I love how Lockwood and Nathaniel both have complete impracticality for the sake of fashion in common. Lockwood with his absurdly long coat. Nathaniel with his ridiculously large sleeves. That is not the correct attire for hunting ghosts or summoning demons but nobody cares the awkward goth teen aesthetic comes first. Incredible.

Rewatching She-ra and drawing gay stuff. Uh, also there's bad fashion taste phase Nathaniel here and some guy that just happened to turn out well😵😶

I had to

watching howl's moving castle and i am having a VISION for a bartseq au. sophie is kitty, howl is nathaniel, and bartimaeus is calcifer, obviously

Do you ever sit and think. Do you ever fucking sit and think.

Nathaniel quotes word for word in Ptolemy's Gate to Kitty- "Demons are very wicked and will hurt you if they can."

Ptolemy's Gate.

He's seventeen.

He's an absolute little shit but it's that line that really puts everything in perspective. He's just terrified of spirits and is just doing what the system has been telling him to do since he was six. It's been eleven years, and yet he still has that same sentence playing in his head.

And that's just another reason Ptolemy's Gate makes me cry.

Can we talk about how the only person Nathaniel trusted the most (After Ms. Underwood and Ms. Lutyens weren't in his life anymore) was Bartimeus except like. Not really??? He couldn't trust ANYONE around him and felt like he, in a way, could trust Bartimeus but also no he couldn't. I know at some point he must have gone "Okay Bartimeus won't tell anyone about my name perhaps. It's been so long" but the environment he lives in and the instilled trust issues I KNOW had him thinking that anxious little thought of "But he Could. And why wouldn't he? Look at how you treat him. He COULD". For Nathaniel the only person he could feasibly trust is Bartimeus and that trust isn't really....there, in the first place. It's more of "he gives me companionship in some way" then actual trust. He was so isolated guys. He was always so vigilant and high strung and the fucking trust issues are SO insane and the worst part is they ARE warranted look at the people he's surrounded with? It's horrible the absolute 0 sense of security. I mean they really were threatening his life at age 14 I can't do this anymore guys. Fuck. Thinking about Nat too hard makes me wanna kms 😞💔

When you think about it, there are a lot of similarities between Bartimaeus and Nathaniel in terms of traumatic events in their lives...

Both have experienced horrendous physical and psychological abuse. Nathaniel at the hands of his master and Simon Lovelace. Bartimaeus in the form of being degraded, enslaved, and tortured by countless masters over thousands of years.

Both are trapped in toxic systems that isolate them and prevent them from forming meaningful relationships with others. Training as a magician separated Nathaniel from his birth family and prevented him from making friends as a child. As an adult his status as a magician minimises his interactions with commoners, and he can't trust the other magicians enough to befriend them. Bartimaeus is unable to form many lasting relationships with other spirits because spirits tend to avoid forming lasting bonds as they know they might be forced to fight each other in the future. Any spirits he does befriend are killed. His status as a nonhuman slave prevents most humans from seeing him as a person, so he has few friends amongst humans either.

Both of them lost the person they love most in the world (one of the only people to ever treat them with kindness) under very violent and traumatic circumstances. Both of them cope with their suffering and grief in less than healthy ways - Bartimaeus by masking his pain behind bitterness and cynicism, Nathaniel by forgetting his sense of honour and throwing himself into climbing the ranks of the corrupt magicians' world.

Idk I just feel like there's a lot of potential for empathy and understanding between these two characters, but the prejudices they hold and the nature if their relationship as master and slave prevents them from truly trusting and opening up to each other, truly getting to know eachother as individuals and as friends.

I think it adds to the tragedy of the series - there's so much wasted potential, so much that could have been between Bartimaeus and Nathaniel.

