45 KiB
In a rational supernatural story, how can anyone justify not going to the authorities?
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Author: u/Sendatsu_Yoshimitsu *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/9kbucf/in_a_rational_supernatural_story_how_can_anyone/
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Score: 37
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Created: 2018-10-01T01:07:37
Post:
I love Buffy/Supernatural-esque stories in which a bunch of random people are thrust into a supernatural or otherwise non-mundane world, and forced to learn the rules well enough to survive. I've made tons of attempts to write my own stories in that vein, but I always get tripped up by the same thing: if we're assuming that the protagonists are a) ordinary people, and b) trying to deal with monsters/ghosts/whatever in a logical and thoughtful fashion, there is no reason they shouldn't immediately go to the police/military/government and seek help from qualified professionals.
A lot of fiction handwaves this away by either making the authorities comically incompetent, or by giving the protagonists some kind of ability or expertise that uniquely qualifies them to handle the threat.
So have any authors actually come up with a reasonably convincing excuse for their protagonist to not seek outside help? Almost everything I can think of relies pretty heavily on the reader's ability to shrug and go "This is a cool story, so I don't mind the opening premise being a bit soft".
Comments:
u/None [+84] (7 minutes later)
You missed an easy explanation. The authorities are already corrupted by the supernatural, and the status quo is forcibly maintained by them. Thus the authorities are another antagonist that must be dealt with.
One other possibility: selfishness. Going to the authorities means turning over a massive source of potential power to those authorities. A rational protagonist might think himself most qualified to keep that power.
u/GaBeRockKing [+29] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (20 minutes later)
Selfishness
Yep, I agree entirely. I've writted snippets of a half dozen portal fantasies where the main characters don't tell the govrnment about the interdimensional portal they've found because they'll make more money if they already own the deed to the land the portal is on and have trade contacts in another dimension by the time the portal is revealed to the public.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (9 hours later)
Are any of those snippets available to the public?
u/GaBeRockKing [+2] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (13 hours later)
Nope, sorry. I try not to publish stuff I'm never going to complete.
u/rlef [+15] (18 minutes later)
This is pretty much the best way, if you can't get around them, make them part of the problem.
u/None [+13] (2 hours later)
Pact is pretty good about this. The Behaims make up many of the local small town police officers in Jacob's Bell, where the story is set. They're not necessarily doing evil things with their magic either - they just (rationally) dislike the Thorburn family.
u/Sparkwitch [+5] (42 minutes later)
Unless there's an entire secret government underneath the real government, there's always a bigger authority... in the US, most state police and the FBI are specifically tasked with dealing with corruption in local jurisdictions. They've got whole departmental branches devoted to such things.
As soon as somebody runs complaints up the chain of command, things have a chance of getting ugly, and the more there is to cover up the sooner those authorities catch wind.
u/None [+19] (an hour later)
Unless there's an entire secret government underneath the real government
You solved it yourself. The corruption goes right to the top, because the bad guys have magic and the civilian government does not.
u/xachariah [+19] (2 hours later)
Plus, it's way easier to use your mind control magic on the top of the totem pole and then let them enforce the rules all the way down than it is to go to every superatural hotspot and mind control each and every sheriff.
u/serge_cell [+7] (5 hours later)
Unless there's an entire secret government underneath the real government, there's always a bigger authority...
Higher authority infiltrated by higher supernaturals. In one of the urban fantasy I've read all governments are essentialy run by higher demons, and big cities by middle tier demons. But on the street level protagonist only conflicts with low level sorcerers and like. When apocalypse happen no one payed much attention because for common people nothing changed.
u/turtleswamp [+2] (a day later)
Ok, but the parade is this weekend and the ghosts are going to kill a bunch of people unless specific countermeasures are taken before then. How long is this review process going to take? Does Internal Affairs have a standard form for "officer ignored ghost-related threat to town due to agesim"?
u/None [+1] (5 days later)
Doesn't have to be a particularly organized or deep/complex conspiracy. Think about how the Yakuza or Mafia worked, or how sexual abuse in the catholic church was covered up. You just need enough people in the lower echelons willing to look the other way, loose paperwork, or make the occasional spurious arrest for intimidation purposes.
u/Daniel_The_Thinker [+45] (7 minutes later)
They're not believed (reasonably)
They're trapped for some reason and must deal with it before they can communicate with the outside.
The authorities are compromised in some ways
The protagonist are skeptical of the authorities for socio-political reasons
The protagonist have a history of mental illness and fear being committed.
