conceptalbummultiverse

[conceptalbummultiverse]

Unlike with Strange Fascination: A Love Story, I don't have a fanmix for Will They Come? (that would just be the first side of Diamond Dogs, tbh), but I have to say that I've always imagined this song to be Haushinka talking to Jack. Just replace "piano" with "the guitar," and "buried you in the ground" with... tried to jump out the window while I was holding you, I guess.

Daddy played piano

Played it very well

Music from his hands could catch you like a spell

He could make you love him

'Fore the tune was done

You have your daddy's hands

You are your daddy's son

Daddy never knew

That you were on the way

He had other ladies

And other tunes to play

When he up and left me

I just up and run

Only thing in my head:

You were your daddy's son

Couldn't hear no music

Couldn't see no light

Mama, she was frightened

Crazy from the fright

Tears without no comfort

Screams without no sound

Only darkness and pain

The anger and pain

The blood and the pain

I buried my heart in the ground

In the ground

When I buried you in the ground

Daddy played piano

Bet he's playing still

Mama can't forget him

Don't suppose I will

God wants no excuses

I have only one:

You had your daddy's hands

Forgive me...

You were your daddy's son

[conceptalbummultiverse]

Here, you can have it a day early!

Read the epilogue to Will They Come? here. <3

       “I���ll miss you,” Jack offered, unsure of what else to say.

       “Yeah, I’ll miss you too.” Julie ruffled his hair, a gentle smile on her face. “But it’s for the best, believe me. Maybe you’ll even find some nice girl to hang out with now that I’ll be gone.”

       “Maybe,” Jack muttered. I won’t ever, ever forget you. How could he? Julie was his best friend and his first love, and he had the memory of a half-Aresian on his side. No matter how long he lived– which could potentially be very long indeed– Julie would always remain in his heart.

And with that, I’m going on a two-week vacation. I will begin posting some follow-up short stories, starting with a story about Ziggy and Floyd acclimating themselves to Hunger City, the week that I return.

[conceptalbummultiverse]

I know someone made fanart once of Ziggy doing the “he asked for no pickles” thing with Pink, and I love that and can see it happening, but consider: Pink is even more likely to do that for Ziggy. He’s his biggest defender. If Ziggy were to get a papercut, Pink’s reaction would be to rip up the paper. If someone is treating his partner wrong, they’ve got hell to pay.

So… Imagine how Floyd feels when, after witnessing Ziggy’s utter despair upon finding out that the apocalypse he’d been trying to prevent for so long has already happened, after spending a little less than sixteen Earth years with him on a foreign planet while the Venusians build a new home for the people of Earth and being acutely aware that Ziggy has put all of his personal goals on hold to help Floyd oversee this project, after they finally reunite with their long-lost people and Floyd finds plenty of humans to connect with (some who he even knows), but Ziggy discovers that not one Aresian is still living and has to process the shock of being the last one alive all over again…

After all that, when the dust is starting to settle, Ziggy informs Floyd that some random woman whom Floyd has never met before has told him that Ziggy is the father of her child and she wants Ziggy to help raise him. As in, she wants to begin co-parenting as soon as possible.

Floyd’s first reaction, of course, would be to march over to wherever it is that Haushinka lives, pound on the door until she opens it, and then give her an earful that basically amounts to: who the fuck do you think you ARE, making demands of Ziggy after he’s been through so much??

Unfortunately (probably because Ziggy not only didn’t have a problem with what Haushinka was asking of him, but actively wanted to do it, and therefore he doesn’t appreciate Floyd taking offense on his behalf), this makes a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a Bad Move. And it may or may not contribute to their second breakup. But that’s another story.

[conceptalbummultiverse]

don’t jokeship with me because 2 hours later i’ll have feels for the pairing.

[conceptalbummultiverse]

it's them

[conceptalbummultiverse]

RAEL 4 today...No porcupine unfortunately

🦔 Okay there we go

[conceptalbummultiverse]

Bowie poster for the road! :] (blank bg version under the cut if you're feeling curious)

I am currently taking commissions! See more on my ko-fi page (where you can also support me) or feel free to dm me!

