#these fics changed my brain

[theyonlyhadeachother]

i have so many bookmarked midam fics its insane. i dont know if i've read all of the midam fics on ao3, but i've def read a very large majority of them

just a few of my absolute favorites are below the cut. none of them are rated E, but if anyone is interested in some of those, shoot me an ask and let me know

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Gen, 3,693 words, No Archive Warnings Apply, 1/1 chapters

bound to the marrow of how it feels by paradisecas

Summary: Ask any kid what their superpower would be, nine times out of ten the answer will be flying. Adam, son of a nurse and a bit of a goody-two-shoes, was always the odd one out choosing the noble imaginary superpower of healing people. If Adam could go back in time—and technically, he could—he’d change his answer. Not to flying, and not from healing; he knows now that he can have it all. He’d like to kneel down in front of baby-Adam and say, hey kid, someday you’re going to have everything anyone could ever want at your fingertips, and you’ll be sharing it with the love of your life. You’ll fly straight through the atmosphere and fix broken bones with a snap of your fingers and sit invisible in the corner of a room you’re not allowed in. You’ll eat until you can’t anymore and still have room for seconds. You’ll be able to pick up a car to save a baby, if that situation ever arises, and it won’t even be adrenaline that does it. He wants to say, no matter what nightmares come your way, something good is waiting for you too. You’ll share your body with someone who loves you. You won’t ever be alone again. You’ll always be warm.

Tags: Michael/Adam Milligan, Michael (Supernatural), Adam Milligan, Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Lucifer's Cage (Supernatural), Post-Canon, Michael Possessing Adam Milligan, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, michael dies but he gets better tho

hook and eye series by thishazeleyeddemon

Series rating of Mature, 19,945 words, No Archive Warnings Apply, 2 fics (2/2 and 1/1 respectively)

Tags: Michael/Adam Milligan, Michael (Supernatural), Adam Milligan, Sam Winchester, The Empty | The Shadow (Supernatural), Witch Adam Milligan, Episode Fix-It: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Grief/Mourning, Bitterness, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Break Up, would you all like to hear about Michael essentially getting his ex to get back together with him, of course you would, Emotional Manipulation, Self-Esteem Issues, Adam Milligan is Not Forgotten, Adam Milligan is So Done, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Adam is such a bitter bitch in this one, it's okay y'all they'll get through it, I just was like Adam can have a little Being Mean and Unreasonable. As a treat, Men of Letters (Supernatural), more tags for Part 2!!, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Gaslighting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, THE PROMISED. HAPPY ENDING., I REWROTE THIS SO MUCH I AM GOING TO BED, prays the rewriting paid off, Michael Steals From The Rich, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Angelic Grace Kink (Supernatural,) arguably - Freeform, Body Horror, although Adam would gut you for saying such things about Michael, obviously Michael is beautiful and perfect no matter how many eyes, Consensual Possession, Making Out smidgeon of angst. just a spicy dollop, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, by virtue of being a hook and eye-verse fic

Summary of the First Fic: you fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye - Margaret Atwood Michael succumbed to his Father's manipulations. He never wanted to destroy the Earth, but it was so hard, so hard, to find the words to fight back against his father when he was all alone. He never wanted to do that. He never wanted to leave Adam. Adam doesn't know that.

Two Weddings and an Engagement by lumpy_space_princess

Teen, 7,812 words, No Archive Warnings Apply, 1/1

Tags: Michael/Adam Milligan, Gabriel/Eileen Leahy/Rowena MacLeod/Sam Winchester, Michael (Supernatural), Adam Milligan, Gabriel (Supernatural), Sam Winchester, Eileen Leahy, Rowena MacLeod, Kevin Tran, Charlie Bradbury, Claire Novak, Kaia Nieves, Dean Winchester, Castiel, Post-Canon Fix-It, Minor Castiel/Dean Winchester, Midam at the Destiel wedding, Midam at the Saileen wedding, Everybody Lives, This is crack so don't think too hard about it, Adam & Kevin & Charlie & Claire & Kaia Michael & Gabriel - Freeform, Fluff and Angst, Didn't Know They Were Dating, Seriously everybody knows it but them, The Love Is Requited They're Just Idiots, They work it out in the end though

