Ra907

Preface

I want to get one thing out of the way. This is going to be a weird write-up because I'm hardly going to cite the manga.

I'm basically posting this as a reference for myself. All of this occurred so I could properly lean into the old man aspect of Sukuna for a fic I'm writing. (Aka I read too much on actual Heian Era history and now you all have to suffer.)

People often joke that Sukuna is an old man, but I'm here to tell you he is so out of touch and out of time that he might as well be existing in a never-ending Lovecraftian nightmare where time has stopped being real.

It's going to take a while to explain why this is the case so hear me out, maybe?

Fundamental Measurements

What is a unit of measurement? And where did these units come from? If you've taken an entry level physics class, you've already been through the existential crisis answering these questions caused.

But for the uninitiated, have you ever sat down and asked yourself why you know what a foot/meter is? Everyone has kind of agreed they represent a specific distance, and depending on where you were raised, you'll prefer one over the other.

I'm an American. I'm also an engineer. I have to use SI Units and Freedom Units all the time. Differing distance units are things I can easily conceptualize. I understand what a meter is. It's like 3.3 feet.

Every time I hear meter, my brain does the conversion to 3.3 feet because I was raised with feet as my base unit of measurement. But oddly enough, when I hear 100 meters, I instantly know how far that is. This is because I was a sprinter for all of Jr. High and High School. When someone says 100 meters, I picture the got danged torture stretch of the 300 meter hurdles.

The point of this is to establish that early life experiences become a reference point when thinking about things as an adult. If I didn't run track or do engineering, I would be a "What the fuck is a kilometer?" type American.

Measurements of Miscommunication

If you couldn't tell, I wrote the previous section with Non-Americans in mind. I specified the units of measurement I was using for distance because I understand people outside of the US could be reading my post.

But what happens if I don't do that? What happens when people assume everyone's units of measurement are the same as theirs? Allow me to recall a conversation I'm sure most of you Non-Americans have had with an American on the internet and vice versa.

Friend, Non-American: Ugh it's 40 degrees out today.

Me, American: Dang that sounds pretty cold, don't forget to wear a jacket.

Friend, Non-American: What the hell do you meant that's cold???

Me, American and remembering where they live: OH YOU MEAN CELSIUS. That's 104 in Freedom Units.

Friend, Non-American: 104 IS SUPER DEAD IN CELSIUS.

(40°F is 4.4°C btw.)

As you can see, these kind of assumptions relay drastically different information. 40 degrees without a unit is read as cold or hot depending on where a person is from. It also doesn't help that the conversion between these units is nonsense. The vast majority of people can't do °C = (°F − 32) × 5/9 off the top of their head.

I, for the life of me, cannot comprehend Celsius. Temperature is too abstract a concept for my brain to swap systems. I think there's a reason for this.

Unlike distance, you can't see the temperature with your body. You can feel it, sure, but sometimes you step into a walk-in freezer and come out feeling like everything is warmer than it is. Relativity like that won't affect how you see distance. A foot is a foot, a meter is a meter, and they will always look those distances. You can check them easily.

Temperature? You need a thermometer to check. Or you assume the generalized data on a weather app is accurate. And things like humidity can fudge with your perception it.

This is all to say that my brain assigned the number 40 as cold. It being a hot number is barely comprehensible because my foundation is it being cold.

(If you were wondering, yes this is why I write out dates like Month DD, YYYY. It's so no one has to look at 3/4/YYYY and guess if they're supposed to be reading it as March 4th or April 3rd because they can't tell what country I'm from.)

What does this have to do with Sukuna?

Well my dear reader, my question to you is: What units of measurement were used in the Heian Era?

Forget about distance and temperature. How was time measured in the Heian era?

Heian Era Timekeeping

Ancient Japan ran on something called a Lunisolar Calendar. This is a type of calendar based around moon phases and sun positioning hence, lunisolar.

