#shinigami king

[aucasaurus]

[keirmoonrock]

Top Five Behind the Scenes: The Name of the Shinigami King

Hey, so after drinking too much coffee and wondering whether or not it would make sense, I’ve decided to scream into the void purely for my own amusement and break down the given name of the Shinigami King I use in my Death Note fanfiction, Top Five! 

Full disclosure: I do not speak Japanese, my only experience is a year’s worth of Duolingo and listening to subbed anime... though I am going to start classes later this year. I am also no linguistic expert, and cite all of my sources from Wikipedia, YouTube, and Google... this isn’t meant to be super serious, just a look into one of the more interesting characters in my fanfic and how I named him/how his name would evolve linguistically.

So in Top Five, the Shinigami King or King of Death is only referred to in those titles, or otherwise by the direct integration of them into speech (ex. Your Majesty, His Majesty). However, it’s revealed during The Search in To The Generosity of Mr. Higuchi! that he does have a given name, the same way Rem is called Rem and not The Executioner, her official court title. His name is Siuja, though it enrages him to hear it outside of the play preformed by the other shinigami in that chapter, because it is associated with his inferiority under Izanami, who cursed him.

Real talk... my beta reader and I came up with a random string of syllables for his name after looking on FantasyNameGenerator.com, and that’s how I decided on Siuja, thinking it was at least adaptable to Japanese, and could pay homage to Siuja’s origin as a mythological creature, whose origin would have first been recorded using Chinese characters. From an uninformed, non-Chinese speaking American perspective, Siuja sounds like it could be pronounced in some dialect of Chinese, or otherwise grounded in an older dialect. 

So in modern day Japanese, the name Siuja would most likely be written and pronounced as シュジャ (Shu-ja), spelled in katakana... for now. The syllables shu and ja, however, are unique in katakana, because they require two symbols each. Shu is first written with the character shi ( シ) and then a smaller yu ( ュ ) to represent it is read as one syllable. The same is true of Ja, with a larger ji and smaller ya. Hold onto that! It comes back later! 

Why do I write it as Siuja, then? The real answer is, I didn’t start learning Japanese until after he was introduced... But my god-given talent is to take my mistakes and turn them into Top Five lore, so let’s go! 

Izanami no Mikoto’s exile of the shinigami from Yomi--the event recounted during the Search--is dated around 1000 A.D. in my Top Five timeline. I don’t quite remember why, but I’m sure at some point I did come up with an explanation for that year specifically... but Siuja was still pretty old when that happened, having been created early on in the Shinto canon, soon after Izanagi failed to rescue Izanami from Yomi. If the earliest recorded period of Japanese history, the Jomon Period, is considered to begin around 13,000 B.C., this means that Siuja was also created around this time. Today, it is unknown what language the people of the Jomon Period would have spoken, so unfortunately, I can’t seem to piece together what his original name might have been. 

Scholars believe, though, that the Japonic language family began to spread through Japan in the next period, the Yayoi Period, primarily dated from 300 B.C. - 300 A.D. The first attestation of what would become modern day Japanese, however, occurs in the 700s and 800s (both AD) with Old Japanese, so now I can try to construct my first iteration of the Shinigami King’s name.

In Old Japanese, some of the characters used for the modern day pronunciation of Shuja do not exist. For that reason, we’ll have to replace it with sounds that would have existed in Old Japanese. Remember how you held onto the unique spellings of shu and ja in katakana? Here’s where they come back: My guess from a solid 20 minutes of research is that the syllable si in Old Japanese later morphed into the modern shi, which is the basis of shu. Since no shi-based syllables existed in Old Japanese, we’ll start by splitting shu into the Old Japanese si and yu. For the ja syllable, however, we have a bigger problem: the j sound did not exist in old Japanese. Of the sounds that did, za probably sounds the most similar to ja, although it seems like this syllable was somewhat rare in the language, so I won’t use it. Again, based on ~no linguistic scholarship or knowledge~, I will therefore guess that the next closest usable sound would be ya... because in Early Middle Japanese ya seems to change to ja. This gives us the first iteration of Siuja’s name: Siyuya. 

Old Japanese was also written using Chinese characters, and so using the most common depictions of those syllables (according to the Wikipedia Page Old Japanese) , we can write it out as  斯 由 夜 . (fun fact, that ya character is the same used in Yagami in the series!) 

