adversary's plan all along. The kid was a suicide bomber, who detonated the charges as soon as they were in the other camp. After witnessing the 'many casualties', K ran from the scene never to return. It wasn't the failure of the operation per se that was the problem, but the notion that she had betrayed Watari's trust in her capabilities as a Wammy letter. Nothing to do with the power and influence that comes with that designation either. It was the personal censure invested within Wammy the man that she most feared evoking. He'd brought her out of herself and believed in her abilities following the death of her parents. He'd been kind and caring, with a warm smile and sage advice, making K feel like she counted, even amongst all the rest of the clever, little Wammys around her. She couldn't stand to see his face again, knowing that she'd let him down. That he'd be disappointed in her. It was that personal for the Wammy kids raised to become Letters within the Wammy Foundation. Away from Wammy's House and the man at its helm, K's 'soul had grown darker than the world around it'. A darkness that she couldn't hope to assuage without the total destruction of humankind, wiped from the Earth in order to save the planet.
Not that K had any cause to worry. As L informed the dangerous Dr Kujo - once he'd located her at the centre of the pathogen outbreak - blowing up her team wasn't any deterrent for her beloved Mr Wammy. He'd assigned his letter K to her anyway, coded with the last message he'd conveyed to Kimiko Kujo before her flight from the Wammy fold - Keep Your Way. Astute words in retrospect, though perhaps Watari should have clarified a 'way' amongst the sane options open to her. Moreover, L continued - breaking her heart in knowing this only now - "Even after you left Wammy's, Watari refused to give that designation to anyone else." Awwww! If only she'd grasped that Wammy still loved her, K wouldn't have had to turn Thailand into the vast killing fields of her unleashing viral mass murder. As it was, L promised that she could resume her place at Wammy's House, letter intact, even now, after whole populations lay dead. What was a little genocidal slaughter amongst Watari's kids? When they stood to ensure justice would prevail and the world could be changed. K vowed to do so, returning to Winchester just as soon as her life sentence was done in prison. No doubt Watari - whomever that was likely to be forthwith - would soon intervene and get that time served down to, say, a week. After all, foiled architect of humanity's extinction aside, Kimiko remains a Wammy kid, in receipt of the letter K. Read On: Alphabet of Wammy Letters L-Z
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Originally, Ohba meant to call this character Shadow, as in L's shadow - a moniker with more than one inferred meaning, which fan-fiction writers would have had great fun exploring. However Death Note's editor pooh-poohed the name, telling Ohba, 'No, no! Anything but that!' Hence the author coming up with Watari, which he explained meant 'handler' in Japanese. Watari's Vital Statistics
Key Dates for Watari
The Auguries of Quillsh Wammy
A Versatile Fixer - The Personality of Quillsh Wammy Death Note 13: How to Read gives us an insight into the character of Quillsh Wammy, at least insofar as his author saw him. The older man scores highly for versatility, talent, initiative/willingness to act, motivation and emotional strength. Not far behind are his only slightly lesser scores for creativity, social skills and intelligence. That he doesn't reach the topmost figure for creativity is a little surprising, given that Wammy made his fortune as an inventor. The ultimate creator, one might think, this side of actual divinity. We do get a hint of the kind of things that Wammy invented, when he turns up in the Death Note manga with belts containing panic buttons. Not exactly Bond's Q, but in the ballpark. As befits a man whose wealth and life has become devoted to raising children, his pet hate is 'dirty rooms'. Presumably plenty of those at Wammy's House. I can't quite see the like of Beyond Birthday, Mello and Near running around with a duster. This is an attribute taken to extreme levels in the Death Note TV drama, wherein guests are sprayed with disinfection at the door. The interior of L's headquarters is kept pristine in its cleanliness, with Watari hurrying in to exchange L's shirt should a mere splash of food stain hit upon it. In most tellings of the Death Note story, it's also inferred that Wammy is a fabulous cook. At least there doesn't seem to be any travelling caterer providing all that confectionery for L that his handler regularly delivers. Though it's nowhere stated that Wammy is an Englishman, it's implied in the location of his main orphanage for the training of gifted and talented orphans - Winchester, in England. A further clue is given in his most favourite thing in the world - Earl Grey tea. It's never truly explained how Watari managed to become such a crack marksman either. His sharp-shooting is such that, in the Death Note manga and anime alike, he's able to fire a bullet which blasts a gun from the hand of Yotsuba's Kyosuke Higuchi, far below him on the ground. Wammy himself hovering over the scene in a helicopter at the time. Nor do we learn where Quillsh Wammy acquired such skill in espionage, though he puts that to good use in Death Note, infiltrating various organizations to gain or deliver information. Not least a gathering of Interpol. Nevertheless he passed on all this knowledge, and the thinking/morality behind it, to the children in his care. Maybe more clues to Watari's character reside in those he raised - how they turned out and what became of them. Complete List of Wammy Kids in Death Note Canon Genius children taken from wherever they lived around the world and installed in Wammy's House, Winchester. Here their 'special talents' were cultivated with a top class education, whereupon they were sent back out into the world to put those skills into practice. All of these individuals were nurtured by Wammy - or at least had their upbringing and training overseen remotely by him, as warden Roger Ruvie took orders from above.
