Grrl Power #456 – Supernatural police brutality
Basically Ingsol is saying that if you’re planning on enslaving humanity or something else dramatic that will blow the show for everyone else, like trying to wipe out another Council race in a loud and bloody war, either get it done before the Council finds out or, well, die. Possibly you’ll go to supernatural Sing Sing, but if the Council has to mobilize forces against you, it won’t end well.
That’s why there is an uncommon civility among the representatives. The biggest troublemakers over the centuries have been dealt with, or at least they manage to keep their murderous biases to themselves. That isn’t to say there aren’t disagreements and shouting matches at meetings, or even violence outside of the meetings, but they know if anything happens on a scale that taxes the Veil’s ability to conceal their activity from humans, the council will shut them down with extreme prejudice. Newly made supernaturals, in the case of Vampires or any other propagating race are given “The Speech,” something actually rather similar to what Maxima said at the press conference. “You’re a Vampire now, congratulations. I know you feel like a big bad ass, and compared to your average human you mostly are, but believe me, there are bigger and badder things out there, including other vampires who have centuries of feeding and experience on you, and they can and will kick the shit out of you if you go try and feed on some anchor during the 6:00 o’clock news, so mind your P’s and Q’s.”
That would sort of suck, becoming a vampire with all those amazing powers, mwoo hah hah! But then finding out you’re just at the bottom of a whole new food chain. I guess that’s kind of the point of a whole lot of supernatural fiction… except for the kind that involves the newbie being “the one” cause their great great grandfather was a mummy and their grandmother was Demeter’s niece and their roommate got a blood transfusion from a cloned dinosaur or whatever.
I’m not sure if I’ve broken some rule of good sequential art storytelling by having the three in the gallery jump in to the conversation like that, but then again maybe I’m too used to the Sydney meet and greet method of introducing characters. Sometimes people jump into a conversation before she gets to spend two pages grilling them. Anyway they’re proper character we’ll meet later, I didn’t just stick them in to nudge the conversation in the direction I wanted.
So sigils. The word sigil, it turns out it means… you know the fancy pentagram people draw when showing a spell, plus all the runes and designs? Apparently that is a sigil. Probably not a big surprise to most of you, but I always thought a sigil was a building. I’m not sure why, maybe cause it sounds like vigil, and someone in a watchtower is vigilant, or at least should be. I don’t know. Anyway, in my story they’re that fancy spell design stuff, and a kind of building, or at least a part of a building. Which I’m sure can be confusing to the people who maintain them, because the Sigils are covered in… well, not sigils, but runes. Still, you can’t see the floor in panel 4, but I bet there’s a big fancy sigil on the floor around the base of that pillar.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon as soon as I get up. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)
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Yup, called it. The Council are the bad guys, Archon is collaborating with them, making them just as guilty.
And you can’t call it apathy anymore. It’s not that people don’t care to investigate further, but you have giant mind control towers planted all over the world to make sure the livestock don’t think, don’t see, don’t do anything except consume and get consumed.
Like, fuck man, this is 1987 Orwellian “The Live” levels of evil!
But… I get the feeling this is just going to get lampshaded, and Sydney isn’t going to do diddly squat about it.
It’s like you didn’t read any of it at all :I
No, he makes a very good point. In order to maintain their anonymity they have implemented a massive mind control scheme. Who amongst the population would willingly choose to be so manipulated? No one (or almost no one, there are always a small number would prefer to bury their heads in the sand rather than know the truth), which leaves only the conclusion that this is an inimical mind control done without the consent of the entire world population.
There are an incredible amount of way this can go bad, and the ways it can go bad are the plots of a large number of novels and movies.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, etc.
Except it’s NOT mind control, it’s perceptual inhibition. A major part of the premise of ‘They Live’ was that they were broadcasting subliminal messages that helped enforce a socioeconomic system of slavery. This falls more under the right to privacy. No one should have to air their horrid alien dangelies in public if they’re not causing any harm. Yes abuse of that system is a concern, but systematic abuse that could come of outing people’s personal information just as if not more significant a concern.
Mmm… I don’t think it falls under the right to privacy.
Put yourself in Anvil’s place for instance. Maybe you would dance and even make out with an alien reptil guy anyway, but it should be your choice. Not being human is not a minor thing.
If everyone you ever knew and loved was secretly a dendritically motivated sack of structurally reinforced plasma, would it matter?
If not for the “plasma” part that could as well be a human being :)
If someone intentionally deceive me, yes, it matter.
Plasma as in blood plasma, so yes spot on. I was being cheeky by describing a human in a very loose ‘ugly bags of water’ way.
Barring significant romantic investment I don’t see how ‘oh actually I breathe through spiracles and have photoreceptors in my skin’ instead of eyes’ is a bigger revelation that ‘I dye my hair’. That’s at least a third date question territory, just before the ‘do you ever want kids’ and ‘do you care if they’re grown in an ootheca’ discussions respectively.
Seriously though, intentional deception by omission happens all the time. People don’t run around introducing themselves at bars by saying ‘Hi, I’m bob and I’m 16 cm, uncircumcised and I only have my left nut. I took an ill-advised dare involving porpoises.’ There’s just no reason for anyone to need to know that unless they’re trying to get in your pants. If you’re just dancing then no, you don’t have an obligation to share information with people that is potentially harmful to you and completely insignificant to the person you’re dancing with.
Oh and John? We love you, but you’re adopted.
Heh, sneaky :) I took it as the fourth state of the matter and went off on a tangent. Should read less scifi :)
Keeping personal stuff private is not deception at all, it’s your right.
People constantly run around introducing themselves by means of their external aspect. My look tell things about me that others use to make decisions: if I seem a woman, if I seem a grownup, if I seem a Star Trek fan, whatever. It’s not my call which of those things is “completely insignificant” to you and which no. It’s yours.
If I know you could be making a decision based on my disguise, then yes, I’m obliged to inform you about that or do not accept the interaction. It’s the right thing to do. Even if it’s “just” to dance. Seriously.
I do concur that if there’s no interaction then there’s no harm.
Careful, Duende…because while I agree the differences are a little more dramatic in this case, you came very close to endorsing the kind of outing that frequently gets gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, and trans people assaulted, battered, fired from jobs, and even murdered. Granted, trans people don’t survive off of drinking blood, but on the other hand it seems that so far, the vampires on the council use willing “donors” who survive the drinking, so the comparison to say, a couple of bdsm folk whose actions would grate against norms but harm no one (without consent anyway, and only up to nonlethal limits) is probably more apt.
it also sounds like the council is regularly ensuring that nobody goes rogue and murders humans – if that’s the case, then we’re on fairly neutral territory here, and you could compare them to Native sovereign nations… Of course, if you have carefully followed Native rights issues you also know that sometimes hiding your important places is a high priority when a great number of people hate you or want to get rid of you (see: the Dakota Pipeline debacle, wherein as soon as the company who wanted to get the Natives out immediately exploited the list of sites that should be protected on that land to bulldoze sacred things to distract Native protesters from the riverside protest site).
until the general populace has truly and gradually acclimated to the existence of the Weird, it’s probably safest for sentient sapient nonhuman people if they have some degree of The Masquerade in place. After all, for every goth millennial who would think vampires are the bees knees, there’s bound to be at least one or more conservative religious or just plain fearful people who would kill them as soon as look at them, either because they assume they’re demons or simply based on assuming they regularly eat people. We already have people in droves who assume all Muslims are terrorists because of a small population of extremists, so I don’t see literal vampires not getting some (speciesist?) flak.
of course, damage to one or more of these structures would probably cause mass outages of the glamour and then widespread panic. So if that never comes up as a plot point I’ll be surprised and disappointed;)
+1 jw</b
(for the comment itself, rather than as a reflection on the preceding comment)
Honestly, if we’re bringing Anvil and her date into this, I would be more concerned about biological incompatibilities. Anything that gets *ahem* “injected” into her could have serious health repercussions.
(There’s a really good treatise out there on why the odds are astronomically against Superman being able to get Lois pregnant and, at the high level, biological incompatibility was one of them. As was pointed out, Lois was more likely to get pregnant from an ear of corn than from an alien that comes from a completely extraterrestrial ecosystem.)
Who says it affects people like that?
Why not just a magical disguise configured to only be seen by humans, as opposed to affecting them directly.
Though, I also have this commented lower on the page…We don’t have hard wording that the Veil is actually any sort of mind control device. Only that it “supresses human awareness of supernatural creatures and events”.
Using a different example than below…If someone put a parachute dome over your car and was systematically, though quietly, disassembling it, your perception of the events transpiring would be suppressed. That does not mean your mind is being controlled just that you are being made ignorant of what’s going on by lack of sensory input actually reaching you.
The Veil could basically just be a giant magical blanket that covers things in a similar manner.
I got the vibe of this being a choice forced on the supernaturals by changing environmental conditions (.i.e. humans were developing tech and aggregating knowledge to be used against supernaturals). It was either do this or eventually get hunted into extinction.
There is a big problem in dealing with creatures who use humans as prey species and are also sapient. Is it acceptable for humans to exterminate another thinking species who has no choice in their actions (i.e. obligate humanivore)? Or do the rules of evolution take precedence? Is there some benefit to humanity for harboring this parasite, or do the parasite’s liabilities vastly outweigh any benefits to the host species?
No good answer here, but it seems to me that the supernaturals have found a way to co-exist with humanity in a tentative fashion. This is more than humanity has managed to do amongst itself. The cost is admittedly high (assuming humans are still being killed), but they’re clearly working on a better solution and they have apparently had a positive impact on their relations with humanity.
Not saying your post is invalid – you’ve hit on some very important points. Most landmarks can be seen from multiple peaks, however. The truth will lie somewhere in the middle.
I like what you said. We can’t look at creatures like vampires as inherently evil because they feed on humans. Yes we’re sentient, but so are the vampires and they do outrank us on the food chain. We can however defend ourselves against them, the same way a buffalo would fight back against a hunter if given a chance.
Do they really out rank us? If we knew about them we would kill them. Period.
Those that arent slain out right are “studied” with “nerve-weasles” And what happens if we find some benefit to harvesting The source of this blood borne magical pathogen with useful medical purposes?
Ever seen a Factory Farm? Go ahead and do a you tube search. i ll be right here when your done.
…
That is what vampires; as we understand them to be, ‘know’ is waiting for them when they come out of the coffin. .
Blast the lack of an edit feature!
Thank you. This sums up my feelings just fine.
I have a lot of people I want to reply to, but first I wanted to thank Oberon for his comment.
Larei says: “Except it’s NOT mind control, it’s perceptual inhibition.”
“Perceptual inhibition” is technically mind control. You can slap a fancy label on it, but that’s what it is. Perception is in the mind, and the council is controlling them. It’s almost exactly the same thing as They Live, and the government is collaborating with these predators to allow them to feed on people.
Weatherheight says: “There is a big problem in dealing with creatures who use humans as prey species and are also sapient.”
Yes. The problem is they’re feasting on people. Full stop.
“Is it acceptable for humans to exterminate another thinking species who has no choice in their actions(?)”
This isn’t about extermination. This is about protecting yourself. Humanity is being lied to so that predators can have their way with the men, women, and children of the world. This is wrong.
Bedovian said: “We can’t look at creatures like vampires as inherently evil because they feed on humans.”
It’s not about evil or good. It’s about the fact that there’s a massive conspiracy to prevent the entire human population, literally billions of people, from knowing the truth. That they are food, that they are slaves. And they will continue to be slaves until some heroes pull together to take down these towers and free the minds of the people.
David K. Storr says: “I suspect that some humans are still being eaten, robbed, mind-controlled, etc and the Council isn’t doing anything about it. In that case the Council is aiding and abetting all those crimes and is effectively in a state of war with humanity.”
Precisely. You get a gold star.
I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen They Live yet, but I feel I need to see it; I behoove everyone else to see it, too.
Either way, here are the facts. Vampires, a species that preys upon humans, have mind control towers set up all over the planet. These tower prevent humans from seeing supernatural beings (including aliens). The government knows about this, and is withholding this information from the people.
If this were really happening, you bet your ass I’d want to know.
…
Hell, Snowden was arrested for blowing the whistle on far less.
Because, of course, humans are the ultimate end of creation and should never, in any circumstance, be less than the kings of all creation. And anyone who threatens that deserves what they get.
Consider that the current situation is a step down from the previous situation – cold war versus hot war, or maybe detente. Consider the consequences of telling the world that your neighbor may be a horrible monster. People in our world get killed all the time for being aliens / vessels of Satan / possessed by demons. Imagine the response if all those things were demonstrably real.
Or not. Pretty sure you’ve made up your mind and aren’t open to possible other viewpoints.
And point of information – Edward Snowden has not been arrested; charges have been filed in federal court against Edward Snowden for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property. He has received asylum in Russia, initially for a period of one year and later extended for three years. IMO, it seems unlikely he will ever leave Russia nor is it likely he will be extradited by Russia.
The consequences of actualizing supernatural identity would be the exact opposite. The accused would not be killed as they are now, they would instead be revered and worshiped, or at least feared and avoided.
Sci-Fi authors typically misunderstand human emotion in this respect – people are killed for being “supernatural” precisely because the chosen method of condemnation is nonsensical. There is zero chance of eye-for-eye retribution. At worst, you might be imprisoned for being “crazy,” which typically carries a much shorter sentence for a given crime.
Now change the situation so these beings are real, and probably an organized force. Suddenly it’s so convenient to kill these people anymore; there’s a bonafide risk of being killed yourself if you so much as insult the group they represent.
Simply put, people do not kill others for being demons and witches out of fear. It’s just convenience.
Psychological tests seem to indicate that the perception of threat and the actuality of threat produce similar results. As you say, some people will react with worship, some will react with fear, but it is also reasonable that some will react with violence. Violence tends to escalate unless acted on by outside mediating forces.
Your assumption that an organized force will be formidable is true; however, terrorist forces have made it plain that asymmetrical warfare is not only possible but is the likely outcome of non-comparable forces coming into conflict without mediation (and, sadly, all to often with mediation being a part of their interactions).
Another assumption is that people weigh consequences before acting – I can assure you, one look at the prison population of the United States provides more than adequate counterargument. While many people are good at this, not all people are, and to use the vernacular, “one apple can upset the apple cart.” Take a look at those around you – do all of these people make decisions that are not only in their own best interest but also in the interest of those around them?
Chauvinists and bigots of any stripe are not affected by reason or rationality – people hate because they’ve been taught to hate by people they trust or because they are afraid. The fact that the Council has implemented the Sigils at all is a double edged sword – as has been well pointed out, it indicates an unwillingness to talk openly – that’s not good if taken at base value. But if they have a reasonable fear of being exterminated (and I feel it’s not unreasonable), then that action is not only reasonable but indicates a willingness to police themselves. Not ideal as it is, but it is a starting place.
I wish I had your faith in the nature of humans, but history has shown that fear is a common reason to kill. So is unwillingness to share resources and / or power, or willingness to limit ones own’s greed for the benefit of others.
