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Nadere: You must enter the sister ceremony by getting fully naked. That is the Aiel way. It is a sacred, ancient tradition. Elayne: The Aiel way seems a lot like the Aes Sedai way, and the Ebou Dar way, and the Sea Folk way. Nadere: Naked women are powerful. Taim: Yes, they are. Now show your power. -- The Wheel Of Time mock summary by ISAM
She probably just has a Fetish Fuel Fetish. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that.
Usually refers to technically clean-but-obviously-fetish-based scenes. In certain cases, it's very clear that the work is an excuse for the creator to express some particular kink. In other cases, it's far less certain; most examples below require at least a little guessing of an author's true intent. (If they have, say, a non-story art section on their site, looking at which subjects they focus on there can be helpful.)
Often, this can overlap with a certain philosophy the author espouses; for instance, an "enlightened culture" in The Future may have no nudity taboo, or may have everyone bisexual, or remove all body hair at birth, et cetera. (Sometimes, this is combined with a Take That on sexual conservatism or prudery.)
Sometimes, the appeal is 100% not sexual. In this case it might not necessarily be a bad thing, as writing about stuff that you happen to like is a completely normal part of the creative process; the problem, however, comes when this kind of stuff starts interfering with the storyline's development.
Compare Fetish Fuel, Writer On Board.
Examples:
Age Fixation
- Many of Piers Anthony's books include teenage girls who are involved in nudity and sexual situations, often with adult men; for example, Firefly, and the Mode series.
- In addition, just about every Piers Anthony story has to have a woman facing being raped. Often rape is excused as something "normal" or otherwise permitted in society under "special" circumstances.
- He puts a bit of a lampshade on people complaining about sexuality in his books in Xanth's "Adult Conspiracy" -- the great act of self-censorship that adults participate in to keep kids from finding out about sex -- magically enforced in Xanth, to boot. And, of course going back to "nudity and sexual situations", the most cited example of this is tragically -- but appropriately -- named "The Color of Her Panties" -- wherein a mermaid turns herself into a human for a while, but doesn't realize she should be putting on clothing, and no one really cares too much -- until she's given a free pair of panties (magic panties, we should point out, which were designed to knock out would-be assailants), which causes every male in view to pass out from over-stimulization. The aesop? It's not the nudity that's inherently sexual, but rather the intent or the covering up that adds appeal. Or something.
- Ditto George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. However, at least Martin has the excuse of trying for verisimilitude (if not outright realism), and the fact remains that being married and a mother before fifteen was common at a comparable point in our history.
- However Martin has no such excuse for the sex scenes between the fourteen old heroine and her handmaiden.
- Robin McKinley's novels often involve May/September romances. McKinley's husband is 25 years her senior.
- Gunsmith Cats would seem to be born in large part out of creator Kenichi Sonoda's preoccupation with barely-legal girls and highly-detailed firearms and automotives; he actually admitted in one interview that every female character in the manga traces back to one or another of his private obsessions (short girls, dark-skinned girls, girls with glasses, etc. etc. etc.).
Anatomy Fixation
- Property Of Gwen and Lowroad 75 both fit in, as series where the main premise is the size of the main characters' breasts. Lowroad 75 is fanservice to the extreme.
- In fact, the Lowroad artist has admitted, on his Deviantart account, that Lowroad was basically just an excuse to pander to his fans and/or himself. He's now working on a new comic, which isn't much different, but the main character is at least more realistically proportioned...
- Gorgeous Princess Creamy Beamy combines the author's love of BBWs (Big Beautiful Women) with a parody of Magical Girls.
- Author S. Sakurai's other webcomic, the Dead To Begin With dark comedy Muertitos, also features more than its fair share of fan service involving fat chicks.
- This is at least an open and deliberate part of the series, frequently lampshaded and foregrounded.
- Falcoon, producer of King Of Fighters: Maximum Impact, has admitted that he likes designing female characters with large chests, so it's no small wonder that the Maximum Impact games feature a lot of Gainaxing and Jiggle Physics. This is especially noticeable with the characters Falcoon designed himself, like Lien Neville (whose chest receives a lot of the focus in cutscenes).
