Grrl Power #998 – All’s well that succs well?
I was trying so hard to trim this tale down to the basics but then in panel 4 I couldn’t help stick in a joke about… I guess it’s about ableism? Sort of? There’s absolutely a need to be aware of discriminatory thinking, but I also think there’s a cutoff, where all parties need to be cognizant of reality. If someone gets both their arms blown off in a potato gun incident, I think it’s okay to suggest that learning sign language or juggling might present a slightly steeper difficulty curve than usual. Not saying you can’t or shouldn’t, and I’ll try not to use the word disabled if you don’t like it, just please don’t bite my head off if I make an offhanded (no pun intended) comment about thinking you might have better luck Riverdancing than rock climbing. Personally, if I lost both my arms, my first instinct wouldn’t be to beligerently sign up for the patty-cake championships, but I might get annoyed if someone I worked with constantly said “hand-off” instead of “delegate.”
I don’t know, I wasn’t trying to get all insightful. I just thought it was funny. My point was, they’ve all had to sit through Archon’s HR videos, and telling someone they need to be “fixed” is probably on the no-no list.
“Why did you attack me with that bucket of water?” “You were on fire.” “Well, that’s just immolationist.”
Panel 5: If I’d had another page for this sequence, I was going to write about how if humans could gene-edit ourselves, our first step might be to make it so we could synthesize vitamin c. Some monkeys can do it. Most mammals can, but at some point one of our ancestors had a mutation that cost him the ability. Obviously he had access to oranges and was probably swinging a big dick, so here we are. But then what’s the next step? Make it so we can synthesize all the vitamins? Cure male-pattern baldness? Eliminate breast cancer? Two hearts are better than one, etc etc. At some point, those people couldn’t realistically call themselves humans. I think usually the species divide is defined at being able to interbreed and produce viable, fertile offspring. Once you lose that, you’re not really the same species any more. Dabbler’s point was yeah, we could get rid of our soul-hole, and our horns and weird skin colors and throat clits, but we certainly wouldn’t be succubi anymore.
“I’m sorry, what was that last one?” “Come and find out.”
There were some concerns about Dabbler being a security risk if she has a foreign master she’s beholden to, and those are perfectly valid. If she was 22, she would definitely be a risk unless her master was also on the team and had equivalent or higher security clearance than her. But she’s 187, and has been able to resist the obedience compulsion for a long ass time.
Oh, and as far as the symbols on the collars go, the 4-x’s isn’t emblematic of anything about Tom specifically, like he doesn’t have a birthmark that looks like 4 X’s or anything. It just forms when the bond is established. That said, it could carry over from some symbol the master strongly identifies with. Like with Deus, it might be that lopsided X on his face, but it usually some unique symbol, like a magical QR code.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
Still working on that sex scene. I don’t really want to FTB, but I haven’t really been in the mood to write it. It’s a scene with Yxlyn, and I think because I wrote her so naive and innocent in the first book, writing a sex scene with her feels tawdry or something? Which is stupid because the book opens on the scene with her and Sam – which I’ve already written. I don’t consider that a spoiler because the first book ends with them crawling into the little cavelette for their first time together. Admittedly it’s a really weird way to open a book, but that’s just where I cut it last time. Poor planning if I’m honest.
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Well now I’m curious as to how frequent this whole “obligated to have sex on a regular basis” thing actually is. Dabs apparently has been avoiding Thothogoth for a while (over 800 pages), so it can’t be too frequently.
Probably just hoping Maxima would say that was an acceptable cost.
Nah, since succubi manna is tantric, probably to produce some “back pressure” on the hole, the master has to have tantric manna, too. Which means they’d both have to have regular sex, but possibly not with each other.
She said We’d be obligated to have sex on a regular basis. Sure sounds like she’s saying the sex is Succubi and Leash Holder.
It’s the more common implication, but it’s not the only one. Usually, I’d expect it to be phrased as “we’d both be obliged to have sex” if it were not necessarily with each other. But given Dabbler’s long-established taste for pushing Maxima’s buttons, it’s an ‘accidental’ omission that I can easily believe of her.
Or, Dabs may have been lying.
The ability to convert ‘tantric energy’ into mana and sustenance predates the mana hole, as explained two pages ago. Also tantric energy is generated by anyone feeling lust (or something like that). Same as how Vehemence gets his power from anyone performing an act of violence, not just other vehemic energy users.
The ‘have to have regular sex with the leash holder’ is probably a throwback to their origin they feel is part of them thus don’t want to loose.
I feel like Scott’s Folly and Pendrake are on to something here. The requirement is that the leash holder has regular sex, though it doesn’t have to be with the succubus. Sure, the succubus is also required to have regular sex, but that’s a given by her nature. If she didn’t have a leash holder, she’d basically need constant sex, more or less.
She worded it ambiguously, but that was more about pushing Max’s buttons than anything. That said, even if she stated it in a completely unambiguous manner, it would still push some of Max’s buttons. But this phrasing lets her push at least one more, and possibly two.
– Having regular sex with someone generally means, sooner or later, clothes would be off, and the cybernetic eye would get its pictures.
– I seem to recall Maxima is straight. Not just the thing with Maxima and Hiro that makes their current employment arrangement awkward, but I seem to recall there was an author comment as well. Dabbler could probably pull off appearing to be male well enough, but Maxima would still know who it really was.
She never said it had to be WITH Tom.
She’s been having sex on a regular basis with Super-guys (and girls) remember. The Barberian and Jabberwocky, for two.
She is capable of dimensional travel and her partner is as well. Nothing to say they haven’t had some hookups. Also, although this is just a hunch, I suspect that with their level of tech and magic phone sex may be rather more hands on for a succubus and her leash holder than for mere mortals.
They also have a direct communication line to each other through that leash.
Micro-energy-takes combined with a morse code equivilent.
She never said it had to be regular sex with the bond holder :P
She implied it, but she’s been looking for an excuse to get into Max’s pants for as long as she’s know Max exists.
known Sigh.
Good to know that there’s some heavy vetting before there’s any heavy petting.
Because unvetted petting results in seat wetting?
And unvetted petting wetting leads to regretting.
Perhaps not in this setting.
Is this something you really want to be betting?
I’m not letting all this aiding and abetting getting the betting of Boba Fetting sweating and regretting resetting the fretting petting the Mystering meddling of those dangling *deep breath* kids and their stupid dog, too!
Is that… Pander twitching in the corner? o_O
Just because she is allergic to bad puns doesn’t mean she can’t stand bad rhymes.
*twitch*
Kidding. Actually I like a good rhyme. One of my favorite parts of the Princess Bride is Fezzik’s ability to rhyme.
What part of this are you not getting?
Fox in Sox: Director’s Cut
I am SO glad I took a punt and looked this up. Roared with laughter that it was Dr Suess. I more than half expected porn.
Honestly, I had thought that the need for sexual energy had been given by the old masters until they mentioned the mana drain. Why attach two forms of drain to their creations, backup control or alternate power sourse?
I think it’s more that they were built to recharge on tantric energy because that was their main intended use at first. May as well build a self charging system, right? The drain came much later, and even the ownership bond was noted not to fully cancel it, so they’re always going to be very slowly leaking mana, and needing to recharge when it gets to critical levels. If they were still unthinking automaton they could probably hold a charge indefinitely.
The need for tantric energy is the same as a human’s need for food, it’s a requirement for good health (just like Vehemence needs the energy of violence to remain healthy). The Mana hole was intended to motivate them to not directly or indirectly bring about their master’s death by causing them to gush mana until they quickly die, basically the master’s connection plugs the hole and killing him removes the stopper causing all the mana to run out.
“I’m sorry, what was that last one?”
Literal actual ‘fuck around and find out’.
+1
I imagined that their throat-clits were on the outside for a while there.
As in their throat opens up at the front to reveal a hidden, fully equipped vagina in the front of their neck.
I may have been watching too much cosmic horror recently.
*looks at is XXXX (four “X”) Australian beer*
That’s also the Discworld analog to Australia.
For two reasons: The Australian Beer, and the fact that it could just mean “mystery”.
