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Accidental Pornomancer

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Wolverine: I've seen it. In bar after bar. Whatever women want, that guy's got it.
[Herc, turned into a half-spider monster, proceeds to have sex with a female half-spider monster]
Storm: Ugh! And he can keep it!
— The X-Men, in Herc #8

An Accidental Pornomancer is a character who seems unable to avoid sex, particularly in situations where most sane people would find it awkward, non-consensual, squickish, immoral, or impractical.

This trope is usually what you get if you want the benefits of the Nice Guy with none of the implications of the Slut or The Pornomancer. Sex is something that just happens to the Accidental Pornomancer, even if they're apathetic or don't want it, and their own desires are completely inconsequential. Moral repercussions are either glossed over, or made to seem wrong, but still awesome. The Accidental Pornomancer is thus free from any responsibility, consequences, guilt or fault for what happened, even if they enjoy it.

In theory, it's the perfect escapist fantasy: the hero isn't "perverted" because this sexual encounter isn't something they — or "normal" people — would want. They aren't womanizing or slutting, because they couldn't say no, or the sex was really weird. Thus, there's plenty of Power Fantasy, but your hero can still be an Audience Surrogate. Further, this trope usually (but not always) averts Idealized Sex; when the sex is really awkward or weird, you can still have them feel insecure, and thus seem innocent.

Because of gender stereotypes, the Accidental Pornomancer is either Always Male or the sexual aggressors are Always Female. If you swap genders, the same situation invites Unfortunate Implications and Double Standards, perhaps unless the story was intended for women, but good luck with that. While the guy will be admired or seen as "lucky", the rare female version of this trope is usually an innocent being victimized or a ditzy, "easy" Slut.

Also, while the setup for this trope is the same as an Unwanted Harem, where it differs is that in the Harem Genre, the hero is usually chaste until the end. This hero sees action at some point during the story, and usually doesn't have to put in any work.

As such, this trope is prevalent in a lot of Pornography, Hentai, Ecchi, and H-Games.

For more information on the subject, check out the Analysis page.

Subtrope to Chick Magnet (and in some cases, Clueless Chick-Magnet specifically) and Really Gets Around. Sometimes overlaps with sister trope, So Beautiful, It's a Curse. In-universe, this is often confused for Playing Hard to Get, but the difference is that the Accidental Pornomancer actually doesn't seek any attention.

Contrast Celibate/Chaste Hero, which this subverts.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • A recurring trope in advertising. Some unremarkable (perhaps even otherwise unattractive) Joe tries out the product being promoted, and the next thing he knows, he can't beat the women off with a stick.
    • The '60s/'70s commercials for Hai Karate aftershave spring to mind.
    • This was also used humorously in a Sir Walter Raliegh pipe tobacco commercial of the same era. When the hero switched to that tobacco, he proclaimed "The chicks are back; ... the chicks are BACK!" When the camera pulled back, he was being followed by a cheeping herd of fluffy yellow baby chicks.
    • Subverted in a late 2012 "3 Musketeers" commercial. He's slightly offended at their come-ons, but it turns out they're only after his candy bar.
    • Lynx/Axe antiperspirant shower gel ads are made of this. In one a girl borrows her boyfriend's gel and, after a day of attracting women, she returns home to demand an explanation. Another Lynx add has a man being molested in the elevator by a beautiful woman after using Lynx. And then, the next person to step into the elevator is a gay biker...
  • One briefly infamous Superbowl ad had a Gonkish woman (she has an overbite and a Big Ol' Unibrow) followed by attractive men in typical Axe fashion. In the end, it turns out she rubs a cashew behind her ears and between her breasts as a perfume. There was much debate as to whether this was insulting to women, men, cashews, or just funny.

    Anime & Manga 
  • The main character of Love Rush, Hakuba Reiji has what is called "The Ubermale Gene", a rare condition that causes practically all girls to view him as a world-class hunk. This leads to him being chased by hordes of lovestruck girls and judging from a flashback, it's been happening since he was in elementary school. And then Cute Monster Girls start crawling out of the woodwork...
  • Aki Sora. Full stop. Sora is extremely shy, effeminate, delicate, and socially awkward. And yet, he gets to have sex with some gorgeous woman almost every issue. Granted, he does have one regular lover, but every other woman he's with either rapes him, tricks him into sex, coerces him, or motivates him into pity sex.
  • Deconstructed in Okane ga Nai. Ayase is So Beautiful, It's a Curse, which leads to him becoming a Sex Slave. He struggles with his feelings about it throughout the series.
  • Itou Makoto of School Days. He suddenly gets the attention of all the female main characters, and while he does want the attention and gives in, he never really does anything to actually get their attention. Eventually deconstructed and subverted when his refusal to support Sekai's supposed pregnancy ends in the girls rejecting him just as easily and ultimately his death. But reconstructed in many of the endings, in which ignoring some Love Interests entirely will end in bloodshed, thus forcing the player to play along to a fashion.
  • Crying Freeman: Discussed as the reason why no woman will ever be able to kill Yoh: he's just such a perfect man, they cannot bring themselves to get rid of such beauty. The alternative? Sex.
  • In Yurika's Campus Life, the title character starts out like this, somehow bedding every woman she meets accidentally. Due to her rather tight economical situation, she quickly takes hold of her potential and starts seducing the women in her campus into giving her food and a place to stay, effectively crossing over into regular pornomancy.
  • In the hentai Mankitsu Happening, the main character Keiichi Oyamada has this due to having a disease that gets him into sexual situations. However, it's a case of Blessed with Suck because he is unable to hold down a steady job because of the titular "happenings".
  • Rito in To Love Ru. Despite being a generally innocent boy without perverted intentions, Rito appears to have sexual talents which he himself is not entirely aware of. Nemesis complimented his "technique" on pleasuring women when she ordered him to massage her shoulders. Momo believes the same thing about him when he fondles her in his sleep, which she greatly enjoys, and has made it a goal of hers to bring out his "inner harem king". Other times, whenever Rito trips and falls into a girl, some of the ways he manages to accidentally touch them seem to overtake them with an overwhelming sense of aroused euphoria before they notice what's just happened.

