Secret's out - now what?

[Henpecked]

If this steps on the unfolding plotline, I apologize.

Suppose for a moment that something happens in the PitW universe that blows The Secret wide open. As in, irrefutable evidence broadcast worldwide that weres exist. What strategy would the general were population adopt in order to prevent humanity from coming after them with torches and pitchforks?

[Black_Mantha]

Here are my thoughts:

One of the first thing to do would be to put forward a spokesman/woman. Someone who can answer questions, ease worries, and try and win over the general population. There is no global organization who can put someone like that forward, so there will probably be one or a few weres per country (or maybe per language) to step up to that role. Contacted humans might work too. The image they'll probably want to spread is "We are hardworking citizens, and for hundreds of years we've kept to ourselves any didn't bother other humans."

On a more local level, most weres will probably not want to reveal themselves until they're sure it's safe. That means no more howls and a lot more effort to keep hidden. This would be hard to do, and wouldn't really help the cause.

The weres' biggest problem would be that they haven't made many social relations outside their own circle (or at all, in the werebears' case.) People would be much slower to condemn weres if one of their best friends was one.

[Fionn the Otaku]

Based on my knowledge Sasquatchery, have various people offer various haox theories one or more of which are likely to be snatched up by the media as THE explination that "Parkie" isn't real) and at the same time play up just how BIG Sarah Wuff is. By spending a lot of time talking aobut how FREAKING HUGE she is it make it harder for people to accept that somehting like that could hide from people while at the same time makeing it easier for most Weres to keep hideing, if your looking for somehting the size of Sarah anything smaller will have a some what easier time hiding.

[Henpecked]

Bear in mind, I wasn't referring to Sarah specifically - I was just wondering if there was any sort of plan in place to deal with the inevitability of weres being exposed to the public at large.

[Kris@WLP]

[Henpecked]

Coming back to this, mainly because I find it hard to believe that the were population at large wouldn't have some sort of endgame.

Even if "we're screwed" was the official stance of the were community, would there be any efforts made to explain their presence or integrate with society? Would they maybe call upon a few friends in high places (the president, Hollywood folks who are in on the secret) to warm the rest of the world to their existence?

[cawsking555]

that's a hokes man you can see the face in the suet even if parkie was there it wold confurm that our bigfoot is real

[Kris@WLP]

[Happygun]

[rdfox]

Ironically, given the state of the world today, I suspect that the biggest reaction would be, "So what?", once the public is over the initial shock of learning.

I mean, the government's already in on the secret (remember the all-Were units you mentioned in various militaries?), so the odds are that there would be little in the way of official repercussions beyond "we knew, and we kept them under control before, so stop worrying!", and then it'd end up being seen as roughly similar to being gay or being HIV-positive--sure, there'd be a few insane people on each side ("THEY MUST BE DESTROYED" and fang-bangers), but most people would say, "Hell, long as you don't cause trouble, don't use it to cheat at sports, and remember to use a condom so you don't spread it involuntarily, it really doesn't affect me, except that now we can't really mock furries any more." Maybe not full acceptance, but at least a shrugging, "Eh, whatcha gonna do?" level of acceptance.

(That, of course, would be in the general population. I expect that, for example, in the military, infantry units and artillery units would be trying to get every lycanthrope they could, while aviation units, armored units, submarines, and other places where getting big and hairy would be a real pain in the ass for all involved, would be only TOO cheerful to transfer them to places where "big and strong" is a bonus. Likewise, I expect that police and fire departments would jump at the chance to have weres on the force, whereas neurosurgery... not so much.)

So the irony is that most of the weres may think that it would be the end of the world, but in this day and age, it probably wouldn't make much difference, day-to-day, except that there could be a much more open (and thus larger) "lycanthrope support group" network out there...

[Aticston]

In all honesty and logic, the secret being "This" well hidden is a baffling thing, defies logic and such.

I mean, some were somewhere has to have been hit by a car/car accident/etc that was a public spectacle to everyone around them and as such their instant recovery would have set off more then a few alarm bells, unless EMT's/Police etc are staffed COMPLETELY by were's, but that still doesn't rule out the general "oooooh! A train wreck! I can't look away at them pulling out bodies!" mindset most public has at scenes of carnage.