Interesting fact: cognitive research indicates humans typically decide first then rationalize that decision; the next step is analysis of that decision, but that doesn’t happen nearly as often as you might expect. This is a survival mechanism – taking time to closely analyze something might lead to being eaten by a large carnivore with sharp pointy teeth. Better to act first and make up a reason later.
In short, you have a point, but people aren’t as rational as you believe them to be.
Considering higher in this very comment chain is
“Do they really out rank us? If we knew about them we would kill them. Period.” I think the council have a good reason to not want an open global war with mankind, and instead stick to the Masquerade.
“Because, of course, humans are the ultimate end of creation and should never, in any circumstance, be less than the kings of all creation. And anyone who threatens that deserves what they get.”
I have not seen anyone in this thread suggest that, and I think it’s a bit of a strawman. Here’s the argument that I and others are making:
1) Many supernatural beings have frequent non-social interactions of various kinds with humans: vampires drink blood, succubi eat tantric energy, etc.
2) Many humans would not want to participate in those interactions — they would not want to be fed on, they would not want to have sex with a non-human, etc.
3) Being fed on by a succubus is apparently mind-blowingly awesome, and there’s an implication that the same is true for vampires. That doesn’t change the fact that some humans would prefer it not happen.
4) Some (many? all?) supernatural creatures have abilities that render consent either questionable or impossible. Succubi have hypno-everything (especially boobs) that will effectively compel a human to have sex with them. In a lot of mythology vampires have the same sort of ability — jury is out on whether it’s true in the Grrlverse. If you don’t want to (have sex / be fed on) and your are compelled to then you have been harmed — raped and/or battered, at least.
5) We have a canon example (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1432) of Dabbler mind controlling a woman into attacking her friends. This is very literally mindrape. There is absolutely zero reason to believe that Dabbler is an exception and that no other supernatural being abuses their powers in such a way.
6) Points 1-5 demonstrate that the supernatural are threats to humans. I hope that it’s not necessary to argue the statement “humans should have the right to defend themselves against threats.”
7) The Veil is a mind-affecting spell that prevents more than 7 billion people from defending themselves against the above-described threats, because it prevents them from knowing that those threats exist.
If the above isn’t enough for you, then let me add another point:
8) Some supernaturals clearly have abilities that are positive for humans, such as healing spells. Dabbler’s amnesia hammer might or might not be useful for treating PTSD and trauma — it would be trivial to find out with a reputable medical trial. The Veil prevents humans from having access to these things. That means people are literally dying because humans don’t know about the supernatural and therefore cannot cooperate with supernatural beings in symbiotic ways.
So, yes. The Veil is evil. Millions of people are dying every year, either due to predation or to not having access to supernatural benefits, who would not have died if the Veil did not exist. An unknown but non-trivial more are being battered (e.g. vampire feeding) and raped (succubi feeding) because the Veil exists. And please, for the love of all things, don’t say “succubi sex / vampire feeding is not rape/battery because the victim enjoys it and doesn’t object.” If someone influences you to have sex through a method that you literally cannot deny, then it’s rape.
1) Yes. However all the examples we have seen have been consensual, and in knowledge of the act and who is involved.*
2) Agreed. Barring the consensual and aware ones. Which may represent the majority of the cases. We have no indication of how widespread abuses are.
3) Agreed.
4) Agreed. Do appreciate though that both Dabbler and the succubus delegate have acted within the bounds of human normal behaviour (albeit at the slutty end). Note Dabbler turning Sydney away when she got herself attracted by the hypnoboobs.
Dabbler clearly fancies Maxima, and could increase her ability to the level where Maxima could not resist. We know that Maxima is vulnerable to mental attacks due to Vehemence affecting her. Yet Dabbler does not because it would be wrong. Humans can rape people. But we do not condemn them all because some are rapists. Until we see more of what is actually happening, under the cover of the Veil we should not prejudge things.
5) I disagree that this is mindrape. It was self defence. I discuss this in detail below.
You say this too sweepingly. And your arguments above fail to constrain it to just any abusers. As such your statement is very similar to citing some (weak) examples of possible abuse by some [ethnic minority] then saying “[ethnic minority] are threats to us”.
Now you are invoking something which incorporates the right to kill. Not having placed limitations, this can be read as “we have the right to kill [ethnic minority], in self defence”.
Then swap out [ethnic minority] and insert your ethnic group, to see if you would be happy on having this line of argument turned on you.
Note that I am not accusing you of intending it that way. I am just pointing out dangers inherent in that type of argument.
7) Agreed. Subject to the above caveats. However it does require pointing out that you are failing to acknowledge that it is also protecting the hidden races from persecution.
The Spanish Inquisition spent a protracted period of history persecuting Jews, Muslims and other perceived threats to Spain. Something which modern Spanish governments have officially apologised for and consider to have been a major mistake.
If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
* Albeit that Barbarian considered Dabbler to be a super, rather than an alien.
All of that is completely unsubstantiated and unsupported by your previous points.
Sorry, I missed point 8) and the above. Point 8) is well made though and a good argument for doing away with the Veil. However it is self-evident that such an act would result in millions of deaths, if done precipitously.
If you could come up with a good way it could be done, which would prevent the persecution of the formerly hidden races, and the potential extinction of humanity, as they fought back, then that would be most constructive.
Until a foolproof plan is developed though, somebody is going to have to police the Veil hidden abuses. And it sounds like Archon are already starting to take on some of the workload.
Of course its mind control.(and I hate non-consensual mind screwery) This comic has always been pretty OK with mind control as long as its only used by, “a good guy”. (or in Dabbler’s case good “bad girl” [yes what she does is specialized mind/perception altering and its as effective as she needs it to be{and some of it can’t even be completely turned off as its built into her physically??}])
Its not as concerned with controlling every little aspect of human behavior as “They Live” was but in one specialized area yes I can see the disturbing similarities in what little it does do.(little only in comparison to “They Live”)
Human prey thing is a big problem. If it’s still happening unpoliced. Pretty sure DaveB won’t have it be that way. Probably we will see that they are working to police their own as if their rights were no greater than Human rights under the supervision of human agencies like Archon which seems to either have a seat on the Council or functionally has one (or two if they count twice as both humans and Supers?). Basically, now that Archon (or its predecessor in the past) is given this mush insight into the Council and seems to have influence over how it works (a seat? two?) pissing them off or doing dastardly things to their charges (humans) would be automatically endanger the whole “coexistence” bit cause Archon and similar agencies would make it so. And so the Council would not allow such things to happen if they could stop it or help Archon/agencies stop it.
A big deal was made out of showing us vampires feeding and when they were called on it the VAMPIRES made a big deal out of how it was a free willed act instead of simply telling Sydney to mind her own business as they were within their rights on the Council in some way or another. So apparently when needed individual humans are allowed to know and work with them on this “feeding” issue.
Its likely that feeding until death isn’t necessary for any of the Council represented creatures. In DaveB’s world I’m betting all of them can stop short while the “whatever” part of the human they ate is still something that can be regrown like that regenerating part of the human’s energy (soul?) that Dabbler feeds off of. (or they got spells/supers or both that can help people regenerate)
I’m actually more concerned with Dabbler and her ilk than the vamps cause her abilities are so much a part of her I’m not really sure anybody is completely out of her “influence” when they agree to be fed on.(unless they agree before meeting her which is possible but not how we’ve seen it done so far) But besides that one objection (which I’ve already been slapped down on before by the other commenters) I think we will find that all the civilized law abiding members of these races will get consent first. That’s just how Dave does things.
Hmmm the next few things after that are also answered by the consent of human “prey” so moving on.
OK, so I agree this is still not good because mind control, on any level, without prior informed consent is just plain wrong.(even if all they make you do is something you “might” have done anyway. That’s how much I dislike it.) I frankly hate it and its made me uncomfortable when reading this comic before as its been around in one form or another for a long time here.
About the only chance I can see this working out in a “The Good Guys and the people they work for actually are mostly good/well intentioned.” kind of way is if Archon and its predecessor(s?) actually have been slowly working towards a plan to make supernaturals publicly known in the most peaceful transition possible.(start with the pretty pretty Feys [people should be more scared of them but they never are at face value]) That would be a nice, “Its a bad situation but we’re working towards making it better everyday.” end to this little dastardly magical invention of necessity.
Soo, we agree on some points but not all and not to the degree that you feel.
Meant to post this a long time ago but it wasn’t being allowed. (happens from time to time for some reason…)
“I frankly hate it and its made me uncomfortable when reading this comic before as its been around in one form or another for a long time here. ”
I’m with you on the fact that Dabbler’s aura is morally questionable at best. For that matter, she has mindraped someone right in front of us: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1432. With one kiss, Dabbler made a woman attack her friends.
That said, I’m glad this stuff is here. The greyscale morality is much more interesting than a normal comic book black/white would be. DaveB is saying “imagine there are things that have these powers, what happens as a result?” That’s a really compelling story.
I don’t know if framing it that way will make it more palatable for you, but I thought I’d suggest it.
I’m not as fussed about that incident as you are. When you are in a life or death situation, you use whatever techniques are at your disposal, to ensure your survival.
In the debriefing Dabbler confirmed that she mainly had lethal capabilities (such as her rail gun) and will work on developing non-lethal ones. However Maxima had ordered that non-lethal takedowns be used, where possible. So which to use was at Dabbler’s discretion. Rightly so, given that the team had been taken by surprise, by a much larger force, who were using lethal attacks.
If you were in that fight would you have preferred to have death by fireball? Have a think about that, and the fact that, it would likely be several minutes before you died of the burns (a 100% burn victim would be unlikely to make it to Super-Doc).
And also bear in mind that this is the super-power of one of the fantastic four, so is genre appropriate. Or would you prefer to have been mind-controlled? With all the loss of self-control you are complaining about.
The latter though can be fine-tuned. Telling you not to go for lethal kills yourself. So that, at the end of the fight, you have not killed anyone. Nor, as it turns out, do you die, because your (former) allies did not want to kill you either.
Personally I too hate the idea of being mind-controlled. But in a life-or-death fight, I would opt to come out breathing, and with the prospect of happy pain-free life ahead. Therapy sessions, for any lingering trauma, would be better than getting earthworm massages, on my corpse.
Further if my only super-power was mind-control, and I got into a kill-or-be-killed situation, I guarantee you I would not be dying, but that other people would be mind-controlled. Finally, if I was outnumbered, and still at risk of dying, even after starting to use the power, I would be ordering “kill them, fast”.
Technically he was arrested for alleged sexual assault. However the root cause was, in all probability, as you say.
Has nobody here read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Seriously, it’s just Somebody Else’s Problem. It’s not mind control; humans have a massively unhealthy problem to ignore things unless it immediately and directly affects them. Almost run over a werewolf? The person is, of course, freaking out. Pass one at a bus stop wearing a pink hat and a bright yellow rainjacket? “I’m not drunk enough to deal with this. Later, Bob.” What The Veil here does is just ratchet that tendency up a fair bit, if not all the way up to eleven.
Which would explain why Dabbler “never goes below a ten”. If she went out, in public, as an eleven, although looking human, even the Veil would not be able to stop people realising that something supernatural was going on.
Fairies in their real sense are super powerful, dangerous and unstoppable. No Tinkerbell garbage. Forces of Nature so old they were here long before we popped up in the stream of evolution. Most of them have gone to their own constructed dimensions, but plenty remain. For you see Humans are also a force of nature and forcing things. We are very good at massive destruction without organization. We are in process of changing this world. A Type 0 civilization creating, accidentally, Type 1 level of destruction. The Fairies have a Type 4 level. They have means of altering their appearance. And they can manipulate souls. Yep stay away from them and never linger if you find one of their Brain Trees.
It makes sense for such beings to keep from a monster civil war on our world. Nothing would survive its aftermath. A very good idea indeed.
“A Type 0 civilization creating, accidentally, Type 1 level of destruction. The Fairies have a Type 4 level.”
Are you talking about the Kardashev scale of civilization? As far as I ever knew, that didn’t go beyond a Type 3 (control of all the energy in a galaxy). What is a Type 4?
Also, are you talking about the Grrlverse or the general mythology of Fae?
A type four could be the energy of a galactic-cluster. A type five an entire universe. And a type six that of multiple universes.
However the scale sounded self-defined, and was factoring in capabilities which would be quantifiable on an energy scale. Yet could be a lot more devastating than any degree of energy control (if no counters to the faerie capabilities went along with them).
“That’s right Mr President, now that the codes have been entered, and the targets have been shifted, to all those nasty people threatening me, in US cities, all you need to do is make me happy by pushing that big red button. Oooh, lovely. Thank you!”
I’m not sure, but it sounds like it might be referring to TV Tropes’ scale of superpowers? Level 0 would be utterly mundane, level 1 is absurdly badass normals like Batman iirc, and it continually grows from there, until l 6 or 7, which is basically a walking deity…
I forget the label they used for the page and I’m also on mobile so I can’t immediately pull it up, but pages like the Flying Brick trope probably link to it?
quantifiable = unquantifiable
Damn, that Observer effect got me too!
It is canon that there are no government sponsored vivisection labs. So concluding that aliens, vampires, werewolves (and werehares, etc.), whatever the Hell an aegir is, supernaturals, and fairies would be killed. Period. Has no support within the story. Period.
It is in fact directly contradicted in the case of supers, a class of people who are just as able to be exploited by government agencies as is any other those others who are members of this council.
“It is canon that there are no government sponsored vivisection labs”
A technicism, but what it’s canon is that Max say there aren’t.
Technically, even that’s more limited than it appears–what’s canon is that Max says the United States doesn’t have government-sponsored vivisection labs. If you think that’s the policy for every nation in the world, from tin-pot Third World dictatorships up through Putin’s Russia… the sky must be a beautiful color in your world.
Thought it was more that Maxi said Sydney need not fear that happening to her
Also, if what Maxi said was “there is no government-sponsored vivisection labs” does not rule out privately-sponsored vivisection labs (Deus would not be the only multi-billion dollar nutjob out there)
“It is canon that there are no government sponsored vivisection labs”
It is also canon that Arianna has been working overtime in the PR department (including using Leon to do some shady media manipulation) to make sure that people are seeing supers in a generally positive light to prevent a widespread backlash with Dabbler’s extraterrestrial origins being mentioned several times as being an area of high concern.
It is quite probable that the reason that there are no government vivisection labs is because all this information hasn’t been dumped on the average citizen.
“Yes we’re sentient, but so are the vampires and they do outrank us on the food chain.”
Do they? Maybe vampires taste great. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I just know, if it’s legal for them to eat me, it should be legal for me to eat them.
It is not. Cannibalism is specifically illegal, even when voluntary.* That was tested in a case in Germany, under laws that are similar enough to the UK & USA that it is likely the same applies.
Jehovah’s Witnesses would consider blood to also fall under that category. In the eyes of the law though, maybe not. Given that we do allow blood transfusions, I would be surprised if drinking human blood turned out to be illegal (I imagine it is one of those things which could go either way, depending on the jurisdiction).
