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[BST] Maintaining the Masquerade

Post:

I was recently digging through my rather enormous drafts folder and trying to figure out what I wanted to write next, and found a small handful of chapters that took place in what appears to be a blatant rip-off of Rowling's version of magical Britain, and seems to concern itself with the people that maintain the veil of secrecy. (If you like first drafts of things that don't (and won't) have an ending, you can read it here, but that's not really what this post is about.)

Intro aside, how do you make the Masquerade believable? Here's the relevant TVTropes link. I really do like the Masquerade as a trope (perhaps because of the level of mystery it implies exists beneath the surface of the world) but the solutions to actually keeping it going seem to be ridiculously overpowered (the universe conspires to keep it in place) or require a huge amount of luck and/or faith in people.

I'm looking for something that makes a bit more sense. What does the rational version of the Masquerade look like? For extra credit, what's the minimum level of technology/magic/organization needed to keep it going? I think it's very easy to invent an overkill solution to the problem, but I want the opposite of overkill - just the exact amount of kill needed to defeat the problem with almost none left over.

Comments:

u/Geminii27:

Disinformation and confusion. The Masquerade-maintainers would have the job (amongst others) of continually making up, cross-pollinating, encouraging, and disseminating supernatural stories with *elements* similar to or even matching whatever was being hidden. Ideally, every investigation of a strange event would come across at least one or more aspects which could be dismissed as "Oh, that was based on a story from twenty years ago."

They would also fund and assist media which promoted incorrect and scrambled versions of the truth - everything from conspiracy publications to straightforward fiction of the time (books, movies, TV series, video games), plus metafiction (eg books about discovering that old myths are, le gasp, TRUE! (and possibly sparkly or aliens in disguise)).

They'd convince people who weren't entirely sane to dress up weirdly and emulate (in a trashy, low-budget way) the things the masquerade was hiding, so there would be police reports about pulling drunks and weirdos dressed as - and insisting they were - vampires/wizards/aliens/whatever. Useful in case one of the hidden supernaturals gets drunk and stumbles down High Street yelling in the secret language, gets pulled up by the cops, and insists they're a... whatever they actually are.

They'd heavily fund magic societies and sleight of hand tricks, get mundane kids interested in it either as a career or hobby, and generally make it widely known that normal everyday people can make it *look* like they're doing impossible things, even if the mechanisms aren't immediately apparent. They'd see to it that articles like David Copperfield fooling a couple of muggers got widespread promotion.

They'd fund and promote the arts of special effects of all kinds. Not simply those which just happen to look like the ones being covered up, but the industry as a whole, so as many people as possible would use the effects, have seen the effects, or know that places like ILM exist.

If ghosts existed, they'd fund a movie about hilarious ghost chasers. If vampires existed, they'd encourage movies and books about vampires to become famous. If magic existed, they'd arrange for books and movies containing certain mostly-accurate details to become a billion-dollar enterprise. They'd pour immense resources into things like easily-obtainable desktop video effects packages, and upload detailed tutorials on how to create cool effects which oh-so-coincidentally resemble masquerade-breaking sightings.

They'd have fingers in major movie studios so that if there was any masquerade break which couldn't be attributed simply to loonies having watched too many fantasy movies, they could have a "production crew" on the scene ASAP with appropriate props and FX gear saying "Oh yes officers, that was our creature workshop's werewolf; we have a robot version which runs at 40mph for long shots which is what you saw, and a van over there full of extremely similar masks and props which you are more than welcome to familiarize yourself with. Please do take pictures and put them in your report."

u/Izeinwinter:

Mostly you need a reason for the masquerade to exist that doesn't make all it's members either idiots or assholes. Even if they are the villains of the piece, you really need a motive for them to go to those lengths that isn't stupid. 
Options: 
1: The masquerade members are blatantly, obviously, Hostis Humanitis, and there are obvious ways to arrange for them all to hang from the metaphorical yardarm if their existence became common knowledge. Vampirism and the mandatory shirtless noonday parade every Wednesday, for example. 