See more of my art on this blog or on my instagram page! :)

Also I wish I knew how to set up one of those printing shops bc I'd love to have this in good quality somewhere in my room </3

[conceptalbummultiverse]

ziggy you have to stop. you play too hard, your swag is too different, your spiders are too bad. they'll kill you

[conceptalbummultiverse]

Random thing I just thought of that is now canon to my stories:

Julie’s full name as given on her birth certificate is “Kyle Stuart George Martin,” with her middle names being the names of both of her grandfathers, because Mylo & Xyloto are sappy little shits. When Julie changes her first name, she at first doesn’t feel the need to change her middle names, because she honestly forgets that she has them sometimes (I mean, how often does one use one’s middle name, anyway?). But experimenting with names is fun, and eventually Julie decides to call herself “Julie Luisa Martin,” after Xyloto’s mother, because Luisa was a name that she almost chose as her first name (only to be overruled by her vague memories of Mylo telling her the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four when she was young, in her attempts to preserve all she knew/remembered of classic literature (horrific sidebar- how many books survived the evacuation of Earth? How many written languages potentially died out due to the loss of the aforementioned books and scarcity of writing material? Since this is my universe that I made up, I won’t ever let the latter happen, but the fact remains that there’s no way the Venusians could have saved every single book in existence)).

On a related note, we’ve already been through in the story why Xyloto is called Xyloto (it has something to do with his father being a percussionist, with xylophone as one of his main instruments, and his belief that music can be felt in every part of the body, from the head to the toes- which, by the way, comes from an actual quote from Chris Martin of Coldplay* from an interview given around the time of MX’s release- and yes, Xyloto Martin was named after Chris Martin (with Mylo Buckland being named after Coldplay’s guitarist, Johnny Buckland). Mylo is called Mylo because her parents were expecting a son and wanted to name him Milo, and when they found out Mylo was going to be a girl, they had become so attached to the name that they wanted to keep it, and tried to make it more “feminine” by replacing the I with Y. Interestingly enough, this bit of history is sort of the key to Mylo understanding/accepting Julie’s name change much more easily than Xyloto.

Finally, I’m pretty sure I’ve joked about this before but MAN, Julie dodged a bullet when she decided to rename herself, because whether someone is a boy or a girl, who would want to be stuck with the name KYLE for the rest of their life?? Seeing as it’s sort of become known as the ultimate fuckboy name… it would probably fit someone like Jagger more. (Uh oh, shots fired.)

*Actual quote from Chris Martin of Coldplay: “Music comes from a place we don’t know. It sort of comes through the fingers and toes. So we came up with the idea of, what if you had musical digits, like xylo toes.” Whatever you say, Chris Martin of Coldplay.

[conceptalbummultiverse]

It’s almost over… Read the second to last chapter of Will They Come? NOW!

I can’t believe we’ve almost reached the finish line! But not quite. In today’s update, Bowie character finally meets Bowie character as Hallowe’en Jack sits down to talk with his father, Ziggy Stardust. Seeing as Jack has never met his father before, they have quite a lot to talk about!

“So you’re Jack.” A sort of guarded warmth brimmed in Jack’s father’s eyes. Jack imagined that he must reflect the way that Jack himself felt. He wanted to let go and open up to his father, but his first instinct was to size him up, to suss out what kind of a person he was.

       “And you’re Ziggy. Ziggy Stardust.”

       “That’s what they call me,” Jack’s father remarked. “Funny how everybody knows me now, but I don’t know them.” His slender hands, clasped together, came to rest beneath his chin. “I suppose it’s more funny that anybody on this planet knows me. I would’ve never guessed…”

       He felt silent, ruminating, while Jack tried to put his thoughts in order. There was so much to discuss about his life, his father’s life, the planet on which they lived and the conflict from which they had recently escaped. Where did Jack even begin?

