The Castlevania Dungeon Forums => General Castlevania Discussion => Topic started by: Nagumo on November 04, 2017, 09:28:18 AM
Title: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: Nagumo on November 04, 2017, 09:28:18 AM
I could ask this question about most urban fantasy stories but I thought it would be interesting to examine Castlevania in particular. Of course, the out-of-universe reason is fairly obvious: if the supernatural is common knowledge and openly visible, the world ceases be like our world.
The LoS games actually has ordinary people being aware of the existence of Gabula and other supernatural things (if I remember correctly) but in LoS 2 it is shown human society in the 21st century seemed to have developed in almost the exact same way as in our world, which makes the whole thing kind of stupid.
In the IGAverse, I assume, this is not the case. In AoS Soma always reacts with disbelief or scepticism whenever he is told certain facts by Genya, Graham, etc. Which makes me believe that ordinary people in the CV universe are not aware of the existence of the supernatural. I think this mostly isn't a problem when dealing with time periods such as the Middle Ages. The view of the world people had back then included all sorts of fantastical elements so a cover up would have been redundant. Though things are getting trickier when moving into later periodes in which the spread of information is quicker and easier and there also exists technology like cameras and smart phones. But at the same time people like Soma exist who don't seem to believe in supernatural things like Dracula at all. Which only leaves the conclusion that the supernatural is being hidden from ordinary people for whatever reason. However, what could be a reasonable in-universe justification for this?
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: theplottwist on November 04, 2017, 11:09:01 AM
Why, the justification is mass hysteria of course. Society would either crumble or lose focus is the news that an almighty Demon King keeps reviving to drive humanity into destruction broke out. Not mentioning other supernatural stuff that we're not even told about, but only hinted at (the Church curbing supernatural activity all around the world, stuff like Dario being a wanted criminal involved in numerous fire-related incidents, etc).
Plus, another reason: You don't want criminals and tyrants using these supernatural things on their favor. I keep complaining how PoR didn't use ONE Nazi, but there is a good counterpoint to that: Brauner used the souls of the dead to revive the castle during the war. Imagine what the Nazis would do if they knew about Dracula and the supernatural. I assume they didn't do anything because the Church did a good job at hiding this stuff.
As time moves forward, humanity grows more intelligent and technologically advanced. This is true for both those who know about the supernatural and those who don't. We're also told that there is a joint effort by the governments of the world -- the people in power and with funds to spare -- to hide the supernatural; So it is on the best interest of humanity that magic and demons remains as hidden as possible so humanity doesn't obliterate itself, something that is much easier to accomplish as time progresses and humanity's cunning for weaponizing everything improves.
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: Dracula9 on November 04, 2017, 11:32:14 AM
Plus, another reason: You don't want criminals and tyrants using these supernatural things on their favor. I keep complaining how PoR didn't use ONE Nazi, but there is a good counterpoint to that: Brauner used the souls of the dead to revive the castle during the war. Imagine what the Nazis would do if they knew about Dracula and the supernatural. I assume they didn't do anything because the Church did a good job at hiding this stuff.
i'll do one you worse
-thule finds out -thule gets ahold of some shit -thule passes shit off to mengele
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: Jorge D. Fuentes on November 04, 2017, 11:54:45 AM
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: zangetsu468 on November 04, 2017, 08:31:03 PM
Masses in the real world don't buy into the supernatural so..
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: Dracula9 on November 04, 2017, 08:46:44 PM
sure they do
just the one with the winchester boys
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: DarkPrinceAlucard on November 04, 2017, 10:13:44 PM
Imagine what the Nazis would do if they knew about Dracula and the supernatural.
Weirdly enough this same instance comes up within the Hellsing series which just so happens to have many nods to the CV franchise (Stories based around Bram Stoker's Dracula, main character name Alucard, a chapter called Castlevania), so we pretty much get to see through it how the Nazis would have reacted to such power since the Hellsing series while not exactly like CV has a world that is very similar power and monster wise and SPOILER ALERT they did not use that power for anything good lol.
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: X on November 04, 2017, 10:33:04 PM
I'm sure that the people of the CV universe know about the supernatural or there would be no knowledge of it at all, let alone the word 'supernatural'. There is just a lack of evidence to bring it more into the spotlight. It would be kinda like our own world. We know of the supernatural but there are so many things about it that still escape our full understanding of it. However by the time AoS takes place someone decided to blow the whistle and expose the entirety of it all.
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: AdrianTepes on November 05, 2017, 02:12:40 PM
The LoS games actually has ordinary people being aware of the existence of Gabula and other supernatural things (if I remember correctly) but in LoS 2 it is shown human society in the 21st century seemed to have developed in almost the exact same way as in our world, which makes the whole thing kind of stupid.
In universe, LoS 2's people are aware that supernatural things exists, or at least that they existed in the past, as the battle between mankind and Dracula has been documented kinda unaccurately, and are historically accepted (you can find that documents in the game in the form of the City Memorial's collectables). To me, makes a lot of sense their society evolved in the same way ours did, after all a lot of people in our society doesn't believe in supernatural stuff at all, and dismiss "historical" accounts of supernatural events, even if at some point were commonly accepted.
