http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ikea.jpg
[[caption-width:336:So Hawt!]]

-->''"OK, insert Rod 'A' into Rod Support 'B'."''
-->''"That's what she-"''
-->''"If you say 'That's what she said' one more time, [[TemptingFate I'm gonna pop you]]."''
-->''FamilyGuy''

Named after the Swedish home furniture retail chain, IKEAErotica describes the tendency of badly written sex scenes to be nothing more than "insert tab A into slot B" ''ad nauseam'', as though the readers [[ViewersAreMorons actually didn't know what goes where]]. The result is that the participants might as well be doing nothing more interesting than assembling a flat-pack wardrobe, the kind of affordable, Swedish, some-assembly-required furniture [=IKEA=] is known for. The point of erotica is to make the reader feel something of what the characters do, which in most cases will be arousal rather than boredom. It's often a sign that the writer didn't want to have a sex scene here but [[ExecutiveMeddling got overruled]], or that the writer is sexually inexperienced and writing with the aid of a biology textbook (a lot of FanFiction [[MostFanficWritersAreGirls written by 14-year-old girls]] comes into this category), making it less of a case of YouFailSexEdForever and more You Haven't Even Taken The Course Yet. Examples are too numerous to list, and too forgettable to remember in any case.

An extremely common feature of {{PWP}}. An example of IKEAErotica is the line, "[[http://www.brunching.com/eroticaorporn.html He pressed his hard sex against her soft sex and they had sex]]". A frequently usable antidote: lead up to the act, then pull a {{discretion shot}} at the end of the chapter, coming back in during the next chapter when it's all over. It works in cinema, and it can work for you, too!

The extreme of IKEAErotica is "verbing the noun", in which the scene is given mostly or entirely in subject-verb-object sentences in which the key words could be replaced by anything and you'd have difficulty noticing.

Not to be confused with [[http://www.furnitureporn.com/ furniture]] [[http://www.strangehorizons.com/2006/20060213/copley-woods-f.shtml porn]]. Or [[http://www.cockeyed.com/pranks/ikea_party/ikea01.shtml The IKEA Fancy Dress Dinner Party]]. Also not to be confused with a CargoShip.

See also FetishRetardant and {{Narm}}, common consequences of IKEAErotica. Contrast with MillsAndBoonProse.
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!!Honorable mention goes to:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Fan Fiction ]]

