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Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?
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Horrifically adorable.
"I'm an intelligent woman. I know the difference between reality and my own dark fantasies. But I thrill at the idea of being taken by a great tentacled beast. My heart races as I imagine my frail and delicate body being controlled, being used by a force too powerful for me to deny. To feel helpless, vulnerable, it scares me yet it excites me. My body aches with desire as I imagine myself being forced to surrender in the most intimate of ways. Can this be so wrong?"
This is what happens when you make love (in either sense of that phrase) with an Eldritch Abomination, or a Starfish Alien doing a passable imitation of one. Tentacles are a frequent feature. Can be played for sheer Squick, horror, fetish appeal, laughs or all of the above at the same time.
See also Evil Is Sexy, a related but dissimilar and partial Super Trope. Compare and contrast Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?, Mars Needs Women, Boldly Coming, and Divine Date. A subtrope of Interspecies Romance. Might lead to Fetus/ Enfant Terrible. A common origin for the Anti Antichrist, able to switch sides as a representation of the human side, but just as likely to become a Complete Monster.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Whether Haruhi Suzumiya qualifies (and if it does, by how much) is still a point of contention. The girl is a reality warping Humanoid Abomination who has the hots for the (normal) boy, and there are some arcs focused on trying to prevent her from unknowingly re-writing the universe.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion's Shinji Ikari has the (mis)fortune of getting cozy with both Rei Ayanami and Kaworu Nagisa, the living avatars of the two sources of all life on earth. Both are of the Humanoid Abomination variety, and the relationships initially follows fairly normal Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl / Closet Key dynamics, respectively, but tentacle squick does happen when Rei gets attacked by an Angel which physically and mentally merges with her and then goes after Shinji because of Rei's own desire to "become one" with him. This results in Shinji and his mecha being hugged by a tentacle that takes Rei's form and triggers horrible, Rei-shaped skin-growths upon touch. Another memorable moment is when Shinji has a mayor Freak Out upon the sight of a continent-sized, eyeless version of Rei after she returned her soul to the body of the thing it was taken from, amongst other reasons, as a quick way to go and check on him since he was screaming his lungs out for unrelated reasons.
- In Tsukihime the protagonist, Tohno Shiki, has the option of falling in love with the "True Ancestor" of the series' "Vampires", Arcueid Brunestud, who is considered an abomination even among her own kind for her monstrous power. However, from her point of view Shiki is the Cthulhu of their relationship, what with him being a natural-born killer of non-humans like herself and his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception meaning that his mind is on the same wavelength as death itself. And considering that the other bearers of those eyes in the Nasuverse are a Celtic God who can make you die with a glance and the living embodiment of Akasha, she's got a good point.
- Tenchi Muyo! works both ways, with Tsunami, Washu and Tokimi supposedly being the omnipotent beings that created everything. They're after Tenchi, who is an even more omnipotent being than they are.
- Kizumonogatari has this as the premise.
- The OAV of El-Hazard: The Magnificent World. The Demon God destroyed the Precursors, brought ruin upon the land, and threatened to do the same to present-day El Hazard. Then she and the hero fell in love...
- In Haiyore! Nyako-san, the protagonist Mahiro is horrified by this trope. Luckily for everyone involved, the series is Lovecraft Lite and not a Cosmic Horror Story.
Comic Books
Fanfiction
Film
- Galaxy Quest. The aliens aren't so humanoid in their true form, and we get a glimpse at the woman one of the characters is making out with. This is by the end when they're established as a couple. He is not even slightly squicked; the viewers, maybe not so much.
- In Dagon, the protagonist has dreams about swimming undersea with a beautiful mermaid. Later, he actually meets her, but resists her attempt at seduction when he finds out that she has tentacles instead of legs. Later on, she turns out to be his sister, and also his destined bride.*
- In Splash, Allen falls in love with a beautiful, innocent woman called Madison. He finds out she is a mermaid when a scientist exposes her. When he finds out, he is severely squicked and breaks off any contact with her. He eventually gets over this.
