#posi's bartseq rants

Stroud doesn't want to give away that he's the extraordinarily lovely (not Khaba briefly possessing my autocorrect) lively shadow we've seen skulking around the place. And so, in the blue-green darkness of Khaba's little murdery mad scientist workshop, he's portrayed as this formless, whispering voice. He's a something. A creature of darkness. A voice more than entity. His body isn't described, whether he has a face or mouth or fingers - we can only PRESUME that he's doing that gay little neck stroking with humanlike appendages.

[Also, friendly reminder about how absolutely and utterly gay this chapter is. No matter how many times I reread RoS, the fact that Stroud really Did That right there on the page in canon never fails to bring a massive gross sicko freak grin to my face.]

AoS: Simon Lovelace - a slimy manipulative asshole who wants to take over and rule the place. He also appears to be the only magician around in a semi-functional, affectionate parental relationship with his former master.

GE: Henry Duvall - the chief of police and an authoritarian, warmongering asshole who doesn't care about the lives he ruins on his way to power. He also happens to be a furry who tells other furries what to do.

PG: Quentin Makepeace - the unassuming yet deadly mastermind who's been hiding in plain sight all along and planning to unleash an invasion of body-snatching spirits unto London. He is also a theatre kid and writes questionable human/spirit plays for propaganda.

Randomly remembered this bit of RoS and I know I made at least one post about this in the past already, but I just. Cannot fucking deal with Ammet right now.

Behold a millennia-old, shapeshifting, terrifyingly powerful marid who has killed and tortured countless men and spirits alike, who in fact has decapitated a guy maybe several hours ago, who looks like a distorted shadowy sleep paralysis demon with no face unless he opens his big ol' toothy mouth to bite YOUR face off...

...and here he is looking like a pathetic wet little guy of a spirit because he suddenly met someone more powerful than him. This is soon after he was dumb enough to walk into the most obvious trap on the gods' green earth, which got him impaled on a sharpened tree trunk. Twice. In about 5 minutes from this paragraph he'll turn tail and flee like a fucking coward which however won't save him from getting absolutely fucking demolished by a horde of spirits summoned by the Ring. Twice.* and then getting sent to gay baby jail in a wine amphora at the bottom of the sea so that he can pickle in the results of his bad decisions for the next several thousand years or so.

*imagine being unexpectedly summoned by the Ring and your one and only command is "I want that twunk Obliterated."

I was listening to some Polish folk metal (Runika my beloved), and remembered płanetnicy/płanetniks (how the fuck do i conjugate that in English) - beings from slavic mythology who are basically super strong flying dudes who control clouds and manage storms, because thunderstorms happen when they fly up there and battle giant evil sky serpents/dragons and that's how thunder and lightning happen.

And THAT in turn led me to the Bartseq lore (the brainrot is eternal) that marids can summon storms if they so desire, and that djinn are spirits of air and often portrayed as winged, so I briefly entertained the idea of a flock of winged djinn being tasked with bringing down this giant monstrous sky serpent as bolts of lightning flash all around them. Cool imagery, very metal album cover, hope that you enjoy visualising it and chewing on today's random bit of mythology trivia.

This ofc led me to the question: how many djinn does it take to bring down a marid?

@asexualreptile I cannot stop dissecting this lad like a frog in science class so I apologise in advance.

@nathaniel-underwood-is-an-intj I need to let you know that this idea adamantly refuses to leave my head because hobby-, design- and personality-wise they're COMPLETE opposites.

The fucking.... prep & goth solidarity of it all. Sol and his pet freak. 700 wives and such negative rizz that the only person who wants him is a marid fucked up in the same way because normal people start running in the opposite direction. The glamorous radiant king and his buddy who looks like a mashup of all those glaringly obvious stereotypical corrupt advisor designs. One of them is doing his best to rule the kingdom as well as he can and the other tortures shit for fun.

Except... EXCEPT for some goddamn reason which nobody can understand there's no backstabbing or any other betrayal and instead they just idk swap eyeliner tips and smoke blunts together while talking abt their monster boyfriends. Because this city is already goddamn weird, so this might as well happen.

Funny you'd think that, buddy.