These are for "ordinary people". Professionals may be interested in keeping up the masquerade or avoiding putting a third party in danger
u/sicutumbo [+6] (15 hours later)
The supernatural agent spends time to have people make hundreds of false claims about the supernatural, so anyone genuinely trying to report something is dismissed as being another person making one of those false claims.
u/pastymage [+31] (22 minutes later)
Memetic hazard: The supernatural is a much more serious hazard to those who comprehend it. Involving others marks them and permanently makes the rest of their lives more dangerous and awful.
E.g. JDAtE (for extremely generous values of "comprehend")
u/tjhance [+2] (an hour later)
what's JDAtE?
u/alexanderwales [+7] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
John Dies at the End, a web serial turned published book by David Wong. It's comic/cosmic horror.
u/None [+1] (5 days later)
I feel Jill Kismet dealt with this particular aspect very well. She had a chapter where the rookie cops are briefed on the existence of the supernatural, and the fact that to keep them safe, when they encounter that stuff, they contact the Hunters and DO NOT investigate it more themselves. The less they know, the better.
u/Sparkwitch [+32] (29 minutes later)
A rational masquerade is going to be tiny, capable, isolated, ruthless, and savvy.
A group of vampires is functionally an organized crime framily. Law enforcement will treat cases surrounding them that way, so they'd be well served to foster that appearance and embrace criminal enterprises that embrace those assumptions, as well as whatever legitimate businesses organized crime would use as covers.
Law enforcement doesn't have to be incompetent in order to accept rational explanations, especially in environments where they have limited workforce or funding: An occasional chopped up corpse, a burned body, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."
The few victims that escape with genuine stories of supernatural events can probably be accepted as delusion, wind up in a heap of mysterious crimes, or be bunched under the auspices a mysterious and theatrical serial killer.
Have the protagonists go to the authorities, have the authorities take their statements and answer their questions and possibly tell them about ongoing cases. Have the protagonist go to the media, and have the media get excited and write up something that ultimately sounds a lot like any other small-time crime reporting. Have them approached by conspiracy theorists who turn out to be crazy and wrong.
Strange things happen all the time, and lots of people think they've experienced supernatural events of many, many kinds. The background radiation is intense, and so long as the supernatural keeps its heads down they'll fade into obscurity with little effort.
This also means the rational supernatural has to be relatively mundane, and it's got to be trying to blend in. This excludes some fun and exciting tales in favor of hard-boiled deconstructions. Your mileage may vary.
EDIT: Oh, and if the protagonist does acquire solid proof of the supernatural, have them take it to authorities and fight the "organized crime family" as it attempts to suppress them and see what story that turns into. That actually happens in the world of organized crime, but I've never seen the premise taken seriously for supernatural events.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+22] Godric Gryffindor (5 hours later)
The supernatural is so hard to handle correctly, so easy to misunderstand and bluster about and map onto appealing stories, and so catastrophically unforgiving of error, that you'd have to be insane to call in anyone who didn't have a strong security mindset.
u/tjhance [+6] (15 hours later)
you wouldn't have to be insane - you'd just have to be someone without a security mindset yourself
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+13] Godric Gryffindor (18 hours later)
Nah, then you're already dead. You died in chapter 2. The remainder of the novel is about your afterlife.
u/warsage [+20] (8 minutes later)
The most common reason I see is that the authorities wouldn't believe them. If I called the police right now and told them a werewolf was trying to eat me they'd think it was a prank call and ignore me, or think I'm on drugs and arrest me.
A rational person might try to obtain irrefutable evidence to convince the police with, but in today's day of Photoshop and CGI that would be pretty tough to do. You'd need a lot of really convincing material and even then there's a good chance they would just blow you off. Making it worse, many supernatural beings are difficult to videotape (e.g. invisible ghosts, vampires not appearing on film).
If I were being haunted I'd be far more likely to approach a friend, medium, or ghost hunter for help than the police.
u/phylogenik [+5] (16 hours later)
Convincing material could entail just showing them directly, though, right? Which you'd do by summoning them to deal with a related, but much more plausible threat (so they respond with appropriate briskness and preparedness). So if a werewolf is attacking you, say you're being attacked by large, rabid dogs (or a bear, etc. depending on where you are). If the werewolf retains human intelligence, describe them as a large, angry human.
u/warsage [+3] (17 hours later)
That would be one way to do it, but there are some issues.
