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"It seems like a waste of a perfectly good virgin to me... "
— Zed, Year One
"How come gods always want virgins? Wouldn't sluts be more accepted? They put out more and have a better understanding of the human body. It's pleasurably logical."
A subtrope of Human Sacrifice, Virgin Sacrifices typically fall under three main categories:
- As payment to a god or some other power, either to keep them functioning or to win their favor in general.
- As payment to a god or some other power for the exclusive use of some powerful Applied Phlebotinum.
- As a necessary fuel for one's own continued existence (eg: a vampire who needs to feast on virgin blood every once in a while in order to continue living).
Popular places to conduct virgin sacrifices include, dark, skull-lined altars under glowering idols and the edges of active volcanoes. Abandoned churches with upside-down crosses in them make a nice setting for any vampiric or Satanically-themed sacrifices (although, if the church in question is in use, the alley next to it works just as well).
Virgin Sacrifices are usually young, female, pure-minded, and often raised from birth to accept — even celebrate — their honored position as Virgin Sacrifice. If not, then they're usually a Love Interest or a member of the heroes' party who got kidnapped and carted away for sacrificial purposes. (If said member of the party is, in fact, not a virgin, you can expect some hilarious hijinks to occur when that fact is uncovered.)
In the ultra-rare case that a male virgin is required for a Virgin Sacrifice, expect the situation to be played for as much humor as possible. Also, expect the victim to be far more upset that his friends have discovered his virgin status than he is about actually being sacrificed.
The virgin will usually be saved right from the sacrificial altar by the Big Damn Heroes, or via an elaborate scheme by her allies to impersonate the hungry god.
Despite the most obvious logical solution, Virgin Sacrifice situations are hardly ever resolved by giving the sacrifice-to-be an opportunity to have an intimate encounter, thus rendering the Virgin Sacrifice unsuitable. (Unless the victim is male and the story is a Sex As Rite Of Passage comedy.) In a few cases, the save-the-sacrificial-victim sex may be non-consensual. That's probably the only time a "heroic character" can rationalize and "get away" with rape, if the hero is male and the Sacrificial Victim is female. Most professional writers probably shy away from plotlines like this due to the amount of Squick they dredge up, although such a scenario has been the plot to many a rape fanfic. And this is not exactly helped by the fact that the squickiest of such ceremonies (which are not shown on TV for obvious reasons) involve the virgin being ritually raped as part of the sacrifice, symbolically destroying her innocence before killing her.
Also note that virgin sacrifices are never the most obvious solution — children — for obvious reasons. The most common in-story justification is that the victim's virginity is ritually significant for some reason connected to the fact that they might have but didn't, which lets the prepubescent population off the hook.
While human sacrifice is Truth In Television — though less frequently than religions have been accused of it — the Virgin Sacrifice is not so accurate.
Often tied in with a Town With A Dark Secret and A Fete Worse Than Death.
Subtrope of Virgin Power and Powered By A Forsaken Child. This is most definitely a down side to Nature Adores A Virgin.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- The power that Miaka and Yui (and before them, Takiko and Suzuno) are granted in Fushigi Yuugi is not only a Virgin Power, it also can result in a Virgin Sacrifice, if the wielder of the power isn't strong willed enough to keep from being absorbed by the god she's calling upon.
- The topic of Fushigi Yuugi brings us to yet another instance of Virgin Sacrifice: In Nuriko's character novel, Yukiyasha Den, the titular snow demon feasts only on beautiful, young, virgin girls.
- Pretty much a staple of the hentai series Bible Black. Heck, the first episode even begins with a virgin being sacrificed.
- Subverted as the girl was raped beforehand, therefore not a virgin.
- Too bad that the chick who was sacrificing said girl didn't know that she was no longer a virgin...