So no chewing allowed, but feel free to drink a vampire’s blood,** if they agree.
You might find some side-effects though…
* Ship-wreck or aircraft crash survivors who have to eat corpses, in extremis, are breaking the law. And have been prosecuted, in some cases. Although (unless there was any indication that it may not have been voluntary, such as by drawing straws, or snacking on the already dead) they will, at other times, either not be prosecuted, as it is not in the public interest, or they will be convicted bur pardoned.
** After checking the law for your jurisdiction. If you live in Louisiana, for instance, this is specifically illegal, if done as part of a ‘ritualistic act’. Although the relevant law does allow provision for it to be done, as part of any state or federally approved, licensed, or funded research project.
Cannibalism? Aren’t Vampires and human different species? Not even anthropophagy.
Does someone with rabies cease to be human? Or a person who has a disease which gives them features not present normally on humans?
Lycanthropy (in the Grrl Power Verse) is transmitted by a magical disease. What you end up with is a mutated human.
We do not know if vampirism follows the same rules (but Occam’s razor would suggest so), however the moral principles remain the same, even if the mechanisms differ. You start out with a human, and they change.*
Do note that we are talking in legal (and also moral) terms, above. And society has clearly established a healthy principle that how people self-identify takes precedence, especially when their classification is not clear-cut.
People can be born with both male and female sexual organs, or characteristics, for example. Archaic practices used to have one forced on the child, and even if they grew up identifying the opposite way, were denied the option to live the way they chose.
I was born into a society which put race on the birth certificate, again as decided by the doctor. Something which which would make a difference to the rest of that persons life. Yet was often made in a completely arbitrary way, especially in complex situations.
Even within the past year or so, I recall a gypsy family, somewhere in Europe, having their blonde haired blue eyed boy taken into care, whilst they were investigated for child-kidnapping, slavery and to see if they had been selling babies into adoption. Completely unjustifiably. He was their natural son, with no kidnapping or infidelity involved. Despite their disparate appearance to him.
This is why civilised countries allow people to self-identify. On the UK census you are asked to (optionally) indicate which race you identify as, for example.
If somebody born a human wishes to continue to identify as a human, even after massively changing biologically, then that is their right. And we should extend them the assumption of that, until or unless they choose to identify as something else.
* There is an exception to this, if their ‘humanity’ is replaced with a completely new entity. In this case though we are talking mentally (or spiritually potentially) rather than physically. The Buffy Verse providing the ideal example, given it also involves vampires. Those vampires have their human souls replaced with demons.
But, of course the Buffy Verse is clever enough to have played with the shades of grey in making exceptions where vampires could regain their souls, and thereby their humanity.
However, because it was such a stark difference, the self-identification was very important even there. Angelus clearly identified as a vampire. Mind you, so did Angel, at the point where he had to decide whether he could live life with Buffy. I think he chose poorly, for both their sakes. It is what you are like, on the inside, which is more important. Their lives would have been happier together, even if they could not have children together naturally.
As a Buffyverse fan let me correct you: Angel, in terms of not staying with Buffy, made exactly the right, albeit painful, decision, as season 2 revealed that he CANNOT experience True Happiness, without losing his soul and reverting to the Angelus persona. It had nothing to do with the sexual act itself, and everything to do with the emotional intimacy and inner peace he achieved in her arms. While it is hypothetically possible that he can only achieve this level of pure happiness alongside an orgasm, there’s absolutely no guarantee of such. He loves Buffy enough and vice versa that it is extremely likely he could get to an overly happy state just from enough kissing and cuddling. This is the reason they’re star-crossed – he literally cannot risk being truly happy without the possibility of losing his soul and becoming a monster, and Buffy is the one person who has ever made him that happy. Considering what happened the first time, it is not worth the risk! Unfortunately this means he’s stuck being unhappy, but he has made a moral choice that his momentary happiness is not worth harming others, especially Buffy. Nobody should really fault him for that, if anybody should be faulted it’s the person who deliberately and shortsightedly programmed his curse that way. (and granted, possibly the scoobies, for not finding another way to return his soul to him without using the same curse though it seems such techniques are elusive)
Conceded.
I am just a soppy romantic, so subconsciously suppressed the inconvenient fact, that got in the way.
But, find a cure for the curse, and my argument would hold water. His vampiric state alone should not prevent them being together.
If the Council is enforcing a strict no-contact policy such that supernaturals don’t interact with humans, then this seems pretty justified. If they are at least hunting down any supernatural who preys on humans (physically or otherwise) then it seems justified. I doubt that’s it, though. I suspect that some humans are still being eaten, robbed, mind-controlled, etc and the Council isn’t doing anything about it. In that case the Council is aiding and abetting all those crimes and is effectively in a state of war with humanity.
I’ll be curious to see this meeting unfold; specifically, I want to see why Archon is working with the Council. My first guess would be that they’re negotiating a deal whereby Archon doesn’t blow the Council’s cover but in return either the Council polices their own or Archon kills any supernatural who harms a human.
Who said there is a no-contact policy, strict or otherwise? o_O
No one, that’s my point. Humanity is being preyed on by the supernatural, and the Council is preventing us from defending ourselves. If the Council WERE (subjunctive) enforcing a no-contact policy then they would be on somewhat steadier moral ground.
The real question, actually, is why is The Council working with Archon? A force that has only been around for a few months at the top
Also, The Council already polices their own, did you not even read this page? They have literally gone to war against ‘their own’
Few months?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/942
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/953
While the current organization is newly publicly known, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t inherit any prior relationships.
I guess The Council taking action have its own complications and risks of exposure, especially nowadays. It could be safest to pass the problem to the already public Archon, now they have it.
“Also, The Council already polices their own, did you not even read this page? They have literally gone to war against ‘their own’”
They police their own when it comes to **breaking the Veil**. Not when it comes to harming humans. Based on what this page tells us, they don’t give a darn if you eat people as long as you do it in a way that isn’t going to be noticed.
Again, my point is that the Council is evil. Humanity is being preyed on and the Council is mind controlling us in order to keep us from defending ourselves. That is literally what the Veil is for: the supernatural beings don’t want humanity to know about the supernatural because if we did then we could fight back.
And how many species does Humanity prey on? How many species has Humanity hunted to extinction?
First, what in the world does that have to do with anything?
Second, tigers and rhinos are welcome to band together and try to hunt humans. It’s not a fair fight, but at least we aren’t modifying their minds to prevent it.
It means, Humans have no right to bitch and complain when some other species decides to hunt and eat them
Yeah, we really do.
You are confusing the *ability* to complain with the *right* to complain. Like I said, tigers and rhinos absolutely have the right to bitch / moan / fight back against us. They aren’t sapient so they lack the ability to do any of those things effectively, but they are welcome to if they want to. They have the *right* but not the *ability*. We are sapient, so we have both.
Elephants, great apes, whales and others are sapient too. They are just not as good at manipulating the environment as humans are. But humans still choose to eat them, make them into umbrella stands and deny them their rights.
Albeit that one landmark case has let us take the first step into becoming less uncivilised. Let us hope that enough of them survive, to avoid extinction, until we actually start treating them like people.
They are not “mind controlling” us, not in the sense that they’re actually telling us what to do. We still have free will. What they are doing is taking advantage of the human ability to focus on one thing very well, and ignore things that we are not directly paying attention to.
Let me put it this way. I was watching an episode of Brain Games last night. As part of an experiment, they had the Jabbawockeez dance group do a routine. Half of the Jabbawockeez were wearing blue jackets, half were wearing red. The instructions were, “count how often you see one dressed in blue step into one of these spotlights.”
At the end of the test…
“Okay, how many of you counted 15 to 20?” about half the hands go up
“And how many of you counted more than 20?” the other half go up
“And how many of you saw the man in the penguin suit?” NO hands go up
When people are laser-focused on one thing, they tend to not notice anything else. The Veil takes advantage of that. Frankly, I’m surprised they even feel they NEED the Veil. These days, so many people are laser-focused on the conversation they’re having on their phone, or the text message they’re typing, that they don’t notice things like the fact they’re about to cause an accident, much less some pasty-pale vampire.
And, as Guesticus points out, “how many species has Humanity hunted to extinction?” Believe it or not, I can answer that question: At least thirteen.
The dodo (1681), the Tasmanian tiger (1930s), the passenger pigeon (1896), the great auk (1844), the quagga (1883), the Falkland Island wolf (1876), the Zanzibar leopard (1990s), the Caribbean monk seal (1952), the Carolina parakeet (1939), the Atlas bear (1870s), the Toolache wallaby (1940), the sea mink (1860s), and the Bubal hartebeest (1923).
DaveB, are you ever planning to add an Edit function? I left off a /blockquote tag, or closed it incorrectly. Again.
Not sure if that is even a feature for this comment software, and would really not be happy if he switched to Disquis (specially if he forgot to allow Guests to comment)
It is. There is an add-on that allows you to edit or delete your posts within the first 5 minutes. Kory Bing uses the same comment software (over on Skin Deep), and she’s installed it on hers.
Also, before anyone calls me on it, the thirteen species I listed are not all the ones humanity has caused to go extinct. Just the ones we deliberately hunted to extinction. It doesn’t count the ones (like the ivory-billed woodpecker) exterminated due to habitat loss, environmental change, etc.
btw, the add-on I was talking about is safe. It only allows you to edit or delete your own posts, not anyone else’s. I assume it does this by remembering your IP address.
I remember Dave saying that his concern was the risk that a change affects the site negatively, from losing comments to temporarily instability. It’s reasonable even for the more tested upgrades.
All I can say is that when Kory Bing installed it on her site, no comments were lost, and there was no instability. If the installation was less than seamless, only she knows; you’d have to ask her.
“they are doing is taking advantage of the human ability to focus on one thing very well”
Nope, or at least not just that. For all we know The Veil is casting a false appearance making supernatural beings look like human. Remember the club? The reptile guy and the waitress were not being unnoticed, they were actually disguised.
How do we know that those weren’t personal disguises? Like what Dabbles was using
Because The Coucil is convinced that Syd can “pierce The Veil”, and not “pierce personal disguises”.
Maybe Sydney can, but that was Maxi’s call, not The Council
And you specifically called out Reptilicus and Greenie, and didn’t like the answer: if you are allowed to make wild donkey theories, then so can others
@Guesticus
Mmm… I’m not sure I underestand. It seems like your are… upset?
“that was Maxi’s call”
Maybe but, how it matter? The Council accepted it in the end.
“you specifically called out Reptilicus and Greenie”
True but, how is that bad? Those were the only instances where Syd could have pierced The Veil.
“and didn’t like the answer”
Like? I was just answering the “how we know” question, I think that Ingsol’s wording and conviction are significative. It was not that I didn’t like it.
“if you are allowed to make wild donkey theories, then so can others”
Of course, it’s actually part of this game we all play and enjoy, myself included, I never said otherwise. Why are you pointed it out here?
Just in case, I’m not upset, just a bit confused.
The Veil might make it hard to notice that a vampire looks any different than a human, but I don’t think it would hide the fact that they were the person who left the bar with the now dead guy. And resisting arrest with vampiric strength is exactly the sort of thing that would get the council involved. Likewise using the Veil to try and hide crimes is the sort of thing most likely to cause people to figure out that it exists, which would also bring the council down with extreme prejudice. And while the Veil does keep humans from realizing that the vampire race even exists there are probably plenty of fully human mages who would cheerfully kill any vampire they catch killing people.
You’re missing the point. Vampires need to feed on people to survive. They’re in charge of The Council. They have mind control towers to prevent people from seeing the truth. The government knows about this, and is withholding the information from the public.
This is a conspiracy to enslave men, women, and children as livestock. That’s wrong, and you bet your ass this would be the biggest X-File Mulder and Scully wish they could get their hands on.
No, it is a conspiracy from a lone crack-bar!!!
Where was it stated, implied or even hinted, that Vamps are in charge of The Council?
Not all non-humans feed on humans, what about the ones who don’t even have a need for food, like the Aegir?
Has it been specifically stated anywhere that vampires actually NEED to feed on humans at this point?
I can think of a number of solutions they might be using the avoid this need, simplest being donors (as in people who are in the know who willingly donate blood) while this might not cover all vampires depending on their population it is a step in the right direction.
Next is synthetic blood, which could completely remove humans from the equation.
Another is kinda grey area, but say vampires owning blood banks, this would reduce the amount of blood available to save peoples lives and is tricking people into giving their blood willingly, but its also not assaulting people or killing them.
And lastly, can vampires just drink a little and not seriously wound or injure humans in the process.
Also, as far as altering perceptions being mind control, then every single government, most companies, and even most individuals are guilty of varying degrees of mind control if you want to go down that rabbit hole, and hell, depending on how benign their needs are of the human race (for example, if they didn’t need to prey on humans, or didn’t actually kill humans e.t.c) their Veil could be seen as less harmful then some of the lies and deceptions governments or even corporations pull on us every single day (don’t forget humans kill shitloads of other humans)
What would be better is to use human DNA to make blood generators, living ones as I would expect they will if they are well organized like in the “Blade” films. Not the whole body, just the parts like marrow used for blood replacement in our own bodies. If you saw one it would not look human.
I remember one sci-fi short story where the protagonist was traumatised, let us say (as I can’t remember his name) that he was called “Dave”. On account of having sold his DNA to an alien race. Which then distributed, to a vast interstellar network, their best-selling brand of “Dave-Burgers”. Every star port he travelled to, he would see aliens eating him.
“Vampires need to feed on people to survive.”
And Werewolves change with the full moon.
Oh, wait…..
Sure, we saw the human blood bank a few strips earlier but have they said that it has to be human? There’s a lot of blood in slaughterhouses that could just as easily be diverted to vamp use. (Nocturnus Slaughterhouse: We sell EVERY part of the cow.)
sounds like my idea for a burger place:
Mad Cow : the only thing our burgers DON’T have in ’em ;}
Heck, depending on how refined a vampire’s palate is I can see a comfortable life for them in the bloodwork business. “Yes… this particular vintage has high cholesterol and the faintest whiff of Diabetes Type 2. There’s also a definite undertone of a chronic liver problem.”
PS: Easy way to determine if all of this is mind control: ask DaveB. If he says yes, it is; if he says no, it’s not. :)
The vampires are not necessarily in charge of the Council. We don’t know who is.
Playing the devil’s advocate here, maybe this is a conspiracy by the Council to protect themselves from seven billion humans with nuclear weapons. Think about that.
To protect themselves from a humanity which can use technology to attempt to offset the vast superiority that Vampires, et al have over humanity, that I can buy even if I disagree completely with mind control being a valid preemptive solution* to that hypothetical problem.
But nukes? Really? Using a nuke to (try to, since who knows if that counts as staking or decapitation and holy wafer mouth filling, or running water, or sunlight) kill a Vampire is like using a nuke to try to kill a terrorist. They live amongst a civilian population and some level of restraint from wholesale slaughter is mandated by both common sense and moral decency.
