Okay, so what if you propose to Solomon before he gets the chance to propose to you? Like obviously, he'd been thinking long and hard about what kind of ring to pick out, where to do it, what to say, yadda yadda... But then while you're *ahem* supervising him in the kitchen one evening, you get down on one knee and propose to him instead.
Poor guy did not see it coming, at all. Initially, he thought you fell or hurt yourself, so he scrambled around to check on you only to see you smiling up at him with the biggest heart eyes. With a gentle flourish of magic, you make the box appear in your hand before opening it to offer him the ring inside.
He can hardly believe it. Him? You want to propose to him? And you beat him to it? He's both impressed and deeply honored. Your little magic stunt made him proud as your teacher while also making the already special moment a million times more so.
Solomon's not one to get emotional. The only time he's ever cried to you was when you and the rest of Purgatory Hall tricked him with that overpowered onion...but this is different. He feels safe to cry as you spout to him a beautiful, heartfelt speech - feeling every letter being etched into his heart and every syllable committed to memory.
He falls to his knees, reaching out to hold you while whispering as many shaky "yeses" as he can muster through his sobs. He can't stop repeating himself like a broken record, beyond excited for this next step in your relationship, touched that you want to keep him as yours.
Once he's calmed down enough through your hushes, kisses, and gentle touches, you pull back to take his hand into yours. Slowly and carefully, you slip the ring onto his finger.
Solomon just stares at it with his heart in his throat, noticing how it shines in the light, how it fits him perfectly (both aesthetically and in size), and how it feels right occupying what he always assumed would be an empty finger. You've given him the gift of hope and the gift of love in the time he's known you. And here you are giving him even more...your life.
And in return, he's gladly and readily giving you his.
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How To Stop Killing Conversations
Talking is hard. People are confusing. Making friends is difficult, and interacting with coworkers is tortuous.
You want to make friends, you want to reach out, but it's hard and every time you start a conversation it dies, or limps along until both you and the person you're talking to are looking for excuses to kill it and put it out of it's misery so you can both escape the increasingly awkward situation.
As an introvert who has suffered a lot of social anxiety in my time, let me share a few tricks I've learned over the years going through hundreds and thousands of excruciatingly painful conversations until I found something that works. I've kind of distilled the process.
ALWAYS ASK A QUESTION!!!
The first thing is to always leave your partner an opening. You need to let each other talk for a conversation to get off the ground, but it's more than that, really. You need to actively encourage each other to talk. The best way to do that is to ask questions.
Here are two examples of an introduction:
Example A
You: Hello.
Them: Hello.
You: Nice to meet you.
Them: Nice to meet you too.
Example B
Y: Hello, nice to meet you, how are you?
T: I’m doing well, yourself?
Y: I've been really well. How are you liking the weather?
T: I'm so happy the weather's finally getting cooler, I'm looking forward to pumpkin spice season. Do you like lattes?
Do you see how in Example A the conversation wasn’t going anywhere? It just kinda died, because there weren’t any openings for new topics, whereas in Example B, there were openings to keep the conversation going.
But what do you do if your conversation partner is as socially inept as you were two minutes ago and doesn't play along? All is not lost.
Example C
Y: Hello, so nice to meet you, how have you been doing?
T: I'm doing well.
Y: That's great, are you enjoying the nice weather, then?
T: Yeah. I'm glad it's finally fall, I'm looking forward to pumpkin spice lattes.
Y: I love pumpkin spice lattes! Pumpkin spice anything, really. I recently got the best pumpkin spice candle at the shop down the road, have you been there?
Even if they don't leave you an opening, you can usually make one. It may be difficult, especially when they don't give you much to work with. This is where having a go-to script is a life-saver--me, I always default to talking about the weather, so when in doubt, you can do that.* The important thing right now is to keep fostering the conversation, so once you bring up the weather, segue into a question. When they answer the question, make a brief comment or observation from your own experience and build off of that comment or observation to ask another question.
"But I don't want to make it about me. Doing that's bad, right?"
This is why that questions are important. If you haven't been asked a question, you kinda have to make it about you, you don't have a choice. But to keep from being an attention hog, follow up your shared experience or anecdote with another question.
Example D
T: I love pumpkin spice lattes
Y: Me too. I had the best pumpkin spice latte the other day at the cafe down the road, have you ever been there?
Now you've circled the conversation back around to them again, and you aren't taking the limelight. Sharing an experience is so important, you're trying to show that you understand, that you sympathize, that you relate.**
This really is the most important element of being a good conversationalist. You have to keep asking questions.
