Now it's been a month but I can't stop thinking about this video we made.
It looks like part of the movie trailer, just LOOK AT THAT
Rewatching this made me cry 😭🙏❤️
I hope the translator will help me tell this incredible love story of the Bartimaeus Trilogy❤
This summer, I accidentally found out that the artist of one of my favorite Trilogy @oneeyedmagi artworks lives with me in the same country. It took me a long time to decide to write to her, and that's what happened.
We started chatting - there were a lot of conversations, jokes and ideas to do something interesting for the fendom of the Bartimaeus Trilogy. She was very supportive of me in cosplay, and I even decided to register on Tumblr to show it.
The drawings and drawings by other authors, as well as your kind words, inspired me so much that I invited her to come to me and do Nathaniel's cosplay.
And it happened.
Jesus, I still don't believe that someone traveled 800 miles for cosplay. We took incredibly cool photos and videos. 800 MILES!!!
Damn, just look at this!
@jonathanstroud - look HOW Much We Love the Bartimaeus Trilogy❤❤❤
I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE WE REALLY DID THIS
just absolutely unreal
Ever since I read The Bartimaeus Trilogy, I've just been obsessed with it.
And now. WE GOT THIS. I never thought it would happen??
It was so fun cosplaying together with amazing @silverfeatheredserpent
THANK YOU MY BEST DJINNI EVER, LOVE YOU SO MUCH 🧡✨
Everything with you is so much fun and having you as my Bartimaeus means world to me!
INCREDIBLE
WE DID THIS TOGETHER
THANK YOU AGAIN ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
And I'm extremely thankful to everyone who shares and likes it!
I can't really think of one particular character who fulfills the Blorbo criteria but there is a cast of characters that's rotating in the back of my mind at all times. We all know them, we were all surprised by their existence; the werewolves!
Yes, I know there are named characters who are outright stated or heavily implied to be werewolves but it's not really them that I'm interested in. It's not even really the fact that they're the police and what kind of real life commentary that is.
What I can't stop trying to wrap my head around is how werewolves as a species fits into the wider world and history of the BS worldbuilding.
Does the average citizen know that they exist? Are they discriminated against (were they? There have to be cultural differences in how they're treated right?) They seem to be in the minority but have they always been? Everywhere? Are there countries made only of werewolves? Tribes? They have to come from /somewhere/ logically but where? How do they reproduce? Bites? Sex? Both?? They're clearly integrated in London and have been for long enough that they can pass as Londoners but?? Are there werewolf citizens?? Do they have their own culture? Why are they more resistant against magic? My dark imagination wants to go down the selective breeding route that would end up putting them somewhere on the second-class citizen spectrum but there's literally nothing there to support that; just seems like something magicians might come up with in the search for obedient, powerful servants that are more easily controllable than spirits.
Also: how many more magical species exist in that world? We know of the spirits, werewolves, the Rock (that huge bird). Bart takes the shape of a phoenix at something point, does that mean they exist(ed)? The Golem's straight up made with different kind of magic (and what was that about).
I guess, the Blorbo was Stroud's implied worldbuilding all along
YeeeeEEEEEEES THE WEREWOOFS. I REALLY wanna know more abt them both because how do you even make that work and also WEREWOLF COPS!!! COME ON!!!
(Side note: I believe with all my heart there's a market on werewolf erotica in London. Something along the lines of "the one cop who isn't corrupt," "here's a totally fictional story that'll teach you how to navigate magician law and the corrupt legal system and how to get away with certain things while being dismissed by the censors as a silly bodice ripper" and also just "listen sometimes you just wanna get railed, y'know?" IRL people get hot and bothered for Satan, demons etc, I'm sure there are furries in the setting.)
You're right - this is a really excellent commentary on the police as attack dogs on the literal leash of the government and how they are perceived by the people they are meant to "protect." Btw, ACAB joke potential: All Cops Are Bitches.
But yeah, I'm really fascinated by the technical side of the topic. We know that a certain degree of magical background radiation can give you certain abilities, like Resilience or Sight or the stuff the Resistance kids have. Therefore, it'd make sense if the werewoofs were humans in some way irradiated by the Other Place energies to the point of gaining limited shape-shifting (aka wolfing out) but at the cost of severe genetic and psychological distortions (such as anger issues and a predisposition to violence, as well as other things which would be enhanced or curbed out during police training.) Perhaps the changes begin in utero and from there on in they're whisked away as children like apprentices are and trained into who they are. They could come from special families, perhaps started by the first werewolves inaugurated by Gladstone to replicate the desired gene - there could even be a breeding program of sorts, to weed out any weaknesses and enhance the strengths even at the cost of potential inbreeding - I doubt that magicians see them as people. Higher than slaves and commoners, perhaps, but more like tools or bodyguards/enforcers of the order. Mind you, higher ranking wolves like Duvall or Farrar would command some respect but not his underlings.