Four Ecks, the counterweight continent.
Two different places. The Counterweight Continent is the Agatean Empire.
Is that why they wear those collar communicators?
To hide that Dabbler must wear one?
Interesting…
From what I gathered, it may just be a glamour to hide the real one. She has probably hacked a way via magic into comms.
Yeah, before this strip I assumed that Dabbler’s collar was just a communicator like everyone else’s.
It was mentioned long ago that the Arc-chokers were modelled on Dabbles’, and now we know why :D
They do too much relative to the size they have to be Earth tech. They may also be too durable, given that size and complexity. It really feels to me like the chokers are tech that Dabbler shared. She normally doesn’t make her tech available to anyone. Why would this be different?
To let her hide in plain sight more easily.
ISTR that an early comic pointed to one of her earrings as a comms device.
And that answers another question people had. The collar is both figurative AND literal. :)
And a double fist to Maxi :D
So isn’t there the possibility that some , I dont know, 3rd generation(?) succubi that don’t have the built-in flaw be still around and after so long, uber powerful?
That.. is an interesting thought. It does seem possible – it would a be a looong time, and we are not sure what the natural lifespan of a Succubus is, let alone the originals who would have to contend with keeping all those different body parts fresh and alive.
But, maybe possible?
This is pretty understandable then.
They like the bonds and the trust inherent to it. But hate the idea of someone taking advantage of that trust.
And based on how scared that one guy looks, they might do worse than just kill whoever abuses a bond.
I suspect the succubus matriarchs are often the domina type.
Oh, I’m fairly certain they die.
Eventually.
Another wonderfully punny title. This is truly a comic made by a punster for punsters. I am so happy and proud to be part of this punny forum.
Despite Dabbler’s reasoning here, I’d still say the soul hole needs fixed. It is different when it is immediately life threatening. I have type 1 diabetes, and it can cause the same have to have energy problem the succubus had with mana. It is not something one should want to keep.
Yes, there’s no good reason to keep an artificial defect that requires you to depend on someone else for your survival and was only placed there to keep your people as slaves serving others. No reason to keep such a thing whatsoever.
To be fair, they’ve created a system that get’s rid of almost all the negatives (except sudden unexpected death of a “master”), but keeps benefits (like power sharing). So likely the incentive to “fix” it is lower.
Yes: Likely, and reasonably, there are probably those who want freedom from the holes. However, since someone as smart and free-will oriented as Dabbler and the “extremely powerful” Matriarchs (who “probably” could solve it), are not providing (apparently) a solution… whether succubi want it or not, they are stuck with they holes for now.
What if the drain hole was moved from the bottom (deadly) of the manna reservoir to part way up (healthy but no more)?
THere’s no good reason to keep an artificial defect that requires you to depend on someone else maintaining their freedom.
As it is right now, capture any succubus’ master and hold them captive without letting them have sex, and the succubus dies. That feels like quite the weakness.
It’s possible that there are reasons why that couldn’t work out so easily. Maybe the succubus can always gate to the master and vis versa? That could be how this happened here, sort of. Basically, Tom waited until there was a big enough energy release near Xuriel to make a stable portal rather than a gate. But it’s possible he had the option to just pop up next to her more or less whenever.
But there’s always Nth tech to worry about. Sure, when we’re talking Nth tech, if they want you dead, they could always make that happen, so long as you don’t have at least, say, N-2 tech. (Not saying that N-2 tech would be good enough to beat Nth tech, of course. Just that having less of a technical disparity makes it more of a contest than a given.)
When we’re talking Nth tech, we’re also possibly talking eldritch. Maybe succubi are somewhat eldritch themselves, relative to us, but it’s more of a continuum. Go far enough down that path, and you can get beings so different that comprehending each others differences becomes difficult on both sides. It would really suck to die not because someone wanted to kill you, but because they wanted to study your master in a setting and didn’t realize not letting them have sex would kill you.
All of this said, I’d think it would be possible to replace the hole with either a faux hole or Garak’s raised hole in such a manner that nobody recognized the difference until someone lost their master and couldn’t replace them. Only Dave would know if this had already happened.
> THere’s no good reason to keep an artificial defect that requires you to depend on someone else maintaining their freedom.
Unless, as stated elsewhere, the side-effects of removing the “defect” are greater than the benefits.
Imagine, for example, that you could remove the “defect” of needing to shit from humans, but the downside was a drastically reduced ability to metabolise food, to the point that you had no variety in diet.
Imagine never being able to eat your favorite food (or even any nice food) ever gain, just so that you don’t need to go to the toilet.
Would you take that deal?
If she has to have regular sex with her leash holder, how does that figure with her long seperation from Tom?
Once exactly every century, on the day, is also regular :)
the arrangement he was talking about when he emerged after fisting Vehemence into the sky.
Seems he was a bit pent up. Guess looking like he was flayed may be causing some problems getting laid despite his apparent lofty position.
Some medications need to be taken damn near rarely. Maybe that’s a example?
The species divide, as mentioned in the author’s comment, is sort of one of the grey areas in biology, evolution and taxonomy.
On one hand, the ability to produce viable and fertile offspring is one of the key aspects species are recognized and differentiated from closely related but different species.
On the other hand, the natural changes to the genome can end up accumulating over time, to the point where all current members of a species may be genetically compatible, but earlier ancestors are no longer compatible even without having a distinct speciation event that we can recognize from our perspective (ring species come to mind as an example).Point is, drawing the line where one species ends and another one begins is tricky.
And from the perspective of evolution and especially taxonomy, no matter how much changes accumulate, it’s impossible to grow out of the evolutionary ancestry. Humans are still animals, mammals, monkeys and apes, as much as some people might object to either of these classifications. It’s a nested hierarchy of subgroups within subgroups within subgroups, and no matter how much a subgroup changes it can’t just drop any of the steps before.
From that perspective, no matter how much we humans, for example, change, we’ll always be humans. If we somehow engineer our descendants to have four arms or be able to survive in outer space, they’ll still be human. Granted, at some point we’ll have to draw the line and say this is no longer homo sapiens but homo sapiens … or sapiens …, but they’ll still be human (especially since human includes more than just homo sapiens).
There has been no discussion and very, very few mentions in the comments for all these pages of explanation regarding Xuriel’s hybrid status. She is half-succubus and half space alien, apparently with two mothers and a father.
As long as this explanation has gone on … there is still some ‘splaining needs to be done regarding Dabbler’s specific situation for her particular mixed race heritage. AND, some general commentary about succubi in general crossbreeding with other species.
I can see many factors being dominant, and in particular when magic is involved it could/would shift normal statistical expectations in the genetic lottery, but Dabbler’s extra set of arms and horn configuration seem to indicate that crossbreeding succubi with other species does shift genotype expression away from a “pure” succubus form.
I’m very curious if certain things (like the soul hole and ability to resist commands) are controlled genetically as black-and-white on-off switches, or if they dilute to a spectrum. Is a hybrid born with a soul hole that functions as a near-immediate death sentence, or might she be born with a “smaller” hole that drains slower? Might she be born with the ability to ignore commands completely, or maybe with just an increased resistance ability?
And, speaking of diluting attributes rather than switching them on or off, other inherent magic-based abilities such as using magic/manna, collecting it by tantric or other means, etc. is a very interesting question. Perhaps a half-succubus just gets all those abilities as “On” rather than diluted/modified due to the magical nature of a succubus, but what about a one-quarter succubus? Or, etc., more diluted succubus descendant? There has to be a point where a one-sixteenth succubus has very limited succubus attributes or none and stops being a succubus.
These hybrids are an automatic gateway to some form of succubus existing that does not have the soul hole, but may express other succubus traits strongly enough to still be considered a succubus.
So, this question is: How long (in generations) have succubi been breeding? And crossbreeding with other species? There have to be a few mutations out there in the wild already. The Succubi Bene Gesserit can’t have kept full track of every single one of them. There could well be an Honered Matre equivalent of succubi in the galaxies with some interesting variations on original succubus attributes and sociology.
Dabbler’s comment about “powerful reproductive systems” couldn’t be compressed into a single word bubble, so I’ll have to pick that up later.