- You need to be in a position to call the police and continue to survive in place until they arrive. You can't be in active combat and you can't be on the run. You'd have to be holed up inside a locked room or such.
- You need the werewolf to stick around for at least five to ten minutes.
- You need to werewolf to remain even after hearing sirens, even though he's most likely trying to keep his existence secret.
- You need the werewolf not to kill the police when they arrive.
If you can pull all that off then you, as a rational person, should probably do it. But it's tricky.
u/TheColourOfHeartache [+5] (9 hours later)
You have to ask though, why are the cops so sceptical.
In the real world the answer is simple, werewolves do not exist. But in a world where werewolves exist why aren't the public more willing to entertain the possibility.
Is there only ten or so werewolves in the USA and you're just unlucky enough to be in one's way? Sure, then the cops are going to be pretty sceptical. Is there 20 in your town alone and they have a rivalry with the vampires. Then it gets harder to explain why nobody believes in the supernatural.
u/kaukamieli [+10] (13 hours later)
But in a world where werewolves exist why aren't the public more willing to entertain the possibility.
Usually they are worlds just like ours, in that people don't know the creeps exist. Thus they wouldn't have any more reason to believe than if you walked to a police station and told them.
Potter does it with obliviation. MIB does it with... obliviation.
u/warsage [+6] (13 hours later)
There's usually an assumption in these types of stories that the monsters have been successfully making an effort to remain concealed. They disguise their attacks as bear maulings or suicide, or they make the victim disappear without a trace.
It reminds me of Tokyo Ghoul, where the ghouls (who must eat human flesh to survive) do it by taking bodies from Suicide Forest where people go to hang themselves every day.
u/TheColourOfHeartache [+2] (14 hours later)
There's usually an assumption, but good world building will go into the details of how the monsters keep secret and make it believable that they have remained hidden.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+13] Godric Gryffindor (18 hours later)
More seriously, the first question is why, if magic is real, everyone doesn’t already believe in it. Answer that question, and the question of why people don’t go to the police will probably take care of itself.
u/thequizzicaleyebrow [+11] (16 minutes later)
Hmmm, maybe there's a memetic angle. If the monsters can only hurt/attack people who are aware of them already, then going and informing the authorities will simply give the monsters a wider pool of victims. Maybe there's some kind of supernatural protection of the innocent and the monsters, due to their nature, can't spread knowledge of themselves to innocents. Only other humans can spread that knowledge. And so, if the protagonist knows this, and is at all self-sacrificing, they won't tell anyone who doesn't already know. I think you could take this a lot of different directions. Maybe there is a governmental agency that knows all about these monsters and how to deal with them, but nobody knows about them because they if they advertise their existence, they're dooming everyone.
I admit, it's still somewhat soft, but it at least explains why people wouldn't seek help and why this hidden side of the world isn't widespread knowledge already.
u/Sendatsu_Yoshimitsu [+7] (54 minutes later)
I think there's actually a really interesting story in mixing supernatural/urban horror themes with a well-thought out memetic system. There would need to be some kind of consistent angle for stuff behind the veil to still get at the real world, but I really like the idea of a group or agency balancing the need to study and understand foes they didn't have the capacity to blindly overpower with the fact that studying them was like opening a window and waving a bright flare through it.
u/thequizzicaleyebrow [+4] (an hour later)
Yeah, exactly. Full blown protection of the innocents might be too much... Maybe there's degree's of innocence? A fully "rational" engineer type who doesn't believe in anything supernatural might be fully "innocent", while somebody who enjoys reading urban fantasy is a little less protected, and so on, until you have the people with full knowledge of the masquerade who are not just unprotected, but are waving that metaphorical flare.
u/Ulmaxes [+8] (59 minutes later)
I always imagine the first act of National Treasure.
"Someone's going to steal the Declaration of Independence because there's a map on the back, I could show you right now." [laughter] "no."
Not setting up NT as a pillar of rationality, but it was pretty accurate. At best you get the FBI tagging your cell phone calls.
Outside of elaborate effort made to trick law enforcement into experiencing it first hand, your protagonist just ends up at the bottom of a very long list of to-dos.
You can easily have the main character(s) try this, get laughed out of the room, and move on. This can set up later for a "there are parts of the government that DO know" sequence later, or maybe even get a few people's attention and bring them into the story as well.
u/saitselkis [+6] (34 minutes later)
The Anita Blake series tackles this by just having the entire world be low fantasy. Sure the cops are involved, but vampires are people with rights and when they step out of line, there are executioners who fix the problems.