- Many people, up to and including actress Uma Thurman, have accused director Quentin Tarantino of having a foot fetish, based on scenes contained in many of his films.
- During a scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1 in which The Bride (played by Uma Thurman) attempts to get her atrophied legs moving again, the camera can be seen focusing on her bare feet as she tries to "wiggle her big toe".
- There are more closeups of Uma Thurman's bare feet during her fight scene with Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill Vol. 2.
- Yet another Kill Bill example: The 5-6-7-8's, the all-female Japanese band who play during the House of Blue Leaves sequence. All three women are barefoot, and there are closeups of the lead singer's bare feet.
- The entire opening credit sequence of Grindhouse: Death Proof runs over the image of Sydney Tamiia Poitier's bare feet propped up on the dashboard of a moving car. And need we mention the severed foot flying out into the street? No, we needn't. Additionally, the DVD edit of the film shows Stuntman Mike surreptitiously playing with, and licking, a sleeping Rosario Dawson's feet.
- And then, there's the foot massage discussion (where it is given very intimate status) and the nail polish in Pulp Fiction... along with, once again, a close-up of actress Uma Thurman's feet.
- Another Pulp Fiction example: when Bruce Willis is picked up by a cab driver played by Angela Jones, there's a closeup of her bare foot pressing the gas pedal.
- Richie in From Dusk Till Dawn (a character presumably written for himself, by himself) conspicuously stares at Juliette Lewis's bare feet, and later drinks tequila poured over Salma Hayek's foot. Although it is Salma Hayek. Be fair.
- In Jackie Brown, there is a close-up of the feet of a character named Melanie (played by Bridget Fonda).
- Ditto Joss Whedon, who in his Serenity commentary called "River's Feet" the eleventh character of the show (the ship herself being the tenth).
- And let us not get started on the foot love in Aeon Flux.
- Agent Aika and Najica Blitz Tactics, both directed by Katsuhiko Nijishima, put the panties into the Panty Fighter genre.
- Is it humanly possible to name any work by comics artist Frank Cho that doesn't include jungles, dinosaurs, extraordinarily well-endowed women, or some combination of the above?
- One has to wonder about Phil Foglio. As well-done as Girl Genius is, Agatha does spend a lot of time in nothing but lacy bra and bloomers... which, of course, is outright tame compared to the pornography he supplied for the comic ''XXXenophile'' and its spin-off Collectible Card Game. And all the female characters in Girl Genius have big chests and big hips.
- Remember that Girl Genius is a collaboration between him and his wife. A recent filler sequence took several pages to present a fashion show of several characters in the form of paper dolls -- and in the commentary, Kaja expressed delight at having an excuse to show the characters in the sort of corsetry she only occasionally works into the main story. So it's not just Phil.
- Don't forget the trapeze from "What's New"
- Then there's Chris Morrison (the webcomic Polymer City Chronicles) and his blaringly obvious love of women with huge muscles and huge breasts.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist creator Hiromu Arakawa's own words: "Men should be buff! Women should be vavoom!"
- Hiroya Oku, creator of GANTZ (a series that has quite a bit of art involving girls with gigantic breasts wearing skintight suits or skimpy outfits or nothing at all) mentioned in the author's notes of one volume that drawing the series is "like masturbation for [him]."
- The Wotch: It's better known for transformation and transgender, as noted later, but one must wonder how much of Jason's redhead fetish comes from the writers. The overwhelming majority of female characters who weren't originally male are redheads, and Jason doesn't take notice of them all (or it'd be a full-time job for him.)
- Fred Perry's Gold Digger is loaded with toned, voluptuous, scantily-clad women who kick ass.
- Hideaki Anno. Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hands. Enough said.
BDSM and Status
- Chris Claremont's run on X-Men repeatedly showed strong women beating up men, with female characters who were more timid being reworked into dominant bruisers. Psylocke was the prime example of this. Mind control plots are also common in his work, seemingly for the same reason.
- Bottom-tier Jean Grey becomes Phoenix, the Chaos Bringer? Anyone?