Please do!
I do wonder if Dabbler’s corner could be made in a less labor-intensive way than the general comic and pinup, and could become a regular thing (once a month?) a lot more word bubbles with just backgrounds-that-can-be-drawn-once-and-zoomed-into-or-blurred-in-various-ways and then talking heads (mostly dabbler, but guests as well for whatever reason from interviewing this other character to demonstrating a power or prowess) that can be reused now and then?
Maybe just try it out with a big asterisk that you are human and might not be able to keep it to even a monthly schedule?
Dave, have you considered a wiki for some of this information? Like the “Grrl Power Footnotes Wiki” or something. It would make things go a little faster. Not that I want you to stop doing these explainer comics; you can even go back and do the explainers for stuff in the wiki later, the “Why Not Both?” approach.
(Add a disclaimer regarding “this is my current thinking and subject to change” and the wiki can even be retconned.)
that is a challenging idea, an appendix or back story database as I used to call it.
However if you make one of these, but then have characters talk about something from it without at least foot noting key details in the story, just treating it like everyone read the appendix; then you can lose some of your audience to confusion and need to explain like in the comments, or link below the comic to the appendix…basically making the audience do home work.
However as you point out, trying to put it in the story can be just as bothersome, if there is a lot of information it can halt the story flow, and feel unnatural if not handled right (like why are we stopping our intense battle to discuss our different people’s history with each other? Don’t we both know this already and it is one reason we are fighting *seen this in a few anime*),
or make the mistake I have and when doing a collection of stories shove some appendix and character sheets at the start of the collection, losing a lot of people right out the gate as the opener becomes a thesis paper or lecture, a literal tell don’t show, much of which would be revealed in smaller details later on anyway.
a separate appendix works, but seems to work best for big franchises like Star Wars where these appendix often list things in the background like various machines, alien races, and such that weren’t really plot relevant, but a fun aside to know about.
I’ve always liked Dave Kellett’s explipages, and the way he weaves them into the Imperio’s self-documentation… I guess DaveB will need to weave them into Archons’ documentation/library?
Yeah, but a footnote “See the wiki, true believers!” is definitely less show-stopping than a whole explainer comic.
I mean, it’s obvious you enjoy writing this lore, and we enjoy reading it, so it seems like a shame to limit yourself to what you can fit in word bubbles and/or come up with neat images for, tho I *do* love that.
Difficulties arise with these definitions when one is talking about constructs, routinely modified groups (one hesitates to call them species) and others where reproduction does not follow the more familiar biological patterns. To start with, evolution as we are familiar with is Darwinian. Among constructs and similar it is something like Lamarckian. And it can bypass the usual mechanisms of reproduction. words like “species” get tricky when parts of a genome (or what ever they use in its place) can be stuffed into organisms with whom the donor can’t otherwise reproduce or where individuals can evolve by in vivo genomic modification. Yeah. I know the definition of evolution is “change in gene frequency in a population over time”. The.assumptions behind that are so relaxed here that they have trouble standing up :)
Just saying that even our terminology gets shaky, and to discuss the matter without setting ourselves up for mistakes will require a lot of new terminology and concepts
It can in sci-fi and fantasy even get more complicated than constructs.
There are some shapeshifters for instance with parasitic genes, supposedly able to reproduce with almost any species they take the shape of. However their form is so perfect that the offspring may just end up a member of the host species and never exhibit the shapeshifter’s traits and never be able to pass them on. So the shapeshifter either never lets on or leaves the family and only returns for their offspring when/if their powers kick in.
-a big one here being that with the powers also comes immortality (or negligible senescence at least) but if these powers never kick in the offspring will live and die as the host species. (so detachment until. Yes this really is my child and not just the child of the mock DNA I made when I shapeshifted) ; even if this gene can skip some generations. You see this in some fairy tales and demon atavism situation *while not a shapeshifter this applies to Yusuke from YuYuHakusho, no telling how many generations since that demon king had gotten with a human woman before Yusuke got strong enough that the demon genes kicked in; despite this other demons treated him as the son of the demon king as did the demon king with no real regards for the generations in-between.
and then there are ascended beings who have avatars, possessions, and reincarnations. *some in those groups blocking their own memories so they don’t even know what they are*, with varying degrees of chance that their children (or sometimes further down the line) would even exhibit their traits and *ascend* as one of them. Think how the Anodites from Ben 10, the grandmother focused on Gwen because she exhibited the traits, while regarding her father like “the poor doomed child”.
So not unlike the YuYuHakusho example before. However Ascended beings as said can complicate this, especially with the more fertile ones taking on avatars on many planets, where their avatar’s biology is one parent, but the (soul) of the offspring may be the child of the ascended being either in or working through the avatar (might even happen when possessing an already there body; less chance, but there are stories of it *I was possessed by the spirit being and they passed on their essence to you through me, I was little more than the tool they used to sire you*. and Incarnations with memory blockers finding out later they made a whole lineage of these as their children might have had some magic, and it wasn’t unless they meditate or after passing away discovered that their souls were a class above other souls, so the ascended or above class being as to do some clean up (gather up the kids and teach them what they really are before…or shortly after…they’ve caused some havoc on the planet you got busy on.
-see various pantheons of gods or lineage of spell casters being sired/born this way with super ghosts, and assuming they must be gods and powerful demons and fighting over control of the regular human souls via after life systems and what not before the big parent(s) have to come back and be like (hey, kids, no, bad, time to take you to the nursey, that’s right, you “gods” are still babies to us).
any who, species wise this means the biology is one thing, the spirit another, and one of these wizards on one world could be the *ascended spirit class* sibling of a radically different alien creature, even so after ascending, identifying with their (birth species), so despite everyone at the family reunion being related with the same technical parents, they are humans, elves, dragons, cthulhunoids, scylla, kitsune, fairies, ect…) with a few older relatives walking around as giant glowing celestial beings because they were (natural births).
The ability to produce viable and fertile offspring is one of the key aspects species are recognized and differentiated from closely related but different species.” – Aphotep
That’s true for modern species, but it’s a lot harder to establish for past combinations. I’m not actually sure how palaeontologists decide how much variation falls within the distribution for a given species and when to draw the line for a different one, especially given how little they sometimes have to go on in terms of remains. Fairly sure I’ve heard of at least one case where a juvenile of species X was assumed to be an adult and therefore of some pygmy species Y, or vice versa – and that’s just within ‘normal’ vertebrates, not getting into amphibian or even insect metamorphoses!
The modern usage of species *tries* to use the ability to produce viable and fertile offspring as a key differentiator, but it fails.
– Any species can produce non-fertile offspring from time to time. Some members of some species can produce offspring, so they’re fertile, but those offspring won’t be able to reproduce. We generally do not consider those members a different species. They’re an evolutionary dead end, so it’s simplest to just lump them in with their parents’ species.
– There exist numerous instances of species where you have sets where subset A can reproduce with subset B, subset B can reproduce with subset C, but subset A cannot reproduce with subset C. These can occur in a multitude of more complicated patterns. If I recall correctly, it’s been demonstrated that we have these situations with dogs, cats, and many varieties of birds. We’ve probably demonstrated it with a bunch of other species, but I don’t really follow this stuff.
To be clear, I’m talking about modern species that exist in the world today.
Taxonomy is hard. The world is far more complicated than I can imagine, and I’d guess that goes for at least most of the people who read this.
“Species” aren’t really natural things, in the sense that “atoms” are. They’re just a classification we impose on the world that doesn’t have to cooperate in fitting it.
And the modern definition of species has gotten rather flexible lately, in an effort to, I think, exaggerate the number of species. By the old definition wolves, coyote, and dogs are all the same species. They not only can interbreed, they will given the opportunity, they just tend not to associate with each other in the wild.
But I think they’ve gone a bit far with, say, the whole spotted owl thing, where you’ve got a population that freely interbreeds, and just looks a bit different at one end of its range than the other, and they break it up into multiple species just so they can say “a species” is threatened if local habitat is compromised, even though the spotted owl isn’t at all endangered.
