What I said about Ryuk last chapter notwithstanding, it's still fun to write him tooling around and hunting for apples. He's still a character, and characters gotta have some initiative.
--
Canon doesn't focus nearly as much on Saiyu's MLG Call of Duty career as I'd like. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not mentioned at all. But Light clearly doesn't play video games—he's much too serious and grown-up, of course, not to mention that he snubs Ryuk's interest—so clearly this is the only remaining hypothesis.
Saiyu's gamertag is xheadshotgurl23x. She plays professionally for a team whose name translates to Blood Legion, and the other members of her team are afraid to anger her because the last unlucky person to be on the receiving end of her wrath stopped showing up to team practices.*
*Due to an unrelated incident, but Saiyu just went with it.
--
We're seeing an inversion here where L knows about the manipulation part of the Note but not the part where it makes you eat something. (This as opposed to canon, where L initially knew it killed you but not that it could manipulate you).
--
L's test for determining whether Angel is only targeting criminals seems incredibly weak, given that it's dependent on the victim using their real name (and not using a face mask, for those of you who've read Hidden Faces. Uh, spoilers). However, L noticed (of course) that criminals who used an alias weren't targeted by the Angel, because he's L. Thus, his tests were already designed with that fact in mind.
See, he told Angel that Angel had given him everything, but he wasn't specific about what Angel had actually given him. No, I did not leave that purposefully vague to give myself more room to work with later.
--
I'm questioning whether Light is really a rationalist. On the one hand, he's working logically from the premises he's working on. On the other hand, he's really bad about questioning those premises in the heat of the moment, at least for questions like "Is this person really smarter than me?" or "Do I really know whether this person is guilty?"
'Cuz what's the point of character flaws if they don't actually make your characters flawed, amirite?
--
Lind L. Taylor was a finalist in the show Hottest Pastries, but ultimately the judges thought the kiwi frosting on his cupcakes was too sweet, deciding in favor of his rival's soufflé. In another world, he went mad with jealousy and murdered her, leading to his execution at Light's hands.
--
A couple general observations:
- This chapter is made of several quick scenes and moves pretty quickly. That's the way it turned out, and sometimes it's unavoidable, but if I do this again, please yell at me.
- I have literally typed the word Angel as Angle every goddamn time except for in this sentence.
- There are times when my mind drifts off and I chase squirrels driving trains of thought. After I return to writing, I see the name "Angel" (dammit! again!) and have to convince myself I'm not writing Buffy fanfiction.
--
Next update will probably be this upcoming Saturday, April 12. But as we've seen how good my powers of prediction turned out to be, take this particular prophecy with a grain of salt. Inasmuch as salt is good for this sort of thing. I never figured that out. Anyways, until next time.