Fanfic / My Stupid Reality

My Stupid Reality by Twisted Grim is a Death Note Fanfic in which the Great Detective L is rounding up genius children for some nefarious purpose and so Light Yagami has pretended to be stupid for all his life. It works up until his senior year of high school when Light makes Just One Little Mistake that puts L on his trail...

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My Stupid Reality provides examples of the following tropes:

• Anti-Intellectualism: In this world, if you're too smart L's people will kidnap you in the middle of the night. Many disappear forever. Some are returned damaged.

• Book Dumb: Light deliberately gets bad grades to hide the fact that he's a genius.

• Byronic Hero: Light is well aware of his flaws, he's a self-described Narcissist with a slight problem with hubris.
• Camera Spoofing: The "splice and dice." Light created a device that will make the cameras just play a five minute loop of him sleeping in order to escape from L.

• Cloudcuckoolander: Sayu:
  Sayu: Hehe I just don't understand why we're in this old abandon warehouse. I mean when we showed up here, my first thought was that you were going to show me all your murder victims. And then when I screamed you were going to 'add me to your collection'.
  (Dramatic Ellipsis)
  Light: What the hell, Sayu?
  Sayu: Hey! It was only a little less likely!
  Light: Less likely then what?
  Sayu: You being gay.
  Light: I shouldn't have asked.
  Sayu: Hey it's possible.
  Light: So you think I'm a gay murderer?
  Sayu: A gay mass murderer, yes. Now all we need is a sexy gay detective, and I have a yaoi manga! Quick! Go kiss Matsuda!
  Light: That is beyond wrong on way too many levels!
• Continuity Nod: To Another Note

• The Ditz: Sayu
  Sayu: I guess. Why do we have to take a train or walk everywhere? You're way old enough to drive.
  Light: It would take longer to drive than it does to walk. Have you ever seen rush hour?
  Sayu: The movie?
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Because of L an entire group of people are Disappeared. Light suspects that L is trying to eliminate the competition.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Light's family wish he was smarter. Light wonders if they WANT him to be taken.
• Driven to Suicide: Many of the Returned.
  L: The mirror had to be removed after the last tester, remember?
  Watari: Oh, that's right. I don't know how I managed to forget that.
  L: That one was particularly awful, wasn't it? I never thought anyone would surpass A in imaginative suicides.
• Dysfunction Junction: When searching for a successor, L realizes that all the orphans come to him damaged and therefore it would be more pragmatic to kidnap genius kids from stable families.
• Dystopia: Genius children disappear all the time now and no one thinks anything of it.
• Education Mama: Sachiko is very disappointed with Light's report card.
• Eternal Recurrence: There's the implication that the original plot of Death Note happened to all of them in a past life. Light wonders what he has done to deserve this.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Watari frequently kidnaps children for L but he has clear lines he won't cross and he objects to L's obsessive stalking of Light.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: Sayu "math is sooooo haarrrrd"

• For Your Own Good: Light's parents get him into a lot of trouble. This is also L's justification in hunting down Light.
• Ghost Memory: Light. There's the implication that all the events of Death Note canon happened before and that Light subconsciously remembers his past life and so he has an implicit fear and distrust of L that goes beyond even his moral objections of L's mass kidnapping of children and he has a "Have We Met?" reaction to several characters. Also when forced to make up an alias on the spot he blurts out:
  Light: I'm... Asahi Kira.
  Misa: Kira? Like 'killer' in English?

• Homemade Inventions: Light creates a Camera Spoofing device that plays an endless five minute loop so that he can escape from L.
• Infraction Distraction: When L puts cameras in his house Light attempts to look normal by reading porn.
  Light (thinking): Slut, (page turn) slut, (page turn) slut, (page turn) not even 18, (page turn) slut, (page turn) whore, (page turn) gross, (page turn) eww, just eww. This just sucks.

• Irony: Light wants to be a detective... he just doesn't want to have anything to do with L.
• Just One Little Mistake: When his father calls him a failure, Light can't help but take it personally and resolves to show him and goes on to ace the Touhou entrance exams-which unfortunately undoes his carefully constructed "Stupid" persona and puts L on his trail.
• Kick the Dog: L's search for a successor destroys many lives. L himself doesn't even seem to realize how horrific that is.

• MacGyvering: Light modifies a cheap laptop to work better with pieces ripped out of L's refrigerator.
• Mind Rape: This seems to be the effect of L's training program. If they aren't instantly rejected, and if they don't kill themselves, they are returned to their parents as Empty Shells.