2: The masquarade is hiding things which would not survive exposure to the public for reasons other than the public setting out to destroy them in moral outrage - Such as: "Magic is real, but finite. All mages share the same source of power. 100 wizards in the world? Power of the greek gods for each one. 1000? Longevity, teleportation, communion with the dead. 10000: Parlor tricks. 100000: "I can make coins come up heads 60% of the time with great effort!"

u/None:

Honestly, the simplest way is if the Muggles just can't, or can't be bothered to, *understand* what your main characters are up to.  You try to explain it to them, and they just get bored or tired and go away to do something else without remembering the real concepts.

I'm reasonably sure this is how most real-life Masquerades are maintained.

u/alexanderwales:

While true, this unfortunately goes contrary to the literary desire to make whatever's being hidden by the Masquerade *as awesome as possible.*

u/DaystarEld:

I think he means that this disinterest would occur through *magical* means.  So no matter how awesome it is, muggles just kinda... forget it. Their attention wanders, they simply can't grasp it.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of that as it seems too effortless, and not really a part of the story, like the Percy Jackson method of maintaining the Masquerade. This would fall under the "overpowered" methods you mention in the OP.

For a realistic masquerade to be just barely maintained, I think the invention of satellites and handheld cameraphones is really the major hurdle. Once that tipping point is reached, it becomes infinitely harder to keep evidence of magic concealed without constant vigilance and an army of wizards going around doing memory charms and wiping videos.  Once the internet shows up? Hoo-boy.

Depending on when they occur, a few slipups here and there won't be a big deal: skepticism of the supernatural grows stronger with every decade. But the sweet spot is that age right after videotaping becomes a thing, but before CGI and editing is powerful enough to artificially create things.

Think about it: if we went back in time and showed The Lord of the Rings to people back when movies were still beginning as a medium, they would be fairly convinced magic was real: either that the whole thing was magic, like a window into another world, or that the events it depicts were real magic, because they couldn't fake visual effects like that.

Nowadays if someone uploads a video from their iphone of someone shooting a fireball, the top comment would be "Awesome effects, what program did you use?"

So yeah, if you want to maintain the masquerade just enough in a rational way, that's the kind of stuff you'll have to deal with. An organization like the MIB, constantly dealing with rogue wizards or magical creatures that don't know or care to avoid leaving evidence.

It's an interesting question, and one I've considered myself for the novel I'm writing, though not as a central focus at all.  I look forward to seeing what you do with it!

(PS: I'm going to get around to reading Metropolitan Man soon, promise :) It's coming up next on my reading list, I've just been swamped with work lately)

u/RMcD94:

>Think about it: if we went back in time and showed The Lord of the Rings to people back when movies were still beginning as a medium, they would be fairly convinced magic was real: either that the whole thing was magic, like a window into another world, or that the events it depicts were real magic, because they couldn't fake visual effects like that.

I mean most of LotR was just make up and stuff so they probably could reasonably imagine that from plays and the such. As well as having stuff like black and white puppet Godzilla's, maybe you're giving them too much discredit.

u/None:

> I think he means that this disinterest would occur through magical means. So no matter how awesome it is, muggles just kinda... forget it. Their attention wanders, they simply can't grasp it.

That's not what I meant, but a Somebody Else's Problem field *is* very effective.

u/ArmokGoB:

Oh, I wouldn't be so sure that matters. I barter with gods from the future, am part of a hivemind, can create infinite worlds with centuries of history with the flick of my fingertips, have several cyborg relatives, wield knowledge that can drive people mad, know techniques to create true persons with my thoughts alone, etc. And people write those of as technicalities and wordplay because getting them wasn't hard or special enough and then they walk away. Bet you will to.

u/DaystarEld:

I don't think it's the method of "getting them" that makes people dismiss such as "wordplay" so much as their uniqueness to you.  Confounding people's expectations only works so long as their expectations are met.

Someone who claims to be able to perform an exothermic reaction on something by touching it might glaze over a listener's gaze, but if they touch something and set it on fire, no one's going to just shrug that off as "Yeah, I can touch things and make them warmer too."  And it's that kind of blatant show of "uniqueness" that needs to be explained away to keep a Masquerade in place.

u/ArmokGoB:

Yea, it doesn't work for things with flashy implementations. The uniqueness thing however... Most of those things mos people COULD do easily, and I'm glad to instruct them if they ask with takes like 10 min, or is true about a fair fraction of random people, but in fact they *don't* do it, or don't *notice* they are those things, rendering it still unique in some senses. 

