Justifications for the Masquerade

[Ralin]

Not Bloody Likely, as Exalted was released in 2001, and Hunter came out in 1999. Unless this was something from nWoD, you've gotten your wires crossed.

It's wiki, but a quick Google search turns this up:

http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Apocrypha

http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Lucifer

So if I'm imagining things I'm not the only one.

[LadyTevar]

I'm going to quote from the link you give on "Lucifer". Bolding is mine.

Speculation
Originally, Exalted was intended to be the prehistory of the World of Darkness. In this connection, Lucifer may have been the Unconquered Sun, referring to his epithet of the Morningstar and the fact he was "unconquered", not being cast down into the Abyss with the other fallen. If this were the case, he would be the patron of the Solar Exalted, who later become the imbued of Hunter: The Reckoning. At any rate, the Exalted/WoD connection was abandoned not long after the game was published, and any connection between the two is most likely a thematic parallel rather than a literal correspondence.

First, whomever wrote the entry clearly states that this part is SPECULATION. Not Fact.
Second, the entry clearly states the idea of connecting the two was abandoned.

As for Hunter Apocrypha, like the Book of Nod and the Silver Record, the information within was Fluff, nothing more. Yes, the GM could play with it, maybe have a story around someone trying to find/complete/make it happen, but it wasn't actual WoD canon.

[Ralin]

First, whomever wrote the entry clearly states that this part is SPECULATION. Not Fact.

WoD often implies things about the setting instead of specifically stating them.

Second, the entry clearly states the idea of connecting the two was abandoned.

So?

As for Hunter Apocrypha, like the Book of Nod and the Silver Record, the information within was Fluff, nothing more.

Setting details generally are.

[FaxModem1]

Again, on-topic, in settings like Buffy or White Wolf, where you literally drag the corpse of a demon and drop it off in front of a medical examiner, the local police, the local news station, etc., you would save a lot of lives in the long run, and the authorities would be hard pressed to try and discredit you if you keep on presenting more and more evidence in front of more and more people.

This is especially egregious on Buffy, as evidenced in "The Wish", where Buffy actually took the time to bury a demon's body to keep the truth hidden. Sure, Sunnydale was corrupt as hell due to the mayor, but widespread knowledge that demons and vampires existing would make Buffy's day to day life a lot easier and the body count a lot lighter.

So, again, for those who are NOT the wizards, the demons, or profiting off it, and are the hunters or fighters against these creatures, why are they NOT telling people?

[Lord Revan]

the question no wants to ask besides me (probably because it would disrupt their crusade) is "how easy is it to detect a supernatural threat before it happens", knowing demons exists isn't the same as knowing who is a demon. You can cart a truckload of demon corpses to the authorities but if only relible (bare in mind there these are magical creatures not aliens) way to detect a demon is thru a ritual only few can perform informining the authorities wouldn't do much good only add more people to the masquerade.

to use a Warcraft example, at 2 demons have infiltrated the Scarlet Crusade/Onslaught and in both times they weren't exposed they revealed themselves. Also Kil'jaden(or one of his minions) was able to mimick Ner'zhul's wife in the orginal timeline so well that Ner'zhul didn't suspect a thing.

Again and I can't belive I have say this a third time, knowing something exists isn't the same as being able to detect them and if you know there's a threat that could be "anywhere" but you wouldn't able to tell where until it was too late, would only cause panic and paranoia and would in fact cost more lives then save in a long run. the question you should be asking is not "why aren't they telling the authorities" but rather "can a normal person easily be trained to be able to detect these threats or is it something that needs extensive training and/or special conditions", if the anwser to THAT question is "yes you can easily train just about anyone to detect supernatural threats" then you can ask "why aren't the telling anyone?".

[The Romulan Republic]

Again, on-topic, in settings like Buffy or White Wolf, where you literally drag the corpse of a demon and drop it off in front of a medical examiner, the local police, the local news station, etc., you would save a lot of lives in the long run, and the authorities would be hard pressed to try and discredit you if you keep on presenting more and more evidence in front of more and more people.

This is especially egregious on Buffy, as evidenced in "The Wish", where Buffy actually took the time to bury a demon's body to keep the truth hidden. Sure, Sunnydale was corrupt as hell due to the mayor, but widespread knowledge that demons and vampires existing would make Buffy's day to day life a lot easier and the body count a lot lighter.

So, again, for those who are NOT the wizards, the demons, or profiting off it, and are the hunters or fighters against these creatures, why are they NOT telling people?

