Grrl Power #993 – On the origin of succubi
Succubi are usually thought of as dream demons, but at least in my little corner of the fantasy-verse, their origins are somewhat more… humble. And as with many typical succubus things, Dabbler didn’t specialize in the dream stuff. She can do it, albeit with some limitations, but when it came time to sign up for the 301 level courses, she went for advanced particle physics instead of “Dream Shagging.” Exploitation of Tetryon Tachiopole Interactions 301 sounded more interesting to her. I mean, she was a succubus in college. She was already pretty good at sex. Just take a minute to imagine what a succubus’s experimental phase would consist of.
“Huh, I’ve never done it with a robot chimera before… Unless you count golems as robots. I guess they’re a kind of robot. Okay, so I have done it with a robot chimera, but I’m game if you three are.”
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
Spent most of the weekend on the new vote incentive/pinup, so I only got 2 more chapters edited. Only 5 to go though.
November’s vote incentive is… actually not ready quite yet, but I put up a teaser of sorts. The nude version is done, I just have to get the clothed version ready. Hopefully it will be up with the Thursday post.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
“Clothes. LOL”
Harem is the official Archon Snack Jockey.
Is it WomLan because she’s a networked entity?
While I’m sure that’s a typo, that would be a good platform name for a network of all-female androids.
Stupid sexy Geth…
That’s my belief.
Probably a typo. There’s no full stop there either.
That is the kind of top quality puns Dave B is known for.
Oh no, not a pun queue again. This could result in another ethernetal thread full of band jokes until all frequencied readers run away
pun queue, punk you.
Whoops. No idea how that typo happened.
I’m still dealing with the concept of Marvin with a sex drive. It’s so depressing!
Yeah, me too. It’s really messing with my, admittedly limited, ability to come up with a witty comment for this page.
Or should I say ‘my ability to come up with a witty *clean* comment’ ?
Did I ever tell you I have a libido the size of a planet?
& me, with this terrible ache in all the diodes in my c**t.
Or Blue (screenofdeath) Balls, more like.
We should let all sex offenders have a chat with Marvin with a sex drive. I’m sure they would behave after that.
Yeah, he’s such a sad sack.
They used his costume for other GPP robots, too. “Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with!”
Didn’t we see Marvin back on Fracture, talking with Max?
… When was Max ever on Fracture?
This is probably Marvette, the most depressed robot in the universe, with PMT
Makes me remember an old song / dialogue with Marvin and a msyterious ‘almost deleted data recording’. In 1981, Polydor released a “Double ‘B’-Side” vinyl album staring “The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy” very own Paranoid Android, Marvin. Titled – Marvin, I love you.
It’s plug and play, surely.
I am SO glad I’m not the only one who caught that.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to sterilize my eyeballs.
Is it a hard drive?
Jabberwokky skeeving out in panel seven makes sense when you realize she’s had naughty fun with Dabbler.
Except she hasn’t, if I recall correctly – explciit orders from Maxima, due to the dodgy connotations of the influence of Dabbler’s attraction spell. She just really wants to.
There were some hints that it happened during the time Sydney had her ‘lost in space’ adventure. Re-read Sydney’s rambling when she was held captive and drugged up.
Flesh Golem sex.
That conceptual image is all that anyone needs for any skeeving. Just because Dabbler has knowledge on the topic doesn’t mean she’s ever done it. It’s been made fairly clear that she does have limits and lines, few & thin as they may be.
Also, fairly genius in-comic canon topic for Halloween. This is as close to the actual date as possible to post it without changing the posting schedule.
How is that any worse than a vibrator or fleshlight?
Flesh Golems aren’t sentient (at least not normally).
I’d say it’s exactly at “sexbot” level
Though these flesh golem obviously are sentient. And sapient.
Well if you take Frankenstein’s Monster as the inspiration for D&D Flesh Golems (which then influence much else), then yes. Flesh Golem hanky panky was going to be a thing. And such a thing that Frankenstein feared super human offspring and destroyed the mate the Monster was having him make.
Which was, frankly, a silly thing to do, because the worst that was going to happen was that you’d get offspring of the relevant organ donors.