* Show me the flashback to Vampires innocently drinking from blood bank bags who are them slaughtered by humans using the kind of weapons we see in the Underworld series of movies and I’ll be happy to change my mind. But so far we have only what appears to be an unfounded fear to justify the mass mind control solution the Council has implemented.
And in the Underworld series, those weapons are only used by werewolves and vampires (and a very few human mercenaries employed by said vampires and werewolves) against one another, and not by humanity at large to slaughter the vampires and werewolves.
Yeah, using nukes is overkill. It’s reasonably safe to assume that they have an accelerated healing factor, but other than that, we don’t know just how resilient werewolves and vampires are in DaveB’s world. In the New World of Darkness, both vampires and werewolves can be killed by any weapon that will kill a human; you don’t have to use wooden stakes or silver bullets. Plain, ordinary lead bullets will do the job, as long as you use enough of them to overcome their regenerative capabilities. (Plain, ordinary bullets will also kill the werewolves in the Mercedes Thompson novels. Again, you just have to hit them often enough to overcome their rapid regeneration.)
DaveB haven’t said whether or not you need special weapons to kill vampires and therianthropes. The point is that vampires and therianthropes don’t reproduce quickly (usually; as the were-hare pointed out, there are exceptions)… if humans found out that they actually exist and get a wild hair up their ass, they could commit genocide on the vampires and weres in short order. Especially if they can be killed by ordinary weapons. (And probably catch more than a few ordinary humans in the crossfire in the process.) So it’s better to stay hidden.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that the vampires and therianthropes were human, once upon a time; you know how we humans love our unfounded fears. For example, all the (probably completely unfounded) concern about allowing transsexuals into the bathroom of their choice leading to more sexual assault. (My opinion: If you are so terrified that the person in the stall next to you might, or might not, have a penis then maybe you should avoid the situation by wearing adult diapers whenever you go out in public so you don’t have to use the public restrooms at all… because you’re acting like a baby.)
In the Larry Correia universe of monster hunter international, the main character kills a werewolf by literally damaging it till its regenerative powers run out. Of course this involves putting something like a dozen rounds into the head of a werewolf, breaking its bones using a fire extinguisher, SNAPPING ITS NECK THROUGH BRUTE FORCE, then tossing it out the window of a high rise office building like fidos name was hand gruber. Vamps are INSANELY powerful monsters, im talking bullet dodging, heals as fast as they are hurt, able to flip apcs through brute force powerful, especially the old ones, but theoretically can be taken down by good old fashioned lead and high explosives. Though you have to decapitate them to finish them off.
All that aside, its entirely likely the council hides, not to keep humans as cattle, and not because humans would obliterate them all, but because it would trigger a vicious guerilla war that would decimate everyone involved most likely. For all we know, they are like the vamps from Blade. Humans can totally blow them apart with a little prep time. There is a VERY wide range of power represented by vamps in literature. No clue on the rest of the creatures. Fae are incredibly dangerous, but also some of the most vulnerable. Cold iron will wreck them in short order. And iron is a hell of a lot easier to get in industrial quantities than silver. No clue on demons, aliens, sentient golems, and other assorted beings. I imagine if the veil was shattered the aliens would mostly leave. It would be like trying to vacation in north korea. Sure technically speaking its possible to go there. but its a bad, bad idea.
I think the concern about transsexuals in the “wrong gender” bathroom has more to do with FAKE transsexuals rather then the real ones. ‘Cus you know as soon as there is an official rule permitting boys to walk into girls bathrooms and vice-versa…. there are gonna be pervs taking advantage. And the unfortunately high rape statistics prove that pervs outnumber genuine transsexuals by a ton. And insisting transsexuals pony up a doctor’s note to use the bathroom is very invasive. (Also really illegal and unethical by modern standards of medical information privacy)
The current social convention of allowing POST-surgical transsexuals to use the bathroom the surgery gave them seems to work fine. Both boy and girl bathrooms have private stalls for a reason. Yeah that means awkwardness for any “transitioning” person but… that will be temporary. And that drastic a change will have many more bits of awkwardness then just which bathroom stall to use!
Plus its a bit of a moot point in many schools. Lots of schools have a single unisex handicap bathroom with all the trimmings installed, instead of trying to retrofit a proper handicap stall into both the boy and girl bathrooms. Why give all the pervy boys in the school permission to use the girl’s bathroom when any transsexual can simply use the unisex bathroom instead?
And, what is stopping from the pervs from going into the ‘wrong’ bathroom now? o_O
I do agree that most of the concern is over fake transsexuals than real ones. However…
Any attempt to try to pass laws to stop transsexuals (fake or not) from walking into the “wrong bathroom” is completely unenforceable. What are you going to do, hire policemen to stand outside every single public bathroom in the U.S. and crotch-check people as they enter? Or make people carry their birth certificate with them, and check their birth certificate to see if they’re using the bathroom of the gender written on it? As Kin said, that’s illegal and unethical for privacy reasons. (And where’s the money to hire all these people gonna come from?)
The fact is, there is not, and never has been, anything stopping the pervs from dressing up as a woman and going into the woman’s bathroom and waiting. Or vice-versa (females raping men happens too, but it’s usually not THAT predatory. Still, you can’t assume that it’ll never happen.) Even if the pervs aren’t dressed as the opposite sex, there’s very rarely any security other than a camera that watches you enter the hall where the restrooms are… it doesn’t watch which one you go into. You may not even have to dress up as the other gender, as long as no one sees you and “blows the whistle” on you while you’re going in.
The vampires and others know about the nuclear weapons and would want to use their powers to disable them. Like the Shoggulu, Vampires, Werewolves and other major species who feed on Humankind they would make sure such weapons are never fired. They like to keep the environment and their food source alive and relatively clean.(They would clean up the environment, end war, and end disease to do so. Such things befoul the food’s taste.) So we get benefits but the down side is we are cattle.
This is as you sad moraly wrong manipulate people like that. But “need must” or as we say, “nöden har ingen lag” translated -desperat time call for desperat mesure-
Just creating those pillar sigils have to be EXTEMT hard work and lott of time.
Nobody would do it unless they are desparat. Powerfull monster or not co-ordinated attacks from religius groups and goverment monster hunter during the history of humanity must have cost lots of monster life.
from the antient time like roman empire or troyan and grece heroes killing dragons to knigth of the church also remeber superhearoes also existed in history fighting monsters.
There are many separate and distinctive reasons for implementation of the sigils.
1. As stated to protect the “monsters” from humanity.
2. To cut down on unwanted attention from the masses that can have long term social/political ramifications. Like what happened in Galalie 2 millennium ago. Do we really need that again.
3. The extraterrestrials have been here a long time, and they finally put their foot down about the damage unrestrained exposure to paranormal was having on human development.
4. By being discreet they diminish the chances of a Elder Eldritch Being notices or is summoned to earth with predictable repercussions.
And there are still other reasons out there.
Also who says the vampires control the council?
They are most likely just the face of the council.
As vampires need to mingle with humanity to feed, they must be able to negotiate a wide range of social interactions.
While a succubus will have a more complete social skill set, they do have a significant draw back, their lust aura. Because they may be able to turn it down, they probably can’t turn it off.
More later.
They all understand that another major war either by humans or their kind could awaken sleeping “things” Eldritch Abominations “asleep” can be awakened no one could stop them then.
The peace is a state of controlled violence.
“goes not show that it passes beyond mere rhetoric” = “goes to show that it passes beyond mere rhetoric”
You are making a subjective opinion, and stating the worst case point of view as an absolute. Bear in mind that I am broadly sympathetic to your sentiments but, in failing to be objective, you weaken your case. So allow me to point out the flaws in your stance.
Firstly evil goes to intent. The stated intent is to protect non-humans from persecution by humans. This is not, in itself evil. Good effort is reportedly being made to prevent and punish abuses. Likewise this goes to show they are acting in good faith. The fact that they have done so, successfully, for thousands of years, goes not show that it passes beyond mere rhetoric.
Of course if the stated facts differ from the truth, then that is another matter. But Archon do have two super-assisted intelligence arms, so will doubtless be checking the veracity of such claims. If we find they are not being honest, about the true situation, then we should re-assess the situation, with that new knowledge in paw.
Secondly you assume freedom of press (ie the dissemination of the whole truth) as being an absolute good and anything contrary to that to be an evil. This is a social construct dependant on the point of view of the society you grew up in. Countries can provide their citizens with a good life, even under censorship, provided that those in the know ensure that ‘things which are wrong’ are dealt with, rather than being hidden away, under the cover of the censorship.
China is an example of a country which is trying to find a balance between censorship and openness. I am not unsympathetic to their attempts in this area. Given that we have high depression and suicide rates in the west, and much of it is due to information overload. We live in a society of billions of people, but reporting on the daily atrocities that occur, on that scale, but in intimate personal detail, makes members of society feel at far greater personal risk than they actually are.
For example, in the UK, in the ’50s the quality of life of individuals was far better. Crimes, murders, rapes and other atrocities did occur. But without the modern media flooding peoples daily lives with such information, people felt comfortable letting kids play unsupervised, and leaving their doors unlocked and trusting strangers. To no great detriment, in the vast majority of cases. Especially when compared to the locked in society we have today.
Co-operating in controlling the release of information, to ensure that massacres and wars do not result, from doing so prematurely (before adequate replacements can be found for the current system), is therefore not itself evil. Until we learn more of Archon’s plans, your condemnation is premature.
Thirdly you claim that humanity is just livestock. This goes contrary to the only feeding example we have seen, which shows an ethical food source. Again you are being premature in assuming that vampires are using the general populace as a food source.
They might all feed from ethical sources, such as animals and volunteers. Plus there are many factions involved, yet you are tarring them all with the same brush. Unless you feel that faerie was taking a nibble out of Sydney, whilst she was unconscious? Because the council consists of members of many races (and now include representation for humanity, via Archon) it can ensure that ‘eating humanity’ is not on the menu.
Wait and see. I have more faith in our heroine than you do. Acting before she knows all the facts though would be foolish. Likewise if what she does creates more harm than good.
The current system is obviously working well enough to allow Humanity to thrive. Even allowing us to endanger the whole planet, by our mismanagement of it. Showing that we do have free-will, and are able to do things contrary to the best interests of the Council.
Given that they could use the Veil as a first-strike capability, to eliminate the threat (and bring ‘livestock’ under direct enslavement, if that was their intent), yet are choosing to reveal their purpose and activities to Archon, does show them in a better light than you are portraying them.
To date all Archon’s intent has pointed to protecting all members of society. How they deal with the presence of the Veil, and all the member races of the Council, is what we should judge them by. And we have not seen enough yet, to make that call.
“China is an example of a country which is trying to find a balance between censorship and openness.”
This reminds of a funny story that happened to me a few months ago: while staying at a hostel in Thailand I met a young Chinese woman and struck up a conversation with her. I didn’t actually bring up the topic of censorship; she volunteered it by saying “I know you Westerners think we’re all oppressed and everything, but we’re not! These days we can even criticize the government as long as we do it in private!”
Heh. Bad choice of words on her part, but the truth is that they honestly don’t mind if you criticize the government, even in public. They just mind if you try to incite a collective action. From the 2013 American Political Science Review:
Agreed. I think the point the woman was trying to make was that placard-waving protests are discouraged. The most extreme example of which being the Tienanmen square massacre. Anything which might lead to Arab-spring type social disorder is heavily policed. Other socially useful activities, such as whistle-blowing on corrupt officials, is even encouraged. Provided it does not take it beyond that and into demands for political change.
That side of things I have less sympathy with, especially as regards Hong Kong. Given that they have a history of a more open society. Then of course there is their suppression of minority groups and the Tibetan occupation. Which it to be condemned.
However credit is due where social innovation is exploring ways of bettering society. Even it it may be at odds with the principles of the capitalist ‘democratic’ (a.k.a. oligarchy) west.
This, right here, is a prime reason for the non-humans to hide themselves away: w have only just found out that they are real, and you are already decrying them as being ‘evil’ ‘mind-manipulators’ who are ‘feeding on humans like cattle’ and basically sharpening the torches and lighting the pitch-forks ready to storm the windmill
That’s a fair point. In automatically presuming the worst, Gray Phantom demonstrates exactly why the Veil is a necessary tool for survival.
No being can be considered evil for taking actions believed to be essential to survival. We have a massive infrastructure for raising beings exclusively to kill them for sustenance, and it’s considered morally neutral. Even if the Council’s vampires did the same, from an objective moral standpoint we haven’t got a leg to stand on.
Yes, quite Grimm indeed.
I see what you did there. ;)
So, if there were, say, a small area that’s attractive to live in surrounded by largely undeveloped land, they’d need to build one in that area, right?
And if someone was in charge of all the construction and knew what kind of space was needed for that… (shifts eyes around)
Wait, are you talking about Maxi’s ex? o_O
“…they’d need to build one in that area…”
Don’t think so. Ingsol said “global spanning spell”, which I think means it already covers the whole world. It’s pretty logical actually, since an area being not developed don’t prevent people wandering on it and potentially crossing paths with a supernatural being. Kinda what was shown when the Grand Canyon trip.
“Network of hidden structures” he says, which suggests the area of effect of each one is limited. They may not bother building any in areas where rare encounters can be dismissed as superstition, since cameras aren’t common there, and most of the relevant beings have likely migrated to areas where there is coverage anyway.
If there aren’t any other ones around, think what were to happen if something happened to the one there…
I suspect they dismiss any decent evidence by blaming shapeshifters. Harem knows they exist (page 207) despite being kept out of the loop. They’re probably getting sick of being the perfect scapegoat.
Fair enough.
“Harem knows they exist (page 207) despite being kept out of the loop”
Harem is in the loop, at least she knows all about Dabbler.
It may not be a limitation of area, so much as being in a mystic pattern that creates the field. FREX, if this setting uses a concept like ley lines, then it might be that these are placed at locations where the ley lines cross–any zone within a triangle formed by the Sigils would then be under the effect.
Notice that Sydney remembered “Greenie”, and nobody who knows what Dabbler is forgets about it. The implication there is that the Veil effect is NOT retroactive, which is to say it doesn’t include Men-in-Black-style memory tampering.
To be honest, I hope that’s the case. That plot mechanic has always bothered me for philosophical reasons in addition to the issue Sydney brought up. By any logic it should be illegal.
Agreed. I think it is as Duende Sociopata called it. So perception manipulation* rather than memory tampering. I also agree that memory tampering should be illegal. I am certainly vehemently opposed to it.
Looking at perception alteration though, it does have parallels to things which we do in society already. Especially when dealing with how others perceive us. Putting on make-up, having cosmetic surgery done, wearing clothes that will create the impression of being richer or from a more advantageous background or even soldiers (or hunters) wearing camouflage gear. All of which are legal.
Plus Darpa and various tech companies, around the globe, are actively investigating invisibility technology, to be used by soldiers, if or when developed. And we already have stealth planes, warships and the like. Which shows that our society even accepts hiding potentially dangerous things.