In the fire example, it's some people going around with fireproof gloves covered in sodium.

u/None:
```
A worthy goal...
```

u/PeridexisErrant:

> Honestly, the simplest way is if the Muggles just can't, or can't be bothered to, understand what your main characters are up to. You try to explain it to them, and they just get bored or tired and go away to do something else without remembering the real concepts.

> I'm reasonably sure this is how most real-life Masquerades are maintained.

This... hurts.  Way too close to home.  

I'm thinking particularly of UF/FAI, climate science (sometimes science in general), and information technology / network governance.

u/None:

> This... hurts. Way too close to home. 
>
>I'm thinking particularly of UF/FAI, climate science (sometimes science in general), and information technology / network governance. 

Exactly my point.

u/Gworn:

I think it's impossible to make the Masquerade believable *without* using some heavy-duty-magic.

If there are a large number of people (thousands or more) involved, who also influence the rest of the world to some degree, it's next to impossible to keep it a secret.
Harry Potter is one of the few instances where I actually bought it. They use magic to make people just overlook their buildings, or suddenly remember an important appointment when they wander too close to a magical area. Coupled with Obliviation, to make people forget stuff they saw, makes it very plausible. Even if they don't get some people with it, the other witnesses won't remember so they just seem crazy. Additionally, it seems like they can use magic on *concepts*, which could mean you even overlook stuff in pictures or videos.

If you only have hiding, blackmail and murder at your disposal, it's hard to see how the Masquerade could ever get off the ground without using hyper-competent people and the rest of humanity being mostly idiots.

(Almost) Everyone *used* to believe in magic, miracles and monsters. The majority only became skeptical (and you can debate how skeptical most people actually are) after people checked again and again and again and never found anything supernatural.

Another point are basic human desires. If there are extremely powerful wizards and/or vampires out there, why don't they rule humanity as a higher caste? That's what I expect would happen over time. To counter that, you'd need the first/most powerful wizard vampires to want to uphold the Masquerade for their own reasons and keep all the others under control.

u/alexanderwales:

> Another point are basic human desires. If there are extremely powerful wizards and/or vampires out there, why don't they rule humanity as a higher caste? That's what I expect would happen over time. To counter that, you'd need the first/most powerful wizard vampires to want to uphold the Masquerade for their own reasons and keep all the others under control.

So ... maybe they do rule the world? Each group has an enormous amount of money and essentially lives in their own little post-scarcity world. If a wizard wants to eat at the best restaurants and spend his time visiting exotic locales, that's his right. Vampires can pretty much do whatever they want so long as they're discreet about who they kill. While both sides are powerful, they're both fairly small, and there would be a fairly large element of risk in revealing themselves, because they're not invulnerable by any means, and they need to sleep.

I don't know, I'll work on it. Thanks for the input.

u/Chronophilia:

I like Mage: the Ascension's. Magic simply doesn't work around Muggles. Or at least, it doesn't work as well, and anything likely to break the Masquerade is also likely to kill the offending mage.

Beliefs affect reality, that's how mages do their work. Muggles don't believe magic exists, so - in the presence of a large enough number of Muggles - it doesn't. Magic has to be done in secret, or at least in the presence of few enough Muggles that the mage's will can overpower theirs.

As a side-effect, any Muggle who figures all this out instantly loses this protection and becomes a juicy target for supernatural creatures. Natural selection ensues.

u/FeepingCreature:

> As a side-effect, any Muggle who figures all this out instantly loses this protection and becomes a juicy target for supernatural creatures. Natural selection ensues.

Ooh, breed for blind. I like.

u/IWantUsToMerge:

> Muggles don't believe magic exists, so - in the presence of a large enough number of Muggles - it doesn't.

I would never want to reify the mind projection fallacy in rational fiction. People are bad enough about confusing perception for reality without being taken through illustrated worlds where they're, to an extent, the same thing.

Or.. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if you introduce profoundly adept conviction-hackers like, immediately.

u/None:

The best version of the Masquerade I've read is in The Laundry series by Charles Stross, where the masquerade is maintained by a large government department who recruits absolutely everyone who sees anything interesting and uses a strong magical geas to stop them talking. [Very good series in other ways too, the 'magic' is based on advanced mathematics]

u/bbrazil:

One option would be to make it look like a conspiracy theory, and seed the world with many similar conspiracy theories to throw people off.