Literature
- H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror". Yog-Sothoth
 has sex with a human woman and produces the offspring who will be known as Wilbur Whateley.
- Oh, and it's hinted at that her elderly father was acting as the, er, vessel for Yog at the time.
- Likewise, several Cthulhu Mythos tales deal with this:
- Michael Shea's "Fat Face" involves a woman who becomes interested in a rather large, but kindly man. It's not a man, and it doesn't end well.
- Played with Ramsey Campbell's "The Faces At Pine Dunes". The protagonist and his girlfriend investigate his parents' strange behavior. His father is a Human/Eldritch Abomination hybrid, and so is the protagonist.
- "The Dunwich Horror" was inspired by Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, which also features sex (or some kind of mating) between a human woman and an Eldritch Abomination. The resulting daughter is an eerily beautiful Humanoid Abomination whose unspeakable acts (strongly implied to be sexual in nature) lead to madness and suicide.
- Done as part of a Deal with the Devil in The Dresden Files when Harry takes up the mantle of the Winter Knight. Harry states that it wasn't sex, no matter what it looked like. You can't have sex with a hurricane, or make love to a storm.
- Star Wars: Fate Of The Jedi: Luke has an encounter with Abeloth. She impersonates each of his previous girlfriends and then sets out to kill the ones that are still alive. Loving a Skywalker can be so complicated.
- The entire point of Nyarko San, except that it's the Cthulhu-side person herself who initiates the relationship to the human protagonist (to varying degree of success). And no, it's not nasty... most of the time.
- Beowulf: Grendel's mother was allegedly an eldritch abomination - and supposedly the biblical Cain decided she was just too sexy to resist. The gods struck him dead on the spot, and his lover then birthed the monstrous Grendel to remember her late lamented beau by. In some accounts Grendel had two brothers that were almost as nightmarish, including a shark that swam through the sky.
- Appears in several works by Neil Gaiman.
- In American Gods, a man sleeps with a prostitute who turns out to be a succubus-like monster. The prostitute ends up swallowing the unlucky man through her vagina. In a less nightmare inducing example, the main character also catches the smitten eye of an Egyptian Cat Goddess, Bastet. It doesn't amount to much more than a one night stand and some minor flirting though.
- In "A Study in Emerald" we have Queen Victoria (reimagined as an Eldritch Abomination) and her human "consort" Prince Albert. Also in this story, Prince Franz Drago of Bohemia (another Eldritch Abomination) is said to have frequented brothels, and he ends up dying after Sherlock Holmes lures him to his death with the offer of a virgin kidnapped from a convent.
- "How to Talk to Girls at Parties." The narrator ends up at the wrong party with his friend, flirts with girls who turn out to be Anthropomorphic Personifications of planets, and is almost consumed by hearing a song from one of them. His friend tries to make out with a sun and inadvertently pisses her off, and the narrator never hears from him again.
Live-Action TV
- In Smallville, only Chloe Sullivan could get involved with Doomsday. Although he is in human form most of the time. Not explicitly stated, but in Eternal she locks Davis and herself alone in the basement.
- In Angel season 5, something develops between Wesley and Illyria, mostly because she reminds him of Fred, and much angst ensues when she impersonates her. It isn't clear until the series finale that Illyria returned his affections, as evidenced by her compassion and grief at Wesley's death.
Music
- The song "Width of a Circle" by David Bowie describes a consensual encounter with some sort of Eldritch Abomination. Remember, kids, Drugs Are Bad!
- Also Norm Sherman's "Heartache Over Innsmouth", which is just what it sounds like.
Tabletop Games
- Call Of Cthulhu tabletop game has a few:
- Yog-Sothoth can mate with human females, creating the Spawn of Yog-Sothoth.
- Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. A woman named Hypatia Masters apparently mated with a Great Old One (she became pregnant and had its child).