The one other thing I will touch on is introductions. DO NOT get into turn based combat.
Example E
Y: Hello
T: Hello
Y: Nice to meet you
T: Nice to meet you too.
Y: How are you doing?
T: I'm fine. You?
Y: Me too.
This will kill any possibility of continuing a conversation. Instead, get it all out of the way all at once, if at all possible.
Example F
Y: Hi, it's nice to meet you, how are you doing?
This is good, but this is better
Example G
Y: Hi, nice to meet you, how are you liking the weather?
Don't ask how they are doing, or if you do, before they can answer, follow it up with your placeholder (weather etc.) so they have to say some thing like
Example H
T: I'm fine, and I'm really liking the weather.
or
T: Not so great, the weather sucks.
Either of those options are much easier to work with than your basic "I'm fine."
Usually, if you can get past the introduction, you can get a conversation going. And then, even if you don't end up hitting it off with the person you're talking with, you at least don't leave the conversation feeling like you've died a thousand tiny deaths.
In fact, if you get past that introduction, you may have just made yourself a friend.
Remember folks, basically everyone around you is more afraid of you than you are of them, and in this benighted age no one has been taught conversation skills, so we are all pretty much in the same boat. (Unless you were born an extrovert, in which case we are all deeply envious and would probably kill you if we didn't need you in our sad and lonely lives so much.)
Have grace for one another, and for yourselves because talking with people is difficult.
Go forth, and stop killing conversations.
*If you are one of those awful people who likes to brag about how you hate small talk and only want to talk about important and meaningful things, I have one question: Do you ever have a conversation that lasts long enough to become meaningful? I thought not. Small talk is an important skill. Develop it.
**This is how you deal with sad or difficult situations too. When you want to show you sympathize with someone going through a hard time.
Example:
Y: How are you doing?
T: Not very well. My dog died last week.
Y: Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. My own dog died last year and I still miss her a lot. How are you handling it?
Now you've circled the conversation back around to them again. You aren't making it about you.
If y'all want, next time I can share how to extricate yourself from a conversation.
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uh oh guys, hot take alert:
i think revali may have invented hand held aerial archery HEAR ME OUT- (this is a long one boys)
okay. evidence one: why the fuck would a rito shoot like that. like, it makes nearly zero sense, it would be such a hindrance to their flight and their main stake is that they can be higher than you can shoot whilst still pinging you... which revali has overcome with his gale
evidence two: tulin and the concept arts. obviously rito style archery would be held in their talons. before totk came out idk if anyone had really thought about it too much, but the developers had, as you can see in concept art (from the creating a champion book). and like, its logical, powerful, and allows for peak maneuverability. also, when in flight revali (and teba) holds his bow in his talons before switching to his wings. surely its easier to keep it in your wing (obvi ignoring the effects to flight but hes doing that anyway firing the damn thing) rather than switch back and forth- unless you were taught that way, because why would you hold it elsewhere, you need it in your talons to shoot.
evidence three: we dont see any other rito do it (...kind of). throughout botw and totk, we never see another rito flying with a bow in their hands. in totk, its mostly tulin, who holds it in his talons, but in botw the big one is teba. during the medoh quest, he actually gives *link* his bow, and therefore does no shooting in the sky. teba and harth had both tried to take on medoh before, but we never see this, and while they holds their bows in their hands *on the ground,* we dont see it.
...except for aoc (uh, spoilers?). there are two times we see a rito other than revali hold their bow in their hand for aerial archery. but it is not with any rito soldiers, either during cutscenes (the bows are only on their backs) or gameplay (they swoop down, and then hand hold bows on ground. they arent seen flying at all but thats prolly for the same reasons as botw: its very hard to code that (and so they write the lore around that fact)). the first time we actually see another rito do this, we dont see it. Its teba, as he comes thru the portal, but all we see is the arrow shot, and then him freeze frame with the bow in one wing. we dont see the bow in his hand for the rest of the fight. the second time we actually see him fighting like this, it *is* in the air, but its noticeably different to revali.
hes a lot slower, it clearly takes a LOT more effort to shoot the bow, and he only pulls off one arrow at a time. its canon that revalis bow is heavier/harder to draw, and he manages to effortlessly stream arrows whilst fucking floating midair. i think teba, forever a revali fanboy, heard of how the champion mastered his own style of archery and sought to teach himself, but lacked one key thing: revalis mastery of wind.
