Reblogging because I felt like adding notes on why each slide is important for them specifically. They specifically chose “Keeping your girlfriend happy” because the goal isn’t actually about improving relationships, though it’s a natural side effect, it’s about making it easier for someone they love to be happy. It got put through the romantic lens because they were talking about each other, in theory most of these work for any relationship.
Tell Her Why You Like Her- Marevelous and Radiance are both terrible at using their words, but good at wanting to use them. Radiance doesn’t really need them to affirm Marevelous’s feelings, but she likes to know what’s going on in her head when she’s making googly eyes. But Marevelous is very insecure about a lot of things, and absolutely needs to be told that Radiance likes her in spite of or because of them. This slide was chosen by Radiance because she knows that Marevelous absolutely needs it to stay happy.
Snuggles- Radiance is a huge proponent of snuggling in general, and snuggling will happen in any and all of her close personal relationships. Marevelous is also touchy feely, but much, much more picky about who she snuggles. She also struggles a lot with feeling lonely, and doesn’t feel nearly so alone if she’s holding someone. Touch is a huge part of both their love languages and it was an essential component for them, even if they didn’t have much advice on the topic. They also considered co-sleeping and sex related slides while on the topic of touch, but felt like sleeping together is very much optional in a way that alleviating touch starvation isn’t. But not being touch starved makes both of them very happy, without it Marevelous is a super duper stormcloud, and Radiance is a depressed slugabed.
Trust Her- They added this one last minute, and debated it because they were concerned that it would be interpreted as blind trust, which does NOT work with everyone. They absolutely both think it’s better to think critically about someone’s words and actions than just have blind faith in them. But feeling trusted makes them both as happy as having someone they can trust. Marevelous loves that Radiance trusts her not to hurt her when she’s so huge and angry that it’s easy to be afraid of her. She loves when Radiance shares personal, secret thoughts and feelings with her. She loves when Radiance lets her do something she knows is important on her behalf. And Marevelous feels absurd levels of relief about just having someone she can trust with anything. Radiance struggles with feeling kind of smothered and babied because Marevelous can be kind of overbearing, so she gets upset when she feels like she isn’t being trusted to make good decisions for herself, and absolutely delighted when Marevelous pushes one of her comfort zones by allowing Radiance to do something or make a decision that Radiance knows freaks her out. She likes when Marevelous believes that she’ll do the right thing, even though not doing the thing herself gives Marevelous palpable anxiety.
Be Silly- They are silly geese. But also, they’re superheroes. They witness a ton of sad stuff, they are in terrifying situations pretty regularly, and while romantic warm fuzzies can be very good, giggles are sometimes way better. Marevelous doesn’t laugh enough, Radiance plays with her until she smiles, even if it means acting like a giant toddler or endangering herself by initiating a tickle. Marevelous is very ticklish, tickling is a flailing risk. And Marevelous loves making Radiance laugh. She literally only started doing the heroic witticism thing and making dumb puns on the job because she made an accidental bad pun once and it made Radiance laugh. She literally turned on her wordplay switch despite the fact she KNOWS her quips are usually super corny because it kind of makes her feel more confident while fighting if Radiance thinks she’s funny. But when it isn’t about her, Radiance gets sad sometimes, and when she gets sad, she automatically goes for physical comfort to a degree that isn’t always feasible. She needs hours when they have minutes, or she wants to get as close as physically possible but Marevelous got herself battered in battle and it literally hurts to do it, but if Marevelous can get her laughing and silly, she isn’t as sad, so she doesn’t NEED the touch as much. It makes them happy to make the other happy, even if it’s fleeting because all they did was make a really silly face.
Kiss Her- They felt it deserved to be separate from Snuggles because while Marevelous is not shy with her mouth, and does kiss her friends, and Radiance also is a pretty liberal kisser, they get that a lot of people save it for immediate family or significant others. And because of that, it feels way more special a lot of other forms of affection. With rare exception, they’re the only one the other kisses on the mouth, and absolutely the only one the other frenches, and they love kissing so much that it deserved it’s own slide. Also, when Marevelous is mad at Radiance, she gets weird about kissing her and avoids it until she feels better again, so for Radiance a kiss on the lips is the definitive sign she’s been forgiven, and she has that “oh, so we’re good” relief. Radiance does not have a problem with kissing while mad, beyond that it makes it really, really hard for her to stay mad and she rarely gets to really stew in her anger and sometimes feels she deserves the right to before she lets herself be sedated with kisses.