- Played straight in the anime series Vandread, with whole worlds up for the Virgin Sacrifice, both literally and figuratively, in combination with the subplot of Earth using its colony worlds as organ banks in a program known as the Harvest. The worlds of the principal characters, Tarak and Majere, are literal worlds of virgins (in a heterosexual sense) that have been taught that each is the other's enemy for precisely that reason: Tarak and Majere are to supply the sexual organs, and Earth wants them in as pristine a condition as possible. There is also the episode where the Nirvana encounters its first harvester ship; the planet in question has not physical virgins, but mental ones — kept in ignorance and taught that the harvesters are gods, sent to take them to Paradise. It's revealed during the episode that these people were kept in ignorance so that they would never progress; the harvesters are not going to take them to Paradise, but was sent to harvest their spinal cords.
Comics
- The humorous male version appeared in Mad Magazine's "Monroe" series.
- A Far Side comic had two woman being carried up the side of a volcano by a group of natives. One woman assures her friend, "And you were worried they wouldn't like Americans! Why, they lit right up when we said we were Virginians."
- One was required to summon a demon in the Ramba story "Vendetta from Hell". Ramba spoils the satanists' plans by rescuing their sacrifice.
Films — Live Action
- The movie Once Bitten is a comedy about a virgin male who attracts the attention of an evil vampiress. The vampiress needs to feed on virgin (male) blood three times before Halloween in order to maintain her beauty. The victim manages to escape from the vampiress's clutches by convincing his frigid girlfriend (who's been holding him off the entire movie for "just the right time") to finally have sex with him.
- The Tsui Hark film Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain contains an encounter where the young hero and a master swordsman discover an evil cult that sacrifices virgins. As they are about to fight them, the hero realises they want virgin males and can detect him.
- Predated by the movie Andy Warhol's Dracula; in that film, Dracula only subsists on virgin blood (the first two girls he tries to drink from, being non-virgins— heck, we see them having sex with the ostensible hero— make him vomit). The "hero" has no qualms about raping the virgin girl to save her, leading to the grotesque sight of Dracula licking her hymenal blood off the floor in desperation.
- Movie example: Joe Versus The Volcano, featuring Tom Hanks as the virgin. He doesn't seem to be worried about his friends finding out, mainly because he doesn't really seem to have friends. He manages to get laid before the end of the movie, and the volcano spits him back out and sinks the island he was to be sacrificed for.
- The original version of The Wicker Man. Note that the American version remake omits this element because (say it with me now) an A-List Hollywood actor is not a virgin. Not even if he's Nicholas Cage. And yes, Edward Woodward does play a male virgin in the original, so there.
- In Dead Gentlemen Productions Demon Hunters: Dead Camper Lake, Chris is taken as a virgin sacrifice to re-summon Duamerthrax the Indestructible. As expected, there are a fair number of "Wait, he's a... naaaaaah," moments.
- In the film remake of the old series Dragnet, P.A.G.A.N. acquires a young woman as a virgin sacrifice to be thrown to a giant snake. Predictably, the heroes rescue her, she becomes a love interest, and she's not a virgin by the end of the film.
- The movie Dragonslayer, inspired by the story of Saint George (see below), features a town that selects virgins via lottery to feed to a dragon. It's the villagers' own superstition that leads them to do this, though; the dragon is basically a wild animal and probably couldn't care less about who it eats.
- In Lesbian Vampire Killers, the blood of a virgin must be mingled with the blood of the last of the McLaren's to resurrect Carmilla the Vampire Queen.
- The title character in Jennifers Body is thought to be a virgin by a satanic rock band and thus is sacrificed to the devil in exchange for success. Although, since she's "not even a backdoor virgin", she becomes a man-eating demon instead. Oh well.
- Poked fun at many times in "Year One".
Close Films — Live Action
Gamebooks
- In the Lone Wolf book The Chasm of Doom, the virgin Madelon is planned to be sacrified at the edge of the Maakengorge by bandit lord Barraka and the Disciples of Vashna, in order to raise Darklord Vashna and his army of undead. She's saved by Lone Wolf — unless the player mucks it up.
Literature
- There is a subversion/parody in the Discworld novel Guards! Guards! where the sacrificial victim is the middle-aged Sybil Ramkin.
- In a previous Discworld book, The Light Fantastic, the voluntary Virgin Sacrifice complained after her Unwanted Rescue that that was "seventeen years of staying home on Saturday nights down the drain".
