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Maybe you're a master of ancient tantric magic. Maybe you're part incubus or succubus. Maybe you've just got a big ol' can of Applied Phlebotinum... in your pants. Who knows? For whatever reason, your plot-related powers or items refuse to turn on until you're turned on... the story can go no further until you go all the way... you can't get on with the plot until you've got it on with... things don't work out until you make out... it won't do if you don't do it... If all you have is a hammer, every problem requires you to nail... okay, I'm done.
A Deus Sex Machina is any speculative fiction contrivance for inserting sex where it would otherwise be implausible. When used properly, this trope can be used to explore sex-as-metaphor. When used poorly, it's just an excuse to dress up pornography as plot. Most examples probably fall somewhere in the middle. Incidentally, semen has traditionally been associated with vitality, Life Energy, holiness, etc in various cultures, and the sex act itself with fertility (agricultural, that is) rites and seasonal change, so there's a bit of mythological justification for this trope.
Naturally, plenty of phlebotinum works the opposite way.
Overlaps in places with Intimate Healing and The Power of Love. If the Deus Sex Machina had not been foreshadowed before in any way, it's also a case of Coitus Ensues. See also Mate or Die, Aliens Made Them Do It, and Level Up At Intimacy 5.
If you're looking for the trope about actual deities having romance or sex, that's Divine Date.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- Phil Foglio's XXXenophile sometimes uses this, but usually with a comedic twist. For example, the one where the nymph mentions casually in passing that people's orgasms keep the earth from exploding, or the one where a time traveller from the future has to find out whether it's worth bringing back women through cloning, but it turns out it's just a
normal exceptional couple roleplaying.
- The old Penthouse ComicX series loved this trope:
- In Alan Moore's Promethea, Jack Faust agrees to teach Sophie Bangs about magic in return for sex with her alter-ego, Promethea. There is a justified reason for this, as Faust uses the opportunity to explain the relationship and symbolism of "male" and "female" magic. But also 'cause Faust is horny, and it allows for an issue-long sex scene. And it's traditional for a wizard to be an utter asshole.
- Hellblazer - In the Fear Machine arc, Constantine and his two ex-girlfriends (a hippie and an earth goddess priestess) save the day with a threesome (and "female" magic). The two ladies had spent the previous few months on an island (a character calls it "one of those woman magic places") where the magic was powered by love and orgies.
- The John Byrne comic Next Men has sex with the Next Men as a catalyst which bestows super-power mutations on normal humans.
- In Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct, the Hell Ditch Pilgrim is revealed to have gotten his powers in the previous Top 10 series by catching S.T.O.R.M.S., a mutating disease, from a prostitute.
- Valiant Comics' Shadowman had to have sex with young-looking Voudun priestess Mama Nettie on a regular basis to keep her young and powerful, so she could help him control his mytical Dark Side.
- Pandora Breedlswight from Ironwood is possessed by a demon that can be summoned at will (taking her place), but can't be dismissed by anything else than an orgasm. This is part of a family curse, running on male members, until Pandora happens to be the last of her line. Her male ancestors seemed not to care of the curse, anyway.
- In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics, Willow uses the power of orgasms to power the spell used to contact her patron goddess, Saga Vasuki.
- In Hack Slash the female slasher Acid Angel has corrosive vaginal juices as her main weapon. Ew.
- In Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosinski's comic Le Grand Pouvoir du Chninkel (The Great Power of the Chninkel), Volga the Soothsayer must have an orgasm in order to deliver propheties.
- Provides Fan Disservice in Incorruptible #16, where the city's water supply is magically transformed into some noxious substance by the unattractive and obese sex magicians Nebuchadnezzar and Loretta Grass, whose spells only last as long as they're "chanting".
Fanfiction
- In the extensive Star Trek Alternate Universe Fic Firing Solution, Pon Farr and the Vulcan mating cycle and cultural history are examined in far more depth, and at least half the mechanics of The Federation and the power shifts in the galaxy prove to be directly attributable to Vulcan Nookie.
- In a True Blood/X-Men crossover Survival of the Fallen, it turns out that Rogue of all people is a succubus. In this case Succubi aren't outright demonic, and appear to go either way morally speaking. They seem more like talented sex oriented energy vampires, without actually needing to take energy. Considering the character this happens to, this is most ironic, and a major plot point.
