Discussion: A.

Hi, everyone! 

We’ve finally reached the last character to be featured for the fifth blogsary celebration. She’s pretty much been with us since the beginning, and I chose to save the best for the last considering the amount of changes that she’s been through. For her character, I’ve decided to spend yesterday and today focusing on DNAU!A, with tomorrow and the day after that focusing on Coa!Aether. I figured that if I were to compile everything into one big post, it would be way too long for everyone to read (and for me to write, hehe). 

I’ll spare you the long introduction—feel free to keep reading down below! 

"I'll try not to be too embarrassed."

I’ve probably said this a million times over, but the very first version of A came back to me in 2009 or so. She was birthed from my experiences of roleplaying on different platforms ranging from forum boards like invisionfree to micro-blogging websites such as Twitter. She started off as a Harry Potter OC, but really gained a sense of character when I brought her into the Death Note fandom. A became her own person after I met some other roleplayers online, and before I knew it, I was forming and setting some kind of canon for her. At the time, the only choice I had was to insert her into the Death Note canon where L had somehow managed to survive and beat Light. 

The earliest versions of DN!A had her as someone highly regarded as the “Female L”. She was pretty similar to L in more ways than one; as a younger writer who barely knew what to do, I took particular elements from L such as his love for candy and pushed them into A. A was the Female L at the time, focused on the Tokyo branch of the investigative forces while the original L focused on other parts of the world. At the same time, she and L were an item, living together and sometimes catching each other at work as well. 

That canon lived for a couple of month to a year, I can’t really remember. Eventually I changed things up and shifted her from the Female L to someone who was an individual agent who worked under HQ. This time around, the canon had shifted once more. The original L died, Near replaced him, and Near beat Light. Instead of forcing her into the canon, I built a new one starting a few years after Death Note ended. This time an orphan from the same orphanage, A was sent to Japan and was trained as an agent. This was different from DNAU!A—this A worked on her own, was much colder, and was unnaturally young. She was already part of the business in late teens to early twenties; perhaps her coldness comes from how fast she had to grow up. 

"Dramatic bullshit and everything."

Eventually, I got tired of this—at this point, all of what I mentioned had come from pure roleplaying with me writing occasionally on the side. I hadn’t really gotten into writing for the Death Note fandom, fanfiction wise, as i was focused on other projects. Upon getting tired of it, however, I decided to scrap what I had in the past and decide to create someone new in hopes of really going somewhere. 

In a few weeks to a month, I managed to form a stable background and canon for A. Most of the basics, such as her being part of headquarters, stayed. What came into the picture was where she came from: A was orphaned after her parents perished in a house fire and moved eventually to the house of Wammy. She suffered a certain trauma after a car crash took her memories away during her teens, and she struggled with picking up the pieces again before she transferred to Tokyo. Transferring eventually led her to meeting Touta Matsuda, who took her under his wing. Tokyo gave way to her meeting people like future team-mates Samuel Peters and Mack Thomas, with Touta joining in as a full-fledged member instead of acting as a guiding figure. The work also led to her meeting Mail Jeevas, and later on, people like Kenichi Matsumoto. 

From here, we can already start to see pieces and fragments of Coalesce peeking through, the most striking of which being the interconnectedness of everyone. A singular moment in the canon’s history leads her to many people. Without the root of it all—losing her parents in the house fire—the canon would barely be the same as it is now. But that’s something for Thursday’s post to discuss! 

At this point, DNAU!A was somehow becoming her own person. She was short-tempered, snappy, cold; she and Peters were in conflict many times, as their personality and beliefs clashed with one another from time to time. DNAU!A was wary of attachment after losing people in her life, but clearly melted upon meeting Matt and gradually falling for him. Her character progression hinted at a possible alcohol dependency issue, which she confronted and later did her best to keep from growing. At her core, though, DNAU!A is kind. Despite hardening and possibly growing jaded because of what life’s thrown at her, that’s not to say that she’s completely unsympathetic. She was one who cared for her team and loved dearly, one who wanted the best for her loved ones, one who persisted despite whatever got in her way. 

"I have my moments."

The A of before and Aether in the present are vastly different. While sharing a mostly common background, at this point I can honestly say that both have grown to be two completely different people. One is colder and the other warmer; one more logical and the other more emotional, one shutting herself away from attachments and the other embracing them at once. Things have changed in the transition from DNAU to Coalesce, and that's something I'm excited to talk about more on Thursday's post. :')

That's all for today! Hope this one was enlightening for you guys; I'll be posting again on the 31st to talk about Aether and culminate the entire month.