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Succubi vs Incubi and why Amir is the Former!
🕑 Added 2022-03-03 20:37:23 +0000 UTCToday's topic is Amir's monster form, which is a succubus! Typically, succubi are associated with female characteristics and sexuality while incubi are associated with male. And while Amir is somewhere on the genderfluid scale, he's very comfortable with his masculine body... so why a succubus?
The in-narrative reason is that when you become a demon, there's no greater authority to explain the ways of demonhood to you and the demonic form you take on is based off of your own traits and characteristics. Mori touched on this briefly in his intro chapter when he tells the MC about his origin and the demonic form he now takes. Mori uses the words Kaibyo and Bakeneko to describe his monster form because those are words he's familiar with from ghost stories as a little boy. He could just have easily described himself as a werecat.
Similarly, Amir chose what words he prefers to describe his demon form with and he went with Succubus. Mostly because he's already quite talented at charming people and found the name to be dramatically fitting as he seduces and thrives off of his clients/targets/victims.
Outside the narrative, I wanted to make sure that Amir's monster form described his appeal as accurately as possible. The man is walking sex appeal, he plays demure and even a little waifish to get people to lower their guard around him. He's really exceptionally dangerous to people who think with their libido.
But let's look at the etymology real quick: neither word was used in English until the late 14th century but the late Latin roots offer some enlightenment. The word Succubus is two separate Latin words, succuba, meaning lover, and sub (under) + cubare (to lie) whose differentiation blurred over time and became the single word we know today. The word incubus has more muddled origins and loses its succuba/lover root to simple be in (on) + cubare (to lie) which is also the exact same etymological path the word incubate comes from.
Another complication is that a few noted scholars of myth make the case that Incubi are strictly heterosexual and taking male victims is detrimental to them in some way and while this isn't a tremendously popular cultural paradigm, it just made the word harder to fit. In the sort of collective modern mind, there's also the hazy conception that Succubi are more prone to creating thralls with their powers and Incubi seek to make more demons by impregnating their victims.
These two reasons are a big part of what I felt "mismarketed" Amir and I didn't want to fight against deeply ingrained preconceptions by trying to trim up more subtle nuance to a word everyone is familiar with. So as a designer and contemplating all of these angles, I felt it was important to distance Amir from some of the expectation we have about either side of the horny night demon coin. And since he fits the succubus vibe much more closely than the incubus, I decided to go with that wording instead.
The more you know! (I have to take all kinds of weird stuff into account for game development ha!)
