#tldr: beth tries to explain why barty is less barbaric and more deadly precise + included very vague references to source material

[morsmortish]

thinking about barty crouch jr’s animagus as a scorpion…

listen. hyena and raccoon are thrown around a lot. for what it’s worth, i DO somewhat see the feral, bloodthirsty interpretation, and i must say i agree with the hyena hc to a much greater degree (it’s imagining a hyena’s teeth that convinces me). but i’ve always thought of barty as slightly less primitive and more…precise. he’s savage and deadly but the way he poses a threat is not through unrestrained, barbaric brutality, but more through a calculated, cruel precision. yes, there is a part of him that wants to rip things apart with his teeth but in the grand scheme of things i can’t help but see barty as delivering a final blow not with a raw savagery, but with a razor sharp, poisoned sting. he is somewhat impulsive, like when he lunges at harry at the end of gof, but more than that, he is so calculated. he seems so much more machiavellian and cunning than uncontrollable and barbaric to me, especially thinking about the detail of his plotting in gof. he builds a whole situation, sets everything up so perfectly, and his plan SUCCEEDS. all of his dominoes fall right into place and voldemort returns, and barty doesn’t necessarily ‘win’ here through brute force, by ripping anything apart, but by carefully piecing something together. he constructs a near perfect plan and. it. works. even the way the story is written presents a final, deadly blow of the portkey and the graveyard, rather than a constant sense of attrition. barty’s final blow is venomous and fatal and, above all, PRECISE. harry is sent into that maze with every piece laid out perfectly, and no one even knows. it’s perfect.

this was supposed to be short but i just had another thought. the story of the scorpion and the frog. the overarching moral of the story is that vicious people cannot resist hurting others even if it hurts them as well, which i see as relating far more to regulus than to barty, who i don’t believe would never do anything not in his own interest. however, something else that i pick up on is the scorpions attitude. from the moment he agrees to his deal with the frog, he knows he his doomed. he knows his own nature and he knows what he will do. he accepts his fate and he drowns, just as he knew he would. to me, this is like barty knowing and accepting the risk he is in when first joining the de, then knowing that from the moment regulus and evan and his mother die, he will join them soon enough. to me, barty has accepted his fate by gof, and he sets out on his mission knowing what will happen just like the scorpion setting out on his journey across the river did. doomed from the start, and he goes down with a smile. he still got what he wanted, in the end.