Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audience?

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Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audience?

Post by Sharad9 »

A succubus has been summoned from hell to our realm by a fool using an ancient text called "demonic pacts for dummies "(placeholder title don't worry). The ritual goes horribly wrong due to incorrect information and resulted in the summoner''s death. The succubus is now free to roam our realm unsupervised and begins terrorizing the populace by leaving a string of bodies in her wake. A succubus has a number of advantages over a human, including increased strength, speed, resistance to harm, and telepathic powers. It has the ability to hypnotize it's victims, putting them into a deep trance. A pleasant, euphoric haze descends on the victim who is under her spell, making them very open to suggestion. This ability only works on men, and uses a large amount of energy (mana) from a succubus to use. The creature can also use polymorphization to slightly adjust and tweak it's features, changing its appearance as needed, but always in the form of a human woman. It needs to hunt every month or so to recharge it's mana reserves. The longer it goes without food, the less control it has over its faculties. At some point, it will force itself on the closest individual it can find.

The creature feeds by preying on men that it seduces. It absorbs the mana from their souls, leaving them desiccated, dried up husks that are later disposed off. Sex with a succubus is far more enjoyable than with a mortal human, which it uses to release the energy from the victim. After the soul is eaten, the creature gains the memories and abilities of the person. The strength of its abilities continues to grow as it feeds off of more prey. At some point, it can completely "dominate" it's victims, enslaving them to its will. A human under its spell at that point would do anything they are told to do by her, including murder, steal, or die. Hypnotization only works on one person at a time while the succubus is weak. As it grows in strength, it can extend it to multiple victims, but can use up it's mana more quickly.

Citizens are terrified and authorities are in panic. Hundreds of unexplained disappearances become commonplace, with victims later turning up scattered around the city. The bodies resemble dried up corpses similar to raisins being left out in the sun for too long. The succubus enjoys the fear that she is instilling, and is no closer to being found. The body count continues to pile up with no end in sight.

I'm trying to salvage the concept of the succubus without turning it into some kind of hentai. Rather than portray it as the sexy, fetishized interpretation of this creature, such as in the show "lost girl", make it out to be a dangerous predator with the pathology of a serial killer, along the lines of catherine tranell or hannibal. Im thinking that telling it from the creatures point of view would be even more disturbing. It would be a look into the mind of a sociopathic monster that sees human beings only as a food source, killing without conscience and destroying lives for its own amusement. Does a sex related story of a monster like this inevitably devolve into fetishist territory, or can it actually work as horror?
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

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Both.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by LinguistCat »

Some people's horror is some other people's sexy, and that's before you even include actual sex in the plot. Just write it the way you feel it should be treated. People will react to it the way they feel inclined.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by Salmoneus »

Don't understand the question. You obviously know that writing a story about a beautiful woman going around having super-sex with huge numbers of people is a sexual story, and that having her murder everyone she has sex with puts it into fetishistic territory. That's all pretty much a matter of definition.

As for whether it can still be horror, the question in confusing in that it implies a contrast between sex and horror. In reality, almost all horror stories are sex stories - they're a kind of symbolic porn. Lots and lots of horror stories revolve around sexual material, and those that don't are almost always either metaphorical fetish porn or else decorated with sexy elements. Dracula is about an old man who sneaks into a young woman's bedroom at night, penetrates her, and makes her fall in love with him despite the commands of her owners parents - and the most famous horror scene in the novel is the chaste husband being demonically tempted by a harem of naked young women. [The first vampire story was about lesbianism]. Or look at Psycho! The horror comes from the sexualised relationship between mother and son (mother drives away all his girlfriends out of jealousy, son murders mother when he finds her having sex with someone else), and the son's transexuality (he dresses up as a woman to kill people), and the most famous terror scene in the film is... yup, a naked woman being attacked and penetrated violently (with a knife).

Alien? It's a film about a male rape monster that forces (mostly men) to give it blowjobs and then gets them pregnant and forces them to have its babies. The sequel adds a gender roles horror element by having the male rape monsters be servants of their mother.
That's not just me reading into it, either. That's the intention. The creator described the core gimmick: "I have an idea: the monster screws one of them." And "This is a movie about alien interspecies rape... That's scary because it hits all of our buttons." Scott picked the final alien design from Giger's drawings because it looked sexy: "It could just as easily fuck you before it killed you."

Does anyone think it's a coincidence that slasher horror almost always features horny teenagers who break the rules and get punished for it? Lots of victims murdered when trying to have sex when they 'shouldn't' (or just kissing for the tamer ones), lots of 'slutty' teens killed...?
Likewise, serial killer films, which typically have mostly sexy female victims and fetishistic ways of killing, and often display of bodies in sexualised ways?

Horror IS fetishism.

The specific idea of the succubus, the (often non-human) woman who seduces men and has sex with them but kills them in the process, is a very widespread one in modern film and TV. Right now, for instance, there's a character on American Gods who seduces people and then eats them with her vagina while they're having sex. A couple of years ago, Under the Skin was a high-profile succubus movie with Scarlett Johansson - about an alien in a (frequently naked) human skin who seduces men and eats them. At the other end of the critical/popular spectrum, there was a well-known film in the '90s called Species, in which a hypersexualised often naked half-alien woman desparately tries to have sex with men - she doesn't inherently have to kill them, but for plot reasons she does anyway, and has a baby who tries to kill people too. More generally, if you look through episodes of things like Buffy and the X-files, it's a common trope.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by clawgrip »

Let's not forget Ash trying to murder Ripley by ramming a rolled up porn magazine down her throat.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by sangi39 »

Well I was going to write something in response to this question but Sal actually beat me to it in the best way possible.

A fair amount of horror revolves around topics related to sex, e.g. loss of virginity, different forms of rape, giving in to sexual temptation, and so on and so on, with Sal, again, pointing to good examples of each.

I think the only difference would be changing the point-of-view from the victim (and by extension to viewer) to the succubus herself, but I think that would have to be really well done to pull off properly. Part of the fear that comes from this kind of horror is from allowing yourself as the viewer to take the place of the victim without having to actually go through that trauma (although for some people the joy of horror comes from the humiliation, torture and deaths of the victims as well, but that rarely seems to go alongside an association with the killer/monster).

You'd probably have to round them out as a character of the succubus, make her interesting enough for the reader to, to a point, sympathise with, and probably throw her into her own horrific drama, whether that be some for of physical horror that she goes through or has been through (possibly as backstory) or show off that her murders, while seemingly necessary, do affect her negatively.

The viewer in this instance isn't placing themselves in the position of the victim but instead forms an association with the succubus that makes the death of the victim more than simplistically sexualised gore.

I don't know. The good thing about horror is that you can take a simple concept and take it in so many different directions and as long as the writing is good, the pacing makes sense and you don't have to suspend disbelief too much then almost any of them can work.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by Salmoneus »

sangi39 wrote: A fair amount of horror revolves around topics related to sex, e.g. loss of virginity, different forms of rape, giving in to sexual temptation, and so on and so on, with Sal, again, pointing to good examples of each.
That's a good point I didn't think of explicitly (no pun intended). I wonder, how might one classify the forms of sex-horror?

How about:
- violation horror. Often manifesting as body horror - the theme of a victim who has control of their body taken from them, usually forcefully, usually through physical penetration. Murder is the ultimate form of violation, and the violation element probably helps explain why knives are so popular in horror, but rape and the threat of rape are also common themes. Violation horror is also a big part of trophyism and the manipulation and display of the dead or dying in horror, I think. In more abstract (and usually SF) forms, this is also seen in possession, mind control and so on. Of course, the audience may enjoy either the horror or the illicit pleasure of identifying with the perpetrator (and if one character is possessed to violate another, the audience gets to feel both at once without feeling bad about it...)

- transgression horror. Gross violations of sexual norms. Voluntary or involuntary bestiality, incest or necrophilia qualify here, or overtones of these. Traditionally, cross-dressing and male homosexuality were a huge part of this (there's a heap of films with MTF, transvestite, or flamboyantly camp murderers (just to pick three of most famous transvestite/transexual murder films: Hitchcock's Psycho, De Palma's Dressed to Kill, and Demme's Silence of the Lambs). Other taboos may also be broken: there may be blasphemous elements, for instance. This is probably the other part of the trophy/display trope, since disrespect for the dead is a pretty basic taboo in our culture. In any case, transgression again lets audiences have it both ways: revulsion, but also an opportunity to explore and enjoy something they may find titillating but that they're otherwise forbiden from seeing.
[One thing that springs to mind here for its ingenuity of transgressions is <i>Interview with the Vampire</i>. You've got homosexuality, effeminate male behaviour, you've got sexualisation of a child, and a cute innocent child who is really a horrible murderer, you've got desecration of bodies (the child-vampire stores a woman's corpse in her box of toys, iirc), you've got a woman publically murdered when she's appearing stark naked in public...]