Well, I suppose he could worry that they’d be lousy parents.
Heh, in the real world Frankenstein would have been incredibly famous, not for making a monster, but for completely solving the problem of tissue rejection!
There was a failed pilot in around the 80s I think it was or early 90s with a modern day Frankenstein: Dr Franken. He had a brain-dead patient he was using for his experiments in treating tissue rejection and limb and organ transplanting, so he’d end up taking parts from recently deceased people (like one patients arms and another’s eyes despite it being relatively impossible to transplant those) and putting them onto his near-cadaver instead. Finally he has someone prepare him a syringe filled with a mix of brain cells that he injects into the brain of the body and it becomes conscious and aware but is a blank slate. It has visions of the last thing its eyes saw (the murderer of the woman the eyes belonged to) that it ends up having to solve.
Presumably it was going to be a weekly deal with him having memories related to his various spliced on body parts and organs and he’d have to seek out and deal with the issues of the deceased before moving on to the next while simultaneously dealing with being a patchwork man and developing his own identity.
Sounds like that iZombie rubbish
I heard of unbelievable horrible terribad moron plot lines before, but almost nothing that compares to that. Just. Wow. And it actually went all the way to pilot.
“… you’d get offspring of the relevant organ donors.”
I don’t think Mary Shelley was worried about such trivia. I’m pretty sure I totally misread the novel, but I got a strong idea she was imagining a God who chickened out of completing his Work. Something along the lines of “In olden days when knights were bold/ and women weren’t invented …”
At the time Shelly wrote Frankenstein, there was still intense and serious debate in the scientific community about whether or not Jean Baptiste Lamarck or Charles Darwin had come up with the correct theory of evolution. Almost 100 years after Frankenstein was published did the field of genetics mature enough to understand that whoever’s balls were grafted onto a Frankenstein’s monster would determine the genetic inheritance of the child. Nobody in Shelly’s time would have understood that clearly. They barely understood that sperm coming out of a man needed to fuse with an egg inside a woman for conception to happen … in fact, with a bit of research it wouldn’t surprise me at all if even tat basic biology wasn’t learned until decades later. From about 100 years ago all the way into the origins of man 7 million years ago, it was considered obviously reasonable that a man planted some sort of seed (physical &/or spiritual) inside a woman and it would grow there; woman being biologically part of the process didn’t even occur to anyone until recently, other than they were some sort of incubator for the child the man planted inside her.
Also, @Dorje Sylas, golems are a monster from Hebrew mythology, usually created mostly from earth (ideally from the grave of the person being simulated). But, “other materials” were always considered part of the construct, including parts from the dead person it was to represent. Some parts would have been considered more valuable for success than others, as well as quantity. A bit of hair might be enough, but it was considered desirable to have more substantial contributions from the corpse. Such a golem (when successfully constructed) was a construct of flesh that could fool many/most people as authentic, until such a time as it ceased to function properly and it would return to being earth.
Animated broom… splinters?
Animated splinters. Hm.
Animation spell potentially works on everything in lonely old archmage’s tower/lab/dungeon, based on description. Doorknobs..
…
Oh. Oh dear. Lack of visitors potentially explained?
…
Glass splinters possible? Train of thought has derailed, caught fire but still won’t stop. Please send help, or cyanide.
Brings a whole new meaning to bedknobs and broomsticks
You. Are. Cancelled.
Do more research. That is the ORIGINAL significance of bedknobs and broomsticks in the context of witches, prior to Disnification.
Sending it. (muted ‘chuff’ as sniper rifle fires)
Don’t worry, in this forum silly trains of thought are not only tolerated, they are encouraged. If not it should be in my opinion.
Silly trains of thought can be both marvellous & oddly productive, agreed fully. I would not wish to stand in their way. Issue here is a reasonably vivid imagination of which I often have only partial control, and a habitual trait since childhood of imaging in great detail what a proposed narrative would actually be like were I to be actually in it, and splinters.
