Archived Discussion Main / Masquerade

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Indigo: Moving "The short-lived Birds Of Prey" to Live-Action TV. The actual comic book is still alive and well, and exists in regular continuity in The DCU. Whereas the TV show is pretty much spot on for that description, and didn't survive even an entire first season.

Ununnilium:
If that's not outlandish enough, Keanu Reeves is the kung-fu cyberpunk messiah who's supposed to save us all.

Take That! that's not related to the trope.

• Of course, the above doesn't explain why the wizards don't use modern weapons alongside magic...
  • Because a lot of wizards don't have half a clue about how the Muggle world works. It stands to reason that if they did there would not need to be a class for muggle studies.
  • Nothing really does quite explain why the wizarding world is so completely out of touch with muggle science and technology. This is especially egregious when you consider that a ton of them come from muggle families. One could argue that this is caused by the majority of muggle-borns being inducted into the society by age 11 (before they can get too in-depth with technology), but that doesn't explain why a "leading expert in muggle studies" can't even pronounce "electricity" correctly. Perhaps a pseudo-genetic trait similar to the one that allows magic is what allows the understanding, development, and deployment of technology?
  • In addition to the more subtle explanations given here for wizardly ignorance of the muggle world, one should never estimate the most basic one: cultural bigotry. The Truth in Television examples of this from the real world would fill a library, and many are too implausible to use in stories. Who would believe, for instance, that a hundred soldiers with horses and steel armor and weapons could cut their way through literally thousands of foreign warriors armed with stone and wood? Or that the Incas would keep fighting the Spanish cavalry in the open over and over and over again, refusing to change tactics, until their empire was destroyed and all their people enslaved?
  • At least one Fan Fic author has suggested a permanent "global" compulsion spell enforces this, and further explains some of the monolithic culture elements of the wizarding world (like one sport and only one sport that anyone cares about).
• It also contains certain assumptions that were never tested in the context of the world, such as: a bullet wound will instantly kill or prevent a wizard from casting, or that a purely physical wound (severe or not) would prove fatal in a world where you can regrow your own arm bones. Or, for that matter, that modern technology works at all in a magically-saturated environment.
  • Yeah. because it's not like we didn't see them get attacked by a bunch of horse-people with bows and arrows or anything, and there's no differance between regrowing an arm-bone (over a period of time and using magic medicine) and regrowing a brain that's been sprayed all over the wall behind the wizard, obviously.
  • And magically saturated environments (which aren't all that common) do interfere with electronics, but guns are completely mechanical, so they'd work just fine.
  • Er, I think you go this from the Dresden Files. No such distinction is ever made anywhere in the Harry Potter series — all we get is Hermione saying that technology tends not to work around high-magic environments, period.

All of this is Conversation In The Main Page.

Cromage: I can't say I agree with just getting rid of *all* of that, since some of it (namely the part concerning cultural bigotry) fits with the trope. However, if you get rid of the discussion, you should probably also get rid of the first part of the conversation, which was these lines:

This is probably a clever subversion of the trope, with the Secrecy statutes enacted — despite claims to the contrary — to protect the wizards from the normals. A moment's thought will show that a muggle with a handgun will beat a wizard with an "Avada Kedavra" spell in a quick-draw, or simply in terms of range — and a sniper against a wizard wins every time. Modern weapons plus far larger numbers mean that at best Wizards are on a level playing field with normals, and may well be at a significant disadvantage.

It's also technically incorrect; a Masquerade used to protect the paranormal from the normal fits the origin of the term, so it is not a subversion in the slightest.

• If you go back and actually watch the scene where Morpheus explains the Matrix to Neo, he states that they harvest human's bioelectricity and their body heat as well. He also mentions that the Machines also use a form of fusion to supplement the energy supplied by the human. As for feeding them, Morpheus mentions that they "liquified the dead to be fed intravenusly to the living". No better way to supply the human body with what it needs to grow than to use another human, right?
  • Au contraire. In any ecosystem, only 10% of the calories consumed by one animal are available to the predator that feeds on that animal- calories are consumed by bodily processes, resulting in waste heat (which the machines are taking up) and energy is stored in nondigestable tissue. Said nondigestible tissue also contains many nutrients key to the survival of the creature in question,but lost to its predator- hair, bones, nails, teeth, and so on. No system can ultimately function on heterotrophs alone.