youcannotrelight:

kiraconversations:

dotti55:

virtuous-virgo:

Call this a rebuttal, maybe, but this is my take on Wammy’s House. Anything underlined has a link to a source, or hover, or both.

I’d like to start out by saying that, yes, Quillish Wammy was the founder of many orphanages other than the one in England. However, it is…

Most of your points are excellent, but there are just a couple I’d like to put my feelings about out there.  I believe simply stating Wammy did it for fun doesn’t mean he didn’t care whether they were interested or not, it simply means he enjoyed doing it.  Doesn’t mean he forced anyone into anything. Linda for example became an artist, so I’m sure there were others that had nothing to do with the entire L heir situation.

I agree that in the beginning the pressure must have been awful for those kids to try to be L, and we saw how that worked out.  But it appears that they calmed that down, neither Near or Mello look as if they’re under much pressure.  Mello’s pressure is from his own feelings of inadequacy more than anyone putting pressure on him.

Some of those other points i have to look up and read myself and reread Another Note, it was so long ago I read it, but they were excellent.

Also, the code name thing, if he was cultivating orphans to be L eventually, the only thing that kept L alive was his anonymity.  The moment he showed his face he was doomed to die.  He would want to make sure that no trace of who they were would be able to be found, and he used orphans for that reason and the fact that there would be no family for someone to find and use against them.  I definitely don’t believe Wammy was thinking of them as disposable unknown lives he could use and abuse, he simply doesn’t appear to be that callous.

I don’t believe Wammy’s was most wonderful place in the world, it’s obvious it wasn’t, but I also don’t believe it was a hellish factory made to stamp out little L clones in any way possible, devoid of anything good.  The way Wammy obviously cares about L also makes me believe he wasn’t a horrible human.

I love these intelligent, well thought out discussions. You guys rock.

*barges in, crashes on couch, starts eating your food* HEY GUYS. It’s quite possible the whole thing can be looked at in terms of generations like the iPod kind of (i mean that in the most irreverent way possible, by the way). The first generation is always flawed, it’s an experiment, very much feel your way through the woods type deal. Wammy began with a very specific prototype he wished to reproduce: L. What do we know about L? L was obviously brilliant and talented but also extremely well-suited to his line of work. I can’t quite recall as to whether Wammy was SPECIFICALLY looking for a child to mold into a super (gay) detective or if L was simply naturally inclined. I’m thinking it’s the latter. In the source text, L is very willful. He’s the decision maker and Wammy is the supportive force. Whether that was always the case is up for interpretation. My personal take is that the program was born out of attempting to replicate L rather than create more out of something that had already been created in L. If I’m wrong and this is specifically stated elsewhere BY ALL MEANS LET ME KNOW. I’m speaking very generally without textual support so feel free to debunkify because I’m flying by the seat of my own headcanon/interpretation of text here.

So ok, Wammy has this brilliant detective child who has been creating a name for himself. Said child and inventor begin to think of the future, of the dangers inherent to his profession and the great purpose L as authority/justice figure is serving. From this comes the idea of successors, of replacements should L die or become incapacitated. I see this coming from an increase in L’s utility in the world, his gaining traction in not only the criminal world but also as a figure of justice/control. The idea of propagating this success becomes attractive. Phase 1 begins with the first generation whom we know as A and B. This generation is the most catastrophic failure with one suicide and one mass murderer. What does it take for both to crack like this? I don’t think they were locked in a dungeon or water boarded or anything like that. But I do believe that they were approached with a certain mentality. Wammy never had to mold L to be L. He never had to treat him a certain way to get him to be himself. Rather, L demanded from the beginning to be handled in a certain manner and Wammy followed his direction. L was naturally excellent, set the bar for what he would achieve so it quite possible they both fell into the trap of expecting the same sort of excellence from the first generation. This means that they were exposed to everything L was. L is classed as an introvert from his thought process (it’s up to you whether you believe the Myers-Briggs typing of INTP. I read a post that classed him as INTJ which fits better) and it’s quite possible he may have preferred solitude to a more social upbringing. He may have been exposed to unseemly subjects quite early, desired to learn such concepts quite eagerly and rampantly, and was most likely very cerebral, emotionally detached, and mature.