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: K.G. Morder on November 06, 2017, 08:35:41 PM
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: Nagumo on November 07, 2017, 11:59:24 AM
It turns out the concept I'm talking about is often refered to as "the masquerade". I'll use that term in this thread from now on for convenience's sake.
Masses in the real world don't buy into the supernatural so..
I think the opposite is true. Humanity have believed in the supernatural for most of its existence. Even now I would bet that religious people outnumber non-religous people. So I don't think you could justify the masquerade with "people don't want to believe".
Aside from the "why?" question there are also some other things that I think are interesting to think about. How could you determine what's magical, and thus needs to be hidden, and what isn't magical? For example, why would a "Dark Octopus" be classified as magical and a regular octopus classified as a regular animal? How would it be possible to maintain the masquerade? I could think of a few events in CV universe where it would pretty much have been impossible to prevent it from breaking. Someone is bound to remember a golem attacking in broad daylight is what looks like a densly populated Japanese city or that time the tower of Pisa got occupied by a bunch of monsters during WWI.
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: theplottwist on November 07, 2017, 01:45:52 PM
I think the opposite is true. Humanity have believed in the supernatural for most of its existence. Even now I would bet that religious people outnumber non-religous people. So I don't think you could justify the masquerade with "people don't want to believe".
Yet this happens now. People really just don't believe stuff, from reasons that range from skepticism to confirmation bias. There are people who will believe any insane thing they see, and there are people who will deny everything. We have millions thinking they saw Jesus on a cloud, and millions more who know what Pareidolia is.
I mean, there are claims of the supernatural all the time. People who claim to have special powers, people who claim to have seen something. Footage of supposedly supernatural entities and cryptids. My country is overrun with stories of priests doing some insane supernatural shit that you "just gotta go to the church to see".
And what is the result? People simply don't believe it or pay no mind to it. We live on a world where the majority is supersticious -- but only if they agree with their pet superstition. It's surprisingly easy to maintain the masquerade when people's faith in the fantastic is either already not very high, or some faiths contradict each other so much that one side claims the other is lying.
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How could you determine what's magical, and thus needs to be hidden, and what isn't magical? For example, why would a "Dark Octopus" be classified as magical and a regular octopus classified as a regular animal?
Because it is "tormented by black magic", unlike ordinary octopuses...?
I get what you're saying. But actual examples of monsters who are functionally just animals (with no apparent bizarre origins, no intent to destroy mankind or no supernatural/physics-defying qualities involved) are very rare.
I mean... The only one I can think of right now is the Killer Fish. And it doesn't seem like there's much of an effort to hide the it from the world. Hell, there are recipes using Killer Fish!
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Someone is bound to remember a golem attacking in broad daylight is what looks like a densly populated Japanese city or that time the tower of Pisa got occupied by a bunch of monsters during WWI.
This is something I wanted to talk about for so long <3
There is one thing we must remember when talking of CV: The history of Earth there is absolutelly not the same as ours. Though some of the "main beats" of their history is close to ours, we don't have the full context of everything. For example: When you talk about how nobody remembers that time when the tower of Pisa got infested with monsters, you might just be wrong -- we don't KNOW if someone remembers it, because we're not given screentime about that guy who was passing in front of the tower and caught a glimpse of a dude with a spear vaulting through floating platforms around the tower.
The entire history of this fictional Earth is already "wrong" starting with Dracula and the Church. This is basically what gets me utterly mad when someone starts talking of how the Church should be evil "because it killed witches for real back then" but ignores completelly the role of Vlad Tepes on the history of Europe, and is JUST OK with him being a vampire sorcerer trying to annihilate mankind, completelly contradicting what actually happened.
What I'm getting at is this: We're not given the full context of some stuff. Though I agree with you in full that some of this is stuff concerning the masquerade appears to be impossible to overlook, we also do not know the extent of the power of the people charged with maintaining it. I mean- the Church has elemental witches and genius sorcerers working for it. Time-stopping is a thing in this universe, how far are we from "mind-wiping magic" akin to MiB's neuralizer?
But I raise you this: Do you know how Brauner knows of Dracula's entire history apparently out of nowhere? Where do you think he learned of the supernatural? We don't know it, of course, but he WAS THERE during WWI. Is it too inconceivable to think that Brauner is just the type of witness we're looking for, to whom the masquerade fell apart? We know the Church battles the supernatural all around the world. So, how much of it is the result of the actions from someone who has witnessed the supernatural before?
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: zangetsu468 on November 07, 2017, 02:29:49 PM
Plottwist has basically said most of what I needed to say.
In terms of the golem attacking people in broad daylight, the media would downplay it somehow or people would conveniently choose to forget. Just YouTube or google the recollections of soldiers who have apparently gunned down a Giant humanoid in Afghanistan. Even if it makes alternative media, the masses won't believe it.