That said, if you're curious about the series, don't read past Obsidian Butterfly. It goes from GoT stype "porn every so often" to full on smut afterwards.
u/Quibbloboy [+7] (5 hours later)
There’s a pretty simple solution that I’m not seeing mentioned: the protagonist does go to the authorities, but then the supernatural thing isn’t around to be destroyed.
It doesn’t have to be anything grandiose or complex: the cops don’t have to be “comically incompetent” or “already corrupted by the supernatural.” There’s no need for some grand conspiracy plot point.
Your rational character calls the cops. Maybe they don’t say “there’s a ghost in my garage,” because they want to be taken seriously, so they say there’s an intruder or something. Or maybe they do just say, “there’s a ghost in my garage.” Either way the cops arrive, openminded and willing to help out, but the ghost doesn’t put in an appearance. So the cops leave. They can even encourage the protagonist to call them again if the protagonist hears anything else. They do want to help their citizens, after all.
Anyway, then your protagonist is afraid of the same thing happening twice, so they don’t call back. Or maybe they just move into contingency operations on their own while they wait for the thing to come back, and when it does, they’re prepared enough to start handling it on their own. Point is, after that first contact, the ball is in the author’s court; the reader is no longer screaming “JUST CALL THE COPS” at the page, because they know that the character knows that’s an option, and that it’s not a cure-all solution.
u/jiaxingseng [+9] (32 minutes later)
I think this one is easy.
Reasons for not going to the cops:
Protagonist is an illegal alien.
Protagonist is of a minority which (rightly or wrongly) fears police brutality
At the end of the day, supernatural threat is completely invisible and leaves no trace... though actually that's usually not rational.
The authorities are corrupted by the threat. Let's face it, any threat that needs to be secret yet would pose a danger to the world at large would need to corrupt the social institutions of human civilizations. The Deep State is run by Cthulhu.... how else would a Deep State function anyway?
u/Paimon [+7] (an hour later)
Re: #4
I can see the headlines for that movie now. The Deep State. From the Deep!
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (a day later)
The Deep State is run by Cthulhu.... how else would a Deep State function anyway?
The Deepest State
u/sl236 [+1] (2 days later)
u/WalterTFD [+5] (an hour later)
Why stop the protagonists from seeking help? Going to the authorities makes for a fine arc. It is absolutely a question that should be examined in most reasonable settings.
u/Evan_Th [+5] Sunshine Regiment (an hour later)
But if they successfully get help, they'll no longer be the ones driving the plot. "Government deals with vampires" is a different story from "gang of teenagers deals with vampires," and sometimes an author wants to tell the latter.
u/Sendatsu_Yoshimitsu [+6] (an hour later)
That's exactly the reason why I've been thinking about this. In a lot of ways, the very same tropes that make this sort of story a tough sell for rational fiction are what make it interesting in softer settings- teenagers/random weirdos/scooby and his friends are practically the worst possible choice for handling the problem, and thus it's inherently much more interesting to watch them overcome the odds than it would be for an army of trained, well-equipped grunts to systematically raid vampire lairs or what have you.
While this isn't the story that I personally want to write, it occurs to me that mental illness or paranoia on the part of the protagonist would be another handy explanation- if your plot hook requires the protagonist to act irrationally, bake that into their character instead of into the world.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (a day later)
"Government deals with vampires" however is potentially an interesting story too, and a less told one. "Gang of teenagers deals with vampires" can be easily achieved by leveraging a few possibilities:
the age old isolation scenario, the teenagers went to party in some cabin in the woods in the middle of fuck all and now vampires are their problem and no one else's
the teenagers are too confident, or did something they don't want to be found out so they're hoping to just hide everything and let no one else know ("What, do you want to tell mom that we went to profanate graves in the cemetery for funsies and now a zombie wants to eat our brain?")
a lot of the various other possibilities mentioned, like they have special powers, they don't want to be taken for crazy, etc.
