#but i love that he's written kind of so melodramatically and cartoonishly that i can still just laugh at him and not feel too bad about it

[13eyond13]

What headcannons do you have on B during his career (for a lack of a better word) as a serial killer? To me, he's like one of the funniest characters but also the most pathetic in the most poetic try-hard way. Why do you think he's such a try-hard? He's coping but what is he coping from?

OMG B!!! Haven't thought about my favourite stupid son B enough lately, so thank you for this ask....

So he's a try-hard because he is probably VERY INSECURE, to be blunt. He probably has very little sense of self-worth or a concrete sense of identity outside of trying to one-up L, and he takes that to the extreme in a highly comical way. He's also no doubt traumatized from his insane childhood as a shinigami hybrid who watched many people (including both his parents) die while knowing they were going to die / was also raised very weirdly and abusively/experimentally at Wammy's and made to feel like he was only worth something if he could be as smart and talented as the legendary L. In his mind he decided that creating his own destiny would be better and rebelled against that expectation by being like, "why be the next L when instead I could DEFEAT L by creating a brilliant crime that he can't possibly solve?"

ANYWAY there's a reason he is the most creepypasta villain / emo boi / dark academia darling of the fandom, and that highly melodramatic backstory is a huge part of it - which I DO love dearly in its own mid 2000s way, even though I also sometimes sigh at it because of the extra villainous cartoony edge it adds to L's backstory, and don't always want to take it very seriously as part of L's characterization in the manga plot...

So on my most recent re-read of the LABB novel, I feel I was a bit struck by just how... Not Good B's impression of L actually is? And this was kind of hilarious to me to think about. I feel like when I was younger and really into shipping LxB I read it just as "clearly B has a massive crush on L and is doing his best to imitate him perfectly because he hero worships him and sincerely wants to be him so bad!" HOWEVER this time around I remember thinking something along the lines of "wow, this feels almost like B just googled how to cosplay L and then lazily threw something together 5 minutes before crawling under the bed", hahaha. So he either just kinda sucks at imitating L (and maybe so, but he also managed to trick the families of the victims into letting him investigate the crime scenes, so he's probably not THAT bad at acting when he wants to be?) or maybe he's intentionally trying to make a mockery of L. It is ALSO FASCINATING from a psychological POV to imagine he's just being a troll about it all and trying to make fun of L with how he behaves! Like! Was he intentionally mocking L with his impression of him to somebody who would never even get the stupid joke in the first place? If that's the case, it's excruciatingly cringy to me that nobody even gets his joke the entire time, hahaha.... poor Naomi suffered more than Jesus at some points during that investigation, I swear...

B trying to do a scathing impression of L to somebody who has never even met him before:

ANYWAYS. I think that whatever the case, he PROBABLY hoped/expected L himself was going to show up to the crime scene to confront him, at any rate. And so therefore he probably initially dressed up as L not to genuinely pass to anybody as L, but maybe expecting to do some ominous dark mirror/ arch-nemesis big reveal shit to L?? Perhaps once he realized that Naomi was the only one coming / was working for L he just changed gears a bit and decided he'd just lead her through the clues as best he could while trying out this cosplay of the guy that he wants to offend most, but this is in my mind pretty much how it must have gone.

One of my fave headcanons about him is that he re-read that crossword puzzle he made / that the police threw out without solving SO MANY times while he was sweating off his makeup under the bed, as well... that's why he had to show it to Naomi as soon as he got out... he was like "I PUT A LOT OF WORK INTO THIS DAMMIT, and SOMEBODY is going to appreciate it" hahahaha. Ohhh, B....

#like i LOVE B #but i also think he sucks ass as a person #but i love that he's written kind of so melodramatically and cartoonishly that i can still just laugh at him and not feel too bad about it #even though his life is sad and clearly sucked ass #idk he's my 3rd fave just because he's such a funny sad shitty guy #and weirdly complex to contemplate despite how much of a creepypasta villain he also is #beyond birthday #p #death note