Mass panic/witch hunts is probably the usual rational. That and maintaining their secret identities, cowardly as that may seem.

In Buffy's case, I think its also the fact that all this was dumped on a 15 year old (at the time she first became a Slayer) who isn't really good at thinking tactically, and she pretty much just took it for granted that you had to keep things secret to protect her safety and that of her family, and that the authorities couldn't do anything against the supernatural.

This was pretty much also the Watchers' Council's line, though they likely had ulterior motives.

[Zixinus]

Lord Revan, I think you aren't touched upon much because that sort of supernatural threats are a minority in fiction. Threats that are functionally indistinguishable from normal people until they decide to act as threats are actually pretty rare.

I would argue that if the rituals can be replicated by average people, that there is no finite source of magic that the conspiracy-keepers need or want to hog on, society could adopt. Police may learn how to do mass rituals that pinpoint outerwise invisible demons.
If there is any physiological difference, then it would be possible to detect them. Infra-red cameras did not exist in medieval times, for example. Nor ultrasound devices.

So, again, for those who are NOT the wizards, the demons, or profiting off it, and are the hunters or fighters against these creatures, why are they NOT telling people?

Writing reasons: Most obvious reason is that the hero must be the underdog, especially in American culture. The underdog is always justified and has the virtue of rugged individualism among other virtues. That they aren't waiting for Big Government or whatever to solve the problem, they self-sacrificially take things into their own hands. This makes them heroic, especially when they are doing it out of their own pocket and without prompting.

In cases like Dresden files, it is also a strong undercurrent of how "look, us neopagans are the rational and intelligent people because our beliefs accurately reflect reality!" snobbery, of depicting society at large as mindless sheep.

It creates easy soapboxes for the author to criticize modern society.

Possible in-universe reasons:

- Indoctrination. Their education and training into the supernatural has been to avoid the public eye and it got mixed into other essential rules so much and for so long, that nobody really questions it.

- Going public and becoming a public figure would make their work impossible. Someone like Buffy, who ventures out at night and simply kills whatever vampires she sees, it would be like a serial killer advertising itself. All the vampires would be notified of her. A news crew and fans and such would distract her from her job and would warn vampires a mile away.

- They are hiding too. Again, in Buffy's case a vampire-slayer is low-profile compared to the greater forces in the world. In normal operation, the vampires and other monsters just keep dying in the night, weakening the forces of darkness. They don't know who she is and thus cannot find her. If she became public then she would become a large target, the forces of darkness could concentrate on her and either kill her or humiliate her or both.
There was a comic like this, killer of demons, that had the devil having tremendous power and had demons that humans saw as other humans. Except one guy who could see them for what they were, was guided by an angel, cameras recorded only a supernatural flame instead of a head and he was still asking himself whether he just gone crazy.

- The public is brainwashed. A variant of the earlier one, the enemy whom they are fighting against is so powerful that even if they did bring proof to the public, the enemy would have the resources and ability to make make the evidence disappear and discredit them publicly. Wolfram and Heart is heavily implied to have such ability, as mentioned in the case of Buffy.

- The government is evil/against them. Another variant of this is that the hunters are afraid of the government for whatever reason, justified or believed. What they do is essentially illegal or requires illegal actions (Winchester brothers), even if they are objectively doing good and not abusing the law. If they tried to do their crusade legally, they would be helplessly tied down to the point of inability. Dresden files hinted that this is why the police cannot deal with supernatural threats, even with sections supposedly specialized for it.
There is also the fear that they may be exploited and taken away from their duty. Angel had this, where he was forcibly recruited by some military outfit during WW2 (I don't recall much else about that episode though).

- The average person is magically retarded when it comes to the supernatural. No, really. An average person will refuse to acknowledge it even when it happens right before their eyes. Dresden files and many others.

[The Romulan Republic]

In cases like Dresden files, it is also a strong undercurrent of how "look, us neopagans are the rational and intelligent people because our beliefs accurately reflect reality!" snobbery, of depicting society at large as mindless sheep.

It creates easy soapboxes for the author to criticize modern society.

I'm going to have to question this, as while its probably true for some authors, I don't recall anything to suggest that Jim Butcher is actually a neo-pagan, much less thinks that The Dresden Files actually reflects reality.

For that matter, the series portrays Christianity quite positively on the whole (see Uriel and the Knights of the Cross, who are definitely heavy hitters on the good side), and Dresden himself is probably more closely aligned with Christianity than any other belief system in the series, especially later on. So that's another strike against it being a neo-pagan soap box.

