#verroq

[jutenium]

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.

[nadiajustbe]

DAY 3

Fright

A sharp look, furrowed brows, broad shoulders, arms scarred from fingers to neck, weapons of all kinds at his waist, an expression of pure indifference and readiness. Not a single shadow of conscience.

"Are you going to kill me?"

A rhetorical question.

And yet she was not unarmed either - her fingers were easily bent, a sharp knife was safely hidden in her boot. Any moment, any sound, any gesture - everything can be a signal to fight. And she would fight. She fought against the mad afrit, fought off a pack of werewolves on equal terms, and challenged all sorts of creatures and powerful magicians.

Kitty Jones will not be intimidated by an ordinary hired killer.

No matter what he knows, no matter what he wants, no matter what his goals are.

"You're invulnerable to magic, aren't you, girl?" a strangled whisper, a barely noticeable whine, glassy blue eyes turned directly at her, a sharp exhale, "Then we're alike in some ways.

The treacherous cold that paraded down my spine. The hand that froze in half-motion. Goosebumps she hadn't expected. The mercenary didn't move, still standing there, clutching the silver disk between his fingers. And he was smiling at her. With every passing second, more and more expressive and wider, as if he didn't even consider her an enemy at all. As if he was just mocking her.

Okay, maybe Kitty Jones could be frightened by an ordinary hired killer. She didn't like to lie to herself. And she wasn't going to give up either.

"I have nothing to do with those who prefer to work for magicians." It came out much quieter than she'd intended, but just as clearly.

The Mercenary took a step forward. Kitty didn't realize how she recoiled. The man slowly stepped out of the shadows that covered him, his face, his image. It was as if he himself were that shadow, without meaning and without purpose. A darkness that goes where other people lead it.

Kitty Jones had no price for him.

"If you don't bother me..." The Mercenary skillfully turned the words on his tongue, thinking, "In that case, maybe I won't touch you.

He let her words pass him by.

With a warning movement, the silver disk came within a millimeter of Kitty's neck. He was twice her size. There was no point in arguing. Nor was there any point in attacking.

But if the mercenary attacked first, he shouldn't think that she would raise a white flag. Even if the only payment is her own blood.

And the man seemed to understand this. For the first time, she saw a glint of approval in those dead eyes, a response to her own gaze.

He was right about something. Kitty was looking into a broken, torn, repulsive, and wrong mirror.

"Get out of the way." he commanded, a little less threateningly, more firmly.

A moment later, they missed each other.

[silverfeatheredserpent]

Aesthetics of the characters in the Bartimaeus Trilogy

Kitty

Ptolemy

Faquarl

Rosanna Lutyens

Resistance

Verroq

Jessica Whitwell

Bartimaeus

[whumpster-fire]

-Nat telling the Scrying Glass Imp to zoom in closer to Mr. Underwood

-Kitty and Jakob trying to play some Cricket in the park

-Bartimaeus deciding to give Scholto Pinn a completely made up message from Simon Lovelace instead of putting any effort into thinking of a better cover story

-Bartimaeus reassuring his sentry squad and mentally bragging to himself about how strong the walls of Prague are while watching Gladstone charge up his staff in the distance

-The Resistance watching some djinni wandering around the market with an extra shiny object around its neck

-Nat attempting to buy an evening paper (he should have asked someone more qualified, like a granny)

-Ascobol and Co. chasing some spindly commoner down some stairs into a hotel kitchen

-14 year old Nathaniel going shopping for suits (implied)

-14 year old Nathaniel setting up a pentacle thinking about how impressed Bartimaeus is going to be with how much his fashion sense has matured over the years (implied)

-Quentin Makepeace proudly announcing that he's decided to summon Nouda "The Terrible" into himself because he is "Very Strong Willed"

-Some random raven trying to eat some bread in the Tower Of London grounds and glancing suspiciously at the new flock members, one of which it's pretty sure had a blue beak just a minute ago

-Verroq, mentally, going "It's just one pestilence, how bad can it possibly be?" (probably)

-Julius Tallow imagining the looks on all his colleagues faces when they see what he's about to summon (implied)

-Baztuk and Xerxes having an intellectually rigorous debate over architecture and the preferred habitats of deathwatch beetles

-Bartimaeus, circa 1914-1918, thinking operating a motor vehicle can't possibly be that hard if a human can do it (implied)

I love Bartimaeus trilogy and it's just a bunch of still shots of various scenes and the caption "pictures taken 30 seconds before disaster"

Highlights include:

-Nat at top of stairway looking down at his master and Lovelace

-Nat getting his hot dog

-Kitty and Co opening the coffin

-Nat and Jane flirting

-Bart and Ptolemy in spice market ;)

-Nat and Bart shooting magic at Nouda. ;)

And more!

