User blog:Njalm2/Nanja's Point of View: Shinigami Edition

So, the time has come again, once again I'll tackle a topic in an attempt to elaborate upon it, and potentially expand it. This guide however has a very different approach, and is geared towards achieving a different thing altogether. Yes, this is the first of what might become several immersion guides. What is an immersion guide, you might ask? Well, an immersion guide is a guide to look past your own beliefs as a person and look upon your character for what they are, beyond merely distinquishing between who they are.

In this guide I'll tackle what is probably the most popular race to roleplay due to their wealth of options, detailed backstory and development and overwhelming presence within the main story itself. I'm obviously talking about. The main issue with Shinigami that I've seen around this site, is the tendency to portray Shinigami as humans. That is humans with superpowers. Shinigami are not humans however, not by any stretch of the imagination. This is why I made this guide, as a way to help you understand these gods of death a little better, and partially for my own part too, as I'm guilty of the exact same thing.

Before I start with the guide itself, which will cover quite a bit of topics, we first need to discuss Soul Society. As it's depicted in the series, the Soul Society is an oligarchy of the worst kind, where the vast majority of people live in extreme poverty, criminals and gangs run rampant in the streets and hollows roam the outskirts looking for easy prey. Meanwhile, the Shinigami live fulfilling and comfortable lives within the Seireitei. At first glance, this might seem extremely unfair, but if you look more closely at just what Shinigami are, then it starts to make quite a bit of sense. Which I'll be covering in the first section. Where I'll also tackle a common question about Shinigami.

Shinigami: Profession or Race?
This question has been brought up a lot, by quite a few people, are Shinigami their own race, or are they merely a profession taken up by souls with a high amount of spiritual energy? All things considered, I'd have to go with both, Shinigami are both a profession and it's own distinct race, or subrace as the case might be. When everything is said and done, the difference between a Shinigami and a plus is enormous, and no, this isn't merely due to the power difference between them, but due to the fact that Shinigami can live for a very long time. Pluses, in contrast, probably live in the afterlife for about as long as your average human lifespan. Shinigami need to eat, but Pluses appearantly don't (even so they have food stalls in the rukon districts, whose sole purpose was to be plundered by Rukia and Renji's group). The conclusion is that although Shinigami and Pluses might look alike, they're very distinct in all manner of ways and most certainly don't belong to what we'd consider the same race.

Because of the vast difference in life expectancy between Shinigami and Pluses, it suddenly doesn't seem like a true oligarchy anymore, after all, in comparison to the Shinigami, Pluses will at most only be around for one century, probably less, and to a Shinigami such as Yamamoto; that might as well constitute a long summer. It makes sense to focus on the Shinigami, who are the true residents of the Soul Society, whereas everyone else are merely passing through the afterlife and back into the cycle of souls. I doubt Shinigami even consider them actual people, at least not in the common sense of the word. Is it unfair, of course it is, and it is barbaric, but to them, this might be the only real option, and to attempt to convince a Shinigami otherwise would probably be pretty difficult given the circumstances. Like affording free hospital care to dogs or cats.

Shinigami: Aging
How Shinigami age has always been a pretty hotly debated topic, many seem to think of it as being similar to how elves age, that their bodies stop aging once they reach adulthood but this is evidently not the case. As Shinigami can be seen in pretty much all ages, it's then occured to me that these beings have an entirely unique aging process which is based not on their race but on each individual Shinigami, they age in accordance to their spiritual energy not in accordance to time. The way this works is that characters like Toshiro, who's actually more than 100 years old, appears younger than other characters because of his immense potential having not yet reached full maturity. Furthermore, if we also use the young Byakuya we saw in the turn back the pendulum arc as an example, we can probably guess that the same applies to him, Byakuya's age is probably around 170 or so, young for a Captain but still presumeably at least a little older than Rukia, who's listed as being over 150 years of age. So, I've concluded that a Shinigami's appearance is therefore a very easy way to judge their talents as a Shinigami, the younger they look, the more untapped powers they have at their command.

This also leads us to the second part of aging, when do Shinigami begin to grow old? Obviously, Shinigami can indeed grow old, as demonstrated by Yamamoto and his late Lieutenant. The questions are when do they begin to age past their prime, and are they immortal? No, Shinigami are by no means immortal, they live for an extremely long time, but they're not immortal by any means as evidenced by how they were vulnerable to Barragan's Respira. In my view, Shinigami begin to age when they're idle, when they've completed their primary goals. Yamamoto began aging after he made the Soul Society, because that was his life's work, and with it achieved he devoted his time to being the Captain-Commander. Through the span of a thousand years, Yamamoto has aged tremendously, going from what appears to be a middle-aged man to what Ichigo refers to as a geezer. Unohana, in start contrast, have looked more or less the same for a thousand years, with no sign of aging whatsoever and she's probably almost as old as Yamamoto. Yeah, From what we've seen aging for Shinigami is a lot like aging is for humans in terms of it's effects, Yamamoto had grown much weaker in his old age, as commented upon by many. My guess is, that within another 1000 years, Yamamoto would've died from natural causes, and over that span of time, his spiritual energy would shrink tremendously as it had already done prior to the series even began. He'd have died at the age of 3000 something.