Without going through the intense linguistic guessing we did with Old Japanese, in Early Middle Japanese (app. 794-1185 AD) Siyuya actually changes to Si-u-ja! That’s right, for some reason it seems like the y syllables have disappeared, and j sounds have now taken root, which for some reason makes my made up name historically accurate to his period???? Katakana and Hiragana are invented in this time period, and Chinese character usage has changed, so it can now be spelled in one of three ways:  之 宇 也 (kanji),  し う や (hiragana), or  シ ウ ヤ (katakana).  The modern kana for y-sounds are also used to write j-sounds like ja, so it actually works out perfectly from Siyuya!

So this raises an interesting question: is the spelling of Siuja’s name in Top Five derived from this Early Middle Japanese pronunciation? I say... probably! By the time of the shinigami exile in 1000, these linguistic changes seem mostly possible! In the chapter Hearsay, Aiber mentions reading the Fuso Ryakuki, an account of Japanese history written in the 1100s. It mentions a plague spreading through Japan in the year 1002, implied to be the plague Siuja, Nu, and Armonia created to try to impress Izanami, which ultimately led to their exile. Much of the Fuso Ryakuki is lost, especially a section chronicling the Age of the Gods in Shintoism... I say it’s possible Siuja’s name may have first been written in those lost sections as Siuja, using one of the spellings above. 

Shinigami stories mostly appear during the 18th century in Japan, however, which is how I landed on 1600-1850 as the Golden Age of the Shinigami within the Shinigami Realm. Here, Siuja’s name may have been written much more frequently, influenced by the earlier spelling of Siuja to later become pronounced as Shuja. 

In short, because Siuja was first referred to in writing as Siuja, although to shinigami he is more likely known as Siyuya, his original name, this is the way it’s written in Top Five. 

Uhhhh what did we learn from this??? Sometimes you come up with something that manages to work out perfectly for the linguistics of your Death Note fanfiction without knowing it! I am genuinely baffled by this, I just wondered and ended up on a 2 hour rabbit hole finding this all out. 

There’s our next lesson... Keir is positively obsessed with their funny little Death Note AU and headcanons. 

If anyone is interested in more Top Five Behind the Scenes (which would genuinely be impressive, because this was a doozy that even I barely understand... and I’m the author), feel free to drop questions into my ask box, labelled Beseech Mine Humble Heart... I might also just make another post about random Top Five shit, if I think of fun stuff to share! Of course, I can’t spoil anything... but you can try ;)

[kingofanemptyworld]

hey you know what would be fun? a fic where the Royal Guard follows through with their plans to make Ichigo the new Soul King and Grimmjow promptly loses his shit because what the actual fuck Ichigo has already given these people literally everything, twice, and this is how they repay him? recruits Nel and Harribel and Urahara and Yoruichi (after Nel sits on him for a while because Jesus Christ Grimmjow you can’t storm Soul Society by yourself no matter how much you’ve powered up) and it’s the Ryoka Invasion all over again except with pissed off arrancar instead. I just think it would be neat

[distinguishedshoeduckdonut]

Preview of "BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War Cour 3" Episode 3!

[bansept]

"Ichigo should have been a captain!!!!"

"Ichigo should have been the Reio!!!!"

"Ichigo should have remained single!!!"

Ungrateful twats, this man is happy with a good job, good family, a wife that makes him smile and feel loved, eating and pounding the best pussy of his entire existence, far from all war decisions and a military lifestyle he never asked for, keep his name out of your mouths.

[ministarfruit]

saw other people do doppelgänger concepts for these two and I wanted to join in so here's my take on them!

[applestorms]

a "quick" little logistical refresher on shinigami eyes & lifespans, mostly for myself but also bc i keep seeing posts talking about this that bother me:

when ryuk first presents light with the offer of shinigami eyes, it comes with an added explanation of the primary (biological?) differences between human & shinigami. specifically, along with the difference in sight distance and ability to see names & lifespans, shinigami use their DN's as a kind of base survival mechanism. while no human weapon/physical attack could ever hurt them, and they have no biological need to eat/sleep/drink/etc, the one thing they do have to do is write down names, at least enough to ensure that their life counter doesn't tick all the way down.

presumably, this is one of the reasons why shinigami can't see each others'/their own lifespans: not just because it is unnecessary, as ryuk says, but also because it is constantly changing as it ticks down, bringing the shinigami closer & closer to their own death until they refresh it by writing down another name. if we could see shinigami lifespans, they would be shifting every second/minute/hour/[insert shinigami-based time measurement here]-- in a way, time is their basic life function.

