DN - The man known as B.

[splinteredstar]

Said I would ramble about B, so here it is. Ljcut for spoilers for Another Note, of course, plus my own oddness. It's late, so I appologize if this makes no sense.




 

Okay. Bit of explaination first. I have something of...psychic radar. With almost all people and any half-decent character, I can almost instantly get a shape for who they are. I send mental pings out and I get a reading back with the shape of the personality. It almost always works, and it's the reason I'm normally so good with characterization. I figure out people and characters in a snap, and I'm good with getting to the core of them.

However, there are a few exceptions. Most of them are just badly done characters, except for the ones in DN (well, one of them. the other is debatable). Those are Near and B. Near, I just get no reading from whatsoever. I could be sending pings out into space for all the response I get from him. It's why I've never even tried writing him - I have no idea who he is or what to do with him. (And I know I'm not the only person who thinks that.)

And the other one is B, the main topic today. B is different. With Near, I get no response. With B, I get a clear reading. 

It just doesn't make any sense. 

It's like one of the Lovecraftian shapes where the geometry's all wrong, acute angles acting like obtuse angles and the rules of matter and perspective get thrown out the window. So I got to wondering why.  Lossy helped, and between the two of us I think I've figured it out.  It's rather interesting.

B's personality doesn't make any sense, doesn't seem to connect, because it doesn't connect. It's NOT one personality. It's the pasted together bits of other people's personalities - mostly L's. He's takes bits and pieces of other people's personalities and acts like they are his own. He's an actor, filling a role, and a damn good one. He's even fooled himself. 

Which explains why I can never figure out who he is. He doesn't know who he is. Of course I can't find his core - there is no "core" there, except for the burning infieriority complex. Everything else is a show, an act, another bit of someone else's personality. No wonder he fooled us all in Another Note - acting was what he did. He was almost better at it than Light.

All of this makes writing him very difficult. How do you write realistically about someone who is made out of artiface and lies? It's a writer's nature to reach through the surface - but what happens when all you find is the shifting winds? Here we have a boy that wanted to be special -to be loved, possibly - so badly that he completely recreated who he was to get attention. He can change who he is in a moment, shifting and morphing so quickly and so often that he doesn't know who he is anymore, just that he needs to be BETTER.

But there is a real person in there. Somewhere. I'm just not sure where, or who he is yet. I'm closer than I was before, but I still haven't gotten it yet. 

Now, another thing about him...in Another Note, it's explained that killing was easy for him because he knew when everyone would die. Well, sorry, but that's bit short as far as explainations go. I mean, if I knew when everyone around me would die I would A.Start dealing with mourning early, B.freak the hell out, and/or C. become a life insurance salesperson. Not a serial killer. 

But we don't know what produced B. However, I have a theory as to what Mello meant. 

B knew when people would die. He knew that no matter what he did, they would die. He didn't cause their deaths - it was destiny. He was just the manner of death. They were going to die then anyway, so it wasn't his fault. He may have even seen himself as an angel of death of some sort, or even an agent of fate. I have a feeling it would be an appealing idea to him. 

Now, that makes me wonder what would happen if B got a Note. Would he be able to handle it? I mean, before he was working in Destiny's hands. His victims were practically prechoosen for him, because Destiny knew he would kill them then. But if he had a note, he wouldn't be restrained by their death dates. He would be able kill them anytime. And it wouldn't be destiny or fate, it would be him.

Suddenly, it would be his fault. Would he be able to handle that? I mean,  yes, he would kill L at some point (the only reason he didn't, I suspect, is because he couldn't wait until his death date showed up)....

...but that brings up another point. Would B be able to survive without L? B has defined himself as "L, only more so" Without L, his yardstick is gone. The source of who he is is cut off. The thing he defines himself is suddenly gone.

Now what does he do?

...well, I think I'm making less and less sense, so I'm stopping now. Besides, I need to go to bed. 


It'll try and get things reviewed for people this week, 'kay?


S

Comments

What a strange animal...

[saint-archie.livejournal.com]

I think some of it made sense, though the way you phrase it suggests that B had no personality to begin with, whereas I'd argue that he did, but after all that time chasing after L, it was warped beyond any semblance of normalcy by his increasingly accurate attempts at near-continuous impersonation.

It's not so much that he's fooled himself, as his mental growth has worked out in such a way that he doesn't need to, because "psuedo-L" is the only personality he's ever managed to significantly develop. He knows who is, and changing what that is goes far beyond mere obsession.

And that's why you get an odd reaction trying to read him, because you'd think there must be something underneath that's him and not L, only he's been at it for long enough that nothing else has ever had any real chance to exist there.

Unfortunately it makes writing about him difficult, as artifice and lies are all you have to go on. You can't write about much else, because... well, what else is there?

Whatever real person was there went long ago, eliminated so he could be L, and we've not been told enough of his past to create an accurate portrait of that person.

As to the other aspect, I think your "Angel of Death" assessment is probably fairly accurate, (lol inexplicable death god eyes). If he ever did get a note he might find himself unable to change a person's death date altogether, since that would remove the justification in his mind.

And for the above reasons, I think if he ever had killed L he would either find himself incapable of functioning as a person any longer, or he would try to slip into the gap left behind, to make the impersonation as close to perfection as it could ever conceivably get.

...Reading all that back, it occurs to me that, if nothing else, you're probably not the least sensical writer on this page any more...

[serria.livejournal.com]

When I think of B, I think of a lot of ambiguity. I don't feel like I know him as well as the series canon characters, I feel like he's deliberately shrouded in a lot of mystery that leaves room for interpretation. But he is peculiar and hard to understand. He doesn't express a lot of personality that's easy to relate to, he's quite accurately described as abnormal.

B killed the people who were going to die anyway, apparently. But I can't help but wonder if their cause of death was "serial killer" - as in, their cause of death was B himself. Their lifespans could have been approaching zero because of him. Though, the idea of fate and a lifespan is always confusing to me, mainly because predestination is so incredibly tricky. It seems to me that if someone knows an outcome, they can certainly change it. B very likely justifies himself as the "angel of death" who serves the inevitable, but perhaps he himself is that fate.

What would B be like without L? I think L was someone he latched on to - it could be for a lot of reasons. Ambition, competitiveness, admiration. If L had never been around, perhaps B would've latched on to someone or something else. Or if no one else was there... who knows. He might go either way.

B is a really interesting character, suffice to say. Good read, makes me think. :-)

[starsplinter.livejournal.com]

What I'm thinking - I talked it out a bit after I posted this - is that B was incredibly good at reading people, and realized most people were lying to him when they said they cared. L didn't.

L will lie, but it's nothing personal. He doesn't pretend to like people when he doesn't. B might like that honesty.

And then there's the matter of Roger...He doesn't seem to like kids, and B would be able to tell. (Which raises the question of what Watari's up to there. He doesn't seem terribly interested in making *functional* children, does he? Great workers, yes, but not really people who can work in society. B could have been prevented - and Mello, for that matter.) B would be offended with Roger. He probably wanted L's attention so much because no one else was worth of giving him honor. (If that makes sense.)

It's complicated. B doesn't totally add up. His personality is patchwork, and the pieces don't match. He cut himself up and pasted it together to be L, but he can't be like L so he just kept cutting. He may not even have known what he was doing. (It's likely that he didn't)

*deep breath* Like I said, complicated. Anyway....Talk about him more later, sometime.


S