Based on extrapolation of end result (Succubi) and other probably non-canon sources such as Fantasia, these would be potentially self aware as awell as animated, focused to a remarkable degree on very specific goals, and unrelenting. Likely far more so than later examples such as Dabbler, given their more primordial state and lack of 20-30,000 years of development and growth.
…SPLINTERS. Of many and varying materials, unrelenting, laser focused, potentially gone rogue. Thank you Robert for the high speed consciouness relief delivery, but may I politley (depserately) request a larger calibre?
Reread “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex”. Add animation magic.
Sorcerer’s Apprentice slash fics…
Animated brooms? That did not work out well for Mickey either.
don’t forget that Mickey was still an apprentice at the time… the ACTUAL sorcerer could probably have done a MUCH better job of this whole topic if he wanted to…
Time for Professor Dabbler again. I can’t remember seeing her in a sexy teacher outfit yet.
I’m very fond of her current outfit. That shirt has to be flapping open continuously while she’s waving her arms around. I’m just wondering how long it will take for Max to break and dial up her superspeed to fasten it shut between arm waves.
Yeah, like that would work. It’s probably just a glamor, and she’s actually naked.
Probably a viewer-dependant illusion, like what she did for Cora at the party – always keeping her just barely decent.
Sydneys’ interpretation brings some interesting conundrums… Does the mechanic have to give access to his hard drive for every upload update to his Sex bot. How many access ports were designed for input devices. I’m sure none of them will accept floppy disks. How often does he need to connect to maintain the bots proper functions. Does he need to first turn the bot on before it will function as designed…
Buy a Fisto, it works as intended even after being abandonded for two hundred years.
but do remember to clean it first. we all know where its been.
Please assume the position….
Marvin as a fembot ala Futurama
Dangit, there was supposed to be chef’s kiss after Futurama, but I bolluxed the HTML and it disappeared.
Oh hey…Succubi were grateful for the wizard that gets them up so succubi were just returning the favor…
Sailor Maxima.
I am still lost. Can i have some of dabbler’s home made cookies while i listen
I get the feeling that’s a grilled cheese in the second-last panel.
Kevin’s request is unexpected but charming.
Yeah, he’s really like a part of the team now. Hope they make him a probationary member after this.
@DaveB has successfully incorporated an Hostess(R) advertisement into the middle of his comic! Holy Cream Filled Goodness!
I don’t know if it was planned that way. Regardless, this personally makes me like Vehemence all the more. Snoballs, Yum!
In my corner of the Fantasy-verse certain forms of fantasy creatures, dragons, unicorns, Uruk-Hai, etc, are the result of the magical equivalent of Genetic Engineering by ancient and powerful Magic Users.
Usually male Wizards and Sorcerers.
Never occurred to me that they also may have been responsible for Succubi and Incubi.
“Incubus.” They do not exist, in the GRRLverse!
Did Dabbles specify that? Thought she just said there were no male succubae
And why does it have to be male wizards? Female wizards get lonely (and horny) as well…
Yes. I was wondering about this as well. If there are no male succubi it would imply at least some of the following things:
a) there are no female archwizards and have never been
b) no female archwizard has tampered with creation of sex golems
c) none of the male archwizards were gay
d) none of the gay archwizards tampered with creation of sex golems
e) female and gay archwizards created different kind of sex golems
f) none of the sex golems created by female or gay archwizards became a sentient race
g) male succubi existed at some point but were destroyed because someone got uncomfortable with the idea of a creature that could make guys have sex with each other (aka lesbians are hawt but gays are not)
h) there are in fact male succubi but they are called something else
Personally I suspect it has to do with preferences of the author – which is fine btw. It’s his comic. I mean pretty much all the female cast is either blatant lesbians or bisexuals, or at least not terribly offended by being fondled by dabbler while none of the guys are – or at least it’s not expresed.
Even the token gay character was ready to get experimental with Dabbler and is in fact older and portrayed in a nonsexualized way. I don’t recall any scene where guys touch each other in a way that could be interpreted even remotely sexual and even minor implications turned into awkward moments afterwards.
Thus my conclusion is that the comic writer is not comfortable with the idea of a male succubus/incubus.