this means that, by necessity, humans are different. a human lifespan cannot change-- or, even if it does have the ability to adjust under certain circumstances, it still absolutely cannot be influenced by the DN. the DN influencing lifespans goes inherently against the point of using the DN as a way of getting more time, as it would mean that at maximum, all shinigami could only get approximately 40 seconds of life for every kill. they would have to be much more regularly active to keep living under such circumstances, which goes against the whole lazy/slothful shinigami realm thing that's set up early on.

sidenote1: theoretically, you could maybe consider a circumstance where time is a lot more fluid, where human lifespans tick down just the same as shinigami and get transferred/sucked over when their name is written in the DN. but considering the fact that (iirc) it is never depicted like that in any animated/live action mediums, and that the explanation seems more focused around the mathematical approach of, "well if you have 60 years listed and you're 40, the shinigami gets 20 years for writing your name," i'm inclined to disregard this idea or call it mostly non-canonical.

so, following this logic, when light kills with the DN he is almost undoubtedly killing people before the end of their stated/written lifespans. the DN's influence on reality is not something that is predetermined by these written lifespans for the reasons listed above, so if light kills someone at the time they were meant to die, a la BB, it is purely by chance. (e.g. lind l. tailor might've been slated to die that day, but his death could still be considered "unnatural," since it was ultimately caused by the DN.) this tends to be the line of reasoning that people follow when they say that, "everything in DN was ryuk's fault," assuming not just that the DN's influence is unnatural, but that the presence of a shinigami itself is somehow breaking the natural flow of how humanity would've existed on its own when freed from such a presence.

this of course brings up the interesting if somewhat complicated question of free will in the DN universe, though i think we can get a clearer view on this by asking a simpler question first: what is a "natural lifespan" anyway?

intuitively, if we are working under the assumption that humans have at least some semblance of free will, it's easy to assume that a natural lifespan is something that humans can influence. i.e. if you eat healthy, work out regularly, take care of yourself mentally, etc. you can improve your length & quality of life, or just the opposite if you do not. however, this again seems to go against the already established principle of "human lifespans do not change," so i don't think this explanation fully fits.

instead, i actually think there might be a similar logic working here as how diavolo's king crimson stand works in jojo pt. 5-- namely, that there is some fated/destined route that all of humanity is destined to go down, should they be free to go their own way. this implies that at least some/all human action is predetermined to a degree, with deaths being fated/unavoidable if the lifespan counter decrees it, just in the same way that a death cannot in any way be avoided if written in the DN. even if nobody (that we know of in-story, anyway) can see it, there is a destined timeline of human action & existence that will play out naturally should humanity be left alone from any exterior forces, shinigami or otherwise.

the question is only how much the action of shinigami influence this destiny in the long run-- like, does the existence of KIRA in the early 2000s influence the lifespan of children born in japan even after light's death in 2010/2013/2006? presumably, yes, as it would be a huge pain for shinigami if they could no longer trust lifespan counters to accurately depict times of death, and the influence of the DN supposedly only works on those whose names are directly written down. so, perhaps the predetermination only works on a smaller scale, looking only at the destiny of each individual human at the time they are born?? something to consider.

EDIT: actually, scratch that, the answer to that should probably be no-- the entire point is that light's influence is somewhat meaningless in the long run, even if humanity still remembers KIRA distinctly long after light's death, as we see in the c-kira & a-kira post-canon stories. the real question here is whether or not the lifespans of kids born at the time of KIRA's reign are influenced-- which again the answer to which should probably be no, as the DN's influence is limited. guess it just feels weird to think about, that everyone remembers KIRA so distinctly but their lives are still destined the same either way. a bit of weird writing, perhaps? again, this gets into the question of what specifically is being predetermined here-- we see the twin towers still standing post-2001 in story at one point, so were those deaths simply not predetermined in this universe?? big sigh.

sidenote2: even going along with this explanation, i don't think you have to entirely divorce the existence of free will from the DN universe, or at the very least you don't have to believe that every single individual action a human takes or emotion they feel is strictly predestined. this could start getting into more formal philosophical arguments though, and i'm not reading any more hume if i can help it.

ironically, this all kinda goes directly against the idea that light is somehow destined/fated to rid the world of evil by being a teenage serial killer-- if anything, it means that light is specifically going against his fated path by using the DN. you could maybe even make the argument that light is one of the only people in the world acting with true free will, freed from his destined path through the power of an outside force. it's very very very interesting to me in this context that humans using the DN seem to lose their destined lifespans entirely, seemingly breaking from their fated paths entirely purely by gaining such a power, the only lasting remnants of fate's influence being a vague doom hanging over their heads (rip minoru tanaka). i mean-- i guess you could still argue that even that was still fated, that there's like another layer of shinigami-based destiny on top of the base-level human destiny, but this is starting to get stupid so i'm gonna stop talking about fate for now.

point is: please stop saying that beyond could somehow tell that L or naomi or mello were all gonna die soon in the future due to KIRA. he had no way of knowing that-- their lifespans would be written the same regardless of whether or not light got the DN, because the DN by necessity cannot influence the written, predetermined human lifespans. thank you for reading my speech, mic drop.