I drew this while I was sitting without the Internet for 2 days because of the russian shelling (these days I had to prepare for the last state exam👍anyway, I passed it successfully and now I'm free for a while), because the only available references for drawing were books and a folder with memes

So, bunch of ukr memes but it's a BartSeq👇

(You'll never believe which meme Kitty represents lol)

"I like the way it burns" for Bartimaeus (more in alt)

"It feels like God is punishing us for something" oh yes, Stroud often does that

Some silly sketches: Bartimaeus grimacing copies very important Minister Mandrake™ explanations, but does so in a guise of Kitty, and just Verroq (i love him, and i still can't draw him properly)

"Get out your 5 hryvnias" and "Verroq, you have a boring face, no one will give us money", or The Mercenary needs to be paid for his services, and Lovelace is raising money for a big coup, but if their faces are boring, no one will give them money (alt for more as always)

And finally... This. Just this. I have nothing to say, it's just a fcking legend. A legend that speaks: "It was me who stole the chumadan (mispronounced «suitcase»)" («spyzdyv» (stole) here is an untranslatable swear word that means "to steal").

It was Kitty who stole the staff.

Instead of shortening “Bartimaeus Sequence” to “bartseq” we should shorten it to BS. Not only would this be shorter, but thanks to both Bartimaeus and Nathaniel it’s also one hundred percent accurate

He is a british gouvernement official. He is a little boy. He cares a lot about his clothes and still doesn't manage to be fashionable. He stomps his feeties when he gets angry. He has comitted war crimes. He produces propaganda for the state. He wants approval from every woman that has ever been in his life. He once almost knocked himself out by running into a wall. He has a deadname but somehow isn't trans. I didn't say his name, but he popped into your head didn't he?

I tried to Bart—

A song that makes me think of Nathaniel

The rifle's sprial - The Shins

Dead lungs command it You pour your life down the rifle's spiral And show us you've earned it Cleric's fog will recede right before your eyes

So long to this wretched form Those gray eyes on the subway Long before you were born You were always to be a dagger floating Straight to their heart

Listen, now, we won't tell anyone But you're gonna tell the world So life ain't then any fun Now your viscera unfurl

As you rise, rise from your burning fiat Go, go get my suitcase, would you? You've thoroughly blown their mind And now I must have passage on the lines To the veins from your heart

You're not invisible, now You just don't exist Your mother must be so proud You sublimate yourself, granting us a wish

Primitive mirror on the wall To fortify your grim resolve Amid the glitz of a shopping mall Another grain of indigent salt for the sea

Go back to this wretched form All them gray eyes on the subway So long before you were born You were always to be a dagger floating Straight to their heart

For context it's about the radicalisation of s*icide b*mbers - I definitely recommend reading the breakdown of the lines-

https://genius.com/The-shins-the-rifles-spiral-lyrics

It describes Nats's transformation into John Mandrake pretty well I think- how he never really had control over the person he was becoming. Fear and the belief of a power greater than himself made him act in the interests of the government even when it went against his own mortality. Until he became John Mandrake and he believed his actions on behalf of the government were truly righteous.

And it is pretty fitting for Nat's death 🤷🏼‍♀️

Drew a Nat. Been a long time

since you are, unofficially, the queen of feeding bart/nat fans at present, are there any other creators for the bartimaeus series that you're a fan of? will literally consume anything you deem as remotely decent lol

Well, I’m one of those annoying people who don’t read (a lot of) fic when they’re writing for the fandom (so you do the math considering I’ve been writing this thing for years). It depends on what you’re looking for, tbh. But you can’t go wrong with our good Maiden of the Moon (if you don’t mind getting depressed). I love izzybusiness’s “love is colder than death” https://archiveofourown.org/works/21141176/chapters/50314316 (it’s a real world AU, which I know is not everybody’s cup of tea, but she did such an incredible job).

Then there’s the oldies but goldies.

A feel-good one: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5970685/1/Waiting

And if you don’t mind crying again: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9882834/1/On-Names-and-Becoming-Them

One set in book 2 in Prague: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3986291/1/Normally

A series of great drabbles (especially the last one, considering I know exactly what you’re all starved for): https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6881162/1/miserable-company

And as a bonus, one where Nat’s parents weren’t arseholes: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8396670/1/Were-the-World-Falling

On the off-chance you haven’t read all of those yet, hope it helps? But maybe someone else has recs for you, we’ll see! Thanks for reaching out! <3

take a picture📷