[conceptalbummultiverse]

In case you’ve been reading Will They Come? and have been finding it hard to picture the extraterrestrial characters in it… Don’t worry! I drew pictures of the three main extraterrestrial species way back in 2012, and those drawings still hold up! So here they are- my interpretations of the People, the Mercurians, and the Venusians.

The People are native to a planet outside of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is continuously being pulled back and forth between two suns and doesn’t have a real name. The People, likewise, do not have a real name, because their language is telepathic and they mostly communicate through sharing mental images and emotions. They are the people who live on this planet, therefore we humans would call them the People. Likewise, their planet is their home, so we humans would call it Home. You know how humans evolved from monkeys? The People evolved from canines, and so are commonly mistaken for dogs. The one pictured here is acting aggressive, because he is defending his home against an intruder, but for the most part, the People are no more violent than we humans are. (Consider humanity’s capacity for violence… but also consider our strong desire for peace. Ideally, they should be equal in measure. That goes for every species, human or not.)

The Mercurians (called as such by the people of Earth, and called Hermesians by the people of Mars/Ares) evolved from reptiles, and therefore are cold-blooded and covered in scales. They are smaller than most humans and live deep underground in vast cities. Their language is impossible for humans to reproduce, because they have two sets of vocal cords and can harmonize with each other (I have no idea how this works with their physiology, ssshhhh). They communicate mainly in a series of grunts, clicks, and whistles. Humans call them Mercurians because they are native to the planet that they call Mercury, but their true name is unpronounceable to the human tongue and is not written down anywhere.

The Venusians (called the Saviors by the humans, the Creators by the People, and the Aphroditans by the Martians/Aresians) are stick-thin, immensely tall beings with glowing eyes and tentacles that wave in the air. They too speak telepathically, and many have a hive mind, which is to say that they think and speak as one being. They alone have mastered interdimensional travel, which means that they’re able to take passengers on their ships (shown in the last picture) and zip them from one galaxy to another in what feels, at most, like a day or two to their passenger.

[conceptalbummultiverse]

i think this is one of my best works by far i will never make PEAK like this again

IT IS RAAAAEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLL💯💯

oh and the website you can make this silly thing on is called wonder of wonder art ❤️

[conceptalbummultiverse]

You Won’t BELIEVE What Happens in the Latest Chapters of Will They Come?!

Now that I have your attention… I promise it’s not clickbait. Two new chapters out today! (They were supposed to be one chapter but they didn’t flow well together, and one was extremely short so it felt like a rip-off of an update if I posted just that one this week.)

Chapter Fifteen: Jack has made up his mind to sacrifice himself. None of the people he confides in are happy about that.

Chapter Sixteen: The Diamond Dogs finally get to tell their side of the story, and it is not what anyone expected. But the humans still want to fight them. Can peace be achieved?

[conceptalbummultiverse]

OH MY GOD?!?!?!?!

MY BABIES!!!! ALL OF THEM ARE RIGHT THERE!!!!! 💖💖💖💖💖

Julie in her party dress! Johnny & Whatsername glaring at each other! Pink going “fuck this shit, I’m out” while Ziggy tries to get him to come back! RAINBOW HAIR MYLO?!?!?!

Thank you for drawing this, you’ve made me very happy!!!!

Family therapy hour!!

This was literally so fun to draw hehee

@conceptalbummultiverse I said I'd do it, and here it is! :3

[conceptalbummultiverse]

Will They Come? Behind the Scenes: Darlings I've Killed

As fun as rewriting a story can be, it can also be a source of pain, once you realize that you have to get rid of a particular line or scene that doesn't work anymore, and yet you've grown attached to it. The most recent chapter of Will They Come? features a major scene that was radically changed from its original version, and I wanted to share that with my readers, but before we get there, here are a few short lines that I had to cut despite finding them humorous, straight from the unedited 2012 version of the story:

~

[This had to be changed because Jack's healing ability works more quickly than is depicted here, but I thought it was funny nonetheless.]

