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Light Yagami of Death Note provides an interestingly complicated case.  For one, you have to worry if Light was inverting his role by pursuing his goals as the villain protagonist, or if he was instead realizing his true role… which is really hard to say!  (Personally, I lean towards the latter, but I’m kind of a Seer of Doom so you might disagree with my enthusiastic drooling at destruction.)

However, the most confusing factor is all the aspects at play:

• Mind.  The players constantly anticipate each others’ potential moves and decisions with the information they would have at hand, and - more importantly - deviously manipulate the façades each put forward.
• Doom.  The eponymous Death Note is an artifact which not only enforces Doom on an individual, but also enforces the nature of that Doom and what the victims do with the last moments of their lives.  Both of these factors are the specific purview of the Doom aspect.
• Rage.  The utopia envisioned by Light Yagami is one ruled by Rage, where the Damocles’ Sword of a swift death as punishment becomes a source of oppressive fear, stifling peoples’ views of the possibility of committing crimes, revolt, or even laziness!  This is the essence of Rage, the aspect of the restriction of perceptions through fear and anger.
• Light.  The war we witnessed in Death Note was largely one of information.  Light Yagami started out with an informational advantage, and carefully titrated what facts or non-facts were insinuated where, that false information hid what was true and pervasive truths hid that which was more deeply true.  Much of our protagonist’s actions were simply (1) gathering information from all available resources, including unlikely ones, about his opponents and targets, (2) leveraging the information his opponents did not know to act freely despite ensuring that all information they gathered about himself was inconclusive or exempting, and (3) executing individuals and plans with said information, including the ultimate and most important piece of data: the true name of each victim, written in the Death Note to guarantee their demise.

It’s a rather tough decision, a close (and by nature subjective) call, but if I had to stand by my strongest feelings…

I would say that Light Yagami is a Prince of Light, and that L is a Mage of Mind.

(Disclaimer:  If you haven’t seen Death Note, don’t spoil yourself by wiki-ing it right now!  Just watch or read it (I’d say watch), it’s excellent.)

Coming up with which Homestuck roles the protagonists would have in works I enjoy has become a bit of an unintentional habit, lately!  For example, I just got through reading most of the Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium series, and if I had to put labels in it, I’d say that Ciaphas is a Knight of Doom, Amberley Vail is a Rogue of Light, and Ferik Jurgen is a Page of Void.

2012-10-16