- Supplement The Fungi from Yuggoth, adventure "The Thing in the Well". After donning a pair of magical glasses a woman is raped by an other-dimensional monster and becomes pregnant with its child.
- The Cthulhu Now adventure "Love's Lonely Children" adventure features a couple who are Y'Golonac cultists. Y'Golonac is the Mythos entity of Squick incarnate. The husband is possessed and bodily transforms into Y'Golonac, while his wife... worships. And they got their daughter involved in it, too...
- Exalted
- In one of the more contested passages in the guide for Infernals, it's suggested that new Infernals are passed around the Yozis for... "initiation." The Yozis are crippled godlike entities that take forms such as a city of brass and basalt, a hundred thousand crystalline spheres of fire, and an ever-twisting river. The sheer physics alone... But, for good or ill, the actual process would be a bit less mind-hurting, as the Yozis can create humaniform avatars called jouten. This is not necessarily an improvement.
- The Yozi Adorjan (who mostly appears in the form of an extremely violent wind) also mated with a Solar Exalt (through a dream...) and conceived daughters by him (half of whom were normal human children, the other half shed their mortal bodies when they reached maturity and became sentient winds like their mother).
- The god(dess) Luna was created (partially) for the purpose of seducing the Primordial Gaia (and fell in love with her instead). Gaia's most commonly seen form is her humanoid jouten, but mentions are made of her other, greater forms, that are vast, primal and slightly terrifying to the gods (although Luna, while typically humanoid, can take some pretty eldritch forms herself, so the line between regular romance and romancing Cthulhu is a bit blurred).
- The "aberrant" bloodline in Pathfinder—which eventually turns your character into a Humanoid Abomination—implies something like this in a sorcerer's ancestry.
- This is part of the graduation ceremony for the Drow priestesses of Lolth in Forgotten Realms. The joint graduation ceremony between female priestesses and male warriors consists of the two groups engaging in a drug-fueled orgy. One "lucky" priestess mates with a glabrezu — a four-armed pincered dog-faced demon — instead of another Drow. It bears mentioning that glabrezu can't shapeshift. This is considered an honor, and the resulting hybrid children (called draegloths) have a special place in Drow society.
Video Games
- Cthulhu Saves The World. Umi falls in love with Cthulhu at first sight, but he considers them "strictly in a rock star-groupie relationship." By the end though, he comes to return her feelings.
- Saya no Uta is about the main character (unknowingly) romancing one of these. He suffers from a condition which caused him to view everything as Eldritch Locations and everyone as Eldritch Abominations, which is why Saya, who herself was an Eldritch Abomination, was the only one to look normal in his eyes.
- Demonbane originated as eroge based on Cthulhu Mythos. The best example is probably when Nyarlathotep has sex with Kuro after he got possessed and transformed into Wilbur Whateley.
- Disgaea 2: Adell has delivered a Cooldown Kiss to Zenon, God of all Overlords.
- In The Sims 2, Olive Specter canonically had sex with the Grim Reaper (which, incidentally, you can't replicate in-game) and it's strongly implied that he's the father of her only child (which you actually can, though it requires cheats).
- It's not entirely certain what the girl in Where We Remain is, but we know that she's spent a very long time magically bound in a cave, that she didn't have a name before the hero gave her one, and that she has some rather nifty (if limited) abilities. Given that the wind spirits on the island are described as her "brothers," it would seem that she's nonhuman rather than just some sort of spellcaster.
- In Persona 3 Portable, on the Female Main Character's route, you're given the chance to initiate a romantic S.Link with Ryoji Mochizuki, the human form of Nyx Avatar. That is, you can make the personification of Death itself fall in love with you.
- While it's not an official social link, a male main character is asked to show Elizabeth what sex is like. The female main character can similarly win the affection of, and have an Optional Sexual Encounter with, Elizabeth's younger brother Theodore. It's not clear exactly what Elizabeth and Theodore are, but whatever they are, it's not human, and as the game's Bonus Bosses they are just as if not more powerful than the abovementioned Ryoji.