There is a key distinction though, in the real-world perception manipulation is almost always conducted on the subject being hidden. Whereas the Veil is acting directly on the observer (lower case “o” variety). In this it becomes closer to perception altering drugs. Which administering on unwilling victims would most definitely be illegal.
However, this actually has a mitigation, which goes to intent. Fraud (as an analogy) only becomes fraud if their is an intent to do something untoward, such as stealing money via the deception. If someone is merely concealing their identity for social reasons (say a famous person who does not want to be recognised), then it is not illegal. Wheres someone altering their appearance, to look like a celebrity, and telling shops to “put the bill on my tab”, is committing fraud.
Here the supernatural Americans (et al) are primarily concerned with avoiding persecution of themselves. However they are also protecting humans, because those who did attempt to harm these beings would very likely be killed themselves. Which could rapidly descend into a global war, if left unchecked.
Legally, and morally, that does give them a good argument to counter the contention that the Veil operates like perception altering drugs. Especially given that it does not randomly mess with peoples perceptions, but acts in a very controlled fashion, to a specific end. So people are not at risk from being hit by traffic, which they think are butterflies, for example.
* The process of perceiving things involves both the senses and the brain. The latter in processing the information, and resolving it into “I know what this is, it is a ….”. It is this point that would be the easiest to manipulate, and insert “harmless human”, instead of “monster”. That way it would not matter which of the senses had contributed to forming the decision, nor the species or particular attributes of the alien/ undead/ tentacled horror.
Hmm… so what you are saying is that I “Observer” (upper case “O” variety) am immune to the Veil. Cool, I have a tiny portion of Sydney’s super powers. (I search for my own name to find my posts. This often leads me to your posts cause you use it a decent percentage of the time. Much more so than anybody else. Well, save me of course.)
In any case, logical inconsistencies are likely to pop up.
“This guy just hit his head on the door frame… but the door is 8 feet tall…” (Chorius et al.)
“That lady just sat down in the back of the bus, but I can’t close the door yet because her…legs?!… aren’t all the way in yet.” (lamia)
“Down in front! Why can’t I see around these guys’ heads?” (various winged entities)
Those are just obvious ones, but a curious observer may try to investigate further and closer if they find subtle ones, and find more and more evidence there’s something wrong with their perception. Unless the thing meddles with metacognition, the ability to analyze one’s own thought processes, which is extremely invasive and problematic.
It would not appear like that though, if he appeared to be a normal human. There would be a 2 foot gap above his head. So all it would look like was he abruptly stopped entering, and rubbed his head. Headache, not head-whack.
Edited to show what the driver would actually observe.* His most logical assumption would be a sticking door mechanism. Which is actually common enough that it would not be remarkable. Even when it cleared after resetting it to open, then closing it again.
Again selective invisibility will allow the observer to see through wings, so it would just look like a group of humans there. But not blocking any more view than any other human heads would do.
* Recall Dabbler invisibly groping Maxima’s bum. Humans do not have tails, so a Lamia, in the illusion of a human, would have an invisible tail (for any part which extended beyond her apparent legs). Even when dancing, Dabbler had a partner holding one of her invisible arms, without it registering that there was something invisible there. So such illusions can affect senses other than just sight (albeit that the succubus ones are the best).
See Hitbox Dissonance. The positions of all objects in contact with an entity would have to be “adjusted” to make it not look weird, but unless the thing can predict the future precisely there will be cases where the physics appear wrong. Especially things like people tripping over lamia tails.
The way I thought you proposed involved the tail, arms etc. being something people were able to inherently avoid colliding with, as being part of human anatomy somehow. What are the other options? Tripping over the tail all the time?
Lamia would just have to avoid slithering around in crowds, if that was a problem. But, like I mentioned with Dabbler’s invisible arms, the effect could just compensate to make the target not think there is anything untoward. Perhaps make the floor look a bit slippery (or just give a subconscious feeling to the same effect) which makes people want to avoid treading on that spot?
I do agree with you, on reflection, though that it is probably only creating a mental invisibility, not actually making them physically see-through. In which case they could be aware of the tail on a subconscious level, but not on a conscious one. This wholly consistent with Ingsol’s dialogue, in panel 1. They have awareness of the monsters, but it is being suppressed.
In which case your final point (the winged aliens) would indeed be the problematic one. As they could be obstructing key visual information (for a bus driver) that might be necessary for safe operation. Whilst this would create a potential hazard (for winged critters and large ones like Chorius), it is something that they can compensate for by folding wings down, or hunching down, respectively. Or, if too big, avoiding public busses or similar situations.
However what I do not think it would do is impinge on the drivers awareness (thus making it more of a hazard). The invisibility-effect would just have their mind fill in any unobserved areas with whatever they can extrapolate from what is (or has been, or is expected to be) visible.
The plus side though is that, after thousands of years of development on it, the ‘filling in from small clues’ might actually be very sophisticated and actually make accurate predictions. Or the magic may simply be able to insert genuine visual imagery, thus making it a true invisibility. The subconsciousness being aware of the ‘real situation’ but he conscious mind surpassing that and replacing it with the real background (or illusion of a person, as is appropriate, for the bit being looked at).
I will leave it unedited, as I thought it through whilst writing, so you can see my reasoning. But the final part seems to work well enough, and fit the known facts, without being unduly contrived. So I will keep that as my favoured interpretation.
Yeah, I think it must just plant a suggestion for their own minds to “make something up” cause doing anything else would require such huge amounts of magic (its the whole planet… in chunks but still amounts to that) that they wouldn’t be able to squeak by with ONLY sacrificing one elder immortal or 12 virgins per year. (I jest its probably just that each one of them sits on a ley line nexus like a bunch of leeches lowering the magic potential of the whole planet for the last so many hundreds of years as the council installed more and more of them. [leading to technology rising in magics place everywhere?])
As a secondary thing it could give a subconscious connection to all the humans in its node region to allow them a weak sort of group mind so they could communicate missing bits to each other and make up the difference but that would still be a bit of a power hog and I would expect that human minds, being adaptive, might start to make unexpected uses of that psi/magical? connection despite any suggestions trying to force them to subconsciously only use it in certain ways… (maybe THAT’S where all the power for the average superbeing comes from?? psychic juice from a subconscious Hive minds will to have certain mental constructs come to life? [eventually the humans start doing it without the magical assist and the Dream Time begins?!*])
I think is as you said in your first paragraph, a careful behavior from part of the supernatural plus a “filling the weirds” as The Veil’s effect.
http://www.malditoinsolente.com/imagenes/foto2/elena_cerenkova1-2.jpg
Technically they are making a “deception intended to result in a financial or personal gain” since they get works and to dance with hot ladies, so you could call it fraud.
Concur with the social masks argument, but that we all know people do, while The Veil’s effects we are unaware of.
Let’s try an example. Suppose that I’m going to a custome party. Letting aside if I’m being a racist asshole or not, I dress myself as a Mexican. So, there I am at the bus stop when a car with a couple of obviously Mexican girls/guys (as you prefer) stop by and tell me (in Spanish) “hey, you going downtown? want a ride?” What should I do?
a) accept of course, it’s just a ride, it means no harm.
b) decline of course, it would be wrong to deceive them.
c) explain of course, first be sure they know the real situation.
d) “What?! You know you are in America, right?”Jokes aside, as I said elsewhere, is a matter of principle, it could be not illegal, and even harmless but it’s still morally questionable. Disguise and be safe, but do not take other advantage of it.
Law does have mechanisms for dealing with spurious cases, such as you propose. On account of people occasionally initiating them, thinking they can get away with abusing the intent of the law. America has far too many jurisdictions, so I always state these arguments from within the laws of England and Wales. As most of the USA’s states legal systems descended from those, the same processes apply often enough that this is a reasonable approach.
Thus in the UK it is handled by using the judgement of the man on the Clapham omnibus. Which means I am qualified to make a judgement call on this, to decide if your ‘straw man’ case is reasonable.
Firstly, intent. Is it your intent to deceive? No, you are travelling to a fancy dress party. No case to answer.
Secondly, financial loss to the victims. They are offering you a lift ‘downtown’, where they are already going. If that is where your party is, then there is no financial loss, on their part (even though there is a financial gain on yours). No case to answer.
Now if you reply, in fluent Spanish “I need to go to New York” (whilst you are in Seattle) then this would represent a significant amount of time and money, which they could loose. At which point you need to examine the other elements to decide if this is fraud.
Thirdly, would the disparity between your apparent appearance and your actual, be significant enough to cause the victims to behave differently. If they are not racist then it would make no difference. Given that racial discrimination is illegal (certainly in the UK and generally in the USA) it would be illegal for them to refuse you on these grounds. No case to answer.
Fourthly even without intent, how likely would they be fooled by a ‘fancy dress outfit’? If you were a top end cos-player, had professional level makeup to change your ethnic appearance, and a flawless Mexican accent (and good Spanish) then this might be credible. But, lacking that, a white guy in a sombrero, with halting Spanish, is not likely to fool anybody, once they get close enough to talk. Which they have already done, by virtue of making the offer. No case to answer.
As you say, in your conclusion, it is probably best, if you are a top cos-player, to break character, before accepting. As a matter of politeness. Not to mention that you might hit it off with one of the girls. But if you continue to deceive her, and enter into a relationship, as a ‘fake Mexican’ then you are straying into fraud territory. Potentially big-time, at that, the more lies you have to make up, rather than just taking advantage of accidental circumstances.
This could become actionable, albeit less likely, with the race discrimination laws I mentioned above. However there has been a case, this year, which has enough of a parallel that it may apply. A woman entering into a sexual relationship, with another woman, whilst pretending to be a man. Sex-discrimination laws did not apply to the fraud and deception being perpetrated there. So the same could well happen in this case, for similar reasons.
I should have said that my first two sentences and the example were unrelated. The intention of the latter was not to prove fraud, just point out a personal moral dilemma. That’s why my last paragraph is the way it is.
On the other hand I do concur with that The Veil’s effect it’s no mind control, that falls inside the right of autodefence, that serve to a greater good, and that is not illegal or bad just by itself.
My one comment: we need some Alchemists in that group. Sure, Edward Elric is long gone by now, but he probably had some great-grandkids… though they might be too tall for his bad-ass coat…
Not just “supernatural Americans” Sydney, The Veil is a global network.
“I don’t get what you mean.”
My leprechaun friends are quite proud of being Irish and I know a Yeti who would be very upset to be grouped in with that “bigfoot” tribe.
Aaaa i see the viel hides the monsters and give them a privat global network they can use to put up their facebook (monsterbook) and surf after monster-porn. Wonder if they have monster version of pokemon-go (got to suck them all)
I just finished readin all the comics for hours. Someone please massage my neck.
*psychically transmits satisfying neck massage feelings*
and over a 3 days.
Welcome ☺
Now you have the fun of reading all the comments :P
…All the way from page 1 onward. We can expect you back in about 2 years, I think.
;)
Wellcome. Here, have your eyeballs back.
Nice to have you on-board.
To be honest, I assumed they were just called Sigils because they’re covered in sigils…
I wonder whether the first version of the sigils were not free-standing structures, but just something that got drawn in spare rooms of council member’s homes. Then after a few centuries, they decided that there were security and logistics advantages to Veiling the entire building housing a sigil and being able to access it without traipsing through someone’s living room. This could also mean that some of the older castles in Europe have an extra tower when viewed via truesight.
Kind of surprised Archon supports the Veil given just how many laws it’s existence must break.
Well to be fair Archon is an American institution and the Veil is presumably older than the country. No doubt supernatural U.S. Government officials would have made sure the country complied with the Veil from the beginning and not the other way around.
Given the Veil is basically a continual mental assault against every normal citizen of the united states any law that would allow such a thing would basically be precedent for anyone with mind control and or illusion abilities to do anything they want to regular people.
And that’s before you get into stuff like interfering in police investigations and covering up criminal acts.
Again, The Council and The Veil pre-date any human laws, let alone the unUnited States of America by several hundreds of years
Which means absolutely nothing as the lands of the United States are now owned and controlled by the United States government. As such the only laws that hold sway in the United States are those put forward by the United States itself.
Now theoretically they could have come to an agreement with the Founding Fathers and gotten an exception for the Veil written into the US Constitution. However you can’t have secret parts of the Constitution if you want it to be legally binding due to the amendment process so large numbers of people would have to actually know about that exception.
And someone’s gonna blab if that’s the case given many people wouldn’t be okay knowing the citizens of their country are regularly having their minds altered by magic.
Maybe there is a ‘partnership’ between The Council and the US Government, because the US Government does not own the land, they are just leasing it
Maybe the Contract from The Council has a higher value than the US Constitution (like how the Federal Laws are higher than the City Laws, but the city population don’t have to know about the higher ranked Federal Laws, until they break them), or how a House Owner may have one set of Rules for the House Leaser who may have another set of Rules for the House Renter (if Leaser has the right under the original Rules to rent it to another person) and the Renter need not concern themselves with the Owner Rules as long as they stick to the Leaser Rules
“Maybe there is a ‘partnership’ between The Council and the US Government, because the US Government does not own the land, they are just leasing it”
Could you expand on that? Are you talking about the real world or the Grrl-verse world? When you say “the land”, are you talking about a particular patch or the entire area of the USA? And, more importantly, from whom do you think the US Government is leasing the land?
Grrl-verse of course, and talking about the entire country
“Which means absolutely nothing as the lands of the United States are now owned and controlled by the United States government. As such the only laws that hold sway in the United States are those put forward by the United States itself.” Not to get into politics but the United States government takes a lot of orders from people with a lot of money.
And, if I were 1000 years old, I’m pretty sure that I’d have a lot of money.
And seriously? If this Presidental election hasn’t drilled into your head that there is one law for the rich/powerful and another law for the rest of us, I don’t know what would.
Hehe. Reminds me of an event back in the 90’s during the vampire goth popularity. We’re standing in line for a club, and some tool in line ahead of us declares with utter sincerity “I’m really a 300 year old vampire.” One of my friends says without missing a beat “If you’re really a 300 year old vampire, then why are you standing in line with the rest of us plebes? You should have your own private room in the club.”
You could visibly see the guy deflate. I mean the wilting was just as bad as if he had dropped his pants and all the women in line had laughed at the size of his penis.
*snickers* Oh dear. He set himself up for that one, didn’t he? xD
[In best Hannibal Lecter voice]I do have one, but found myself alone tonight, and decided to seek company. Please join me, I would love to have you for dinner!
“The Council and The Veil pre-date any human laws, … by several hundreds of years”
They do? Where was that stated?
Well, maybe not any human laws, but they have been around for a very very long time (and possibly even helped right some of the laws originally)
No… or yes :) but what I meant is that supernatural beings could have been around since long, but we don’t know The Council. That they have been using the name “Twilight” for about two hundred years is the only date that has been stated. We don’t really know if The Council is older than that or not, not to say The Veil.