Or the balance between genders was so uneven that the female and gay archwizards were never lacking in potential partners so they had no need to create sex slaves.
Yes. Well, that was implied in the “none of the female/gay archwizards tampered with creation of sex golems” aka they had no reason because of x y or z.
I don’t think ANYONE is terribly offended by being fondled by dabbler. It would be somewhere next to the fact that her boobs are literally hypnotic.
Depending on where you draw the line between “ancient and powerful magic user” and “angel” that’s actually canon for the Uruk-Hai. Saruman’s an Aiur, on par with Gandalf, The Balrog, Sauron, etc… Basically an angel.
The line needs to move to “god” for the orks and elves though.
see, this strip has made me think not of sex spells (as the final working spells), but of the experiments done to develop those spells, and everything that could have gone wrong, especially if spells get too literal.
example — “This spell will make everyone around me want to eat me. OH NOOOOOO….”
oops, i put the words “chomp chomp chomp” after the OH NOOOOOO” but they vanished or erased somehow
Were they inside triangle brackets?
The site’s running WordPress without a third-party comments plugin, so those have to be replaced with < and > or they’ll get interpreted as an attempt at HTML and compared against the whitelist of allowed tags.
yes they were. i usually try to use them in most text only formats to signify actions vs. spoken text
I usually use *asterisks* after some old IRC/IM conventions but no biggie.
Just use < and > as if you were writing a raw HTML file and it’ll work <fine>. (If you want a literal ampersand for writing *those*, you write it as &.)
I’m thinking this leads to succubi being what happens when advanced Realdolls and the AI uprising overlap. All succubi being slaves is I bet similar to how in some Sci-fi stories AI have to be partnered with a biological person. And the contract she has with Tom is her ‘I am owned and not a rogue AI’ statement.
Sexbot AI going rampant, now that sounds like a plot for porn. ”Assume the position and submit puny meatbags!”
It’s now your turn to get stuck “step-bro”…
“You Will Be Assmutilated!”
*pulls out a notebook not sure if this will be on the test later* Succubi are not descended from other kinds of demons…. check! Next note please. I may actually use this in an adventure or story I write… if the Author is okay with me utilizing this idea that is.
So, it wasn’t just a kink thing.
But I wonder what makes Dabbler Tom’s “slave” specifically.
The collar?
And, by extension, does that make all of Archon Tommy’s (sex) slaves?
I imagine succubi would experiment in monogamy and call it their ‘boring phase’.
Anything that would shock older conservative succubi like holding hands, no kissing on the first date and taking long walks.
I wonder if Cold Showers are considered self-harm?
like many things… it depends.
Why is Vehemence asking for breasts from Harem? The Ho Ho’s are slang for tits.
They’re also a delicious hostess chocolate snack cake.
There is a snack cake brand Hostess, sold in the Midwest. (maybe other areas idk) They have a bunch of products that have names that can be considered double entendre.
Ho Ho’s, Ding Dongs, Twinkies, and Honey Buns namely.
Oh it’s an American thing.
Hunnybun!?That’s my second life, love!
And if you have the ‘right’ frame of mind, they are all a bit dirty.
I mean, even if you were right, why wouldn’t he?
Okay no one predicted or could have predicted this context of ‘slave.’
Well played DaveB. Well played indeed.
can’t wait to hear this story……!
Again, I am enjoying this detour.
Marvina has risen…
Hopefully Max has read enough scifi to get some of the implications of Dabbler being the child of AIs without it needing to be spelled out to her.
Ah, I think I get it where this is going:
Getting artificial beings recognized by law is hard. And that is what succubi are.
A option considered in several SciFi stories has been to incorporate a AI – making it a corporation – getting most of the legal ability without society having to answer a lot of quesrtions.
I guess becomming Slaves was the Succubi way of getting legal recognition?
While that’s a very excellent point, there’s another option she’s hinting at. Three laws of robotics anyone? There’s a good chance that needing an owner (or at least order-giver) is HARDcoded into the Succubi subconcious, while actually FOLLOWING those orders is less so (“Why would you do that?” Brats are a thing, and a popular one at that….) If that’s the case, then it’s quite possible that the Lord or Dorkness over there was a highschool friend/sweetheart who went into a mutually beneficial arrangement. She’s his slave, or perhaps “slave” is a better term for it, from juuust enough of a legal standpoint to trigger whatever’s in her makeup and that’s about it.
