terabytes of dreamless solitude ○○○○○○

He's my favorite character and ur my favorite blog, its the perfect combo

I have SO many thoughts about Barty, actually, because I think fandom has taken one of the most interesting things about his canon characterization and completely run in the opposite direction with it. My biggest disagreement with the common fanon version of him is that I don't think Barty Crouch Jr. was particularly interested in being noticed. If anything, I think his defining characteristic was probably his ability to perform normality so convincingly that nobody noticed what was actually going on underneath.

The version of Barty I tend to envision has very little in common with the Gen Z Tumblr "punk Death Eater" interpretation of him with dyed hair, piercings, tattoos, deliberately provocative clothes, constantly acting out, etc. Not because I think he couldn't be rebellious, but because it seems completely at odds with what we actually know about his relationship with his father. Crouch Sr. explicitly talks about Barty's academic achievements and seems to have regarded him as an exceptionally promising son. More importantly, his involvement with the Death Eaters apparently came as a genuine shock. There is nothing in canon suggesting that everyone around him had been thinking "yeah, that Crouch boy is obviously going to become a Death Eater." Quite the opposite: he seems to have presented himself as respectable, intelligent and successful.

And that's why I actually tend to picture him in Ravenclaw rather than Slytherin. I think academic achievement was probably the socially acceptable way in which he sought his father's approval. Crouch Sr. is a man absolutely obsessed with competence, reputation, status and public respectability, and I can very easily imagine Barty learning very young that there is a very specific formula for receiving his father's approval: be brilliant, be accomplished, don't embarrass me, and make me proud.

So I don't imagine teenage Barty as someone deliberately cultivating an "edgy" identity. I imagine almost the opposite: a boy who is extremely good at performing whatever version of himself is going to be rewarded. Good grades, articulate, competent, probably fairly intense and competitive, but outwardly completely respectable. Maybe even the kind of student adults consistently describe as "such a promising young man." Which makes the eventual revelation that he is a Death Eater much more interesting, because it means his public persona wasn't necessarily fake in the sense that none of it was real. He really was brilliant. He really was ambitious. He had simply learned how to package those qualities in a way his father approved of.

And then you have the fact that his entire later career is basically built around performance.

This is the part of Barty's character that I think fandom underestimates enormously. He impersonates Alastor Moody for an entire school year. Not just superficially, either. He has to reproduce Moody's mannerisms, speech patterns, knowledge, relationships with people, teaching methods, paranoia, habits, and general personality convincingly enough to fool people who actually know Moody. He does this under Dumbledore's nose, in a school full of people interacting with him every day.

That's not the behaviour of someone whose primary impulse is "look at me." It's the behaviour of someone who is exceptionally good at observing people and controlling what they are allowed to see.

So I actually think the theatre-kid interpretation can be really interesting, but only if you invert the usual fanon version of it. Barty is a theatre kid in the sense that his entire life is performance, not in the sense that he is constantly demanding an audience. He performs normality. He performs competence. He performs obedience. Later, he literally performs another person's identity. His talent is not necessarily getting attention; it's controlling perception.

And I think that becomes especially interesting when you put Voldemort into the equation.

Because I don't think Barty's relationship with Voldemort can be reduced to "angry son rebels against his fascist father." If anything, I find it much more compelling to imagine that Barty was desperately seeking the validation of a father figure and simply found it somewhere else. Crouch Sr.'s approval seems fundamentally conditional: you are valuable because you are successful, respectable and accomplished. Voldemort offers something very different. He recognises Barty's intelligence and usefulness and, crucially, rewards him for it. Barty isn't just trying to impress somebody; he has found an authority figure who actively reinforces the behaviour he wants from him.

And I think that is a very powerful mechanism for radicalisation, particularly for someone like Barty. Voldemort essentially gives him a framework in which all of the qualities he has learned to value — intelligence, ambition, competence, exceptionalism — suddenly have a different purpose. And unlike Crouch Sr., Voldemort actively makes Barty feel chosen.

That's why I don't think Barty needs to be secretly coerced or manipulated into being a Death Eater for his character to be psychologically interesting. I think he genuinely believes in what he's doing. He is absolutely responsible for the things he does. He is a torturer, a murderer, and someone who is willing to manipulate an entire school full of children in order to bring Voldemort back. But understanding why someone becomes that person doesn't require excusing them.

In fact, I think making him genuinely committed to Voldemort makes his relationship with him much more interesting. He isn't simply rebelling against his father. He's found an alternative authority figure whose approval he desperately wants, and whose approval is tied to becoming increasingly useful and increasingly loyal. It's almost a horrible feedback loop: Barty proves himself = Voldemort rewards him = Barty becomes more invested in proving himself = the relationship becomes increasingly central to his identity.

And that also makes the contrast with Crouch Sr. particularly tragic. Because eventually Crouch Sr. does become completely consumed by his son. Barty finally becomes important enough to dominate his father's life, but only because he has become everything his father cannot tolerate. The validation Barty presumably wanted as a child never comes in the form he wanted it, and by the time his father is forced to confront him, their relationship has become completely poisoned.

Which is also why I find the fanon "rebellious punk Barty" version so uninteresting. It gives him a very obvious and externally visible form of rebellion, when canon gives us something much subtler and, frankly, much creepier. His rebellion isn't necessarily looking rebellious. It's taking all the things his father taught him to value — intelligence, achievement, exceptionalism, power — and directing them towards something his father considers monstrous.

And then, ironically, he becomes incredibly good at hiding it.

That's what I think makes canon Barty so compelling. Fanon tends to make him chaotic, visibly maladjusted, attention-seeking and aesthetically rebellious. Canon Barty is methodical, intelligent, disciplined and frighteningly good at maintaining a facade. Fanon Barty wants everyone to know he's dangerous. Canon Barty's greatest accomplishment is convincing almost everyone around him that he is someone else.

And honestly, I think the fact that he was a teenager when so much of this happened makes the canon version considerably darker than the fanon one. People tend to age him up psychologically because it's easier to process "dangerous Death Eater" as an adult archetype than as a gifted teenager who gets radicalised, becomes involved in something horrific, is sent to Azkaban, loses his mother, spends years under magical coercion and eventually becomes even more devoted to Voldemort. The actual timeline is much uglier.

So yeah, I don't see Barty as the kid in the corner with black eyeliner, piercings and a cigarette thinking nobody understands him. I see him as the frighteningly competent kid who learned very early how to give adults exactly the version of himself they wanted to see.

And honestly, that makes him infinitely more interesting to me.

I think her parents played favourites, and I think that’s where all her resentment comes from. I think they were probably thrilled to have a witch for a daughter, and that everything revolved around her sister, while her sister didn’t give a shit about her family because she was away for most of the year, leaving Petunia to stay at home and deal with the two of them.

Like, I totally understand why she couldn’t stand her sister, because imagine your sister being away all fucking year while you’re stuck dealing with your parents, all their bullshit, their bad sides, and all their shitty moments, and then whenever she comes home, you’re all expected to play happy family because they want your sister to have the best possible time during the little time she’s there. And on top of that, everything revolves around her and her world of fucking wannabes and all her weird shit that you have absolutely nothing to do with, blah blah blah.

I hate when people feminize Sirius because Sirius is not a feminine character. Like, at no point is Sirius a character who has anything whatsoever to do with hegemonic femininity. So if, instead of making him the over-six-foot-tall guy that Sirius was — because based on how he’s described, he was over six feet tall — you make him this tiny five-foot guy who weighs 45 kilos and is more feminine than I am, then you’re completely missing the point.