Another would be to hide it in something taboo or commonly ignored, would you notice a secret society among the homeless?

u/AmeteurOpinions:
```
Social workers might.
```

u/Escapement:

I remember the Illuminatus! Trilogy's Illuminati used a variant of the first approach - they appeared to initial members as whatever would allow the new members to be converted, and constantly lied about their history in a multitude of historical sources to obscure their origins and goals, and were motivated to constantly lie about their power and extent of influence because of people's natural tendency to want to join the winning side. The trilogy presented probably >25 contradictory histories of the Illuminati, including everything from the rather mundane Bavarian conspiracy to the out-there Atlantean connections.

u/VorpalAuroch:

> out-there Atlantean connections.

And about five different versions of that. None of which were the true one.

u/Fredlage:

I like the Dresden Files approach to this. At a first, it seems like there isn't even any Masquerade (the main character actually advertises he is a wizard in the yellow pages, and has no compunction about using magic in public) and getting to know about the supernatural stuff is actually pretty easy. However we do see cases where a video showing magic is quickly discredited by the media before vanishing (and those are rare anyway, since magic interferes with technology). The police department in charge of investigating strange occurrences is expected by the higher ups to write creative reports not mentioning anything supernatural, lest the one responsible be demoted and given mandatory psychiatric help. There is no memory erasing or anything, whoever is doing this is just reliant on the fact that "everybody knows there is no such thing as magic" and using some good deal of influence to make sure there isn't any official confirmation. The non human beings generally view involving the mortal authorities on their conflicts as something of a nuclear option, so they try to stay out of sight, and humans in on it know most people would just call them crazy.
It's mostly quite believable, though the author's tendency to go for awesome stuff tends to stretch suspension of disbelief a little. 
There has been no mention of a case where someone deliberately tried to break it (for all that he doesn't hide, the main character also doesn't bother trying to convince people either), but I wouldn't be surprised if those were quietly dealt with by whoever is running the Masquerade.

u/Chronophilia:

> However we do see cases where a video showing magic is quickly discredited by the media before vanishing (and those are rare anyway, since magic interferes with technology).

Clever! Experiments that would seem reasonable to Muggles fail for reasons that you couldn't foresee *unless you already knew about magic*.

And when the wizard tries to defend himself with "oh but the camera won't be able to record it" or "it doesn't work very well if you don't believe in it", he sounds like he's making a bad excuse.

u/DCarrier:

Technology failing near magic only makes it easier to notice the magic. If it didn't, a wizard would have to actually cast a spell before you get video footage. With it, every supernatural being would be a walking blind spot on England's massive network of cameras. Mages would have no way of disguising themselves as muggles.

As for everyone knowing there is no such thing as magic, you have to explain how they all know that. Someone must have been keeping the masquerade up before.

u/Nepene:

I don't think you need a very strong masquerade to make it believable.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/16915/three-four-americans-believe-paranormal.aspx

73% of people in the modern era in the USA already believe in something supernatural.

So just say that while the vast majority of people have had a direct interaction with some sort of magic the conspiracy prevents this knowledge from leaking out into mass media or textbooks and encourages it to be mocked by the scientific elite.

It isn't strongly suppressed, numerous corporations, the military, and parts of the government regularly use magic and research it (according to publicly available records), there are hosts of tv shows and magazines about magic, there are many organizations that actively work to promote belief in magic, there are many youtube videos of magic, but thanks to the lack of mass media and rigorous science no one's really sure exactly what the magic does.

u/pedanterrific:

What's the scale of problem we're talking about? For instance, a Masquerade that can stay intact despite intelligent people who are in on the secret actively attempting to betray that secret to the world needs to be much stronger than one in which everyone in the conspiracy is on the same page. Is it just a mundane conspiracy, are there visible large-scale effects (people with superpowers duking it out in populated areas), are we trying to hide whole species of uncooperative megafauna (dragon preserves), what?

u/alexanderwales:

One of the stories I'm thinking about trying to finish has two different ones:

* Order of wizards, 2K-10K strong, hide in the shadows and accumulate their vast wealth in secret - new members are inducted carefully, and there's never much need to use magic out in the open.
* Coven of vampires, 2K-10K strong, spontaneously combust in direct sunlight, need *x* pints of blood per week to survive, controls a vast wealth thanks to the the advanced age of their oldest members, inducts new members carefully. Vampires have fangs (which they mostly file down) but otherwise appear more or less like pale humans.