Taken directly from Wikipedia:

"A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures, incorporating lunar calendars and solar calendars. The date of lunisolar calendars therefore indicates both the Moon phase and the time of the solar year, that is the position of the Sun in the Earth's sky. If the sidereal year (such as in a sidereal solar calendar) is used instead of the solar year, then the calendar will predict the constellation near which the full moon may occur. As with all calendars which divide the year into months there is an additional requirement that the year have a whole number of months. In some cases ordinary years consist of twelve months but every second or third year is an embolismic year, which adds a thirteenth intercalary, embolismic, or leap month.

Their months are based on the regular cycle of the Moon's phases. So lunisolar calendars are lunar calendars with – in contrast to them – additional intercalation rules being used to bring them into a rough agreement with the solar year and thus with the seasons."

Did you notice something funky? A leap month has to be accounted for with this calendar. And it gets worse. The duration between leap months vary because the earth's path around the sun varies.

Under this calendar system, instead of a fixed interval of time always passing for a year, everything is variable. This means conversion to a modern date, which uses fixed time intervals, is not a one to one thing. It's kind of like trying to convert February 29th to non-leap years. Some people born on this day celebrate on February 28th and others will use March 1st. Legally speaking in the US, March 1st is used for tallying. (And if you've seen the Pirates of Penzance, this is an actual plot point when trying to determine a character's contract clause.) So imagine that but for months, years, and hours all the time.

I exclude days from this issue because Heian Japan agreed that a day was as day. They don't shrink or grow. The 12 hours a day always pass! And yes I mean 12 hours a day.

Heian Hours

For the rest of this discussion I'm referencing this lovely source by Katherine M. Lawrence. Everything quoted is from here.

So... let's get into that 12 hour day thing.

"Days consisted of 12 hours based on the 12 zodiac animals, each Heian hour being equal to about two modern hours. In a moment I will get to why I deliberately used the word “about.”

Days were divided into six “hours” of daylight and six “hours” of darkness. Instead of midnight, the day started at daybreak. Only in the Meiji times, in 1867, did the day change at midnight.

What is fascinating is that there were always six “hours” of daylight and six “hours” of night irrespective of the time of year. In modern times, with mechanical and even atomic clocks, we accept that more daylight falls in summer than in winter. We might turn back or move our clocks forward twice a year. In Japan it was done 24 times a year—approximately every 14 to 16 days—so that the first light would always come during the first “hour” of the day, which was known as the Hour of the Rabbit, sometimes called the Hour of the Hare. Dusk would come at the Hour of the Bird, sometimes called the Hour of the Rooster.

If we were to measure the actual length of winter days using a modern timepiece, the Hour of the Rabbit would be shorter than two hours because the relatively shorter total daylight in winter would still be distributed into six parts.

The six nighttime hours in winter would absorb the extra darkness and be proportionately longer than the nominal two hours of our 24-hour clock.

All this kept the astrologers and priests busy, because every 14 to 16 days, the clocks had to be adjusted. “More on that in a minute,” which by the way, is an idiom the Japanese of the era would not have used, because our modern concept of sixty minutes to an hour and sixty seconds to a minute is highly tied to mechanical clocks."

In summary, Heian Hours quite literally grow and shorten depending on the season. That 1 Heian Hour=2 Modern Hours conversion only works when daylight hours are the exact same as nighttime hours.

But it gets even weirder than that. Rather than counting from 1 to 12 for daytime and nighttime like we might on our modern clocks, Heian Japan counted down from 9 to 4 twice. This results in a clock conversion that looks like this.

And remember, this is only accurate when daylight hours are equal to nighttime hours!

It should also be noted that these hours were announced by the ringing of temple bells throughout the day and the night. Everyone relied on these temples to keep the time at all times.

But wait, there's more! (Heian Months and Solar Stems)

This is where timekeeping really starts to fall apart in terms of my understanding of it so Ms. Katherine M. Lawrence is going to explain it.

"In the Heian period (and until 1867), each month began on the dark moon, also know as the new moon. The full moon would come on the 15th day and the month would end approximately on the 28th, sometimes the 29th, and even the 30th day of the month.