Each skilled Wammy kid set loose on the world was assigned a letter by Watari. In L: Change the World, it's stated that this only occurs with the greatest, most intelligent of the Wammy's House outcrop. Kujo is according stunned to belatedly realise that she was afforded the letter K. Dotted across various adaptations of canon, we've practically got the entire alphabet in Wammy Letters. With Watari himself indicated by the Letter W, only H, I, O, S and U are missing. However, some known Wammy alumni never divulge their letters. We don't, for example, know which Matt was assigned, despite him being third in the Wammy House rankings. Nor yet do we know which letter Ryūzaki will take in the forthcoming movie Death Note 2016, assuming that he takes one at all. Meanwhile, by the end of the manga/anime Death Note stories, Near interchangeably uses both N and L. The latter earned post-Kira. Thus giving an insight into the fact that letters can be taken from their peers by successful rivals/successors from the same Institution. This is a system that Wammy himself must have set up. Along with a code of ethics that apparently accounts for serial killers, abductors, biomedical scientists bent on mass destruction and the propensity of Wammy graduates to think it proper to die - or be killed - for want of a puzzle's solution. The Faces of Watari
 There's always been something a little off about events in the Yellow Box Warehouse, wherein was staged Death Note's climactic scenes. It's all good drama nontheless. We get Gevanni's sleight of hand with Death Notes performed like a stage magician's prestige; that breath-taking instant of Light's confession; the chaos and the shooting; a divine madman's soliloquy on the subject of justice; and Near's finest hour in the coldest put-down to ever deaden a burgeoning reality. Not to mention the revelation of Mell0's final heroism, as martyr to the cause (inadvertently taking Matt with him), being more meaningful than hitherto suspected; and the crawling disbelief of Light, as the Kira veneer is stripped from him and we're all reminded that Ryuk was only ever here for the lulz. Then death - a flashing ghost of glowing L, if this is the anime over manga - and everyone leaves to resume normality in a world, where the given order has long since been shaken to the core. Global society now quickly recovering with a haste almost indecent enough to prove Kira right after all. And everyone lived happily ever after. So - Run it by Us Again - How Did Death Note End?! I Think We Missed a Bit...  Except they didn't. Do you know a single Death Note fan who hasn't at least questioned the unfolding narrative in that scene? Attempting to follow Near's proof and logic from confrontation to conclusion; not only of the moment, but the whole story supposedly unravelling in evidence that leads directly to Light's undignified demise. I think everyone read or watched it again at least twice. I've lost count of forum posts with each new fandom victim meandering to say, 'Erm, sorry, but I don't quite get this.' Thus follows the specific point where they tripped down yawning the plot-holes, now opening up like a minefield across the scene: What did Mello do again? How did Near know x, y, z? Is he psychic or something? And what the sweet proverbial was up with Mikami's bizarreness in behaviour generally and facial expressions definitely? Everyone too busy worrying that they were the only one left confused to even touch upon the gore of that arterial blood-burst, so gloried in the anime as Mikami's dramatic turn at self-harm. You know what I mean. We've all been there. Several detailed readings or stop-contemplate-start viewings on, some of us can even convince ourselves that the denunciation is sequential; all points supported with no great leaps of faith; and it all makes sense. Otherwise we've sat though 37 episodes/108 chapters of story that doesn't deliver at the final crescendo of all that build-up. Which can't be true, when the tale is widely deemed to be a - perhaps the - classic of the genre; wildly, unabashedly and unceasingly popular on a global scale. So the doubt creeps in that it's us instead. We weren't genius enough to fully 'get' it. It's enough to pretend we did, then run with the points that were discerned and fitted perfectly in place. The rest is simply fan-fiction. Death Note Doesn't End at the Yellow Box  The problem is our natural propensity to think of Death Note as Light's story. It's not. It's Ryuk's. (Though Tarot Mikami is coming up shortly with an intriguing perspective on the manga also being Matsuda's tale.) Nevertheless when the epic build up breaks upon Kira's death, and subsequent dissembling into nothingness, it can seem like we went with him. What follows is way too often dismissed as superlative; an epilogue to bring us all back down to Earth. While mischievously inserting doubt over whether Light really lost, when Kira worshippers still ritually congregate and believe. But this, not Kira's Curtain, was what it was all leading up to. Tsugumi Ohba himself said, in How to Read - Death Note 13, that the vision of these scenes in Finis were what caused the spark of inspiration to flow through the rest of the Death Note narrative. All else he wrote was working back from this, no tacked on arcs post-L, nor leaping into the grave with Light. For all their game-changing grandeur, they were ultimately merely markers upon the narrative, pointing beyond themselves to now. Pinging upon the sacred number of Defilements in Buddhism, Finis is chapter 108. It always would be. Ohba decided that one early on, and left the one-shot manga to follow unnumbered so not to alter the fact that Death Note has exactly 108 chapters. You can count them on your Mala Beads, if you want. So what great facet is revealed to us here? That Light found divinity in the end? That the world without him simply returns to previous form: crime rate rising to pre-Kira levels; all else flowing back as if the last seven years had been erased, with even the same people in the streets, older, yet doing exactly the same things. Light's endeavours, and even erstwhile existence, rendered meaningless in minute, subtle ways. Like the return of Yamamoto, last seen in cameo within the earliest Death Note chapters as Light Yagami's friend; now greeting Matsuda as his BFF, and off they go to the pub. Light's own mother never learning the truth of his loss. Told lies to cover up the reality as seen and shaped by her son. His place in the world, philosophy, perspective and pursuits all rendered Mu as his Kira ridden soul. All else come full circle and moved on like he was never there. Nor is this the point of Finis. It just the fine detail in the background driving certain messages home; if we're charitable a coda of candles in the wind.  Matsuda's Theory is Not a Coda; It's the Final Piece in the Jigsaw Puzzle  It's in the foreground that the big reveal is happening, hidden in plain sight through the chattering of a 'Fool' and already dismissed by Ide before we even make the mountain top. Most readers agreeing, because we're too distracted by Light and all the lovely Easter eggs waving from the scenery. Plus we already feel like idiots for not quite 'getting' the Near exposee of Light in the Yellow Box Warehouse, and we're damned if we're going to be drawn into another long explanation posited by a traumatized idiot. Matsuda's always been so easy to dismiss. Particularly now, when we recently saw his gullibility writ large upon that shattering previous scene. His shock in the great Kira reveal caused such a meltdown that he's probably suffering PTSD or something now. Racked with guilt over Soichiro and so many dead; still obviously wrestling with the shock of knowing a third of his life was lived as a lie; his loyalty disabused in the most belittling, gut-wrenching way. We don't need the ghost of L to whisper, 'Shut up, Matsuda! You idiot!' Because we're hardly listening anyway. It's just background noise finally shut down by Ide, tacitly approved by all lost in mourning for our mass murdering megalomaniac and his warped sense of justice. Now echoed by Ide himself, as he decrees Kira's crimes terrible enough to warrant his summary execution - with an illegally wielded firearm (Matsuda was technically off-duty) and a Death God's intervention, in an out of the way warehouse, without charge, nor trial, judge and jury, and no right of appeal before instant death. Based upon evidence constructed from a self-confessed SPK sting, plus Near sounding so sure as he blithely divulged bits of the known coupled with conjecture, like it was the only way things could have played out. His speech, on behalf of the prosecution in this kangaroo court condemnation of Kira, seemed utterly watertight. Yet Near was still able to reorder his version of events, to encompass the implications of Mello's intent in Takada's abduction, as Hal Lidner testified her impression of the same rather late in the day. It was an interpretation which cast a different hue upon the timeline, but delivered in confidence nontheless and received likewise from all who heard. Just as they'd accepted the prior telling too. Maybe because they, like those bearing witness from our ringside seats in the fourth wall, couldn't truly follow it at the time. But Near is a genius, so it must be true; and who cares why or how a Mafia man died? While Matt only turned up twelve panels ago, if he'd lived he probably wouldn't have amounted to much. We hardly knew him, so let him go - collateral damage in a war against a man too rotten to live in this world of safety and security, and justice. Around this time in proceedings, it's normally behoven for babes or Fools to call out to say that the Emperor wears no