Anyway, we’ve established that the succubi are a made thing, and didn’t have to be made to follow natural rules.
Ever ponder just how many of our beliefs are just things we impose on the world that it doesn’t really care about?
I get that the Earth is ball, I mean it just makes sense that if we’re the center of the Universe a flat Earth just wouldn’t work. Take the moon for example – how in the name of living demiurges can it properly orbit a plate for Archimedes’ sake?
Ever seen a basketball orbit the hoop before falling either in or out?
But the moon clearly goes overhead, which is very different than rolling around on the edge of the horizon.
I’m a paid-up member of the Flat Moon Society. which holds that all other planets and stars are also plates. We don’t have any ideas or preferences for what holds all those plates in position. We need a wealthy sponsor to build us a spaceship… Elon?
The beaut part of the system is that it is — in the long run — self-correcting. “Later” researchers seem to have no investment in the “locality” thing, and start lumping them back into their proper places. One of the big drivers is the very thing you mentioned, “exaggeration”. But sometimes the pendulum doth swing too far…
I’d love to say that a collective group of Succubi would be called a Seduction, or a Tease or Temptation
I’m just going to suggest that a group of Succubi would be called a Directors Cut.
I like seduction, of the three, tease would be the runner up, none are objectionable
Someone else has suggested an “Opulence of Succubi”
https://digitalcitizen.ca/2017/05/10/a-table-of-over-125-supernatural-collective-nouns-in-text-format/
An orgy of succubi. A saturnalia of succubi. A pompeii of succubi.
Isn’t pompeii getting just a little too chummy with sodom or gomorrah? I understand there’s a volcano invoved, but allthe same…?
One reason to not call a group of succubi a “harem” could be that the word derives from the arabic haram = forbidden. It is a place where no men are allowed. (Including any “owner” of that place.)
On the other hand, who cares about word origins?
Nope. Harim and haram are different inflections, almost the opposite of each other.
Arabic: حريم ḥarīm, “a sacred inviolable place;
The etymology im looking at is harama-harim-harem, with respective meanings of “be prohibited”, “prohibited place”, “harem”
You know what’s fun about opposites? In English, it gets even better than flammable and inflammable, which despite sounding like opposites, are actually synonyms.
There’s two words that are used in very similar contexts that are essentially opposite depending on who’s speaking them. In English the word “moot” basically means to “table” a discussion, but the unfortunate thing is that “moot” and “tabling”, in the context of deciding how to act on a discussion are essentially opposite in American vs British Vernacular. In Britain, tabling a moot discussion is typically used when someone considers the subject important enough to put in front of everyone concerned and talk about it until hopefully a resolution or evolution is achieved. In American vernacular, it’s when the people involved believe the topic to be unimportant to a great enough degree that it should be put off until later or even indefinitely.
I love language!
The collective noun for succubi is an “orgy”.
Because a harem implies they’re all only fucking one central person.
This is decent. I think I might still vote for “seduction” over “orgy”, though.
I was thinking the same…
Wish I’d seen this before saying exactly the same. I second your motion.
All this exposition just to clarify a comment about slavery and how it’s not a bad thing. Wow.
For Succubi, not humans.
I know, I know. It still just annoys me because long stretches of exposition are where the comic’s at its weakest for me.
I’m sure it would be different if it came out in a sixteen page issue once a week.
Oh yeah.
That’s like, half the comic. :)
And yes, I wish I could put out a page a day. :/
So do we! :)
Y’know, I’ve thought of trying to make a comic named “exposition”, which just showed the exposition episodes of comics from authors who were willing to allow their comics to be plugged as sources of good exposition.
Unfortunately, there’s just not enough exposition in the comics I read for it to be feasible for it to be a frequently updating comic, even if all of the web comic artists I read agreed to it. El Goonish Shive tends to do its part, but most of them just do so little, relegating most of their exposition to the author comments, so that they avoid the whole massive word bubble thing.
Thats a bit of a gross oversimplification. The exposition gives us backstory on succubi history, which is something Sydney asked about LONG ago, and its not saying slavery is a bad thing. Its saying that they figured a workaround to what would normally be a bad thing that works well for the succubi. For a slave, Dabbler is very very free to the point where the only real remnant of slavery is a bond that she can choose to change if she so wishes. Even the masters in this bond seem to encourage the slave resisting being slaves, and trybto help them to overcome this spell.
Plus if its voluntary as thry choose to not genetically alter themselves so that they are no longer ‘holed’ because they like being succubi more than they dislike the bond requirement, then not aure how their free will is being constrained anymore. Its a weird situation but so is a bdsm relationship in my opinion. But Im not going to tell someone else what they can do there either if they are in that relationship willingly and knowingly.
Which is admittedly a little at odds with my view of the primacy of liberty, but respecting liberty also means respecting what other people do with their own liberty, as long as it doesnt inhibit anyone else’s liberty as well.
“They choose to be like this” skirts a bit too close to being a Themian Argument for comfort.
Being a fantasy race in a fantasy story they have no agency of themselves. Ultimately what the characters in a story do, say or believe, is up to the author, not to them (because they are not real ;))
That said, while I still find the whole concept of ‘willingly enslaved’ deeply troublesome, it is made clear by the author that the actual disturbing negatives have been removed and that the power balance is no longer one-sided. What is left is my own feelings about the concept of slavery in general that colours my interpretation of the story. The remaining problems that I have lie with me, not with the story. I may find it difficult to comprehend that somebody would want to exist in this way, where their live literally depends on somebody else, but that is a me problem given that there are actual living humans who choose to do something very similar to this (except for the literally dying without an owner of course).
So, all in all, hats off to Dave for some excellent world building.
“Ultimately what the characters in a story do, say or believe, is up to the author, not to them”
Well… yes. The characters are fictional so obviously they’re not actually making their own decisions. But I’m talking about in-universe. If the things that happen to those characters WERE real, and I was in that universe with the same opinions that I have in the real universe, I’d have to just accept that some people are going to want to willingly give up their liberty (as long as them doing so does not also require others to give up their liberty as well). A person is allowed to give up their own liberty – they are not allowed to give up another person’s liberty.
So just like, in the real world, I’m not into the BDSM scene and could not fathom ever personally being a slave to some dominatrix (or be a dominatrix to some slave), I could not really justify telling either the dominatrix or the slave that they can’t do what they’re doing because one is giving up a portion of their liberty. Because it does not affect me, and does not affect anyone aside from themselves, when they’re two consenting adults who are making a choice willingly and knowingly.
In the same thought process, if I was a person in the Grrlpower universe, aside from that I’d obviously be Deus’s personal lawyer and main squeeze, I’d also not be in a position to tell Dabbler or any other succubus that they can’t choose to continue to be slaves, even if being slaves is BARELY more than ‘in name only’ since it seems to be very consensual, and is not causing anyone else to lose their liberty or freedom. If I was to push my beliefs on them that being in a master/slave relationship was wrong and they can’t do it, I’d ironically be the one actually stifling Dabbler’s liberty, AGAINST her will.
“That said, while I still find the whole concept of ‘willingly enslaved’ deeply troublesome”
And you’re free to say that you would never agree to such a proposition yourself, but you can’t prevent them unless you put your own importance above that of another person who is living their own life, and not in any way messing with yours in the process.
Plus, like you say, ‘the power balance is no longer one-sided. It’s essentially slavery ‘in name only’ when the master is bound by a ton of rules that prevent any sort of abuse, and the ‘slave’ is free to leave and find another ‘master’ as she wishes. If anything, it’s less of a master/slave relationship and more of a contractual agreement, or even arguably sort of like a marriage with a very bad naming scheme.
“that is a me problem given that there are actual living humans who choose to do something very similar to this”
Yep. I’m in the same boat as you where I don’t personally like the idea, but in the end, it’s a ‘me’ problem more than a ‘them’ problem.
“So, all in all, hats off to Dave for some excellent world building.”
It’s one of the main things I love about the webcomic. :)
There’s a distinction being made about whether something is “wrong” or “undesirable.” They are slightly different ideas.
You and I (and probably most people) find the condition of enslavement “undesirable.” In the sense that we do not desire to participate in it.
