#Bartprompts24

[narinick]

The Hanged Man

Ptolemy gave me a small salute, then his head fell back gently against the wall… All light around me vanished, my consciousness departed; the Other Place pulled me away. Furiously, against my will, I accepted Ptolemy's last gift.

[dragon-djinn]

Day 3: The Hanged Man

A card about self sacrifice just hits different when framed with the Bartimaeus story.

The pose is inspired by one of my favorite John Singer Sargeant sketches.

[tarragonthedragon]

hi guys! it’s us at the bartimaeus discord server with another prompt week for another year. fanworks of all kinds are welcome, but the event is usually pretty art focused.

we’ll be running from monday the first to sunday the seventh of april, and this year, we're doing something a little different. all of our prompts will be tarot themed! those of you not familiar with tarot, we've included a couple of suggested interpretations, but if you do want to look up more meaning, they can all be found here.

prompts are:

Monday 1: the fool innocence, new beginnings, free spirit which scene is funniest to you?

Tuesday 2: the star reversed faithlessness, discouragement, insecurity is there a twist that stung your heart?

Wednesday 3: the hanged man sacrifice, release, martyrdom which story has your favourite last moment?

Thursday 4: the tower sudden upheaval, broken pride, disaster can you imagine a bad ending for us?

Friday 5: the magician reversed trickery, illusions, out of touch which spirit's form which captured your imagination?

Saturday 6: the lovers partnerships, duality, union show us your favourite relationship?

Sunday 7: the devil addiction, materialism, playfulness which villain caught your interest?

please tag all your contributions with #bartprompts24, and have fun!!!

[fauna-a]

I The Fool

Here we go friends :) Some young Bart (at like his first time on Earth) to start with him all happy and curious.

«What is it?»

The creature (a man, it had said; it man, me spirit) looked at me, amazed. «It’s the sun».

«And what is it for?»

«It warms us. It makes the seeds you helped to plant sprout».

«Who put it here?»

«The gods did».

I decided I liked the sun. It felt good for my essence and counterattacked against the heavy and burdensome ailment from the Earth. Even the soil was nice when it was touched by the sun, and so it was the great mass of water and all the creatures that worked over there.

I pointed towards some creatures smaller than others. «And those?»

The man – the one who had taken me away from my home to bring me in this place, so different and strange – looked at me confused. «They are children… They are like us, just younger. We were all like this, then we have grown up. As animals do. Were you born like this? Have you always been like this?»

«Well, not this this». To adapt myself, I had been trying to imitate the man as best I could, but I had the feeling that I hadn’t done a great job. Anyway, I wanted to change: I made myself smaller and tried to copy those children: chubby limbs, coloured faces, some missing tooth… Not the most beautiful, nor the most functional.

I didn’t understand; everything that had been shown to me until now was necessary to something in this strange world where everything seemed to be where it was needed to be. Here the point was to do, not to be, like at home… And yet, here there were these ridiculous beings that seemed to have been made just to be useless. Mh…

One of the children pushed another one, that ended up in the mud; from below, it grabbed its assailant and from there a rather hilarious, seen their dimensions fight unleashed, but it caused a lot of chaos between the bigger creatures around there.

Oh.

Maybe I was wrong: maybe there was something that could make that world more alike to mine, and leave untouched all the nice thing there were already there.

At that point, the children were covered in wet soil from head to toe; a man and a… well, a not-man were yelling at them and they were looking down; but, as soon as they locked eyes, they did something that the man by my side had never done: they turned upwards their lips, opened their mouths as they were about to speak and instead made a sound I had not heard  yet. It was beautiful, strong, resounding and made me want to mimic it, even if I couldn’t figure out how to do it.

«What are they doing?»

«They are laughing».

This time, I didn’t ask what it was for or why they were doing it: I wanted to figure it out by myself.

[saint-oleander]

In the end, as it had been in the beginning, Ptolemy wakes up. But that comes later. Before, there are three things: a ring, a staff, a necklace. And a boy, closing his eyes in the Other Place and opening them amongst trees.

For one moment, between the Other Place and Earth, Ptolemy finds himself somewhere else.

Written for the first five prompts of this year's Bartimaeus Prompt Week

[narinick]

Yes, that hurt a lot. That’s a very powerful interpretation of that scene, well done!!

Day 2: The Star Reversed

A twist that stung my heart

This one was a bit tricky because there are a couple twists but none of the ones that might first come to mind really tickled my brain.

But there is one that stuck in my head really vividly because it blindsided me immensely when I first read it. And that scene is from The Golem's Eye when Kitty goes home to her family after she loses the Resistance to Honorius and Nat tries (and fails lmao) to capture her. But it's not Nat's behaviour that hurt but her parents'. The way they turn on her was so unexpected to me because I simply hadn't thought to expect any pain from that direction at all. But the betrayal is very much set up! Once it's there it makes perfect sense.

When I drew this, I intentionally relied more on how I remembered this scene than on the exact way it's described in the books. And what I remembered most intensely was her parents trying to grab her, lying in the floor and making themselves obstacles to keep her. Kind of a similar vibe to The Other Mother and Father from Coraline.

Her dad isn't directly visible in this because somehow her mother's behaviour was more at the forefront of my memories.

[narinick]

The Magician Reversed

One spirit, thousand faces.

My favorite Bartimaeus guises from the first book.

[narinick]

The Stars Reversed

Kitty’s story is dear to me. She’s belittled, misinformed, abused, threatened, robbed of her rights, used, played and betrayed by almost every adult in her life. And yet she’s resisting like the badass she is. I love her.