There is some -GREATER- government authority at work -IE- "Were's" fall under a special sub category in society, but even -THAT- is pretty damn far fetched as any were can infect any person, and as such a containment issue could be outright dangerous to a degree. I mean, Gus Cramer (Reading the current comic it said he was under "House arrest" or something of the like, so they are keeping him restrained ATM) if he wanted to go all hyper "Fuck you all, I don't give a flying shit what happens to me or the rest of you, I'm driving to the next city over and welding all the doors on a roller derby shut, breaking in and then biting as many people as possible" and then you have 50-1000+ thralls to take care of, which would be impossible to mandate or conceal (Unless you pull plot OUT OF YOUR FUCKING ASS like Micheal Bay in Transformers 2 with "Oh, they blew up a whole city, lol government coverup yeah we managed to keep 5+ million civilians from talking" bullshit)

And they mentioned before that during WW2 the nazi's etc experimented on were's, trying to find out their limits/create soldiers etc, and after WW2 such things were banned and were's were given "mandated" status, but I just see that potentially blowing up in their faces, like with the Gus Cramer example I gave above.

So its not a matter of it being hidden in my mind, its a matter of "How long can this be kept hidden" thing that will, given due process, time and understanding of the unpredictable nature that is general life, there will be -SOME- large info leak of the whole were thing. And the "Parkie" being outed at the burger joint thing was a bad, bad clean up of such. Him deleting all the movies etc didn't make sense. Or the "Photoshop hoax" thing didn't make sense either as its incredibly easy to tell a real photo from a fake one. The business manager being all lovable and sweet and wanting to protect "Parkie" kinda baffled me unless were's by nature have sort of empathic dampening field that creates pleasure etc, but its how the comic was written so I'll roll with it.

In short, yes the secret is "hidden" ATM, but it is still known by the greater government authority at large. I would be interested to know how local were's communicate with said public government really, for example Con has that surgical pacemaker scar on his chest, and also Kris OR Bar1 said in the past that there is were's that live outside the were circles, and in the past they were -INCREDIBLY- shunned cause they were "Not part of packs/prides/etc", but in recent years any "strays" have been far more welcome in were society as they lose lots and lots of their old and outdated traditions. Would be interesting to see if Jack has to routinely meet up with some greater government authority to give updates about not only his "pack" but also of were's that exist outside the pack structure. Sarah's father has only touched on police "corruption" but nothing has been said about if he thinks Jack Goodwin is also part of such, and it could be a good comic point because he has little to no proof of Con "Running the police", but public meetings of Jack Goodwin with a government agent could give him some conspiracy theory fuel, and since Jack regularly meets with Con that could give him some "Fuel" for his thought processes.

Anyways, again I am thinking -WAY- too much about what is a bump and grind comic, though I love equally both aspects I doubt the majority of people here read it for the plot, and more for the "plot(s)" per say. Just thought I would offer my two bits etc on everything as I see it ATM.

[Black_Mantha]

It's not quite as hard as you seem to think. The big strength of the secret is not in never letting anyone see something out of the ordinary, but in keeping were unbelievable. Sarah has been running around town for months now, and it's treated more like Loch Ness than Area 51.

I don't think accidents and such are a big problem. A were can just act more injured when necessary, and there are stories of people who walk from big accidents with minor injuries, and stories of people surviving huge accidents. Most things can be explained away as just being lucky. Even if someone sees a wound has disappeared, their first thought will be they must have been mistaken first. And even if they're sure the wound disappeared, what are they going to do about it?

Weres going postal would be a bigger problem, since you can't just gloss over dozens of people disappearing. These incidents will be very rare, though. For starters, simple numbers; only one in thousand is a were. Secondly, weres have a tight social network to prevent and detect people going bad. Thirdly, were tend to be more successful in life, so that's one frustration factor reduced.

And lastly, even big events can be kept hidden if some other explanation can be found, such in the incident described at the start of chapter 6. () In your example of Gus thralling dozens of people, the best approach is probably to say they have to be quarantined because of a dangerous new disease spread by a terrorist. If you can convince people it's an emergency situation, you can order then around even if you technically don't have the authority. It would be a lot of work to keep them quarantined (in a research facility far from any city of course) for months and to train them all, but it could be done.

Still, once it's out, it's out. So it probably will happen at some point in the future. But probably (EDIT: not) in the comic's run time.

[Aticston]

[Kris@WLP]

[Kris@WLP]

[Aticston]

You do realize that 1 in 1000 people would be, completely, and entirely, impossible to cover up right?