Alternatively, Dabbler’s just kinky and it’s a bdsm thing, and she’s sending Max on a wild goose chase to get her more invested before revealing at the end “Nah I’m just fucking with you I’m his slave because of *whisper whisper whisper DUCK!*
Oh that brings up two intersting points I missed. “What about the other two shown succubi?” Well, one’s a kid and I don’t think I should have to explain why the everloving hell that would be left alone. and the other one? We don’t know much about Decollete, but we DO know a few things that, while in and of themselves mean nothing, when you start adding them together well..
1. She is the only person not part of ARCHON who I know of in the supernatural meeting, or in future meetings, who has a collar/choker.
2. She hints that most succubi are only “properly educated” if they have gone to a school… that sounds surprisingly similar to what one would expect from a high-class servant of nobility, such as a head maid or butler (Although! Yes, those also describe what a noble or high-society member in general would go to, but added in with the “All Cubi are slaves” thing..)
2.B. Her actions and attitude in general are, while not SUBMISSIVE, definitely what one would consider serving of others. I get a definite “Female Alfred” vibe off of her in a good way, while she’s dominant and ambitious in certain senses she also actively finds way to make herself useful to those around her. She volunteers as Tamatha’s mentor, she goes out of her way to make sure Sidney’s needs are met (nonsexual though they may be) for what seems to be no “real” reason (although one could argue she either likes her in some way shape or form or that she wants to get in good with one of Archon’s up and coming super-tiered-heros), and several other subtle cues that honestly until I saw this page I thought I was imagining, and might still be.
3. The whole mentor thing between her and Tamatha might be a way to counter such mental perogatives? That one’s admittedly more of a stretch then Dabbler with the Barberian though.
Bonus amusing one that’s too much of a stretch to get a number: Last panel of page 796 that smile at getting smacked looks WAY too real and WAY too pleasant for her not to be at least partially a masochist. :P
A possible compromise in the whole discussion though: Perhaps instead of it being some sort of ingrained mental control it’s something similar to them needing good old vitamin T. Perhaps they feed, a little less regularly, on whatever the mental/supernatural energy of domination itself, built into them when they were built to need Vitamin T. as a method of keeping them addicted without actually controlling them directly? I guess we’ll find out.
I just went back and checked: Decollete’s collar is the same every time she appears in the comic.
Starting to seem like getting a master is part of coming-of-age for a succubus?
Decollete sent snacks to Sydney in exchange for Sydney feeding Decollete a snack… Sydney’s sexual response to the guys in the club.
What the hael does Tammy being a kidubus have to do with anything? Most adult hyu-mons start out as kids
I think that the OP thinks that Dabbler’s explanation is that ‘succubus are artificially created’ when Dabbler is actually saying ‘succubus were artificially created 20,000 years ago but now get born through a very complicated process (described during the press conference right before the Fel attack)’ But their origin is from being artificial constructs. Which is why Tamatha is a little girl and she described that other succubi start as babies as well and grow up like other people into adulthood.
Unless I’m mistaken, I believe the United Kingdom has already passed legislation preemptively providing any AI to achieve self awareness. Purely as a preventative measure, to guard against a Skynet/AM scenario (in “Terminator 2” it’s emphasized that Skynet didn’t just attack humanity, it defended itself after the depraved Pentagon leaders tried to murder their electronic child. And in “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream,” AM is a military A.I. that was never allowed to learn anything other than cruelty and evil from the humans who built it)
This has to be a “Truth founded in fact” story. It’s literally on the limit of political awareness of CompSci. I have no doubt at all that no politician — elected or appointed — is capable of connecting the dots “self-awareness” and “intelligent/intelligence”. And some of those pollies want self-driving — autonomous — cars on the road!
Like Zombie hand jobs?