Japanese did not have the western concept of the seven-day week, though they certainly could count to seven. What they had instead was the concept of the solar stem, of which there were 24."

"The first solar stem of the Japanese year starts on the first day of the year: Start of Spring, which, unlike the Western calendar, is not  in March. The Last Solar Stem (the 24th) ends on the last day of Major Cold. The beginning of the year in Japan, as measured by the Western calendar, would start somewhere between mid-January and mid-February, the variation resulting from aligning the solar stems with the lunar months."

In summary, Heian Months may be about the same length as Modern Months, but they are strictly based on the moon phases and the 24 Solar Stems are anchored around them.

This leaves us with a conversion calendar that looks like this. (Edited to number the Solar Stems.)

And remember, this is approximate. The Solar Stems do not always align with these exact Georgian calendar dates.

The lunar months, of course, do not use our calendar date names. I present a summary table based on several people's documentation (Source 1, Source 2, Source 3) since sadly the other blogger didn't include them:

(Jan-Feb) Mutsuki (睦月) Month of Harmony/Affection 

(Feb-Mar) Kisaragi (如月) Month of Changing of Clothes

(Mar-Apr) Yayoi (弥生) Month of Plant Growth/New Life

(Apr-May) Uzuki (卯月) Month of Deutzia Flowers

(May-Jun) Satsuki (皐月) Month of Planting Rice

(Jun-Jul) Minazuki (水無月) Month of Water/No Gods 

(Jul-Aug) Fumizuki (文月) Month of Literature

(Aug-Sep) Hazuki (葉月) Month of Leaves  

(Sep-Oct) Nagatsuki (長月) The Long Month    

(Oct-Nov) Kannazuki (神無月) Month of Gods    

(Nov-Dec) Shimotsuki (霜月) Month of Frost     

(Dec-Jan) Shiwasu (師走) Month of Running Priests  

This table merges multiple sources because the translations of Kanji differ and it's good to see how/why these differences occur. There's also the issue of the bloggers presenting the months like 1-to-1 conversions.

I want to stress that these Lunar Months start and end anywhere from the middle to the late parts of Georgian Months. This is why Source 1 claims Mutsuki=Feb while Sources 2 & 3 claim Mutsuki=Jan. Source 1 chose Feb because the majority of Mutsuki occurs in Feb while Sources 2 & 3 chose Jan because Mutsuki technically starts in late Jan.

Now that I've laid all this out, I'm sure you have the following burning question:

How the hell do you convert modern time to Heian time???

I turn to Ms. Katherine M. Lawrence again for guidance.

"If this post gets some interest, I will continue and explain how the author calculates..."

There's no guidance.

However! There is an example of a conversion without the explanation.

"Thus, we know as Yamabuki and Tomoe ride up to the Shayō Tōge, the Sunset Pass, at Sunset on May 11, 1172, in the middle of a freak snowstorm, the author can say with some assurance that it happened at the Hour of the Bird on the 13th day of the 7th solar stem, two days past the full moon of the Flower Month."

So I'm going to try to figure out how this occurred using the information I've been given.

Hour of the Bird: This one is easy! The bird hour is the official sunset hour.

7th Solar Stem: According to the chart that's between late April and early May.

13th Day: Since Solar Stems are about 14-16 days this means it's almost the 8th Solar Stem which starts around May 21st.

2 days past the full moon of the Flower Month: "Flower Month" is not on my chart. From what I know about kanji, I think this is a simplification of Uzuki (卯月) or the the Month of Deutzia Flowers. This aligns with the month of May.

This is where I give up. I legitimately do not know where to go from here. ...And that's my point.

What does this have to do with Sukuna?

Before I completely lose you, my dearest most patient reader, please consider the following:

You wake up in a place where time is counted backwards and the hours pass faster than you've ever known them to. The things you use to tell the time don't exist or are in a form you no longer can recognize.