Because the condition itself is “undesirable” we regard imposing the condition on others to be “wrong,” which is a much stronger idea. An institution of slavery, in which the condition is forced upon people who neither want it nor willingly accept it, is dead flat evil and merits strong opposition.
Leastwise, that’s how I see it. And there’s a lot of stuff that’s not so simple to decide, like, someone who finds something desirable but knows most other people do not. Should they base their judgment about what’s “wrong” on their own perceptions or on what they believe about the perceptions of society at large? That’s the sort of thing that’s not answered by this simplistic rule of thumb.
Rules of thumb are all very good, but you mustn’t forget that you have other fingers, and some issues are more than a handful.
If the thing were entirely from the author and not representative of the feelings of actual people, then I would tend to agree with your position.
If the thing represented a feeling somewhat akin to something I’ve heard multiple people expressing, that they wanted to be like this fantasy race that the author has made, I’d tend to be more supportive of the author.
Guess which of these situations represents my lived experience and thus defines my feelings on the matter? I’ll give you a hint, I’ve gotten to know a *lot* of very different people who are varied in more ways than I could have possibly imagined had I not met them.
Unfortunately, this is the Internet, so if I don’t spell it out, some people will guess wrong. It’s the second one. It’s possible that this just came out of Dave’s mind and indicates that he’s less than a wonderful person, but he’s done a very good job of depicting the desired fantasy form of multiple people I’ve met to such an extent that I can’t help but feel he’s met similar people. (That he seems to identify as a ‘he’ and various other things he’s said in the author comments suggests that he’s probably not one of them, but that could also be a possibility.)
Youse may want to see Sabine Hosenfelder’s take at ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpU_e3jh_FY ) “You don’t have free will, but don’t worry.”
It’s… disturbing.
I’m not sure I buy the soul-hole thing. I’m pretty sure women would be okay with being able to turn off their periods, even if that could technically be said to make them not-women in some way. I was born needing to wear glasses, and I happily got laser eye surgery despite it meaning I was now excluded from some category of short sighted people. If Dabbler said “Some do, most don’t, it’s their choice”, that’d be a different thing, but she said basically “Anyone who gets rid of this obvious weak point that was deliberately added to keep them weak and subserviant is *not one of us*”.
They literally wouldn’t be ‘one of them’ anymore
As you said, fixing your eyes meant you are no longer one of the ‘short sighted people’
Except “everyone is okay with this” is not what she’s saying. She’s saying that it is feasible that the Matriarchs (probably the most “powerful” and/or “intelligent”, for some definition of each) “probably could” (not provable without an attempt) “fix” things. This implies that whether or not it is an option, the Matriarch aren’t doing so publicly. Laser-eye-surgery is public knowledge and something society pushed for. A cure for a soul-hole is apparently neither.
As for the stopping periods analogy, it is possible to certain definitions, but I wouldn’t consider it “what makes someone a woman” (and/or human), just a part of a very large package. Meanwhile, succibi a have much less to tie them together as a species. I wouldn’t consider the soul-hole by itself to be a defining factor of succubi, but as she pointed out, they’ve already changed other things that made them succubi, and given the ability to change the holes, could probably change even more. Basically, the holes represent a large percentage of what still ties them to their origin, and if they change that and some other things, they’d be more close to some other species, than to succubi.
I guess the best way I can describe it is… if fish edited themselves to be able to grow four legs, walk and breathe on land, but still needed to return to water to swim every once in a while and still dealt with having cold blood, their metabolism and dietary restrictions and such… then discovered how to adjust all that, how soon before they are more akin to wolves than fish?
“if fish edited themselves to be able to grow four legs, walk and breathe on land, but still needed to return to water to swim every once in a while and still dealt with having cold blood, their metabolism and dietary restrictions and such… then discovered how to adjust all that, how soon before they are more akin to wolves than fish?”
I believe those are called elpistostege. A fish with legs, circa 400 million years ago in the Devonian period. They then evolved to be the first amphibians.
https://thesciencebreaker.org/storage/breaks/images/elpistostege-a-fish-with-legs-or-a-tetrapod-with-fins/elpistostege-a-fish-with-legs-or-a-tetrapod-with-fins.png
And eventually hundreds of millions of years later, mammals, which eventually brings us to wolves, about million years ago in the Pleistocene period. So in answer to your question about 399 million years. :)
Appreciate the link share, I’ll have to give it a look later… though in this case I was suggesting a decidedly shorter (not to mention sci-fi/fantasy) method ^^
I was pretty sure women would be OK with being able to turn off their periods, if it didn’t have any other effects.
Then one of my friends went on an experimental birth control medication that cut down the frequency of her periods to just one every three months (by design). My reaction was, “That sounds cool. I hope it goes well. I bet that will be popular.”
The funny thing is, though, I was present for her telling a number of other women about that, and the predominant reaction she got was something like, “What? That would be weird. I’m not sure if I would be OK with that.”
Maybe they were just a non-representative sample. But it’s likely that real women are quite different from the women I’d imagine.
… i don’t buy it, sorry.
Wanting to keep your cultural identity (+ inconvenient “health problems” you can actually manage fairly easy), ok fine – not everyone IRL sees their disabilities as a horrible hindrance, and some people even embrace it and/or don’t mind being disabled at all (the deaf community and a lot of autistic people come to mind).
But the soul-hole condition is life-threatening. No way around it. It’s not just an inconvience, and and the necessary management of the condition puts people at a tremendous risk of abuse. It doesn’t matter how rare it is, there absolutely HAVE to be traumatized succubi that decided “forget that bullshit, i want that stupid hole gone”.
And identity is cultural. Not natural. Every culture has members that don’t adhere to social conventions. And a species is going to have members that will be raised outside of the majority culture(s) – which will mean their identity will deviate from the cultural one of other individuals of their species.
If it was available, there are humans that absolutely would cure male pattern baldness and co. in themselves on a genetic level. Body modification is an entire thing with humans.
And another comment said why that “no longer human/succubi” thing is nonsense on a biological level.
In conclusion: I just don’t buy that there are no succubi actively trying to get rid of the soul-hole. Or at least want to. Or haven’t already.
Agreed. There would have to be some pretty considerable benefits to justify not repairing a potentially fatal weakness, and ‘cultural cohesion’ is absolutely not enough.
What if the benefit is ‘the ability to use Tantric magic better than anyone else in the universe’ – which is what Dabbler was implying in panel 5.
>But the soul-hole condition is life-threatening. No way around it. It’s not just an inconvience, and and the necessary management of the condition puts people at a tremendous risk of abuse.
From how casually Dabbler is talking about it, sounds like they’ve got the system locked down pat for the most part.
They killed their past abusers and ensured, through what is likely gratuitous amounts of violence, that there wouldn’t be a repeat.
>In conclusion: I just don’t buy that there are no succubi actively trying to get rid of the soul-hole. Or at least want to. Or haven’t already.
I think you may be taking Dabbler’s line a bit too literally.
I doubt Dabbler can honestly speak on behalf of the millions upon millions of succubi out in the universe, and the countless hybrids.
She’s just giving a generalized history lesson.
Umm, must have missed the part where Dabbles was selling anything
You are not here to ‘buy’ shit, just listen to a history lesson
I was expressing that said “history lesson” breaks my personal suspension of disbelief, and outlining the reasons why.
“None of them” is indeed stronger than is probably warranted. However, as an autistic man who notices gentle whiffs of eugenic intent from most calls for a “cure” for autism, I certainly find it plausible that the predominant approach for the group is that a well-managed/accomodated apparent disability is not worth changing, especially when it may change the core of who they are.
I agree, but the problem with the lethal-if-untreated soul-hole is… that i don’t see how it’s at the center of succubus-identity. Living off tantric energy? Definitely. Hypersexual? Yep. Overcoming the obdience thing? Even that I can see. Bonding with someone even if it’s somewhat one-sided and cteates a power-imbalance? Ok, fine.
What I find hard to believe is that the soul-hole has not been reduced from “lethal if untreated” to “inconvenient if untreated”.
Who said it was the center of their identity?
And it certainly sounds like they have reduced it to ‘inconvenient if untreated’ if Dabbles has been able to hide out on Dirt for a long time (and probably even longer ‘on the run’ before finding her way there)
Gentle whiffs? Most of the whiffs I’ve gotten have been anything but gentle.
I can kind of understand. When one has a child who has chosen to not continue trying to learn how to talk, it can be extremely painful to think that anything you did could have been to blame for it. But it would be really nice if they could understand that it’s not the problem that they make it out to be for a lot of people on spectrum, Most of the things that many of the high functioning on spectrum people I know have issues with are things that are problems for everybody, it’s just that normal people don’t want to give these problems up – much like these succubi.
Sometimes, some of these end up killing people, and not just people on spectrum. Frequently, if it happens enough, we can get people to actually fix the specific instance of it that was found to be killing people. But whenever that happens, we have people complaining about OSHA or whatever organization mandated the fix interfering with stuff that was working well enough. Because a lot of people seem to love their life-threatening defects.
Eh, I’ve been known to soften language to smooth things over when I’m not sure that a bold statement is worth the spoons that the ensuing fight would take. I could very easily have used the term “genocidal” but decided that it might create enough of a derailment that my point would be lost in the perceived attack. In other words, I agree with you but wanted to make sure my core point came across to those who might disagree with my side point.
Xuriel in this page states that /probably/ the problem can be fixed, along with several other problems. But at some point along the line of fixing themselves they would cease to be succubi. Her choice of words also makes it clear that she is not certain that is possible, just that she thinks it is likely.
This is a valid argument, though I am not sure if it would extend to not fixing a universal lethal problem inherent in their entire species.
If we ever get to the point of being able to gene edit ourselves (and perhaps even retroactively ‘wetware’ improvements to ourselves instead of only to our offspring) there are a lot of problems with the human body that we could then address. We could edit away some causes of our aging, several lethal genetic defects, susceptiblity to cancer, alzheimer’s and many other kinds of nasty diseases. But as these changes to ourselves pile up, at some point we would end up being ‘not human’, and we would have to ask ourselves, is that worth it?
Xuriel makes it clear that she thinks that the matriarchs could figure out the magic to undo the whole thaumaturgical mess that forces succubi to magicall and psychologically /need/ an owner, But she is not certain, and she is uncertain if removing something that is so fundamental to being a succubus is worth it when these matriarchs clearly have set up a system where the owners no longer have the ability to abuse their slaves, and the slaves can get over the worst of the psychological dependencies. She can clearly leave Tom at any moment she chose to, and equally clearly is not bound to be by his side and serving his every whim.
So there clearly is an extensive support structure in place, the power balance is much more even and abusive a**es are weeded out before they can get near any young succubus. This makes the whole situation more akin to living with a chronic but manageable condition and the question of ‘should I alter the nature of what I am to cure myself’ one that does not have a clear cut yes or no answer.
Considering how she treated Tom in the past, it seems very clear to me that the whole ‘slave’ thing is in name only. She basically banished him and he didn’t react by cancelling their bond (and she apparently didn’t worry even slightly that he might do that.) In fact, perhaps with modern succubi it’s the ‘master’ who gets the short end of the stick. (Viz. panel 2).
Humans need food, and water, and air, and sleep, and are particular about certain ranges of pressure, gravity, and temperature. They have a lot of needs, some of which could presumably be eliminated or modified, given advanced enough technology. Even if those needs are met, they eventually grow old and die. But they’re conditioned to think of them as being normal parts of living, rather than an affront, or something that urgently needs to be fixed. Succubi presumably view their needs and natures in much the same way.
I generally have no problem with any of this, especially since it is fiction, but a key difference that weakens your particular argument is that IRL, humans share MANY of these needs and preferences with basically all other multicellular life (biggest exception is probably how we get access to air, but it’s still air that almost all life on earth requires)
Of those that don’t have these requirements (like say, the organisms near thermal ocean vents that I think live off of sulfur(?)), they are not unique in that difference, but are one of several organisms that evolved differently to need or prefer sulfur. This is perhaps a little closer to the situation with humans vs Succubi, but it still differs in that (a) these organisms evolved that way, they weren’t DESIGNED to be like that as a method of preventing their free will and (b) they not demonstrate significant intelligence, and thus the cannot recognizably demonstrate or express their desire to mingle with organisms that do not have such requirements or express that they are fine with the difference…
Anyway – several differences to consider
I wonder if the average succubi knows their own racial history, or that any of their properties were designed, rather than evolved. She says their origin is “in excess of twenty thousand years ago“. Presumably a lot has happened since then, including both organic evolution and intentional self-modification. Would the average succubi really be conscious of what property came from what source? It’s all just their daily experience.
My argument isn’t about whether those needs are reasonable or should or shouldn’t be changed. It’s about whether the species themselves would consider them normal, excessive, or in need of change. Consider too that succubi, being demons, are going to interact with a variety of magical creatures with very different needs from those you recognize as being common among multicellular life. Some of those creatures may consider some of our needs bizarre.
I love the title “All’s well that succs well”…!
I think I am running out of space for notes… anyone else got a notebook… or three?
Panel 2 seems a little unclear. “You might think the list of prospects would included all heterosexual males,” here is off. “would included” has the obvious “ed” added at the end, but wouldn’t you by default be NOT including heterosexual males for obvious reason, said reasons then mitigated by the Terms And Conditions?
Panel 5 has some weird kerning with “understand” where it’s split into “underst” and “and” on separate lines. Had to read it three times to get what was happening.
This page underwent a lot of editing as I was doing it, so I’m not surprised there’s a goof. They’ve both been fixed. You might have to CTRL+F5 to see the update.
Wait a second, who’s the little girl succubus’s master? and she’s getting regular sex apparently?
yup, this was my immediate question, what is up with this “succubus out in the wild”? Like, wasn’t she on the street or something? How does that work?
She’s not quite at that stage yet. That only happens at [INSERT LEGAL AGE FOR YOUR MUNICIPALITY].
…it completely slipped your mind didn’t it?
every series that makes succubus a species rather than a title hits this roadblock at some point, and it can really stumble them.
It didn’t slip his mind. He mentioned this same exact thing yesterday.
Ok, it slipped his mind before the same question was asked yesterday. w/e
You don’t think he had contemplated any of this before now? Dabbler’s existence as a character precedes the existence of this webcomic. He’s put some thought into the idea of succubi as an alien species in a sci-fi setting, rather than just demons in a purely fantasy setting.
Reading the comic, you don’t get the impression that unpacking and deconstructing tropes is kind of a hobby for him? That he doesn’t put a lot of thought into worldbuilding?
At the moment, Tamatha is getting what she needs
at second handas a third partyindirectly.Did anyone else get hung up on “throat clit” in Dave’s commentary?!
I did. It brought back fond memories of the one time a woman came while blowing me. Ah, the good old days…
If Max thought about it for a moment, she wouldn’t want her both under her command as well as ‘under’ her command. ;-)
“Actually”, (yes, am being that guy), harem originally meant a group of women lawyers in a king court. It just got bastardized by horny man.
Mmm, only partly. It also meant the place where women in a household lived which was harsh in the sense that it was the inviolable and protected part of the home. Sort of like kapu/tabu in Polynesia.
I thought it meant women’s quarters, part of the house where only women and children are allowed, implemented because the modesty requirements in Islam are only exempt when the only people around is the husband or just other women?
That’s a bit of an oversimplification. The whole “modesty” thing has varied a lot in meaning and strictness depending on time and place. There are whole categories of people who are defined as “family” for whom the restrictions are loosened or absent. By a lot of local definitions – and local definitions have always been a big part of how it works – most of your village might fit under the definition of family.
There’s also, as alluded to elsewhere, the idea that the women and children’s quarters was the heart of the household, the part that was defended by custom at all costs.
So, how does this all work with Dabbler, who’s, like, quarter-succubus or something?
If the bond thing always breeds true, pretty soon the majority of the universe will have soul-holes…
Looks to me like they have a rather extreme “K” type reproductive strategy, reproducing rarely and investing heavily in the offspring, rather than an “R” type, where you just reproduce indiscriminately and don’t care if most of them die.