[recurring-polynya]

[darkkbluee]

Sometimes I think, Shinigami King!Light. He'd revolutionize the Shinigami world, bringing in 'jobs', 'money' and internet from the human world. Suddenly, the Shinigami realm is so much more lively that even Ryuk finds it interesting to live there.

Dead!L can go to Hell and take over there. No one can tell him what to do. L has the demon king who tried to order him around over thrown. There isn't food he likes to eat. So, L funds culinary revolution in Hell, including sponsoring air cons, refrigerators, mixers, ovens, etc. Now no one wants to escape Hell because its better there than the human world.

Eventually though, L ends up dealing with the sudden influx of souls caused by Light bringing 'jobs' to the Shinigami Realm. L is once again on the hunt to stop Kira.

[corviiids]

genuinely so sorry to slide into your dm's like this, not sure that this is proper tumblr etiquette, etc., but i just got so excited when i read in your sayu-gets-the-death-note ask that you've been trying to talk yourself out of doing an entire statutory interpretation of the manga death note rules because i've been trying to talk myself out doing an entire metaphysical interpretation of the manga death note rules, so... if you, like me, simply cannot talk yourself out of a stupid idea once it sinks its claws in your brain and would at some point like to share notes about I THINK one of the sexiest and most broken parts of this series, i'd be delighted.

oh my god dont apologise im just excited a single person on earth besides me is interested in a pseudo-legal (very pseudo) perspective on the death note rules. high fives you. for the most part im just incredibly impressed that they manage to retain so much internal consistency especially since so many of them have the vibe of, like, random amendments which were included just for funsies. it's incredible they don't overtly contradict each other. ive been obsessed with them since i first saw them and have already spent way too much time reading over them but yeah i'd honestly love to dig into them more. HTR13 does organise them into something closer to Parts or Divisions which makes the structure a little more coherent. it drives me nuts that sometimes a numbered rule will have sub-provisions that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. drafting that gives me a stress migraine

[coockie8]

I headcanon that B is actually just half Shinigami (his mom was a hardcore monster fucker obviously) and his conception is what lost the Shinigami their fuck rights

[tuliharja]

BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War - The Conflict episode 1 review

After almost a year Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood war anime is back on the air! I would be lying if I wrote I hadn't been expecting it to come last month (September) because the second cour started to appear back then. But it's a good thing the cour 3 finally started!

Despite that, I think the first episode was a bit mid. The sole reason is the fact almost half of the episode was a recap of last cour's two last fights. Don't get me wrong, I still think Senjumaru's fight against the Quincies was epic, and seeing her Bankai was wonderful. Ichibe going against Yhwach was also something to be mesmerized about, but because those fights were so epic...at least I could remember those as clearly as if I had just yesterday finished watching cour 2's last episodes. Even so, while I found it a bit puzzling why there was such a recap, I could somehow understand it. It'll give the animators (hopefully) a budget for other epic scenes yet to come and once the anime finally truly picked itself, it felt just a natural continuation. Even so...it made me question 'what if they had cut out that recap and used that time for something else?'

But moving on. The third cour only kicked on after that recap and just like every manga reader would know, it was this time the quincies turn to win. The manga never showed us how, so seeing how Yhwach and Uryuu brought down both Ichibe and Senjumaru was interesting.

I really liked Uryuu's comeback against Senjumaru. I believe we haven't really seen Uryuu going so strongly against anyone except at the very beginning of the Bleach Mayuri. Which Senjumaru made the comparison. It almost made me laugh when she made that comment. It was like her breaking indirectly the fourth wall!

Yhwach vs. Ichibe was epic. The fact Ichibe broke down to that poem-ish singing middle of the fight to bring a new side of his Bankai (as youngsters these days would call it [talk about Ichibe and Senjumaru slaying things with their witty choice of words]) was epic. The animation was also epic. It felt very unique and refreshing, despite the fact there was some 3D here and there, but the makers still made it work. Too bad, Yhwach had seen that all and claimed his victory just like Uryuu who ended up playing Senjumaru like back with Mayuri, but hopefully this time without as big a cost as with Mayuri. Truly. Uryuu vs. Senjumaru felt like a parallel to Uryuu vs. Mayuri. But with that twist, this time Uryuu was the bad guy -at least from a certain perspective.