The vampiress’ cleavage will have distracted you, so take care when looking at panel 4, on this page. But, if you return from that link, and find that you have forgotten why you went there, please allow me to recap:
Thank you dear puppy, was starting to have doubts if had actually remembered that correctly :(
Have a fresh batch of Yorpie Snax ☺
Yum yum!
*motorboats tail*
“Adds in a fresh blt with thick cut b, on just cooled french bread, and condiment tray.”
Wow, that must actually have happened I guess, because not a trace of memory until I read your quote.
Guesticus: you are totally right.
Yorp: can’t compete with Guesticus’ snack Cornucopia so just “thanks for the piercing!”.
:-D My pleasure.
And thenks, DR.REVENGE :)
On the policing side:
It seems to me that it would be the human police interfering in the investigations done by the Council, making it a matter of jurisdiction. I don’t know the accuracy of the FBI/NCIS/Local PD/CIA rivalries in the NCIS series, but I’d assume that sort of “it’s need to know/let us handle this” is what goes on. The council would have to make sure that all of the levels of US policing know that there’s another investigative/arresting agency to avoid any sort of “they’re not a real organization” problems. Most police departments probably saw them like a less public ARCHON, and some were likely happy that they weren’t sending their fragile human enforcers against superhuman criminals that might be highly bullet resistant.
It’s a horrible thought, but Sydney may have just found the means to end racism entirely. What if the whole world was put under a glamour to think everyone around them had the same natural skin color/tone. In a few centuries you could removemit and no one would even notice the change.
Nope, in a few centuries you could remove it and see people freaking out, then forming factions, and then defending themselves against those “mutants”.
Actually they would only prepare to defend themselves at first, and then as they see the opposite group do the same they would start “defending” themselves (the preemptive kind).
It would end racism entirely… the day one group finally manages to eradicate all others. (Only to start dividing themselves over other attributes)
Well, without visual cues for differences of ethnicity, there would probably be a lot more breeding between them. If so, it wouldn’t take too many generations before the differences between the ethnicities (at least the genetic differences) all but vanished. Highly isolated populations may retain some physical differences and cultural differences may persist. But by-and-large, he might be right.
In the TTRPG Feng Shui, the dystopic future setting is ruled by an autocrat who has passed a law banning same-race breeding. Presumably, everyone has an ID or something stamped with some kind of ‘phenotype rating’, and you can’t get married or have kids with anyone whose rating is too close to your own. The idea is force-breed the very notion of ‘race’ out in the next few generations. They even have mass media where the idea of, say, two black people falling in love becomes a major scandal and ends in tragedy (again, dystopia–the government controls all the media).
People would just find new differences to hate each other over.
Since they Japanese population is pretty homogeneous looking, they have needed to get inventive on who to discriminate against. They have come up with a way to classify personal status based on blood type. https://blog.gaijinpot.com/blood-type/
Just when I had watched enough manga, to feel I was understanding some aspects of Japanese culture better,* you had to go and throw that curve-ball, didn’t you?
* If I get the money to do the tourist thing, someday, I will be sure to go when temples are holding their festivals. I will be wary of buying any blood-related drinks though.
Well from our point of view that wouldn’t exactly be a DRASTIC change from our current history. Likely it would become racism via culture, but anyone can learn to blend in or stand out. You can’t just change your skin color.
Sure you can, Mickey Jackseat did it (went from black to white), and Paris Trampstamp went from white to orange
“Mickey Jackseat”, as you call him, did not voluntarily go from black to white. I don’t know if you missed it, but he had vitiligo, which is a very real autoimmune skin disorder. He also may have had lupus (in remission). And yes, the diagnosis of vitiligo is confirmed by his medical records. Vitiligo causes a patchy appearance; it’s easier to use makeup to conceal the dark patches than it is to try to darken depigmented skin.
As for “Paris Trampstamp” turning orange, that happens to anyone who uses too much artificial tanner, because your skin absorbs DHA (Dihydroxyacetone), a primary ingredient in all the artificial tanners out there. And there are plenty of things you can do about it, such as rubbing yourself with lemon, vodka, or moistened baking soda.
Didn’t say it was by choice, just that people can change colour, sometimes by choice mostly by illness or accident
Surprise can do it too. I have seen people transform into Ancient Japanese Assassins simply because the walked into a spiders web.
You live in a strange part of the world.
It must be Australia. Have you ever heard of any australian wildlife that is not terrifyingly dangerous? I can imagine even the blackest guy becoming temporarily albino over there.
They all cheered when google created its own data storage towers and simply put all the new sigils next to Those so humans would police their goods for them.
Ok – several questions about “What”, “How”, and “Who” answered now but that leaves a rather obvious question of “WHYY???”. Obviously Dave has an answer to that and we’ll probably find out sometime next update or two. Until then… I have a theory!
Theory – the majority of Supernaturals are terrified of humanity. As in curl-up-in-a-fetal-position-and-pull-blankets-over-your-head terrified. The Veil is a big magical safety blanket set up so no greedy magicians can simply “forget” to renew the spell. And anyone trying/threating to break the spell gets hammered with the kind of violent overreaction usually reserved for idiots with nuclear hand grenades. Oddly enough individual humans aren’t threating at all, simply humanity as a group.
Ok… so why is “one human” not a problem but “all humans” flat out terrifying? Well, we are pretty darn good at causing extinctions of other species. Especially because of the existence of “Supers” in this world. And as Sudanese or Adolf Hitler could tell you, trying to do a complete genocide is darn near impossible. So its reasonable that “kill all the scary humans” was proven to be not a valid solution. Especially if there is a few groups of Supernaturals that need humans to reproduce (ie – vampires) And while that explains why humans weren’t simply killed off… it doesn’t explain the hiding.
So what if humans are scary because of a racial magical ability! What if “peer pressure” is not just a human thing? But rather a human racial spell that humans themselves are partially immune to? What if all those stories of gods and demons had power OVER the gods and demons? The human zeitgeist could give a ton of magical power to supernatural critters while at the same time striping out the free will. After all – all the stories of gods include what sacrifice you need to “pay” to get what you want out of them. Sort of a magical domestication process.
Now that kind of “loss of free will” easily explains the paranoid level of secrecy. And it ALSO explains why any government force that finds out simply doesn’t have the option to force them out of hiding. And why aliens want to leave the place well alone. That kind of racial ability is not one you want to toss all over the galaxy. Especially if you are not sure what the “minimum size” is for it to take effect.
That was answered on panel 2 of this page. Albeit only in broad terms.
This would overlap with aspects of what you say, in your first two paragraphs. The xenophobic behaviour of humanity is self-evident. So if they, as a community, wished to co-exist with humanity, it was necessary to find a means to avoid persecution (and the need to use force to defend themselves).
Really interested in these Sigils here. The most obvious way I can think to power something of this size is placing them on the world’s ley lines but then what about ownership of the spells involved.
Most fictional worlds tend to have spells die with their casters so unless there are gods in this setting that can’t technically be killed I’m inclined to believe ownership of the spells falls to the Planet with the casters acting as proxies. This essentially frees up the Veil from being withheld by greedy magi from others in the supernatural set.
I’m also inclined to think that this opens up the possibility that the Planet, or at least it’s magic, has a will of it’s own. This could go a long way explaining how the Veil works to prevent (the key word being prevent here) discovery of the supernatural by normal humans. It also allows for those few humans who happen to, by accident or by Fate, discover the supernatural by themselves; the Planet essentially wills these occurrences to happen for reasons completely alien to anyone but the Planet itself (and perhaps those few with enough power to become some degree of omniscient). Maybe this will extends to other situations as well such as the coincidences that led Sydney to join ARCHON or even the discovery and emergence of everyone’s powers.
I’d also like to posit that the Planet acts as a sort of magic ISP; and MSP if you will. It not only spreads the Veil throughout the world through the Sigils but also allows for the creation of private magic networks. Like say you want to Veil an entire town, city, or district from the normal world and not just the Supernatural citizens. This community could erect and maintain their own Sigils with the Planet providing the bulk of the spell power essentially creating a pocket of space where the supernatural and their sympathizers can live without fear of discovery. Unfortunately this also leaves the issue of what happens to these spaces when the tenants leave without giving the landlord the keys (in which the landlord also forgets the location of the metaphorical apartment). Thus we have situations like Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, and El Dorado where entire places seem to fade into legend but people still seem to believe these places are out there.
Also open to the possibility that a certain man took control of a certain country partially to take advantage of their underdeveloped leylines with him providing important infrastructure. Sigils, for example.
Someone already mentioned that, just a few posts above
Will just leave this here for anyone interested in a Monster Bash…
Weird . . .
I prefer a Monster Mash!
Yeah, that’s the video had expected
I have to agree. It was pretty predictable. ☺
You just need a Smiling Jack to get you on the proper track. He’ll teach you all about that cardiac snack.
I wonder if the Veil selectively excludes super-humans, if they’re just too varied to nail down or if it’s an intentional exclusion because the veil would be too hard to maintain with humans just ‘poping in’ at inopportune moments. That is, assuming being covered by the veil means others relatively aren’t. I wonder if they can selectively include or exclude people in the veil at all? I assume the building is a Veil exclusion zone of some kind, but then why does Dabbler have to verbally cover for her demon form when she could just say she has invisible arm powers or something.
Also Dabbler can show her demon form without the Veil covering her. I think it exclude humans (of any kind) and anybody that can disguise themselves.
Alternatively it could be that it cover just who wants to be covered. Which imply you need to know about it. Which in turn imply that new supernatural beings will be a security break also for that reason, until they get “The Speech”.
Combining the two, maybe it covers anybody not human, except when they don’t want to be covered. Rookies problem solved.
Shit, need to remember that the comments open at the last page, all these was already plenty discussed on the first page.
If you are non-human you have to login in and sign up for coverage from your local provider. Just don’t automatically hit ‘agree’ on the terms page without reading it though. They have recently slipped in a clause about ‘first born child’.
They also took off the “I’m not a robot” check box.
As Duende Sociopata mentions, in a broader context, this has been addressed, on the previous page of comments. Namely that the Veil excludes humans, and super-humans are part of that set.
Dabbler is an exception, who can be seen, thus does need an explanation. One is readily available though when you recall that succubus illusions are the most powerful ones going. So Dabbler (or any succubus) could override the weaker power of the Veil, by use of her racial abilities.
This does not preclude the logic that other Supernatural Americans can also over-ride the Veil, when necessary. Be it by willpower or, perhaps, carrying a counter-charm. Clearly something like that must be happening, in this very chamber. Or else none of our heroines (including Sydney, as she is not holding her true-sight orb) would be able to see the council members for what they are. Your assumption though, that it could be a building-specific exclusion, is perfectly reasonable too.
So, Sydney is the type to not only just through out the “This is racist” she uses it wrong. :p
She probably thinks the sun is racist for burning her pasty self more than others. :p
You’ve never heard the phrase ‘the human race’ used as a way of referring to mankind? Maybe she should have been more precise and said ‘racially selective’. As far as I’m aware race is defined by shared physical characteristics, so I think you could consider vampires as a categorically distinct race of humans with the same basic sub-groups of race and ethnicity as humans? I guess? I’m not a frigin’ cryptopologist.
“Race” being an outdated concept aside, “racist” imply to believe in inherent superiority, stereotypes, and stuff like that. “Racially selective” is not necessarily “racist”.
True. Racially selective systems are frequently the product or perpetrators of institutional racism, but that’s not always the case. The Veil could easily be considered an engine for racial equity in that it lets people of non-human races bypass the xenophobic enmity and skip right to the good ol’ every day variety. Of course keeping a system that lets people freely change their outward appearance from humans could be considered at least a bit of a dick move if you’re say… a burn victim.
By all means, file it with that time Sydney made the ‘roofied prom date’ joke. She’s being facetious and intentionally messing with Ingsol by using an inaccurate summation with negative connotations. I just think it’s worth pointing out that she’s not -entirely- wrong.
Of course I have, but that’s not from which the term came about. :p Not to mention, as mentioned racist tends to be negative. A system in place to hide yourself (or even a group of people) does not make one racist.
I’d just expect a very old vampire, who looks to be a leader of a council that important, to be able to refute her better, but rereading it, maybe he just decided she wasn’t worth the time, but if that’s the case, it didn’t come off that well, because Sydney is supposed to be important to the story :p (At least seems to be right now :p Who knows, Dave may decide to kill her off later.)
What
Wlad Inggie should have done, was correct her rudeness by saying “No, not a racist glamour, a racial glamour. Do you know how many different races there are in this room right now?”Crud, forgot to close the [strike] tag after Wlad :(
>.> Something of note…unless I missed something. There is no particular mention of HOW the Veil works, simply that it suppresses normal human ability to perceive the supernatural. That could mean, as everyone seems to think that it acts as a mental influence device directly on people…
OR
It could mean that it acts like a perpetual glamor on the supernatural beings and events themselves. Without knowing the complexity to which the device has been developed, it could do a sort of reverse check on each non-human creature’s mind to verify whether or not they want to be covered or not under the Veil. That would allow for Succubae appearing human or not based on whether they have chosen to enact their own glamor.
By that same standard, that would shift the veil to being less of a mind control device and instead an actual Veil generator that basically sends a ping test to a non-human/special case interactions in the world. Not terribly invasive. Potential to be used for nefarious things is still there, but when you can only send insignificant bits in data packets, the threat is vastly diminished…
I might look over this page for longer than 2 minutes tomorrow, and realize I missed something, but for 2am, I like how my thoughts sound xD
Ingsol specifically said it suppresses human awareness of supernatural creatures and events. That’s a form of mind control. They’re actively making people more dumb.
Geez, I almost typed “dumber.”
Um… no. There’s a difference between lowering one’s IQ (making someone more dumb) and hiding something from their perception.
Or are you trying to say that stage magicians are making people more dumb, because they’re hiding how their magic tricks work?
Bingo. Sensory suppression is not necessarilly a modification to the party that gets the result.
Think of it this way, for a simple example, with a gun silencer.
The noise is suppressed, but just because you don’t hear the sound at the same volume does not mean your ears have been changed.
Your awareness of the true nature of the bullet’s characteristics (if you know the round sizes by rough noise output) would be changed, but you have not actually been afflicted with any sort of control.
The process works on the mental image your brain creates for the object, but my complaint is that it should not work on photo from any camera or audio from other recording devices. The system was put into place well before the advent of technology.
For instance London is heavily monitored with a myriad of surveillance cameras. By now they should have picked up on all those werewolves I have heard about from there.
They could have modified the sigils to adapt when they saw what was coming.
It’s a giant magical supernetwork and we’re really questioning why technology doesn’t get around it?
…Eh whatever, I’d like to point back to Dabbler for this. Her glamour is used in the introduction to the press. If the Veil, like before, is more akin to a perpetual glamour, it would also cover technology based recordings using the same magical principle.
I am endorsing Duende Sociopata‘s answer to this. Although Ira Nibanabane‘s is a reasonable take too.
The net result for either is that humans viewing taped or remote footage will still see nothing out of the ordinary. In the former it is because, even though the footage has a monster in it, the spell is changing their perception of it. The latter being because the technology has been fooled as well.