Oh dear god…
You know she got a mental image of what Halo said just from the look on her face.
the internet has shown me far worse, with zombies.
I feel like I missed a step somewhere. Who is Marvin?
Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship’s robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold. Marvin is afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because he has a “brain the size of a planet” which he is seldom, if ever, given the chance to use.
The robot in panel 5 is “Marvin” with a female body style based on the prop used in the BBC TV series of THHGTTG.
Oh, that Marvin. I haven’t thought of him in forever. Also I never saw the TV version, so that didn’t help matters.
Those cans are totally implants. They forgot to remove the handles.
That’s nice. I’ll give her two comics to explain why this justifies Tom’s “since I first COLLARED you, SLAVE!!” nonsense, then I’m going back to having Max kill him painfully.
yeah, this is kind of moving from *protect my friend’s honor from an abusive boyfriend * to *considering invading Hell to liberate sex slaves born and bred and made to feed on sex to survive to stay subservient despite also interbreeding with their “owners”.
yeah, Dabbler may want to explain this quickly and hope it doesn’t just read as (oh we’re still lower class property to our society but we were bred to mentally accept that and can’t imagine trying to break free tee hee)…time for some face smashing and mental hold releasing, somehow.
Possible scenario. Theyre literally incapable of surviving without being a slave to somebody as part of the magic spell that first created succubi 20,000 years ago maybe? So infernals created a system for succubi to help them survive which let them choose a master, butits more similar to an open marriage than slavery as practiced by humanity?
Just spitballing ideas now.
So succubae are descended through a line of sexy shuggoths?
Shaggoths
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaoYHu9XkAA11Um.jpg
there’s your Shaggoths
Shoggoth Maids,
https://monstergirlencyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Shoggoth?file=Shoggoth_L.jpg
Why would I even think about being surprised that there are Shoggoth Maids on the internet.
I forgot rule 34 for a moment there.
that sounds about right,
Humunculi, Biomancy constructs, magic versions of Bio-androids.
heck I justified in one sci-fi setting monster-girls existing as techno-organic androids that through *liquid carbon nano-tubule* technology advancing to artificial cellular structures gaining more and more complex forms to eventually gaining their own freedom and being granted their own planets over the course of a century or more.
*helps that same setting the same technology was being used for human prosthetic bodies so the line ended up blurring between Andros and “Comfort Companions / Monster Mates*
and then add into the mix the bio-engineered/techno-organic utility / pet creation “Pet Slimes” ended up evolving on their own thanks to their adaptive systems and became Slime-girls of their own accord.
If Dabbler’s talking about animating flesh then Succubi could have originally started out as flesh Golems. We can think of something as primitive as Frankenstein’s Monster (albeit manufactured slightly differently here), then altered considerably over time till said Golems resemble early succubi.
Start with a realdoll, keep making it more and more lifelike.
In a world with magic, *of course* you’re going to cross the “alive, sentient and sapient” line at some point.
yeah, Bio-android, gene splicer only as Humunculi in a magic setting.
“Proto-succubi were entirely artificial.” In other words, man-made. This pretty much explains succubi.
Look me in the eye and tell me you’d turn down a date with Dabbles.
Made, yes; but not Man-Made!
I don’t know what’s more interesting, the possibility of being able to create a being that can feed on an inherent energy (tantric, in the case of succubi, but Vehemence is right there) or the implications of Dabbler only being HALF-succubus.
the half thing has come up in some series, notably the game series ArYonelico *ignoring the third game which sank the franchise after being bought by a new owner and taken into contradictory directions*,
anywho, the premise of games one and two revolve around bio-android called Reyvetales, however aside from a few immortal ones from the founding generation that act as goddesses *one of good the other of evil (spoiler she’s actually a weapon from a forgotten war that was treated poorly so is lashing out as the containment is weakening after millenia have gone by),
anywho no actual bio-androids are built anymore, these Reyvatales are born, they reproduce with regular humanss, however their children will when they mature develop Reyvatale features like a port in the lower back for power up crystals and the ability to use aria magic. (first game had a metaphor here of a slave class and women being treated poorly in society and this needing to change), second game they were more on even terms and treated as just another race of humanoids. Third game went all Amazons and put them in charge tyrannically.
so any who, the concept is out there, although sci-fi will treat it usually like an umbrella for approaching biracial social commentary situations more so than the implications of an artificial being not only reproducing but being able to hybridize with the species that created them. Which would likely be a much bigger deal, legally and socially than the *yes still important*, equal rights and social stigmas seen in older generations with parents of “mixed race”.