Dresden's comments about science and how most people ignore the supernatural are probably just the character talking in character, more than the author's beliefs. Or at least that's my guess. Butcher does write it with enough skill and sincerity that you can almost buy it, though a good author should be able to convincingly write viewpoints they disagree with when writing in character.

Kind of like how Joss Whedon is an atheist, but wrote Shepard Book (and Captain America, if his line about God in the first Avengers film is any indication) as Christian.

[Zixinus]

It has been a while since I read the books and I freely admit that my memory may be selective. I definitely felt that there was an undercurrent like that, especially in the book that dealt with actual neo-pagan people. But that may have been just my reading.

EDIT: That said, other authors can and may make reasons that have politically-charged points.

[Broomstick]

From what I recall of Dresden Files, the way that 'verse handles the 'masquerade' is liberal amounts of "this weird shit happened but there's a totally plausible explanation for it, now forget the actual weird shit" spells being thrown around. Concealment spells, spells that prevent mundanes from seeing the Fair Folk or the vampire courts, things like that.

Not really. Or, at least, not commonly. For one thing, modifying a person's mind against their will/without consent is a death penalty offense for human wizards, and performing such an act leaves a stain on the person's aura or soul or whatever – Harry still has such a mark from killing someone with magic in self defense and there are a still a lot of wizards in his world who think he should have been executed.

What it is, is normal human denial. People see weird shit but it's so far out of their experience their own minds come up with explanations for what they saw. The typical person never encounters the weird shit, most who do only get one encounter and usualy under either lethal (in which their opinion is moot) or tangential form (which makes it easier to rationalize away).

The justification... mm... honestly I'm not sure there's one. Generally the notion, I think, is that if the mundanes knew of things like the Vampire Courts, there might be mass panic or the Vampires might decide it was open season in the name of self-defense, something like that.

Yep, that. Vampires are not immune to atom bombs.

Mundanes have little to no natural defenses against the supernatural. So, if you told the masses about the threats there wouldn't be a damn thing most could do about it. Sheer numbers mean that in an open conflict humans would most likely win (especially with modern tech) but the casualties would be astronomical. The human governments have an interest in maintaining the status quo, just as do the supernatural types.

Mostly secrecy is a combination of magic fucking up advanced electronics (meaning its hard to get good recordings of the supernatural) and people not believing it/rationalizing it away/being in denial.

^ Yep, this.

The one hard and fast (sort of) rule seems to be not to bring mortal authorities into a supernatural conflict. As I recall, Dresden describes that at one point as being their world's version of using nuclear weapons. This being due to the number of mortals, at least in part.

Yep.

Some do sort of cheat on it, though. The White Court has plenty of contacts in mortal government, ditto John Marcone's criminal organization.

John Marcone's criminal organization is, aside from some hired mercenaries, entirely mundane human. He's an outlier because of that. It's also an example of why the supernaturals don't want the masses in the know – Marcone is completley vanilla human but he's now a Baron in the supernatural world. He runs a safe deposit service for demi-gods, for cryin' out loud! Sure, a lot of humans break down when the mask drops but some of them don't, and the latter may well beat the supernaturals at their own game.

It's like a lion getting kicked to death by a zebra or giraffe – sometimes the prey turns on the predator and kills it. Lions don't want zebras and giraffes taking self-defense courses. Likewise, the supernatural predators in the Dresdenverse don't want the mundanes finding out about them because humans are so good at eliminating predators from eco-systems.

Another example: Waldo Butters is a mundane, but he is given custody of a magical artifact and uses it to build magical devices that really work. The Supernaturals maintain the masquerade because it's so very much easier to hunt ignorant mundanes.

In cases like Dresden files, it is also a strong undercurrent of how "look, us neopagans are the rational and intelligent people because our beliefs accurately reflect reality!" snobbery, of depicting society at large as mindless sheep.

It creates easy soapboxes for the author to criticize modern society.

I'm going to have to question this, as while its probably true for some authors, I don't recall anything to suggest that Jim Butcher is actually a neo-pagan, much less thinks that The Dresden Files actually reflects reality.

Yes, please do not conflate the character with the author. Jim Butcher is not a NeoPagan. He's quite private about his personal spirituality but he's also been quite adamant that he is NOT Harry Dresden. Harry Dresden is a fictional character in a fictional universe.

Besides which, Dresden doesn't follow any established NeoPagan religion or doctrine that I (who have been a NeoPagan for 40 years) am aware of. If Dresden is a “NeoPagan” he's what we call an “eclectic solitaire”, meaning it's his own idiosyncratic belief system he cooked up himself. Which, in the larger NeoPagan world is perfectly OK for the most part, and characterizing Dresden as such means Butcher doesn't have to worry about a gaff regarding NeoPagan religion/doctine/practice on par with putting a giant parking lot around Wrigley Field in Chicago. (Wrigley Field has no public parking lot whatsoever, just a tiny one for staff).

For that matter, the series portrays Christianity quite positively on the whole (see Uriel and the Knights of the Cross, who are definitely heavy hitters on the good side), and Dresden himself is probably more closely aligned with Christianity than any other belief system in the series, especially later on. So that's another strike against it being a neo-pagan soap box.

^ That.

And then there is the Jewish guy wielding a Jedi light saber as a Knight of the Cross, the latter of which is a warrior aided by Christian angels against the Fallen Angels of the Christian mythos. Butcher isn't on a soap box for ANY religion in his books as far as I can see. His “NeoPagan” approach/whatever is about as “authentic” as the Jewish Jedi Knight of the Cross. (Actually, it makes sense in context. Polka will never die!)

Dresden's comments about science and how most people ignore the supernatural are probably just the character talking in character, more than the author's beliefs.

^ This. A hundred times this. Don't mistake a first person narrator for the author!

Kind of like how Joss Whedon is an atheist, but wrote Shepard Book (and Captain America, if his line about God in the first Avengers film is any indication) as Christian.

^ This.

[Q99]

In a lot of fantasy works, wizards, vampires, ghosts, etc. are kept secret. So, our plucky heroes fights evil, and more often than not, keeps the truth hidden about what they're really doing from the public. But why?


So, aside from upsetting the apple cart of the setting, and making the writer of a work have to deal with this, why is the masquerade upheld by good guys?

In Wapsi Square, because there's a mix of supernaturals who are big, powerful, can do what they want... and low-level supernaturals who'd be really vulnerable to persecution if there was an angry mob aimed at supernaturals.

Heck, even some 'dangerous' species have plenty of respectable individuals. You don't actually want mass vampire hunts, even if you do want to put down bad vampires.

That said, that one has a light masquerade where the authorities know about Supernaturals and there's organized MIB to police things.

What it is, is normal human denial. People see weird shit but it's so far out of their experience their own minds come up with explanations for what they saw. The typical person never encounters the weird shit, most who do only get one encounter and usualy under either lethal (in which their opinion is moot) or tangential form (which makes it easier to rationalize away).

I find a lot of masquerade-fictions reaaally overstate denial.

Sure, brief encounters can be brushed aside or discounted, but too much and the masquerade gets pretty leaky.

[Broomstick]

Think Dresden has a pretty good approach - MOST people don't have encounters, and thus it never comes up. Some have tangential encounters easily explained away. Others wind up over their heads so you actually have a fair number of vanilla humans knowing about the masque. For that matter, Dresden openly advertises his services as a wizard as well as a private investigator. The masquerade is mighty thin in the Dresdenverse.

Another series I haven't seen mentioned is the Mercy Thompson series - it's a world where the masquerade is being slowly lifted. First the Faeries came out of the closet, then the werewolves. Vampires are still undercover, as are witches and a bunch of other Things. The Fae came out when modern numbers and tech (and also problems on their side of the fence) made keeping the masquerade somewhere between no longer cost-effective and impossible. The werewolves started coming out on their own rather than being forced out because they were concerned with PR and damage control. It's a somewhat different approach to the whole issue in that you see a society where the veils are being drawn aside.

[Ralin]

Yes, please do not conflate the character with the author. Jim Butcher is not a NeoPagan. He's quite private about his personal spirituality but he's also been quite adamant that he is NOT Harry Dresden. Harry Dresden is a fictional character in a fictional universe.

I've heard that Butcher comes from a pretty heavily fundamentalist Christian background, though I don't know the source for that and he's presumably mellowed a lot compared to his family if that's true.

Besides which, Dresden doesn't follow any established NeoPagan religion or doctrine that I (who have been a NeoPagan for 40 years) am aware of. If Dresden is a “NeoPagan” he's what we call an “eclectic solitaire”, meaning it's his own idiosyncratic belief system he cooked up himself. Which, in the larger NeoPagan world is perfectly OK for the most part, and characterizing Dresden as such means Butcher doesn't have to worry about a gaff regarding NeoPagan religion/doctine/practice on par with putting a giant parking lot around Wrigley Field in Chicago. (Wrigley Field has no public parking lot whatsoever, just a tiny one for staff).

Frankly I'd say that Dresden straight up is a Christian, though not a practicing or devout one. He believes that God is real and that Christians like Michael and Father Forthill are worshiping and serving him. He makes jokes about being theological Switzerland because that's just the sort of person he is, but he never questions that there is a God. And believing that there is a God and that Jesus is God is the best definition of 'Christian' that I've heard.

And then there is the Jewish guy wielding a Jedi light saber as a Knight of the Cross, the latter of which is a warrior aided by Christian angels against the Fallen Angels of the Christian mythos. Butcher isn't on a soap box for ANY religion in his books as far as I can see. His “NeoPagan” approach/whatever is about as “authentic” as the Jewish Jedi Knight of the Cross. (Actually, it makes sense in context. Polka will never die!)

The Swords clearly don't give a damn what your religious beliefs are. Though I do think that the Dresden Files are about as strongly pro-Christian as an urban fantasy series can be without actually being a Christian urban fantasy series, if you take my meaning.

[Crazedwraith]

Frankly I'd say that Dresden straight up is a Christian, though not a practicing or devout one. He believes that God is real and that Christians like Michael and Father Forthill are worshiping and serving him. He makes jokes about being theological Switzerland because that's just the sort of person he is, but he never questions that there is a God. And believing that there is a God and that Jesus is God is the best definition of 'Christian' that I've heard.

"Believe" is a bit of a stretch when the God and theology in question is undeniably real. He's also met a greek god and norse god and knows they exist that doesn't make him a pagan.

To Be Fair though The Dresden Files presents God as sort of the 'real' religion while other gods are created by believe and are creatures from the NeverNever.

But he also credits Gods power with the current popularity of Christianity at one point in the book as well.

Out of all the knights we've met. Only Micheal is a proper devoted Christian. (partial credit for Murphy.) The others were technically Baptist (got baptised accidentally and rolled with it), Atheist (despite meeting an archangel) and jewish/jedi. (since that spoiler was already mentioned above I'll put it here)

[Alyrium Denryle]

It has been a while since I read the books and I freely admit that my memory may be selective. I definitely felt that there was an undercurrent like that, especially in the book that dealt with actual neo-pagan people. But that may have been just my reading.

EDIT: That said, other authors can and may make reasons that have politically-charged points.

Harry Dresden treats science sociologically rather than as an epistemological method. Someone like Butters actually utilizes the scientific method to understand and work with magic, but Dresden sees it as a cultural phenomenon rather than a tool set.

My read on the overall metaphysics is that ALL the religions are correct. Gods are just freakishly powerful magical beings who draw power from belief, so if enough people think YHWH created the world, he might as well have. Which is also why you have regional afterlives and shit.

As for the Masquerade itself, lets take a look at the Dresden Files from the In-Universe reasons given earlier.

- Indoctrination. Their education and training into the supernatural has been to avoid the public eye and it got mixed into other essential rules so much and for so long, that nobody really questions it.

This is definitely part of it. Wizards and the like have secrecy trained into them. Keep in mind that the last time they went public, the inquisition and witch burning happened. It feeds into the second reason.

- Going public and becoming a public figure would make their work impossible. Someone like Buffy, who ventures out at night and simply kills whatever vampires she sees, it would be like a serial killer advertising itself. All the vampires would be notified of her. A news crew and fans and such would distract her from her job and would warn vampires a mile away.

Ok. Lets imagine for a moment the wizards go public with everything. Mortals still cannot detect most magical beings. Oh sure they might be better positioned to combat marauding trolls, but they cannot deal with White or Red Court vampires (not that the Reds are around anymore). And they have few defenses. How easy would it be for a white court vampire to do something like infiltrate government agencies and get the White Councils century-long investment accounts audited? Or stir up a government witch hunt by manipulating people's minds?

The Fellowship of St. Giles operates using secrecy. That is out of the bag.

The Venatori do the same. They no longer function.

It would make the work impossible.

It is better to have a few selected groups and agencies in know (I imagine every police department has a Special Investigations section, even if it is a couple guys who just catch weird cases, and someone had to disappear that Werewolf tape)

- They are hiding too. Again, in Buffy's case a vampire-slayer is low-profile compared to the greater forces in the world. In normal operation, the vampires and other monsters just keep dying in the night, weakening the forces of darkness. They don't know who she is and thus cannot find her. If she became public then she would become a large target, the forces of darkness could concentrate on her and either kill her or humiliate her or both.
There was a comic like this, killer of demons, that had the devil having tremendous power and had demons that humans saw as other humans. Except one guy who could see them for what they were, was guided by an angel, cameras recorded only a supernatural flame instead of a head and he was still asking himself whether he just gone crazy.

Extensionally equivalent to above.

- The public is brainwashed. A variant of the earlier one, the enemy whom they are fighting against is so powerful that even if they did bring proof to the public, the enemy would have the resources and ability to make make the evidence disappear and discredit them publicly. Wolfram and Heart is heavily implied to have such ability, as mentioned in the case of Buffy.

See above.

- The government is evil/against them. Another variant of this is that the hunters are afraid of the government for whatever reason, justified or believed. What they do is essentially illegal or requires illegal actions (Winchester brothers), even if they are objectively doing good and not abusing the law. If they tried to do their crusade legally, they would be helplessly tied down to the point of inability. Dresden files hinted that this is why the police cannot deal with supernatural threats, even with sections supposedly specialized for it.
There is also the fear that they may be exploited and taken away from their duty. Angel had this, where he was forcibly recruited by some military outfit during WW2 (I don't recall much else about that episode though).

Yep. Oh god yes. You cannot perform forensic investigations to figure out which boogedyboo killed someone. Not when alibis dont work because the murderer can step into the Nevernever, or magically kill from a distance. It just does not work. The legal system would fail, and even if they succeeded they could not hold anything. Combine this with the fact that the predators would get their claws in and have a hand in writing whatever new rules governments cook up.

- The average person is magically retarded when it comes to the supernatural. No, really. An average person will refuse to acknowledge it even when it happens right before their eyes. Dresden files and many others.

And then there is that. Hell, it might even be a pseudo-magical effect.

[Q99]

The mangas Negima and UQ Holder in the same universe deal with a masquerade and it's lifting. In Negima, magic isn't overly common but is around, and magic mind-spells are a major means of enforcement- and a major plotline is someone trying to force a mass masquerade breach.

In UQ Holder, about 80 years in the future, the masquerade has been completely down for about 20 years, after lots of groundwork to make the transition happen. Magic 'apps' now exist and while magic is something only some have, you can go to a small town and encounter zero magic users, everyone knows about it.

Think Dresden has a pretty good approach - MOST people don't have encounters, and thus it never comes up. Some have tangential encounters easily explained away. Others wind up over their heads so you actually have a fair number of vanilla humans knowing about the masque. For that matter, Dresden openly advertises his services as a wizard as well as a private investigator. The masquerade is mighty thin in the Dresdenverse.

Don't they explicitly state that the number of deaths caused by supernaturals is pretty similar to the number of deaths lions cause in gazelles, proportionally? There's still a good number of encounters.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Don't they explicitly state that the number of deaths caused by supernaturals is pretty similar to the number of deaths lions cause in gazelles, proportionally? There's still a good number of encounters.

Not if the success rate is higher. Predators on the african Savannah have a success rate of between 10 and 30% depending on the species, and when they do attack an entire herd sees the predator.

Some dude leaving a bar with a white court vampire is far far more innocuous, and the success rate approaches 100%, so even if he lives for a while before finally orgasming to death, he is not living to tell about it. Even if the vampire eats him slowly, all anyone knows is that he has a booty call he wont say no to until he drifts out of everyone's lives and they never see him again. They might worry, but with no body...

[Broomstick]

It's a common meme in the Masquerade that most "prey" is taken from those who won't be missed. For a real life example, it was big news when Tammy Zywicki disappeared and was presumably murdered, but few have even heard of Tionda and Diamond Bradley who also went missing at around the same time. LOTS of people disappear every year, never to be heard from again, and most of them don't even get modest publicity. As long as supernatural predators keep their "harvest" below a certain level they won't stir up enough trouble for the humans to come after them. It will be chalked up to mundane causes.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, there are regrettably more than enough homeless, indigent, and socially outcast that nobody is going to bat an eye if some of them go missing. It's occurred to me that, for example, prostitutes would be easy prey for vampires, especially the streetwalker type (hell I'm pretty sure that's been used in a few stories outright).

It's also no coincidence that a lot of the magical action in books like Dresden Files tend to happen in abandoned areas-- warehouse districts, run-down ghettos, forested parks, graveyards and what not. Less people to get caught in the fallout, nobody cares that much about those areas, and if some civilians do get caught in the crossfire, more people won't care than will and those that do care won't have enough pull to do anything about it.

