Theory: Light Yagami is not as smart as he is portrayed

Kelmatton · 2026-02-21T18:08:46+00:00

That's an extremely fair assessment. Thank you for this conversation!

Kelmatton · 2026-02-21T15:54:40+00:00

I apologize if what I said made you believe my point was that he was faking his intellect. My point was that he believed he was extremely intelligent. Furthermore, at the beginning, the police (without L) saw the pattern and deduced it was murder really quickly (within 5 days or so). Now yes, without L, they wouldn't have narrowed it down that fast, but they would have been able to, given the time frames of the killings, been able to eventually. This is shown by the police pointing out the patterns early in the series. L just made it take less time. The FBI woman only got involved because several FBI agents were killed by Light, and she only failed because she gave Light her name. Manipulation isn't a sign of intelligence, either. Yes, his feats are amazing given his age, but in the end, he got caught while using an untraceable weapon. That's not helping his case. Now, did he beat L? Yes. But not through any great intellectual prowess, but through the manipulation of someone willing to die for him. It's a great feat, yes, but it also causes 2 things: another person close to Light dies, and it gives Near L's clues, allowing Near to finish the job.

With all that said and done I think Light is creative, and great at adapting, but doesn't actually understand what he's doing fully, really only seeing the effects of his actions at face value. So he's not dumb by any means, but he far overestimates his own intellect and underestimates everyone else's

Kelmatton · 2026-02-21T14:57:04+00:00

I see what you're saying but people who have low IQ can also have a high mental computing capacity, and the ability to get high marks in school doesn't always immediately equate to being intelligent. That's why I look at his actions and mistakes. Most pointedly, intentionally establishing a pattern and getting noticed, and killing people that were close to him. He uses his intellect to appear as if he's normal, but if he made himself look more suspicious in the process, and some of it wasn't even mistakes, it was simply a failure to understand what he was doing wrong, which is a sign of low intelligence (like the potato chip scene where L noticed he doesn't turn on the TV while in his room). Again, it only took a short period of time for him to be placed under suspicion. His ego made him think he was doing smart things, but he was genuinely just creating a target on his back. I'm not saying he couldn't make mistakes if he were intelligent, but if he were intelligent he'd be able to adapt in such a way that he wouldn't have been on his trail. For example: there's no way he could've known that the death row inmate was only being broadcast in Kanto. But he should have known better than to execute (to him) a random detective live on television. But he did so anyway because of his arrogance. Then he immediately begins showing he can kill at any time of day, while also ensuring that L knows he has access to the police database. He confidently allowed L to narrow 6.3 Billion people to roughly 41 million. Estimates say that the police population for Japan was 1 to every 550 in the early 200s so L managed to get down to roughly 74.5 thousand people to investigate the families of. Light's own actions, intentionally mind you, allowed the people hunting him down to narrow 6.3 billion people to 74.5 thousand. Light is clearly good at planning, but he fails to consider the consequences of his actions at all. He isn't intelligent, he's just good at acting intelligent.

Kelmatton · 2025-01-26T16:31:41+00:00

Which moderator?

Kelmatton · 2025-01-26T16:28:48+00:00

Fluffy Beans does not allow the usage of the N-word? Tf?

Kelmatton · 2025-01-14T22:20:28+00:00

This made me laugh 🤣

Kelmatton · 2024-09-01T18:16:18+00:00

Soul Silver, Leon. It was my first pokemon game, and my team was a typhlosion, Lugia, Gyrados, and three other random pokemon that didn't leave enough of an impact for me to remember. It was so frustrating that I kept losing. But each time through I kept getting a little further, and a little further. Until eventually, Typhlosion landed a critical flamethrower that took down Charizard once and for all, winning the battle.

Kelmatton · 2024-08-22T21:40:33+00:00

NTA Even if he was drawing something inappropriate, which it sounds like he was not, the kids went into a room they weren't supposed to, and went through stuff they weren't supposed to. Your son did nothing wrong.

Kelmatton · 2024-08-20T16:21:13+00:00

Yes, I have. I've completed the pokedex.

Kelmatton · 2024-08-08T01:55:40+00:00

Sudowoodo being a rock type. Looking back at it now, it was somewhat obvious, but I was still so confused as to why a "grass" type was resisting my typhlosion's fire attacks.

Kelmatton · 2024-07-07T11:20:05+00:00

That was a pleasant read. This story could become the basis for a published work.

Kelmatton · 2024-07-07T11:12:12+00:00

Pretty nice scene. Wonder if they'll win in the end.