clothes; or that in this Orwellian warehouse scenario it's getting difficult to call the pigs from the humans, humans from the pigs, nor tell the rationale of Kira from those arrayed extra-judicially against him. Unfortunately the Fool Matsuda was in meltdown at the time, being dragged away by his friends; while the only child present was made judge and chief prosecutor at the same time. Needless to say, he won the day. Then watched Light Yagami die as a result; howling, without advocacy, nor anyone to ask whether Light was even sane enough at this point to understand what was happening to him. Or take the opportunity to arrest Kira, hold him safe, and learn what he knew about the Afterlife and eternity, and all those other things that philosophers, priests and ordinary people have pondered to distraction over every millennia of human sentience. Instead all watched too, accepting the sense of prevailing 'rightness' in the air around Near. Who watched Kira die and kept the Death Notes. Which was the actual point of the Yellow Box confrontation - to knock out the opposition and clear the decks ready to quietly seize power, when no-one else was looking. At least it is, if we're running with the gut instinct of Matsuda and some really quite compelling end game theories for Near in Death Note. No Black and White in Light and Near - Matsuda Muses Upon Morality Post-Kira One year to the day after the death of Light Yagami, Touta Matsuda still isn't convinced that they were on the right 'side' in the end. He watches society sink back from fear of Kira into a resurgence of the usual mix of humanity for good or ill living as they will. With the inevitable wave of criminal behaviour surfing in ever higher numbers in their midst, Matsuda's depression deepens. For those not actually targeted by Kira, these streets had been safer under his horrific regime. It's an unsettling notion that maybe, after all, they did crucify their Saviour. Yet sharing his concerns with Ide elicits a most telling reply:  Kira was wrong. Because that's what they DECIDED by consensus was the case. Kira has to be wrong, or else there was no purpose attached to the sacrifice of those serving on the anti-Kira Task Force, nor who lost their lives in other parties in his opposition. Condemn Light Yagami's worldview, and his prospective Godhood with it, and survivors like Matsuda, Ide, Aizawa, Mogi and Near with his group all become war heroes. Able to feel pride in their past endeavours and self-respect for themselves. Their fallen - Soichiro, Ukita, L, Watari, Raye Penbar, Mello, Matt et al - become martyrs in a noble cause. The Glorious Dead of cenotaphs, remembered with honour and distinction. Support Kira in memory and all that fails. Each become betrayers, of a friend and comrade, perhaps of a Messiah. Maybe even the destroyers of humanity itself; thieves of a genuine Utopian dream. It was decided Kira was not right, because otherwise they wouldn't be able to grasp what they were fighting for in that bitter, seven year war. And madness beckons that way.
Does Tota Matsuda's Theory Reveal Death Note Truths as its Grand Manga Finale? For all that its generally ignored, or blatantly rejected within the panels of the Death Note manga, Matsuda's theory isn't that off the wall. It's nestling comfortably in the realms of actual possibility. Whilst recalling that this was the chapter planned from the start - following one that was almost called Black Curtain (a Japanese euphemism for someone orchestrating events behind the scenes) - and that Tsugumi Ohba blatantly said that 'Near cheats', let's recap. These were the points of plot that Touta Matsuda was pondering: Near Played Mello like a Puppet Before indulging in speculation about this part of Matsuda's Theory re Mello, please read what Death Note News reader Dominic Miller has to comment below. He has effectively disproved its veracity, as Near didn't have Mikami's notebook in time for this sequence of events to be feasible.
However, we never do find out. Matsuda manages to convince Ide to at least intimidate some parts of his theory have been heard, and taken seriously. For a moment, the older man steps into Touta Matsuda's reality and that kind of affirmation was all the young officer needed for comfort in his unsolvable, unsettling theorizing. A touch of grace and we see the old Fool back. Matsuda grinning with a friend, too busy chatting, making plans to visit a bar tonight, to properly hear a word Near has to say anymore. The final word in Death Note - before the ritual coda of Kira cultists - is Near's admonishment to Matsuda, "Listen carefully!"  Maybe because Near knows that he might need Matsuda one day to stop him too, if only the Fool would pay attention. But for now he's distracted, laughing and moved on, Near got away with killing for personal gain. But surely that's understandable? Just ask Kira.