[bart-mush]

ファンジンに描かせていただいた絵　とても楽しかった！

My arts for @tbtfanzine

full zine: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hEx6F9CIezhnH5uBdStvd-v3MMsGIiJK

[chokopoppo]

i ended up not volunteering to work on the millenia zine because i just had no ideas for what I would or could write, and i had a bunch of other projects besides, but it has JUST hit me that i literally desperately wanted to write faquarl-as-hopkins/verroq fic many many years ago and that well is fucking UNTAPPED

DAMMIT.

even if it’s not part of the zine, is this just weirdass self-indulgence, or would anyone like..................want this

[thejesterer]

Does anyone else just really want some sort of Bartimaeus-Lockwood & Co. crossover au where Ptolemy and George know each other from the archives, but Ptolemy is secretly a ghost-cultist because why not? And I guess Bartimaeus is a Type Three ghost (not in a jar, yay) that Ptolemy carries around, or maybe (but probably not) a human with excellent Talent in all fields? I don’t know. But I think Verroq is hired to kill Ptolemy, and the L&C crew end up helping out with that.

Nathaniel is a snooty Fittes agent, of course, and Kitty would be freelance, or maybe a Sensitive who isn’t as drippy as most, or from a small agency consisting of the resistance, most of whom end up dying by ghost touch from a certain possessed skeleton.

Your thoughts?

[mutopians]

yes

if bartseq ever got a movie/tv series and gained a sizeable fandom, which character do you think would receive Tumblr Sexyman ™ status

[jutenium]

Some Verroq sketches

[faquarlofmycenae]

open discussion

[erunerwynter]

i’m going to make a vampire: the masquerade!au for the bartimaeus and you CANNOT STOP ME

ok so this is dumb

if u r not familiar with v:tm or the world of darkness im sorry for u now go and read that rulebook(s) or u could, like, stay and try to make sense of what im writing. your call.

bartimaeus is a gangrel, vampires with the power of shapeshifting and meld with the earth. he’s probably kinda ancient - not as ancient as he is in canon tho bc vampires that are That Old are usually Assholes(TM). he absolutely hates the tremere, and probably the giovanni too. gargoyles are ok tho.

ptolemy is one of the salubri, the children of saulot, maybe the only vampire ever existed that wasnt a total asshole. he, kinda obviously, died horribly, and his clan fell out of grace. the salubri have a third eye, and there are three kind of them: the healers, the warriors and the watchers. ptolemy is one of the healers, embraced when he was still young and kind, and helped bartimaeus a lot. when he disappeared, after the diablerie of saulot, bart was absolutely devastated.

asmira is an assamite, and that was kinda obvious. judges, assassins, sorcerers and they come from middle east. she fitted very well into the archetype.

faquarl... i’d say he’s either a tzimisce or a lasombra. both are royal, and both have history with... weird-shaped things. i like tzimisce bc fleshcrafting is cool and also absolutely fucking disgusting, but i tend towards lasombra bc living shadows!!! oh and they can also make weird ass tentacular arms made of shadows. so yeah. id say lasombra.

jabor is either a brujah (passionate and ready to FIGHT) or a gangrel (jackal head). i like brujah!jabor a lot more than gangrel!jabor tho.

kitty is a brujah, hands down. as i said earlier, they are passionate, ready to fuck shit up and hate authority. tell me they don’t scream “kathleen jones”.

nathaniel is... complicated. i like him as a ventrue (royal, arrogant and usually competent), as a tremere (magicians, arrogant, literally one of the youngest vapire clans, phyramidal gerarchy) and as a giovanni (necromancers, italians, arrogant and rich, probably dedicated to incest and necrophilia, literally destroyed an entire clan). i’ll go with the tremere bc hey, blood magic! and also the founder was a literal mage but then he had the great idea of drinking vampiric blood.

my poor baby jakob is a nosferatu, bc they are ugky as fuck, super strong, have the power of invisibility (more or less) and they usually know everything about everyone. if im feeling particularly evil, tho, he’s a samedi, an haitian bloodline of vampires that are, quite literally, walking corpses made out of rotting flesh. they’re even uglier than the nosferatu!