You see a clock face that counts in the wrong direction to numbers you've never seen used for time. The sounds it makes are familiar and foreign all at once. When you try to use the times and dates everyone you ever knew understood instantly, you're met with complete confusion. No one except a few dedicated scholars know how to convert your concept of time to theirs.

This is how Sukuna experiences time in the modern era.

Sukuna Can't Tell the Time (Sukuna almost fumbled his date with Gojo.)

Remember all my rambling about my own experiences with trying to understand SI Units as a Freedom Units user and my complete and utter failure to convert Heian Time to Modern Time? This is to establish that on a fundamental level, it does not matter that Sukuna has access to his vessel's memories. These foreign units mean nothing without a conversion reference.

Yuta in Gojo's body showed us how the memory recollection process works. You see them like movie and must draw your understandings from them.

We also learn from Sukuna that he tends to ignore memories that aren't relevant to his sorcery. So something mundane like telling the time isn't his priority. (I often think about how Sukuna has been watching Yuji and everyone around him use a cell phone but he still calls it a photography device.)

(He's lying about the flowers though.)

So this leads us to Sukuna and Gojo setting the date for their battle...

When Sukuna heard Kenjaku say November 19th and Gojo say December 24th his brain was the equivalent of TV static. It's very likely that Sukuna had to rely on Kenjaku to ensure he showed up at the right day. (Kenjaku, of course, is an exception here because instead of drawing from memories, Kenny got to live through the transitional period of the Lunisolar Calendar to the Georgian Calendar and had 100+ years to adjust to it. And now that I think about it, the Culling Game using days to count time is probably Kenjaku being considerate of this generational difference.)

It's a really good thing that Gojo didn't specify the time because that would've made things worse. See the following examples using the handy dandy conversion chart as a reference...

Gojo: Let's do this at 10.

Sukuna: ???

Gojo: Let's do this at 9.

Sukuna: *Shows up approximately 2 hours late at 11 am.*

Gojo: Let's do this at 8.

Sukuna: *Shows up approximately 5 hours late at 1 pm.*

Gojo: Let's do this at 7.

Sukuna: *Shows up approximately 8 hours late at 3 pm*

Gojo: Let's do this at 6.

Sukuna: *Shows up on time?* (It’s December in the northern hemisphere so the sun comes up after 6. Sukuna might still show up a bit late.)

These examples also assume that Sukuna can still gauge Heian Hours accurately. That too is up in the air because the hourly bells that sounded the Heian Hours no longer exist. The temples and bells may remain, but their use for timekeeping has changed entirely.

Since it's likely he spent a large portion of his early life in a temple, there's a chance Sukuna has a strong internalized sense of Heian Hours. But how many people do you know that can accurately feel an hour pass on vibes alone?

There isn't any point in the manga where Sukuna indicates he knows what Georgian Month is, let alone a Modern Hour. I think that's why he's just waiting on top of the building for Gojo to show up. The day starts for him when the sun comes up, not midnight. He probably figured that as long as he was out there by dawn, eventually his date would show up.

There's something strangely adorable about that. Sukuna didn't go out massacring others for funsies or wreak havoc after Gojo was unsealed. He just waited a whole month and gambled on their connection starting the death date on time.

How Sukuna Might Tell the Time

When Sukuna uses time units, he only uses minutes or seconds.

Well...the narrator implies he's able to use seconds.

This makes sense despite the Heian Era not having minutes or seconds. They're foundational units rather than a unit he needs to convert to something mentally. Because they are so drastically smaller than other Heian units of time, it's easier for the brain to calibrate itself to them.

This means that if one wanted to communicate a duration of time to Sukuna, it would be better to use minutes or seconds.

For example, rather than saying "see you in an hour", "see you in 60 minutes" would be better. Otherwise Sukuna is going to default to 1 Heian Hour and show up approximately 2 hours late.

Another example, telling Sukuna you'll "be gone for a few hours" means to him that you'll be gone for most of the day. At this point it would be better to reference a duration of an activity he's familiar with than use minutes. Sukuna watched some of those movies with Yuji. "I'll be gone for 1-2 movies" will make a little more sense to him.