- When a pornstar revealed that Claremont had allegedly hired one of her colleagues to dress up as Storm (a strong female character he co-created) and do things to him involving copious amount of lubricant, many people were grossed out, but only a few were surprised.
- Works by the late Mark Gruenwald, particularly his Captain America run, also often featured subtle to not-so-subtle instances on a frequent basis. This could range from standard rope/chain/mechanical devices bondage scenes to a scene where a semi-nude Red Skull had the villainess Viper strap him to a "torture wheel" that would inflict pain on him, which the Viper had full control over. He even pointed out that he was interested in seeing how far the Viper would actually go!
- Speaking of Gruenwald, he was also one of many writers responsible for numerous bondage scenes in the original Spider-Woman's (Jessica Drew) title. The most glaring example (written by Marv Wolfman) is her capture by a vigilante named The Hangman, who ties and gags her and leaves her in his dungeon because he believes that "all women are frail", and he must therefore protect her from the evil world. This is particularly bizarre considering her capture was a cliffhanger ending for the Hangman's first appearance, but following her escape from his dungeon at the beginning of the next issue, he's never heard of again, thus making the entire sequence utterly pointless in terms of relevance for the plot other than self-serving purposes.
- Wonder Woman, in its original form, was heavily based on the author's belief that a little BDSM now and then was a healthy way of sublimating the aggression in a relationship. Oh, and bondage leads to world peace. It was startlingly blatant for the 1940s. Amusingly, attacks by Media Watchdogs cracking down on comics were treated more as an misinterpreted annoyance than any outright denials of its themes.
- John Norman's Gor novels began as somewhat mediocre Planetary Romance novels, but rapidly came to revolve entirely around the elaborate system of sex slavery practiced by the men of Gor. The series has actually spawned a small but vocal BDSM subculture -- see also Rule Thirty Four.
- This troper opines that the Gor novels wouldn't be as bad if the author didn't portray bondage and slavery as the natural relationship of females to males, which is not only morally repugnant but scientifically inaccurate. Lampshading the Fetish Fuel might help, too.
- Frank Miller's work is notorious for almost always featuring at least one female character who is a prostitute (often of the dominatrix type). This tendency of Miller's reached its apotheosis in Sin City (movie and comic), in which an entire neighborhood of the titular city is wholly populated and governed by prostitutes. (Who nevertheless require a man's help when they get into serious trouble.)
- Terry Goodkind's Sword Of Truth series has a disturbing focus on rape, with it almost happening (or actually happening to someone less important) at least once a book. This editor is trying to think of a single female character within the series of several 500+ page books who has not been raped, nearly raped, threatened with rape, or revealed to have been raped in the past, and is drawing a blank. In a scene in the sixth book, the protagonist's wife, linked to a female antagonist to feel what she feels, experiences very rough sex that the other is going through. She reflects that there was always an undercurrent of such things in her sex life with her husband, but nothing like this...
- The brigade of women who do nothing but wear leather fetish gear and torture men is also a big chunk of Author Appeal here.
- The Wheel Of Time, Robert Jordan's sprawling epic fantasy series, includes accounts of dozens of imaginary cultures. Suspiciously enough, most of those cultures rely on spankings -- invariably delivered to females, and recounted by the author in careful detail -- to enforce their rules and hierarchies. The plot also continually depends on slavery, servitude, and subordination; the plot winds up depending on a magic leash that allows its owner to inflict pain or pleasure on her slaves at will.
- He also seems to have a thing for powerful women falling to lowly positions, doing housework and such. Queen Morgase and Siuan Sanche, in particular, spring to mind.
- As the pagequote shows, there are a lot of revered rites that involve naked women. Point: the breast-baring "I am a woman" scene, which is alluded to have involved "more thorough" proof in backstory.
- And who can forget the "humorous" Mat and Tylin subplot, where none of the characters bat an eyelid at Mat falling into a relationship where his consent is questionable at best (and where several characters think its just what he deserves).
- William Hope Hodgson had definite opinions on bodybuilding, gender roles, and the domination and disciplining of beautiful women by strong men, and in The Night Land he indulges fully in them.
