between_time_and_42 | My Drawings: The Evolution of Julie Martin

As I've mentioned, I've been drawing a lot lately, and also as I've mentioned, my OC Kylie/Julie Martin has gone through a lot of changes recently. I've been having fun drawing various versions of her, and I wanted to quickly take a look at how she's evolved.

This is the first drawing I ever did of Julie, back when she was called Kylie:

Kylie at the time was white, being the daughter of a white man and a white woman, and cis as well, for reasons explained in my "Adapting the Concept Albums" post about Diamond Dogs. She wore a black leather jacket with the collar turned up, black jeans, a white T-shirt, and white roller skates. The name "Kylie" came from the fact that her parents, Mylo and Xyloto, wanted to give her a name that also had "yl" in it, and the name "Martin" came from Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, whose album Mylo Xyloto inspired my story.

Here is the new version of Julie that I drew over the holidays:

When I decided that Julie would be trans (again, this is explained in my "Adapting the Concept Albums" post), I decided to rename her Julie for multiple reasons. First, I'd never liked the name Kylie and would have renamed her anyway even if she'd remained cis. Second, because Julie had chosen her own name, I decided that her parents must have stuck with the "yl" naming convention when choosing her birth name, and Julie wouldn't be interested in adhering to it when she renamed herself. Third, "Julie" is a cursed name (for personal reasons) and I wanted to reclaim it. And finally, Julie is also reminiscent of "Julia," which is the name of the female lead in 1984, which was the main basis for Diamond Dogs, which in turn was the main basis for Will They Come? (the story in which Julie appears). In-universe, Julie named herself after this character as well (who also happens to be one of my favorite characters in all of literature, so that's another personal shout-out on my part- if I ever had a daughter, I would name her Julia, and Julie IS my daughter, in a sense).

Anyway... yeah, so Julie is a trans girl who hasn't transitioned, but this iteration of her is still white and wears a black leather jacket and white roller skates. Her hair is a bit messier than Kylie's.

Here's the party dress variant of Julie Mark 2 (I couldn't find the picture that I'd drawn of Kylie in the party dress, so unfortunately I have nothing to compare this to):

In Will They Come?, the dress is described as having a floral pattern, but I decided I liked the random geometric shapes better. Someone I showed this to described the dress as "80's," which I wasn't even intending but... yeah, it SHOULD look 80's because it's supposed to have been made in the 80's.

This version of Julie is also not white. I may explain why in a later post, but basically I realized that I had to make Xyloto non-white, so he is now mixed-race- Black and Latino. Therefore, Julie is also mixed-race- Black, Latino, and white. This was going to be my final version of Julie, but I gave it some more thought and, based on genetics and what I've observed from folks I've known who are mixed-race, I realized I'd like to change her hair. So:

Here's Julie Mark 3, in all her floofy-haired glory. This was just a test design originally, to see what it would look like, but I had so much fun drawing her hair that I think I'll keep her looking like this from now on. I also changed her skates to be in-line roller blades.

Here's the party dress variant:

(I'm not really happy with this drawing because her body type looks wrong, but I guess I can always re-draw it.)

To close out this post, here are some older drawings:

Kylie/Julie & Jack meeting up again after Kylie returns from her travels across the world that she sets out on at the end of Will They Come?

A Diamond Dog (now called a Person)

Jack & Kylie's daughter, who doesn't exist anymore because 1. Julie can't get pregnant, 2. Jack is sterile (as I've decided now, based on him being a human/Aresian hybrid and following the same rules as other cross-species hybrids), and 3. they don't end up together anyway. But anyway, I'm still sort of fond of her. Her name is Sera Stardust (named after Ziggy's first lover, who Jack found out about by reading his diary), and she becomes a musician just like her grandfather.