25 KiB
Death note rational fiction
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Author: u/Annieelo *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7ruoa7/death_note_rational_fiction/
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Score: 18
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Created: 2018-01-21T01:23:40
Post:
Is there any good death note rational fanfiction ? I feel like this anime/manga beg to have its own story where light is actually rational.
Comments:
u/wren42 [+17] (23 minutes later)
I was thinking about this a few months ago. Haven't found anything great. I was thinking of writing something with a light that actually rationally pursues the betterment of humanity rather than self aggrandizement. The problem is if he's careful and doesnt mess up early L will have almost no chance of finding him. It was only his desire to go public with Kira that made him exposed. If he stayed in the shadows it would be impossible to detect much less stop.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+36] (an hour later)
You can just change the order of events. Let Light go on his killing spree uncaught for a while. People will still detect that there is a Kira going around mass killing criminals (due to the sudden unnatural rise in death rates among criminals, no matter how accidental they seem), but L would have no idea where he is.
Then enter Misa, who self-proclaims as second Kira and is as incompetent as she is in canon, leading to a race between L and Light to track her down. L wants to catch her so he can figure out the murder method, and then use that knowledge to hunt down the first Kira. Light wants to catch her before anyone else does, because they could publicly announce the murder method and then everyone would hide their real names, forcing Light to either trade half his lifespan for Shinigami eyes or have a useless Death Note.
u/wren42 [+16] (5 hours later)
Misa is a good wildcard to create chaos for sure.
Thing is I wouldn't even have him killing criminals in a way that indicates a supernatural force. Step one would be use death note to carefully acquire more traditional means of power and influence. Have some unethical Bitcoin owners hand over their keys untracably then die of accidents. Influence major business decisions to manipulate markets you invest in. Set up networks of influence in gangs/dictatorships by having the right people assassinated and cronies put in power. You want to build financial and political power than can be used to do things other than just kill. Killing alone is a limited tool. You want to reserve the note for cases where the behavior manipulation is useful, because that's actually its strongest power. Then use your money and influence to enact humanitarian policies, end wars, encourage investment in science etc.
What L and the international law enforcement orgs would start noticing is this steady consolidation of more traditional power and elimination of people with harmful ideologies on a global scale. The game would be much further along by the time the patterns emerged, and L would be competing with an extremely powerful opponent, his only advantage being his own stealth. I think it would be interesting but the cat and mouse would take a very different form.
u/ShiranaiWakaranai [+13] (7 hours later)
Have some unethical Bitcoin owners hand over their keys untracably then die of accidents.
You want to reserve the note for cases where the behavior manipulation is useful, because that's actually its strongest power.
On the other hand, it is also the most traceable power. Remember the hidden rules of the death note that Light discovered via experimentation: the actions that you make the target do must be something that they can do, and have a motive to do. So you can't just write "Do X Untracably": your target will just get a heart attack and die without doing X if they don't know how to do X untracably. At best, you can write "Do X as secretly as possible". But then remember that your targets are usually pretty stupid, since they were stupid enough to commit evil crimes and get caught. How well do you really think they can perform task X without being traced?
And even if you get past the traceability issue, there's still the motive issue. You are not a mind reader, and you're often targeting strangers you barely know anything about. (If you target a non-stranger, that's a link to you.) So determining whether someone has a motive to do X can be very difficult depending on what X is. And it seems especially unlikely that they have a motive to do X if X is something like give you all their money, since you are just a random stranger to them. Guess wrong about whether they have a motive and they just get a heart attack and die without doing X.
Influence major business decisions to manipulate markets you invest in. Set up networks of influence in gangs/dictatorships by having the right people assassinated and cronies put in power. You want to build financial and political power than can be used to do things other than just kill.
This is literally what Higuchi did, and he got caught fast. Granted, in his case he had the disadvantage of the note's powers already being known, but the fact that someone is getting rich very quickly though very coincidental deaths is a red flag. You wouldn't get L's attention just yet since you haven't done any mass murders, but this is leaving a trail that he can follow back once you do get his attention.
Also, wouldn't this require murdering innocent people? It isn't like there are evil criminals crawling all over the business market. (Okay, there probably are, but most of them are hiding it well, so you wouldn't be able to tell who is innocent.)
Then use your money and influence to enact humanitarian policies, end wars, encourage investment in science etc.
Are you changing Light's values in addition to making him more rational? Because he doesn't really care about all that. He is a son of a policeman, and so is obsessed with enforcing justice, not utility. He values creating a world without evil much more highly than anything else.