Transformation
Gender Fixation and LGBTQ
- Ed Wood, people! While there's a blatant example of deliberate polemic in Glen Or Glenda (whose cross-dressing main character he played under a pseudonym), the auteur's personal love of transvestitism pops its head up in virtually every single movie. (Nice example: Tor Johnson fondling an angora sweater in Bride Of The Monster.)
- Melinda Gebbie comics usually have some sort of girl-on-girl action, which is strange when you consider she's married to a man. An interesting example would be an issue of Supreme wherein two versions of the same story were shown. Chris Sprouse drew a traditional superhero fight, her version looked more like a catfight.
- Not to mention all her work on AARH!, a LGBTQ magazine.
- And nobody's mentioned CLAMP yet? All those Yaoi Guys . . .
- Not just guys. It would seem that Everyone Is Bi in the CLAMP universe. It's especially noticeable in Cardcaptor Sakura, in which everyone seems to have at least one crush of each sex (except for Tomoyo, who only has eyes for her Sakura-chan.)
- Dan Shive, author of El Goonish Shive (noted above), also has a marked fondness for Schoolgirl Lesbians.
- This troper is convinced that Mercedes Lackey is a Yaoi Fangirl, as she keeps filling her novels with Yaoi Guys.
- Yoshihiro Togashi, author of Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter X Hunter, has stated in the first volume of the YYH manga that he has an interest in gay and bisexual men and male-to-female Transvestites and Transsexuals. He even has an unpublished series, Trouble Quartet, about a team of crossdressing homosexual soccer players. Of course, Shueisha refused to publish it.
Miscellaneous Paraphilia
- Sabrina Online illustrates the difference between "Funny Animal comic" and "Furry Comic".
- Totally Spies is infamous for putting its heroines in situations that appeal to one or more of a variety of sexual fetishes (e.g. bondage, Attack Of The 50 Foot Whatever, Incredible Shrinking Man, Animorphism, and many more) in virtually every episode, despite being aimed at a primary audience of teenage girls.
- Russell T. Davies' fondness for nontraditional romantic relationships has bled into Doctor Who, most noticeably in the in-your-face pansexuality of Captain Jack. And that's not even counting all the stuff that goes on in Torchwood.
- The episode "Gridlock" included a marriage between a woman and an anthropomorphic cat. They even had kittens. The same episode also featured two old ladies who were married.
- Helen Raynor's two-parters are possible ones. Evil Naked Slimy Martha Clone
- Salman Rushdie appears to have a thing for girls with scars.
- Webcomic example: Pastel Defender Heliotrope. Much of the story has to do with the characters' widely varied sexualities; any sense that sex isn't central to the plot goes out the window when you realize that one of the Big Bads is a bigoted Corrupt Church devoted to rooting out "perversion" (and just to make it more Anvilicious, the Corrupt Church is basically Roman Catholicism with the serial numbers filed off).
- It is claimed that Hellsing mangaka Kouta Hirano based the design of Rip van Winkle (no, not that one) on a mix of his fetishes. This editor cannot recall the source and would appreciate someone conclusively confirming or denying it.
- Don't know the source, but if you cross-reference with the other female characters then you can definitely see a pattern emerging: Glasses or sunglasses (Rip, Yumiko, Integra, Heinkel), gloves (almost EVERY character, male and female), androgyny (Rip, Integra, Heinkel and Zorin all wear mens clothes; Seras would look like a boy if not for her exceptionally large breasts) stupidly large weapon (Rips musket, Seras' "Harkonnen," Zorin's Scythe...). Hmn...
- The Men In Black series contains more vore (people being eaten alive, and yes, that ''is'' a real fetish) than should be legal.
- Mega Tokyo and the author's obsession with depressed young girls who need to be protected, which happen to make up half of the cast. The author himself has all but admitted this, making joking comments that it's practically the contents of his soul detailed on paper. The series also shows his Kanon-influenced obsession with Snow Means Love, despite being set during fall; it appears that his next work, however, is going to completely focus on it.
- While on the subject, one should also note that almost every female character just happens to wear a choker at some point. Also, the character Piro has a female online avatar.