• Mirror Universe: In this universe Light is a genuinely Nice Guy who has spent all his life pretending to be imperfect and it's L that jumps off the slippery slope.
• Neat Freak:
  Light (to the mud on his clothes): I think we should see other people. This relationship isn't going to work out. I mean, I should be with a shower right now, and you down the drain; maybe with a nice dead goldfish to hang with...
• Nice Job Breaking It, Rivals! / Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: A little bit of both. Mello and Matt get into a fight that results in them accidentally destroying all of L's data on Light. When L finds out he uses it as the excuse he needs to justify his continued pursuit of Light to Watari.
• The Nicknamer: Matt nicknames Light "PB" (for Pretty Boy, not Peanut Butter)
• Nightmare Sequence: After Light outs himself as a genius he has a nightmare where he's rejected by his family and kidnapped by L. The latter soon becomes a reality.
• No Escape but Down: When Light attempts a Balcony Escape from the hotel where L and Watari are detaining him and falls. Luckily there is Soft Water swimming pool below to break his fall.
• Noble Fugitive: Light. Takada and Misa help him hide from L.
• Not Good with Rejection: L. He can't even fathom why someone WOULDN'T want to be his successor.
• Obfuscating Insanity: When it becomes impossible for Light to deny that he's a genius he tries to get out of L's program by deliberately failing the psych exam by pretending to be a homocidal maniac who believes all criminals should die. Unfortunately he failed too well and L knew he was faking.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Light, for years. He has it down to an art:
  Light: One does not just randomly select a question or 2 and try to get them wrong. No. Nor do you do it to every 4th question or some other such ridiculous, predictable pattern like that. The key lies in, like all things, strategy. You need to choose ahead of time a subject or 2 your awful at, a few your neutral, and 1 your good at. Then whenever you get homework, consistently get the same basic principals wrong, and get it wrong on the test as well. Also, you have to make a show of not paying attention in class, or else suspicions will be raised, and you'll be given a special "learning disability," and assigned a tutor pronto.
• Peggy Sue: There's the implication that it's a do-over without the players having conscious knowledge that it's a do-over. There is no Death Note in this universe and the Shinigami appear to Light once as human goth kids to deliver a cryptic warning. Light subconsciously remembers his past life-he has an implicit fear and distrust of L that goes beyond even his moral objections of L's mass kidnapping of children, he once refers to himself as "Kira", and he has a "Have We Met?" reaction to several characters. As for L, he lives in fear of his own mortality and is obsessed with finding the right successor.

• Popular Is Dumb: an Invoked Trope of Light's "Stupid" persona- he pretends to be a dumb, Brainless Beauty, jock type.
• Pride: Light realizes it's his Fatal Flaw when he outs himself by acing the Touhou entrance exams just to prove to his father he's not a failure.

• Reasonable Authority Figure: Watari. He puts his foot down with L's continued stalking of a boy who wants nothing to do with the Program.
• Refusal of the Call: Light refuses to be L's successor. Too bad L doesn't take "no" for an answer.
• Scare 'Em Straight: or rather Scare 'em Stupid The first books Light read that had any substance to them were Evil Genius, Artemis Fowl, Matilda, Ender's Game, and Battle Royale. It had quite an impact on him as a kid. In each of those books all the characters' problems came from people knowing they were genii so Light decided it was safer to play dumb... and luckily he already had his mask in place by the time L began stealing children in the middle of the night.
• Second Place Is for Winners: Light has deliberately tried to look Book Dumb and scored average all his life. So when Light aces every subject in the Touhou entrance exam L realizes just how smart Light must be to keep up that act for so long and is determined to make him his successor.
• Shout-Out: see Light's reading list. Also to Portal and Super Mario Bros.. Also Light sets up a false trail for his pursuers that leads through Minnesota to Fargo, North Dakota.
• Slash Fic: Currently pre-slash but it's set up to be one eventually with the usual fandom pairings of L x Light and Mello x Matt.
• The Snack Is More Interesting: L when Watari is telling him of yet another potential candidate for the program... until L realizes the implications of what Watari just said.
• Sneeze Cut:
  L: Wherever it is that you, my true successor, are hiding, enjoy your last few days of normalcy. L's life is a hard one. One you're going to start soon. No matter who or where you are. I'll find you. And when I do, you're not getting away from me. I am justice, and justice will always prevail.
  Somewhere in the world, a certain Light Yagami sneezed.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The Taken and The Returned. L's kidnapping of children is such a persistant phenomenon that there are Support Groups for The Returned.
• Stalker without a Crush: L, initially, with Light...
  Watari: Light Yagami, I feel bad for you.
  L: Why for him?
  Watari: He's your obsession. That poor kid is doomed.
  L: No, he will be my successor. He is not doomed.
• Stalker with a Crush: L begins having interesting dreams about Light as his obsession continues to grow.
• Sue Donym: Many of Light's aliases are variations on his own name. When he has to quickly think up a new one he comes up with... "Kira Asahi."

• Tabloid Melodrama: the paparazzi stalks Misa and this is how Team L gets back on Light's trail.
• Tautological Templar: L kidnaps children in his search for a successor. He gets away with it because he is L, he is Justice.
• Teen Drama: The story's initial focus is on school and social cliques and how Light has fooled everyone into thinking he's an idiot.

• Training from Hell: L's program. Most who enter it crack under preassure. Some are returned to their parents as Empty Shells and others are Driven to Suicide.
• Transparent Closet: Light. "The day a man like that retires is the day I come out of the closet... Wait, it's not that I'm in the closet, I just meant…it's impossible ok! Never gonna happen."
• Unperson: L kidnaps genius children from around the world in his search for a successor. Most disappear forever. Some are eventually returned to their parents damaged or are Driven to Suicide.
• We Can Rule Together: L wants to make Light his successor. Light wants nothing to do with L.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Souichiro sees his son as a failure until he aces the Touhou entrance exam and proves that he didn't cheat.
• Wild Goose Chase: Light sets up a fake trail that has Mello looking all over for him through Fargo, North Dakota.
• With Us or Against Us: L's mindset—either do as L says or you’re an enemy of Justice.

• Worthy Opponent: Light to L. "We must track him down. He is the first person since B to escape from my program, and I do believe he is much more stable than B was."

• You're Not My Type: Takada says this to Light when he's playing dumb (despite the fact he isn't interested). Later when Takada finds out how smart Light really is she starts throwing herself at him.

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