Enacting humanitarian policies and investing in science would increase standards of living, but would it eliminate evil? That's hard to say for sure. Industrialization happened and yet we still have plenty of the same sorts of murderers and rapists as we did back in the stone age. And it certainly won't be as effective as the mass supernatural murder of evil criminals, which would directly eliminate evil criminals as well as terrorize most villains into acting good, or at least more subtly, which greatly decreases the amount of harm they can do since they are constrained by the need to maintain secrecy.
I mean, it is your fanfic, so you can change Light's values so that he no longer wants to mass murder criminals, but then you would lose Misa and L completely. Misa only became second Kira after being inspired by the first, so no Kira = Misa just continues her normal idol life. L only became interested because he wanted to solve the puzzle of the mass murders. So no mass murders = Light's case is utterly boring = L doesn't care. You would end up with a 1 man story of Light doing Light things.
u/wren42 [+5] (13 hours later)
I agree with most of your points and they are exactly what would drive the plot.
A few clarifications: yes, I'm changing lights motives to a degree. At the very start, he states he wants to improve the world. I'm starting from there with the rational rewrite. I don't think a smart, rational light would see mass killing criminals as the best way to accomplish improving the world. Its a dumb plan for so many reasons. Terrorizing criminals won't eliminate crime. The best bet is to improve the human condition and invest in sociological study of the root causes of criminality. So from the outset his path is different and more humanist, just like HJPEV. His rise to power consists of the first section of the story.
Secondly, yes financial and political influence is traceable, but without the mass murder no one is looking for it until very late stage. Light will already have money and power through surrogates and aliases by the time L starts on his trail, but he will be able to look back and find the path of bodies as you suggested. This is the detective cat and mouse game, which comprises the second section of the narrative.
The third final section involves some other twists and bringing in more characters to increase the action.
A few other things:
I think the death notes ability to manipulate is stronger than you imply. In the anime he has criminals write specific messages in their own blood before killing themselves. Having someone buy Bitcoin and leave their keys in an anonymous dropbox is easy. There's no question of motive in the show, he makes people do things against their will all the time. Not sure where that is coming from. This power gives him really subtle control and access to tons of sensitive information and resources.
EDIT: I rewatched those scenes to refresh myself. You are right that he was unable to get the criminal to leave a message directly referencing L and Kira, since the prisoner had no knowledge of the events or people mentioned. So the subject can't do something completely outside what they know already. However the pentagram and specific messages with an acrostic embedded through 3 different notes are extremely specific and certainly not something they would have come up with on their own. This makes the limits of the Deathnote's power somewhat fuzzy and likely exploitable.
He would obviously not use this as Higuchi did to personally climb a criminal network. He would use surrogates anonymously, basically offer through an intermediary to help them rise if they stay indebted to him and feed him information and do favors. Then show he can kill people in their way via traditional looking means. They would be both in his debt and aware he could kill them, but have no clues to his identity, probably assuming he's kgb or CIA or some other big crime Lord.
This is one of the things L would eventually pick up on though- kaizer soze like rumors of a criminal overlord running everything behind the scenes. But he'd also note that really nasty crimes, like child trafficking, were getting shut down from the inside very aggressively.
Anyway, I think there's plenty of material for a smart ethical light who doesn't take the path of cannon light at all. The power of the death note is barely explored in cannon imo, he uses it very brute Force when it has so much more potential.
u/FordEngineerman [+6] (a day later)
I don't think you are writing Light at all anymore though. That's fine because the Death Note itself is an interesting enough item to have lots of fiction written about it.
u/wren42 [+3] (a day later)
It'd definitely be a rewrite the character, much like HPMOR. Redoing deathnote with Light being identical I don't think is very interesting; he's already pretty smart, and makes some mistakes but this is human. I feel like cannon Light got the treatment he deserved in the original. Any fanfic needs to branch off in a significant way, and making Lights motivation more rational seems like the best way to make it a rationalist fic.
The problem the deathnote poses to an ethical, humanist rationalist is interesting. One of Elizier's big tennents he put in bold letters was THOU SHALT NOT KILL THOSE WHO DISAGREE WITH YOU. Killing is taboo as a solution to a problem in his worldivew.
This makes the deathnote troublesome as a tool. Can someone remain ethically centered while killing for utilitarian gain? Is killing - other than self-defense- an acceptable utilitarian act in the right circumstances?
I feel like these questions were ignored entirely in cannon. Light committed 100% to killing people he saw as evil from day 1. He had no qualms, and in time went further into psychopathic megalomania. This makes for an interesting character, but it ignores the moral questions or struggle.
