#quentin makepeace

[somecleverreference]

RIP Quentin Makepeace you would have loved this film

[nadiajustbe]

I'm so happy Makeveraux brought up again because if there's someone gay throughout this series it's those fuckers. What private plays were you showing to Deveraux, Quentin? I'd say I want to know the details but I in fact, do not.

[idioticpopcorn]

My imagination was doing things so I think I'll share.

Now I've made it known that I like Nathaniel in a dress, but for during a canon timeline, when would he get to wear one?

Well, Quentin Makepeace seems like the type of guy to not mind being a bit feminine. And he has connections with Devereaux. What if Quentin convinced Devereaux to host some sort of gala/ball/party where everyone dressed in the 'opposite gender' outfit?

At first many of the ministers were against the idea, but with Devereaux's endorsement and a couple young council members agreeing(John + Jane), people warmed up to the idea.

Some people took it a lot more seriously than others. But no one expected John Mandrake to walk in, full victorian era ball gown and a full face of makeup. Quentin was quite proud, at least someone understood the assignment.

Bartimaeus found the event stupid, why need a whole party just for a guy to wear a dress? Through he did secretly think Nathaniel looked surprisingly good in a dress. But that would never be said aloud.

Btw this is a dress I found that I thought was perfect ⬇️

[graceofafilingcabinet]

Quentin Makepeace Sketch

Devious lil man who holds a suspicious amount of sway over the PM

I need more inspiration before drawing Deveraux, going to reread the books again soon I will dig deep

*sneaky edit, drew a slightly to devious version

[hyperpotamianarch]

Thoughts about the Golem's Eye, from rereading it (spoilers to the entire Bartimaeus Sequence follow):

I think Duvall wasn't one of Makepeace's serious attempts at overthrowing the government - I think he actually took the backseat for this one. Now, that's not really new, not exactly. After all, Duvall himself admits to not knowing about anything most of the time and only listening to Hopkins. However, due to the structure of the series, it can feel like in every book there is an attempt to overthrow the government by the same group. That's not really the case here, though.

The important point to me here is this: even though Makepeace and Hopkins were clearly behind Duvall's attempt, the whole thing smells of stupidity. Duvall used a Golem - which, in this series, is a giant demon-negating clay creature wrapped in darkness - as an attempt to cause panic and gain more power for the police. To not get caught, he attempted to pin it on the Resistance. You know, that movement with obvious operation methods that don't include killing genies or smashing walls. To be fair, it was Tallow who presented this idea first, which makes him the glorious idiot. But honestly? It only worked because the British government is corrupted to the core and full of idiots. It's not like they had to believe it's a Golem, since they have good reasons to believe those don't exist anymore. But the Resistance just never operated this way, and never would - their hits aren't usually as central as the places the Golem attacked, and they steal, not destroy, magical artifacts.

All that said, I think I can safely say the Resistance and Gladstone's staff was their actual play here. Which, to be honest, I don't currently remember if anyone outside of Nathaniel used it in Ptolemy's Gate? So it may have ended up being unnecessary, because of the whole Honoria deal which gave them the stupid idea of getting themselves possessed. Anyway, in that case, I think it's entirely possible that they were using Duvall as a distraction.

The real issue with that line of thinking is why. Assuming that, before Honoria, their plan was just to get the Staff and use it to take over - what did they need Duvall for? Covering treason with another treason is a bit weird, right? Well, the thing is, I think Hopkins and Makepeace both took part in Lovelace's attempt. They were serious participants in that conspiracy. And they were stopped by a kid called John Mandrake. In short: Mandrake isn't yet as corrupt as everybody else. He's surprisingly competent. While, unlike them, he didn't manage to get a mole in the Resistance, he was still a nuisance and could cause problems. The fact the Golem ploy got him sent to Czechia just in time for the grave robbery was coincidentally beneficial, but even had he stayed - he'd have been busy with the Golem. I suppose it didn't have to fall to him, so that idea might be a little problematic, but with the power structure of the British government in the book it was pretty likely.

I suppose that's it for now, thank you and have a good day.

[jutenium]

✨Friendship is magic✨(🥁)

[ekezable]

[serpent-of-the-silver-plumes]

An FMA au of Bartimaeus works surprisingly well, and the more I thought about it, the better everything fit. I don’t have time to write an actual story, so here’s the outline of a plot. Spoilers for fma, and implicit spoilers for bartimaeus

-400 years ago, a homunculus named Nouda was created. He wanted freedom, so he tricked the King of Xerxes, under the offer of immortality, into killing every person in his kingdom in one instant. All those souls could give someone nearly unlimited power, and Nouda took them all for himself. But he still wanted more, he wanted to become the perfect being, so he travelled west and began manipulating a different country

-to help him in his task, he rid himself of each of the seven sins and gave them all bodies and new names. First was Pride, known as Ammet: a powerful shadowy eldritch being. Next were the twins, Faquarl and Bartimaeus, Wrath and Greed, with the power of sight and shapeshifting respectively. Then came Sloth, or Jabor, with his immense strength. Then there was Gluttony (Ramuthra), Lust (Honorius), and Envy (Simpkin).

-100 years ago, Bartimaeus ran away and started a life of his own

-10 years ago, the country of Amestris started a civil war against the region of Ishval, where a girl named Kitty lived

-5 years ago, Nathaniel began reading alchemy books with knowledge beyond what his teacher would show him. A state alchemist named Lovelace had wronged him, and he wanted revenge.

