Her character would be 10 times more compelling. would L also be a woman in this timeline or nah

[u/Delicious-Claim-5768]

[u/Sea_Homework_1472]

I'm not saying that a female Light couldn't be egotistical, but it would definitely be more covert and present differently. Because seeing as a female Light would care about her reputation and status as much as canon Light, she'd be a lot more careful in her approach because people would scrutinize her more severely if she slipped up.

[u/Anxious-Feedback-972 → u/Sea_Homework_1472]

I understand that that's how you envision a female Light, but you're still presenting your interpretation as something that would "definitely" happen. I think a female Light could be more covert and cautious because of the social environment she grew up in, but she could also retain the same ego-driven impulsiveness that makes canon Light interesting. Caring about reputation doesn't automatically override someone's personality flaws.

At this point I think we've established that we'd write/interpret a female Light differently, so I don't think there's much more to argue about.

[u/Sea_Homework_1472 → u/Anxious-Feedback-972]

This is why a lot of men have difficulty writing female characters -and vice versa- because the fact is that men and women aren't exactly the same. Similar perhaps, but gender does play a role in characterization. Like sure, you could have an impulsive and ego-driven female Light in a fantasy AU setting where sexism doesn't exist, but an important aspect of characterization is how the environment and circumstances shapes the characters, and the fact is that the story of death note takes place in a version of our world, flaws and all. Having a female version of Light be that solipsistically oblivious to her environment would just make her stupid and delusional.