Remember, the “Matriarchs” who designed this reproductive system probably took into account the implications for relations with other species. Limiting reproduction rates probably looked like a good way to appear unthreatening.
When you are the apex predators of nookie you need a lot of territory each, the desperate enthusiasm of teenagers notwithstanding. Can’t have a rising population.
I would think that, beyond the question of obedience, having one of your heavy hitters bound to someone presenting as a potential foe is still very problematic. The team will be stuck with using non-lethal force because of what the consequences of killing him would be, while Tom would have no such constraints. Also he can draw on her reserves, which might take her out of the fight if too much is taken.
I could see Max insisting on a change of ownership so long as Tom represents a threat, which could be used as leverage against Tom. Which does he value more, Dabbler or the prospect of taking over Earth?
Have you seen Earth lately? Not exactly the best prize at the proverbial carnival booth.
His assistant made a whole PowerPoint slide to try and convince our world leaders. So it’s worth something at least.
We don’t yet know what contingencies modern Succubi put in place to insure against a Master’s unexpected death. I would expect a watertight inheritance-of-ownership clause to be part of the obligatory vetting process, not unlike the obligation in (certain jurisdictions of) our world to hold life insurance when taking out a mortgage.
I was about to suggest some ways succubi could deal with this metaphysical hole, such as by creating a homunculus that’s not really capable of doing anything on it’s own and forcing it to be her ‘master’, but the fact that they can explicitly cure it outright is just stupid. Seriously, it’s just bad writing to give your characters such a massive weakness and then say “They can fix it any time they want, they just choose not to”. How would you feel about Superman if DC told you he could have become immune to kryptonite at any point in time with no downsides whatsoever, but he just chose not to?
In fairness, most of superman’s weaknesses in the comics didn’t end up being kryptonite, but the fact that his villains knew how to manipulate his sense of duty and compassion in order to let them get away with stuff while he was, say, off rescuing that buss full of Seniors they conveniently put in a life threatening situation earlier.
Because it’s not a weakness for them?
Not practically, at least.
We’ve seen 3 succubi in this comic so far, and it has hindered none of them. It’s not like Superman and kryptonite where he’s constantly hampered by it to raise the stakes.
Dabbler in particular has kicked almost as much ass as Max herself, without even needing to draw on energy from her bond.
The homunculus thing would probably require that succubi perform a similar process to what their creators performed to count. The bond appears soul-deep, which would mean it requires a soul. So the effort would probably be worse than trying just to cure it (not to mention, creating creatures that are natural masters might cause new problems (master arms race?), and even if it didn’t the vetting process would probably still be necessary, because souls would probably mean diversity of personality.)
—
As far as “They can [per Dabbler, “probably”, not guaranteed] fix it any time they want, they just choose not to” goes, it depends on if they actually consider it a weakness. Some people consider society forcing them to change “issues” to meet standard to be a weakness of society, and not the other way around. Also, what about people who consider not having four arms like Dabbler to be a “massive weakness”? If they all start editing themselves, then they will eventually become unrecognizable to their past selves, and since they are much more diverse than humans, the few things that tie them to each other are “what make them succubi”.
Then there’s the PoV of, “what if humans could cure, say… addiction, or the possibility thereof, but it’s all or nothing?”, so getting rid of obsession with smoking, gambling, sexual gratification (for those who consider those bad, and not everyone does), etc also got rid of obsessions with arts, engineering, cooking, ect. It is possible that the cure has a cost they are not willing to consider and/or that the matriarchs decided is too high.
It is not bad to want to keep your “weaknesses” if you consider it a “part of you”. There is no wrong in not wanting to “cure” yourself. Doubly so in this case, where it appears that they do not consider it to be a “weakness” just a part of who they are. It’s likely less to them “we have a kryptonite that will kill us” and more… “we are driven by our nature to crawl[I dunno, making something up] and can live our whole life crawling due to our nature, we even still need to on occasion, but we choose to learn to want to walk, and choose to learn to walk and then do as we please”
I’m reminded of one of Gordon R. Dickson’s short stories — “Flat tiger“. To summarize an already short story, an alien lands on Earth for a pit-stop during a race, and extends an offer to join the “Galactic Confraternity of Intelligences”. However, there are aliens of all shapes and sizes, a number of which look nearly identical to animals that humans kill and eat for food… A condition of joining the confraternity would be to give up eating and drinking entirely, and be “adjusted” into exclusively subsisting on “energy”.
Could humans be easily convinced to give up a need that has so much cultural significance?
Hm, possibly a sensible comparison… I could see that raising issues and could see it giving them pause.
And that story sounds interesting, I’ll have to read it!
“Powerful reproductive systems”! Okay we’re way past Frankensteinian succubi at this point and Dabs has referenced her natural birth heritage. So how does a ‘freeborn’ succubus become a slave? I don’t get it, am I missing something here? Unless it’s like the progeny of a slave is a slave which, according to Dabs historical oratory is not a thing, I think. Sorta confused here. In any case, I’m way deep in Max’s/Heinlein’s corner regarding slavery, the very concept of personal ownership give me the jeebies. On another level I get the whole ‘Dom-Sub’ thing which I think is qwerky but y’know different strokes… so okay, but I don’t see Dabs as a Sub at all unless she role plays on an occasion. Or a Dom for that matter, she’s just true to her humpagrind nature needing a good meal for good health….okay like all of us but sort of a biological necessity for her. Um, wait for us too, head swirling here too early, no coffee…
Go read the author’s comments (in the comments section) on the last comic.
Dave explained this in the comments last page (I think) Succubi don’t need to be “bound” until after puberty. The soul hole drains minimal mana for quite a while as it slowly starts to open up and they can live “un-collared” for, apparently, years before they finally need to get a master.
Okay reread and had coffee, I get that the ‘soul hole’ is a genetic thing for succubi. But…how does that work for newborn, babies? Is the birthling ‘soul holed’ to the mother or is it a puberty type thing?
In earlier threads on this page the author says it only happens after actual adulthood, not just the beginning of sexual development.
I like the Dune joke in panel 5. A couple layers there for fans of that series.
I also do not understand panel 5…
kwisatz surrach ?
It’s a reference to the “Kwisatz_Haderach” from Dune.
I thank you for imparting your knowledge.
Panel 5 confused the heck out of me too, and not just because of the Dune reference. I puzzled over what the heck that thing was supposed to be and how it related to the subject for quite a while.
Let me see if I’ve finally decoded Dave’s intent there:
That weird thing, is a (hypothetical) “new succubus”, with the soul hole fixed, the dependence on tantric energy to live fixed, and a few other debatably undesirably traits all “fixed”… and the end result looks nothing at all like a succubus… or a humaniod… in fact it kind of looks like some terrible accident of mad science that (if it can talk) would probably beg to be put out of its misery? For sure doesn’t look like it would enjoy life as much as every succubus we’ve ever met seems to, and thus the point.
The thought in my head was that you can “improve” a thing in little steps until it no longer resembles the original thing. As I recall, my first draft of this page had Dabbler suggesting that humans could make it so we could make our own Vitamin D. Most primates can do it, but we can’t. Then we could make it so our eyes could focus underwater like how fish can. While we’re at it, why not throw in some nictitating membranes, and make it so women don’t menstruate like how basically no other mammals do. Why not make our toes grabby like a monkey and how about prehensile tails, etc, etc, etc. Dabbler’s point being that the end result would hardly look human and it probably wouldn’t make sense to call it such either.
Instead I made a pop culture reference where a thousand generations of bloodlines were manipulated to produce a desired result because I couldn’t think of a good genetic engineering reference. Khan Noonien Singh is a pop culture G.E. reference, but he still looked totally human. I can’t really think of a good “iterative drift” example, so you guys get Kwizatz Sucurach.
I just assumed the XXXX on her collar was ‘the next step past XXX’ ;)
As for the ‘armless person entering the patty-cake contest’ analogy…
It’s not the entering that bothers me, it’s the part where today they’d automatically ‘win’ in order to ‘make restitution for the years of societal oppression directed toward non-quadrilimbed persons at the hands of white supremicists’ or somesuch professional apologist foolishness.
