#though let's be real the true superfund dimension is actually just the living world

[bleachbleachbleach]

I started typing this in the tags and then I was like, well, that's probably a mistake, so I'm aborting mission and just starting up here. XDD The whole land question in Soul Society has always been interesting to me, because if the souls of Rukongai do not need to eat, I feel like that removes one of the biggest motivators for ag and commerce that supports people eating, and why having a shitload of land would be valuable in any real way, since the eating population of the Seireitei isn't really that big, either, even if that means there's some element of Rukongai peasants farming on behalf of the Seireitei's food supply. But I guess that's also assuming that their value system would equate land only with value through arability, and if everything is reishi maybe they're better at valuing land as land than a lot of the LIving World tends to be. Land is land, tracts of land act as wells of reishi, and idk, this inspires status-play where owning a lot of land implies that your line will have greater reiryoku. Not through any direct biological mechanism, but through the general feeling that it's a way of maintaining your connection to the sacred/to the mystery that is the Soul King, or something like that.

(I don't actually *know* anything useful about this, except that the European divine right of kinds functions slightly differently than the conception of divinity re: the Japanese emperor. I feel like that might be generative for discussions about the Soul King business, except 1) I don't know enough political history or religious studies to have understood the one article I skimmed one time, except that a lot of the time it seemed like being a conduit for the divine in the Japanese sense was a much suckier deal than being a God-appointed King of France or whatever, and 2) I am a professional at retaining absolutely zero knowledge of anything even remotely related to the Soul King, LOL. SOUL KING WHOMST. Yhwach talks and my brain stops processing language, oh no.)

And maybe back in the way your power as a noble family could be demonstrated by the amount of land you could steward/keep clean of Hollows, up until this part gets less fun to them and becomes the purview of the Gotei. And now instead of that, we largely just have the districts as defined by the Gotei and maybe scattered in there some random nobles with connections to this or that area, like the Shiba. To say nothing of the districts that might be 'districted' nominally, but like, no one ever goes there or really knows what that is, like you mentioned!

And then the Seireitei is its own issue because even though it's a contained urban space with limited growth potential because it's got these giant walls constraining its edges, it's certainly not... hurting for space? Like, sure, we can be boring and say that no one's ever in the streets because it's a pain to draw/animate but I rather feel like the empty-streets quality is a huge part of the Seireitei's characterization, with a bunch of random empty buildings that nobody actual uses, and all the rooms are built just a little too big and the furniture never looks right in the space and it's all just a bit Weird. Which is a quality of the Seireitei's that I am very fond of!

I'm kind of into the idea that at some past point the population of the Seireitei used to be a lot larger, and it's been constricting for some time now. Well, I mean, post-TYBW it's even smaller. But pre-TYBW! So the Seireitei used to be right-sized at some point, maybe even a little too small and in need of expansion, and now that's not the case, and quite the opposite. I guess what I'm saying is that some element of the Seireitei gives me Detroit vibes. OR it was built in anticipation of a population boom that never actually happened.

(Even if the stated reason for "needing" to commit genocide against the Quincy was an issue of soul stoichiometry, I feel like simultaneous long-term anxieties about Seireitei and/or shinigami proliferation (let's say high spiritual energy souls, regardless of their enlistment/employment) would probably create a socio-political climate that would sway Seireitei denizens into thinking some type of way about Quincy and soul stoichiometry...)

Though now I've ended up in a place that has nothing to do with the original post and not a lot to do even with your post I am trying to reply to, which is what I was trying to avoid doing in the original post LOL because what a mess this reply is!!! But I've enjoyed all the directions these replies have gone anyway! I guess the full-circle here is that despite the fact that supply-and-demand would suggest obtaining land/property in the Seireitei would be achievable, the nobles were just like "fuck your supply-and-demand curve, land costs 999999999999999 eleventy kan. Begone, peasants. To the superfund pit with you!"

This probably requires a much longer, sprawling post (the number of tentacles increased exponentially every 2 seconds as I was thinking about this) but despite Gotei captains making good money and having fairly high social standing, I feel like land prices must be set artificially, astronomically high so that no one but the already-landed nobility [or a governmental entity, lie the Gotei] could possibly ever own anything. That 'officer's neighborhood' or whatever it is is cushy, but it's also technically just a reserve the nobility has consented to so that there's no reason for these people to live anywhere else (unless they already have property by virtue of being noble). Not sure how this works for commercial leases--are they subsidized by the 46? or does running a business require you to have some kind of arrangement with a noble family. DOES SILVER DRAGONFLY LEASE FROM THE KUCHIKI.

I'm not sure how this would work for Rukongai (except that surely it's very controversial to be buying/selling parcels in Rukongai to begin with, many considering it a foolish audacity to assume such a place can be owned) but I imagine that at the very least the property taxes (or whatever payments/responsibilities inhere in "ownership" in Rukongai, re: assuming responsibility for whatever shit happens out there/keeping it Hollow-controlled, etc.) present a functional barrier to ownership for most individuals.

The generational wealth gap (mostly in terms of having family vs. having no family, but also I guess in terms of shinigami who are really old vs. those who are not) must be bananas, too. But NO, NO, STOPPING, this post was supposed to be 2 sentences about Seireitei land prices and it's already about seventy other things. It's 9AM stopping STOPPING