- body rebellion horror. Yeah, not a great name. What I mean is the idea of the body turning against the mind. This can obviously take the form of body horror, but it's also the fear of sex - of being tempted or seduced, and of losing control. So horror films can directly appeal to this, but more generally they amplify it by portraying situations that are sexy but also dangerous. Teenagers on lover's lane. Sexy vampire temptresses and femmes fatale. Succubi...
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by Lambuzhao »

Well, Sal's thorough disquisition reminds me of Mother Nature's analog to all this: traumatic insemination, q.v.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_insemination
[:x]
Yet I don't think this even covers those critters that reproduce by infesting the host in some way, like viruses, tarantula hawk wasps, and those flukes that make the frogs grow extra limbs to make them less mobile and more tasty to aquatic birds, their next vector in the horripilous guignol that is their reproductive cycle.

As Sal suggests, this was quintessentially played by Ridley Scott and H.R. Giger in Alien.


I read this page a few months ago. I could not believe it at all. But here, I feel this thread on this forum is the perfect home for these frisky varmints:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141117 ... h-penguins

Yet another flavor of Mother Nature's traumatic insemination.

[:x]
BTW: Great name for a band, wot?

Ladies and germs, here they are back from their whirlwind tour. The Tin Angel is proud to present Mother Nature's goddamn Traumatic Insemination
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by Lambuzhao »

*VIDJEAU-GAME SPOILER*
Isn't a succubus the final boss of the game L'il Nightmares?

Now, for what it is, that game is a trip.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by elemtilas »

Lambuzhao wrote:http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141117 ... h-penguins

Yet another flavor of Mother Nature's traumatic insemination.
Well, there's not a lot for young seal lads to do on those long Antarctic Friday evenings. So why nòt head down to Club Penguinia? --- after all, that's where all the well heeled and well dressed birds congregate!

And, you know, if one should accidentally kill and eat one's date, well, it was all in good fun, right? All's swell that ends well! Everyone had a grand time, all things considered!
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by Ahzoh »

Salmoneus wrote:
sangi39 wrote: A fair amount of horror revolves around topics related to sex, e.g. loss of virginity, different forms of rape, giving in to sexual temptation, and so on and so on, with Sal, again, pointing to good examples of each.
That's a good point I didn't think of explicitly (no pun intended). I wonder, how might one classify the forms of sex-horror?

...
And then there is monsters (or people) eating people, otherwise known in its pure fetish form as "vore".
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by sangi39 »

Ahzoh wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:
sangi39 wrote: A fair amount of horror revolves around topics related to sex, e.g. loss of virginity, different forms of rape, giving in to sexual temptation, and so on and so on, with Sal, again, pointing to good examples of each.
That's a good point I didn't think of explicitly (no pun intended). I wonder, how might one classify the forms of sex-horror?

...
And then there is monsters (or people) eating people, otherwise known in its pure fetish form as "vore".
We do not talk of vore [:P]

Also "vore" on its own is kind of ambiguous. For some it's about eating someone/something, while for others it's about being eaten, and then you have to distinguish between whether the consumption is "whole" (the "victim" being eaten in one mouthful") or "partial" (the "victim" being eaten piece by piece). Some people seem to favour the simple image of being food (or others being food) as well, as if prepared as a meal, rather than actually eating said person or thing, but I'm not sure to what extent you can consider that vore over something like... I guess "soft" sexual cannibalism.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by Keenir »

in answer to the OP, in public bookstores, there are indeed novels and novellas about succumbi - most are average citizens of an RL country or Generic Modern Country With Mythical Citizens Alongside Humans....the succumbi tend to hold jobs (some are bounty hunters, others are not) and want normal relationships and a normal life.

a few books have their succumbi working for a/the demon/devil, either happily or trying to get out (in both cases, they can be holding down a normal life without their Signifigant Other knowing who the succumbus works for)

but if you have your succumbus as the viewpoint character and make it as/more unfeeling as Hannibal...you need to give the reader a reason to read the book. (not so much if you're only writing the book to see if such a POV is possible, and don't want anyone else to read it)
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by Axiem »

Keenir wrote:in public bookstores, there are indeed novels and novellas about succumbi
Can you name some titles? Some vague "oh yeah, they exist" is not very helpful, especially if someone wants to read one or two to see how it's treated.
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Post by Keenir »

Axiem wrote:
Keenir wrote:in public bookstores, there are indeed novels and novellas about succumbi
Can you name some titles? Some vague "oh yeah, they exist" is not very helpful, especially if someone wants to read one or two to see how it's treated.
I just summarized several dust jackets from memory; i can't offer titles or authors until i get back to the bookstore.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by alynnidalar »

Google is your friend.