- In Persona 4, you can fulfill the requests of the big sister of the aforementioned Elizabeth and Theodore, Margaret. If you do, her comments toward you become more and more flirty and, if you abstained from romancing anyone else in the game, she will steal a kiss and tease you about meeting again in the future.
- An even better example comes in the form of Marie in Persona 4 Golden on the PS Vita, who is a bona fide romantic social link and is an alter ego of the Bigger Bad, Izanami, the former mate of Izanagi (who, incidentally, is your alter ego).
- In The Bards Tale, you're unknowingly setting free (or not) a Demon Queen. You guessed it, Caleigh. Though she does keep her promise to you.
- One of the potential love interests in Dragon Age II is a Humanoid Abomination. Several characters discuss and lampshade the squickier aspects of the relationship. For those unfamiliar with the setting, Abominations are humans who have been possessed by spirits/demons. This means that every intimate encounter Hawke shares with his/her Abomination Love Interest is technically a threesome.
- In Diablo III, Adria conceived Leah with Aidan while he was possessed by Diablo. And she knew it. Adria had consensual sex with the Lord of Terror.
- Just to make it a bit more Squicky, Adria knew what she was doing at the time, but he only gradually gained control of Aidan through the first half of the events of Diablo II; his human host was mostly still in control before he left Tristram. One can only guess what was going through his head at the time...
- In Mask of the Betrayer, you play as a soul-eating abomination whose mere existence poses a threat to those around you. This does not stop you from getting a Romance Sidequest.
- In Fire Emblem: Awakening, a Male Avatar can marry Tiki, who was put to sleep by Naga to keep her from degenerating into madness, which would destroy the world. Furthermore, all of the Avatar's romance options boil down to "Did You Just Romance The Avatar of Grima?".
- Justified in the "good" ending of Eversion: Princess Nehema has already been revaled as an Eldritch Abomination in the bad ending, but in the good ending it turns out that Zee Tee is one too.
Visual Novels
- In Dra Koi the protagonist starts a relationship with a dragon that is along the lines of an eldritch abomination: It casually breaks the laws of physics and is hinted to spread madness.
Web Comics
- Ow My Sanity combines this with Unwanted Harem.
- Sluggy Freelance has a hint of this in a TV show actually called "Unholy Concubine Connection". (Before that comic, the show showed someone "merely" involved with Satan.)
- In Grim Tales From Down Below, it turns out that years after The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, Grim and Mandy married and had two kids. Though actually the boy is an abortion from an unknown father, and the girl's father is Nergal Junior, as Grim can't actually father new life, because he's Death.
- Drow Tales sees Mel'arnach and the intelligent Giant Spider Zhor. Despite appearing to be an Interspecies Romance, it actually isn't, since Zhor is a transformed dark elf, but due to his appearance it still counts.
- The Lord Kingnote The Erlkönig. Looks mostly human but isn't, also steals children, hunts people and trolls the cast / Widow Norringtonnote Fully human... but she also trolls the cast pairing in Roommates is either this trope or Divine Date depending on what you think about The Fair Folk. The guy also refuses to be categorized by hunting with Odin but playing poker with The Slender Man.
Web Original
- In the Whateley Universe, Sara Waite is a Humanoid Abomination, so anyone she has sex with counts. Further, she's the product of just such a pairing.
- For that matter, her father Gothmog is by all accounts still quite popular with the ladies.
- This deviantART image. Horrifically adorable!
- Cracked uses this as one of the potential next Twilight-style monster/teenager romance trends here.
- /tg/ likes these◊.
- The twist of "Wilhelm Park" by redminus.
- The Nostalgia Chick and her sidekick Nella are planning a "crowd-sourced" Paranormal Romance novel that they describe as "Twilight with aliens." By incorporating the suggestions of their fans, they eventually make the story about an ordinary teenage girl and a Lovecraftian Eldritch Abomination who fall in love.
Western Animation
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