#asmoral and ianna

[resinfossil]

Bartimaeus Sequence headcanons

Faquarl is extremely touch-starved. Someone please give this poor djinni a hug.

Queezle is fifth-level. I don't have much evidence to back this up, I just get the feeling that her power level is somewhere between Bart's and Faquarl's, closer to Bart than to Faquarl. The little evidence I do have amounts to "Bartimaeus seems to be most likely to befriend humans and spirits who are stronger than him"

Most if not all of the protagonists are autistic. Yes, including Bartimaeus. (More on this in a later post)

Ptolemy has a protective streak of his own, we just don't get to see that much of it in canon because he also knows damn well that his djinn are all far more qualified to handle physical threats than he is

Ptolemy has low empathy (for humans at least). Yes he's compassionate, but empathy is not the same thing as compassion and he is absolutely terrible at predicting how people will react to things.

Bartimaeus has ADHD. Let's be real here, do I even need to explain my reasoning for this? If you went up to someone who'd interacted with him for any significant length of time and you so much as told them what ADHD stands for, I bet they would immediately think of Bartimaeus. (Also, "energetic but unreliable" is totally magician-speak for "has potential but doesn't apply himself")

Bartimaeus was friends with Asmoral and Ianna. We all know he'll get attached to just about anyone who's willing to get attached to him, and we also know Asmoral and Ianna were at least willing to bond with each other. Plus he mentioned them both by name in that one footnote, so he probably knew them personally rather than just hearing about what happened afterwards.

When Bartimaeus is talking about something emotionally painful and he picks at his nails or shrugs his shoulders, he's not actually doing it to seem aloof. It's a handy side effect, sure, but that's not why he's doing it. The real reason he does it is because he's learned that having a physical distraction helps a lot when you're trying not to cry.