- On the contrary, most young girls in Mega Tokyo, while certainly depressed, are more than capable of taking care of themselves - the two most obvious examples being Tohya (who has no problem repeatedly taking down heavily-armed mercenary Ed) and Erika (who breaks several people's limbs, starting with Largo's arm early in the comic), and to a lesser extent fiercely independent Kimiko, robot girl Ping who is capable of judo-throwing a 'zilla when angered, and recently-turned-magical-girl Yuki.
- This troper suspects all that might be a subversion of Author Appeal, as one of the big themes is that the boys can’t solve everything for the girl in their life. This is notable, as it's near totally the opposite to what happens in most of the Visual Novels Megatokyo is based off (And the author is a big fan of).
- Karen Traviss and Mandalorians. ...what? You know it's true!
- Robert A Heinlein married a redhead. Guess the standard hair color of any love interest in his novels. Go on, guess.
- Better yet, count the redheaded twins.
- Heinlein again: From Stranger in a Strange Land and on, expect any book to feature its protagonists in a polyamorous group marriage. And as you get later and later in his career, especially after Lazarus Long starts showing up and refusing to go away, expect incest. Lots and lots of incest. Mother/son, father/daughter, brother/sister, whatever. Heinlein was a known polygamist in real life -- one can only hope he kept the incest stuff to his fantasies.
- Philip José Farmer was the original Fanfic writer. The dude loves writing about sex with historical figures.
- Does Piers Anthony count?
- Toni Morrison has a thing for necrophilia, and adults breastfeeding other adults.
- Garth Ennis loves to include two things in his comic books: anal sex, and grievous head wounds. It is a rare issue of Preacher that did not include anal sex or someone being shot in the head, or both.
- Also, a fetish for having strawman versions of characters he doesn't like get beaten up, such as he did to Daredevil, Spider-Man, God, and others. Preacher and Punisher are most guilty.
- English Western author J.T. Edson seemed to have a fetish for catfights judging from how often he managed to shoehorn them into his novels. The most egregious example involved a character who had a collection of paintings of catfights that had taken place in the author's previous novels, incuding ones that no one but the participants had been there to witness.
- Ken Akamatsu and cosplay. Just check out Love Hina or Mahou Sensei Negima. In fact one of the more important students in Negima, Chisame, is a Cosplay Otaku Girl. The whole thing hits its peak during the school festival arc in which everyone is wearing cosplay, and there is a cosplay contest.
- WWE chairman Vince McMahon has apparently been pushing for an incest angle for years now, and, at one time, even proposed a storyline that would show himself as the on-screen father of his daughter Stephanie's child (thankfully, Stephanie, as head of WWE's creative committee, was able to veto that one). He appears to have finally gotten his wish with Paul and Katie Lea Burchill, a brother/sister pairing with waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much Subtext.
- Mine Yoshizaki, creator of Keroro Gunsou is a macrophile, somebody attracted to giants. The main evidence for this is that he actually did write/draw an adult work about a giant naked woman, and in the anime, the presence of the size-changing "Flash Spoon" in later episodes, not to mention the general size-related issues with the series.
- Paul Dini, a writer of the DCAU, has a penchant for using the Zatanna character. He's married to a magician, so...
Likely Non-Sexual
- Robert Heinlein, again (the man had trouble keeping himself out of his books, clearly) -- Starship Troopers is one of the oft-most cited literary examples, with almost all of the authority figures in the main character's life having page long monologues that consist of Heinlein's own philosophies, such as his views on nuclear weapons, the military, and matters of national defense.
- Shortpacked!, a rare hobby-based and clean-subtexted example, takes this trope to a really fun extreme. Toys, especially Transformers, had managed to sneak into the earlier webcomics of David Willis, and this is a Webcomic set in a toy store, written by a toy collector. Do the math.
- The elves of The Inheritance Trilogy are atheist, nudist, vegetarian tree-worshippers who impart their "wisdom" repeatedly to the main character and the reader.
- Butch Hartman's love of Star Wars and Comic Books, as well as his hatred of jocks, cheerleaders, popular kids, rich kids and basically anyone else who picked on him in high school shines throughout his work. This includes The Fairly Oddparents, Danny Phantom, and even the never-picked-up Crash Nebula. He also has a habit of making his protagonists Book Dumb losers who are also crazy about space and comic books.
