#rereading bartseq

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Bart identifying one of his underlings in 19th century Prague right at the beginning of GE as a 'small and rather mournful frog' is tragically hilarious. How the turn tables.

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Because I can't just post depressing stuff, just a reminder that Bart tells Nat that Prague has good beer in chapter 31 of AoS. No, I did not write a chaotic fic based on a beer premise at all.

Jokes aside, this society's drinking age is approximately 'after diapers', isn't it? Well, I can't really talk.

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The most unrealistic thing about The Bartimaeus Sequence is Bart in chapter 25 of AoS saying it's his first time changing into a raven, hence the blue beak, after Faquarl nearly had a conniption looking at him. Excuse me, in five-fucking-thousand years you have never become a raven? Sir. At this point I'm just taking this as an half-arsed excuse because there is simply no way.

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The fact that Bart's last straw is the Mercenary/Verroq not dying quietly like Bart wanted is so funny. He was ordered about by a suicidal magician, manhandled by children, suffered sewage around his essence, chased multiple times around London, thrown in the Tower and nearly expired, etc., in the span of a week, and then this bitch just refuses to die? Absolutely the fuck not, he says, not today.

I too would be losing my shit and throwing indecent statues of greek gods kissing dolphins.

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Nobody can convince me that the reason Nathaniel was able to move at all during the climax of AoS wasn't Bartimaeus saying his true name multiple times and generally being kind to him.

Up until this point we only see Nat getting mistreated or spoken to harshly to get him to move/do something, but here is Bart, about to die as well, and choosing to spend what could be his last moments taking charge of the situation and being gentle to a terrified kid.

(This was after that car scene where Nat confessed to having been beaten for attacking Lovelace & co., by the way.

More proof that Bart was being kind and gentle from Bart himself: After all the events of the previous few days, I had almost forgotten how young he was. Right at that moment, he did not look like a magician at all, but just a terrified small boy.)

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In other Jonathan Stroud is a foreshadowing genius news, how about that scene in AoS, chapter 25, when Faquarl and Bart have just escaped the Tower and are wheezing like old men on someone's lawn? Faquarl is saying he has *plans* (we know what you're up to, mister). It's not the first time this has come up, according to Bart himself, but then a funny parallel to PG happens—Bart chooses 'self-preservation' over Faquarl, and both times it's tied to Nathaniel.

See, it's in my overanalytical nature to make a big deal out of things like this because:

1) Bartimaeus absolutely could have thrown Nat under the bus here (Nat himself thinks this is the case, but that's a psychoanalysis for another day), he could have done so repeatedly during these past few chapters and didn't, even when he was so close to dying it was not even funny for him anymore;

2) Jonathan Stroud makes it clear that this is not *just* about self-preservation immediately after, when a girl interrupts them by accidentally kicking a tennis ball over and coming to get it (also, ahem, Kitty parallel anyone?). Faquarl wants to kill her, Bart makes sure he doesn't while escaping.

To me, this is more about establishing Bart's reluctant moral fibre and inability of looking at a human (child) without compassion than his relationship with either Nathaniel or Faquarl, but it's deeply tied to them regardless, because we all know what happens in the end. Neither of the djinn changes, really, but only one gets saved. And both times Bart chooses Nathaniel over Faquarl.

(I promise I'll shut up one day about these rereads, just not today.)

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I have so, so many thoughts about the confrontation between Nat, Lovelace and Underwood in chapter 29 of AoS, but right now what stands out to me is that Bart thought for quite a bit that Nat was acting on someone else's behalf as a petty thief while in reality it was Lovelace, the adult, being played as a fiddle by his master & co and being a pawn in something a lot bigger than he imagined.

There's something to be said about Lovelace's full indoctrination and consequent loss of identity (true name) vs. Nat not being allowed to forget his, and learning early on not to trust any adult in his life besides Mrs Underwood and Ms Lutyens (both of which impressed upon him the importance of integrity in some way), but I need to sleep, so that's all for now.

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(This is going to be a bit rambly because I'm currently sick and the meds are working a little too well.)

Returning to chapter 29 of AoS—for one thing, we have a three-way confrontation (with Bart hidden and listening to everything) when usually you'd have the hero and villain standing off against each other alone. For another, it's the common 'dark night of the soul' moment. Nat hits his lowest point in the book. But he doesn't win by returning to 'good' as it might appear at first glance. He wins by sinking further down.

Nat is still pretty much on the side of 'good' here—he's motivated by justice, and in spite of his earlier claims to Bart that in case the Amulet was discovered in his master's study he'd be in the clear... Nat cannot follow through with that and takes responsibility for his actions. Even when he might very well die, he stands there and later his one regret is not warning Mrs Underwood in time despite almost getting killed (again) by yelling for her in the middle of the fire.

But that's it, this is the moment that firmly shatters Nathaniel's trust in absolutely everybody with the sometimes exception of Bartimaeus. And it's definitely the moment when he shuts down. Lovelace calls him weak, and explains that coups and violence are how magicians operate overall, which goes entirely against what Nat has grown up believeing from Mrs Underwood's worldview. And his master practically offers him up as a sacrifice to save his skin, something which Nathaniel doesn't even seem to take to heart. His only thought about it later is that he did what he could for Underwood.

From this moment on, Nathaniel has been waiting to die, for relief, dousing himself in gasoline through it all. "I can read your thoughts as if they were my own: you want to go out in a blaze of glory against Lovelace," is what Bartimaeus (Mr I'm not good with psychology(I know he doesn't mean *this* kind of psychology, but the weekly make-fun-of-Bart tax must be paid)) tells him later, in chapter 31. Another bit of foreshadowing/parallel to PG, only then Bart is ready for it too. Nat wants oblivion, not justice.

He sure gets that, in the end.