[Jack's mother] passed a hand along her face, closing her eyes and finally giving in. “Okay. You can go find your friends and bring them back here. But there’s one condition…”

Oh Bog, please don’t let it be anything bad… Jack squinted. “Yes?”

“I’m coming with you,” his mother said. She marched over to the door and knelt down to put on her shoes. Jack was shocked. His mother was going back into civilization after condemning everything to do with it a few years before? Jack pinched himself to know if he was dreaming or not, but the pain didn’t wake him up. In fact, it was only made worse as Jack had accidentally dug his nails into a scratch on his arm that he had received the night before, one that was scarring over now. His eyes watered.

~

[In the original version of WTC? and SF: ALS, Xyloto's character shtick was to point out all the contrived parts of the story and make fun of them in a meta way. I realized when I went to rewrite it that this is not nearly as funny a gimmick as I thought it was, but I still like Mylo's retort in this scene. (Also, the information given here about Mercury City is not accurate anymore.)]

“Mercury City?”

“Yes,” Mylo said. “The Mercurians built it belowground after the humans came to colonize this planet. It’s still somewhat of a work in progress, though, which is why a lot of Mercurians lingered aboveground in Hunger City to eventually drink themselves to death. They left behind manholes and trap doors all over the place as entryways to their underground city.”

“And we’ve known about them ever since we came here because there’s a trapdoor ever so conveniently located in our bedroom at home,” Xyloto said dryly. He wagged his head in disbelief. “Who knew we’d ever need it for an escape! I tell you, Mylo, there’s a reason I’m writing a book on all this. A story this contrived would become an instant bestseller.”

“If there were publishing companies on this planet, any story could become a bestseller,” Mylo retorted.

~

[Finally, here's the major part I had to cut: the existence of Kylie/Julie's adopted sister, Eva. In Concept Album Extravaganza, Pink/Floyd reconciled with his wife and had a daughter with her, who he and his wife ended up abandoning when they left the planet to go to Mars. In SF: ALS, Floyd's wife divorces him and they don't reconcile, so they don't have a daughter, so Eva no longer exists. Here's a little bit of introduction to the concept of Eva's character:]

~

Thinking about his father led Jack to think about Mylo and Xyloto, and then about the mystifying Eva. Although Jack had only just met her and had barely said more than a sentence to her, she seemed to be horrifically fascinated with him. Maybe it was just the fact that he wasn’t human and the son of a famous rock singer to boot, but Jack had an odd sneaking suspicion that Eva’s interest with him went deeper than that. He thought about her portraits on the walls in the main room, and suddenly a thought occurred to him that he had to ask Kylie about.

“Hey, Kylie?”

She flipped the record over. “What?”

“How old is your sister?” Jack asked.

Kylie paused for a moment. “She’s twenty-two.”

A piece of information that Kylie had told Jack entered his head. My mom had me when she was eighteen…

“So she’s six years older than you?” Jack said, counting quickly.

“Yeah…” There was a note of wariness in Kylie’s voice.

“So your mom had her when she was twelve?!”

Kylie stayed immobile in one place before setting the record down, putting the needle on it, and then pressing the button. She crept back to the bed and sat cross-legged at the end of it as a rocking song came blaring out of the boxes beside the turntable.

“My mom didn’t have Eva at all,” Kylie said. “But we don’t like talking about it.”

~

[And now, at long last, here is the scene from the recent chapter of WTC? where Eva talks to Jack. In the new version, Mylo is the one who talks with him while showing him around Mercury City.]

Shortly, Jack became aware of the sound of feet pattering along after him. He slowed down warily; none of the Nadsats could be following him, because he would hear squeaking skate wheels rather than footsteps. He turned around to find that Eva was coming after him, determination glowing in her brown eyes.

“Can you stop doing that?” Jack asked, stopping in his walk to let her come to his side.

“Doing what?” she asked, smoothing her skirt and biting her lip.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Jack sighed. “You’re just staring at me a lot, and… it’s getting uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” Eva looked down at her feet, a red blush slowing approaching her skin. “That— that scene back there… that was very impressive.”