Funnily enough though, telling Sukuna that you work a 9-5 wouldn't cause a miscommunication for duration. That's 4 Heian Hours or about 8 Modern Hours. He probably thinks it's weird you start working in the middle of the day and into the night though.

How Sukuna tells time for himself is likely similar to someone lost in the wilderness. He'll mostly be relying on environmental cues like moon phase, sun position, constellations, and flora growth. (Which ironically, climate change affecting flora growth patterns would throw him off even more. I can't even imagine how he'd feel about light pollution stealing away the stars on top of that. But at least the moon is still there!)

But as you can see, the normal methods of precise timekeeping are next to impossible for Sukuna to use and this discrepancy is ripe for miscommunication. This has a lot of comedy and horror potential in fanworks. (Hence me writing this as a resource.)

How Sukuna Used to Tell the Time

After doing all this research, I found myself viewing Sukuna's theme Malevolent Shrine a little differently. I always found it to be a quite sad sounding song for his character. Villains as violent and fierce as Sukuna tend to get battle themes that reflect that. In comparison to high energy bangers like One-Winged Angel (Sephiroth Final Fantasy), Avalon (Ultimate Lifeform Kars Jojo), or The Last Mission (Murem vs Netero Hunter x Hunter), Malevolent Shrine is rather somber and unfocused.

This theme opens and closes with bells. The opening in particular feels chaotic with how the different bells seem to overlap and overwhelm each other. But if you listen closely, you'll hear the gong of a temple bell that keeps rhythm by marking the start of a new measure. Using this bell, it becomes easier to count the beats, even when it eventually disappears in the middle section.

His theme to me now feels like an echo of what Sukuna used to know before he was thrust into a world that is no longer in sync with his very concept of time.

"Interestingly, the Japanese “witching hour” is not at midnight, but at nominally 2 AM (1 AM–3 AM) and is known as the Hour of the Ox."

I don't really know where else to put this. Sukuna on his throne of ox skulls, a representation of the witching hour where reality falls apart and spirits come out to play.

How all this might look in action. (Defending my questionable writing choices.)

Though everything I've given is plenty enough for people to run wild with in fanworks, I would like to give examples of it in my own. My type of autism is one where it's easier for me have something to use as a direct reference. (Clear and concise instructions please.) So I want to provide that for anyone else wired similarly.

Context: The fic I'm writing is from Sukuna's POV so I've taken great care to avoid him using modern timekeeping terms. I have a timeline for everything outlined, but I refuse to make that clear to the reader so they can get the Sukuna Experience™.

Other characters will reference the time and give the reader little windows into what date it possibly is, but otherwise they have to infer it themselves.

But because I myself use modern time, I caught mistakes I made in an early chapter... (Aka before I realized Heian Timekeeping is Extremely Different.)

Old Sentence: The year is 2019.

Revised Sentence: The year is 2019 for the Common Era.

(Heian Japan was mimicking China so I'm assuming that the numbered years restarted with each era since I couldn't find how years were kept.)

Old Sentence: It’s reminding him he has not eaten for the past 5 hours and 38 minutes.

Revised Sentence: It’s reminding him he has not eaten since the hour of the dragon—338 minutes and counting.

(This one is self evident I think.)

But even within this chapter, I obscured the date by having Sukuna observe his surroundings. I don't think it's a good example so I'll use a different one.

...it occurs under the same wisteria and same midday sun. The branches and buds have begun to green and sag before the Flowering Moon has reached its full, an indication that the bloom will come early.

Wisterias bloom in late April around the time of full moon. April aligns with Yayoi or the Month of Plant Growth/New Life. I worked under the assumption that the moons can be called by their month names kind of like Native American moon names. But Plant Growth/New Life Moon didn't sound good to me so I changed it to Flowering.