- The Neon Genesis Evangelion doujin RE-TAKE, takes this to... a much lower level than would be expected, considering the author's previous work! This is done properly in chapter one. All 5 chapters thereafter just play dress-up-the-sex-and-hope-the-audience-doesn't-notice.
Film
Literature
- In Stephen King's IT (but not in The Film of the Book for obvious reasons), Beverly Marsh has sex with the other members of the Losers Club (all six of them, one after the other, in a sewer) in order to re-forge the connection between them after defeating IT as pre-teens. Apparently it's supposed to be a metaphor for moving from childhood to adulthood.
- Another level of irony (and possibly a Family Unfriendly Aesop) also exists here, when you contrast this with another scene in the book. Beverly's father is portrayed as an abusive, overprotective, borderline psychopath. When he learns that Beverly has been playing with boys, he insists — violently — on physically checking to see if she's still a virgin. Fortunately, she escapes him. At this point, she still is, and the scene plays out like an attempted rape.
- The real irony of the matter is that Beverly is inspired to have sex with the boys because of what her father did. He put the idea in her head.
- Stephen King might do this a lot. In his Dark Tower series, in order to retrieve Jake from the other world, Roland has Odetta/Detta distract the oracle. In the series, oracles are demons that feed on sexual energy (i.e., incubi/succubi). Go on, guess the best way to distract one.
- The Wild Cards series has several examples:
- Fortunato has "magickal" powers that must be fueled by tantric sex. Fortunately for him, he's a pimp with easy access to geisha-style prostitutes.
- The character of "Blowjob" must be sexually excited in order to breathe life into inanimate objects.
- Roulette can kill by unleashing poisonous vaginal secretions. (Does somebody have issues?)
- "Prime" was able to give the "Jumpers" their power to switch minds with other people by having sex with them.
- Water Lily gets the power to cure Jokers by intercourse after being infected by the Sleeper's new strain of Wild Card virus.
- Genetrix lay eggs which hatch into short-lived children with ace powers fitting her needs when engaging in sex.
- The eponymous protagonist of the Anita Blake series has had her supernatural powers become more closely tied to sex with each passing book, resulting in a situation where the solution to any problem is for her to have sex with somebody or something. That makes this also an example of When All You Have Is a Hammer... or possibly, in this case, a screwdriver.
- And in the same author's Merry Gentry series, it's eventually explicitly stated that the power of Faerie comes from the natural order and thus can only be awakened through fertility rites. This does allow the choice of sex or death (killing in battle or sacrificing loved ones), and Meredith isn't always viewed favorably for favoring the "soft" option (except by the beneficiaries of it). Since the protagonist here has been chosen to revitalize the entire magical world... this series basically starts sexually at the point Anita Blake was at that time, with a main character who never had any of Anita's former inhibitions.
- In Larry Niven's Ringworld series, depending on the particular human subspecies involved, when two inhabitants from different subspecies meet, the standard greeting may be ritualized sex ("Rishathra" is the word for this among the species our protagonist meets in The Ringworld Engineers), though for some cultures it is taboo. (People still talk about Niven showing up at a sci-fi convention in the late 1970s wearing a button that said "I have sex outside my species.")
- In the later Dune novels, an offshoot of the Bene Gesserit arise who use sex as a form of hypnosis — it's just that good, apparently. Numerous galaxy-spanning, wheels within wheels plots are derailed when it is discovered that there is a man with the same power. A-whoops!
- And this man trains other men to use that power. Leading to a guerilla war fought mostly using SEX. Really awesome sex. Where do I sign up?
- In the Illuminatus!! trilogy, the goddess Eris has sex with multiple men to return to God mode. The insanely high amounts of sex in that book build up a pretty good reader tolerance to implausible sex acts, but that one takes the cake.
- In the The Book Of All Hours duology by Hal Duncan, especially in the second book, "Ink", tantric sex apparently makes it easier to travel between the various alternate realities. Several kinds of technology also seem to be fuelled by sex, using so-called "orgone energy" as a power source.
- Jennifer Stevenson's Trash Sex Magic is entirely about this trope, as its title might well imply.
- In Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter, protagonist Jane learns to use sex magic to boost her own spellcasting ability.