The story takes place in the 1970s, prior to the invention of mass home video recording. I'm sort of wavering on all of the above points, since I'd like these masquerades to be as large as possible while still being believable. Neither side has access to memory modification, just lots of money, connections, and killing intent. This is more or less my take on the masquerade - small enough societies with strong enough incentives that it's conceivable that the secret wouldn't spill out. But even two thousand members with no dissent that's not instantly squelched seems a little iffy.

u/pedanterrific:

It seems like the main difficulty is the coordination problem of preventing betrayal. The actual Masquerade is just "don't do anything supernatural in public", otherwise they're pretty much the Freemasons. (Well, I guess the vampires might have an incentive not to have legal existences to avoid something like jury duty that might get them attention for not being willing to go out in the sun.)

One option would be some explicitly supernatural means of solving coordination problems. Magically-enforced contracts, truth serums, vampire hypnotic gaze; but all that is very much inventing the nuke to swat a fly. 

Well, before that, is there a particular danger of whistleblowing in the first place? Why would a wizard or vampire *want* to expose themselves to Muggles, just sheer altruism?

u/None:

Another way of looking at this is to look for real world masquerade type cases. Secret research projects would count, but are probably to low scale for your needs. Organised crime may be a better one, people have a vague idea of whats going on but there's never enough evidence to prove anything conclusively, and they use various front organisations for plausible deniability. So what real world thing what be a plausible cover for your magic? 

E.g. schizophrenia doesnt really exist, but there are muggles who have attracted the attention of demons. Or SARS was actually a series of possession incidents.

u/alexanderwales:

The big thing that vampires need a cover for are always staying out of sunlight, getting blood from somewhere, being impossibly old, and the fangs.

* Explained as photophobia or a rare skin condition, on those occasions when it actually comes up. Bursting into flame on contact with sunlight happens rarely enough that we can just call it spontaneous combustion.
* Blood banks are an old standby. Maybe there are more missing persons than in baseline reality, kept in dungeons and used for once-monthly blood donations.
* Easy enough to switch identities prior to the computer era if you've got enough money and few connections with the world.
* Find a trusted dentist and file them away. Or find an untrustworthy dentist and eat him afterwards.

The big thing that wizards need a cover for is wealth generation (they can pull matter from thin air), since they very rarely have cause to use their combat abilities.

* Cook the books. Inventory shows that you always had that pallet of gold bars just sitting there in storage.
* Own a couple of mines, make tours every few months to seed new metals.

The vampires are much more problematic, simply because they have so much more restrictions on them. I'll have to think on it some more.

u/None:

I bet you there are hundreds of eccentric rich people who have never been seen by the public in the day time. "My employer values his privacy and as such his only public appearances are at these evening charity galas."
Hell there's lots of people in any large city who work night shifts or have strange sleep schedules and nobody cares. If no one is looking for vampires they have no reason to care. 

The practicalities can be dealt with by having massive piles of money and/or mind control powers. Billionaire with weird fetish is far more plausible than vampire. Or make up a disease that requires frequent transfusions and get it covered by insurance. 

Wizard is easy, just do standard money laundering jobs. Especially good would be antiques dealer. 

The main point is that being in plain sight with a plausible excuse is much easier than hiding entirety.

u/darvistad:

Monitoring and controlling your own personnel would help considerably. Supernaturals usually have some sort of convenient mind magic. They could easily turn it on themselves to keep their population under a collective geas to maintain the masquerade and root out anyone who could be a security risk. This is similar to the approach taken in Charles Stross's *The Laundry* series.

This could allow you to have a relatively large secret society without the tremendous overhead that comes with real covert organizations. It might also give the supernaturals a way to stay secret without being so powerful that secrecy starts to seem irrelevant. 10,000 wizards might have the resources to keep 10,000 wizards in line without being able to do the same for 7 billion muggles.