So I do have a very specific date for when this scene occurs, but Sukuna doesn't know so the reader doesn't know. The best you can guess is sometime in April but you have to know when Wisterias typically bloom and what a Flowering Moon might be. (I'm hoping this kind of vague timekeeping disorients the reader and causes frustration. I used sun, moon, and star positioning charts for this got dang it.)

Tools to Use for Weird Timekeeping

Chinese Calendar Conversions

Solar Stem Converter

(This one is annoying to use because they don't use the translated names but there is a definitions table.)

Lunar Calendar Converter

(Unfortunately it only allows for 1901-2100. You can probably infer the lunar month via the Solar Stem Converter for older dates.)

Celestial Bodies

For star/constellation positions in the night sky use this:

Sky & Telescope Interactive Sky Chart

(Yes you can even change the location and time to get the exact night sky the characters might be looking at.)

For sun positions and sunrise/sunset times use this:

SunCalc

For moon positions and moonrise/moonset times use this:

MoonCalc

(If you want to see a summary of moon phases by month this tool is helpful.)

This tool gives celestial body-specific rise and set times along with positions:

In-The-Sky

(The site is a bit unintuitive so here is an example of it being used for a star cluster at a specific location and toggleable date.)

Extra Info

Here’s a document on how the Subaru/Pleiades star cluster was used for timekeeping in historical Japan: The Inspiration of Subaru as a Symbol of Cultural Values and Traditions in Japan

There’s also this website that briefly goes over historical Japanese astrology with a focus on the Orion’s Belt constellation: Astronomy and Mythology in Ancient Japan

Wiki links for celestial body festivals that have been around since the Heian:

Star Festival (Tanabata)

Moon Festival (Tsumiki)

Why have you done this?

Bruce Banner: He's a man of science, so for him, the concept of the Below Place was already hard to grasp. Of course, it gets easier when you meet "magical people" like Doctor Strange or the Scarlet Witch, but objects coming to life thanks to emotions and darkness imbued into them? Bruce finds that hard to imagine. It's already hard for him to see his other alters with him in the Dark World, imagine his face when he sees a giant cathode ray tube television man happily greeting him into his studios! At first, he legitimately thought that it was his mindscape playing tricks on him, but after he'd met the man again, he just had to accept it as the truth.

Bruce... finds Tenna odd. He's clearly someone who hurt a lot in the past, and he can't understand why he's so cheerful all the time. Is he covering up something with his host attitude? Probably. But he enjoys talking about the programs he used to watch as a child together with him. Heck, Tenna even remembers the advertisements of the few construction toys he got back when he was with his mother. How old is this guy? But other than that, he sees the good in Tenna, how he tries to be better after all he's been through, and that sometimes gets to him. If a television can strive to be better than his past mistakes, what does this say about him? A man, or... less than a human, or a lightner, as Tenna calls him.

Tenna on the other hand, likes Bruce's company. He's always sure that his intellect will back him up during quiz segments, even if he struggles during physical challenges. Sometimes they even chat about The legend of Tenna, even if Charlene is clearly the best candidate to talk about programming and machinery. Tenna doesn't know much about Bruce's past, but thankfully he's heard from some Bibliox that dissociative identity disorder isn't like in the movies he sometimes broadcasts. He's always ready if Bruce wants to talk about it, but for now, he's content simply chit chatting over things from the past. Happy to have found someone that he can bond with over his prime days again.

Joe Fixit (Grey Hulk): Wow, this new body of his actually makes him get drunk enough that all of the system starts to hallucinate because of him! Cool! Wait, this guy is real? Goddamnit.

Joe likes to tease Tenna. A lot. That pristine jacket of his and all of the show host talk and his happy go lucky attitude all makes him want to get under his skin, or plastic, right. He soon came to know that Tenna is very insecure, deep down, but he will never make fun of him for that. Joe is past those days. He's a CEO, for fuck's sake, he could at least try to be a little more imposing! He even has the size and the strength for that! Joe wishes he had those right now, so he envies him a lot. But Tenna is simply... not that kind of person. He can grow some confidence, sure, but he will never change, deep down. He'll always be afraid of negative feedback because it reminds him of his darkner status. So they mostly end up chatting about old black and white movies, and his sharp wit makes Tenna fluster a lot during quiz segments. Maybe one day they'll even talk about movies that made Joe form in the first place, like Kiss me Deadly, and Tenna will treasure those moments of trust forever. But at first, he was very hesitant to approach Joe, finding excuses every chance he got to be busy somewhere else in the studio, and that was basically what pushed Joe to tease him in the first place. Why was that?