Making Light a more cautious person trying to do good is interesting unexplored territory. He will obviously need to use the deathnote for the story to progress, but these questions can be sources of ethical turmoil in way they weren't in cannon.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
[deleted]
u/wren42 [+3] (3 days later)
That's a fair point, though I don't think the change is as severe as you are imagining. The R!Light would retain much of his basic personality and abilities pre-deathnote. He is still ambitious, highly intelligent, and somewhat egotistical. The main things that are changing is that he pursues his goals more rationally, and that extends to how he sets his intermediary goals.
Cannon!Light's goal at the start is to reduce crime and increase justice throughout the world. He decides the way to do this is to kill criminals publicly and make it obviously supernatural.
I don't think a truly rational Light would take this path. He would realize
a) the incidence of killing innocents would be high if basing it merely off publicly available suspects (not even convicts)
b) people aren't very motivated by fear of punishment in a general sense. the existing justice system already threatens to kill people for murder; yet murder occurs. Even if Kira were killing thousands of additional criminals per year, it would barely make a dent in the some 800,000 annual murder rate.
c)acting in this way has a high chance of getting caught, resulting in an inability to act further in the future.
d) as a corollary to c, at some point Kira will die or stop operating. What happens to humanity then? He has not changed human nature or society; just applied a temporary pressure to disincentivize crime. Once that pressure is gone, crime will return to prior levels, or worse. To have a lasting effect, he should aim to change human society and institutions in a permanent way.
So, take essentially the same Light from the start of the series, before becoming a mass murderer-- intelligent, bold, driven by a strong sense of justice, and somewhat egotistical -- and give him better big picture vision and foresight and a more rational approach to the problem, and you have the character I envision.
I don't think a new character is necessary to fill this role; Light's familiarity is still useful for a fanfic.
u/696e6372656469626c65 [+3] I think, therefore I am pretentious. (3 days later)
Readers of fanfiction are less inclined to read a particular story if it's about an OC.
u/Frommerman [+2] (19 hours later)
Depending on your interpretation of the Note, you could get around the motivation issue by having them die in ways which encrypt the Bitcoin wallet private keys as some other, more mundane action. Say you can get access to the security camera footage of the hours before the guy dies somehow, then use the order in which he does specific things which he would do otherwise to extract the keys from his mind.
Setting up a system like this would probably require cramped handwriting to fit it all on one page, but given that the Note can already process natural language, thinking it can parse conditional statements isn't too insane.
u/wren42 [+2] (a day later)
this seems more than plausible IMO. Light embedded a secret message to L in an acrostic in the notes he had prisoners write. The ability to manipulate them seems extremely detailed and subtle, and given the 23 day rules you could be controlling their actions for weeks before hand. it should be trivial to get a target to leave funds in an untraceable form you can collect anonymously. hell just have them create a new account with the credentials you specify and leave the money there to be withdrawn at a later date.
also details can be written across more than one page according to the rules. only the name has to be on a single page.
u/Annieelo [+2] (2 days later)
The problem with this is time and resources. I agree about this way being more consistent with an attempt to improve the world, but this requires way too much planification and knowledge about the internal institution he wants to act on. Furthermore, I don't think that money and power is enough to change that much the world. The main reason why the death note was effective is because of the fear of a supernatural punishment. Randomization of the criminals he kills and the hour at which he kills them would cover the tractability problem he had.
u/wren42 [+4] (2 days later)
I don't think that random killing of criminals would have the impact Light expects or even what the anime shows. It would simply drive more crime underground. Fear of punishment doesn't deter crime today, nor did it when most people believed in the supernatural and heaven/hell. I don't believe human society would respond as represented, with "war ending" and "murder reduced by 70%". It's absurdly optimistic.
There are some places where the deathnote would be an extremely effective tool, of course. Osama bin laden could have been killed in a day. Targeting known terrorist leaders and authoritarian dictators could dramatically improve some of the most oppressed parts of the world. And the control the deathnote gives over the manner of the death is extremely powerful and under exploited by Light.
For instance, rather than just killing random criminals and suspects, say he gains information about organizers of sex trafficing rings, and writes their names with "dies of gunshot in surprise police raid on their office, while compiling a list of clientele for blackmail."
Light could use conventional law enforcement to his advantage rather than working against him by subtly manipulating events to weaken organized crime and provide key evidence. This is just one example, of course.
u/Annieelo [+1] (2 days later)
After reflexion, I think that you are right. But would it still make sense for L to chase Light? The same way saying that killing every criminal in order to improve the world is stupid, chasing someone who genuinely improves the world with a mentality of ''a murder is a murder and murder are wrong no matter how much the ratio benefits/life cost is" sound pretty stupid too.
u/wren42 [+2] (3 days later)
that's a good question! It depends on how L comes across the case.