I mean, its part of the comics logic, so its part of how the comics logic functions etc, but in terms of "Reality" and keeping this secret, it would be, literally, impossible.

And I was giving examples based on 500K-million and how hard -THAT- would be, now its 7.5 million, and I can't fathom what kind of society would be oblivious to this unless the comics society the non-were's the average human being has the IQ of a postage stamp and barely functions enough to eat/sleep/breath

I like you a lot Kris, and if its the comics logic etc, I'll run with it, cause its fiction, but yeah, this would be literally impossible to keep under wraps, this is too much mixing of elements/races/clashes of cultures to not have the were culture found out/exposed etc.

I'm a -SEVERE- paranoid schizophrenic, and believe me, there's lots of stuff I fear the government is doing out to get me, or people out to get me etc, but yeah, but one in a thousand people being a were, yet -STILL- being covered up, while impossible in my previous example, is just drastically more blatantly obvious now.

I can't begin to list all the examples of this being found out. People being shot, people being executed, people being attacked on the streets, people falling 200ft cause a bridge collapses, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.

So yeah, like I said, I am going to stick with the psychology of the characters, cause rationalizing it impossible. And I -KNOW- you were not arguing that "Its plausible" etc, you were just stating how Peter's particular world functions etc, and like I said, its part of its fiction so I'll run with it, I was just commenting further for this thread that having such a secret would be impossible given just how society functions as a complete whole.

Hell, lets take your Peter mugging comment. You said a were would kill the mugger, that would leave -INCREDIBLE- wounds on a body, the human body can take a -HELL- ton of abuse before expiring, a "beating" for example is much, much, much harder then you think to kill somebody -OUTSIDE- of crushing/breaking the human skull or causing brain damage. And at that, its not caused by a -SINGULAR- blow, when people die from skull fractures in fights, its not one punch, its many, many, many punches, or many, many, many kicks. Its just flat out one in a million rare to have somebody die from a SINGULAR head blow in a fight.

Now, said were punches person in the skull, kills them in a single hit. This would be incredibly hard to explain in a forensics way, as I have studied biology etc, and bones/tissue breaks/crumbles in a -VERY- specific way/pattern. For a bone to shatter from a impact, it leaves a imprint of what hit it. Bone hitting bone leaves very very blunt impacts, its akin to the outside edge of a bubble popping and caving in. A -WEAPON- hitting a skull causes a obliteration of the bone, not just a cavitation of the bone.

So its a cavitation of the skull with a -SINGULAR- blow, at that, said anatomy of the blow wouldn't add up. Just looking at the were's hands, they don't match up with human anatomy. The size of their hands in were form is -DRASTICALLY- huge alone, as is the anatomy -NOT- human in design, which would show up in forensics that the thing that hit the skull was not a weapon, BUT was not human. You can see these sorts of examples in animal attacks, like a person getting smacked by a grizzly etc, the cavitation of the bone conforms to the grizzly's paw shape.

So this leaves other forms of death, such as breaking the persons neck etc, or strangling, which is again, impossible to accomplish. Breaking the neck is a -MOVIE DEVICE-, its actually almost impossible to do, movies just do it cause it makes it look like "WOO HE KNOWS ULTRA MARTIAL ARTS!" etc, it takes a person with olympic strength to even come anywhere close to snapping a persons neck. Or hell, the were could just strangle the mugger, and in both cases, you would have the problem because not only would there be claw marks all over the persons head/neck/collarbone/shoulders, there would be tons and tons of additional forensic information such as all the weird animal hairs all over the struggling victim.

*sighs* I don't want to get dragged into this again and again, cause like I said, in -ACTUAL- logic such a society couldn't exist, and that's all I was arguing about. I don't bring it up when talking about the comic -ITSELF- because this is a work of fiction, thus, its world has its own set of designs etc. Talking about "Reality" in keeping the were secret is just beyond the scope of suspending disbelief. Like I said, I spend all my time when I talk about this comic (Other then giving Bar a ribbing when he draws Sarah's gloriously huge breasts smaller then normal =3) its dealing with human behavior, human reactions and how people naturally react to things. And even -THEN- I don't get too much into it, cause I could break down the psyche on quite a few of these characters and how they would have naturally evolved as human beings given their settings, like Peter, given how he's been treated his whole life etc, he wouldn't be mopey etc like he was at the start, he would have been rather jaded/combative/angry then mopey/submissive.

