L x Reader oneshots 1 // series 3 • Death Note

An updated L moral analysis

Edit: started this AGES ago and it was sitting in drafts and finally finished it. (I stared this 3 months ago oops). Here you go, long awaited update from my old outdated one in my old books.

Since my last one was literally years ago, let's update this bitch.

Note that this isn't about L's personality or character, but I can do that later of wanted. It's about his morals.

First off, there's two sides to this here. Lawful morals, being the things the law and majority of people deem good and bad, and personal morals. The things YOU deem good or bad.

I'd say I'm pretty morally grey. For the most part I agree with the law but there's some circumstances I don't agree with. Obviously I'm not on the level of "they annoyed me so I killed them" but more on the level of "if getting rid one one irredeemable killer saves 70 innocent people, let that killer die. Even though I'd usually say don't kill anyone regardless of what they did"

So take that into account when reading this, bc obviously my morals and the majority/laws morals are different in some areas. Mainly ones regarding death.

So, we all know by now L is definitely morally grey by the laws standards. He finds loopholes and exploits the shit out of them. An "end justifies the means" kinda thing. But we all also know that his "end justifies the means" mentality is nowhere near as bad as Lights. Death Note isn't the good guys and the bad guys. It's the bad and the morally grey.

Also take into account that the death notes existence would have to cause whole laws to be re-written because it's a supernatural weapon of mass destruction, held by the un-killable gods of death. (Apart from the whole falling in love thing but how often does that happen? Misa just got hella lucky). In a case like Kira, some morals will have to be thrown away, and some laws will have to be re-written due to the fact this is literally a supernatural thing.

Best example is the whole Misa being restrained situation. Obviously, no human would normally be restrained THAT tightly and monitored that closely. But L and the taskforce knew for a fact that she could kill with a face only. They at this point had no idea the death note existed and for all they knew she could kill someone by saying "you dead now nya!"
They also knew that Misa would take the fact light was involved to the grave, and she did end up threatening to kill her self to keep the secret.

So having her completely immobilised was the only way to make sure she didn't kill anyone and didn't kill herself trying to keep the secret. Because once again, all they knew at this point was a face is all she needs, and if she on the off chance already knew their faces, then she could strike at any moment if she was able to move around. Ending up in several lives of innocent police officers lost.

Although, lights dad did drive into a whole building. I'm pretty sure that's destruction of property and considered a crime but,,, like in this situation, it's either do one morally wrong thing, or have people dead.

So yes, detaining Misa so harshly (and Lights dad destroying the entrance to Sakura TV) are morally wrong to the majority and law, but it's either that or have multiple lives lost.

In these cases it's kind of a let one less bad thing happen to stop a major catastrophe. Even if the "less bad" thing is still pretty bad. Misa may be scarred from that experience, but she's alive, and so are the lives she was a threat to. So, end justifies the means in this case.

Any other case this would be unacceptable by law and moral standards. But this is Kira, the supernatural is involved and due to that humanity has to re-think what's good and bad. And do some things that are usually seen as bad in order to prevent something worse happening.