#i MAY do character/album moodboards but idk yet

[castoracklys]

i just stumbled across your blog and i'm in love with it! if you're okay with it, can you talk about the concept/story?

Of Course!

There are three timeline's to follow which is 1943, then 1983, then 2003. But the main focus is 1983!

Saviour's Secret (aka "album 1") follows Castor Acklys in his hidden romance with Charles Mercy, his older siblings best friend. This album explores themes of saviour complexes, secrets, social pressures, and coming to terms with things not going in a perfect fairytale way.

Brother of the Sky (Extended) (aka "album 2") is where we explore of Castor's life and family. We learn about the Acklys family and meet Winifred, his mother, Calamity, his maternal cousin, and most prominently, The Star, his older sibling. We see their family dynamic and explore Castor feeling abandoned when The Star can no longer live the way they were raised and chooses to leave, which opens the world to Castor in new ways as he views everything around him without the layer of protection his sibling gave him. This explores abandonment, doing the right thing and still getting hurt, legacies, and disillusionment with circumstances you may have been raised with. It also establishes The Star and Castor's dynamic as not particularly healthy, fed by codepedence, jealousy, insecurity and belonging. The extended version of this album includes 5 tracks "post mortem", meaning that the original album ends with Castor being murdered after he too tries to escape his family home and run away, and the final 5 tracks are his reflection upon his death and the way things are unfolding for him. (This album also includes my favourite song; The Beginning and End of Everything I Know. Castor's dying song/his final goodbyes.)

Husband (aka "album 3") is a timeline diversion, what if this didn't happen. What if Castor got a happy life. And the answer is, he wouldn't (yet). In this album, Castor doesn't run away, instead he marries his friend Abram. A major issue in this relationship is desire, Castor is not romantically invested in Abram, he needed family and belonging and an escape from where he was, Abram offered that. He's trying to find family in someone who currently views him as a sexual/romantic partner. This explores how his life should have gone, yet every song feels uninspired and unfulfilled. Castor feels empty in life and thinks about how things could have been better if he simply didn't marry Abram (even though we, the audience, know it would be far worse). Feeling unfulfilled leads Castor to have an affair with Nova, a local shop keeper. This album ends with Castor talking to a divorce lawyer.

Keeper's Lover (aka "album 4") is the happy album, but it doesn't ever feel like it. Continuing on from Husband, we see Castor's life develop even more and that he does finally find belonging and happiness with Nova. But that also comes with the full range of acceptance that everything that came before wasn't good. This is a very cathartic album where Castor has to accept that everything he has been taught his whole life about love is wrong, but not really. The things Castor has been taught about love are right, it's all consuming and wonderful and everything he ever expected, except there isn't a catch. Every concept Castor has been taught about love was also used to justify a lifetimes worth of suffering he's experienced. This explores themes of grief over lose opportunities, acceptance, autonomy, and if then rounded off in the final song with the other shoe dropping, a reminder that this is not the life Castor lives, he doesn't get married, he doesn't meet Nova. Castor's is still dead in the woods, Castor still left the night he did, still met the wrong man at the bus stop, still didn't stand a chance to ever really get this life.

Gravesite (aka "album 5") returns to Castor's original timeline with a new perspective. Castor's life unfolding after The Star leaves, Castor deciding to leave too, all now watched from the perspective of a ghost. Dalilah Fare, a girl who died in 1943, was murdered and buried in a near identical way to Castor in the same location 40 years earlier. She is buried so close to Castor when he dies they could have reached out and held hands. While Dalilah's circumstances are not the same, her death was. This album follows Dalilah trying to understand the story unfolding in front of her and protect Castor, she kicks and screams and bites and pleads but she's already gone and can't save him. This also covers Castor's acceptance into the afterlife and learning about Dalilah's life, her family, her sister Angie, her love Simon.

The final album, Something Like God (aka "album 6") says what if Castor didn't stay, but did leave differently. Castor goes to a different location on a different day when he runs away. He meets a different man than the one who murders him. He meets Victor Casement instead. He is brought to a community entire different from his own, he meets Victor's wife, Donna Casement, who becomes his friend. He finds acceptance in a different way. He finds religion in a very different way, Victor is a cult leader. This album unfolds more as an investigative piece, Castor slowly peeling back layers of this cult to begin to understand it and the people around him.

That's it for the albums ! But it doesn't round off the story completely.

We still have Kory, in 2003. A theme for this whole piece of work is cycles. The cycles of abuse that drove The Star away, the cycles of violence that lead Dalilah and Castor to the same circumstances of death. For Kory, the cycle continues. Kory also dies in a new identical way to them, in the same location, 20 years in the future. Sacrafice and suffering were never enough to save people. Dalilah and Castor were not enough to reach through the veil of death and save Kory from their fate. Some cycles continue no matter how much we wish they never existed in the first place.