u/LifeIsBizarre [+3] (2 hours later)
"Hey, look, just say I believe you have a Bigfoot in your house. First we cordon off your neighborhood. Second, we evacuate your neighbors, and third, we send a whole shit-load of cops in there to deal with the thing. I mean, fully armed and ready, Mr. Henderson. So unless you wanna be responsible for wrongfully turning your neighborhood into a war zone I suggest you drop this whole thing right now." - Harry and the Hendersons
u/Endovior [+4] (2 hours later)
In the real world, if vampires actually existed, we'd almost certainly already know about it. In your story, if vampires actually exist, and the protagonist did not start the story knowing this, there is a reason. Essentially, worlds that actually contain vampires (or other supernatural beings that manage to remain hidden from society at large) are likely to produce priors that argue against involving the authorities. Personally, I like After Sundown's take on the subject:
Life for the common man in After Sundown is actually pretty horrible, and extremely dangerous. Life in After Sundown is life in a horror movie. Or rather, it is a world not unlike Earth would be if all the horror movies were real in different places and at different times. This means that body counts are extremely high, and it is very difficult to get help. This is good news if you happen to be the Bogie Man, but really bad for anyone looking for a life of vaguely normal properties. Here are some important things to remember:
The Police are no help at all. Heavily infiltrated by cultists and secret societies, the police in After Sundown are astoundingly ineffective. Sure they will occasionally bring down a killer, but the vast majority of crimes go unsolved. Many crimes don't even get investigated, especially if something supernatural is afoot.
Telecommunications are Shoddy. Sat Phones aren't generally available in the realm of horror. Cellphone coverage cuts out constantly at inopportune moments. Most people still have landlines, but regular telecommunication wires go down frequently and are out for days at a time. The inability to get a call out of a building or town isn't unusual, that kind of thing happens a lot in After Sundown.
People Don't Travel Much. It's not weird for people to not know what goes on in the next town over in After Sundown. Things are just more dangerous, and people keep to themselves more.Keep this in mind when you're planning your nights in the realm of horror. Life is less connected to other life in the realm of horror and it is much easier for dangerous elements to thrive in such an environment.
That being said, it is important to remember that most horror movies begin with people thinking things are pretty normal, and end with something of a return to normalcy as well (or do they?) So it's not like Jason is running around the streets murdering people left and right. Indeed, while the death rate from serial and mass murder is large enough in the realm of horror to compete with traffic accidents or opiate abuse, the fact is that you're still more likely to die from cancer. Supernatural creatures remain hidden and the president of the United States is openly a mundane human. A vampire can't just flash their fangs to get free entry to a movie theater, and indeed they could be in a lot of trouble if they flash their fangs in a public space of any kind.
Given assumptions like these, it's a lot less sensible to go to the authorities. You might start by considering how effective the police are at tracking down murderers in general, and make a rational decision about how helpful they are likely to be based on that... and you should then revise your calculations based on the fact that vampires have managed to remain hidden from society at large until now, and consider the possibility that any official request to the authorities might bring you unwanted attention from whoever's managed to pull off that particular feat. Given that there actually are vampires in your story, this probably results in pretty decent odds that you shouldn't actually bother involving the authorities... or if you do, that you shouldn't actually rely on those authorities actually being helpful, and that you should have plans for your plea for help attracting attention from the vampires.
u/None [+6] (9 hours later)
You could also avoid this by making the enemy incredibly powerful. So incredibly powerful, in fact, that the only reason it is currently operating in anyway the protagonists (or even humanity at large) have any chance of stopping, is because of convenience, instead of necessity.
Take Animorphs for example. In Animorphs, the only reason the evil alien brain slug Yeerks aren't razing Earth to the ground with their advanced alien weaponry and alien host-body army, is because they want preserve human bodies (to use as hosts later). The kids don't go to the authorities for a long time, because if they try to, and word accidentally gets to a Yeerk spy in the chain of command (of which they know the Yeerks have plenty), then the Yeerks will stop their slow-scale, secretive invasion of small town America (which the kids can feasibly slow down/sabotage while they try to think of a way to stop the aliens all together), and instead switch to the alien holocaust humanity has no chance of winning. A semi-major plot point is trying to find a way to alert the military to the infestation, without alerting any Yeerk spies, and that plot point could easily be copy-pasted into a more rational story.
Another way is to make the enemy grow stronger, depending on how many people are interacting with it. If you are familiar with the SCP Foundation, write a story where the protagonists are doing battle with some kind of antimemetic demon or something like that, or even just something like Slenderman that can only attack/affect people that have done some particular thing, and grows stronger the more people it can affect. They aren't trying to save the world; they're just trying to save themselves, and they know that bringing more people into the fold will only make their enemy stronger, and potentially doom the world. They can't alert the police, but perhaps they can risk bringing in the sheriff, if the increase in the enemy's strength per 'in-the-know person' is linear rather than exponential. But bringing in the whole chain of command, or the army? That would turn the enemy into a god, and so simply isn't an option.
u/kraryal [+3] (15 hours later)
That second one was used in Nightmare on Elm Street; the baddie could only interact with people who already knew about him. At some point in the series, the authorities have actually rounded up all of said people and keep them drugged in an asylum in an attempt to get rid of the baddie.
u/Kachajal [+6] (9 hours later)
I think it can be reasonably justified.