Tenna... hated how Joe looked so much like Spamton. It made him angry with himself. They were clearly two different people, but somehow, those similarities tugged his wires painfully. How Joe indulged in cigars in the Dark World because they affected only him, for once. How he moved and those quick retorts that Spamton excelled in, being a salesman. The casual sunglasses that reminded him so much of those that Spamton occasionally sported. He thought that Joe had a history of trying to scam others, and while he never confirmed it, he was right. Only after Joe basically started to creep around him like a pest, Tenna opened up. He was tired of acting like Joe had wronged him, when that clearly wasn't the case. He was right in feeling like that, and he and Spamton had ended their partnership in a very bittersweet way after all, but that didn't excuse Tenna's behavior. Thankfully they made up, and now he just listens to Joe's anecdotes about his period as a bouncer in Vegas, as he probably is familiar (not with the mafia mind you) with people not being too pleased with him as the boss of a television studio. Joe one time even says that he wishes he met this Spamton guy Tenna keeps talking about, and Tenna sighs, stuck between hatred and... a weird frustrating sense of concern for the addison. He hates him for how things ended, but at the same time, he wishes he found serenity, wherever he ended up.

Savage Hulk: BIG TELEVISION MAN!!! Hulk like to play games with television man!!! And everyone who works with television man is nice make Hulk happy! Trumpet guys are very fun because Hulk likes to talk to them. And when they answer they make funny trumpet sound! Hulk like television man's home!

Savage LOVES Tenna. He feels safe because Tenna never belittles Hulk's speech, and Hulk especially makes for a perfect contestant during physical challenges. Even if he ends up breaking a prop or two. Tenna loves his enthusiasm. Hulk is full of marvel like only a child before a screen can be, and he enjoys the atmosphere in TV Time studios. He's always mindful of other darkners, and even some water spirits come say hi to him once in a while, where they mostly stay inside the water coolers out of shyness. Hulk adores all of the kinds of sets there are in the studios, and loves to play the part of the hero that protects the Tenna statue in the middle of TV Tropolis. He also loves to listen to all of Tenna's PSAs because he's just so fun to listen to! Even if sometimes Tenna gets a bit... glooby, as he learned from him. He thinks about his family and Hulk comforts him over their shared pain of their old families. Hulk is just happy to have television man as a true friend, because... Tenna is even bigger than him! He doesn't need to be afraid of Hulk! They even bond over that sometimes, even if out of the two of them, Tenna is the most approachable.

Meanwhile, Tenna is so glad of having Savage as an audience. He's entertained by almost everything that comes out of his speakers! Even if he struggles with quizzes and boards, it's all fine! Tenna never had this much fun with a child in ages! And he particularly enjoys when the alters banter softly with each other. It reminds him of the familiar air that he smelled in the Dreemur household. Tenna's always surprised at how little Hulk turns him down, and he's surprised everytime to hear from him that he's genuinely having fun, at the point that Tenna sometimes has to hold back tears. Hulk is just so genuine, and they have so much in common, he hopes he never gets tired of TV Time.

Devil Hulk: Devil is somewhat speechless at Tenna. He saw the worst shit that mankind could ever come up with, but a 15 feet tall television wasn't on his bingo list when he took back his place in the system.

