rem and ryuk truly are the coworkers of all time to me. imagine you're forced to cover your other coworker's shift against your will bc he fucked up work so hard he died only to find out the single other person on shift alongside you is the annoying twat you've been avoiding because he can't remember any of the rules to do literally anything so he just watches you do all his tasks for him every time instead of asking. and then you die. that's rem's experience in the human realm
I'm back with another random Death Note theory and okay this kinda stands on HTR13 so if you don't accept that in your canon, then ignore all the following. BUT, if you do:
While it's not made totally explicit anywhere, it's strongly implied and widely accepted in the fandom that Misa died by suicide on Valentine's Day 2011, just over a year after Light's death at the Yellow Box warehouse. How tragic, how romantic, she tried to live without him for a year and couldn't in the end, etc. HOWEVER. [cut for long post]
I think it should be the case, in the DN universe, that if a human tries to commit suicide before their indicated lifespan expires - they just won't die. Either they'll survive (possibly with life-changing injuries etc), or the universe will somehow twist so they never attempt, or someone will show up and talk them down, or something. We know that if you're destined to die by violence your numbers will reflect that, as with Misa's running out when she was due to be stabbed, so if you're destined to commit suicide then it's logical to suppose that they'll reflect that too. If this is so, then the only thing that should be able to end you before your time ought to be a Death Note - and Misa is running on two shinigami gifting her their remaining lifespan. So I'm pretty sure she shouldn't be able to kill herself if that gifted time hasn't run out.
So first, is it possible her time could be up? 2011 is around seven years after she first received Gelus's lifespan, and logically we can assume she got Rem's too when Rem died to save her. Now, that means the total number of years she must have collected include at minimum, not counting whatever Gelus and Rem each had before the start of the plot:
- the remaining lifespan of the stalker Gelus killed for her (could've been any length, he might have killed himself alongside Misa as he threatened to, or he could've lived for years) via Gelus
- the remaining lifespan of Watari (okay, that maybe wasn't much, man was like seventy) and L (could've easily been decades), via Rem
- the remaining lifespan of Ginzo Kaneboshi (unknown, but he only looks middle-aged), whom Rem killed in the back of Higuchi's car to prove that Misa was the second Kira, via Rem
Yes, she sacrificed half of Gelus's gift to make the eye deal with Rem, but presumably got most of that back in the package deal when Rem died for her; so the only lifespan she permanently forfeited was a quarter of Gelus's gift to Ryuk when she traded with him. So Misa's total lifespan at the end of part one should've been everything left over from Watari, L, Ginzo and Rem, plus just under three-quarters of everything left over from Gelus and her stalker. That's four humans and two shinigami. Is it really possible that all six of them were so close to death's door that Misa emerged with only seven years to live in total?
It's just about possible, but it's a hell of a coincidence if so. So let's consider the other possibility. What if what actually happened was that Misa's suicide was forced on her by someone with a Death Note?
If so - who and why? It's possible that the math went the other way and Misa ended up with, say, three hundred years to live - utterly ridiculous for a human - and some random hungry shinigami spotted those absurd numbers and killed her for food, but an uninvolved shinigami wouldn't go to the trouble of scheduling her suicide on a significant date, they'd just kill her. It's possible that Nia lied about having destroyed the Death Notes and he killed her - but again, why would he orchestrate something so theatrical for her? Nia's hardly a romantic and he doesn't even know most of her backstory, he'd just tidy her up like a loose end if he was going to do such a thing at all. There are no other Death Notes remaining in human hands. So who's left who might have both the motive and the means to kill Misa Amane and make a production out of it?
Ryuk. Ryuk who has a Death Note, and who already knew that Misa had two shinigami's worth of extra lifespan and was no longer under anyone's protection. Ryuk who was stuck bonded to Misa for half a decade and didn't look exactly happy about it when Light assigned him that mission in the first place. Ryuk who, if you notice a certain throwaway line of Misa's in chapter 65, was apparently being expected to help with the housework in part 2 (ouch, the indignity).
And Ryuk always laughed at Misa's devotion to the boy who was using her - but then Misa, after all her past pledges of how she'd gladly sacrifice herself for Light and couldn't be without him, outlived him. Can I see Ryuk being sadistic enough to decide that Misa should keep her word and die for Light Yagami whether she actually wanted to or not (and incidentally let him snag what was left of Rem and Gelus's lifespans)? Hell yes, easily.
Concluding headcanon: Misa Amane did not commit romantic suicide of her own volition, she was sniped from above by a vindictive shinigami who didn't see why SHE should be the only human to get away with having been Kira scot-free and with her pockets full of bonus lifespan that she didn't even remember getting. Absolutely nobody has to agree with me of course because this is all standing on a lot of conjecture and if-thens, but this is my theory and anyone who likes it is welcome to steal it!
So, I’ve been thinking about how Misa became a murderous stalker like, right after her own murderous stalkers was killed. And I had a weird thought.
So, you know how Shinigami basically eat the lifespans of the humans they kill? And when they kill to unnaturally extend a human’s life their own lifespan is given to that human? Well, what if there’s like, a digestive process or something? Like, the shinigami aren’t influenced by the lives they take but, well the stalkers lifespan was just immediately given to Misa since Gelus died at the same time right? Do you think maybe that’s another consequence of breaking the rules?
What if it’s not just “save a human who should die and you’ll turn to dust,” but also “and that human will forever be cursed to live with their would be murderer as a part of them.”
Wouldn’t that be fun to explore? Anyway yeah that’s my random thought of the day.
I love Death Note because yeah two immortal aliens with wings and foresight descend from the stars and their "claustrophobic" world which is rotting to an unknown cause, forcing them to become nothing more than parasites in a millenniums-long meaningless life ruled by a King that would, Mimikyu style, kill a human of fright if they saw him, and love are goodness are outlawed but there are still characters that are killed or choose to die for any hope of redemption from their cruel existence. That's not really the point though, who even cares about that stuff. THIS is about a teenage boy who's either really gay or really aroace fucking with a bunch of twinks and goth girls before he dies on a staircase. Don't even. Don't even think about all the other stuff i said it's FINE !!