Though they may have neared or matched L in raw intelligence, the reality of it was that A and B might have been very different in personality. L/Wammy may not have seen that as an obstacle in the beginning, they could have assumed that nurture would do the trick. You can be sure that both boys were subject to A LOT of psychological/intellectual/physical testing before being chosen in order to minimize risk but ultimately there was a lot of arrogance involved in the first generation. You can’t even contemplate the deliberate molding of human beings without some form of grandiosity. So there were a lot of blind spots, possibly the assumption that if the raw intelligence were there, they would make do. Some desperation involved as well I mean how big a pool did they really have at their disposal? Not huge. We’re talking a pool of maybe 0.001% of the world population and even then some of these kids might have people who object to this kind of thing. So ok, no overt child abuse (most likely) but definitely not much psychological support. You were expected to modulate yourself and your choices and your emotions much in the way L must have done as a child. You were expected to be independent and mature and strong. You were expected to be rational and self-possessed. Otherwise, you would be replaced. I think they got that message a lot. YOU WILL BE REPLACED IF YOU FAIL. There is always someone waiting for you to fail. In the first generation there was probably a lot of unmodulated expectation/criticism. We see it in the result: A killed himself because of either a perceived or literal failure to meet expectations and B railed against a nebulous authority figure for attempting to instill those expectations. Shit hit the fan. L and Wammy had to go back to the drawing board.

From the manga, it’s clear that Matt, Mello, Near and Linda, never had much contact with L. I think that was intentional. I think L learned his lesson. He couldn’t be visible to them or place insane expectations of personality cloning because it failed so miserably in the initial run. They realized that the psychological demands were insane and abusive not emotionally I don’t think they truly cared about that, but in terms of cost-benefit. The best they could hope for was symbiosis between two or three. That’s why they’re allowed to develop with only each other as competitors. The ideal remains distant but they are allowed better room to develop a sense of self. Another experiment, still harmful in it’s own ways (see headcase! Mello) but definitely an improvement on the original experiment. So I see A and B as the iPod Photo. A complete clusterfuck I had to return 4 times within a month (so bitter about that) and Mello, Near and Matt as a more stable version of the same thing with some issues (like maybe the iPod Video with a bigger hard drive but with still a shorter life expectancy). Ultimately, I feel they were all pretty much fucked from the beginning it’s that A and B really got the shortest end out of the deal because of the initial arrogance/grandiosity of attempting the experiment to begin with.

So yes, please talk to me about this if this isn’t super boring to all of you. it’s very TL;DR, I know.

Coooool, these are the most perfectly reasoned comments. And, Karina, I love you. I’m just nodding all the way through. I don’t think it’s been discussed yet, but you know how it’s specifically stated that Watari was an inventor, that it might have some significance, possibly? I just wonder why Ohba chose that particular profession for him or why it had to be mentioned at all, because from a plot perspective or as an introduction to Wammy’s House and Mello and Near, it doesn’t seem important to know that the founder was an inventor, only that he had a string of orphanages around the world. And of course it’s very important that he was an ace sniper, because I still can’t get over that and that L can fly a helicopter like they’re a mini SWAT team.

A problem I have with Wammy’s House is that, yeah, they’d take in orphans - how philanthropic - but they had to be gifted orphans. Probably great if you were gifted at playing the tuba or something, but if you showed promise as a possible successor to L then God help you, basically. I see Watari lucking out in finding the brilliance and suitable personality of L, too, and that it was a fluke instead of Watari setting out to create a super gay detective. In the no.15 oneshot it suggests that Watari let L have and do whatever he wanted, and that L started with advising/telling Watari to invest in certain things and then he got into solving crimes, and Watari continued to be a support. That’s all good but the problems are, like you say in a much better way, the invention part really comes in with Wammy’s House having this creating efficient L replica machines instead of children thing going on, dealing with children who weren’t necessarily intellectually or emotionally suited to taking on L’s role or the pressure of aspiring to it. The thought of making back-up plans out of children is horrible and I don’t know how anyone can defend that, really. What you get are possible successors committing suicide and going off the rails in a competitive death or glory way, with Near as the exception.