He sniffed it the second he saw him. And this was a man that hardly (or at all) had any eyes to look into. Tenna was a horrible liar. And he would have understood that even if he couldn't smell lies. He always saw through his tactics, even those that Tenna wasn't conscious of himself. This television was a walking shell of insecurities and paralyzing fear of abandonment. Devil read him like an open book, and he was so so interested in knowing what would have made him snap. Not that he would have done it, considering how frail the showman looked, physically and mentally, but he couldn't help but star in his silly little program that was obviously manufactured with the... lightners' enjoyment in mind. Devil said that he could have hardly been called a lightner, considering his strictly nighttime appearances, and for a second a Lucifer metaphor passed through his thoughts, but he eventually let it go. He knew that Tenna wasn't at ease with him, but that was normal, no one felt safe around him. He only hoped that he would have treated the system fairly, and when he saw the look on Savage's face, his little kid, he knew that Tenna was a good man, true to his emotions and always striving to be a better person, accepting his past and what happened to him. Between outcasts you only had to be friends.

Tenna didn't think that a giant lizard could have been this good at his program. Both the physical challenges and the quizzes, he only needed a bigger controller, like some of the others, but he always scored high in everything. At first, he was rightfully terrified of the only one that looked like a monster between them. He'd seen darkners that paled, next to him. But it wasn't his appearance that threw Tenna off, nono, he could have easily passed for Susie's uncle, or something. But this guy somehow... knew things about him. Tenna wasn't exactly the best at hiding his shame, but even when he performed for them, when he used his best host screen, this guy somehow knew, and it terrified him. He could only sit there and take whatever Devil told him, nothing that he didn't already know about himself, of course, but it made him uncomfortable, being watched like his whole life was displayed on his screen. Soon enough, Devil relented, concentrating on how he performed on the program and on some of his employees. Tenna hoped that their relationship could have improved, eventually, even if he'd heard blood curling things from Joe from time to time. Tenna didn't completely understand this giant lizard, and he probably would have never reached that kind of trust, but he only felt his engine swell with kindness when he saw the consideration Devil had for his system. He saw that he loved them, each and every one of them, and that proved how trustworthy this lizard truly was, deep down.

Green Scar: Humans and their stupid attachment to objects, the Green Scar always struggled to understand it. Until he learned that Tenna was a person with thoughts and feelings, and he slowly changed his mind.

He doesn't have much use for television, that screen with the Illuminati's message echoing in his mind like a ghost, but that didn't mean that the guy was impossible to talk to. It just meant that they wouldn't have bonded over that dumb program of his, or whatever he called it. Green Scar much preferred simply conversing with the host, learning how his unexpectedly long life was, the ups and downs of his career. How the humans... had discarded him. There was a weird feeling of pity for that silly television, that covered his wounds with tape and a fancy outfit, but he was ultimately proud of what Tenna was working on, of how he still struggled and of how he always tried to do better.

Tenna too weeped for the Green Scar, how absurd it was that the same humans that he loved so much could simply send the Green Scar away without even listening to his input. It scared him, how somehow it sounded like a possible future for him. But his screen brightened when he heard of the tales of the jade giant in the colosseum, how he longed to be there not only as a spectator, but giving commentary of the breathtaking action that had taken place. It was not simply fun and glory, the Green Scar told him, it was gory and cruel and raw and heart wrenching, to see all of those slaves struck down by tyranny and the law of the strongest, and the revolution was the same. Tenna shed tears, apologizing profusely when he talked about Caiera, but a flower soon bloomed when he spoke of the lucky birth of his son Skarr, and how he longed to see him again, in the future. Tenna admired this Hulk who had faced so many hardships, and ultimately understood his actions and what brought him to declare war, but one day he would have certainly found a way to convince him to star in TV Time. It would have just taken... time, haha.

Professor Hulk: A man that has a television instead of a head. Hm, he'd seen a lot of things in his superhero life, but this was truly out of the ordinary.

The professor was fascinated by Tenna. His programs and his studios, his inner workings and his personality. He eagerly accepted to participate in TV Time, not just because the show intrigued him, but because it would have meant getting closer to the showman. Sure, the way sometimes Tenna yelled at his employees reminded him of himself in a way, but he liked that in the end, this television always had other people's happiness in his mind.