“Thanks,” Jack mumbled. “You don’t think they’re going to hate me for it later, do you?”

Eva blinked. “Hate you? Why?”

“Well, in nadsat-talk, the word ‘nadsat’ means ‘teenager…’” Jack rolled his eyes. "They’re going to think I’m the worst at coming up with names.”

“Well, you’ve never had to do it before,” Eva pointed out. She took a step forward. “Come walk with me, Jack. I’ve been wanting to talk to you since yesterday.”

Interested, Jack followed Eva, trying to keep up with her long strides. She stared straight ahead, her back ramrod straight, seeming to know exactly where she was going, although Jack hadn’t gotten the feeling that she had been to Mercury City before. Mercurians huddled and slouched in dark corners beside the squat buildings, and as Jack looked at their inhuman features, trying to accustom himself to them, Eva began to speak in her oddly-accented voice.

“I don’t know if you’ve figured this out already, but Mylo and Xyloto are not my parents, and Kylie’s not my blood sister.”

“I did figure it out,” Jack said. “Kylie told me how old you are.”

Eva nodded. “I don’t like people to talk about it, or to talk about it myself, really. But I think it’s important that you know who I am.”

“Who were your real parents?” Jack asked, having the sneaking suspicion that he would recognize one or more of the names.

Eva ran her fingers through her long, tangled hair. “My father was Floyd Pinkerton, or Pink Floyd, the rock star that Xyloto was talking about who told him about you and your mother. I was seven years old when he died.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I… I know how you feel.” He wanted to touch Eva to comfort her, but she seemed hardened and closed up, and her hands were clasped tightly together in front of her.

“No, you don’t,” Eva said. “At least you weren’t born yet when Ziggy died. At least he didn’t deliberately take himself away from you…” She breathed deeply, trying to keep her voice steady. “My parents dragged me along on some trip to America– that was a country on Earth, we used to live in England—”

“I’ve heard of it,” Jack interjected, wondering now if that was where Eva’s accent came from.

“—under the pretense that we were visiting some of my dad’s old friends,” Eva continued. “The next thing I knew, he had dumped me off with Mylo and Xyloto to go into outer space with my mum. They were trying to bury Ziggy’s body, or so Mylo and Xyloto told me… They were headed to Mars. I mean, Ares, I guess.” She fiddled with her fingers and bit her lip even harder, breaking the skin. Jack was alarmed. “Are you all right?” He reached in to take Eva’s hand, but she moved away from Jack.

“No,” she spat. “No, I’m not all right! Why would you expect me to be? My parents went away one morning, and I never saw them again… Who would do that to a little girl?” Eva’s voice choked off, and she hastily brushed away the tears that were forming in her eyes. “I spent two whole years wishing they would come back. But I never found out what happened to them.” She stopped walking suddenly and hung her head, pressing her hands to her face and shaking with a suppressed sob. Jack, unable to control himself, reached out and laid a hand on Eva’s shoulder, but she violently shook him off and turned away from him. “Don’t touch me!” She hid her face in her hands as Jack, at a loss, stood by her awkwardly, trying to think of soothing things to say but only able to come up with the eternal “I’m sorry.”

Finally Eva turned back to Jack. She wiped her damp face as she spoke. “I’m sorry, Jack. I get emotional when I talk or even think about them.” She gave him a cracked smile. “I didn’t mean to tell you all that.”

“It’s fine,” Jack said, and then, aware that he might be treading dangerous waters to set Eva off again, but still wanting to know himself, he asked, “Did your parents know my father? You said that they went all the way to Ares to bury him.”

“Yes,” Eva said. “I knew him too. Ziggy was actually the first man I ever loved.” She laughed. “Imagine that— a child in love with a million-year-old man!”

A million years old? Of course Jack had known that Aresians could live for a very long time, but he couldn’t quite reconcile that with the image of the youthful singer from his newspaper clipping. But then again, Aladdin Sane had lived for about the same amount of time, and he had appeared to be no older than his thirties when Jack had met him.

