When I first started writing about a lesbian succubus it was all just a bit of fun. And then I ‘met’ her asexual best friend, a snarky incubus who is far too old for all this shit, and I had to start thinking a little more about how sex, sexuality and gender work in this crazy little world I’ve been creating.
What follows is my attempt at explaining the relationship between sexuality, gender and the demons who need them to survive.
Part 1 – The Demons
We all know the accepted mythology is a succubus feeds on men and an incubus seduces, and impregnates, women. This still holds true for my demonic children. The fact that Kyra, my anxious mess of a main character, doesn’t find men sexually attractive doesn’t change the fact that she needs to eat. And as a demon who can weave a glamour to reflect her meal’s deepest desires, it doesn’t really matter what he finds attractive either. If her meal happens to be gay, she’ll present as a man. Succubi and incubi use the sexual desires of their victims as a weapon, reflecting it back to confuse the senses and manipulate the mind. Kyra can charm most any man into doing what she wants, including stupid, deadly things.
A succubus feeds from a man, regardless of his sexuality*, and passes the sexual energy taken to her favourite incubus. That incubus then uses the energy, altered by the transference, to impregnate a woman. Most of the time women are selected for their magical affinity to give the best possible chance of another demon being born. Sometimes it’s a human baby born, but they inherit the magical affinity of their mother, which is then boosted by their demonic father. (*Note: Sexuality will be covered in Part 3.)
This is true for succubi and incubi. Vampires and witches tend to breed in a more traditional fashion, usually pretty exclusively within their own species. Mixed children exist, and are generally treated the same as their full blood brethren, if only because numbers are too small for anyone to make a big deal about it. For the most part, humans don’t know if their partners are demons, because they don’t know that demons exist. Sometimes relationships just fall apart and children need to be co-parented. Sometimes children grow up to pursue a life their parents don’t understand, and sometimes that life takes them across the country in the footsteps of their other parent. This doesn’t mean that the child doesn’t love their human parent, just that they live in two very different worlds.
While witches and vampires are also demons, and have their own unique skills and magic, they don’t really play a big part in my first novel. I really like the idea of demons evolving and adapting to survive like any other animal or species on the planet. The use of magic is mostly to conceal or misdirect, to keep demons safe from humans while still using them as a food source a lot of the time. Demons are stalking, ambush predators, and have evolved to create shadows to hide in. It’s just that the ‘shadows’ they use are different for each type. Witches play with memory and perception, convincing people that what they see or hear isn’t really there. Succubi and incubi use glamours to hide their true selves while projecting the most distracting mask possible, and then weaponise the lust of their prey to ensure they can’t even begin to think about resisting. Vampires are probably the least subtle, using blunt force magic to cast a thrall and basically wipe a mind clean of everything besides a desire to serve.
I could go on forever about the mechanics of the world I’m creating and the way it nestles so small and quiet in the corner of our own. In Part 2, I’ll explore gender and how being non-binary is both a blessing and a curse.
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