Your au takes place in the 1920’s. I know your au has rarijack, are there any issues because of them being lesbians or is that not really a problem (the general existence of cadence may have caused people to be more accepting sooner idk)
Not really a problem. This AU's supposed to be fun, it wouldn't be fun having to write 90% of characters and settings as vehemently and violently anti-gay. At the very least, bigotry still exists, but social progress is more similar to the 2010s, where queerness is more normalized.
oh my fucking god i feel. SO stupid rn at How i didnt make the (super sane very normal just absolutely. Yes. Surely) connection earlier but uhh
so anyway im now like 89% certain that whatever the "traces" of the narwhal that remain on ajax and facilitate their (ever-growing) innate connection are like. an actually fundamental aspect of it (them?) more or less.
why? because if you consider its pov just for a moment. the narwhal was literally about to depart teyvat for good. it had nearly finished consuming the primordial sea and preparing to breach surface to finish the job by eating the french for the leftovers their human bodies were made from. its an interstellar voyager it does not linger on planets it devours. it goes glug glug and it leaves.
and like if it wasnt for traveler intervening its confirmed through narzissenkreuz and renes world formula that teyvat wouldve just been destroyed. no one could have stopped the narwhal not neuvillette not focalors not anyone.
so what was the one other thing it did right before going for that french brunch? calling for ajax. getting them reunited in the primordial sea. like all the possible implications aside bc theres many different ways to speculate on the exact reasons why and the nature of that link. the point remains.
it wasnt leaving teyvat without finding him.
like the narwhal is about to fucking Dip from this cringe planet and whatever part of it that ajax carries within himself his narwhal Absolutely wanted to be reunited with. what the fuck am i supposed to read from that. hoyo???????!??! answers?!?!?!
and its not only the calling from the narwhal side itself either bc this is ALL coinciding with the growth of a 'restless power' within ajax and his vision malfunctioning (the things celestia is literally confirmed to harvest energy thru to repair its damaged authority) and his connection with the narwhal reaching an actual conscious level (arguably subconscious n emotional too bc i find it Curious his mood is poor right as the narwhal is repeatedly described as positively malding to the point its boss fight mechanic is literally a rage meter). ajax' power is growing. his destiny is starting to shift and something is drawing him to fontaine... right as the narwhal is getting close to finished with the primordial sea. funny how it overlaps eh. how it aligns 🤨🤨 why are they orbiting each other like this (they should kiss)
(& not to even Mention how ajax just Happened to get that absolutely exponential and borderline unbelievable feat of power spike in extending his foul legacy endurance as massively as he did. while. within the primordial sea. with his narwhal. who had at that point all but incorporated the power of that sea into itself. i s2g if childe was getting passive home turf co-op bonus exp with a 4x multiplier automatically the whole 40+ days 💀💀)
Don't talk to me; I'm still recovering from the fact that the first computer-synthesized voice to sing in 1961 - the IBM 704 - sang Daisy Bell, a love song.
Here is just some bands/music artists I think Neil and Stacey would listen to that I’m going to explain my reasons for thinking this under the cut
Neil- I think he’d be into New Wave and some 80s pop. It’s all cause of the new order shirt. I also put the band Sloan there for the same reason as new order cause he wears one of their shirts. Stacey would get him into David Bowie and The Monkees in my little headcanon. Also obviously Sexbob-omb is there cause he is their #1 fan outside of Knives.
Stacey- She is a 60s music fiend. I like to think that Lawrence introduced some more 60s bands to her after she got into The Beatles. She of course listens to Coldplay cause she is the most normal person in the cast and would in fact have a “basic” taste in music. She also is a big Spice Girls fan. Brining my Bowie fan headcanon here cause she would in fact like early Bowie and you cannot change my mind.
So to put it simply (and with some other commonly established headcanons I’ve seen floating around):
Neil likes New Wave, emo, and alt music that in some cases can be weird, and Stacey likes 60s rock, pop, and more well known alt bands.
Feel free to ask questions if you’re wondering about a certain band or music artist and want to know a more in-depth reason as to why I headcanon either Stacey or Neil liking them. I’ll be happy to answer cause I love talking about music and some of the people or bands in there I listen to myself in my daily life!
I was kinda bored so I made a little playlist of some songs that I consider to be essential finnish music, so if anyone here's interested, click here
fair warning it's probably not to anyone's taste but my own 💀
also I'd be super interested if other finns here made some playlists!! I'm curious of what music finns here think of when they think of finnish music (specifically in finnish)
Just some disconnected, inchoate and probably defensive thoughts on "HARD," the reaction to "HARD," and where it fits within SHINee's discography (written in bullet-point format, since I'm supposed to be working):
I'm not here to discipline anyone into liking the song; it's perfectly legitimate to feel disappointed by an artist embracing a sound you don't personally enjoy.
Having said that, I also tend to roll my eyes at knee-jerk dismissals of "fourth gen" music. Pop music changes, or else it stagnates. If I'm weighing a piece of music as a critic, and not just as an individual with strongly held generic and aesthetic preferences (which, again, require no defense), I can't begin and end by totaling up the number of chanted choruses and anti-drops—I mean, I can, it would just make me a very conservative and not particularly illuminating critic.
Other than excellent production, what stands out to me about "HARD" in opposition to any number of more po-faced recent boy group releases (cf. Kayla Beardslee on how too many boy groups right now "are obsessed with coming off as really cool") is how much fun the members are having in playing around with goofy fourth gen motifs. There's nothing ironic or parodic about it—they are, as a friend said, sincerely committed to the bit, but also clearly relishing in the ridiculousness of it all. I mean, consider the dick jokes.
Is "HARD" a good song? I think so. Is it a good SHINee song?Putting aside the question of whether "HARD" feels sonically distinct from other recent boy group releases (or how much), the underlying playfulness of it feels distinctly SHINee. In that sense, it reminds me of "LUCIFER," which also embraced a more hard-edged sound/aesthetic already popular in K-Pop at the time, but which still feels/felt distinctly SHINee in its flamboyance (see Occupied Territories' brilliant write-up).