In Buffy specifically, there's a couple decent reasons.
- One, they're teenagers, with all that that implies.
Most people don't think all that clearly at that age. Yes, even to that level of blindness.
I think this only applies to short-term or non-rational fiction, though. Anyone will eventually think of doing this, and the rational community doesn't much like incompetent characters, even if they have good reasons for it.
- Secondly, the proper authorities have been contacted, as far as they can tell - those being the Watchers.
If you're keen to trust authority, then you'd probably expect them to contact or already be working with the government. If you have the time and inclination to ask, then there's quite a few potential excuses/reasons for them not to be working with the government already.
That's just passing the ball a bit, though, but it's much easier to come up with good reasons for a bureaucratic, traditional secret society not to work with the government. Hell - you can have it be a plot point where the protagonist initially trusts the reasons given by the Watchers, but eventually rebels and tries to make things happen on his own.
- Thirdly, there's the issue of proving any of the claims.
The easiest way I can think of doing this in Buffy is to capture a vampire or two, keep them trapped away from sunlight, and then use them dying to sunlight as proof that at least something fucky is going on. But going from there to proving that the Master is going to be freed and kill everyone, or that the city is located on a Hellmouth, or that Glory is a goddess hellbent on destroying the world or whatever seems much more difficult.
Hell, say your first instinct in Buffy is to do what I said. Get a policeman and convince them to come with you to see proof of the supernatural. Say he's on the level and tries to rally the precinct. He's dead the next day (at best), because Sunnydale is corrupt. Where do you go from there, as a random teenager, even a smart one? How the hell do you convince anyone on the state or federal level of anything? In the 90's, especially? A letter is going to make you sound crazy at best.
- Lastly, there's the fact that you have no idea if the government is uncorrupted.
In Buffy, the mayor of Sunnydale is hundreds of years old and specifically planned and built the city as a playground for him and his. While it seems pretty unlikely that the entire country is in a similar state, it's pretty likely that there are at least pockets of bad actors in the government in general.
None of this implies an unrealistic level of incompetence in the government, IMO. Look at how easily politics is already swayed with money alone. Now add to that bribing with immortality, arcane power, straight up mind control and placing your own people in power.
So yeah, it might not be an correct decision with ironclad logic behind it, but I think it's quite reasonable, and similar reasons could be built into most stories. You could definitely make going to the authorities a good idea objectively, but a bad idea given the information available to the protagonist.
Incidentally, I don't know of any rational-adjacent Buffy stories, I'd definitely appreciate some recommendations.
u/KingMako [+3] Unlicensed Archrationalist (41 minutes later)
AoE curse affecting everyone on the planet. Possible variants:
Mentality of "Nobody will believe me." As a result, even if person B believes your story, they don't want to look like a fool for trying to tell another person. Even if you tell them they shouldn't think like that, most people would still rather do nothing. Someone would have to actually die to get the conviction required of most people, thus the paranormal do not want to escalate that far.
After witnessing paranormal stuff, you lose very specific subsections of your vocabulary. Thief, stolen, murder etc. are included in this list, making you unable to describe even an adjacent crime.
The curse is actually several thousand curses. Many have found loopholes, then some mysterious faction has patched them. This has been going on since medieval times.
u/jtolmar [+3] (7 hours later)
The authorities being compromised is the easy solution.
But I think "information-security magic is really good in this setting" is also a strong option, especially for the types of stories people around here like. That includes options like Lovecraftian corrupting knowledge, Voldemort's name curse, all the antimemes in the SCP archives, and the cryptography-inspired stuff from Horry Patter And The Philologer's Stone.