Dabbler is only half-succubus, might that make a slight difference in the size of her ‘hole’ ?
Would her Doppelganger or ‘unknown alien’ parts cancel it out entirely, making her a free agent ?
Maybe she only thinks she’s ‘bound’ and could walk away any time she wanted to (assuming she wanted to ;) )
So many potential concepts to play with, should be fun seeing how they turn out
Nah, fairly sure she would know if she truly wasn’t soul-holed
> It’s not the entering that bothers me, it’s the part where today they’d automatically ‘win’ in order to ‘make restitution for the years of societal oppression directed toward non-quadrilimbed persons at the hands of white supremicists’ or somesuch professional apologist foolishness.
Oh piss off with that bullshit.
They are actually not wrong
So often in school sports, specially the junior grade schools (kids pre-teen), no one gets medals or trophies for coming first second or third, everyone gets a ribbon or certificate just for participating, even if they came last
Or were you commenting on the apologists fucking up everything?
He’s making an alt-right (read: Nazi) talking point about reparations for slavery in America.
And yes, Nazi apologists *are* currently fucking up everything.
“But we like being collared and bound and almost enslaved.” — which is what Dabbler effectively says, when trying to explain why the “mana hole” hasn’t been fixed. This is… not great.
Feeling really bad for Tamatha and what she’s going to have to go through.
The soul hole appears to be tied to their need to have sex regularly. So fixing the soul hole might render them asexual without any desire to have sex after that. That’s a cost that’s likely too high a price to pay.
Or it’s at least sufficiently associated with it that they don’t want to mess with it. Also associated with it so much that they could worry about its removal is their ability to use tantric energy as easily as they do.
So is there just an enormous personality shift that every succubus goes from, as they go from pre hole and have a standard personality like tarantula, then just all go through a phase where they are slavishly devoted on top of getting the hormonesx100 that tarantula is already going through?
… that seems like it would produce a very weird mental state to have a period of life where you have such strong mental influences constantly
Like seriously, even if they learn to resist the influence, it is going to have lasting effects since it was such a strong influence during their childhood/teenagehood.
Also still pretty sure that Tom is definitely edging what is allowed when he called dabbler a slave. Not just the using it as an insult, but the whole “you’ve gotten uppity” thing. In general, it seems like Tom is trying to get dabbler to be subservient which doesn’t seem like it would be allowed.
Re: Tamer: Enhancer 2
I’m actually the guy who felt weirdly cockblocked by you ending the last book with a FTB. I’m really looking forward to the new Enhancer Book and every scene in it, be it sexy or not. Here’s how I see it: If you’re not comfortable writing the scene don’t write it. Normally I would argue it’s an opportunity to push your writing skills but that’s simply not the case with sex scenes. There’s more gut feeling involved in those and it won’t read right if it doesn’t feel right to write it and if it doesn’t feel right, that’s not far from feeling wrong when it comes to sex.
Panel 2: “Initial every page. It will require 4 liters of blood.” The human body has, on average, 5 liters of blood, so somebody has to be in REALLY top notch physical shape and very, very sure that this is what they want to do to go through that.
Or spread it out over a couple weeks. Way better to use the time-regeneration method so other forms of background checks can be applied.
And as these are succubi, possible stress-testing, and other forms of testing. Yes, I see you back there- put down the phallic thermometer!
So signing is a multi-day or multi-week ritual, so you have time to recover blood… Sounds like buying a house.
Yeah, and it’s another way of vetting potential bond-holders: they are going to have to be very certain and dedicated just to sign the pre-paperwork
Who said it has to be the signer’s blood? Or even human? o_0
Obviously both are implied, but tiny loopholes with massive implications have been overlooked in the past.
The fact the matriarch is standing over the guy with a pen attached to a tube that will presumably be inserted into his vein?
Sure, that’s obviously the default plan and spirit of the contract. But if he tells her to use a couple of his sheep from the pasture outside (and plans to BBQ anyway for a bonding feast), the contract wording may make that a valid letter-of-the-law approach. At least for the first person to think of it.
And she could just as easily tell him to find himself a different slave
This doesn’t sound like the first time if she knows how much blood would b required (fortunately it’s just initializing and not signing… )
Either that, or be on good terms with <a href="https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-453-i-am-the-refiller/"Tom.
In the commentary on at what point with modification could a human no longer be considered human.
Well, that really depends on what aspect they are adhering to for “human” a strictly biological one, mental, or even just as a social construct for a varying population if gene mods, cybernetics, and alien hybrid horizontal gene transfer tech making it possible all want to be citizens; so (human) becomes more a social identity than a biological one.
I have three (advanced) human groups that still regard themselves as *human* but from a modern human perspective may seem more out of it.
Ju-el
*gene modification; while those from a more newely turned Earth may not look that different to the next Earth; their standards of beauty and gene mods tend to push their species towards a more feminine frame, longer limbs relative to torso, slightly larger heads, larger eyes, shorter faces, denser and more feathery hair, and no pores in the skin.
Without their contact suits the older world Ju-el can have a real *Ethereal, Uncanny Valley* quality to them. As a result some Ju-el invasions have a multi-generational avatar program where agents work to alter the standards of beauty among the more advanced *most likely to resist* cultures so when they show up they will be seen as beautiful, cute, or at least (oh they kind of have this anime/cartoon/doll appearance to them), by enough of the population to off-set the uncanny valley fear reaction that hampers interaction and PR.
Andros: As the name may indicate, Ghost in the Shell type history, evolving to Techno-Organic bodies (can now be born a cyborg basically), and modify however throughout life. What is human here is socially based. There is a longer more complex history involving the development of sapient sex dolls that got their own rights *Monster Mates, Comfort Companions, Replicants, ect..* with the same types of bodies and tech also available to people so that lined blurred to the point that an organization grew out of it that eventually became (Humanity) as far as the greater galaxy would be concerned.
-same time line did see *regular humans* push to keep a biological identity and retreat to the wilds of Earth in the distant future…only to eventually evolve naturally into something else anyway (why they became bird like is a debate among the Andros, some believing someone tampered with their genome for survival as a wild species on Earth but…also the time frame is like 100 million years between when they came back to visit so there’s that.
Aesperians: Originating from a reality that used protein based nanites for temporary modifications to work in various environments. The Aesperians are one part a mutation reacting to this process making these traits permanent and inheritable, one part celestial beings tampering with the human genome across the galaxy secretly, and after the Aesperian organization carried tens of millions of individuals into a pocket universe to escape other companies that sold nanites trying to commit genocide on them this pocket universe’s innate magical environment mutated them further into standard physical powers across the board and various elemental specialties. Making Aesperians basically super human (but enough generations later and only interacting with each other this would become the norm so the idea of being super human left them.
Naturally these are based on sci-fi and fantasy tropes, with Aesperians a way to biologically explain the physical powers of anime characters in fantasy series with their clear super strength and durability, even among the average individuals. A what-if this was explained and not just for comedic effect.
but at the end of the day I get the feeling what is considered “human” will fade from a species divide to a social one if enough means for modification or inclusion of non-ape originating variants (robots, sapient slime, sapient plants, ect..) are created.
At the very least, highly advanced cybernetics can lead to a serious Ship of Theseus issue that could eventually happen on a species level.
the techno-organic brain being used to enhance then nanites inserted at birth as a norm, then passed on with regular genes (over centuries),
along side that the fully artificial androids were using the same neural structure.
yeah, mix and match the species till no one really knows who is of human descent and who is of Companion descent and then shrug and go on as a society.
Sounds like it could happen in The Culture if becoming an AI wasn’t viewed as eccentric.
I use the term “phylohuman” in my sci-fi worldbuilding. (As in phylogenetics, the way we trace evolutionary lineage)
sounds like a good phylosophy
See this has me wondering… just what does it take to be a leash holder? Is the only requirement being a magic user? Because succubi are magic users in and of themselves.
Could three succubi make a circle of master/slave bonds to each other and plug the holes for each other?
If they could they’d all die if one dies