So I was thinking about the last episode of My Dress Up Darling (watch on Crunchyroll) and Marin's latest cosplay was of a succubus, and she had to explain to Gojo what a succubus was. She quickly explained that they are a kind of demon that makes men have wet dreams so they could take their semen and kill them, which is accurate enough I guess, but then that got me thinking...

So in the real world the idea of a succubus was made up to explain wet dreams (or nocturnal emissions if we want to get all educated) and in some cultures men would even place phallic objects in front of their doors to "distract" the succubi when they came at night. The reason they went through such lengths was because, for a hilariously long portion of human history, it was thought that men would only be able to ejaculate so many times in their life, as every time they did it consumed some of their life force (the term "orgasm" actually means "the little death" for that exact reason.) This is why masturbation was discouraged so much, but since your sperm cells need to be renewed every few days you literally can't do anything to stop it.

Of course that made me wonder, we now know that there is no life force (or spiritus vitae) to consume and you can basically keep doing it as long as you don't chafe or dehydrate, so if our ancestors knew that would the succubus still be seen as a dangerous monster? I think they might actually have been seen as angels from heaven in that light. The poor succubi are victims of ignorance and religious propaganda! # succubiareangels!