Any of those could be inherent: everyone who knows about magic has to perform a ritual sacrifice once per moon or they turn into a wraith - or a passive effect of a creature: vampires know the location of everyone who knows their true identity - or a spell someone actually cast: no wizard would teach anyone their secrets without cursing them to be unable to speak them.
u/SometimesATroll [+4] (7 hours later)
It was brought up in another comment, but I'll expand upon it here. What if your protagonist is the authorities? Some government agency caught wind of something and is sending in an agent to investigate. Or maybe they've known for years and the character is part of a Men In Black type group meant to investigate and suppress the supernatural. Combine with a "people aware of the supernatural are more vulnerable to it" explanation for why the government doesn't just make it common knowledge.
u/Kachajal [+3] (9 hours later)
It's definitely an option, but there's a good reason for the "random teenager suddenly finds themselves in a supernatural world" - it's fundamentally far more appealing and identifiable, so I can see why OP wants to make it work.
The protagonist could join the authorities after trying to contact them, but "random teenager joins a supernatural police agency" is still a very different story to "random teenager finds the supernatural world and is largely on his own in navigating it".
u/Sendatsu_Yoshimitsu [+1] (2 days later)
This is something I've gone back and forth on a few times- on one hand, aging the character up a few years and making them an 18-22 year-old rookie cop in the supernatural activities division is an easy sell, and in a lot of ways bypasses the common obstacles we've been discussing.
On the flip side, though, you miss out on an awful lot of interesting storytelling; this might just be a personal bias, but in stories that are rooted in a character or group of people discovering what lies behind the masquerade and using their wits to survive, I really dislike when there's a mentor character who exists explicitly to provide exposition and direct them. It's a really useful trope (Giles and the Watchers stuck around well into Buffy's adulthood for exactly that reason), but I think it's fundamentally more interesting to see the protagonist research and overcome their problem than it is to watch them blindly rely on a third party's know-how.
u/Izeinwinter [+4] (11 hours later)
Everyone is missing the obvious: The protagonist cannot go to the authorities because they are the authorities.
Just make your main character the highly-trained, highly-put-upon, and moderately shellshocked civil servants who have the job of dealing with all the call-ins about the supernatural.
Task one: "Is this a genuine incident" Task two: "Deal".
And sure, calling for help from the higher ups is an option, but you know how much paperwork you have to file if you pull your gun? Now imagine the bureaucratic nightmare that follows after you call in an air-strike on a vampire nest or invoke the ancient treaties and compacts to have one of the Djinn eat a demon. Doing that sort of thing lightly looks really bad on your year end review.
u/Hust91 [+3] (7 hours later)
Can't the main characters just be the authorities, qualified to handle the situation or not?
u/kaukamieli [+3] (12 hours later)
In Buffy, the Gov knows already. Also a spoiler, the mayor was on the gig.
But the basic policemen, what were they supposed to do against supernatural powers? Police are not qualified professionals, Buffy and Giles were.
But if they are ordinary people... Snitches get stitches. Also they might want to get into that world somehow.
u/liramzil [+2] (46 minutes later)
Theres pretty good precedent in our own world that mysterious thing plus bureaucracies goes nowhere quick.
There isn't any common knowledge of paranormal problems- and most people already have it in their head that x doesn't exist. Usually, explaining the problem clearly would not even help you be taken any more seriously:
"Help! I am being chased across linear time by two distinct groups of immortals. One of which is a problem. They can teleport themselves around the world by using camera terminology. Which they abuse to kidnap extremely-special-kids and with the help of a very-evil-painting, crack open the kid's soul-egg to continue their immortality. The other group is at war with them but doesn't kill kids and can't do the camera thing but anyway they can't protect me from the first group and that is why I've come here to talk to you officer."
u/Teulisch [+2] Space Tech Support (a day later)
i have an idea for a rational time travel story that runs into this... and they cant go to the authorities because they have a time machine, and the bad guys are in the past. i lost the first draft (only a couple thousand words) when a hard drive died. i really should get around to that idea again at some point.
some stories have their own rational logic of why some solutions cant work. others just need to have a worse problem in order to stay rational.
u/Boron_the_Moron [+2] (a day later)
Reality is self-censoring. If you wander off the beaten path, or something Weird wanders across it, you will not remember what you experienced. At least, not for long. You need repeated, regular exposure to Weird Shit for any of your memories to stick. Otherwise you will eventually rationalise it away as something mundane.
Meanwhile, trying to go public with your discovery will backfire horribly. The more unaware people who learn about your Weird Shit, the more the universe itself will take notice, and move to bury your truth. Maybe your camera breaks. Maybe your computer mysteriously wipes itself. Maybe a Thing from the Other Side bores a hole into this world, and erases you from history.