Peter evolving -LIKE HE HAS NOW- into a more -ASSERTIVE- character -IS- a completely natural "I need to take control of my life and stand up for myself" course of human behavioral growth when given the mopey/submissive background he has as a character, but that's just how he has been written and is his origin personality for the comic. Like I said, given Peter's upbringing/social life/social status etc he would be a rather mean spirited/jaded person, he would have evolved -COMPLETELY- into the character Gus is now, I pretty much guarantee that 100%, Peter would have been picking on people smaller then him at school etc for example. Hell I could give a really really really good argument given Peter's upbringing he could possibly become psychotic in behavior. So yeah, Peter's starting personality as he started the comic was a work of writing, not a work of reality. How Peter has "Grown" since then though is more or less completely natural and how people grow as human beings into adulthood.

So I guess I'll just stay out of these threads from now on, cause discussing on how to "Keep the secret" does not hold any such real terms or merit to how society actually functions, and I think we should -ALL- just enjoy the comics setting/world as it is, and do -NOT- try to rationally explain it, because like I have pointed out in many, many, many examples, running the rules of reality into Peter's universe just, well, destroys it. The logic of Peter's universe exists -OUTSIDE- the logic of our universe, and as such, we should just enjoy the comic as it is. Like hell, put it this way. Remember Star wars 4-6 where the force was just a "Magical force" and not explained, it was just used, it was a facet of that worlds laws of how it operated etc, it was fascinating, it was uplifting, it was mystical. Then episode 1 came out and -EXPLAINED- the force, and just completely -RUINED- it because they used -LOGIC AND SCIENCE TO EXPLAIN MAGIC-

Lets not do this to Peter's world please, I think we should spend less time thinking about its "Reality and how it functions" because frankly -ONLY- Kris/Bar1 know how that works, cause we only deal with -OUR- reality, not the comics one, and like I have shown, when you drag actual reality into Peter's universe, you obliterate its plausibility. Lets just stick with the characters, how they grow and evolve, and take part in it.

[Henpecked]

I would now like to personally apologize for this can of worms having been opened.

[Aticston]

[Henpecked]

Well, there's always the MST3K Mantra, Aticston.

Even if there's no centralized plan, I wouldn't expect there to be absolutely no plan at all. There's just to many ways to be caught nowadays. Consider:

1) Someone who's in on the secret may not actually like the existence of weres, and would want to blow the secret open with hidden-camera videos or something of the sort.
2) A were who's suffering from depression or some other mental illness (which I doubt old-school weres do try to do anything about except to maybe remove them from the population) could decide one day that he's tired of the charade and walks down Main Street in wolf form.
3) As Peter himself mentioned when Sarah bolted out of Dr. Abe's office, cell phone cameras are so prevalent that all it takes is two strangers taking a picture of the same Parkie from different angles - who are then corroborated by all the bystanders who weren't able to whip out their iPhones in time - to blow the secret wide open.
4) An Alpha from another town may catch wind of the Parkie "hoax" becoming front page news, and decide that they may be better off revealing themselves voluntarily and on their terms, rather than risk a sensationalist media turning a future slip-up into widespread panic.

I also don't imagine that if something were to happen, all the weres of the world would just throw up their hands and say, "You got us, sorry to disturb everyone, we'll just line up for our silver nitrate injections now." There's got to be some form of self-preservation in there. If Jack got a phone call from an alpha in a neighboring town giving the code phrase "My dog's barking woke up the neighbors", what would he do about it?

[Kris@WLP]

[Henpecked]

[Kris@WLP]

[cawsking555]

just stop stop of you wan to rand and do this move it over to the ch reaction thred my suggustion is to just read Kitty Norville just stop

[blackjackel]

How many humans not in on the secert will accept weres either out of repect for humanity or to make use of them a soliders or test subjects
Hwo many will hate them but have the balls to go after a twelve foot nightmare thats NOT as nice and playfull as sarah and could pick up a tank

[Henpecked]

I wouldn't considering automatically making weres soldiers or test subjects "accepting" them, honestly.

The biggest problem concerning a were outing - aside from the bad reputation that decades of film and television that they'd have to overcome - is that Christian fundamentalism would swoop in and use the existence of weres as a proof that God exists, that it's their God that exists, and that it's now their duty to exterminate this evil scourge from the world. Worse yet, it may be one of the few moments where multiple religions agree on something - that something being the eradication of the were population.