Success of the Redeemer Series - Death Note Fan-Fic by Maru-Light & Andariel 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? Writing on The Redeemer Series Begins to Break Down 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. Backlash of Death Note Redeemer Series Readers 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. The Redeemer Series Transforms into The Breaking Across Devotion Series  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.   Screenshot of the current homepage for our Death Note Gift shop Are you loving the Death Note Christmas gift shop gif that's over there on the sidebar being all festive? Wonderful, isn't it? Orangepunch created it for us and it's been gently snowing away in that corner, calling people in to remember that seasonal Death Note decorations do exist and all that. Whilst also reminding me that I never did get around to finishing half of the stores that it's inviting people in to visit. Plus some of them went up with way too big images attached to every pretty product, rendering them too long to load for the average sense of patience to withstand. If it doesn't crash the prospective buyers internet first. What can I say, I was young and foolish, followed by forgetful and lazy. Swiftly introducing, 'Oh no! All of that should have been fixed months ago!' *cue pulling an all-nighter* into the bargain. One unfathomably long night later, we have a much improved Death Note Gift Emporium (though granted, that might have been more useful a few weeks ago BEFORE you bought all your Xmas presents), plus some new departments entirely. You will still find flaws in there (size of pics in DVDs and books pages, we're all looking at you), but I also found something quite intriguing to bring to the table. Plus some gossip. What's New in Death Note Gifts? First let me run you through what's changed and sparkly new in our Death Note shopping area, plus a 'to do' list of what's coming up, so you can check if the issue you've found is already known. If not, then naturally we'd be very grateful to get the heads up. The front page (screenshot above) got a redesign. The thumbnails were all much reduced in size, in order to boost the speed at which the page loads. Hopefully it is much more navigable now. In addition, every Death Note merchandise page has been reconfigured with funky tabs - making finding things at a glance much easier and again dropping that load time a lot! Check them out in any department clicked below. Death Note Decorations & Party Stuff
Death Note OSTs & Other Musical Things
GOSSIP STOP! In filling up those cyber shelves, I found several new Death Note tribute tracks by other artists, including two available for pre-order on release dates later this month or January. They are both in our gift store now, but I will be hunting down the musicians and featuring them as separate Death Note News reports. Death Note's 10th anniversary, TV drama or upcoming movies, appear to have inspired a veritable flood of them! Happy days. Death Note Cosplay & Costume Accessories
Death Note Manga & Other Books
Death Note Anime, Movies and Other DVDs
Brand New Character Collections for Death Note Gift Ideas These next two kick start a whole new category in Death Note memorabilia - collections based on merchandise for Death Note characters. I'm sure that most people choosing which characters to begin would have gone for Light and L. But I know my readership. Death Note Mello Merchandise
Death Note Matt Gifts & Memorabilia
Anyone want to prod us towards which character to compile a collection for next? If there's no broad hints in any other direction, we'll default to Light Yagami and work through the series from there. Though I'm half tempted to be perverse and go Sachiko Yagami instead! Reckon there would be anything out there to buy in honour of Light's mother? But this brings us nicely to the salient question with which I led. Is Death Note's Matt a Motorcycle Enthusiast? Or Just a Punk?  In manga and anime, we only ever see Matt driving a car, but is that his transport of choice? I know where my money is. In fact, I've written twelve novels of Mello/Matt fan-fiction spelling it out - and one of them initially ran with the working title Cyberpunk. Another had titles lifted from several Cyberpunk dictionaries and cultural references. Matt in my universe ended up with a motorbike once, but we've barely seen it since. Maybe that's because I've missed a trick. In conjunction with most of the Death Note Matt fandom, I missed what was in plain sight, because I never thought to look certain things up. Matt's gift shop was looking a bit sparse. Mello's was jam packed. I felt bad. So I thought it would be a nice idea to hunt for that habitual Matt costume for Death Note cosplayers to buy, love and cherish. After all, its probably the most ubiquitously seen, ordinary collection of clothes on any Death Note character. You could grab half the items in any given mainstream clothes shop. Or could you? It's harder than it looks, this cosplay malarkey. I started with the gloves. How do you search for those? They're quite distinctive. Racing