The chase in the crypt is my favorite horror scene in the books. Run Kitty, run!

[narinick]

The Lovers

Bart and Kitty is my one and only. I love the chemistry. The real talk. The impact they had on each other. I think they could have achieved anything together, bringing down an empire was only the beginning.

[narinick]

Happy Bart Prompt week 2024 everyone!

Starting with day 1:

The Fool

A tarot-inspired interpretation of my favorite funny scene

[narinick]

The Tower

A bad ending. The sacrifice isn’t enough. Nouda rises from the palace. There’s nothing left to do and everything’s shattered glass.

That’s actually the starting point of one of my favorite fanfics, Monomyth by conception.creation.

[dragon-djinn]

Day 5: The Magician (reversed)

Struggled to get one done on time

[narinick]

The Devil

Khaba the Cruel and his *checks notes* boyfriend.

[fauna-a]

VI The Lovers

¡Reincarnation AU! Who knows me knows I have a soft spot for these two.

Life has its own way to slam doors in your face. You lived for millennia and millennia, dodging death with virtuosity and grace; when your time came, you accepted the Dark Lady’s hand with the same grace, almost looking forward the upcoming rest.[1]

And instead, the universe had found a way to tell me one more time how incomparable and unique was my presence on Earth; and, if that wasn’t enough, had made me human.

Talk about good luck.

It was a very different Earth compared to the one I’d left: no magic, no spirits, no Other Place to my knowledge. In other ways, instead, it was sadly the same, see wars, violence, assorted spite.

In my other life, I had met humans who believed in reincarnation, but no one had ever applied the concept to spirits, maybe because no one thought we had a soul. And instead, look at this: until now, I had met only spirits transmuted (can’t find a better word) in humans.[2] Maybe things  were going like this: in the other world humans went on and beyond, while we had to do all the procedures. Bah.

The gust of wind preceding the metro coming distracted me; the train came, the doors opened, people came out… A girl bumped lightly into me with her shoulder; she had long dark hair gathered in cornrows whose tips were dyed green. That green made something spring in me, a recognition.

Without thinking twice, I turned around and followed her,[3] hoping to not receive some pepper spray (very much justified anyway).

«Excuse me!»

She turned around suddenly, and I recognised her without a doubt. Don’t ask me why or how, but I knew it was her.

«Queezle?»

«Bartimaeus!»

In my other life, I had never been used to hug people; it wasn’t something you did among spirits, that usually don’t have a body. And, well, it’s not I was going around hugging humans.[4]

But Queezle had always been particular, different; and I wasn’t surprised to find her in my arms. She was very thin: I could feel her shoulders’ bones under my hands.

«I was wondering when you’ll show up» she muttered; she had those stupid airpods on her ears, with a cascade of earrings. «You have to tell me everything».

«Nah» I shrugged. «Nothing much to say. Saved the world once or twice, dead, came here. Nothing more».

Her bony arms couldn’t let me go. «Idiot. I’ve missed you».

Hugs, huh. Maybe a thing that humans got right in all the world there was.

[1] Some humans believed there was a place after death, sort of reward (or punishment) because of your conduct during your life. I had never thought about it. But maybe it would be nice getting some rest in company of some old friends… Even if I doubted that spirits humans could end up in the same place, if it even existed.

[2] Yes, I had met Jabor. No, it hadn’t been pleasant. No, I won’t elaborate because we both were in a phase of a life when humans are barely sentient.

[3] I just had to go to work, after all. A human nonsense.

[4] Unless it was a way to stab them in the back.

[dragon-djinn]

Day 1: the fool

I've wanted to do a Bartimaeus Tarot for ages, this is the best excuse to sit down and start the ground work.

One down, 77 to go.

[fauna-a]

II The Star reversed

So.... here comes the angst. I've already said that Bartimaeus seems to have been very fond of Uruk and its inhabitants when he talks about its fall with Asmira in RoS. So this is a little headcanon of mine, his first real sorrow. You could say it's a companion fic for The Fool.

I had learnt that on Earth everything had a beginning and an end. It wasn’t an infinite and harmonious circle like it was in the Other Place, where nothing begins and nothing ends and we were simply there and kept being there. Humans were born and then died and sometimes, I had learnt, they caused others’ death. Even spirits’.

Humans didn’t like death, and yet they did nothing but cause it. Until it touched someone or something they cared about.

Centuries had gone, but I remembered well Gilgamesh’s desperation in front of Enkidu’s death and his ridiculous and hopeless research of immortality. Even I, that at the time was very young, had understood how fruitless that endeavour would have been.

However, during those first centuries, I still believed that something could be preserved from death. I thought Uruk, the most beautiful city ever appeared in Mesopotamia, would have survived the flow of centuries. Until Uruk would be standing, I could remember easily that idiot Gilgamesh wobbling drunkenly around its streets.

At the moment, there were only ruins blocking the streets; if Gilgamesh had been going around, he would have broken his neck. And he would have been in good company.

I was tired.

It was weird: I had never felt this tiredness so drenched in my essence. Was this how children felt when they were desperately crying? How Gilgamesh had felt?

My naked feet were dirty with dust and blood; the sun shone high in the sky, as if nothing had happened.

I wondered where my master was: probably agonizing under some crumpled wall or struck down by a spear.

I stayed there, waiting for him to die so I could go back home: I didn’t want to see Uruk like this anymore.

I’d see it again, instead, many, many more times, around the world, with its smell of blood and desperation.