[LNHY/ACRA] The Daily Super Short-Short Story #36

[Saxon Brenton]

phippsmartin at hotmail.com (Martin Phipps) replied:

>> Should Tsurlich be a succubus? 
> 
> "A lewd female demon or goblin which takes on the illusory appearance
> of a female human being and seeks sexual intercourse with men, usually
> while they are asleep."
> 
> Why bother taking on an illusionary appearance if the victim is
> asleep?  Or is this for when they wake up?

No idea. Although I suspect it's these little details that indicate that 
the description was made up for people to either savour and/or get 
guilty about when they're awake.

> So the wives of Dracula in Van Helsing were succubi as well as
> vampires???

Just as there are a lot of creatures from world folklore and myth that 
drink blood, humanity's preoccupation with sex seems to have produced a 
common motif of dangerously seductive creatures. I don't think we should 
be surprised that there's overlap. It probably all links back to the Freudian 
'fear of castration complex' in the imagery of the vagina dentata.

>>A lilim? 
>
> "The Lilim are the most religious Circle within the Handmaidens of
> Lilith."
> 
> No.

Doesn't say whether it's good religion or bad. I was typing these 
suggestions off the top of my head, so I don't have references, but I do 
seem to recall one tradition that had Lilith as the devil's consort. Lilim 
as particularly fanatical dark priestesses?

>> A fox woman?
>
> "Once, a fox fell in love with a man. She loved him so much that she
> yearned to become human so they could make love as humans do."
> 
> That would make her Japanese, right?  But what part of the story
> implies evil?

Yes, she would be Japanese. This one would be a bit of stretch from a 
typical FW, and implies an unusual FW hanging out with an unusually 
eclectic group of nightsiders. While there is nothing stereotypically evil 
about FW, my understanding is that they tend to be haughty and 
mischeivous, and this could be used as an elision for someone who's gone bad.

Mind you, an 'Unusual Background' of "renegade member of an otherwise 
beneficent non-human race" cold be applied to almost an mythological being.

>> A ninya?
>
> "There are two main people-groups in Ninya, as they themselves would
> define it. There are humans, and there are Rocs.  The Rocs are huge
> sentient birds."

Hadn't been aware of that version.

Australian aboriginal mythology from around Mt Conner. One description:
"Spirit-men of ice, makers of frost and ice. Their bodies are always white 
with frost and they have beards and eyebrows of tinkling icicles." [...]

>> A spham elemental?
>
> No.
>
>> A smurf?
> 
> You are joking, right?  No.

Probably joking. Mind you, I do recall one LNH story where a whole bunch 
of henchmen turn up, including Henchman Smurf 'The one who went really 
bad'.

But in this case I'm probably joking.

>> A deep one?
>
> Huh?  No.

>> A superintelligent shade of the colour blue?
> 
> Now, here I was imagining this series being printed in black and
> white.

Oh, pfft. Just have a somewhat foggy looking in the artwork with grey
shading. The problem as I see it would be that if it's a *shade* of
the colour blue, then it's going to be just as hard to produce the
illusion of depth/3-dimensionality regardles of whether its printed in
colour or black&white, because 'shade' implies uniform colour. OTOH
lighting from different angles would change the perceived colour
regardless of what the inherent colour is, so it might be that much of 
a problem.

> >Something else?
> 
> An Atlantean?  A Lemurian?  A reanimated neanderthal?  A Syren?  Have
> you tried http://www.occultopedia.com/topics/demons.htm ?  That should
> keep you busy for a while.  Or you can just make her a succumbus.

Hadn't been aware of that net.resource. But then, that would probably just 
boggle me with an amazing number of options.

---
Saxon Brenton    Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia