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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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Malfoy’s mates Crabbe and Goyle - lower class or lower middle class? Servants of House Malfoy? As an American, all I can tell is they’re somewhere between soccer hooligans and Alfred Pennyworth.

The lowest of upper/upper middle class, from what I've gathered if I'm not mixing it up with fanon. The kind that have to brownnose people like Malfoys to stay at their level.

Senior Crabbe/Goyle are in the Death Eaters so they couldn't have been too lowborn.

DEs had a lot of people and AFAIR accepted anyone who was pureblood and was willing to worship the big V. I don't think it required any special position in the society, at least for mere membership - it seems to be modeled after the Nazi party, which explicitly welcomed low class people that felt the society has left them behind and wanted to do something about it, no matter who gets hurt. It seems the true numbers of DEs weren't even known as many who were eager to join when the things were going well for them, later claimed there weren't true DEs as they were imperiused or coerced (weird that they didn't have means to detect somebody had been imperiused, but let's not dwell of that, HPs magic system is so full of plot holes).

(weird that they didn't have means to detect somebody had been imperiused, but let's not dwell of that, HPs magic system is so full of plot holes).

They could always dose anyone they wanted to question with Veritaserum, the problem in HP society is that the Good Guys can't just impose such measures on the important people.

weird that they didn't have means to detect somebody had been imperiused, but let's not dwell of that, HPs magic system is so full of plot holes

Also, sometimes you just can’t do stuff. Modern fantasy is very influenced by sci-fi and D&D, and readers expects thing to be rule-based, comprehensible, and amenable to experimentation. See for example all the silliness about rules-lawyering wishes but I don’t think the deep HP magic runs on those lines. It’s more like art: there are principles and the basics are straightforward but the complex stuff just isn’t, and you have to go by feel.