- Inverted in S.M. Stirling's alternate-history novel The Peshawar Lancers: The heroine has been (incestuously) bred for clairvoyance; this power (1) only works for virgins and (2) ultimately drives the holder to madness and death. You can guess what the hero does to save her.
- In American Gods, a perversion of the Queen of Sheba literally devours a man through the act of coitus, apparently to substitute for the worship she wasn't getting to sustain herself.
- Also, there is importance in Shadow's in-dream sex with Bast.
- Not to mention the Ifrit who exchanges bodies through sex
- In Dan Simmon's Olympos, one of the main characters finds a slumbering princess who's been kept in stasis for centuries. The only way to wake her? Climb in the stasis chamber and give her some lovin'.
- Ramona Random, a Black Chamber agent in Charles Stross's The Jennifer Morgue has a succubus bound to her. If she doesn't have sex, it eats her mind. If she does have sex, it kills the partner instead. She's employed as an assassin, naturally.
- This is how the story of Sleeping Beauty originally went, though now that version is usually titled Sun, Moon, and Talia to differentiate it. She stays asleep until she has twins and one of them suckles the poisoned needle from her finger.
- This happens with Leah, Henry, and Tony in Smoke And Shadows Leah is tied via Demongate to a sex demon named Ryne Cyratane, but the demon doesn't comprehend homosexuality. Tony the gay wizard can tell that Ryne Cyratane wants to communicate with him, but literally can't see him without the sexual connection. Ergo, Tony's Bi the Way ex Henry is enlisted for a save-the-world threesome that will enable Tony to talk to the demon.
- Kushiels Dart and its sequels contain any number of Deus ex Machina scenes where the main character resolves whatever problems exist in the kingdom through having sex with someone. This is because she is magically gifted with really enjoying every kind of kinky sex...
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. In the end, the man finally completes the "perfect" perfume he had been attempting to create the entire movie, and drops the vial on the ground while being led to his execution for his multiple murders and distilling of young women's essences. The smell is so beautiful, everyone in attendance participates in a spontaneous orgy, and the man escapes in the chaos. It's funny what you can accept when the movie logic is introduced early and kept consistent, really...
- Same for the film of the book.
- The Secrets of Jin Shei - although Lihui is a powerful mage without resorting to this, it's implied that he can only keep his strength and immortality by stealing other people's energy. Unfortunately for Nhia, to create the psychic link he needs for this ritual, he has to create a physical link as well. Guess how.
- In Battle Circle by Piers Anthony, the heroine is trapped in a Minotaur's maze. The hero goes in to rescue her. He finds her but they are unable to escape and the Minotaur is closing in on them. The hero remembers that the Minotaur is only interested in virgins and he can save the heroine's life by another means.
- Dragonlance: Heroes: Vol. 1. Huma, Knight of the Sword. One of the final gambits of Takhisis, Queen of Darkness is that she could show him... things. He refuses.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire Melisandre the Red Priestess/sorceress is able to spawn shadow demons that can be used as assassins. She needs sex in order to create them, but it apparently weakens the man she uses; she herself states that Stannis' declining health is due to her using him in that way, and so tries to convince Davos Seaworth to help. It is possible that her somewhat Foe Yay-ish interactions with Jon Snow might be a prelude to trying to use him in this way.
Live Action TV
- In Smallville, Clark's discovery of his Heat Vision was linked to him being aroused. I wonder what that reminds you of... Hence the Fan Nickname (yes, for a superpower!) "Eyejaculation."
- Torchwood featured an alien, in the stolen body of a human woman, who fed on sexual energy by turning men to dust during orgasms. It's said of her first victim when the team watches security footage of the act that he "... came and went." Also, it turns out that the alien is just a junkie for human coital energy and picked its host based on her access to a sperm bank.
- An episode of the 90s The Outer Limits series featured Alyssa Milano in much the same plot.
- Subverted in Babylon 5. Susan Ivanova, ordered to form an alliance with an alien race at any cost, is shocked to find that their deals are sealed by having sex. Susan is stymied over how to get out of this until she realises that the alien would have no idea how humans 'do it', leading to the hilarious "Boom-shaka-laka-boom!" scene.