But the line Duende Sociopata quotes is what makes me favour his version more.
Take a nap on a tree :P
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CWM1zDcmWXs/TroD0VsX4WI/AAAAAAAAAVA/Jc5bN5xSTkc/s1600/ch930919.gif
Flawless logic. Convinced me.
Honestly the Veil to me sounds like it just tricks minds into just not seeing what’s there. Kind of like the ability ‘Obfuscate’ from Vampire: The Masquerade.
I like the design of the Sigil, though I wonder what wavelength(s) it uses if it requires a capacitance hat.
(I noticed the Stargate reference just right of center, at the bottom of that frame. I wonder if it includes Time Lord and Vorlon markings, can’t see it too well on this tiny monitor…)
Hey Dave, Any chance of posting the full-rez version on your art page like you did for the agro-aura?
Seconded.
Octarine, of course!
Oh cool, others mentioned that they were spotting a Stargate nod, but you actually pointed me at where it was. Thanks.
Still don’t get it o_O
Symbol: https://atlantis-tv.ru/_ph/233/840963456.jpg
Explanation: https://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Point_of_origin
“…the newbie being “the one” cause their great great grandfather was a mummy and their grandmother was Demeter’s niece and their roommate got a blood transfusion from a cloned dinosaur or whatever”
Thanks for giving me a prompt for NANOWRIMO this year!
…I wanna read that, even if it is a first draft!
*discreetly slides over a box of worming tablets*
Interesting conundrum.
Mind controlling basically the population of earth without their permission is “bad”, but if it is done to avoid a war that would likely cost thousands of lives on both sides, it may not be “evil”.
The first alternative that springs to mind is a gradual roll out of the information that such creatures exist along with the truth about how they work and the extent to which they are or are not dangerous. Maybe one “race” at a time? (If so, I recommend leading with the werehare)
That may in fact be part of the reason Archon had Maxima and the others “come out”: it may be a precursor to introducing other superhuman elements.
That is my concern. The veil may be bad (or even evil), but any alternative may be worse in terms of loss of human life.
People are getting used to the ‘supers’ idea. Just tell the public the same story whenever they see an unknown form. That wolf guy? Bitten by a radioactive wolf. That bunny girl? Bitten by a radioactive rabbit. That guy who looks like a vampire? Bitten by a radioactive bat.
everyone seems to be freaking out about the whole veil thing. so here’s my 2 cents worth.
Instead of judging it by the legal or moral guidelines, here’s the result:
humanity hasn’t committed genocide on the various undercover species.
lets face it there are many unenlightened people out there who would do just that if they knew about the “freaks” if not now then in decades past.
The various undercover species haven’t been forced to fight for survival. let’s face it they’d do a lot of damage if they decided they wanted to take us with them.
so sure global perceptual inhibition kinda sucks but it beats having that much blood on your hands
Nicely said. Likewise Kitsune9tails above.
beaten to it by 3 minutes
Yea, clearly a ninja situation. It would not have been visible as you were typing, hence giving credit to you both.
Aaannnd the peanut gallery finally chimes in.
*licks lips, and googles “peanut rabbit”*
Awww, awww, cute, cute!
I wanna stroke it and pet it and call it…. anything other than George!
He’s a White Rabbit, you can call him ‘Late for Supper’!
Ladies and gentlemen (and assorted genderless species) let us raise a glass of Romulan ale to salute today as the 50th anniversary of the first airing of a little TV adventure show know as Star Trek.
https://www.startrek.com/article/happy-50th-anniversary-star-trek
I’m not much of a drinker, thank you. Make mine tea. Earl Grey. Hot. ☺
Well played.
Belatedly *chinks a glass*
i went into a giggle fit when i read “Racist Glamour”
I had a good laugh too. Keep calling it like you see it, Syd.
So there’s naga/lamia/marilith/gorgon? Cool, but I’d expect everyone to keep tripping on invisible tails if they were around.
Don’t get me started on Dabbler having invisible pointy things that stick out forward close to eye level.
They probably do, but the Veil makes them perceive it as having been whatever non-supernatural alternative may be at hand. Such as a scuffed carpet, or slightly raised flagstone. If all else fails, tripping over one’s self is an option.
But, on the grand scheme of things, falling over is better than getting stoned.
I see what you did there. Figured it might look like that when I wrote it.
When in doubt, blame pranksters with invisible forcefields or something.
So I’m curious, how does Sydney see all these beings right now even though she’s not using the orb that allows her to pierce ‘the veil’?
Is it a massive globe-spanning spell that just so happens to not work at a certain level underground? Or would they have something build into this base/lair of theirs that suppresses magic to some extent?
She can see them, because they are not being hidden, either that room is not covered by The Veil, or they all choose to appear as they are
Its also possible that once you see through the veil, it no longer works on you. Dabbler and other aliens are an exception because they have their own methods of disguise to work with. The veil is meant more for beings that CANT disguise themselves.
This page slightly confused me. I have never before associated sigils with structures or buildings.
Maybe he just wanted to shy away from using unoriginal sounding things like sigil stones (sounds like rune stones or a thousand other “something” stones mystical objects) or to untheatrical like The Veil Generators (and clearly these old supernatural council types like simple names with theatrical punch).
I think Dave just wanted something short and sweet to call them as there will probably be a chapter where he will have to find room for their name a lot?
Anywhosers, the “structures” as you call them are covered in sigils so its a pretty good short hand for them. Admittedly it would be like calling an object covered in curse words “The Curses” and while that would be weird sounding said to a large and varied group of people not in the know stuff like that probably does happen with things only known to an “in” crowd.
Yes, like calling something “letter” because is cover of letters.
Wait…
What? “cover of” should be “covered in” o_O
Duenduuude! That happens to me all the time. I SWEAR I even proofread some of those words before I hit submit but it turns out missing a chunk or slightly altered to a word I never remember typing accidentally BEFORE I got a browser with automatic spell check. I’m becoming paranoid that the thing actually can do more than merely SUGGEST corrections. O.O” (not that I don’t make plenty of typos but I’m not only pretty sure I checked some of those before hand but they aren’t patterns of typos I was prone to before Chrome etc… spooky… )
Clearly it is the Observer Effect, in operation.
Whilst it remains in the edit box, the word is both normal and weird simultaneously. Yet you only notice the former. However, once you hit the “Submit Comment” button, and observe the resulting post, the effect resolves itself, as the latter.
I like that, it explains a lot.
A fellow soul, thanks goodness.
My text box do behave weird, the cursor turns invisible, the DEL key stops working, etc, all pretty random as far as I can tell.
A lot of weird shit happens in Chrome, because it has so many keyboard shortcuts, that can easily be activated in error. Not that I know if any replicate the issues you mentioned mind. The one I hate the most though is the ‘close tab’ one. Especially when hit at the end of a lengthy post! Gone, with no ‘are you sure?’
What I would like to do is turn off all keyboard shortcuts (chrome, windows and all other applications), and then specifically enable just the ones which I need, as and when I desire to do so, and learn what they are.
The current system reduces my productivity, in anything I am doing. Not allowing me the option, I described, is dumb. And typical of big corporations arrogance. “Learning keyboard shortcuts will speed up your productivity. Therefore you must do so, or we will punish you, by making all your work disappear, or otherwise be FUBAR!”
Heh. Cover of Letters sounds like an 80’s power ballad.
Makes sense.
Pff. That feel when the shadowy bald guy looks almost exactly like your own vampire character.
Hey, rather think of it as a free cameo!
:-D
Yeah, that’s definitely a great way to think of it. xD
My thoughts, after reading a *lot* of comments…I wonder if Dave B planned this somewhat subtle bomb long ago…!
The Veil by itself is neither good nor evil; those are societal designations based solely on individual interpretations. An easy example is the `cheating lying girlfriend’…you will *not* care that your girlfriend is cheating until you FIND OUT. Until then, you are happy as a clam with your beautiful sweet rich sexually adventurous girlfriend who tells you your wee-wee is just on the safe side of being too big and five minutes of sexy time is the perfect amount. You are happy to swallow her lies because you don’t know about it; they cater to your own preconceptions.
On the flip side, you will `understand’ if the hot girl you took home last night lies to her actual boyfriend about where she was and who she was with. He’s your co-worker, the poor girl has needs he can’t satisfy properly, nobody was hurt, you got laid, and it would just cause way too many problems if she straight up TOLD him she went home with you.
Good…evil…it depends on perspective. Or, as Deus would say: it’s all an expression of greed. Since (hopefully) the vast majority of readers are human, we tend to judge or perceive from a humanocentric perspective. There is no Ultimate Good or Ultimate Evil…pretty sure the Egyptians thought Yahweh was kind of a major dick to be killing all those Egyptians for the sake of one enslaved tribe.
So, The Veil *isn’t* Good or Evil…it’s simply a Thing. How it’s used and how others perceive its use determines its final `moral value’. For the vampires and other extra-natural races/entities, it’s a Good Thing, allowing them safety to exist. For the humans being lied to (and yes, they are being lied to, prevented from seeing/knowing truth/reality/whatever term you want to use), it may not be so good, especially if the occasional extra-natural gets nibbly and fatally feeds or otherwise uses an oblivious human.
All The Veil really is, is an attempt to delay Darwinism. For better or worse, without The Veil, there would be war, with the extra-natural forces outnumbered and outgunned (so to speak). From a strictly objective view, if humans can wipe out vampires, then vampires don’t matter in the cosmic scheme of things. If vampires couldn’t prevent themselves from being wiped out, what use were they? The universe really doesn’t care. Yes, humans have caused X number of species to become extinct…so what? The world continues, the universe continues…eventually mankind may succeed in making itself extinct, and the universe will still go on.
From the human or vampire (using vampires solely as an example) perspective, of course it’s a lot more `important’. I *believe* this is where Dave is going, having foreshadowed it with Deus’ Greed Speech, and the entire comic to this point. With today’s information-sharing, our minds are a lot more flexible, able to entertain concepts unimaginable a hundred years ago. Women voting? Racial equality? Absurdities to an educated person a hundred years ago; today, almost everyone accepts and agrees.
So now we have superheroes being rolled out in a huge PR wave. I think this whole thing has been orchestrated to `train’ society to accept the extra-naturals. Possibly The Veil isn’t capable of adapting or being adapted as fast as human technology advances. Now that superheroes are `known’, the other extra-naturals can be slowly revealed…because remaining in hiding is going to be impossible for whatever reason.
Personally, I think Archon is forcing the Council’s hand here. Superheroes, as we’ve been shown thus far, consider themselves humans first, *then* superheroes…not as a separate class or race. Vampires, demons, aliens…they are vampires, demons, aliens *first*, even if they used to be human.
Which is `right’ or `wrong’ doesn’t really matter, except from the bias of our personal greed.
^ This. +10 Interwebs.
Well said, Grimjac, well said.
You stated that the “extra-natural forces (are) outnumbered and outgunned”, but that is only true now! Couple hundred years ago, it was not the case: humanity may have had the numbers, but they would not have the technology and an all out war would have seen the entire human virus wiped out (may have weapons that can fire several hundred rounds per second now, well, the potential, but back then, you were lucky to get a single shot off per minute!)
really people are bringing up the “is it right to wipe out vampires just becuase they feed on us?” Question again?
yes.
If rabbits all turned around one day and wiped wolves off the face of the earth no one would blame them.
If I just kicked down literally every single vampires door and roasted them in napalm till they were ashes would I have killed more people than would have suffered at the vampires hands in the rest of history? No. I just saved like a bajillion prostitutes and hobos, and a large number of pretty blond women on vacation abroad.
We as a species like all species have the Darwinian right to defend ourselves from predators, as could be argued that so do the vampires, but our own government is being a bunch of idiots and collaborating with them, so everytime someone just disappears becuase of the vampires it’s our government sitting on its hands that allowed it to happen through inaction.
A worldwide spell might be edited to do nastier things than just not noticing the supernatural, and yet our governments cool with a bunch of towers magically fucking with our minds, even their own.
And it’s going to bite them all in the ass one day when a super that makes his perception check goes apeshit over it and demolishes one of those veil emitters and starts a goddamn crusade
Are you sure our government had a choice? The Council predates the formation of the U.S. government by a significant amount.
Are you sure the government even knows about the towers? I’m sure someone in government knows about the Council, and definitely Archon knows, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the government does. “Plausible deniability” and all that. You’re making assumptions about something which you know nothing about.
Also, it’s probably enough of a pain keeping the Veil updated just to keep up with human technology. These days, everyone but me seems to have a cell phone camera. And then there’s all the updates in the field of forensic science. It would not surprise me at all if there are a few forensic pathologists who quietly wonder if they’re imagining things, because they found human AND wolf DNA in a wound.
Actually, it’s more likely that someone like YOU would start a goddamn crusade, deciding that they should all be destroyed without knowing anything more about WHY they feel they need to use such extreme methods to protect themselves. So, congratulations. You just provided all the proof they need to justify the existence of the Veil, at least in their minds.
1. Pretty sure if the government just dropped a press release that supernatural shit exists and to watch out for vampires n shit with a bit of proof there isn’t a damn thing the council could do about it.
2. The government knows it exists becuase that vampire just willingly explained the entire thing to a government agent, so he isn’t exactly dragging that secret to the grave.
3. Yeah I am the kind of person that would start a “kill all vampires” crusade and that’s when I do know why they erected the veil. It’s because vampires feed on humans and would be wiped out by humans if humans knew they existed , because we would, because WHY WOULD WE ALLOW THEM TO DO THAT, (like imagine if your neighbor ate people and everyone was just cool with it) so they erected it out of self preservation.
I couldn’t give less of a shit about literally every single other magical creature as long as they don’t feed on humans, I’d be super pissed that the government hasn’t told us about aliens but that’s a separate issue linking to progression of technology and people dieing of easily-cured-by-space-medicine diseases and the like
Are you sure the Veil is even the vampires’ idea?
For all you know, it might’ve been the fae or the aegir or the aliens.
(2) just because Archon knows, doesn’t necessarily mean the government as a whole knows. Again, “plausible deniability”. As long as our leaders don’t know, then they don’t have to lie when they’re asked about it.
(3) Why would we allow them to do that? Well, maybe they only feed on volunteers nowadays. Have you even considered that there is an ethical way for them to feed? Now, of course, to be fair I don’t know if they’re doing that. But you don’t know that they’re not.
(4) As for the aliens, I hate to tell you this, but there are people out there… religious fundamentalists of every stripe, for example… who would take scripture from the Bible (“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”) and happily start a crusade against anything that wasn’t human. Fae, Aegir, Aliens, Vampires, etc. All because they’re not “creatures of God”.
So, picture this: The government says “aliens are real”. Fundamentalists kill all the aliens. “Dammit, they could have cured cancer, and you went off and killed them!” … it could happen. (And all the political repercussions that might follow. Such as one of the alien species not being happy that we killed one of their representatives, and sending a warship to blow up the earth.)