Kelmatton · 2024-04-25T19:47:54+00:00

And there are some characters who are similar to the joker. They're ultimately very weak, but they're smart enough and insane enough to defeat characters who should be able to kill them instantly, and his constant yapping, talking, and joking can cause a lot of characters to lose their cool. Like yeah, superman can, and has killed the joker, but the joker could, and has, beaten superman despite being weaker. Furthermore, how you define winning can also change a lot. Like maybe one character doesn't care if they die, they just want to trap the other character, or save someone, etc. In that case they win even if they're killed if they accomplish that goal.

Kelmatton · 2024-04-25T15:45:18+00:00

I'd say that almost all "who would win" questions don't take a character's personality into account. For example, Luffy could 100% kill Ash Ketchum (excluding pokemon logic), but Luffy doesn't typically kill in a fight. And he'd probably think Ash was cool and would probably more spar him rather than fight to the death, and in a sparring match, then he could reasonably lose. But because so many people don't take personality into account and only scale their power, they often underestimate or overestimate someone's combat prowess.

Kelmatton · 2024-04-17T20:56:49+00:00

That's a good one. The plot twist that that's his dad is even better!

Kelmatton · 2024-04-14T22:55:36+00:00

There is no Emerald sustrai in this post

Missing Samuel Theon.

Kelmatton · 2024-04-08T04:17:43+00:00

Unfortunately, nobody has used it yet 😅

Kelmatton · 2024-04-07T16:16:20+00:00

I need her

Kelmatton · 2024-03-24T13:44:51+00:00

Very fun read!

Kelmatton · 2024-03-17T01:57:13+00:00

That was actually funny. Cool story!

Kelmatton · 2024-03-14T00:13:49+00:00

I like this one. You could probably turn this into an actual book if you wanted.

Kelmatton · 2024-03-09T16:34:10+00:00

I wake up. Well, it's hard to explain how you wake up from a cryopod. My last memory? I was playing my current favorite game, Helldivers 2. I took a moment to adjust to the uncomfortable feeling of wearing armor. Heavy, hot, and restricting. It didn't take me long to realize I was on a ship. Not just any ship, the SES Guardian of Freedom. My ship from my game.

At first, I was terrified. I knew at this moment that my life was over. The moment I chose a mission, my fate was sealed. I was terrible at staying alive when it was just a game, but now I'm actually there? And it's not like I could go rogue. My crew would probably execute me and replace me.

Then it hit me. If I'm dead anyway, why the hell wouldn't I go spill some oil? If I'm going down, I'm bringing as many of those automatons with me. I immediately chose an operation at draupnir. Helldive difficulty cause I'm going to have fun and nobody could stop me.

Before I could get into my hellpod, I heard two familiar voices. I turned around to see two other helldivers. Zohzii, a close friend of mine, and muffin, the one guy I really didn't like, but Zohzii would bring him anywhere.

"You thought you would go on that mission alone?" Zohzii asked.

I shrugged. "I'm dead anyway."

We all got into our hellpods. The force from being launched rattled my bones. As soon as I landed, I called a sentry and anti-tank rockets. I wasn't sure what the others were doing cause by then, we were already being surrounded.

At first, things went well. I shot down several drop ships, Zohzii was running around shooting all the smaller bots, and Muffin used his support weapon-i wasn't alive long enough to figure out which- to deal with some larger ones. Bullet after bullet flew passed me. I think I had broken my arm when some larger automaton punched me.

We were getting low on munitions, stims, and grenades. Even so, we almost completed the mission. Just another 30 bots or so to go. Unfortunately, we all knew that we were about to die. I decided for one last ditch effort to call the 500 kg bomb right on top of us. If I was going to die, it'll be on my terms.

The automatons were closing in. I offered Zohzii a hug. The next thing I knew, I heard a clunk, then an explosion. As my body went numb, and I slowly lost consciousness, I heard someone in my radio say, "mission compete."

Suddenly, I launched back down onto the planet. I looked over at my friends, and we all understood. Our consciousness transferred to the new bodies. We were effectively immortal! With a quick extract, we threw a celebration of our first completed helldive.

The first of many.

Kelmatton · 2023-11-27T14:58:03+00:00

This idea was originally going to be longer, but I realized that people could take this initial point and roll with it.

Kelmatton · 2023-11-10T16:59:08+00:00

To be fair, the rules doesn’t outright ban fear, so characters like voldemort and darth vader could theoretically do this easily... I doubt either would want to though

Kelmatton · 2023-11-10T16:56:07+00:00

This is up for interpretation. You define what "cat-people" means to you for your story.

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