- The rarity of male virgin sacrifices is mentioned in Mercedes Lackey's The Fire Rose. The villain needs a virgin sacrifice, and remarks that while the gender doesn't matter, it's so much easier to verify a woman's virginity than a man's.
- Subverted in a few other Lackey books. In One Good Knight, the townspeople offer up many girls as virgin sacrifices, and as time goes on most of them aren't virginal in the least. In Burning Water, Tezcatlipoca needed to sacrifice a woman who had borne at least one child to return to Earth.
- In Roger Zelazny's novel The Changing Land, a wizard employs a "virgin detector spell" to locate a suitable sacrifice. The wizard is in a hurry to regain his power after a mishap and sacrificing a virgin is the quickest and easiest way. Naturally, the Big Damn Heroes arrive just in time.
- In the novel The Day of the Dissonance, some fairies decide to sacrifice a young girl who they have captive, stating that bathing in virgin's blood would help them. The sacrifice is called off when the girl breaks into hysterical laughter at being told this. Seems she was held captive by pirates for quite a while and doesn't qualify.
- In the novel Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff, an attempt by an evil keeper (a magic user who safeguards the balance between good and evil) during World War II to open a gateway to Hell in the basement of a bed and breakfast in Kingston, Ontario fails because her intended sacrifice of a teenage girl she assumed was a virgin turned out not to be and the keeper is placed in suspended animation. Then, in the present day she is accidentally revived and sets about to recreate her plan, this time with the chaste 20-year-old male cook/housekeeper of the B&B whose virginity is a surprise to his boss, Claire Hanson, the female protagonist of the series, who was further surprised to find out that her 17-year-old sister was not a suitable sacrifice because she had already become sexually active.
- A short story in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword And Sorceress anthology series covers a lot of ground with this trope. The local religious elders are known to cheat when it comes to selecting victims, "randomly" selecting girls who turned them down, and once a girl is known to be the next chosen, removing her from contention is unwise because the boy who helps her tends to find that it's harder to prove a male isn't a virgin. So the protagonist (female, next victim) finds the dragon she's supposed to be sacrificed to, finds that he doesn't care about the sexual history of his meals, and convinces him that fat priests are a better food source.
- Less extreme example in Lawrence Watt-Evans's Ethshar series. One of the many, many ingredients needed for wizardry is blood of the virgin. Wizards are just buying it in reasonable amounts from virginal donors. It is implied in Taking Flight that virgin of any gender will do.
- Virgin's tears are also magically potent.
- In On A Pale Horse, Luna knows she's living on borrowed time, and sets herself up to be eaten by a dragon. The preference of dragons for virgin (not necessarily human) prey is actually explained: generations ago, the species was nearly wiped out by a strain of venereal disease that unlucky dragons contracted from eating infected animals.
- In a play on the story of The Minotaur Minea in The Egyptian is to be sacrificed to the Cretan God... Only God Is Dead and rather than being sacrificed, she is killed to keep this a secret. Yeah, it's that kind of story.
Live Action TV
- A first season episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer involves a Praying Mantis demon that uses virgin males to fertilize its eggs, then eats them. Its chosen victims are a jock and Xander, both of whom are insistent that A Man Is Not A Virgin after Buffy rescues them.
- An episode of Angel went with the hijinks route when a wizard tries to sacrifice his own daughter. Unfortunately for him, virginity is a requirement, and he discovers he hasn't been isolating her from men as effectively as he'd thought.
- In season four, Jasmine-possessing-Cordelia had to use fresh virgin blood so she could give birth to herself. It Makes Sense In Context.
- 1991 TV movie Cast a Deadly Spell. In this film noir/horror pastiche set in an alternate 1940s Los Angeles where everyone uses magic except private detective Harry Philip Lovecraft, a cult leader has fathered and raised a daughter for the sole purpose of being the Virgin Sacrifice during the summoning of a Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know. Unfortunately for Daddy and his ritual, she got around his strictures by boinking an LA police officer...
- Supernatural combines Virgin Sacrifice with Someone Has To Die in "Jus in Bello". Apparently only the internal organs of a virgin can kill demons. Lampshaded by the virgin (Nancy to her friends): "When this is over, I'm going to have so much sex."