I'd also give a little thought to history of the Masquerade. Why was it necessary to hide? What, if anything, stopped your supernaturals from simply presenting themselves as gods at the dawn of history and ruling openly from that point on? How would non-wizard/vampire/shapeshifting 4th dimensional reptile religions ever get a foothold? And if they did do this once, why were they later demonized to the point where the only option for survival was living in the shadows? The answers to these questions could help determine how powerful your supernaturals are and what means they could use to stay secret.

u/MugaSofer:

Well, if your vampires don't have mind control, I'm not sure they even qualify as vampires. (Set the wizards aside for now, since they're sufficiently varied I'm not sure what you actually *mean* by wizard.)

So it's a question of how *little* mind control we can get away with, because we don't want to inadvertently turn this into a Philip K Dick novel.

Full-on memory erasure is definitely overkill. Muggle-only memory erasure would be a nice handwave, but it only works if we don't have any muggle PCs.

Muggle servants, friends, lovers etc. are probably good, because they're probably addicted to blood or hypnotized or something anyway. So we have three main threats: bystanders, accidents, and lunatics.

Bystanders can probably be neutralized as a serious threat with a little social engineering, assuming our superpowers aren't *too* flashy. Really, what cop is going to conclude *vampires must be real* because a witness came in talking crazy? Hell, most vampire-y actions are probably sufficiently mundane to be written off as merely weird by witnesses.

Accidents are harder. You mentioned that vamps explode spectacularly in sunlight, which ... well, if you say so. That makes it actually pretty hard to screw up - I mean, you can never be seen in daylight and that's a pretty obvious pattern, but ultimately vampires who do anything vaguely public are liable to suffer natural selection.

Victims who escape can, obviously, be killed. If there are other issues - mirrors, counting, photography, whatever - then this only confirms that vampires are basically enforced recluses who leave only to seduce a victim and take them home. Which, honestly, sucks. Maybe tone down the weaknesses, a la *Dracula* or *Lost Boys*?

Finally, what do you do if a vampire *tries* to tell the world? You mock them, of course. Pop-culture is already seeded, much like regular conspiracy theories genuinely helped suppress the NSA thing.

Ultimately, there's very little you can do that would prove to the world that vampires exist - over time, sure, but by then the offending individual sadly committed suicide. They were obviously mentally disturbed.

u/AmeteurOpinions:

Poor communication systems are a must. There was an XKCD that I can't find now, which said something along the lines of humans proving bigfoot doesn't exist by way of everyone being equipped with a camera in their cellphone. 

If strange incidents are happening across the land, only people who regularly travel a lot and observe their environment in great detail would notice anything. Many villages could have their own "ghost stories" but only someone who travelled to a bunch of villages and learned a *lot* of "ghost stories" would notice a pattern (in most fiction, this is the type of person who is "in on it", so to speak [go figure]).

With this in mind, you could probably keep up a Masquerade without *too* much effort, especially if magic is available. But once the Cold War happened and people started becoming super-suspicious of each other and, most importantly, *lots of people in powerful government positions* become suspicious, it becomes much harder to hide significant activity. 

It's perfectly possible to have worlds almost completely cut-off from our own (the Alternate Dimension stereotype) but these can't really have too much interaction thereof, and what trades do occur must happen through trustworthy agents.

*Pact* runs its Masquerade by allowing magical events a path-of-least-resistance interpretation to non-Practitioners (the doll/Midge fight becoming an obese woman throwing things at bystanders for one). I don't really want to go into magical systems here because there's simply too many ways to do it.

u/lehyde:

> There was an XKCD that I can't find now

[Here](http://xkcd.com/1235/) is is.

u/MugaSofer:

It's quite hard to hide from a sufficiently dedicated searcher.

It's easier to hide when they already believe there's nothing to search for in the first place.

It's easi*est* to hide when, deep down, they don't *want* to find you.

***

In more detail:

If you're competent enough, blatant invisibility and/or extremely tight security can probably work ... for a while. But any leaks can and eventually *will* escalate and tear the whole thing apart.

Deliberate disinformation and/or making the truth extremely low-status is more effective, although there will always be outliers - who have an inherent tactical advantage, by virtue of being right.

Persuading anyone who comes close that - for whatever reason - they *really* don't want to expose you is very, very effective. If you can do it.

Attack the motivation, and they won't *try* to outsmart you.

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[BST] Maintaining the Masquerade

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