To give you another example, take any semi well known conspiracy theorist. They report on supernatural occurrences and the occult, some people believe, but most people don't. It's simple.
The hypothetical black octopus debate can be put down to "people will assume it's a new species". There are rainbow lobsters in the ocean, which I had never heard about until today. People are not going to assume such things - which mimic something existing - are supernatural.
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: thernz on November 08, 2017, 02:20:35 PM
i feel like the implication is that human hunters and the church just got really effective at doing what they do at a certain point, or that maybe only cv3 was the only actual big incident of hell invasion of demons attacking humans
so in the modern age it just doesnt happen, bc all the demons are mostly fucking dead
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: K.G. Morder on November 09, 2017, 07:49:04 AM
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Someone is bound to remember a golem attacking in broad daylight is what looks like a densly populated Japanese city
"probably cosplayers"
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or that time the tower of Pisa got occupied by a bunch of monsters during WWI.
considering it was wartime, I doubt most civilians were going to notice the demons amidst the chaos already unfolding. Most of those areas seem to be particularly devoid of human life when you go through them.
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: Nagumo on November 09, 2017, 08:51:53 AM
i feel like the implication is that human hunters and the church just got really effective at doing what they do at a certain point, or that maybe only cv3 was the only actual big incident of hell invasion of demons attacking humans
so in the modern age it just doesnt happen, bc all the demons are mostly fucking dead
I suppose the explanation that would make the most sense would be that supernatural beings are extremely rare and perhaps most of them live in hell/makai/whatever. CV enemies also tend to burn into flames when killed which is an covenient explanation for why archaeologists wouldn't be digging up minotaur skeletons or something.
But then there's still the problem of magic being hidden instead of reshaping society in significant ways.
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: zangetsu468 on November 09, 2017, 04:45:53 PM
Reminds me of when Kang and Kotos knock on Homer's door and are met with "Oh great.... Mormons..."
Title: Re: Why is the supernatural hidden from ordinary people in the CV universe?
Post by: Nagumo on December 19, 2017, 06:50:21 AM
I have been doing some more thinking regarding the "why?" of the masquerade in the Castlevania universe and I think I have come up with a (at least for me) satisfying and believeable answer. It's pretty much complete fan-fiction and it might not completely fit with everything we know regarding the lore of the games but nevertheless I'm quite fond of it. My idea is sort of based on something from Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy. (I strongly recommend these books in case any of you are looking for more fantasy to read) Basically, there's this council of mages and the head of said council issued an edict that forbids any magician from interfering in temporal matters or playing favorites with any ruler. His reasoning is that any such interference would sooner of later inevitably transgress upon the interests of other magicians, and thus lead to said magicians blasting each other out of existence. Any magician who breaks the rules has to deal with the combined powers of the rest. It's implied the edict was created in response to a huge disaster which happend a long time ago and ended with Atlantis sinking in the ocean. I should mention the magicians in these books don't hide the existence of magic but I think doing so would be a logical extension of a non-interference edict. For example, the Prime Directive from Star Trek forbids a technology advanced species from interacting with civilizations which are below a certain technological threshold. This also means they cannot make their presence known to them.
That covers magicians and magic but what about the various monsters? Why would those be hidden? In order to explain that, I came up with a certain headcanon: the idea that every magical creature is the result of a magical experiment. It's already sort of implied this is the case with certain creatures because Devil Forging exists. This would also explain why, for example, an unicorn (an artificially created creature) would be considered "magical" and horse just a regular animal. Of course, most of the monsters in Castlevania tend to belong to the "mindless, raging beast" variety, so they wouldn't be actively involved in maintaining the masquerade. But that relates to the "how"? part which is a while other can of worms.
So when applying this idea to the Castlevania universe it would mean that magic is passed down soley in certain magical families. These would be the Cronqvists, Belnadeses, Hakubas, the Belmonts (after Leon got "initiated" into the magical world so to speak), etc.
I like the above explanation because it avoids certain flaws which are prevalent in other masquerade stories. First of all, it avoids the pitfall of having magicians hide because humans would somehow be a threat to them.Of course this might be plausible depending on the power level of magicians but magic users in the Castlevania universe possess a ridiculously varied arsenal of spells: control the elements, teleportation, transfiguration, stop time, summon familiars, heal spells, and plenty of other things I didn't think even think of. There's just no way someone like say, Charlotte, would have anything to fear from a pitchfork mob. Secondly, it also explains why history in Castlevania still roughly follows the one of your world. Otherwise someone in power would have thought of a way to use magic for their own ends and ended up significantly altering the course of history. Lastly, because the reason for the masquerade existing is preventing the near or complete destruction of the magical community, it's a perfect reason why every magician would be on the same page about it. The only reason a magician would be able to break the masquerade and want to do so, is because he or she is powerful enough to take on all the other magicians, and wants to cause mass chaos and destruction. And of course, in the Castlevania universe there happens to be a certain vampire who happens to meet those two criteria.