“How did you meet my father?” Jack asked. Eva answered, “My family was the first to meet him when he came to Earth, actually.” She began walking again, and Jack picked up the pace. “He landed in our backyard. Well, really my parents’ backyard.”

Jack raised his eyebrows– that was an addition to the story that Xyloto had forgotten to tell him about. Another question popped into his brain. “Do I remind you of him?”

Eva turned her head and looked down her nose at Jack, and even in the bad lighting Jack was startled by the force and intensity of her eyes. Dark and brown, they seemed almost to belong to another person, not quite matching up with her quiet demeanor. They stared viscerally into Jack, mentally tearing him apart.

“Yes,” Eva murmured, her soft-spoken voice contrasting the power of her eyes. “Yes, you do remind me of him a bit. You’ve got the ears right down pat, and the eyes…” She peered deeper into Jack’s, unnerving him with her stare even more. “Goodness, but Ziggy had such lovely eyes! Dark blue on one side, light blue on the other.”

“Actually,” Jack said, “one of his pupils was permanently dilated, and the other one wasn’t.”

“Oh.” Eva pulled away from Jack. “Well, there goes my memory, then. Good thing I haven’t gotten a chance to paint him yet.” She chuckled. “Mylo and Xyloto have no good photos of Ziggy, and of course I’m not eidetic like you Aresians… it means having a flawless memory,” she clarified, seeing Jack’s blank expression.

“I’m not eidetic,” Jack said. “I can remember things pretty well, but only when I need to.”

“Ah, well supposedly Aresians can remember everything that’s happened in their life after their birth,” Eva said. “I wish I could remember Ziggy better…” She blinked in Jack’s face, and then reached out to brush a strand of hair behind his ear. Jack shuddered involuntarily.

“You have his nose,” Eva said. “As far as I recall, anyway. The cheekbones aren’t exactly the same, though…”

Jack pulled away. “I thought you said Mylo and Xyloto don’t have any good photos of my father.”

“Oh, they have a few good photos, but not for what I want to do with them,” Eva said. “I want to paint a portrait just as I’ve done for all the other members of my family, but none of their photos are suitable for the kind of portrait I want to do. I want to show Ziggy candidly as he was, not posed for some publicity shot or…” She sucked in a breath and looked away, not finishing her sentence.

“I have a photo,” Jack began, and started to reach for the knapsack on his back– before realizing that there was no knapsack on his back. He must have left it in the building that he had awoken in. “Never mind for now. Maybe I could model for you– if I look enough like my father, you could just fill in the blanks from your memory.”

Eva shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. When I paint a person’s face, I have to paint the person that I’m looking at, not someone else, no matter how similar they look. Even if they were identical twins, I’d still notice at least one difference in their expression. My mother always used to remind me that every person is different, and when I paint, I can’t help but present their uniqueness.” She smiled, and Jack was surprised to find how much the expression suited her. “Of course, you’re welcome to come and sit for your own portrait any time you want. I suppose you’re a part of the family now that Kylie is dating you.”

“We’re not dating,” Jack said.

“Oh? Then why has Kylie told me that you were her first kiss?” Eva countered.

Jack shrugged hopelessly. “Can we not talk about Kylie right now?” Bringing up Kylie had brought up the memories of the last time Jack had seen her, fighting with all her might against the pack of Diamond Dogs that could very well destroy her…

Eva nodded, understanding, and a flash of pain came to her eyes. She changed the subject and turned around to walk the other way with Jack. “There’s something I have for you back at the house. Not our house in Hunger City, I mean, but the house that you were treated in a few moments ago.” She cocked her head sideways and ran her hands over her skirt again.

“Do you mean a present?” Jack asked.

Eva inclined her head. “I suppose so. When we were fleeing the Diamond Dogs, I grabbed The Rise of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars off Mylo and Xyloto’s bed. I couldn’t bear to leave without it, and I thought you might want it too.”