Now if you had some equivalent of a Balrog being conjured up in Times Square or some such highly public area, that would get interesting...

[Alyrium Denryle]

It's a common meme in the Masquerade that most "prey" is taken from those who won't be missed. For a real life example, it was big news when Tammy Zywicki disappeared and was presumably murdered, but few have even heard of Tionda and Diamond Bradley who also went missing at around the same time. LOTS of people disappear every year, never to be heard from again, and most of them don't even get modest publicity. As long as supernatural predators keep their "harvest" below a certain level they won't stir up enough trouble for the humans to come after them. It will be chalked up to mundane causes.

Hell, it is not even just people no one will miss like prostitutes and homeless people

We have had members of this board just fucking vanish. Ghost Rider just up and poofed out of existence. Despite our collective best efforts to get that disappearance to go viral, it never took off and to this day he is just fucking gone. Could have walked away from his life, could have run afoul of a someone and been dumped in the east river. No one fucking knows.

[Q99]

Even for 'aiming for those who won't be missed,' that's a heck of a lot of disappearances! And it's not like there's actual background checks before snagging someone. The drunk 'loser' will have close friends and family'll who investigate surprising often. Sometimes they'll be the rich corporate type who likes to slum it.

- The average person is magically retarded when it comes to the supernatural. No, really. An average person will refuse to acknowledge it even when it happens right before their eyes. Dresden files and many others.

The webcomic Narbonic has this, only in respect to mad science and such. It's not that mad scientists keep quiet, it's that most people will just actively not parse the talking gerbal, the humanoid robot is just a weird human, etc..

So there's basically three levels. Weirdness-filter normals. Normals who recognize and react to the weird. And then flat-out mad scientists.

And of course, being mad scientists, some mad scientists are into researching the causes so they can *exploit* this difference

[The Romulan Republic]

Missing persons stats (albeit a couple years out of date):

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... /16110709/

On average, 90,000 people are missing in the USA at any given time, according to Todd Matthews from the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, a national database for missing people.

In light of the recent disappearance of Hannah Graham from Charlottesville, Va., USA TODAY Network looks at the numbers of missing people from the FBI's National Crime Information Center, NCIC. Unless otherwise noted, these data are accurate as of Sept. 1.

01_total
At any given moment, there are as many as 90,000 missing persons in the U.S. (Photo: USA TODAY)
02_adults
60% of missing people are adults over 18. (Photo: USA TODAY)
03_under18
40% of missing persons are juveniles. (Photo: USA TODAY)
04_male
52% of missing persons are male. (Photo: USA TODAY)
05_female
48% of all missing persons are female. (Photo: USA TODAY)
06a_white
56% of missing persons are white. (Photo: USA TODAY)
07_black
Among missing persons in the U.S., African Americans are overrepresented. They make up 33 % of overall missing persons while they represent 13% of the total U.S. population. (Photo: USA TODAY)
08_na
The race of 7% of missing persons is not specified. (Photo: USA TODAY)
10_nativeamerican
2% of missing persons are Native American. (Photo: USA TODAY)
11_750
This average was found by reviewing the last 10 years of data from the NCIC database. (Photo: USA TODAY)
12_672
More than 600,000 missing people were reported in 2013. (Photo: USA TODAY)
13_arrow
In 2004, there were 830,325 missing persons entered into the NCIC database. (Photo: USA TODAY)
"The first 12-24 hours are the most critical in an active missing persons investigation," Amy Dobbs, an investigator with the Knox County Sheriff's Office, told USA TODAY Network. "The longer it takes for a case to be reported and become an active investigation, the less likely a positive outcome will occur."

For children, the first three hours are especially critical because 76% of abducted children who are killed die within that time frame, according to a 2006 study by the Washington State Attorney General's Office.

If someone you know is missing, call 911 and report it as quickly as possible, Dobbs said. There is no mandatory time period that you need to wait to file a missing persons report. You can also report the missing person to NamUs, which will verify the information with law enforcement and list it on the NamUs site.

[Elheru Aran]

The weirdness filter is pretty much a real thing; it's proverbial in places like New York. Some guy in a totally garish suit toting a little dog in matching suit boards the subway, people don't bother looking up from their phones. I definitely wouldn't discount the effect.

As for missing persons... provided that they don't snatch *too* many, it's quite possible that they wouldn't cause much of a blip, especially in urban areas like Chicago where such occurrences would be regrettably frequent. Take vampires for example-- they could grab a bum, give him a few decent meals in exchange for "donating blood", he might decide to stick around and eventually becomes a fixture of their underground palace... something like that.