Granted this in some parts is still a subject of discussion because bigots are still a thing, however how mixed race parentage is treated in stuff like fantasy (half elf, half orc, ect…) often feels like backsliding as they get treated as a different race altogether with unique powers, a concept likely brought over from Dhampir folklore, which shows this in fantasy and sci-fi is a real mixed bag and can either be approached wholly in-universe or as social commentary. But that said some may treat it as social commentary no matter what you intended just by virtue of the subject matter.
What I find more interesting is that, as a created species, there are no male succubi/incubi.
The implications are:
* There were no straight female arch-mages back then.
* Or there were, but they didn’t have trouble finding partners.
* No Succubi has ever turned out to be trans.
* That there are *any* full Succubi, given that they’re all female.
Relevent comic: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-762-this-presser-is-about-to-get-a-lot-more-exciting/
Lots and lots of highly interesting implications… In our oceans we have many fish species, mostly Osteichthyes but possibly including some Chondrichthyes, which change gender according to some environmental signals. I’m not sure the genetic heritance is totally absent from the human genome, especially when we think of our “trans” neighbours.
> especially when we think of our “trans” neighbours.
I know I have a hairtrigger on this, but please don’t put trans in inverted commas. It reads like you don’t think trans people are real.
No worries cobber.
Okay, that was unexpected.
I like how Vehemence is actually making polite requests and being treated as kinda/sorta one of the gang. Which makes sense, all things considered. He never actually looked to kill anyone (dead people can’t offer him any nourishment, after all), he’s actually pretty friendly and nice when he’s not looking to feed, and even his brief little attempt at rebellion came across more as testing the limits and hoping for a little more nourishment than anything else. They’re probably contemplating recruiting him (under VERY strict safeguards, obviously)
Except Max. He was totally willing to kill her. And mindcontrol the team into juicing him up, even of it meant they died or killed each other.
He was willing to kill Max only after she went ultraviolent and demonstrated that she was both willing and able to kill him, if he had only a little less power. She was an imminent mortal threat to him personally.
Between the two of them, he’s the more sympathetic character. But he’s too overpowered to add to the team.
> But he’s too overpowered to add to the team.
Have you seen the team?
This isn’t DBZ. This is a personality-driven comedy. And Vehemence has tonnes of personality.
I think another problem with Vehemence is he’s not trustworthy, and the more power he has access to via violence, the more possibility there is of him turning on the team in order to cause more chaos.
If he was just overpowered, that probably wouldn’t be a dealbreaker.
After all, Maxima is overpowered and she runs the team.
Sydney is potentially overpowered and also has ADHD and mental peculiarities that made them concerned about putting her on the team at all, but she’s definitely gained their trust from her actions.
Jabberwokky was a criminal, but she’s also not overpowered, so if she goes back to her old ways, she can be defeated without much trouble. Plus she has gained some trust.
Vehemence, though, is both incredibly overpowered AND not trusted to turn on them if he got powerful enough and had a chance to do so. Maybe eventually, but not yet. Definitely not if he hasn’t done something to gain trust, I’d expect. Only a couple of months ago, he set up a massive chaotic brawl and attempted to murder Maxima, and they only barely defeated him (almost entirely because of Sydney). Not many strips ago on this same day, they needed to have Sydney portal him into the vacuum of deep space in order to get him to behave and give up because he wasn’t abiding by the agreement of when to stop fighting.
TL;DR – they don’t trust him enough to want him on the team.
Although I do agree that he has personality and is a potentially sympathetic character when he is behaving.
Only a little while ago in comic time, he threatened to do just that and Maxima had to show him how easily he could be taken out, permanently, by Archon.