- In The Others, two of the characters have fallen in love, but the interaction of their respective psi-powers causes powerful energy discharges whenever they touch. In the finale, as part of a series of strange happenings that works to break the group apart, they find that they can now safely touch one another. This tragically turns out to be an illusion created by an otherworldly evil force, which lifts while they're having sex. Cue the entire building exploding.
- The eponymous planet-killing spaceship of Lexx would only respond to whoever held its symbiotic energy key in their brain. The host would involuntarily release the key into whoever else was nearby if brought to the very edge of death... or the very extreme of sexual ecstasy. Interestingly, this was not equivalent to orgasm; actual sex usually did nothing to trigger the key, whereas just the anticipation of sex with a character's One True Love thrice did.
- Star Trek has Pon Farr - every seven or eight years Vulcans get a hormone craze that is generally only to be satiated by sex. Either they do or die, literally. (Or at least wrestle with their sweaty, shirtless Heterosexual Life Partner.)
Tabletop Games
- Mage: The Ascension gave us the Cult of Ecstasy. Sure, they didn't just revolve around using sex as magical foci (they also used drugs, music, meditation, etc.), but that was easily the aspect with the most humor potential.
- Mage The Awakening carries it on with a Legacy called the Whipping Boys. They don't use sex, exactly, but BDSM, using deeply intensive "sessions" to find revelation in a place beyond pain and pleasure.
- Both played straight and inverted in Unknown Armies with the tastefully named magick school of Pornomancy. Followers get charged up from mechanically reenacting scenes from porn films starring The Naked Goddess, a porn star who got promoted to the Invisible Clergy. The inversion comes from the fact that if they ever have sex with anyone for any other reason than charging up, all their stored power goes away.
- In Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the Chaos God Slaanesh and its followers have this reputation, however any excessive and obsessive mindset can cause empowerment in his/her name, not just sex. The Emperor's Children Legion were seduced by Slaanesh due to their single-minded obsession with purity and the excesses they would commit to achieve and maintain it, Noise Marines are focused on extremes of psychically-charged music, and The Masque (most powerful of all Daemonettes) gets its power from basically being the best dancer in the universe, able to entrance even the Chaos Gods.
- In Bliss Stage, the power of a Pilot's Dream World Humongous Mecha is based on the intimacy level of their relationships. To get the maximum of Intimacy 5 with anyone you're not related to, you have to have sex with them. It's quite disturbing considering the Pilots are teenagers, and the Anchors that produce their mecha and the various supporting characters are either teenagers, or full-out children.
- One of the many strange and juvenile things that comes with the territory when people publish sex-based supplements for Dungeons And Dragons (officially, the legendarily bad Book of Erotic Fantasy, as well as Encyclopedia Arcana: Nymphology and Quintessential Temptress, with the latter two basically a collection of juvenile snickering). Tantric magic is just the tip of it.
- And Sisters of Rapture, which kicks it up a notch with full-frontal nudity on nearly every page — some of it showing tavern scenes and the like to drive the point home that these characters never wear clothing at all.
Theatre
- In Richard Strauss's early opera Feuersnot, Kunrad punishes Diemut's rejection by magically banishing fire from the town until she gives herself to him.
Video Games
- Completely inverted in Planescape: Torment, where the token demoness is a reformed succubus, runs an Intellectual Brothel and refuses to feast on horny men for her power. She is the healer of the party, but not quite the Intimate Healer; her kisses are an attack. There is a tentative flirtation between her and The Nameless One that suggests the approach of a kiss, but she decides not to risk it, even if he's apparently immortal.
- A memory that the Nameless One can trigger reveals that he can have sex with a succubus, die, and come back. In fact, he did so, and then gave the memory to the Sensates so that other people can experience it without, you know, the unfortunate end.
- Actually, he didn't record that memory. Remember, prior to his awakening in the Mortuary at the beginning of the game, he lost his memories every time he died, meaning that he therefore could not possibly have recorded the memory of being killed. Someone else would have had to record that memory then get raised from the dead. The Nameless One might have had a very easy time coming back from the dead, but he was hardly the only person in the world able to do so.
- In Grand Theft Auto games, players gain health from prostitutes. This method can be used to greater-than-max health.
- The fourth one added strippers, who unfortunately stay in bra and panties. They heal the same amount prostitutes do, but they cost more.