[Zixinus]

Hey, anime fans, what about magical girl stuff and other high-school fantasy? I think we are focusing a bit too much on western urban fantasy.
Say, magical girls. Sailor moon, for example but practically the whole genre or any related genre. Why won't the girls tell their parents what's going on?

I think at this point we should try to make a list. I'll re-read the thread later and see if I missed anything.

Stuff I'd add to the list (would a mod want to keep such a list?). I have slayers in mind, in view of the original question, but I'm sure it applies to others:

- The masquerade actually ultimately serves good. The supernatural evil, if gone public, would be powerful for whatever reason. The good guys are the ones making/keeping the masquare, even if it hampers them short-term. A big example is "if you believe in it, you can make it stronger. If you are ignorant of it, it will be weaker or even powerless over you".
Or, say, if vampires became public, the problems that the slayers/hunters have, they would have worse. Imagine if the media learned of a real vampire, they would monitor him more than any intelligence agency would dare and every feeding would be a potential public lyncing. Or they are afraid that then everyone would want to become an immortal vampire and create a scenario like Daybreakers. Where everyone is a vampire and the last humans have just been drained of blood. Neither side wants that.

- Political problems. Even if the public and nation would accept slayers, there would be powerful political factions (like, say, the Vatican) that the slayers would have to fear or otherwise would have serious problems with. In this example, the Vatican has their own slayer-army and views any competition worse than the actual evil they are fighting.
So the slayers are working in the quiet to avoid getting tied down in that, viewing keeping the masquerade easier than fighting over territory. Extra points if both warring sides would rather keep it secret to avoid having too much sway from superiors and having too much bloodshed. Especially important if the enemy is supernatural.

- Cannot gather suitable evidence. They can find them and kill/hurt/handle them, but can't secure evidence of them. Or the evidence they can gather is weak. Ghost-hunting for example, especially if ghosts mess with modern electronics. Or real evidence is indistinguishable from genuine fakes.
An important element may be that it isn't a modern setting, so stuff like DNA analysis and such would not be possible proof.

- Secrecy is tied to power. Say, the slayers need a special power to allow them to do any slaying, but the source of that power does not want to become public and the given power is conditional to secrecy. If the slayers would go public, the power to battle evil would go away too.
An example is actually Young Wizards. Wizards are a secret on Earth because it is not sufficiently enlightened and the masquerade must be kept until it is. So its a rule they can't brake. That said, the books regularly feature the wizards struggling to keep this, in one case having what is halfway a parade in New York disguised as a film set to move a portal.

- The modern world left it behind. The slayers have been working so well that their once-public role has become defunct. There is no vampires for the vampire-slayer to kill, so why keep in paid? Why even believe vampires exist at all? With time, the fact became knowledge that became legend that became myth. There are so few vampires left around that the remaining slayers have to spend all their effort just to keep their tradition alive in case there is a few left somewhere.
A good example would be dragon-slaying. No more dragons, no more mystical dragon-slayers with magic swords to kill them.
Geralt laments this in the Witcher, especially in the books although there is no masquerade.

- Community/cultural/government ordained secret. For whatever higher ideological, theological or cultural reason, it has been ordained by the worldly power to keep it secret. The reason may be good or bad, practical or very idealistic, but the slayers are stuck with it if they want to operate. They would want to make public, they would benefit their work but they can't go against the government enforcing secrecy.
Gargoyles had this with one community of gargoyles that lived in Japan. The community viewed them as part of themselves, so they kept them nice and safe with keeping them secret. In older times, the gargoyles would then also protect the community at night in exchange. Similar deals have happened elsewhere.
The movie Trollhunter had this, where the government wanted to keep it a secret for whatever reason.

As for the Masquerade itself, lets take a look at the Dresden Files from the In-Universe reasons given earlier.

Erm, yes. The list was not for the Dresden files specifically. I was responding to a question asking for reasons for people like non-wizards keeping the conspiracy. I gave Dresden Files as an example for some of the effects, the reasons happening there too, but the list wasn't about him. Or people like him. More like Buffy-stlye slayers (or Blade). They are not really part of the conspiracy and would have reason to expose it, but don't.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Even for 'aiming for those who won't be missed,' that's a heck of a lot of disappearances! And it's not like there's actual background checks before snagging someone. The drunk 'loser' will have close friends and family'll who investigate surprising often. Sometimes they'll be the rich corporate type who likes to slum it.

They're predators. They can spot the easy targets.