Mythology
- Iphigenia was sacrificed by her father Agamemnon to appease the goddess Artemis. (Although his wife Clytemnestra had him murdered for it, and some variants, the goddess snatched her away and substituted a deer.)
- Happens a lot in Greek mythology, such as Cetus and Andromeda.
- One of the classic examples is the story of Saint George, in which a town in North Africa is plagued by the depredations of a dragon who demands that the townsfolk offer up a virgin for it to devour on a regular basis. The dragon is usually interpreted as a metaphor for Satan and/or pagan beliefs.
Theater
- In Euripides's The Trojan Women and Hecuba, the Trojan princess Polyxena was sacrificed at the demand of Achilles's ghost.
- In Euripides's Heracleidae, the children of Hercules seek sanctuary. The Athenians intend to protect them, but grow reluctant when the oracle says they must sacrifice a noble maiden to succeed. One of Hercules's daughters, Macaria, volunteers for the role.
- The Golden Calf scene in the Schoenberg opera Moses and Aaron includes the sacrifice of four naked virgins.
- In I'm Sorry, The Bridge Is Out, You'll Have to Spend the Night, Dr. Nasser needs a virgin sacrifice for his mummified pharaoh. Turns out that it doesn't have to be a woman; he's more than happy to use hapless protagonist John Wellgood upon discovering that he's the only virgin around (which takes John aback when this is revealed to him, as he believed that his fiancee Mary Helen was also a virgin.)
Video Games
- Happens Twice in Romancing Sa Ga: Early on in the game during the Quest A Suspicious Demise: Humans that worship Saruin sacrifice virgin women to gain power; you can stop them mid-ceremony; and later on in the game during the Water Dragon Rite Quest Daughter of Kjaraht's potentate is captured and offered to Strom, one of the 4 Elemental Lords; you can free her, but it involves a very annoying Chain Of Deals or killing Strom. Killing Strom is much easier than having to go about his request.
- In the introduction of Castlevania Rondo Of Blood, a group of cultists, led by the dark priest Shaft, sacrifices a woman to revive Dracula.
- The ill-fated Rope Maidens in the first Fatal Frame game are virgins, raised in total isolation from human contact, that are then violently ripped apart by the neck and limbs in order to preserve the seal in the Hellmouth under Himuro Mansion. The latest one, Kirie, accidentally fell in love with a servant boy, with disastrous consequences for the ritual.
- An instance of a male Virgin Sacrifice is found in Ben Jordan case 3.
- In La-Mulana, you can see a never-ending procession of virgins plunging themselves into a spiked pit, which causes their blood to drip down and heal the Mini Boss Shu.
Web Comics
Web Original
- Subverted in lonelygirl15, in which it turns out that whether or not the victim actually is a virgin makes no difference to the ceremony, and the "purity bond" is just religious mumbo-jumbo to keep the victims in line.
- Played with in the Hitherby Dragons episode "Angus' Bad Day": Apparently, in a pinch, it doesn't really matter if the person whose blood is being spilt is a virgin, so long as the implement with which the blood is being spilt has never had sex.
Western Animation
- Futurama; in the episode where Nibbler disappears in the sewers, it appears that the tribe of sewer-dwelling mutants have taken to worshipping him as a god who requires this trope to prevent mass-scale slaughter. Leela, who isn't one, volunteers as the sacrifice to draw Nibbler out — only to be derisively mocked ("Nice try, Leela. But we've all seen Zapp Brannigan's webpage.") as a result. It transpires that there's no one else available, however, meaning they have to use her anyway: "So when El Chubacabra comes to take the (airquotes) 'virgin'..."
- Also in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" when the governments of the world decide to crack down on the Trekkie movement for becoming to powerful, they bump them off in the manner befitting
nerds virgins. Cue two men tossing Trekkies into a volcano, saying "He's dead, Jim... He's dead, Jim..."
- Drawn Together. Toot Braunstein is stranded on an island and eating everything in sight. The natives use up all their virgins appeasing her, so they have to resort to using the sluts.
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