jane is a gangrel, bc WEREWOLVES!

solomon is probably a tremere. either that or a cappadocian (the clan that gave unlife to the giovanni and was consequentially destroyed by them. they were, also, kinda obsessed with death for some reason).

uraziel is a true brujah bc HELL YEAH TIME MAGIC! tbh tho he also sounds very calm and collected and the true brujah are like that 

khaba is a child of seth, evil fucks that hate sunlight even more than most vampires, which clan’s discipline, serpentis, gives them snakes’ characteristic, like... a very long tongue. and hypnotic eyes.

and obviously ammet is a lasombra.

rupert devereaux is a toreador. “beautiful and also really unreliable”, they are obsessed with all kinds of art. it’s like an obsession for them.

queezle is... uh, really a problem? idk where to put her. maybe she’s just a caitiff, one of the clanless. maybe a gargoyle? they have a great sense of community, can fly and have some kind of earth magic called visceratika and i really love them.

verroq is absolutely an assamite. he’s an assassin, for crying out loud! 

rebecca piper, poor thing, is probably a gargoyle that works for nathaniel. she doesn’t mind it, tho, and nathaniel is much kinder than the majority of the warlocks.

rosanna lutyens? she’s a tough one. probably a toreador, bc art.

idk maybe i forgot someone? if u have any questions just ask me!

[thepenultimateunicorn]

When Wheatman was introduced he reminded me of Verroq. What with the whole ‘seemingly unstoppable, quiet mercenary who has a vendetta against one of the main characters’ portrayal.

And basically now I’m considering Bartimaeus Sequence/Knight and Rogue crossovers.

[thepenultimateunicorn]

I do think he dissociates to ignore trauma: going from the start of the story, at age five he should have some permanent memories, the fact that he doesn't recall anything about his parents or his original home or even his own last name is a little suspicious. The separation/abandonment was probably so painful he blocked out its cause. The fact that his only memories of pre-underwood life are mottled and triggered by music is also interesting.

Then in terms of his danger reactions, I'm still on Golem's Eye cause i'm the slowest reader ever, but I noticed when Bart is nearly killed by Verroq in Kavka's house Nathaniel immediately steps up to topple a ladder on Verroq to save Bart. But earlier when Verroq was approaching him while he was pinned beneath the couch he was basically too scared to move. To steal a tumblr term, Nat kind of has the mom friend override where when he's left to himself he'll freeze up or panic (even just that whole "and then his enemies would send their demons and he would die. Alone." segment is him folding in on himself) but when somebody else is at risk (the Underwoods, Bart, the london magicians, later Kitty) he's capable of making a plan and doing something. He's not so good at saving himself but he'll do his best to try save others.

Just an observation but I suspect Nathaniel in book 1 dissociated through the entire night after the house fire. Given his slow reaction time, blank staring and spotty memory of that time, he was probably in shock and his mind retreated inwards to protect himself.

Nat also does this several other times. (Like that time with tallow getting eaten or that time in AoS when Lovelace summons the demon to kill the government officials) It's also noted that after the imp incident in his masters study, he didn't have an appetite and just lay in bed blankly for like...a week?

Dissociation of varying degrees happens when the mind can't cope with a traumatic event. It would also explain why it's mentioned that Nathaniel doesn't really remember the study incident but the shadow of it never left his mind. If you are dissociated, your memory forms in a really different way, just flashes of things and it's not a linear storyline. Sometimes, you can repress the event entirely if your memories were formed so badly that they are just tiny fragments due to the terror of the situation or you were in so much stress that you couldn't even process the event.

Dissciation happens on a spectrum and it's not always as extreme as feeling "out of your body" or "looking at event from third person".

Also I think Nathaniel is a mainly freeze-fight type. He either reacts defensively and angrily to fear or he just completely freezes up (the extreme of this is dissociation). But he does also use flight when he throws himself into work and denial to avoid his emotions and he learned to fawn in the government.

Also also! There's this time during emergency situations where people can suddenly become super calm and take control of the situation in a super logical manner, which is something I believe both Nat and Kitty do in varying degrees

"So black was the outlook now that fear had become redundant."

Anyone feel like discussing character trauma reactions with me? Hahaha.

[bart-mush]

ファンジンの過程と線画

The progress and line art of my art for @tbtfanzine