- The fangame Quest for Glory 4.5 also allows the hero to be, er, healer in a brothel. Needless to say the company owning the original game wasn't too happy.
- A possible choice at the end of Dragon Age: Origins is for Morrigan to conceive a child with either Alistair, Loghain or the male player character in order to make a receptacle for the Archdemon's soul; otherwise a Heroic Sacrifice is necessary. Unlike other examples of this trope, this choice is far more serious than it looks.
- Brütal Legend: Apparently, years of orgy and violence can cause a "temporal perversion" aka time travel. It's the Tainted Coils we are talking about, however, it's almost expected.
- Apparently sex is required to gain the right to become an Eternal in Eien No Aselia. Fridge Logic sets in when you realize that Kyouko and Tokimi apparently did not have to. Maybe Tokimi made the whole thing up?
- In Embric Of Wulfhammers Castle, Huraine (goddess of love, lush scenery, strawberries and chocolate) requires this of her worshipers in their rituals, which is good news for Dorcas. One of the Multiple Endings even has the Duchess becoming the centrepiece of one of these rituals.
Webcomics
- Super Stupor has one comic where a hero reveals his superpower to make anyone tell the truth... as long as his penis is inside them. He's asked how he discovered this power, whereupon a third character claims it's "the best divorce story ever!"
- Kit 'n Kay Boodle, all the time. Nearly every plot line seems to be solved by the title characters
having sex yiffing.
- Ménage ŕ 3 features "Everything That Moves" Zii, whose ability to have sex with anyone she wants (except Didi) reaches the level of a superpower, and warps reality around her to make it conform to the rules of a porn movie (with her in the role of the pizza delivery guy). She used this power to get her revenge over a Troll by banging his mom, granting her an instant Flawless Victory.
- In another story, Zii and Didi are playing with Gary's Transformers collectibles and break a rare one. Not being able to fix or repair it, Zii comes up with a plan - she and Didi will have a threesome with Gary (who's a virgin) and he'll be so overwhelmed by the sex he won't care about the broken collectible.
- Sonichu, of all comics. has this in issue #8 with Silvana, whose "nectar" is a poisonous and paralytic sleeping agent she secretes during sex. After transforming herself to look like Bubbles, she makes out with Blake, knocks him out, and advances what little plot there is in the comic in the first place.
Web Original
- Go to asstr.org's author's page and look up Stephen Gray (NSFW or kids). Marvel at both the sex as mind control and demons/ potions / Aliens Made Them Do It. Notice how vanilla most of the sex is. Wonder if this is a case of the Machina being extraneous to the sex...
- This shows up a lot in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section of Literotica, though details vary.
- This is essentially the premise of Pokegirls—the eponymous semihumans are normally bestial and dangerous, but sex (or rape) temporarily restores their minds. This leads in weird directions...
Real Life
- The Etoro people of Papua New Guinea believe that boys do not produce their own semen and must be provided with it for them to grow into men. To accomplish this, the men of the tribe "provide" the teenage boys with semen by having oral sex with them, every single night, for the duration of the boys' puberty. The point is to pass on the life force of the older generation so that the boys can grow into healthy and strong men. Unfortunately, boys who grow too quickly are assumed to be stealing the life force from other boys and are likely to be branded sex-hungry witches.
- Government troops in Congo raped a village of pygmies to gain magic powers.
- The urban legend that having sex with a virgin can cure you of AIDS, which apparently contributes to the (scarily high) amount of rape in South Africa, and the even more scarily high incidence of childhood AIDS.
- Also albinos, apparently. Yep, one more case of the human instinct to rationalize making problems worse. (At least it's better than Tanzania, where albinos are sometimes killed and eaten due to the belief that eating an albino somehow grants magical powers.)
- This was a common belief in Western countries before the germ theory of disease was discovered, and is one of the reasons why prostitution of very young girls was so prevalent well into the 19th century. Of course, the disease they were worried about was syphilis, not AIDS, but at the time syphilis was just as dreaded and just as incurable.
- Orgone energy was thought to be an actual physical force, which spawned (sorry) its own technology. It also lead to its "discoverer", Wilhelm Reich making magic cancer curing orgone machines which eventually lead to him getting quite justly slung into jail.
- Some eccentric people even believe you can create human life this way. Imagine that?
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