As for how they fit into society, I personally imagine the lower ranking ones could be isolated from the commoners to avoid accidents and the possibility of accidental gene dilution - that is, if they can produce children at all, which isn't certain given their complicated DNA. Like you say, there's nothing to support that, but to be fair we get so little about werewolves that we really don't know what their deal is.
A regular commoner probably knows that there's SOMETHING wrong with the secret police, and the werewolf thing is either something everyone is aware and terrified of but doesn't dare to speak out about, or it's something you only find out when you hear howling behind you and the snapping of jaws at your heels. They are feared, that's for certain.
Mind you, I'm just assuming that they were simply manufactured by the magicians and not a natural, pre-existing part of the setting. This is all my personal headcanons which I'm attempting to match to the general tone of the story, setting, and the magicians they serve under. You may have other thoughts, which I would very much like to hear.
I'd love it if they were a natural part of the setting like spirits, because it'd also feed my personal little self indulgent headcanon that the world was/is also full of beings from other mythologies, but either hidden or driven to escape/extinction by the magicians summoning spirits all over the place. However, if werewolves were a more widespread thing, chances are we would've gotten a footnote about that.
HOWEVER! Bartimaeus is an unreliable narrator and London choked by propaganda - we weren't told that werewolves exist elsewhere, but we also weren't told that they don't. Ergo, it's free real estate for fanart, fics, headcanons and worldbuilding.
And A/B/O if you're inclined to venture in that particular direction.
The rest is under the cut bc you've activated my special interest and I'm gonna be annoying for a bit.
Again, I'd LOVE to take a deeper look at that world's other inhabitants because sure, the Roc could be a type of spirit or a bird irradiated by Other Place energy, I GUESS, but for me personally it's a lot more fun to imagine that there are also fairies, rusałki, and other beings of myth and legend - I mean, djinn, afrits and marids are mythological creatures, right? Why should spirits be the only ones around?
That said, my personal excuse for inserting my vodnik OC into Bartverse is that all magic, in some way, comes from the Other Place, which is elemental in nature (hence spirits being made up of mixed elements like air and fire and wielding elemental magic) and can thus, in certain circumstances, influence the elements of our world.
For example, are you familiar with the story of the Fern Flower? Super rare magical blossom which blooms for one night only each year/every 100 years depending on the version of the story you're reading? Certain times of the year, the veil between the world and the OP gets thin enough (or maybe it's just a random leak of magic) for the energy to seep through and create, for instance, mushroom circles where time flows differently, enchanted stones and flowers, wellsprings of water which can heal or curse you or give you eternal youth...
...And sometimes, the fissure between the worlds is large enough that a little essence leaks through and, once the temporary break closes, you're left with a low to mid level djinni (or, as the locals would call them, a vodnik, or pixie, or dwarf) with no way to go back home and no pentacle binding them to a specific purpose, so they're just gonna roam the place and do their own thing.
Suppose that this happens all over the world. Sure, a bunch of jerks over in the East figured out how to draw essence directly from the Other Place to summon beings they refer to as imps, foliots, djinn etc etc, but to someone over in, say, a rural village in 1000AD Poland, that handsome lad with scaly skin chilling in a pond in the middle of the woods is a vodnik who will drown you and keep your soul in a jar at the bottom of the pond. And if the pond is sufficiently magical, your soul might break free and you might return as a rusałka or wodnica.
Magical mutations can explain a lot of mythological phenomenons, and I'm just using the slavic mythology as examples bc it's a special interests. Strigas are born with two hearts/two souls. When one dies and goes to heaven, the other awakens as a bloodthirsty monster unless the dead is buried correctly. Other Place magic? Why not? Some spirits can get pretty scary, and Bart mentioned strigoi and ghuls in a footnote somewhere. Same type of essence/magic which made them could make your sweet rosy-cheeked baby into a vampire unless you decorate the crib with protective charms.
A zmora - creature who sits on your chest while you sleep so you can't breathe or steals your horse and rides it all night long and returns it to the stable at dawn exhausted and sickly - could easily be a rogue spirits.
Południca - the ghost of a maiden who died before/on her wedding day, appears at noon if the workers aren't quick enough to put down their tools, and leaves you with burns and heatstroke if you were lucky enough to survive - could easily be a fire/air spirit getting herself a meal.
