Basic Trope: A male character starts a romance with a mermaid and can't figure out how to go all the way.
- Straight: Bob the human meets Alice the mermaid - they fall in love but can't make love.
- Exaggerated: Bob will vow to never have sex due to his love for Alice.
- Downplayed: ???
- Justified: Alice the mermaid lays eggs.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- "She has a mouth."
- External fertilization.
- Turn out that part of her scales, just below her waist, can split and reveal vital organ.
- Alice has a genital slit similar to that of a dolphin.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice insanely bites down like a shark when he tries it.
- Turns out the slit hides an ovipositor like a fish has, rather than an actual vagina, so it's not of much use to Bob.
- Parodied: Bob is a "mersexuial" but has no idea how to make love with mermaids. It amuses mermaids to not tell him.
- Zig Zagged: Bob and Alice the mermaid can't make love. Alice has herself turned into a human. Bob turns himself into a merman. Of course since she was a Mermaid until recently, Alice knows just what to do.
- Averted:
- Alice is a human woman wearing a prosthetic tail over her legs.
- Mermaids in this setting are aquatic mammals and possess fairly similar genitalia.
- Bob and Alice don't want to have sex
- Alice has two tails instead of one, with female genitalia in between.
- Enforced: "We can't have love making on screen. Make Alice a mermaid."
- Lampshaded: Bob: "I have to do WHAT?"
- Invoked: Bob is trapped on a planet of incompatible mermaids as a form of Ironic Hell.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Bob has no problem working out the biology of her kind.
- Discussed: Alice: "I'm ready Bob, take me now!" Bob: "How do I do that?" Alice: "Loser."
- Conversed: Alice: "My boyfriend will not make love to me." Carol "He is a human. Did you ever tell him how?"
- Deconstructed: Despite superficial similarities, mermaids and humans are far too biologically different for a romantic or sexual relationship to work. They have fundamental misconceptions about how such a relationship would work - Bob can't get past her lack of 'equipment', Alice doesn't understand why he sees sex as more than just reproduction. They have a short, rocky relationship and go their separate ways.
- Reconstructed: Bob has a fetish for mermaids, and Alice has a fascination with humans. They make it work.
- Played For Laughs: "I put it where?"
- Played For Drama: Alice thinks because of this problem she and Bob were never meant to be.
Back to the
Mermaid Problem - we think the answer may involve
seamen.