You don't hear about people going to the authorities, because those people disappear. Thus, in accordance with natural selection, the only people left are those who don't immediately try to tear the masquerade wide open.
u/SimoneNonvelodico [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (a day later)
Depending on the kind of threat, they might have a reasonable fear of being considered crazy and possibly forcibly committed. Consider that usually people who see monsters or ghosts and think they're on a mission to defeat them are schizophrenic, and it'd be easy to be also considered a potential violent individual if you're going on about "killing the demons".
Another very reasonable possibility: the threat is beyond any regular human's reach, while the protagonist has special powers/knowledge to face it. In that case, involving anyone else might as well cause their death, and there's a case for not wanting to do that. Maybe not 100% rational if the stakes are high enough and external help could tip the scales, but it's normal to feel responsible.
Other possibilities: they don't want to share whatever loot/power they can get from the defeated creatures. They don't trust the authorities to not be corrupt. They don't trust the authorities to not have some kind of mole inside their ranks. The threat is specifically preventing them from disclosing information to anyone (for example, can read minds and they're the only ones who are immune). They're criminals themselves and don't want to be arrested when all is said and done.
u/SpeculativeFiction [+2] (2 days later)
If I suddenly found out there was a supernatural world hidden out there, I'd figure there were some very powerful people out there keeping it that way.
What's more likely:
A) A bunch of vampires, wizards, etc have suddenly appeared
B) They've always existed, but have gone unnoticed for millennia, and stayed hidden in modern times where everyone has a camera on them at all times.
C) that people who go to the government or spread videos of supernatural creatures are dealt with somehow.
I'm going to be heavily considering "C".
u/GeneralExtension [+1] (a day later)
This depends a lot on the other stuff you have going on, but
Make it personal (to the characters).
A 'normal' person:
The protagonist discovers they have powers, or their best friend gets possessed. They don't want them self/their friend to be taken away.
criminals:
An industrial saboteur accidentally sets the zombie virus loose on the world*, a jewel thief's steals a large, famous diamond with a long and bloody history only to discover that it's cursed, or when a new gang comes to town, the established factions discover things no one would believe. People who might be reluctant to call the cops because if they can take care of it on their own, they don't have to worry about going to jail.
*Or take the blame for global catastrophe.
u/turtleswamp [+1] (a day later)
In my experience it's usually implied or outright stated that the characters expect the authorities will not believe them.
Depending on the situation that's not necessarily unreasonable, as it's unlikely that the police would say: cancel a parade because a bunch of teenagers say ghosts are going to kill people because of this old journal they found in the woods about a town fire that started at a similar parade a hundred years ago.
A variant would be that the authorities don't actually have any jurisdiction over the matter (possibly you juts don't know about the authorities who do), or you have to confess to a real crime to accuse others of a potential crime.
For example it probably isn't actually illegal to slaughter a goat and have an orgy while covered in its blood for the purposes of petitioning Sub'nigreth. But peeping in the window while people have an orgy is illegal and probably lands you on the registered sex offender list. And then it's you word against theirs when you claim they were petitioning it to accept the town as food for the monster they want to summon, not say: a plateful harvest.
u/vallar57 [+1] Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic (a day later)
No need for authorities to be corrupted in order to maintain masquerade. It might genuinely be the best option for the vast majority of muggles. It may be tied to how exactly the supernatural works. For example, if the number of monsters is directly tied to the number of people who are aware of them (that's an extreme example though).
u/topin89 [+1] (4 days later)
Found good one here: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-harsh-realities-that-occur-after-happy-movie-endings/
"Every time the last survivor escapes from the scary French catacomb or flaming Antarctic research base, they become the prime suspect for whatever horror they just endured. So if you ever find yourself escaping some unimaginable forest monster that just ate your camping buddies, maybe just cut your losses and don't tell anyone. Because you really don't want your name sharing the same police report as the word "werewolf."
u/Sendatsu_Yoshimitsu [+1] (6 days later)
Until Dawn had this in the worst way- the end credits involve police interviews with whomever makes it out, and it ends up looking really dire because the interviewers are obviously looking for motive for who in the group could've perpetrated the acts they're all ascribing to wendigos.
u/None [+0] (4 days later)
[removed]
u/None [+2] (5 days later)
If I remember right, muggles can't see witches or their effects, and get their minds warped by them. So presumably wouldn't be much help. Also the incubators seem to want to keep it secret and are unlikely to have any scruples about enforcing that agressively
u/ceegheim [+1] (13 days later)
My head canon is that some girl wished for secrecy back in the day.