“You thought right,” Jack murmured, and a smile came to his face. “Thank you very much, Eva.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, smiling back, and then her eyes grew tight around the edges. “I’ve been listening to that album for so many years now, ever since I was five. I love Ziggy’s music, but remembering who he was and what he did upsets me. I mean, he was so bloody beautiful, and brilliant as well… He didn’t deserve to die. He could have saved the entire planet Earth with his music, were it not for those three sick bastards of bandmates that he had…” Her hands balled into fists, and her eyes turned murderous. “Your father was loved by so many people, Jack. Including me. I— I wish he could have survived just long enough to meet you… and maybe make another album…” She patted Jack’s shoulder. “It must be hard for you to have grown up without him.”

“Not really,” Jack said, and his heart sang with pain. “I’ve only just started missing him, but how can you miss someone you never knew?” Eva had no response. She and Jack walked along, silently comforting each other for the respective losses of their fathers (and in Eva’s case, her mother). Then Eva spoke up again.

“It’s incredibly odd to be here with someone who is so closely connected with the man I admire.” She looked down at Jack. “Now that I’m older, I’ve begun to seriously cherish the time I spent with him. And to have his son here… It’s a bit spooky.” She laughed softly, chastising herself. “I’m sorry if that sounded weird. Actually, I’m also sorry for staring at you so much yesterday… I just couldn’t believe you existed.”

“It’s okay,” Jack said. He couldn’t understand Eva’s emotional connection to his father, but the staring part made sense to him. “It’s nice to hear from someone else who knew my dad when he was alive.”

“Not that I can really tell you much,” Eva sighed. “I’ve got only the fuzziest memories of him in my head. If my dad were still around, I know he could tell you more about Ziggy than any of us can. He was very close to Ziggy back then, or so Mylo and Xyloto have said. They even lived in America together for a short while.”

She sighed and kicked at the concrete ground. “He never told me he was a musician, did you know that, Jack? My father kept it a secret when I was growing up. I know Kylie likes his music, and it’s been played often in our house, but I’ve never listened. I’ve heard it about a thousand times, but I’ve never listened. I— I just can’t think about him, or my mother, without…”

Eva sucked in a deep breath and fell silent. Then she prodded Jack in the side. “What’s your favorite song of Ziggy’s, Jack?”

“Um…” Jack racked his brains for the song titles. “I liked ‘Starman’ the best, I think. And ‘Memory of A Free Festival.’ That was pretty horrorshow.” He smiled apologetically for his use of nadsat-talk, and Eva burst out laughing.

“Horrorshow! That’s a wonderful word. Kylie’s been using it all over the place.” Then, with the unpleasant thought of Kylie looming in her mind, Eva said quickly, “Those songs are actually my two favorites of Ziggy’s, too. They’re rather hard to listen to now, though.”

[conceptalbummultiverse]

Y’know, it’s chapter updates like today’s that really makes me wish there was a therapist in Hunger City. Imagine that conversation:

“So in order to keep the Diamond Dogs from killing all the humans, you wanted to… let them kill you instead?”

“Yep.”

“So you don’t value your own life?”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do? I don’t want my mom or my friends to die! Besides, my mom has told me multiple times that she never really wanted to have a kid anyway, and my friends only really care about me because they think I’m a god or something, so really I’m doing the world a favor!”

“……..”

[conceptalbummultiverse]

TWO new chapters of Will They Come? are out today!!!

As promised, here are two new chapters, right at the beginning of the week. I was too exhausted to post on Friday, and will be traveling this upcoming Friday, hence the early update.

In these chapters, Jack finds himself in a safe hiding place to wait out the Diamond Dogs' siege of Hunger City. While his mother gets to know Xyloto (or, more like argue with Xyloto), Mylo takes him on a grand tour.

In the second chapter, a decision is made regarding what to do in light of the siege, much to Jack's displeasure. In secret, he makes a plan to stop the upcoming violence.