Oh, well put! I absolutely loved the line '...he defines himself through L's existence.' This was utterly brilliant, and thanks for the fic recs!

Oh, by the way, I recommend putting a huge spoiler warning on this. People are ridiculously picky about it, but I admit that I would have been furious if 58 had been spoiled for me in advance. (Same goes for your icon, but I don't think you really need to change that.)