Summary: Adam massages fingers over his temples, and tries not to look morose. "Listen. You're not exactly telling me anything I haven't told myself. But there's just - there's baggage there, ok? It's been hard to look at the future when we've barely gotten used to having a present again." He huffs. "Anyway, I don't think he'd even want that. He's an-" "-an archangel, yeah, you've said. It was crap the last time you said it, too." Kevin props himself on his elbows, gazing intently at Adam. "How will you know if you don't try? How is it fair to him, that you just decide what he feels without asking him about it?"  Charlie nods. "Would you want him to treat you that way? It's obviously weighing on you. How would you feel, if he was keeping something this important from you?"  ----------------- Or: Michael and Adam, bless their hearts, are mutually in love. Strangely, they're the only ones who can't seem to see it.

the past is made of stardust (the future's shifting sand) by Anonymous

Teen, 30,461 words, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply, 1/1

Tags: Michael/Adam Milligan, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Castiel/Dean Winchester, Adam Milligan, Michael (Supernatural), Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Castiel (Supernatural), The Empty | The Shadow (Supernatural), Lucifer's Cage (Supernatural), Post-Lucifer's Cage (Supernatural), Post-Episode: s15e08 Our Father Who Aren't in Heaven, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Non-Chronological Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, The Empty (Supernatural), Adam Milligan Saves Michael from the Empty, Michael Possessing Adam Milligan, Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Kinda Fluff, Temporary Character Death, i am going to rewrite this. i mean it.

Summary: Adam knocked on the door and waited. And waited. And waited. He knocked again, and then it opened to Sam brandishing a gun, Dean behind him with a knife and a bottle of whiskey. When they saw him, they didn’t relax, but they didn’t attack either. “Adam?” Sam asked, hesitantly. “Or… Michael?” Adam knew he had to look ridiculous. Before, they’d seen him while he still had an archangel maintaining his body, but after the last day and a half? He was sweaty and sunburnt and dehydrated and he could almost feel the bags under his eyes. But another gift of the Cage was losing the ability to give a fuck what he looked like. “Michael isn't home right now,” Adam said. “And I’d like to know why.��

Mirror Of Change by QuicksilverCastiel

Teen, 2,127 words, No Archive Warnings Apply, 1/1

Tags: Michael/Adam Milligan, Serafina (Supernatural), Michael (Supernatural), Adam Milligan, Raphael (Supernatural), Serafina is going through it, Or at least she's bluescreening on account of Michael's heart-eyes at Adam, Also Heaven ecology yay!, they/them pronouns for Raphael

Summary: When all is said and done, God defeated and the world righted again, Serafina takes on her biggest challenge yet: Going back to Heaven. Not to stay, but to see if the rumour of it 'changing' have any truth to it. Turn out, at least some archangels have definitely changed. And it may be because of another Adam.

your mother's son by darkmillennium

Teen, 10,633 words, No Archive Warnings Apply, 1/1

Tags: Michael/Adam Milligan, Michael & Adam Milligan, Michael (Supernatural), Adam Milligan, Alternate Michael's Grace-Enhanced Monsters, POV Adam Milligan, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life, Fluff and Humor, Post-Episode: s15e08 Our Father Who Aren't in Heaven, Michael Possessing Adam Milligan, Adam Milligan is So Done, Developing Relationship, Romantic Tension, listen they're in love with each other we've all seen it, this is just 10k words of michael and adam living life, Enochian-Speaking Adam Milligan, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Summary: Adam wants a normal life. He really does. He wants, at least, as close to a normal life as he can get after spending ten years—a thousand years—in the Cage. And he’s got it, mostly. He’s got an apartment and a job and a closet full of clothes that aren’t the clothes he went to Hell in. He thinks he’s been managing pretty great, all things considered. But one day, Michael warns him that he’s sensed a pack of werewolves move into the area, and then people start dropping dead with their hearts ripped out, and.. Life isn't going to be as relaxed as he'd like it to be, is it?

[paintedcrows]

Some Fords! (and Martin K Blackwood is also there)

[keferon]

Chapters 46 and 47 were…….oh my god

[imeriayapping]

Logan. Logan WHAT DO YOU MEAN "CAN'T GET AWAY FROM EACHOTHER"

WHAT DO YOU MEAN

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

it’s suguru and his love for sleepy drunks against the whole entire world

[jadewritesficshere]

Steddie x female!reader thought 18+ only

Eddie blinks his eyes a couple of times to make sure he is actually seeing what he is seeing. He must be living in a nightmare.

You're laying back on one of the pool loungers. One leg dangling over the edge keeping your foot on the warm cement ground, the other spread over Steve's lap as he absently rubs his hand up and down it while he bitches to you about something from work. Your hand rubs up and down Steve's back in comfort. But that isn't the nightmare.

Your bright red bikini bottoms covering enough, but with your legs spread a bit more skin is shown then intended. Spread in such a way that makes Eddie want to just dive in. Get on his knees and worship you, rub his face over your mound as he licks and nips and sucks. Moan as the curly thatch of hair brushes against his face.

Except the curls of hair he is expecting to see peeking around your bikini are gone. Just smooth bare skin. And that isn't the only nightmare. Steve's chest is smooth like when he was in school on the swim team. Not a speck of that beautiful chest hair Eddie would curl into after getting hot and heavy. Not a single curl of the "love rug" he jokingly called it.

Eddie wants to weep. To throw himself down like a little kid and thrash his arms and legs around. Yeah, it's your body and you can do what you want, but he still is sad its gone. Eddie doesn't like change, and suddenly walking in to see both of his partners change something without any warning? Uncomfortable. It makes Eddie feel itchy.

Eddie can barely speak as he walks over and sits next to Steve. He doesn't respond to Steve's warm greeting. Doesn't respond to you asking how the day is. Just stares with big wet eyes at the sight in front of him. A pout on his lips.

A warm hand lands on his shoulder, gently squeezing. Steve's brow furrowed in concern, your wide eyes blinking at him.

"Shaved?" Eddie asks in a quiet voice, eyes darting to Steve's chest and then your clothed pussy. Steve lets out a huff of laughter, "Fuck, thought something was wrong man." Eddie glares," It is."

[oodlesodoodles]

Harry squeezes a local Club manager to let them have a swim in the fancy ass pool in return for keeping a drugging/poisoning case quiet

[sad-leon]

When your greif becomes so overpowering that you break shit, but now you're left empty and with just as much greif as you started with, if not more.

Anyways- guess who was listening to Lost One's Weeping again :D (it was me, i am so normal over that song)

[fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma]

Breakable heaven by @sokkalore changed the trajectory of my entire life so I needed to draw it

(Without text)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Smell Check [Easy: Failure]

MDZS Disco Elysium AU part 1 (part 2 - part 3)

[ashanimus]

Vee and Hunter had not started off on a very good foot.

He had recognized her immediately and done his best to avoid her. She had pretended that she didn't know who he was and that had been just fine with him. They had spent weeks like that, tip-toeing around the truth like it didn't exist, until one of them had finally flinched.

Fanart for the always incredible @polyhexian's fic Empty Water Heater!

[popcornsupernova]

You ever stumble into a fandom that’s being held up by like 3 people and some sticks

[vepaluiron]

more Sithvanas because i'm a little bit obsessed

[karvviie]

me reading the most goated rvb fic of all time like yay! yipee! this is awesome! OH THAT’S GORE OF ALL MY COMFORT CHARACTERS

[hot-topic-piss]

Just finished reading Metallic Need and now I know I will never know happiness again.

Reading 7 chapters in one sitting wasn’t wise. I really should’ve spaced them out throughout the week, but I’m an impulsive wreck. I need to read the whole story again to get a better understanding of everything that’s happened and then read the last chapter a few times more. I might just wait a day or two before I do that, I’m not ready to relive this emotional rollercoaster.

ANYWAYS. Stuck in a job you hate and looking for a distraction? Slap a pair of headphones and blast Metallic Need via text-to-speech for the next 10 hours nonstop for a whole week as I did. Very healthy. I have no regrets, I love this fic so much omg 😭

[thepersonperson]

Sukuna Can't Tell the Time (The unique way Sukuna is damned to eternal miscommunication and existentialism in the modern era.)

Notes before we start.

1) I will be mainly using the TCB scans for the manga because of their accessibility. 

2) I need professional help.

(Click images for captions/citations.)

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 from an unpublished draft.

...it occurs under the same wisteria and same midday sun. The branches and buds have begun to green and swell 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.)

Why have you done this?

I don't know. Please enjoy my perverse obsession with the little details.