Transcript
A young woman sits on her couch holding a phone, looking incredulously at an online video.
Woman: Have you seen the special effects on this goblin? They look ridiculous!
Doorbell: Ding dong!
An agent in a suit and sunglasses stands in the doorway with a stern expression. The tips of colorful butterfly wings are showing on either side of his shoulders.
Agent: Are you user dragn4rt? You’ve viewed and liked what no mortal should see. You’ll have to come with me.
Woman: Come with… are you wearing fairy wings?
Agent: No.
The agent looks sheepish.
Woman: Okay look, if it’s about the bad goblin video I made, I’m going to improve the special effects, just as soon as –
Agent: Wait, you made the video?
The doorway shows only the bottom of the agent’s legs as they float upward.
Woman: With my buddies. I’m still new at it but –
Woman: Hello?
P.S. Our bills are paid by our wonderful patrons. Could you chip in?
Funnily enough, I’m right now writing an urban fantasy story where the people maintaining the masquerade mass-produce fake special effects videos of the supernatural. That way, genuine recordings of wizards casting fireballs gain less attention and lose credibility. Not a fool-proof cover-up method, but good enough to spread skepticism among the general population (although plenty of people still believe these videos are real and some scientists search for the genuinely supernatural stuff).
That reminds me of a page on TV Tropes, especially the masquerade section. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/IfIAmEverHeadOfAnAlienMonitoringAgency). I think you’l find it kind of funny, if a bit corny.
Thanks for that link, TVTropes’ Just For Fun pages are always an excellent read.
I take quite a lot of inspiration from TVTropes, but that idea was one I found on the r/rational subreddit.
Wait, you can make links with this thing?
Anyway, the Woman proved that even a blind squirrel can find a nut. Or in this case, you can make an accurate image of a goblin without having never seen one.
Although, if real goblins look like bad CGI, how many would believe their eyes after seeing one?
Hey Xyder, quick editor’s note: While I’m sure you didn’t mean it this way, sayings like “even a blind squirrel can find a nut” are a type of ableist language that we don’t allow on Mythcreants, as they inherently paint disabled people as incapable or incompetent.
I’m not deleting anything because this kind of language is really imbedded in modern slang and I don’t think you were being malicious, just try to avoid it in the future.
Yeah, it wasn’t appropriate of me.
Come to think of it, idioms for someone succeeding by accident are surprisingly nasty.
No worries, Xyder, thanks for understanding.
In my setting there is magic, but noone tries to make a masquerade about it, it’s just low level, so is hard to pick out a real wizard from a fake one. People always thinks there is a trick.
It will go from low level to full blown “goblinization” so, while metahumans will be less in numbers their powers prevent them to being opressed (and natural division between different factions prevent them to overpower humans as a whole).
A fairy-winged Man In Black. :-D
Just the visual alone. :-))
This could only be improved by a visible earpiece cable, like the Secret Service Presidential Protection Detail agents have in Hollywood movies.
Keep up the great work! ;-)
The fairies should hire them to do more videos with fake goblins, fairies, etc. After all, the more obvious it is that those are faked videos, the easier it is that nobody will believe the real magic in videos.
On the other hand, I find the ‘masquerade’ in the Dresden Files rather funny, now that I’ve started reading the series (late, I know). There is no masquerade, humans without magic simply ignore everything supernatural.
If I want to begin a story with a masquerade only to have it broken later on, what’s the best way to foreshadow breaking it? In the story I am planning, demons have started invading Earth from another dimension, threatening the secrecy of the veil. I haven’t fleshed out the details yet, although having the other dimension exposed for the first time is a plot point that comes up later on.
I think it’s enough to just provide a believable reason why it hasn’t been broken earlier and what is different now.
Thanks. I’ll take it into consideration.