* ''Fanfic/MyImmortal''. Who could forget "And then he put his thingy in my you-know-what and we did it"? Lampshaded and parodied in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL1ONR9e5eI this]] dramatic reading.
* [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3800285/3/Mobile_Suit_Gundam_Tournament Karen placed her hands on Sally's ass. Sally licked up the right side of Dorothy's neck repeatedly. Karen finished the kiss. "Let's turn around." Karen took her hands off of Sally's ass. Sally took her hands off of Karen's ass. Karen and Dorothy turned 180 degrees.]] Described by one fanfic snark community as the only sex scene in the history of erotica ever to be written in LOGO.
* Most {{Transformers}} fan fiction falls into this category, only substitute "plug," "port," "cable," "valve," etc. for human genitalia. (Giant robot porn... who'da thunk?)
**Remember RuleThirtyFour.
** Writing with this particular form of... intimacy... actually has a name among Transformers fans - stickyfics.
** I've actually read a well written fanfic about CodeGeass mechs. And it actually aroused a lot of people on the forum it was posted on.
* [[HilarityEnsues Hilariously subverted]] in this {{Smallville}} [[http://www.caffiends.net/viewstory.php?sid=214 fanfiction.]]
* There is a stunningly prolific PWP-fic writer whose "stories" consist of about three hundred words, with the characters starting, having, and completing (usually with simultaneous, written-out screams) the encounter. If you have read one of this person's stories, you have read all of them. We will not dignify the person with this by giving the name.
*CoriFalls mixes this with PurpleProse to create the most boring, schmoopy and unsexy love scenes ever.
* Although ''{{Sonichu}}'' is a comic, it still manages this in the form of dialogue: before sex, Rosechu tells Sonichu "Insert Rod A into Slot B." Then there is a lengthy and {{squick}}y segue into the physiology of electric-hedgehog-Pokemon sex, which is like reading out a medical book, except that the book is written by an insane pervert.
* [[FanFic/LegolasByLaura legolas by laura]]: "and then one of the orcs striped her and then he raped her and then laura said 'go away you bastard'."
** This troper found that hilarious. It's too late to say "no" when the deed is already done.
* [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5499347/3/Umineko_Memories_of_Umineko Battler thrusted his penis one last time and he came. She came too. Then they flew down to the ground.]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* The ''{{Clan of the Cave Bear}}'' series (with the exception of the first book) has pages and pages of this stuff (the sex scenes average at least six pages each) largely devoted to the fact that Ayla and Jondalar have genitals of a complementary size, and are in fact, the only people with genitals of such a size. Also, they like to watch horses do it. And Mammoths.
* [[AnitaBlake Laurell K. Hamilton]], whose last few books have devolved into exactly this sort of porn.
** And when Ms. Hamilton isn't utilizing this trope she typically just has some weird mystic happening affect all the characters so they wake up hours (or days) later having had insanely hot orgies that they don't even remember. This really saves her from having to find new words to describe obscenely large werewolf-genitalia (which then get inserted into tab B).
* The (in)famous example from political lightning-rod Bill O'Reilly's book ''Those Who Trespass'': "Ashley was now wearing only brief white panties. She had signaled her desire by removing her shirt and skirt, and by leaning back on the couch. She closed her eyes, concentrating on nothing but Shannon's tongue and lips. He gently teased her by licking the areas around her most sensitive erogenous zone. Then he slipped her panties down her legs and, within seconds, his tongue was inside her, moving rapidly."
** It may be worth mentioning that 'Shannon Michaels' is an AuthorAvatar. [[NightmareFuel Yes]].
*** Would it be cruel to mention that [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/24/americans-react-to-bill-o_n_178401.html there is an audiobook done by the man himself?]]
** This cannot possibly be Bill O'Reilly erotica as it has absolutely no mention of [[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/03/27/060327fa_fact falafel]]
* PlayedForLaughs in ''DaveBarry In Cyberspace'', with a "cybersex" session including the ridiculous line: "I AM THRUSTING MY MASSIVE KNOCKWURST OF LOVE INTO YOUR PASSION PERSIMMON!"
** And then it turns out that the guy is Al Gore. No, really.
*** It gets better. The woman he's doing it with? Tipper Gore. ''And neither of them knew at first.''
*The sex scenes in Greg Egan's novels are so frighteningly banal and usually misjudged from the characters' perspective that he's clearly subverting the whole idea of the things. Yes, people bump naughty bits together from time to time. They also urinate, get cramps, digest food, and flake off skin; there's no tradition of putting scenes specifically depicting ''those'' activities into novels.
* {{Tom Clancy}}'s ''The Bear and The Dragon'' is proof that devout Catholics should never, ever, EVER be allowed to write sex scenes.
** Hell, Tom Clancy once induced a FunnyAneurysmMoment when he once said he was surprised his book "The Hunt For Red October" sold so well even when "they didn't have any sex in them". Looking back, it was probably for the best.
* John Varley's novel ''Mammoth'' contained an IKEAErotica scene cringe-inducingly unerotic. "His stiffness into her wetness" or something like that.
* HowNOTToWriteANovel points out in a section entitled "Assembly Instructions: Wherein the sex is drained of sex" that this is the likely result of a writer being uncomfortable with the scene; "The result will be something that reads like a medical brochure about erectile dysfunction. What's more, it will read as more perverse than a straightforward 'They fucked all night', and in a disturbing Norman Bates-y way." Weepingcock - a community devoted to the sporking of bad porn of all kinds - looks at this examples provided in the book [[http://community.livejournal.com/weepingcock/280804.html here]].
* An awesome scene early on in the Japanese creation myth ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kojiki Kojiki]]'': "Izanagi asked his spouse Izanami, 'How's your body formed?' She replied, 'My body, formed though it be formed, has one place that is formed insufficiently.' Then Izanagi said, ' My body, formed though it be formed, has one place that is formed in excess. Therefore I would like to take that place in my body which is formed to excess and insert it into that place in your body that is formed insufficiently and give birth to the land. How would this be?' Izanami replied, 'This would be good.'"
* The TalesoftheOtori series should get mention for its two sentence sex scenes. They all go something like: They embraced, they climaxed.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* The first sex scene in ''BrokebackMountain'' is like this. Anyone who tries anal sex like that is in for a world of hurt.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* ''TheShield'' invokes this, intentionally, in an ongoing subversion of HollywoodSex.
* Episode 6 of ''GarthMarenghisDarkplace'' opens with a piece of hilariously bad IKEAErotica. Later, Dean Learner gets to go on an epic rant about the standards of modern erotica writing, which ends up veering straight into PurpleProse.
-->'''Learner:''' ''I read modern writers, and it's "screw this", "he licked her", "she sucked that", "he bit the other", you know, "someone put it there", "he held it", I mean, where's the sensuality?
-->'''Marenghi:''' Where's "he glided in liquid smooth"? Where's "her wispy mound"?

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* The Literary Review's [[http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex.html Bad Sex in Fiction award]] showcases [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin bad sex in fiction]] that quite often falls into this trope:
-->If Dawn Madden's breasts were a pair of Danishes, Debby Crombie's got two Space Hoppers. Each armed with a gribbly nipple.
* Most actual Porn resembles this, sacrificing any form of eroticism or foreplay for unnatural and mechanical movements repeated ad infinitum.
* German-Polish critic [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Reich-Ranicki Marcel Reich-Ranicki]] should also be mentioned, after he famously pointed out in one of his critiques that the sentence "he put his penis into her vagina" is about as interesting as "he put his pencil in the pocket". Well, that's what he said. This is an example of what the description refers to as "verbing the noun".
* The phrase 'He put his sex in her sex and they had sex', designed to show the ambiguities of the English language, could be considered an example of this trope.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]

*The {{SCP Foundation}} fic [[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/union "Union"]] actually uses this for effect, since it's based on SCP-217, a virus that converts organisms into clockwork, both literally and figuratively.
* [[http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/03/05/review-knight-moves-by-jamaica-layne/ This]] definitely NSFW book review has sex passages quoted that [[SoBadItsHorrible defy the imagination]]. They are SO bad, in fact, that they make MyImmortal seem like deathless erotic prose by comparison. Read it and you, too, can be torn between wanting to laugh at the ridiculousness and wanting to weep that the author got PAID to publish this.
** Not only is there IKEA Erotica, but also a clear case of YouKeepUsingThatWord (dude- a codpiece is a real thing...!).
** One of the comments references this trope:
--->"This isn't just IKEA Erotica, it’s IKEA Erotica that didn't follow the assembly instructions."
* [[http://i412.photobucket.com/albums/pp210/notdazzled/fail-owned-nut-ad-fail.jpg This sign]], as documented on the Fail Blog.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* Parodied in ''{{Futurama}}'' with Bender "Come on, it's just like making love. Y'know: Left, down, rotate 62 degrees, engage rotor."
** I know how to make love!
* Also shows up in the ''{{Family Guy}}'' movie. "Get in there! Get in there and... (while reading from "The Joy of Sex") insert your ''phal-lus'' into her ''vag-in-a!''"

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