I made a little post complaining about the lack of a Light Bashing tag, and now the time has come for me to expand on what exactly counts as bashing! :D
Bashing is described as "villainizing a character, and representing them without any redeeming qualities", and "...demonizing a character, referring to them with derogatory terms, or making them the subject of deathfics or spitefics". Deathfics aren't so common for Light (L Bashing is more common in those, though I have seen Light Bashing in deathfics centered around L) but I think spitefics fit very nicely with some of the ones I've seen.
Generally bashing is a negative deviation from the original character's personality by either ONLY representing their flaws, EXAGGERATING their flaws, or making up NEW flaws.
In Light's case, this is done by presenting him as someone stupid, incompetent, heartless, cowardly, arrogant, and/or sadistic. And yes, given that Light is a villain, arrogant and cowardly do describe his character—TO AN EXTENT. The representation of these traits only becomes bashing when they're pointed out repeatedly and/or exaggerated. (When I say repeatedly I mean it becomes an underlying theme in the story rather than a single part of it, harped on rather than just mentioned).
Now, where I think a lot of people get tripped up is this: Light's looks do not count as a redeeming quality. If your story's stance on him is "he's evil and stupid and I hate him but he's hot so it's okay"—that still counts as bashing.
In fact, even if you DO feature his good qualities in your story, if the bad outweighs the good then that would count as bashing.
Now, where this gets muddied up is, again, the fact that Light is a villain. "But Grim," you say. "How am I supposed to write Light authentically if I can't write him doing bad things?" You can write him doing bad things! You can write him being evil and awful! In fact I encourage it!
What I'm saying isn't that you should morally whitewash Light—I'm saying that bashing is an ignorance of nuance in a negative direction. Writing Light killing people isn't bashing. Writing Light killing people for no reason or for fun is bashing. Writing Light being an absent lover isn't bashing. Writing Light being an abusive lover is bashing. Bashing is, again, a discernible deviation from the known character in a way that makes them worse than they are, or refers to them in a derogatory manner.
"Well Light IS that awful, he SHOULD be demonized! Light SHOULD be referred to in a derogatory manner!" <- this is ignoring character nuance. If you write your fics like this, I politely ask that you tag them as Light Bashing (preferably as Yagami Light Bashing or Light Yagami Bashing, given that there's already a tag for light bashing that isn't Death Note related) because this counts.
And you should do this for every character in your story!! Maybe you enjoy Light, maybe you do enjoy the nuance of his character—you might still ignore L's. Or Misa's. Or Matsuda's. Or Mikami's. Or Near's. Or Mello's. Or a hundred other characters that I haven't mentioned. Don't think I haven't seen just as many fics that ought to be tagged as Soichiro Yagami Bashing out there too 🫵
Bashing is not inherently bad. A lot of people like those sorts of fics, especially when they hate the same characters you do. But the problem the DN fandom seems to have is UNTAGGED bashing. There are several tags that haven't been implemented that honestly should be, and I think it's just because the Death Note fandom is so old. It comes from before the tagging system, from before AO3 was even a thing. Times where authors had to toss up a warning in parentheses right before the smut started 😅
But we DO have a tag system now—and a very good one. I'm asking people to pretty please use it. Help people that hate the same characters you do find your fics. Help people that love those same characters avoid them. It's only polite 💖
JL: Nightwing! It’s a delight to see you! You should come by more often.
Nightwing: Thank you! I’m so sorry, work has been piling up on me but I’ll try to drop by the office party this Sunday.
JL: Ofcourse! Looking forward to seeing you there. By the way, is Batman coming late?
Nightwing: No, I’ll be filling in for him today.
JL: Did something happen?
Nightwing: Nothing much, he’s just grounded.
JL: ???
48 hours earlier
Dick: Bruce, I’m telling you now and we’ve had this conversation before but you need to build a better rapport with your children. They look up to you as a father figure and your actions influence their behavior.
Bruce: …hmrgh
Dick: And you might not be aware but you unconconscious behavior is damaging. Tim has picked up your terrible habit of constantly working in front of a screen-it’s going to strain his eyes. He’s always inside too, so you need to make him go outside more. I’m not always here, I have an entire city to run, the titans need me, I'm mentoring hundreds of heroes, the Justice League calls on me to help them, and I need to keep up with my social life. The people in Bludhaven where I teach and work also call me if I’m gone for a day-the point is-I can’t always be playing second parent here in Gotham.
Bruce: ……hmrgh
Dick: Damian always looks up to you
Bruce: *side eyes*
Dick: He does! See you don’t even realize it! He wants to make you proud and Jason gets mad when you don’t make time for him because he cares too. Stephanie doesn’t have a dad she can turn to and it would mean the world to her if you took her out to an amusement park or something. When was the last time you spent time with her.