gloves? Long, black gloves for men? Finally, I found them. They are officially known - in non-Death Note circles - as motorcyclist's gauntlet gloves, or motorbike racing gauntlet gloves. Next I went for the goggles. Bog standard cyberpunk, I thought, with an option on steampunk, if that outfitting genre fell short. Close, but no cigar. Yet I was finding something similar, if not precise, in a whole new class of goggle sporting necessities. Necessary, that is, if you happen to be a motorbike racer. Like those wearing the gloves too. Shoved some stripy, long-sleeved tops in and off into the jeans department. Mmmm, several billion here, what to search in order to narrow this down? Ribbed jeans? Denim with circles around them? Turns out that there are some jeans created specifically with patchwork patterns surrounding each leg - just like Matt's wears in fact. They're made especially for bikers. Apparently it improves their saddle grip upon the seat. Saves them slipping about, as ordinary jeans might.  Mello checking the manual to ensure that he is legally able to ride Matt's motorbike... possibly So goggles, gloves and jeans all point due Matt the motorbike rider, with a strong nudge towards racing them too. You going for that in your head canon? Fan fiction writers, is that why he's beside a bike the first time we see him, and why Mello acquires one only after Matt's on the scene? Death Note fan artists, what motorcycle does Mail Jeevas ride? If this releases the throttle on anybody's muse, let me link the results, or show them off here.
Or are you just going 'cyberpunk geek' like me, and dismissing this out of hand? I'd be fascinated with your thoughts!
Since then, the kittens have a travel case so lovely that they doze in it all day in the house and enter it willingly for any journeys out. They've also been to the vets and had their first immunisations, plus flea and worm treatment, and an appointment made for them to be micro-chipped. Two thirds of that was paid for in Mello and Matt fan-fiction commissions (give or take the couple about EHC members). Thank you all!
(And this is still on-going. There's still the neutering/spraying to happen, and the boa constrictor needs a larger vivarium. *sobs*) I've also been really touched by how many people, in donating to the cause and providing me with a remit for their tale, wanted it set in my own Mello/Matt universe. I didn't expect that. I'll be honest and say that it made things a lot easier in terms of speedily getting these stories written and out. But I anticipated all kinds of AUs and/or alternatives from the canon. Not so much Matti!Canon, coupled with (so far) unanimous permission from all commissioning tales, for those stories to be shared with everyone else. Lots of happy tears here. Reading compliments and requests, feeling so honoured to be entrusted with long-treasured plot bunnies and witnessing readers of my work wanting to add their own chapter in my voice to the MelloxMatt Matti!canon. Absolutely thank you all. Where to Read New Mello/Matt MRSJeevas Fan-Fiction
Shadow Riso EHC symbols, inspired by MRSJeevas One-Shot Laughter in the Darkness
These stories belong to those who bought them. However, everyone so far asked that they be shared. They are supposed to be drabbles (or one-shots), but since when was I able to be that succinct. One is currently in the process of becoming a novella.
As one-shots, they usually first appear in the relevant sub-forum at He Moves Me Differently: Matti!Canon Mello/Matt One-Shots Those with an account registered at the forum can subscribe at the top, in order to be notified of any post updates. My stories eventually turn up in the library too. That may be located on my MRSJeevas fan-fiction website, also called He Moves Me Differently. It could be practically simultaneously. It could be days later. All depends on when I log into my ftp server and upload them there too. However, I will link you directly here to the most recent additions, as posted onto the forum:
 How the Death Note world first met L Light and Soichiro Yagami are both first viewed head on, but from a few feet away, framed by their environment and with the reader positioned above left. Father and son are each sitting behind desks - one at school, the other at Interpol - with their arms crossed before them. They are in rows, surrounded by others all seated the same, facing towards a single frontal focus point.  Like father, like son - our first sight of the Yagami men in Death Note manga panels Even the shapes of things on their tables mirror, in polar opposite colours, objects on the surface before the other. A microphone bisects our view of Soichiro's desk. A pen apes its short straight line and direction on that of his son. What is that black rectangle in front of Light Yagami? Is it a pencil case with a white pattern upon it? Its contours and colour is mimicked in the white name-plate identifying his father and colleague as representatives of Japan. Complete with their nation's flag - seen without hues as fundamentally a white square with a black sun. Practically Ying Yang - black with white for Light; white with black for Soirchiro. See what I mean? Much more to look into, while inspecting the first Death Note manga panels for major characters, than might be supposed. Perhaps hidden bits of sub-plot in where Tsugumi Ohba directed, or Takeshi Obata just draw, correlations between certain individuals. As Neil Gaiman wrote in Sandman (and I'm fond of repeating to readers of my fan fiction) - Always trust the story, never the storyteller. There's always more to see in the subtleties and the little things, the links and what's left out. And today I learned that artists are just as bad. Discover more first sightings in the manga of Death Note personae in Kyoko Kikuchi's Death Note blog. Then keep on reading, because also found and ready for the analysing are the panels wherein we see each character's face for the first time. Plus, if they survived the time jump, then Kyoko also digs out the picture introducing us to that individual's older self in the second arc. We could be here for hours. However, the collection did miss out Matt's first Death Note manga appearance, in chapter 83, page 10. Let me make good that omission. And oh! Look! Just like Mello, Near, L, Ryuk and Misa, he's looking away with his face concealed. Interesting.  The fandom's first glimpse of Death Note's Matt  Platinum End begins - chapter 1, page 1, and front cover of the English version Platinum End - the new manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, Death Note's creators - launched today with its first chapter simultaneously appearing in Japanese and English translations on opposite sides of the Pacific. Readers in Japan may find it serialized in Jump Square magazine's December 2015 issue 12 (Nov. 4th 2015), while English readers can download a digital version from Viz Media's Weekly Shonen Jump website.  Jump Square Issue 12 front cover and contents for introduction of Platinum End Naturally a copy of the first chapter of Platinum End has been grabbed here, so we can see what it's all about and how the Death Note fandom might possibly receive this latest manga by Ohba and Obata.
However, sensible of spoilers, all thoughts in review of the chapter will be hidden behind a read more mask.  Fanfiction Novel Contest on Inkitt How would you like to help fan fiction about Mello and Matt win the top spot? Not mine this time, but Rhiannon D'Averc's brilliant Kriminalist in the running for Inkitt's Fandom completion. The winner can expect assistance in publishing their original novel-length composition as a real world book. In addition, digital trophies will be awarded to those authors ranked first, second and third with their stories. Those finishing in the topmost 10% will receive a cyber badge reflecting that achievement. Plus, you know, glory and greatness all round. Recommending Kriminalist - Mello/Matt Fan Fiction Novel by Rhiannon D'Averc  Reacting on Twitter to reading Kriminalist As Death Note fan fiction goes, the multi-chaptered Kriminalist is one of the long term classics in Mello and Matt fandom stories. It takes place in an AU universe, wherein neither are killed but suffer the indignity of watching Near take down Kira in the Yellow Box warehouse. After spending most of their young lives chasing L's killer, in order to become his acclaimed successor, they've lost. So what now? While Mello freaks, Matt plans. A future is born in a brand new detective code to rival L's own. This time as a partnership, blooming in clues and cases, as well as deepening their dealings with each other. Not your average romance, but one to delight those who ship Mello and Matt amidst the Death Note fraternity. Here's how the author describes her MelloMatt fan fiction entry in the novel length (40,000 words plus) Fandom competition on Inkitt:  Kriminalist - MelloxMatt fan fiction entry on Inkitt (Screenshot October 9th 2015) Kriminalist was recommended to me years ago. Waiting until the other night to read it was an error. I should have been in there when it was first mentioned. This was one of those moments when I was half asleep and clicked on to the link 'just to see how it starts'. Next thing I knew, it was several hours later - sleep now being a thing which happens to other people - and the whole novel was read. How could great writing like that be put down, until the tale was told? How to Vote for Kriminalist on Inkitt  I'm not going to tell you how to vote - that's for your conscience to decide
But if you want to read Rhiannon D'Averc's Kriminalist, in this context, you will find the opening chapter here. It's currently placed at number 166 - with two votes - being beaten by fan fiction novels based on Twilight, Naruto, Pokemon, Supernatural and One Piece, amongst very many more. Mello and Matt are being beaten by Twilight. Twilight. Edward/Bella are pwning Mello/Matt. All I'm saying. Kriminalist is currently the top ranked Death Note fan fiction novel in the Inkitt contest. It may even be the only one, as I'm yet to find more. Good luck, Rhiannon, and thank you for writing a tremendous MelloxMatt novel length fan fiction tale. |
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