You already have horlas, who spread plague and sickness. Plenty of other cultures have physical embodiments of various diseases and plagues, why not have one of them be a rogue horla?
Of course, this wouldn't really last. Leaks from the Other Place are rare and places where the veil is thin enough are both secret and could be destroyed or seized by magicians as their empires expanded and conquered different countries and their wilderness. One mushroom circle destroyed, one inscribed stone taken to a museum, one glade chopped down for a magician's castle or pond flooded to make a road, and suddenly those creatures show up less and less often, until eventually all you see around are spirits - which are still those beings under different names, but how are you to know that?
AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON GODS. THEY DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST IN THE CANON VERSION OF BARTSEQ I HAVE IN MY HEAD AND ARE LIMITED TO ONE SPECIFIC AU BUT BOY HOWDY IF THEY EXISTED AND COULD SEE WHAT THE MAGICIANS WERE DOING......
Ahem.
Anyways.
Yeah, this is mad interesting. Please share more of your thoughts bc you got me going abt mythology so now I'm gonna vibrate abt it for the next several hours.
Lissssten you cannot trust me to talk about mythology in this setting for more than 5 seconds bc otherwise I'll have to come up with a 50k+ story which necessitates the existence of gods and monsters and the underworld and the contemplations of religion and morality and folktales and tropes which crop up in stories over and over across time and history and I WILL START BITING THINGS.
Ohooohohoh, gimme your headcanons. You're not annoying, I love reading your thoughts <3
To be fully honest, I don't have many more, fleshed out Thoughts, the werewolves just kinda rotate in their own axis in my head and I'm willing to adopt any kind of idea into my own.
THe PorN. I didn't even think about that but you're so right omg, there totally would be. (And what do the werewolves themselves think about that? Do they find it hilarious, insulting, baffling? It's got to be a guilty pleasure for some of them at least. Do they trade it under their supervisors' eyes like contraband? Now I'm giggling, this is a great addition) And if this kind of thing exists for the Scary Police, it has to exist for spirits as well, right.
I hadn't specified it for some reason, but I firmly believe in the leak as well. I mean, it only makes sense, how else would human children be naturally born with Sight, Resistance etc.? In our world, mutations happen spontaneously (If I remember my school biology correctly) and through natural selection they either spread or disappear again. But mutations are very much also triggered by external things like radiation so Other World Juice leaking into our world could plausibly cause mutations in differing degrees. If the leak and the Juice exist in planes that humans can't see, how would they know? They can only see the effects that the mutations have on their children. Does that mean, a lot of children die from the mutations? In our world, (severe) mutations can end deadly more often than not. On the other hand, maybe it's actually the reverse! Bart's essence in Nat (lol) only has positive effects on him (in the observable short term), even though /being/ in the Other Place kills you.. Though, tbf, that could be explained by people having to leave their bodies behind so maybe it's not actually TOP that kills them.
Mythological beings from different cultures being misidentified spirits is quite the obvious explanation for me, that's the solution that a lot of fantasy stories go with. I don't mind it, makes a lot of sense after all. And I don't think 'mutated humans that are so different from normal humans that they are more like a different species' (hello there X-Men) and 'actual spirits from Not-Earth' can't coexist in the same world. Makes for more interesting worldbuilding that way.
I do have another headcanon about spirits/humans and how innately they're intertwined though, If you're interested. But since it's about the creation of spirits and not really on topic here, I might make a seperate post about it.
I think that Sight and Resistance can also be caused by ambient magical radiation, like the kind you'd get in London from an excessive amount of spirits, surveillance orbs, wards around the magicians' houses etc. I imagine it's less common elsewhere in the empire or the rest of the world but in London specifically it's why this one-in-a-million phenomenon happened enough times for Pennyfeather to gather so many recruits. It's likely that magicians aren't aware of this because of their rules against having offspring mentioned in AoS - something about warring dynasties and whatnot, and maybe they aren't as susceptible to it thanks to certain wards or the regular rotation of spirits in their service.
Re: werewoofs finding the erotica, I'd say they'd see it like irl firefighters see those sexy pinup calendars etc. Some find it cringe, others amusing or mildly flattering, and maybe others laugh at it but secretly hold on to it because the idea that someone could love them despite the werewoofness makes them feel less like monsters. Perhaps the escapism can go both ways.