Bruce: ….hmrgh
Dick: And-
1 hour later
Dick: -that’s why you need to stop working, go to them right now, and bond with them.
Bruce:
Dick:
Bruce: ……...hmrgh
Dick: I’m waiting.
Bruce: *dragging himself off the batcave chair and begrudgingly trudging upstairs under Dick’s watchful eye*
Bruce: *listening to the sounds of his kids in the living room and pumping himself up* Better relationships mean better teamwork. Better relationships mean better teamwork. Better relationships mean better teamwork. And Dick. Do it for him.
Bruce: *entering* *clearing his throat* Children. We will be going-
*The living room is in utter chaos. The cushions are strewn and ripped with stuffing coating the couches and floor which for some reason is stained yellow, the flower vase is shattered and so is the table it was sitting on, there’s string confetti on the chandelier, there’s spray paint and neon goo across the walls and in Tim’s hair, Jason has deep claw marks down his face as he wrestles with Damian who’s sporting massive bruise on his cheek and trying his hardest to bite him, Stephanie is dunking Tim’s face in a tub of soda which splashed everywhere while he’s ripping out Jason’s hair and also trying to kick Damian with his foot, the tv has massive spiderwebs and looping on tellatubies like a broken record machine, Titus is spitting out a feather while a random goose runs around honking while Alfred the cat chases after it at full speed, knocking down decades old paintings.*
Bruce:
Bruce:
Bruce:
Bruce: *rolling up his sleeves and stomping forward to join the fight* HMRGH.
Okay, so first of all Dan would like to say it’s not his fault. Ellie was the one to bring some unknown object into the speeder and Jazz was the one driving. Or had Sam been driving- didn’t matter! It wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t the one shooting at them, he wasn’t the one to break whatever, he was not the one to open a stupid portal, and so it wasn’t his fault!
So why is he now like, five years old, and why is the speeder crashed in some sort of corn field. Why is everyone- except for Jazz whose now like six- also like three at most?! And- oh fuck the door just opened and… okay that’s a kid. Like, nine at most.
A kid and an adult, who he hadn’t noticed at first so again, it’s not his fault if he hissed at them and tried to hide his not-siblings behind him. It’s also not fair they’re apparently stuck to ghost speak for who knows how long, but at least they can understand the people.
Every day I’m haunted by the fact the boys happily swim in sewer water
Even if it’s filtered somehow there’s no way it’s not still nasty 😭 Bet they can defeat any of their villains just by accidentally giving them diseases I swear
Danny knew he should have put better security around the Sarcophagus of Eternal Sleep. It wasn’t even Vlad who opened it this time! The fruitloop was too busy doing his actual mayor duties because for some godforsaken reason, the man got re-elected.
No, it wasn’t Vlad. And it wasn’t Fright Knight, either. Nor the Observants. Who opened the Sarcophagus, then? Danny didn’t have time to find out as Pariah Dark promptly tore open a hole in reality and hunting Danny down.
The battle was longer this time. He didn’t have the Ecto-Skeleton, as that was the first thing Pariah had destroyed. The halfa had grown a lot over the past few years, and learned some new tricks, but apparently sleeping in a magic ghost box meant that Pariah had absorbed a lot of power. The bigger ghost acted like a one-man army!
Amity Park was caught in the middle of the battle, but the residents made sure it went no further than that. Vlad and the Fentons made a barrier around the town to keep the destruction from leaking. Sam, Tucker, and Dani did crowd control while Danny faced the king head-on.
Their battle shook the Zone and pulled them wildly between the mortal plane and the afterlife. Sometimes, residents noticed a blow from Pariah transported them to the age of the dinosaurs, and Phantom’s Wail brought them to an unknown future. Then they were in a desert. Then a blazing forest. Then underwater. It went on like that, but no one dared step foot outside of Amity. They couldn’t risk being left behind.
It took ages to beat him, but eventually, Danny stood above the old ghost king, encasing his symbols of power in ice so they couldn’t be used again. He refused to claim the title for himself. Tired as he was, Danny handed the objects off to Clockwork for safe keeping and started repairing the damage Pariah had done to the town. The tear he’d made was too big to fix, for now, so no one bothered. They just welcomed their new ghostly neighbors with open arms and worked together to restore Amity Park.
Finally, the day came to bring down the barrier. People were gathered around the giant device the Fentons had built to sustain it. Danny had brought Clockwork to Amity, to double check that they had returned to the right time and dimension.
Clockwork assured everyone that they were in the right spot, and only a small amount of time had passed, so the Fentons gave the signal to drop the shield.
Very quickly did they discover that something was wrong. The air smelled different. The noise of the nearby city, Elmerton, was louder and more chaotic. Something was there that wasn’t before, and it put everyone on edge.