Sirius was imposing. Harry describes him as an imposing guy. He was someone who commanded attention, who had a presence. He was masculine, he had very masculine mannerisms, and, for fuck’s sake, he wore a leather jacket, rode a motorcycle, had pictures of women in bikinis in his room. I mean, can you get more heteronormative than that? Every description we get of Sirius in the books presents him as a pretty fucking heteronormative guy who fits the whole “bad boy with a heart of gold” archetype.

So what bothers me is when people just completely disregard all of that and turn him into this tiny, 45-kilo little boy who is more feminine than I am, okay? I consider myself a pretty conventionally feminine person, but Sirius would probably look more like a girl than I do. And that is what bothers me, because you’re completely disregarding the character.

And actually, Sirius being such a strongly masculine archetype has a lot to do with his personality, with how he relates to other people, and with how he exerts his power. So you’re basically destroying the character.

With Severus, it’s different, because Severus is never described as an excessively masculine person. In fact, Severus has a lot of feminine traits. And when we talk about hegemonic gender presentation, we’re talking about certain characteristics, okay? Not about what should or shouldn’t be considered masculine or feminine, or what we personally, when talking about gender theory, would like it to be. No. We’re talking about what is conventionally understood as masculine or feminine.

And Severus is never described as particularly masculine. Quite the opposite. He has many traits that can very easily be associated with femininity. Does it annoy me if you portray him as basically a stereotypically feminine character? Obviously. But does Severus have a much greater potential for gender fluidity than Sirius? Absolutely. For all sorts of reasons.

Everything about him. From where he comes from, to the way he’s dressed as a child — he’s actually dressed in clothing that is coded as feminine — to the fact that he’s called “Snivelly,” which is a direct attack on his masculinity and an insult with very homophobic and deeply patriarchal connotations. Because calling a man a crybaby, essentially, is deeply patriarchal. The fact that he isn’t athletic, the fact that he’s lanky, the fact that he has features that don’t conform to hegemonic standards of male beauty, it’s all of these things.

So, obviously, there’s much more leeway with him. You simply cannot compare the two characters on that level, because they have absolutely nothing in common in that regard.

I genuinely think one of your problems is that you don’t understand some very basic concepts, for fuck’s sake. And maybe these things seem basic to me because I’m thirty and therefore I assume certain things are universal knowledge, but I genuinely think there’s been a decline in the quality of people’s education and general cultural literacy over the past few years.

So, what we know is that Sirius had short hair during his teen years. I don’t think it was very short, though. Maybe a little, I don’t know. I mean, when I talk about short hair, I mean really short hair. So I don’t think Sirius had it that short, but I don’t think he had long hair either. I think it was just a normal length, maybe down to the nape of his neck or something.

I can absolutely see canon James doing that lmao. Not necessarily in the sense of being genuinely, ideologically homophobic, but I can very easily imagine him making fun of some kid for being a “fairy” or whatever because he thinks it's funny. It fits him way too well, especially given his tendency to pick on people based on how they look, dress, speak, or otherwise fail to fit whatever he considers cool.

And honestly, I think that's more consistent with how I read James than the idea that he'd necessarily have some coherent ideological position on homosexuality. His prejudice seems much more social and instinctive than intellectual. He's very capable of going “that guy is weird, therefore I'm going to make fun of him” without ever sitting down and thinking about what he actually believes.

Which is also why I think the comparison with blood status works, although I'd make a distinction: James can sincerely think blood supremacy is bullshit while still reproducing other forms of casual prejudice because he hasn't actually examined all of his own assumptions. Being anti-pure-blood ideology doesn't automatically make someone socially enlightened in every other respect.

So yeah, I don't necessarily picture James as the guy giving speeches about how gay people are immoral or anything. I picture him as the seventeen-year-old asshole laughing with Sirius because some poor Ravenclaw is effeminate and going “look at that fairy”, and then being genuinely confused if someone called him homophobic because, in his mind, he was just taking the piss.

Haven’t posted some Snape in a while so…uhm…hopefully this makes up for it. I’m not that great at animating lol