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 
  • Unsuprisingly common in Lemons.
  • The Infinite Loops:
  • Xander in Working for the Weekend has apparently taken the virginity of at least a couple dozen women. Because he's teleported to an Earth with no people once a week (for three days on that end but one day on our end), a lot of girls have tagged along and used it as a way to lose their virginity. Notably, everyone has adopted the Vegas rule (What happens there, stays there) and, after having gotten burned a few times, Xander assumes the girl doesn't want anything while in Sunnydale unless they make a move first.
  • Very much Played for Drama in A Mark Of Appeal. Joyous Release has a cutie mark talent for sex appeal, which she cannot turn off or control in any way. Any sapient being who spends more than a minute or two in her presence is consumed by lust for her, regardless of species, sexual orientation, or marital status. She has tried everything up to and including physically cutting out her mark (which doesn't work) to rid herself of this "talent", and finally seeks out Princess Luna as her last hope for a normal life, or indeed any life at all.
  • Katia Managan, the protagonist of Prequel Adventure, notes with no small amount of shame that she is a ridiculously easy lay when she's drunk — and unfortunately, she's a recovering alcoholic with an almost supernaturally low tolerance for booze. Within three days of arriving in Cyrodiil she's already had black-out drunken sex twice, one of which was a three-way with a necromancer and a skeleton.
  • Vow of Nudity: Haara, a stoic monk who lives alone in the wilderness, would probably be a Celibate Hero if the universe weren't constantly bending over backwards to drop her into erotic situations. On several occasions she expresses disbelief or annoyance at how often she seems to find herself having sex.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Timmy Lea in the Confessions of a... series of films. Ironically enough in the first film he has the exact opposite problem but soon finds women left and right trying to get into his pants even if he's not actively looking for sex.
  • Indiana Jones, at least in regards to his students, some of whom are minors. It's shown that Indy tends to try and ignore their advances, but at the same time, it's implied that he's given in more than once. Marian Ravenwood was 14 when they hooked up.
  • To an extent, Will Ferrell's character from The Other Guys is inexplicably attractive to women who are seemingly way out of his league. He frequently talks about how plain his wife (Eva Mendez!) is and at the end of the movie he casually mentions that an ex of his grew up to be an actress... "The girl I lost my virginity to actually became a TV actress: Heather Locklear. You've heard of her? She was much chubbier back then." He was also a pimp for a time.