Clockwork smiled, made a remark about the town fitting in better than before, and disappearing before Danny could catch him.
Frantic, Danny had a few of his ghost buds stay behind to protect the town while he investigated.
He flew far and wide, steadily growing horrified at the changes the world had undergone. Heroes, villains, rampant crime and alien invasions. The Earth was unrecognizable. There were people moving around the stars like it was second nature and others raising dead gods like the apocalypse was coming. Magic and ectoplasm was everywhere, rather than following the ley lines like they were supposed to.
Danny returned to Amity.
The fight with Pariah had taken them through space and time. Somewhere along the way, they had changed the course of history so badly that this now felt like an alien world.
How was he supposed to fix this?
-
In the Watchtower, The Flash was wrapping up monitor duty while Impulse buzzed around him, a little more jittery than usual. The boy was talking a mile a minute, when alarms started blaring an alarming green. Flash had never seen this alarm before, and its crackling whine was grating on his ears.
Flash returned to the monitor, frantically clicking around to find the issue, but nothing was popping up. No major disasters, no invasions, no declarations of war. Nothing! What was causing the alarm?
Impulse swore and zipped to a window, pressing his face against it and staring down at Earth. “Fuck! It’s today isn’t it? I forgot!”
“What’s today?” Flash asked. He shot off a text to Batman, asking if it was an error. The big Bat said it wasn’t, and that he would be there soon.
“The arrival of Amity Park. I learned about this in school; the alarm always gives me headaches.”
Flash turned to his grandson, getting his attention. “Bart,” he stressed. “What are you talking about?”
Impulse barely glanced over his shoulder. Now that Flash was facing him, he could see a strong glow coming from Earth. “The first villain, first anti-villain, and the first hero,” he said anxiously. “They all protect the town of the original metas. They’re all here.”
“Here? Now??”
“Yeah? They weren’t before, but they are now. The first hero said there was time stuff involved, which was what inspired me to start practicing time travel in the first place.”
“I’m not following.”
“It’s okay. We should probably go welcome them before they tear apart Illinois, though. The history I remember says that some of them freaked and destroyed a chunk of the Midwest during a fight with each other.”
new dad Bakugou who’s going back to work full time almost a full year after his daughter his born and he now has to grapple with the fact that….goddamn, he’s spoiled the shit outta her.
well, he doesn’t think it was spoiling her. in actuality, he just created a routine with her, gave her every bit of his attention, held her when she cried, scolded her (yes just at eight months) whenever she’d babble for more puffs even though she’s had enough already. it wasn’t spoiling, it wasn’t. he vowed to never be that dad, to raise a snot nosed brat, one similar to himself.
but here he is, on a Tuesday morning three weeks after her first birthday. he’s standing halfway between the front door and the living room in full uniform, with his still sleepy baby and her even sleepier mama. she’s gripping his neck like he promised to abandon her, wailing and crying so loud and dramatically, that you can’t help but chuckle at her antics and how he wavers ever so slightly.
“You promised you’d go back to work,” you scold him gently, rubbing at your daughters quivering back when she whines again the moment he acts like he’s gonna pull her off. Bakugou frowns at you, and you shrug, smoothing her unruly blond curls away from her sticky forehead.
“But you guys need me.” He pouts, eyebrows downturned as he pulls her away enough to wipe at her wet face. she blubbers again, whimpering out a small dadaaaa noooo, that absolutely breaks his heart.
“And so does the world.” You smile at him, gently pulling your daughter away from the matching glassy red eyes who watch her go. “We’ll be fine, my love. Promise.”
Bakugou looks unconvinced, especially since your daughter reaches for him with another cry of his name. you don’t say anything when he sniffles discreetly, quickly reaching down to the coffee table to snatch up his utility belt that he dropped when she waddled out of her room in tears. he snaps it on wordlessly, and you go to turn to the kitchen when he wraps you both up in his arms.
“Love you,” he whispers against your forehead before pecking it, leaning down to kiss your lips next, and then your daughter’s fat little cheeks. He whispers another love you to her, and wipes away at her rosy cheeks when she pouts at him.
“Rub you.” your daughter pouts, the both of you freezing in shock.
“Oh my god,” you whisper, grinning. “She said I love you back!” Bakugou matches your grin, laughing under his breath as he presses another torrent of kisses all of her face. for the first time since she’s opened her eyes today, she laughs, loud and joyous and familiar. he thinks that maybe going back in today won’t be so bad after all. not if this is what he’ll be coming home to.
Fic in which Mary tries extra hard to bond with Cas to show Dean she supports him and their relationship, except that relationship doesn’t exist in the way she thinks it does and because none of them ever use their words Dean is now faced with the horrifying thought Cas might become his stepdad