But back to the Other Place leaks: this is something I've been thinking about, too. There are so many planes, of course the leak could happen on the third or fourth and the humans around it would have no idea. Going back to the fern flower, it's possible that it doesn't blossom once every year or a hundred years or whatever - maybe it only blooms on the second plane and it's only once every couple decades you'll get a sufficiently irradiated plucky young man with the Sight to see it. Also, cats can see on the second plane and I think Bartimaeus mentioned other animals being able to look past the first, which would neatly explain the folk/fairytale trope of wise animal companions showing the hero secret pathways or leading them to treasure they couldn't have found on their own. I mean, that and also spirits capable of shifting into animals, but you know what I'm getting at.
The negative aspects of OP mutations are something which I've also considered, albeit not in that much detail. It's possible that there is a higher infant mortality rate in magic-heavy areas, and perhaps that could've also contributed to the rule of not letting magicians have kids. Maybe that's how we got the idea of changelings? Regular children being born with a silver allergy just because they got a little too much OP juice and their parents panicked because gasp, faery child! Ma'am, no, your kid's just irradiated.
I'm ALWAYS interested in Bartseq headcanons so by all means when/if you make a post abt them, please do @ me - I'd love to hear more of your thoughts!
Oh damn I forgot all about this footnote! Thank you SO MUCH for tracking it down, it really adds a lot more spice to things to hear that they've been around since 2000BC and that I was mostly correct about how they came to be.
I was right in thinking that they came from man made magic and could be enhanced by specialised breeding programmes.
However, seeing that the practice is as old as it is, it's not impossible that there are some werewolf enclaves in the wild made up from individuals who somehow got away from the influence of magicians, like @asexualreptile had suggested.
So I just typed out an entire essay but when I wanted to post ist, Tumblr sent it straight to the Void instead. I don't think it was bad enough to warrant that, so I'll try again :P
Thanks for the addition!!! Hilarious that neither of us remembered it but we still got it mostly right.
"suitably brawny humans", "promptly ate several of the houseguests" -> No sign that there was any kind of consent from the humans' side. This immediatly made me think of Makepeace's brilliant idea to put a spirit into a human's body and how badly that went wrong. The similarities between the way spirits and werewolves are viewed, treated, and instrumentalised by magicians are really hitting you in the face, right? What's interesting is that werewolves /were/ humans first while spirits weren't. So magicians really went, picked humans that they viewed as lesser, Put them into a position were they could comfortably ignore/deny their humanity and started systematically exploiting them. The spirits might be the named slaves in this story but the parallel between werewolves and real-life slaves looks much cleaner now. (So how much actual power do they have now? How free are they?)
Another interesting detail are they words "promptly" and "ate": Did the newly transformed werewolves go straight to eating (fellow) humans or did time pass? The presence of houseguests implies the latter which would mean that the magician misjudged how "well-behaved" the werewolves were. So werewolves were able to take the kind of revenge that spirits usually can't; because whatever safety measures the magician took, weren't strong enough? Was it just plain hubris that made him think they wouldn't disobey? Also, they /ate/ people? What happened there to make them not just kill but eat them (is Bart exaggerating here maybe? Does He know for sure what happened?)? Did their minds destabilise from the transformation and the treatment? Did it drive them insane?
"Keeping them in isolation" -> that's straight up torture and sound like eternal confinement to break mind and spirit (heh)
"Breeding program" -> Got it right :D I agree, @shadowy-dumbo-octopus, some must have escaped. No way they didn't. That makes me wonder, what kind of stories did they tell? Their mythology must have be(en) full of light/dark, chains/freedom, hope/despair, violence and the flesh of Masters tearing under your teeth...
Now I'm actually disappointed that we never saw meaningful interactions between spirits and werewolves that weren't hostile (but don't we know that kind of dynamic from history as well...)
@shadowy-dumbo-octopus, @asexualreptile guys, really enjoyed reading your conversation, I would just like to make a small addition.
I have some screenshots with Q&A from bartiforums (as we know, the forum was shut down in early 2023, but we still have the waybackmachine, hehe)
(I actually have a ton of screenshots of almost the entire Q&A forum section i'm out of my mind)
And here's what Jonathan Stroud answered to questions about werewolves:
Okay here me out,,,
Instead of drawing, I made this.
These are mostly just my personal headcanons of them, including hcs for postcanon, so…
*drops it here and runs away screaming *
hey guys, I just wanted to say to thank you for all the likes and reblogs and tags! This means a whole lot to me so thank you everyone, I appreciate it loads! 💖💖💖
I'm actually not new on tumblr, but I don't use it much so I still don't really understand how to interact with it. I get nice comments in the tags and I want to reply to them, but have no clue how to 😭 I read all the tags and I love them dearly!! Your feedback encourages me, thank youuu---
Also Bartimaeus fandom, I LOVE YOU ALL! Sending hugs 🫶🫶🫶
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