Take Care Of Her- People have a lot to do, it can get overwhelming, especially if there isn’t time, or their bodies are mad or the things that need to happen are things they are bad at. It’s kind of a no brainer. Marevelous likes babying Radiance, she’ll bring her food, drinks, blankets, she likes brushing her hair and carrying her when she’s sore or sick and getting her stuff that she needs but is reluctant to do for herself. And again, Marevelous goes kind of overboard, but the vast majority of the time, it ultimately makes her happier because she doesn’t her herself and get benched for as long and it’s really flattering to know that she never has to go to sleep with her teeth unbrushed just because she was too tired to walk to the bathroom. And Radiance does little things like fix stuff Marevelous complained about, help teach other people how to not upset her, specifically ask to do something that will prevent her from exacerbating an ache or pain she doesn’t want to admit she has, or that gives her an excuse to blow off or exit early when she’s somewhere she doesn’t want to be, and very often she treats Marevelous’s injuries when they aren’t super severe. She also conspires with Marevelous’ coworkers to make sure she has the most pleasant day she’s capable of having when she hates her job, which usually involves planning dates for the night before and after especially stressful days or visiting her at lunch when she’s due for a pick me up. Marevelous also is a terrible insomniac, so Radiance uses a careful combination of lullabies and sex and cuddle related hormones to help get her to fall asleep at more decent hours. Most of Radiance’s duties are more necessary emotional and stress alleviating care, and a lot of Marevelous’ taking care of Radiance is her functionally treating her like a beloved doll more because she likes to than because Radiance needs it, but she also is very necessary emotional support and occasionally pain relief, and her fussing over her is sometimes totally justified because if she didn’t Radiance doesn’t really respect her body’s limits enough to not hurt herself without intervention. Marevelous is happier when her emotional needs are being adeptly managed, and she needs help to do that, and Radiance is happiest when she isn’t down for the count because she hurt herself overdoing something and then was too tired or hurt to properly take care of herself and recover, so she ends up staying down too long.
Carry Her- I posit that no one ever truly grows out of certain basic toddler urges, and one of them is being carried like they’re still a baby. It’s just that when people weigh more, they feel less safe and secure because the risk of falling is so much higher. Radiance has the benefit of being very small and dating someone well over twice her size on top of it, so she gets carried pretty much whenever she wants to be, she feels safe and loved and Marevelous LOVES doing it. Marevelous has the sad station in life of being one of the biggest, bulkiest, heaviest ponies around Maretropolis, so she gave up the very idea of ever being carried again, let alone by a romantic partner. She struggled a lot with wanting to feel that precious and light and effortless, and knowing she really isn’t. She wants to be cute and lovingly held and was too scared of crushing Radiance to ever ask for it. but Radiance made herself “lifty mitts” which are basically construct gloves that go all the way up her arms(and sometimes her chest) that bear the weight for her and also can elongate her reach, so she can carry things that she normally wouldn’t be able to. After the first time she made them in the line of hero work, she immediately scooped Marevelous up and Marevelous was filled with so much girlish glee it became a staple cheer up technique.
Let Her Vent- Pretty self explanatory. Marevelous is frequently on the verge of exploding, if Radiance didn’t help her get it out in safe and/or productive ways, she’d be way worse off because the guilt and frustration from actually exploding is really depressing and emotionally exhausting, so venting helps her actually rest and work through her feelings and improves her mental health a lot, and Radiance really doesn’t think much about it, she just kind of had a knack for it and it just seemed like another “bonding with my girlfriend” activity for her. She usually actually really enjoys helping Marevelous feel better, and she’s typically emotionally stable enough that she doesn’t need to be vented nearly so much, but every once in a while something will be bugging her, and she’s her own blind spot so she’s actually TERRIBLE at figuring out what’s wrong, or at the very least using her words to let Marevelous know about it. But Marevelous got really good at recognizing when something’s not quite right and has figured out how to induce a venting session that Radiance wasn’t even necessarily aware she needed until she felt better afterwards. But once Marevelous coaxes her into it, she also uses all the stuff she learned from Radiance coaching her through her feelings to return the favor, and while Radiance’s problems usually run much deeper and are much harder to fix, Marevelous has been getting her to try dealing with them and start healing from them, and while it doesn’t happen nearly so often, it honestly makes her so much happier because she finally knows what’s wrong and that she’s not just weirdly sad for no reason. It’s basically mutual, unpaid therapy, and they’re both much happier for it.
Most of the rejected slides were either super broad(Talk to each other! Spend time together! Get acquainted with her self esteem issues and systematically annihilate them!), way too specific(Learn to love getting licked, have an emergency plan for if one gets tangled or lost in the other’s hair, get acquainted with her self esteem issues and systematically annihilate them, teach her how to dance, Spend some time combing through the idiosyncrasies of her empathic nervous system), and a very large segment of them were axed for being too dirty(Learn to love getting licked part 2, figure out her hang ups before you get too invested in a kinky idea) or too dirty AND specific(keep bag balm around from when the constant sleep-sucking chaps her skin, keep a wooden spoon at the ready, Figure out how to say no before you land her in the hospital) because another reason Radiance couldn’t walk at midnight was because she “tapped the sap” at least once for all the slides that did make it in because she was only kept busy for ten minutes after several days of not being allowed to do much physical activity, Marevelous didn’t make alternate plans, and when with Marevelous, Radiance gets very, very horny if left idle and will continuously seduce her until she tires herself out. And Marevelous is a hopeless romantic, so she was already pretty seduced by Hearts and Hooves day itself and very vulnerable to making bad judgement calls about how many times they can do it before Radiance gets sore.
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