My outline so far has L being hired to take on a case from an influential businessman who is paranoid he is going to be killed. He has noticed a pattern of several of his associates dying in suspicious ways that appear to be accidents. L is intrigued, and starts investigating. His search eventually leads him to what appears to be a global conspiracy involved in a range of killings and consolidating power and money across the globe. But he will, as you suggest, also notice that many of these killings seem to be ethically motivated, and be faced with his own moral dilemma on whether or not it should be opposed.
u/Annieelo [+1] (4 days later)
Interesting! Of course he will be opposed (if not... no story) I'm also curious about how L will find the identity of Light? Do you plan to let the light make mistakes? Or a more clever use of bait (like Lind L Tailor) or a better manipulation of the information available on the net and media? Sorry, so many questions in mind.
u/wren42 [+2] (4 days later)
Yes, I think L's primary motivation is boredom/curiosity and drive to win, more than ethics. So there will be a struggle, but with a much more ambiguous morality - Light is killing people for what appear to be pure intentions (at least from a utilitarian perspective), while L is chasing him to enforce the law based on mostly selfish motives. While cannon has Light as a clear villain, I think this ambiguity in who is really doing the right thing is interesting.
As far as how L can make progress, as others in this thread noted any use of the deathnote to accumulate traditional forms of power is traceable to some degree, no matter how careful you are. the best strategy is not to be targeted in the first place, but once they are on you it's mostly a matter of time if they are persistent and smart.
There are also ways to throw more chaos into the mix of course with Misa and other characters. I'm imagining the final part of the story will take a pretty sharp turn and depart from the cannon cat and mouse game in big ways. Assuming I ever get there, of course ;)
u/FlameDragonSlayer [+1] (9 days later)
I dont think that using law enforcement will work as cause of death, first of all, i dont think manipulation of other people is within the scope of the Death Notes powers, since it is already limited to something the death noted person CAN do and otherwise it will result in a heart attack, so it is death noted guy cant magically have a surprise raid unless he orders it himself. Secondly, it is unlikely that all police officers are going to be clean, especially in developing countries, and even in developed countries you have police brutality e.g paris police rape, american police shootings, so iys lokely that criminals would have the police in their pockets, especially the higher ranking ones as they are probably ones who make major decisions like raids and such, also how are immoral police treated, those who get off scott free due to protectionism of police departments,
Another aspect to think about is how you'll treat the corrupt government officials, those who make lawa or regulations that are clearly against the people but they become legal, how will Light handle this?, and this beggars a bigger question, what about corporations, clearly immoral, and try to get away with as much illegal shit as they possibly can, many of them cause a shit ton of second or third hand deaths,e.g. dumping toxoc waste in water sources, harmful emissions, tobacco etc, And also the exploitation of workers etc, How will Light deal with them, there is no single person you can blame, the CEOs, the shareholders, the management,
And then also, what about nations, there are some countries waging wars that have no clear meaning, war on terror?, state sponsored terrorism? But who is to blame for this?, what about the assassinations carried aout by certain intelligence agencies, how will Light judge them?
Theres a lot to think about if you want to dive into criminal organisations
u/wren42 [+1] (9 days later)
I dont think that using law enforcement will work as cause of death, first of all, i dont think manipulation of other people is within the scope of the Death Notes powers
In cannon several people die of car accidents. This requires the death note to manipulate the events around the target in a pretty far-reaching way, and does impact other people not named. My reading is that so long as the situation is can plausibly occur in the time allowed, it will do so. So if you say "killed in a police raid" with a time of 5 minutes, it's a heart attack. but if you give them 20 days to actually prepare and arrive, and it can plausibly occur based on all the surrounding state of affairs, it will work.
the questions on how to treat immoral and corrupt police and officials is a good one that will take a lot of exploration and create moral gray areas. Good subject matter for the story =)
u/LieGroupE8 [+8] ** (21 minutes later)
Well, this one was fun, but the author abandoned it. Then they were going to rewrite it here, but apparently never got past the first chapter of the rewrite.
u/nytelios [+6] (14 hours later)
There was a recommendation on this sub that I enjoyed immensely. It capitalizes on the best part of Death Note - the cat and mouse mind games between L and Light - while also incorporating an excellent psychological exploration of characters.
u/wren42 [+2] (a day later)
gosh darnit. the thing is incomplete and on indefinite hiatus. what a let down =(
u/Darnit_Bot [+4] (a day later)
What a darn shame..
^^Darn ^^Counter: ^^12081
u/throwaway234f32423df [+5] (22 hours later)
Although not fanfiction, this might interest you if you haven't seen it already.