Also in the No. 15 oneshot prequel thing, L compares solving crimes as a game, and that continues into adulthood and the manga. That’s like a doctor saying that they’re not doing what they’re doing to help people, they’re doing it because they like the challenge and the science. I’d be a bit worried about a doctor who thought like that, like I would be about a detective who did. The thing that I think is obvious about Wammy’s is that emotional intelligence and development wasn’t as valued or nurtured in possible successors, judging by the varying levels of dysfunctional heirs coming out of there (or not in the case of A). In what you were saying about the first generation going kaboom, B is a slow, destructive suicide as part of his revenge mission against L. Emotionally driven like Mello. ’I am justice’ and ‘I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way. I’ll be number one’ and ‘If you can’t win the game, if you can’t solve the puzzle, you’re nothing but a loser’ and ’If L’s a genius, then B’s an extreme genius. If L’s a freak, then B’s an extreme freak’ sound like quotes from extremely egotistical characters who try to surpass and win because their worth is about being the best no matter what. Wammy’s House must have contributed or be responsible for that as the common factor. So I suppose my main issue with WH is how it deals with potential successors than the institution as a whole.

This discussion is so interesting, I hope some more musey stuff is added!

jumping in a day late and a dollar (or a few hundred) short to, along with tip my hat off and bow obsequiously to the above discussion and verbalization of things i’ve long felt but have expressed only with a muted wheezing sound, add how crazily weird i think it is that people often see L as a sort of loving father or older brother figure to mello and near (and matt, in the added ‘let’s just say he’s part of the group!’ way). i mean, i think L can be construed as sort of fatherly, but in that 'works all the time, hates your mother, buys you a lot of things because he can’t be assed to spend any time with you’ kind of way where the kids grow up seethingly resenting him but also as slightly awkwardly molded little carbon copies of him.

i honestly think that if L hadn’t died, mello would have ended up much more like B in that he’d do a lot of crazy shit for attention and recognition and to prove that he exists and matters. L dies though and so they get to remember him as a great hero - a luxury B and A didn’t have - and it’s hard to rail against the oppression of someone who kicked the bucket five years ago, so instead mello just takes on his legacy, but in the most assbackwards way where he goes totally off the rails. awkwardly molded carbon copy. viola.

actually, there are quite a few similarities between L and B and near and mello that actually speak a lot about narrative symmetry if you look at them, but then you realize that they were kind of constructed independently of each other so maybe it was just a freak accident. regardless of my personal headcaons, though, the facts are that mello and B both:

  •  defined themselves through their respective inability to live up their (disinterested) rival
  • left wammy’s and ended up somehow in los angeles
  • got burn scars from a tragic fire mishap that was (to varying degrees) their own doing
  • survived said fire mishap
  • were killed by a death note (not notable because most major characters were but whatever)

whereas near and L are both apparently disinterested in the other but, fairly obviously in near’s case and totally headcanonically in L’s, actually quite fond of mello and B respectively

and then there’s A and matt who you might say both said, “fuck it, i’m staying out of this mess as much as i can,” to which end A offed himself and matt got really stoned. okay ignore this part but the rest stands.

actually no none of this stands i’m just spouting off here like a broken hose someone spare the garden and cut the water

(Source: virtuous-trixster-blog, via halfpromise)

1:57 pm ( 377 notes ) # and with that mangled metaphor i bid aideu # *sweats nervously and pretends i don't ship mello with his father figure* # *and that i dont headcanon L and B as awful twin terrors who are half in denial but mostly just too busy sucking # each other off to really notice how uncomfortable they're making everyone else # also k if you see this FUCK GODDAMN THAT LXB i have only just bolded some lines i liked and wrote a lot of nonesense in replu # that needs fine tuning and to be made sensible but i love you # and i love laura too i love you # all # i really am writing you a reply laura because there are things i wanna say/ask # aslo i'm not depressed at all today wow # i think it was the biking # meta
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