#this is all total conjecture so feel free to cherry pick or to just ignore it all completely

[gingerbreadmonsters]

I feel like all empathy daemons are either too childlike to even know what being in love feels like (Caelum) or they are asexual (Cam)

i.... potentially?? this is a good point, anon, and i fear that you may have opened the pandora's box of lore theorising in my brain 🤠🤠

everything i'm about to say is extrapolated from the only two empathy demons we've actually met - caelum and regulus (i think cam is a serenity demon, and thus might operate on different rules?). as such, it's likely to be wildly wrong, but i just like speculating lmao

in my mind, empathy demons (at least when they're young) can be quite easily impressionable, and actually have significant problems figuring out where the acceptable boundaries for manipulating/commenting on/sharing other people's emotions - they know that humans like feeling happy, and that they can help (well, force) them to feel happy, so there can be a bit of trouble getting them to realise that they shouldn't just reach into a human's brain and turn on the happy juice for a few minutes.

(this is part of the reason why caelum and freelancer's relationship is so important for both of them - caelum needs someone who can show him a healthy perspective of what makes humans feel certain ways, and how he can control the effect he's having on people.)

to me, his general bluntness and willingness to directly tell freelancer how their emotions are changing in real time (although it is very endearing) suggests that his youth means he might not quite be familiar with the general etiquette surrounding stuff like that, where humans tend to be a lot less open with discussing/revealing emotions than demons (seeing as they're not used to the people around them always being able to directly sense their feelings).

that weird relationship with happiness intersects very bizarrely with concepts about love, romance, and relationships in general, and i'd guess that it takes most empathy demons quite a long time to figure out how to negotiate even very basic relationships with humans like platonic friendships, and romantic relationships are even harder.

(caelum and regulus can't really help us in that regard, seeing as caelum is a child and regulus is... well, regulus, and the fact that cam comments on the fact that he's worried about what post-escape regulus will do to his listener indicates that regulus is not a normal example of an empathy demon in a romantic relationship with a human. as such, i'll hold off on theorising about why those relationships might be so difficult in too much detail, if only from a lack of information.)

after all, it's a reasonable problem to have if you're a freshly-coalesced empathy demon: it sustains me, and it makes both me and my charge feel good, so i should create it at all opportunities, right? humans feeling happy is always a positive thing, i am able to induce happiness in humans at will, so why shouldn't i just create happiness at all times?

i might not say that all empathy demons don't know what love (well, romantic love at least) feels like - regulus certainly thinks he does, and he clearly experiences some form of sexual attraction/sex drive:

however, as we said before, regulus is not exactly a model empathy demon, so it's unclear just how different from the rest he is. it's possible that all empathy demons, at least at some point in their lives, are capable of feeling romantic and/or sexual attraction, but it's just as plausible that only some of them do.

or - and this is less likely, but still possible - it might be that regulus is more of an outlier than we thought, and he's sidestepped the general outlook of empathy demons to effectively condition himself into sexually desiring his listener (and/or feeling sexual attraction in general) because sex makes them feel good, and he's addicted to their feelings of pleasure and happiness. considering what we know about regulus, re: how unhinged he is and how much he craves his listener, i don't know that we can rule this out as a possibility entirely.

tldr: we just don't have enough information! we don't know enough typical, adult empathy demons to be able to make an educated guess about how your typical, adult empathy demon behaves. in my opinion i suspect that empathy demons are capable of love, in both a platonic and romantic sense, but whether or not they do feel it depends on things like their own mental/emotional maturity (i expect physical maturity too, but i don't know enough about how demons physically change as they grow older - we know that they coalesce fully formed, but it's unclear whether they retain that form forever, or if that form changes and matures as they grow older and more emotional mature. do demons go through puberty? this excludes incubi to some extent, as we know that they change their appearances at will, basically whenever they like), their personal and individual disposition towards those sorts of feelings, etc.

#i fuckin RAMBLED my god #hey anon! i....uh..... hope you like it....??? #this is all total conjecture so feel free to cherry pick or to just ignore it all completely #redacted asmr #before i get any anons rattling around in my askbox - i do NOT agree with sexualising caelum (in case that was not abundantly clear) #he appears to be narratively framed as a child (e.g. being referred to as a 'bakadere demon boy' in the title of the baking cookies audio) #(nobody else gets the same age qualifier - for example cam is 'serenity daemon' not 'serenity daemon man') #idk what happened here but i had fun so #🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