#but i was also incredibly tired so I'm going to be lenient with myself

[captaindamianos]

[cloud-somersault]

The Constellations Covenant AU you just posted is so interesting for different reasons to me, among them:

-I’d wondered and sometimes thought about asking you about whether Macaque would have killed Wukong in that first battle between them if he was the one who’d gotten the upper hand (I ended up not asking though because it was part of other contemplations I was having about their relationship and what they would each be willing to do for and against the other and it was heavy and complicated for me to express properly I suppose) but this AU explored some of that scenario now so, cool!!

-AND!!! I’d also thought about asking what would have happened if there was another celestial primate there on Flower Fruit Mountain to receive MK when he was born, whether Wukong or Macaque or even Little Star idk (I ended up not asking this one cause a lot about MK’s origins and what happened to him immediately after his birth is still mystery territory so I wasn’t sure how much you could delve into it. Plus tbh I have a lot of questions about your thoughts on the celestial primate births that I’ve kinda kept to myself because I don’t wanna bombard you or anything 😂) but again, some of that in this au?? MK recognized as a celestial primate from the beginning??

Very cool as always!!!

You can always come in here and ask anything! I'm honestly going to be a bit more lenient with information and what I withhold. Unless it's a plot-heavy detail, I'll divulge anything, because there's a vast majority of things that are just going to stay in my head. So, asking now is the perfect time to get those answers and lore.

I always saw Macaque and Wukong's fight to be this long, tired, exhausting, powerful battle. They both get so caught up in the thrill of fighting each other and how they have to keep their wits about them at all times. It basically boils down to "I have to win!!" no matter the cost, and it's lethal and deadly, obviously, but it's neck-and-neck. Wukong didn't stop until it was too late. That's the same for Macaque in Covenant AU.

There's also just the anger of thinking the other abandoned them, which is also canon in Covenant AU, so they've got that anger, the thrill and adrenaline, and needing to best the other but finding it incredibly difficult. It's the hardest battle both of them have ever fought.

As for your second question, Little Star wouldn't be able to receive MK, because they were already lost at that point. If Wukong/Macaque were there when MK was born, they'd pick him up and look him over and immediately identify that he is like them. MK would be born with celestial-blessed eyes and abundant magic, and with his connection to wood magic, Wukong/Macaque would put two and two together.

They both were there when Little Star was born as well, so shadowpeach (i'm just going to type that out, it's less letters) both know what to look for. In Constellations, if Wukong had been on FFM and not in Heaven attending a Spell Discovery Presentation, then he would've immediately known MK was a celestial primate.

So, basically, shadowpeach would look after MK and take care of him, but it would be heavily fraught with arguments and fear. Macaque wants to keep MK hidden from the world and Wukong agrees, but doesn't to the extent that Macaque wants to. Wukong would want to show MK the Mortal Realm; Macaque wouldn't want that because he fears a repeat of what happened to Little Star. He wants MK to only known FFM

Because Macaque doesn't have magic in this AU, Wukong gets final say in a lot of things....Macaque also isn't doing so great mentally and self-confidence wise. Their relationship has some hurdles and ups and downs, but they're still heavily in love - but those issues that stemmed from their younger days are still there and they get addressed at this point.

MK, all the while, is just a little monkey who speaks monkey waddling about being silly. Flowers spring up from his footsteps and whenever he sleeps, he grows a garden around himself. Whenever Wukong picks him up and smiles, MK pats Wukong's cheeks and makes marigolds bloom in Wukong's hair.

Whenever MK is nervous during the night, Macaque is there to reassure him. He can't ease his heart without magic, but he holds him and keeps him safe throughout the night. And in the morning, there are lilacs in Macaque's fur and hair.

So, it'd be like that. More domestic and realistic. But very sad, too.

If you have more questions about this AU or just Constellations in general, please ask!

[chili-mango]

I hate that I miss you. I hate that I'm questioning myself again, wondering if maybe I'm misremembering how bad things were, if maybe you're right that I was being a self-fulfilling prophecy. I hate that I'm questioning whether maybe I should have been more lenient or tried harder to make myself understood even though my parents, my sister, my friends, my therapist, my LAST therapist, are all telling me that I was INCREDIBLY gracious & lenient in how I ended things with you.

I just want to feel listened to and understood. I want to feel heard & seen & validated. I feel like my reality of experience and the reality of our relationship that you talk about are not the same reality and it's gaslight-y as fuck, even though I KNOW you don't do it on purpose.

I hate constantly feeling like I can't trust my own perception of social interactions. I hate feeling like my perception of self and others' perception of me aren't even close. I'm working really hard on trusting my own intuition & my own perception of things & not constantly trying to compare it to what other people think about a situation, but it's hard. If I analyze anything for long enough, it breaks down into symbols of truth & not the actual truth. "Pointing at the moon is not the moon," "ceci n'est pas un pipe," etc.

I miss you, but I like that being broken up gives me time to process the weird existential non-reality shit that constantly clutters the edges of my mind. I have time to realize I'm in a nihilism spiral & shake myself out of it. I can realize I'm disassociating faster & then start working to ground myself back in the here & now and not get caught trying to distill things down into some sort of concrete meaning or truth.

I think I wasn't getting enough brooding time when we lived together. Sometimes I just need to be left alone to sulk for a while, until I get fed up with being an edgelord and am fit to be around people again. Especially since you would also get caught in edgelord spirals, and I would be catching stray fire because I lived with you. I do not like being around you when you're in a Everything Is Awful & I'm Going to Make It Everyone's Problem mood. It takes so much energy & time to stay out of my own spirals that getting caught in yours, or trying desperately to NOT get caught in yours, exhausted me. And I know that's when we'd both end up in that growing-tension section of our abusive cycle.

I'm tired. I hope you're okay. I still don't see a way to fix this, even though I want a way to fix this. I hope you're doing well.

[antialiart]

I've been following this since you started doing the draw every day thing, and your art has definitely improved a lot. I'm thinking about doing this too -- do you have any suggestions (esp. for things like keeping motivation) as someone who has been drawing every day for over a year? Thank you!

Thanks! I’m thrilled to hear you want to try daily drawing - I really love doing it and I’m so glad I went ahead and did it.

I’ve honestly never really had trouble staying motivated, which surprised me; I wasn’t at all sure I wouldn’t flake on this when I started, but it turned out really easy for me to keep up. I think the biggest factors that have contributed to how well I’ve kept it up are the following:

- I post all my drawings to an artblog and have made my intention to draw something every day very explicit. Whether I actually do a drawing on a given day is a matter of public record. I don’t know if any of my followers would really notice if I failed to do a drawing, but it still discourages me from thinking stuff like “I’ll just draw two things tomorrow instead” which could lead down a slippery slope of never actually doing all the drawing.

- I’m willing to be lenient with myself with regards to what I’ll consider an acceptable drawing. This is really important, I think. It’s just “draw something”. If I’m tired and sick and don’t want to draw at all, I’m allowed to draw a two-minute half-assed sketch of a Voltorb and post that. If that weren’t allowed, I’d be forced to skip days every now and then when I’m just not physically capable of putting effort into a drawing, and once I’m allowed to skip days, it becomes too easy to slowly expand the definition of what qualifies as a day I’m allowed to skip. None of that; I will do some kind of drawing every single day, but it doesn’t have to be good or refined in the slightest if I can’t do that. No pressure; it should feel like a game, not a chore, and definitely not like some sort of looming, intimidating duty.

- Of course, as a corollary, I need to want to make good drawings; otherwise I’d just end up doing something half-assed every day, which wouldn’t be terribly helpful. Posting to the artblog serves an important role here, too: you can all see exactly what I’m drawing, and if it’s halfhearted crap, I don’t like posting it. It’s extremely important that I do so anyway, but I would much, much rather draw something I’m actually happy to show off. So if I’m not extremely tired or sick or otherwise unable to put effort into my daily, I will make at least something of an effort.

- Other important way to get yourself to make an effort: draw something you care about. Draw presents for your friends; draw your own characters or your pets or people you love; draw scenes from movies or shows or games that are emotionally important to you. I say this with the reservation that you shouldn’t try to bite off more than you can chew - if you don’t feel like you’re any good at realistic faces yet, trying to draw a realistic face that you actually care about may just end up feeling frustrating, because you don’t have the skill to get them close enough to be satisfied, and because of the emotional importance to you, it might make you just really hate the idea of posting your failure. That’s not very productive. Start by drawing easy-to-draw things that you care about and then ramp up the difficulty when you get good enough to not utterly hate yourself when you try. (But still be willing to screw it up a bit. Don’t wait forever to be good enough; you should be eager to get to try to draw things you care about! Be bold and try the moment you think you might even conceivably be able to draw something kind of close. It’s not going to be perfect, but it actually just might be better than anything similar you’ve done before.)

- Ask for challenges from others. I haven’t been doing a lot of suggestions recently, but I really need to finish the last few and make a new suggestion post, because doing suggestions has definitely been one of the things I’ve found most consistently helpful. Ask for something that challenges you at your current skill level, things you’ve noticed you have trouble with. I happen to have a decent audience on my artblog but you can also just ask friends. Not only do you get to draw something challenging, you also get an automatic motivation boost from the fact that you’re doing it for somebody and you don’t want to disappoint them. Plus, people often come up with wild, hilarious suggestions and the results are great and incredibly fun to do regardless of the quality of the drawing.

- Do a lot of different things! Often people do scheduled daily projects, like one Pokémon a day or something, and if that works out well for you, great, but if you get bored with that sort of routine, don’t try to force yourself to draw something you’re not really feeling. Switch it up, do something different from what you’ve been doing and practice different things if that’s what it takes to keep yourself interested.

- Think of how awesome it will be when you can draw that thing you’ve always wanted to draw. Think of how every artist got good by drawing a lot. Think of how by keeping this up you are in the process of making yourself awesome. You’re not just doing a dinky little drawing, you’re one drawing closer to godhood.

That’s about all I can think of right now. I hope that helps, and I hope daily drawing works out great for you!