evidence three point five: revali could easily use his powers to hold him in the air longer/slow his descent long enough for him to fire his shots. it makes sense, really. if he can use his gale to propel him, he can sit on the updraft for a hot sec, or even curve the path to carry him along while he lines up the shot. this would mean he wouldnt need to flap as much as other rito, who would obviously need to keep flying
evidence four: revalis fighting style and his needs. revali works with non rito, obviously. he needs to be able to communicate with them on the battlefield, and they wont understand the muffled chirps if he holds his string in his beak, so he needs his mouth free to speak hylian. also, revalis main tactic is fly up with gale, shoot, fall, either shoot more or use velocity and weight to knock around opponents, and then fly back up. he often needs both feet planted firmly on the ground to get a good hold of his gale, something that is harder to do if you have a bow in the way.
also, take for example the kick he delivers link in their fight (aoc). that would possibly damage the bow, or give the opponent a chance to grab his weapon, if he held it in his talons. and to switch from feet to back is a risky maneuver during freefall, and could lose precious seconds, and then when you get back in the air you need to get it off your back again. its much easier to keep the bow loosely in your wing the whole time, meaning your free to attack melee, land and rise all while not wasting a single moment getting your next shot lined up.
so yeah, i think the rito used the talon grip for aerial archery, and would often use the hand held method on the ground for a variety of reasons (more powerful shots?, easier in some situations like hunting), but revali was perhaps the first to use hand held aerial, another reason he was one of the greatest archers ever.
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I'm not much for naming things but: Danny's associated with green and M'gann's a White Martian, so... Spearmint (like the green and white mint candies)? Just a thought.
Prompt: Magic removed Amity Park from the map. JL didn't notice, but in an Alderaan type moment (Star Wars ref. yay!) The martian on Watchtower monitoring duty heard the residents get silent unanimously.
Of course they need to be investigated! So M'gann gets her watch partner to take over and flies there, discovering an odd green rift of death energy doing a black hole effect and it sucks her in. Danny gets landed on/ flown into when she tumbles through the rift. She tried getting a message through to JL when she felt herself getting sucked in, but the message was not received due to ectoplasmic interference.
So Danny has to figure out how to get her AND Amity Park back home!
(Just a thought. I'm curious how you flesh it out if you do!)
This is such an interesting idea, and it definitely deserves much more story than I can write in single prompt, so this here is just a beginning and I will continue. I hope it's up to your expectations
Also, I really love the Spearmint idea
*****
M’gann understood the importance of monitor duty in Watchtower, she really did. She also understood why they were taught it while still in this gray area between fully dependent sidekicks and fully independent heroes, that was the main reason the Young Justice Team even existed.
It didn’t make it any less boring. Even when she had a decent duty partner. Don't get her wrong, Green Arrow was a much better option than Batman or Superman, it was just awkward. At least he seemed equally done with it and didn't scold her for jumping between satellite cameras just a bit too fast to actually ‘monitor’ anything.
And it was only twenty minutes into the two hour shift.
One of the sixty (or so) screens, the one directly in front of her, blinked to the view of the American Midwest. She was about to skip further, when a sudden movement caught her attention. She clicked a few keys to review the footage and asked, still unsure if her eyes weren't deceiving her.
“Did the entire city… just disappear?“
Green Arrow nodded, equally stunned.
“I'm going to check this out” she spluttered, already flying out of the room and doing her best to get Zeta to send her as close as possible. It was a bit tricky when she couldn't see the keyboard. She managed though, so before the adult hero even finished yelling that it was above her skill level, she was out.
From there, getting to the disappeared city was a piece of cake.
She stopped right in tracks when the thing came in view. M'gann had no idea how to describe it. It was a green and white and black storm but not, glass, see-through dome but not, deep space but also decidedly not. It made her want to run away but also come closer, almost like it was tugging at her. Like some pseudo, mental in nature, gravitation.
Oh, wait, no. It was an actual, physical force that after a quick test turned out to be inescapable for her.
Green Arrow, perhaps, maybe probably was kinda right. It was so high above her skill level that a balled napkin from this height would cause serious damage. Thank Batman for comms that she could use to call a backup!
The comms, that, of course, didn't work the one time she needed them.
She sent the message anyway, describing everything to the best of her ability, even though it was only a tip of the iceberg. Just in case, if the magical storm thing just made her comm one way communication only. It was highly unlikely, but who was she, if not an optimist.
She barely closed her mouth, when she was jerked sideways before the whole world became blurred.