List of succubi in fiction from Wikipedia

Googling "urban fantasy succubus" yields a number of different books as well.

A Goodreads shelf of succubus books.

EDIT: if anyone's not familiar with the term, "urban fantasy" is the usual term these days for fantasy that takes place in the modern world. "Contemporary fantasy" is also used. "Paranormal romance" or "supernatural romance" are often very similar, but with a focus on a romantic relationship. Sometimes these categories can overlap weirdly; for some reason, the Mercedes Thompson books sometimes get considered "paranormal romance" even though the romance bits are clearly secondary to the main plots. But some people seem to consider any urban fantasy novel with a female protagonist and some element of romance to be a romance novel. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by Micamo »

I'll be honest, I don't think a female character who uses her sexuality to destroy men like a predator, whether in a supernatural sense like a succubus or in a more mundane way like the femme fatale, has any value played straight. It honestly only makes sense turned on its head, with the feelings of the woman centered rather than the men who desire and fear her.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

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Really stupid comment, but isn't this technically similar to the basis of the music videos for :yout: Toxic and :yout:
Paparazzi and pretty much every Lady Gaga song?
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by eldin raigmore »

alynnidalar wrote: if anyone's not familiar with the term, "urban fantasy" is the usual term these days for fantasy that takes place in the modern world. ...
"Urban" seems more to be used as if a code-word for "nearly all the main characters are African-American".
IOW it doesn't mean what it seems to say it means. Instead it means something else. But nobody who uses the word will say so. They expect the readers and bookbuyers to figure it out.
Micamo wrote:I'll be honest, I don't think a female character who uses her sexuality to destroy men like a predator, whether in a supernatural sense like a succubus or in a more mundane way like the femme fatale, has any value played straight. It honestly only makes sense turned on its head, with the feelings of the woman centered rather than the men who desire and fear her.
I don't know that Micamo is 100% correct about everything in that quote; but definitely I'd be more interested in the story if it were told from the succubus's point-of-view, especially if she were capable of regret, and pity for her victims. Like vampirism or lycanthropy, if the "monster" wishes s/he didn't have to be a monster, or wanted to protect some set of people (e.g. their family and friends from before they were monster-ified; or just people they happened to genuinely like; or maybe anyone who didn't give their informed consent); then their emotions would make for a better story. Probably the best way to do that would be to have them interact with another monster who very much liked being a full-on monster and had no desire to protect anyone. And/or have the protagonist have a conflict between protecting a "normal" and protecting a fellow monster.

What about incubi?

What about the idea that succubi and incubi are the same demon? Because demons, being things of the Devil, can't create life -- only things of God can create life -- if an incubus wants to impregnate a mortal woman, it must get the seed from a mortal man, which it acquires by becoming a succubus and seducing the man.

In any case; I think the idea of the succubus just comes from the occasional "wet nightmare" some guys sometimes have.
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Re: Is the idea of a succubus too cheesy for a modern audien

Post by Lao Kou »

eldin raigmore wrote:In any case; I think the idea of the succubus just comes from the occasional "wet nightmare" some guys sometimes have.
I've heard it linked to sleep paralysis.

I should think any protagonist experiencing existential Angst, if well-written, would be interesting.

The horror, for humans, I think, comes from no longer being at the top of the food chain. Lions are not "monsters" for felling zebra and gnus, but tell a zebra that. That you are potential lunch (in our case, for a vampire or succubus) is something prey animals live with daily, so why not you? Creatures higher up the chain needn't be minions of Hell -- just folks who want a nosh; that the nosh may be you is unfortunate, from your perspective. As for intertwining with sexual issues -- c'mon, straight guys. All this energy expended trying to gain access to a vagina, and then worry about one's vitality/potency being zapped/desiccated in a cavern down under? Is female sexuality that threatening?
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