-Around the same time, Kitty was living in the slums of East City. She found a group of surviving Ishvalans called the Resistance who learned the destruction part of alchemy but not the reconstruction part, in order not to tread on their Goddess’s domain. They used this power to attack State Alchemists, the soldiers who had headed the genocide of their people. Kitty didn’t need much convincing to join

-Nathaniel’s plans of revenge backfired horribly, causing his teacher’s wife, one of the only people he cared about, to die. Utterly enraged and still too confident of his own power, he broke the biggest rule of alchemy and tried to bring her back. He failed, losing a leg and gaining so much knowledge in the process

-In the east, the Queen of Sheba was starting to feel threatened by the Amestris across the desert. There were rumors of the government creating philosopher stones from the souls of their enemies, using them to strengthen their armies. She sent her head guard, Asmira, over to investigate and bring one back

-Bartimaeus had been roaming the world for the past century, but now he found himself coming back to Amestris, just to see what was up. He met a kid, Ptolemy, who was studying both Western alchemy and Eastern alkahestry, and combining them. Even before he met Bartimaeus, he had figured out the country-wide transmutation circle, but with information from Bartimaeus’s time working for Nouda, he came up with a way to reverse it. There were a few other people working together with them, and after awhile, Bartimaeus started to feel like he has a family for the first time in over a hundred years

-With the knowledge that the Truth had given Nathaniel, he was confident that he could take on Lovelace for real this time. After getting automail prosthetic legs, he went right back to trying to ruin Lovelace. He was nearly stopped by a monster named Ramuthra that devoured everything in its path. It was watching Lovelace’s house, though it did not appear to be working for him. Nathaniel got past it and uncovered Lovelace’s treasonous plot against the government, earning himself a position as a State Alchemist

-The Resistance received an anonymous tip, and went to attack Makepeace, the kindly-seeming head of government who had ordered the destruction of Ishval. But before they could even get close to him, they were stopped by a horrifying creature who could heal itself and had claws that could pierce through everything. All of them were killed except Kitty.

-After spending two years in Amestris with Ptolemy, Ramuthra caught scent of Bartimaeus. Along with Simpkin, he attacked the place Bartimaeus had been living, killing Ptolemy and all but one of the others. Nouda had Bartimaeus killed, absorbing his essence back into himself.

-Nathaniel quickly began rising through the ranks of the government. As he did, he began noticing things that didn’t line up: a human transmutation circle in the ruins of an abandoned government laboratory, rumors of experiments to combine humans and animals into chimeras to use as soldiers, alchemic wonders that could only have been done by a philosopher’s stone

-In the aftermath of the Resistance’s destruction, Kitty ran into Asmira. The monster that had killed her team was still after her, and she needed help. Asmira knew that anything that could regenerate its wounds had to be powered by a philosopher’s stone, and she wanted access to it. It was a perfect match

-The more information Nathaniel found, the deeper he dug into the going ons of the country. One day, he mapped out all major conflicts Amestris had ever been in, and it showed a clear pattern. Spread out in key points along the circular shape of the country, each major conflict was clearly a blood sacrifice for a country-wide transmutation circle

-He was found out almost immediately, and dragged into a lair underneath the central government. Here, he was told everything. The heads of the government were not behind this plot, but are rather mere pawns, manipulated by Mr. Hopkins, a mysterious and immortal man who was secretly a homunculus in a human body. The homunculi were sad to kill him, they said. Apparently he was going to have been a sacrifice to help them activate the nation-wide array, but he was becoming too much trouble to keep around. But at least he would have some use.

-Nouda took the essence of Bartimaeus, wiped of any memories, and stuck it into Nathaniel’s body. The homunculi expected that he would destroy Nathaniel’s mind, like Faquarl did Hopkins. Instead, Bartimaeus had boundless curiosity about the whole world, and as annoying Nathaniel was, he amused and interested him. Bartimaeus decided to keep him around for a little longer

-Working together, Kitty and Asmira ambushed Honorius. After learning that there were more like him, they killed him and decided to go after a weaker homunculi so Asmira could have an easier time of bringing a stone back to Sheba

-However, the more destruction Asmira realized the homunculi could cause because of their philosopher’s stone, the more she worried about what would happen if she took one to Sheba. The final straw was when she and Kitty learned that in order to create a stone, people had to die. Asmira knew that she couldn’t allow this knowledge to be spread any further, even to her own queen

-The last surviving member of Bartimaeus’s family from before found his way into the tunnels of Central. It was only after Bartimaeus had killed Affa that all the memories came flooding in. Furious and grieving, with a whole past life crashing into his mind, he went after Ramuthra to try and kill him for what he did to Ptolemy and the rest. He didn’t succeed, but he managed to escape unharmed and join up with Asmira and Kitty

-Now, they are planning to stop Nouda’s plans to destroy the country. There’s only four of them, but Nathaniel knows the intricacies of how the government and the people in it work, Asmira can sense the presence of a homunculus, Kitty can kill them by disintegrating their bodies over and over until they die for good, and Bartimaeus knows how to reverse the country-wide human transmutation circle. In addition, all of them are extremely powerful fighters in different ways. They don’t have a great chance of winning, but they do still have one