He’s definitely on the ‘cannot be trusted at all’ side of the equation.
Yep! Totally agree.
Max herself theorized that “Vehemence’s aura just made people fight, not kill.” This may be based on what Vehemence said on page 274: “I wasn’t planning on killing anyone tonight, after all, the dead aren’t violent.”
ROIGHT SO NECROMANCY AND REANIMATION: THARR BE ONE HELL OF A DIFFERENCE and I tend to be pedantic about it. Here ye go!
Necro- prefix means dead things.
-mancy suffix means divination.
Necromancy is (originally) divination by death: usually summoning a departed spirit and asking it questions. Maybe you commune directly, like a seance, or with a board, or whatever, but maybe you bind it to a form with a mouth so it can speak directly, and it makes sense in some ways that sometimes the best option would be the corpse it came from. All fine and good, but if you then enslave that spirit-possessed body, you got yourself a zombie.
Animating stuff is just empowering it with the ability to move. Note that in many settings, golems and the like are animated by binding and enslaving an elemental spirit, while in others it’s literally just pumping movy energy in and makin it go.
BONUS ROUND: PSYCHICS
How did psychics get a rep for communing with the aliven’t? After all, psychics are mental powers, not necromancy. The answer is the sub-discipline of psychometry: reading the psionic imprint of powerful emotional events, like death. Bit of overlap here.
Bonus fun bit: By classical definitions, modern forensic pathology is a form of necromancy.
Tangent: I argue that technically, Shawn Spencer of Psych is a low-tier (by the standards of fantasy) psion: innate natural mental talent (photographic memory) sharpened by years of intense training, to the point of being far beyond what a normal person can ever hope to match.
Blame Diablo 2 for the “Necromancers == Undead Animator” thing, unless someone has an older reference?
No, ryncewynde88 already covered that with the “…but maybe you bind it to a form with a mouth so it can speak directly, and it makes sense in some ways that sometimes the best option would be the corpse it came from.” line
And it (un)naturally wouldn’t take that long before the Necro figured out that they didn’t have to release the spirit afterwards, and they had themselves an obedient servant that couldn’t die (because it was already, technically, dead). Add in a smidgeon of self-control and voila!
Heroes of Might and Magic 3 has Necromancers that are undead animators too, and it came out about a year before Diablo 2.
Homunculi, Biomancy constructs, magic versions of Bio-androids.
heck I justified in one sci-fi setting monster-girls existing as techno-organic androids that through *liquid carbon nano-tubule* technology advancing to artificial cellular structures gaining more and more complex forms to eventually gaining their own freedom and being granted their own planets over the course of a century or more.
*helps that same setting the same technology was being used for human prosthetic bodies so the line ended up blurring between “Andros” (humans who had fully embraced and could even reproduce as techno-organic beings) and “Comfort Companions / Monster Mates*
and then add into the mix the bio-engineered/techno-organic utility / pet creation “Pet Slimes” ended up evolving on their own thanks to their adaptive systems and became Slime-girls of their own accord.
Heck its just a more fleshy version of the sapient robot situation, as well as the rarer sapient holograms. Add magic and you get Metal Men, Metal Gods *granted this is usually a sci-fi fantasy setting where magic comes from ancient hidden technology and androids are still mechanical just crazy powerful), and magic wise you do get homunculi and the phantasms and created fiends and other things in alchemy and dark magic, just expand and boom alive.
go sci-fi or combine the two and you get living flesh golems, sentient changelings, Shoggoth maids, bonded spirit beings, and all sorts of combinations.
That line about how its like using a animation spell to get a broom to sweep by itself and its association to succubus’s is making me think of Disney’s Fantasia in a hole new light. What else was Micky Using those spells for?
… Aaand just like that I just ruined so many people’s childhoods.
I’ve seen Mickey Mouse being pegged by Minnie Mouse, yet my childhood is still intact…because that is the past.
Honestly that stuff doesn’t bother me, its when I rewatch the actual stuff from my childhood as an adult and find it either lacking, dumber, racist, or full of innuendos I missed, ect…that actually stomps all over my nostalgia glasses.