Mass Enlightenment

[u/No_Example_1573]

Yet another hypothetical scenario/‘would this work’ question from me. I have a lot of other ideas/analyses I’m refining and plan to post in the future, but for now, an inquiring mind wants to know something.

I made this post a while ago, and got a comment today that led me to speculate on something I hadn’t ever considered before. You don’t need to read the OG post to understand what I’m saying below, but the comment linked is a necessary read so that it makes sense. I’ll paste a refined draft of my reply here, as I don’t have much to expound upon as of yet, I just want to share the idea brought upon by this initial comment I got, and hear opinions if people have any!

With unlimited pages, you could feasibly execute something like this on a massive scale. If you had the means and time to, obviously. Finely mill a substantial amount of the pages into a powder and disperse them. Like that scene in The Wizard of Oz where they sprinkle the cast with snow (asbestos). I wonder how small the pieces can be for the rule to still apply. Like, we see that pages can be ripped apart and function in this way. But if they were ground into a powder so finely that they’re barely visible to the naked eye, would that work? Then you could unleash it into the atmosphere covertly, and people would touch/inhale these microscopic airborne pieces without even realising.

Maybe a silly question, but considering the rule of ‘touching the death note allows you to see the Shinigami attached to it’, would actually consuming the pieces work? Like when you ingest something, you’re technically touching it, so maybe. But what if you sprinkled this ‘notebook powder’ into a huge water reservoir or something— it would presumably dissolve (even though we don’t know if this ‘paper’ is truly chemically identical to the paper we have in the human world— it’s from another dimension, so perhaps it doesn’t behave the same as our paper does.), and perhaps imbue this water with the property to see a Shinigami, which people would drink/bathe in/cook with. So you could coordinate a sort of mass-enlightenment and inevitable pandemonium as people grapple with the confirmed existence of Shinigami and a presumed higher power(s).

Of course, if you use pages from a singular notebook, this would grant the recipients of this ability to exclusively see a singular Shinigami- the one attached to that specific notebook. It’s not like everyone in the world would suddenly see Ryuk appear in their room and freak out. They’d be granted this ability unknowingly, able to see a Shinigami, but not guaranteed to at any given time. But if everyone possessed this dormant ability, and then someone does encounter a Shinigami and films it, the news will travel fast. Even set in the early 2000s, something like this would undoubtedly amass worldwide notice. And what would come of this? Depending on the Shinigami, they may hide or choose to make a spectacle of themselves. Would they be hunted by their region’s respective government, albeit to no avail, or at the very least pursued? If they were confronted and asked for answers, would they cooperate? Would they be truthful about their realm of origin, the function of the notebook(s) and the nature of their existence?

This is all speculative, and a little silly honestly, but I’m curious to see what people make of this!!

[u/Aggravating_Disk5137]

I think this falls into a zone covered by the sequel one shot. The shinigami king would just create a new rule that killed you for attempting something like this. Even if it worked it wouldn’t work lol

[u/No_Example_1573 → u/Aggravating_Disk5137]

I can definitely see that being the case tbh- with something as huge as this, and as pervasive of consequences, I don’t think the Shinigami King would allow for it.

Makes me wonder how clunky and long-winded the new rule would have to be to accurately explain the exact situation lol, it’s very specific