Shinigami: Psychology
There's been hints of this in earlier sections, as I've briefly touched upon their psychology to explain certain other matters. In this section however, I will attempt to go into more detail about their base psychology and how a Shinigami might approach things differently than others. The greatest difference between Shinigami and humans is the lifespan, that much is a given, and I'd like to use this moment to say that no, a 100 year old Shinigami is in no way comparable to a 20 year old adult, even if they might look and behave similarily. The difference is immense, whereas we often live year by year, a Shinigami might live decade by decade; and they might dedicate an entire decade to cultivating a single talent alone, a Shinigami painter might spend years perfecting the stroke of their brush before they even attempt to paint a picture. Cause to them, there is no sense in hurrying, no sense in urgency, they live like humans, and yet they don't. A basic Shinigami's knowledge of swordplay is likely on the same level as a human expert in the field, and if they got a Gigai a Hakuda practitioner could probably win a tournament with ease, even without their spiritual power.

On the other hand, the Shinigami shown are noted to behave a lot like humans do, at least at a glance. Their interests are varied and they even sometimes take to learning human forms of art, such as Hisagi learning how to play the guitar. Shinigami do these small things because to a certain extent, the inventions of humans fascinate them, as has been shown time and again. It's worth noting that a Shinigami without much contact with humans might consider them to be cute if silly creatures, akin to animals, for witihn a human lifespan they can at best hope to achieve a modicum of what Shinigami can.

Another thing I want to bring up here is the heavy criticism Rukia got after Ichigo defeated Aizen, where she headed back to Soul Society and didn't return to visit him even once over the span of a full year. To our perception of time, this is indeed cruel and even makes it seem as though she and the Gotei 13 used him, but consider it from her perspective for a moment here, one year to her is probably an utterly insignificant length of time. She might've simply wanted to give Ichigo some space, it's not like she wants to overly impose herself on the poor kid either.

Romance and Marriage
As a subsection for the Psychology section, I've decided to attempt to go into detail about how things like romance and marriage plays out among Shinigami, judging by my own viewpoints. Shinigami would look upon things very differently from us humans, they frequently life what amounts to ten or twelve human lifetimes, and within those lifetimes they're likely to change drastically over time, as they forget their oldest memories and new ones spring forth. Because of this, a Shinigami is unlikely to be bothered about the gender or even species of their current lover, if you asked someone like Tetsuzaemon if he'd be interested in pursuing something with Komamura, his number one reasoning on why he couldn't might be something like "But he's my Captain, it'd be unprofessional!". Whereas a human would get all caught up in the physical things, "it's another man, he's a dog, he's way bigger than me, I'm too ticklish, he's not my type, it's a dog!". Yeah, if you ever attempted to explain the sexuality of humans to a Shinigami they might consider it strange, and a little amusing. Remarking on how humans have all these quaint little categories.

A Shinigami of a few centuries age, have likely had a great many romances in their back record, likely ranging between good friends turned lovers, dainty damsels, handsome debonairs, comrades in arms and bad boys and femme fatales, with a few interspecies romances sprinkled between. Which brings us to my next point, how would a relationship between a human and a Shinigami work out, are there any actual credence to it and could it have any kind of future? Well, let's compare what is pehraps the most hopeful pairing of them all and one of the most common ships within the Bleach fandom, Rukia and Ichigo. There's a massive difference between the two of them, and although they might seem to act as though they're similar in age, Rukia has likely experienced more than Ichigo could ever experience in an entire lifetime, she's lived long enough to trace the lines of history back for a full century. Ichigo is a high school student, and a baby boy in comparison to her, being literally one tenth her age. While there certainly might be an attraction, there would be no true future for them even if they wanted it to be. The difference in values, intelligence, knowledge and experience is simply too great to overcome in their case, as it probably is in most relations between Shinigami and humans, all of which are probably bound to end in tragedy.

Now, to close up this section of my guide I'd like to talk about how Shinigami regard marriage, as it's extremely common for users on this site to assign wives to their Shinigami guys. This is likely done out of habit, because that's what we do as humans, but how would a Shinigami regard marriage? From what we've seen in the series, marriage is primarily a political tool employed by powerful clans such as noble houses and wealthy families in order to secure more power and connections. It's appearantly not common for someone outside of these powerful families to marry, as all such marriages thus far portrayed have been within such clans.

It might as well be unique to these clans altogether, with most common Shinigami probably opting instead for looser relationships, perhaps they have a private form of union that's unique to them? So, why exactly don't Shinigami appear to revel in marriage the same way we humans do? The most logical explanation is because Shinigami don't believe in any gods but themselves, as Hachigen himself put it, but that's only part of it - the whole idea of marriage is to devote yourself to a single person forever. To beings like Shinigami, who likely change profoundly several times across their extremely long life spans, such a set up would not only be vastly restrictive, but also one eventually doomed to failure. If humans, who put so much stock in marriage frequently get divorced after a decade or two, what could ever really be expected of Shinigami, who don't appear to have nearly the same reverence for it that we do?

That's not the same as claiming that Shinigami wouldn't make attempts to make their relationships work, and it's probably quite common for casual Shinigami relationships to last up to a decade or two. Within this span of time however, they might only see one another a few times a month; which to them might seem quite often given a Shinigami's perception of time.

Conclusion
This concludes my very first guide to immersion, and I think it might be helpful to quite a bit of people. I hope you can use it to portray your Shinigami characters more realistically in regards to their profession, race and age. One thing to always keep in mind is that Shinigami are not humans, I don't know how much I could ever stress that fact. If you want to roleplay as a human, make a substitute Shinigami like Ichigo or roleplay a Fullbringer or Quincy instead, that's my advice.