hello anon! i don’t remember an ask quite like that so i guess it must have gotten lost but thank you for sending it again!

my thoughts are basically in line with yours, although cards on the table i don’t think near would be overly concerned about it. an interesting thing about near is, i think, contrary to mello’s raging spitfire of an inferiority complex, near is extremely sure of himself and doesn’t seem to entertain self-doubt. he’s not very self aware, i think, or if he is then he gives the appearance of not being in order to make everyone uncomfortable and it sure as hell works and mello spends most of his life going completely off the wall because of it

i feel like mello would obsess over B and A (i mean, shit, kid literally wrote the book on them) and study up and freak out about all the old wammy’s lore he could dig up and view as some kind of grand and meaningful pattern that he’s not supposed to repeat and near would be about as interested in it as he is most of what mello freaks out about - that is, view it with distant and almost condescending fondness but kind of not really get it on an intuitive level and just kind of see A and B as an interesting example of how stressful childhood environments yield troubled adolescents and adults and note it down with clinical interest

which is sort of why i like near (when i like near) because he’s not trying to prove how big his dick is by not caring (like L does) he just doesn’t, he’s very un self conscious and does a lot of shit that kind of makes you tilt your head and go, “what is wrong with you man?” but he just shrugs it off and doesn’t care and goes to play with robots