The government may have a damn good reason for concealing the existence of aliens. You don’t know (and neither do I). What I’m saying is, don’t be in such a hurry to jump to conclusions. That’s the kind of behavior that has nearly started World War III more often than you realize. (No, I’m not talking about just the Cuban Missile Crisis.)
There is a distinction between ‘feeds on humans’ and ‘eats people’. Lethal predation by vampires in many works is shown to be optional. You’re presuming that the level of harm done by their feeding is automatically equivalent to, say, a cougar attack. In many works, it’s actually more akin to a tapeworm; it might leave you feeling a bit under par for a few days, but you’ll walk away from it and proceed about your life with minimal harm. You’re talking about justifying genocide of a sentient species over their need to periodically inconvenience humans for their own survival.
“We as a species like all species have the Darwinian right to defend ourselves from predators”
Just like the predators as a species have the Darwinian right to defend themselves from starvation by pursuing and killing prey. What you’re missing here is that Darwinian theory also charts other courses: parasitism (which is morally better than predation because it keeps the prey alive, as well as being better for the parasite by providing them with a secure food source) and symbiosis. The implication at hand is that the Council has been using the Veil as a means of enabling their membership to survive as parasites upon human society, and that Archon may be looking to shift that relationship into one that is more symbiotic.
Well thought out. Although it is entirely possible that they already have a symbiotic relationship. The one example we have seen certainly fits into that category. Likewise volunteer blood donors might live a life of luxury, in exchange for their services.
If there are any sexy vampiresses, in South East Transylvania who are looking for volunteers, just let me know? Unless you have to kill to feed, in which case I would only be interested out of academic curiosity. Just put me down for ‘likes friendly chats, and possible snuggles, but no nibbling’.
True, the one example we have of vampiric predation is symbiotic on an individual level… but we also have an indication that it’s a unique situation. It’s possible that it’s unique only in the scope or scale of feeding, and that the basic relationship is comparable to how vampiric society handles its feeding relationships… but it’s possible that it’s only one of a number of feeding strategies.
Then of course there’s the question of micro versus macro. What’s symbiosis on the individual level may still functionally operate as parasitism when one looks at the relationship between the vampire species and humanity.
Evolution and social evolution go paw in paw. Ever since humanity got smart and invented their first tools their relationship with the eco-system began to change.
Specifically restricting discussion to symbiotic relationships, hunter gatherers had such with a few species by accident (as regards intent, albeit that such species evolved to take advantage of that process in both humans and other animals). For instance spreading the seeds of fruit, by consuming it some distance from where it is gathered.
The more humanity learnt to shape their environment, the more species they brought actively into a symbiotic relationship. All crops, farm animals and domestic animals now have such symbiotic relationships with humanity. Regardless of what biological relationships they had before the advent of civilisation.
If vampires have to kill humans, to feed, on the face of it that is a parasitic relationship. However humans have to kill cows, in order to eat beefburgers. Yet, as I stated above, cows are in a symbiotic relationship with humans. All the cows’ needs are provided for by humans,* including food, water, protection from predators, shelter, medical care (where available) and, importantly, ensuring they get to reproduce.
For the same to apply to the vampire to human relationship, as societies, then vampires would need to be providing a considerable return. Which could be done, if a poor person is offered all the above (and a good quality of life) for themselves and their family, in exchange for becoming a snack, later in life. Rather detracting from the quality of life mind. Clearly this would only work if vampires are rich, have very small numbers and do not need to feed frequently.
But then, as a species, there is also the ‘protection from predators’ angle, which can mitigate any failings in the above. Clearly, in the Grrl Power Verse, there is a lot more to Earth than just humanity. And in this chamber we see an elder vampire taking a leading role in protecting humanity. If the service they are providing is so significant that it makes the difference between humanity’s extinction and survival, then they are clearly in a symbiotic relationship with their food.
Obviously the case becomes a lot easier, to argue, if they only need to take donations of blood, in small enough quantities not to endanger life. And ceasing to be an issue, at all, if they can, and do, survive on animal blood.
* Albeit that the quality of life can be severely lacking, in more abusive societies.
Given DaveB’s exposure to Vampire: the Masquerade, I expect his model of vampirism is probably at least somewhat based upon their model… which would mean that a vampire simply going about the business of survival will need to have a covert harmless feeding every two to three days. If deprived of blood, most would starve to the point of being a danger to humans over the course of ten days, although more ‘potent’ vampires may be able to stockpile more and thus survive longer. Likewise regarding danger; it can cause the need for potentially harmful feeding, but the more potent the vampire the less likely it will do so before they can find a solution.
To my mind, it’s not even a matter of who wins or loses. Once the war starts, everybody loses. Or at least all of the humans who get killed because of the war lose.
A big factor is how vampires feed. Covering up for willing blood donors is one thing, but covering up for assault and battery on the unsuspecting is another.
There is no assault, if the victim is unaware of an attack.
Providing the Council polices and punishes battery at least as well as humans do, under normal circumstances, then justice is being dealt.
There is actually president for this kind of activity, within our legal system. Namely when a crime involves somebody from the security services (as a witness or undercover, within a group of suspects, as examples). Whilst such trials can be done publicly, but just screening off the witness, there are other times when the degree of security forces involvement is so extensive that most, if not all, of the trial has to be conducted in secret.
The justification being that revealing the secrets would put the public in greater jeopardy. Thus this outweighs the defendant’s rights to a public trial.
In reality the secret trial option is used vanishingly rarely. And rightly so. But the principle is still there, for precedent purposes.
The villain spreading were-bunnyism is probably cooling his heels in a cell next to Vehemence, at the moment. Presumably on remand pending his trial. Which is unlikely to be a fully public trial. Presuming he is found to be guilty, the verdict can be announced, under whatever pertinent laws might punish the knowing contamination of blood with a contagion. Without necessarily having to specify what.
Any press queries could be met with a flat “In the interests of public safety the nature of the contagion is classified.” This would not sit well with them of course. But voices of complaint have still not managed to eliminate Guantanamo Bay yet. So I do not think it would render this approach impractical. Just unpopular.
Why would the government and this Council cooperate despite all the downsides? It’s very simple:
M.A.D.
Or they are hoping to keep close enough to them that their agents will slowly glean enough magic, tech, magitech, etc… to give us a flippin’ chance now that they know we are but one little bluish marble in a life filled universe (multiverse?). These endangered species, refugees, weirdos and rejects probably have enough knowledge to make acting like the Earth in “Men in Black” (neutral/protected turf to hide in?) worth it. Or so they think till that warship comes looking for a certain runaway Princess.
SCENE: 100 light years away from the little bluish marble. The spiral arm sector governor’s palace, floating, on cloud tops, above a intensely developed city-world.
GOVERNOR(weary sigh): OK what’s next on the agenda?
AID: (shuts door, and sits down) A radioactive cloud will be enveloping a backwater planet, within the next two weeks. All higher life will die.
GOVERNOR (idly waves a tentacle):Backwater? What tech level?
AID: Seven, verging on eight. Supersonic aircraft, and the like.
GOVERNOR (looking irritated): Barely sentient. Next item?
AID: I should mention that we have three hundred of our citizens on that planet. Plus the various demon races have several thousands.
GOVERNOR (pointedly looks at AID’s groin): Let me guess, you passed the Succubus ambassador, on the way in?
AID (flushes blue, in embarrassment): Yes. She looked… determined.
GOVERNOR (tugging ceremonial sash on): You better go draw up an action plan. Send in the ambassador, on your way out.
I’m interested to know if there is any method by which humans can ‘pierce the veil’ and become hunters of supernatural creatures. Aside from superpowers.
Also I think the foreshadowing is that these mystical structures will be targets for some evil group in the future looking to “liberate mankind” or “allow monsters to run free like nature intended” or simply so chaos so Archon is to busy to notice their true agenda until it is too late.
Vampire hinted that Sydney wasn’t the only instance of a recruit with powers to pierce the Veil so any appropriate ability might be able to pierce or partially pierce it.
For a normal human this probably means training with magic (even if the don’t have a great knack true knowledge might provide methods) to produce an anti-glamour or anti-magic effect or appropriating an object/device already imbued with such an effect.
Since the Council has spent a few lifetimes killing anyone who makes too obvious a move primarily because it might clue the humans in on things there might be a threshold of believable behavior beyond which the human mind automatically rejects the awareness suppression. (“Vincent the new transfer student got really mad and then everything went kind of blurry as he seemed to move around REAL FAST and somehow everybody got dead… but I couldn’t seem to focus on exactly how he did it and… and…………….. wasn’t he.. Wait, yeah, he had fricking FANGS!!” *!*VEIL ERROR DETECTED*!* )
As for the last thing. Yes, everyone seems to feel that is what will happen. Someday. But I want the rest of my frickin’ extensive (and extensively amusing) power testing a la Diane Castle.
I must admit that I’m finding the comments for DaveB’s latest page almost oppressively serious what with all the talk of guns and wars and mind control and so on. Something must be done about it and so I present the following bit of tasteless, lowbrow comedy:
♪ ♫ The Great Wakkorotti – The Summer Concert ♫ ♪
Please don’t make me do this to you again. ☺
Well, we usually have regular bouts of seriousness mixed in with the silly but mind control, of any level, always brings out the worst in a few of us. (said knowing I am one of those) Its a pretty upsetting concept.
As soon as we move on from panels telling us all about such upsetting things we will get more pleasant silly comments back into the mix. (or like Yorp who tries to mix both kinds of comments together in the, “I am never more serious then when I am joking.” vein.) Though this is actually much more upbeat, civil and pleasant than what happened during the last couple forms of Vehemence.
I know, I know. Serious matters demand serious discussions!
On the other hand, in my opinion, an injection of silliness was sorely needed.
. . . or should I have said stupidity?
Please don’t forget to vote, and keep us in the number one spot, for the Top Web Comics list.
Especially with the sexy picture of Harem, as an incentive!
Still saying that that is Daphne #6 :p
Wow, just tuned in and read the whole “The Secret is an immoral conspiracy, our own government cooperating to hide the truth about the supernatural/extraterrestrial predators among us.” dialogue. Not to disrespect the argument, but Ingsol says “We police our own.” I take that at face value: supernaturals who commit crimes against “mundanes” are TAKEN CARE OF.
Not because of any enlightened policy, but because the human governments that know about them insist on it; the last thing the Council wants is war with humanity, which they would probably lose.
At the same time, the human governments probably figure that a war with the supernaturals would be Bad For The Neighborhood, afterwards remembered by such titles as Ragnarok or Armageddon.
So supernaturals police their own, and Those Who Know let them keep hiding. Win-win.
But all that aside, Dave needs a Veil if he wants to give his world nifty things like vampires, werewolves, ancient gods, etc, while keeping it looking and feeling like the modern, mostly mundane, superhero world that’s pretty much our own minus supers. So let’s not overthink it.
Re. your last paragraph, I agree.
However Dave’s writing is deep enough that it can withstand heavy analysis. So, whilst your final point is good from a “let’s chill about it” point of view, I think it is still worth the exploration we have been doing.
In particular the reason why Dave needs the Veil is, as you say, because he wanted a world that is ours, but with all the exciting extras. However that does not necessarily mean that he wants to “keeping it looking and feeling” that way. Rather he wanted it as a starting point where all readers could project themselves into the world, and then take it to interesting places.
So he could potentially have the Veil dropped tomorrow, for instance. But, as always, he examines the implications of that. And I think that we can all see it would result in world-wide anarchy, persecution and possibly war. Therefore I do not feel that is likely to happen. But I am sure Maxima, Archon and, as she is brought up-to-speed, Sydney, will be examining the options, to see how the system could be changed.
The conclusion may eventually be that it cannot. The parallel to this would be the ‘witness protection program’. People who’s true identity have to be protected, both for their own safety and for the public good. For witnesses, it is to encourage them to step forward and do their whistle-blowing. For the Council, it is to prevent them having to defend themselves, perhaps even going to war to do so. A war, which the Council has access to vastly more powerful resources, so could well be lost by humanity.
In this scenario, it would then be a matter of determining whether Archon has the capability to take over the policing role, completely, from the Council. The simple answer is they cannot. Archon only has jurisdiction in the USA, whereas the Council is a world-wide organisation, with a status equal to, or greater than, the UN. So, at most Archon could police the USA’s supernatural events.
This would clearly make for an interesting story, as it would require the cops to balance combating supernatural menaces, whilst having to avoid events getting so out of control that even the Veil cannot counter it. Fortunately an awful lot of such events can be put down to rogue super-villains, now that is out in the open. And Arianna’s talk, saying that legendary monsters were probably supers, does hint this is a route Archon have in mind.
However it could alternatively turn out that Archon simply do not have the manpower to handle it all, in addition to dealing with regular super-villains. In which case I could see the Council’s enforcers being sworn in as deputies. Perhaps even more formally, in that they can get full modern police deputy (or even sheriff) training.
Of course, if they get a badge, then they must be part of the organisation issuing it. If they are operating covertly, perhaps we are just about to be introduced to Arc-Dark? Although Archon clearly do need a spy arm, and I cannot see them having that solely drawn from monster society. So either they will just be a department, within it, or they will be a separate branch completely. Given their remit is policing hidden monsters, and the like, rather tnan spying, I think that the latter is the most likely.
Which leads to the most important speculation, if that is the case. What is that branch of Archon going to be called?
• Arc-ane (sadly does not represent the non-magic using factions)
• Arc-angel (Very good for PR purposes. But would the demons, or the angels approve?)
• Arc-osaur (Just in case dinosaurs had a proto-Council, which the current Council members all respected. Thus giving a faction-neutral title)
• Arc-tangent (Linguistically a ‘tangent’ is something that veers away, at an angle. Applicable as supernatural humans had veered away from humanity. Mathematically an arctangent is the inverse of a tangent. Bringing supernaturals and humans back together!)
Finally, of course, they may be aiming to bring all the races of the council out into the open. But no faster than it is safe to do. So the above situations would hold, until that could happen. Which would take a massive effort, coordinated across the globe, as it would impact every country in the world. And they would all need to make extensive preparations, for the Unveiling.
Then we could have the fun of seeing how the people of the world might react, to finding that they are not alone!
The existence of the Veil, allows us to reinterpret this scene. We can now see why Dabbler was so unconcerned about talking openly about her ‘battleform’. She knew that even if her words would create suspicion amongst the paranoid,* and her later transformations, in public view, the Veil would push the general public into giving greater emphasis to believing the ‘official explanation’ than the conspiracy theorists.
“There was a UFO”
“Marsh-gas”
“I saw it in person”
“Venus”
“It had landing-gears!”
“Helicopter”
“It then flew upside-down”
“You’re nuts!”
* Xuriel Tantalis, friend to conspiracy theorists.
So it’s not just reality blindness (a lá ‘Narbonic’, a lá ‘Skin-Horse’).
Well, at least it gives some folks a bit more credit. Though I suppose that sometimes things go a little wonky and some folks ignore a little too much reality.
[please refrain from adding inflammatory commentary]