- The webcomic ''Fans! is a little too vehement in its defense of fanboys. Claim that they're valuable, intelligent and worthwhile human beings, fine. Claim that fanboys have the specific combination of strengths that makes them the only ones capable of defending Earth, and that the biggest, geekiest fanboys alive will be revered by future generations as heroes who made all of society possible... that's taking things a bit too far.
- The Wallflower author Tomoko Hayakawa practically admits in her author notes that she simply made a series full of stuff she likes: Bishonen, J-rock performers, horror and gothic pop culture, and the Elegant Gothic Lolita style.
- Film producer Jon Peters appears to really like giant spiders, as noted in our article on Executive Meddling.
- The webcomic Misfile. Not here because of its transgender content; here because it goes on and on and on about amateur street racing.
- John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants appears to enjoy writing about cranial trauma.
- Tim Burton has something against hands. Or for them; it's hard to tell. His films contain unusual hands -- severed hands, mutilated hands, prosthetic hands, gloved hands, and artistic representations of hands -- in far greater proportion than is common. The only remotely sexual connotation attaches to the leather-glove fetishism in Batman. (Or maybe that's just me.)
- He also likes German Expressionist cinema, which is a visible influence of his work. Sometimes he admits this, like how Christopher Walken's character in Batman Returns is named "Max Schreck".
- Shakespeare loves comparing things to gardening, falconry, and hunting with dogs. He also loves crossdressing characters, but that was a fairly common schtick at the time. When he was writing, women were not permitted to be actors, and as such most of the female characters were men, and he thought it would be funny to make jokes based on that.
- Jay Naylor's webcomic Better Days frequently works in lovingly detailed drawings and descriptions of firearms and the handling of them and undertones (and in an earlier arc, outright depiction) of incest between the twin protagonists Fizk and Lucy. Despite the repeated appearance of said themes (and the fact that Fisk and Lucy were created in a series of x-rated commissioned works), Naylor denies that the comic is explicitly about them.
- Everything by Leo Frankowski has both sexual and non-sexual Author Appeal. Especially Conrad's Time Machine, a book whose plot is as follows: Two Author Avatar s hang out together inventing a time machine, and spend the majority of the book whisked away to an tropical island where they become fabulously wealthy, enjoy the services of an Unwanted Harem, and finish inventing their time machine. It's also filled with quotes from Frankowski's own favorite authors, especially Heinlein.
- William-Adolphe Bouguereau, as can be seen at the Other Wiki here, made a career out of painting innocent, pale young girls looking sad and adorable. Almost surely non-sexual.
- This editor believes that Shinji Mikami from Resident Evil fame has a thing for masked wrestlers and Sentai as demonstrated in games where he can actually get away with it (Killer7 had Mask de Smith and the Punishing Rangers AKA The Handsome Men, God Hand had Mr. Gorilla Mask and the Mad Midget Five and two words: Viewtiful Joe)
- By this time, it's became quite obvious that Square-Enix designer Tetsuya Nomura is obsessed with zippers and belts.
- Speaking of belts, ''Guilty Gear'' character designer Daisuke Ishiwatari seems to use belts as a unifying motif minus a few rare cases (Anji Mito has only a sash). Sol Badguy tops the list with 24 belts in his costume design. Funnily enough, the costumes still manage to look pretty cool.
- Even HP Lovecraft, in his own way: He had no strong female characters, and sexuality is always horrifying in his work, but he could describe a building more lovingly than Shakespeare describing his Fair Lord. There are theories that Lovecraft may have been asexual. But he loved his architecture.
- The "Lovecraft as asexual weirdo" idea is so ingrained, it may be surprising to learn that he was married for a time, and while it didn't last, his wife was explicitly quoted saying yes, they had sex, and yes, he did OK at it.
- Lovecraft was also reportedly allergic to fish, which has been held to contribute to the marine qualities of many of his monstrous creations.
- Kevin Smith always stuffs his films with his favorite things: Star Wars, Jaws and comic book references, and talks about "unnatural" sex acts. He also seems to have a thing for girls with glasses.
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