She later would have a hard time telling anyone how it felt, to be inside the thing. She was basically powerless, thrown around randomly despite clearly keeping all of her abilities. She couldn't see, couldn't tell which way was up and down, couldn't change direction even a little bit. The rumble of the thing was so loud she couldn't hear her thoughts, throwing her brain so off the loop she forgot what her name was. She was crying probably, almost puking, her limbs hitting any and every part of her body.
At first, she didn't even realize she was out, so dazed from the ride. She didn't even see the flying boy until a while after she crashed into him, throwing them both off the sky. Neither of them caught them before they slammed into the ground. Somehow she ended up cushioning the boy's fall. M’gann couldn’t breathe for a moment. She kinda deserved it for ramming into him in the first place though.
By the time she could use her lungs and behave like a social creature again, the boy scrambled off her and just crouched, intensely staring, anxious and awestruck at the same time. She sat up and gave him once over herself.
He was around her physical age, but much skinnier than her or anybofnher teammates, build like a twig. He had fluffy, white, almost glowing hair, caucasian complexion, and wore a black and white jumpsuit with a tool belt. Big ‘P’ on his chest indicated he was someone from a hero/villain scene, and from general vibes she got, M’gann was leaning towards a hero. He was kinda cute. She coughed awkwardly when she realized how long they just sat in silence.
“Hi?”
Apparently it was enough to release an incoherent babbling from the boy.
“Hi, um… Miss Martian, ma'am? I'm Phantom. What are you doing here? Is the rest of your Team going to fall off the sky too? Justice League?”
“Not right now probably”
She was ignored. Phantom just kept panicking.
“Is this some of your villain's schemes? Are you alright? You crashed pretty hard, sorry I landed on top of you by the way, do you–?”
“I'm fine, don't worry I got worse”
“Sure…”
“Sorry I threw you off the sky”
“Not your fault, really, it's fi–”
“You asked what I'm doing here. I went on my own to investigate when I saw the city blink out of existence and got sucked in. I'm not sure if my report from site made it through, but they know where I went, so they'll soon come to help, don't worry”
Phantom did not stop worrying.
“Alright, cool, cool” he ran his hand through his hair, tugging at them “The Justice League knows you mysteriously disappeared along with an entire city. This is fine, totally fine, absolutely–”
“You're panicking”
“No shit Sherlock. Someone kidnapped my city again and I have no idea how to fix it because my usual tactic is ‘punch the cause of the problem into submission’ and this time I can't punch the storm. Now you're here so if something happens, I’ll have pissed of Justice League to worry about because, of course, it will be my fault. You could be overshadowed and I have no clue what's going on but I have to fix it as soon as–”
“Breathe Phantom“ she interrupted again, projecting what the Team called ‘calming vibes’. Since it didn't involve outright entering someone's brain and humans almost didn't react to it, it was an okay thing to do without asking even on non-villains. “Remember, I'm a hero, not a damsel in the distress you have to protect non stop”
“Of course, you're not. You're Miss Martian. You're amazing, but it doesn't give me any more of an idea on what's going on nor what to do with Justice League when they come, obviously furious because everyone in Amity and their mother will testify that it was somehow my fault, especially if–”
“Hey, hey, none of that. I know you're a good guy and they’ll too. I will vouch for you if for some reason they get misled”
Phantom looked her in the eyes as if he was trying to read her mind himself without even an ounce of psychic powers. She could tell if he used it.
“I could be a bad guy,” he said seriously after a moment of silence.
“I know you're not”
“You don't know me”
“You spent almost all of our interaction agonizing over how to save your city. It's not typical bad guy behavior”
“I could be acting”
M’gann didn't even dignify it with her response other than an incredulous stare.
“ Alright, if I've been acting, I would be a lot cooler but still… I could be acting!”
“I'm a literal psychic, remember? I didn't read your thoughts, don't worry, I know it's invasive for humans. But I got a general overview of who you are, and your vibes matched pretty well with the vibes of good guys”
“Sure, of course, why not,” he muttered, taking a moment to reboot “Why is this my life now?”
M’gann decided it wasn't to her and well… Phantom wasn't wrong, she didn't know him, so however she'd try to answer it was pretty much hit or miss. But from what she'd seen of him, she was curious to learn more.
“Nevermind, let's get you a Specter Deflector before anyone tries to use you as a meatsuit” he said, catching her wrist to drag her somewhere.
She let him lead her. He still didn’t have any nefarious reasoning, and hey! Maybe she'll finish this adventure with a new teammate!
[Sure M’gann. Just a teammate. Don't worry, Danny won't be a panicked mess all of the time here]
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