I also felt a strong parallel when Ichibe asked Ichigo to stop Yhwach. I don't know, but that parallel felt like a parallel to Kisuke? I can't now remember (it has been quite a long time) if Kisuke ever asked Ichigo to protect Soul Society or sort of, but the way Ichibe talked, his behavior, and the fact 'you don't have to kill the Quincy King (Yhwach) to protect Soul King, just stop him' just gave me massive Kisuke vibes asking things from Ichigo. I know many other shinigami have asked Ichigo to protect Soul Society when they haven't or sort of, but this...just like déja vu. I feel like this episode as a whole had lots of parallels. It was...interesting from that perspective.

Yhwach thrusting his blade to Soul King felt very ominous at the end. That and paired with the next episode's title, we can expect something epic next time!

Plus, the hint of Kyoraku going to see Aizen? I can't wait to see Aizen joining the fryer, since it won't just be your usual social visit Kyoraku will do.

Lastly, the opening of this cour is just epic. I really love the aesthetic of a monochrome setting with hints of color. It capture's viewer's sight of certain things while making the viewer somewhat 'blind' to other things that might occur. The ending made me giggle as the music sounds so upbeat and happy-happy, even though the words aren't that happy-go-lucky nor are the animations. But the beat being like that after things end with an ominous note? Yeah, talk about the contrast between things. In fact, the ending felt like playing with contrasts as Uryuu was on the side of the 'darkness' while Ichigo was on the side of 'light', yet in the end...they felt like just two opposites of the same coin, meeting somewhere in-between. The midnight sun was something that caught my attention when I watched the ending and read the lyrics of the song. It was obviously a figure of speech, but somehow...it felt a significant one. Also, once again, the fact the ending song's name was 'MONOCHROME' while the opening was almost fully monochrome felt like a huge parallel between the two things. In fact, the whole episode felt like it had lots of parallels...

[gagedraws]

💕 Happy Valentine’s Day 💋

Gals from 2023’s video games.

[kingofanemptyworld]

sometimes I think about the fact that Grimmjow never saw Ichigo after his Mugetsu transformation and I get sad because literally there would have been no one more ecstatic to see Ichigo’s sudden and explosive growth (and also the hair and outfit let’s be real)

[distinguishedshoeduckdonut]

29 「THE DARK ARM」

[epraim1992]

Soul King's Origin

One big revelation from Bleach is that the Human World, Soul Society and Hueco Mundo were originally one world that the Soul King split.

According to Ichibe in Can't Fear Your Own World Hollows existed in the original world and all souls would have become one gigantic Menos causing stagnation.

But then the Soul King appeared and destroyed the Hollows turning them into Reishi sand. It was later revealed that Ichibei's recounting of the past can't be taken as face value.

I have a theory that the Soul King was that large Menos and completed the evolution of a Hollow.

I think his personality was able to become the dominant one.

He evolved into an adjuchas then a vasto lorde.

But his evolution didn't stop there.

I think he was able to remove his mask to gain Shinigami powers.

When a Hollow removers their mask it becomes their Zanpakuto.

A hollow's mask is their lost heart its also the source of their power and unique appearance.

I think next the Soul King removed his hollow hole. If removing the mask gives Shinigami powers then I think removing the hole awakens Quincy powers.

I think is symbolized and hinted at by Uryu's Quincy cross which incorporates a circle which I think represents the Hollow hole.

It was revealed that Hollows in hell are able to remove their holes from their flesh. So it is possible.

I think there is precedent with Ebern who was an arrancar that gained Quincy powers.

I think the last step is he reintegrated his powers. When Aizen was transcending he became one with his Zanpakuto.

Hollowfication was meant as way to reach new heights but in my opinion that faded away in favor of the Hogyoku.

Aizen explained that hollowficiation was supposed to lead to a new kind of being which we never saw. Maybe it is what happened with the Soul King.

As to why the Soul King was able to become a god I think of the conversation with Shawlong Koufang about how some are destined to be a Vasto Lordes and others are not.

It also made me think of White's speech about the king and his horse. Maybe the Soul King had the killer instinct to become a god.

I also think that the the ancestors of the Five Noble families are menos who were followers of the Soul King. After becoming a god I think the Soul King turned them into Shinigami.

It was never explained how humans could become Shinigami. One theory I had is that they where purified Hollows.