    Literature 
  • Strike the Blood: Kojou Akatsuki is an interesting case. He's a vampire, and this series treats his bloodlust and blood-sucking as being akin to actual love and sex. (At one point, he even refers to himself as a "virgin" vampire because he has never drunk blood.) Further, the only way for him to gain control over his powers is to drink the blood of someone new. So every story arc follows a similar pattern: Akatsuki and the Girl of the Week become emotionally close, eventually are trapped together in a life-or-death situation, and she insists that he drink her blood to awaken new power. Every time, he insists that he had no choice.
  • Anita Blake is a female example, and has all those Unfortunate Implications the description mentions. Though she gets to insist it's not her fault since it's because of her accidentally acquired succubus powers that make her have to or she'll die.
  • Thomas Raith in The Dresden Files is a White Court vampire, which means he feeds on life force generated by emotions, and the most common emotion is lust. Being White Court, he is born with a "demon" bonded to his soul that tries to feed constantly and needs that energy, and if it doesn't get it the demon drives him into an insane, psychic-raping frenzy. When he isn't getting fed on human life energy, Thomas is unintentionally exuding a psychic "come hither" compulsion in people around him, which makes it hard for him to try to hold down a job when both men and women are either coming on to him or actually jumping his bones in the break room, and the demon isn't letting Thomas say no. It gets bad enough that he even starts pulling in joggers when he goes out for a run.
  • Sir Lancelot in Arthurian Legend was raped by two separate women: Lady Elaine and her servant, Brisen.
  • Alatiel in The Decameron is a rare female version. She winds up kidnapped and loses her virginity when her captor gets her inebriated before having his way with her. She grew a taste for it very quickly. From there, men constantly fight over her, capture or enslave her, rarely of her own volition, but she hardly minds the constant sex. By the end, when she meets the man she is to marry, she's afraid that the problems associated with female versions of this trope will deter her suitor, but he says "Nope!" and they marry and live Happily Ever After.
  • John Carter of Mars only ever had eyes for Dejah Thoris, but that didn't prevent him from attracting the affections of Thuvia, Phaidor, and Ozara, among others.
  • Deconstructed in InCryptid: Artie is an incubus with Power Incontinence, which means his pheromones cause any non-relative who's attracted to men (including some non-human species) to be overcome with lust for him. He mostly deals with it by becoming a Hikikomori who only goes out covered in enough cologne to destroy the sense of smell of anyone in a ten-foot radius. When he was a kid, he even worried that his powers would make the family's resident sapient mice be attracted to him (fortunately, they're biologically incompatible with humanoids and therefore immune). Altogether he's So Beautiful, It's a Curse.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Brittany in Glee. It is implied that she had slept with nearly every guy in the school, yet you never see her trying, and she doesn't seem to realize how unusual this is.
  • Randy in My Name Is Earl borders on this trope; much to everyone's surprise, he turns out to be very good in bed during his green card marriage, but he doesn't seem to know this about himself. As a result, though, he doesn't Really Get Around much during the series.
  • This seems to be the default programming of Warren's sexbots on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
  • Deconstructed to horrific effect with the premise of Dollhouse, where the "dolls" are selected for physical attractiveness and repeatedly brainwashed and mindwiped, meaning that they become the dream lover of a variety of clients while never quite knowing or remembering afterwards. For the clients, this means a lover who will indulge their worst fantasies and never remember afterwards, as in their mindwiped "doll" state, they're all childlike amnesiacs. Or at least that's how it's supposed to work.
  • Dr. Chase on House... sorta. It's been shown on occasion that he can't turn off women even when he's trying.
  • Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Though Will himself is definitely The Casanova, there has been an occasional story about a woman who just wouldn't take no for an answer, or who sleeping with was just an all-around bad idea. His girlfriend's mother, for example.
  • Daniel in Stargate SG-1. Two episodes after his wife is kidnapped by the Goa'uld, he gets lucky with an alien high-priest's daughter when they accidentally revert to a neanderthal state. After that, he gets jumped by Hathor, Shyla, and Linea, mind-raped by Sarah/Osiris and is propositioned repeatedly by Vala (who he eventually obliges during the series finale... which is then erased by intentional time screwiness). And of course, he often doesn't get much of a say in the matter...
  • The Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who. Technically, several previous incarnations have had shades of this, but due to the Moral Guardians it was usually too subtle to really qualify. Mata Hari, Queen Nefertiti, Marilyn Monroe, and in his tenth incarnation, Queen Elizabeth I and Madame de Pompadour are some of his most recognizable entanglements. And as far as companions go, Rose Tyler and Martha Jones made it unambiguously clear they'd jump the Doctor's bones at the slightest provocation (making the cloned Doctor Rose ends up with a pretty lucky fella), and Amy Pond actually tries to get the Eleventh Doctor to sleep with her — the day before her marriage!
  • After saving Tyrion's life in Game of Thrones Podrick is rewarded with three extremely gifted prostitutes. When he returns he also returns Tyrion's money, it turns out the girls were so impressed they did it for free. Tyrion tries to figure it out, but quickly becomes flabbergasted, reaches for the wine, and proceeds to get Podrick plastered so he would share details.
  • Million Yen Women: Six months after having been invited into his house by a mysterious, four of the five women start making advances to Shin. Shin is generally receptive, but quite awkward and hesitant about it. Things tend to stop short of actual sex, however.
  • Octavia in Rome. The list of people that her mother makes her have sex with is slightly longer than the list of people that she actually goes to bed with because she likes them. She also beds her brother because her lover at the time goads her into doing so.

    Myths & Religion 
  • According to the Kabbalah, King David was seduced by a succubus in order to give birth to Asmodeus, who eventually becomes the King of Hell.
  • By many interpretations of the The Qur'an, Jinns are forbidden from marrying or mating with humanity. That hasn't stopped many of them from seducing humans anyway.
  • Classical Mythology:
    • Hercules, even moreso than his comic book interpretation above. During his Twelve Labors, he slept with King Thespius's daughters (all fifty of them). Some accounts state this was one of his labors, other accounts say that this was the only way to secure the King's assistance (because the King wanted grandchildren) and some accounts say that the reward for his deeds was... doing the deed. (Thespius certainly got what he wanted; all fifty of the daughters conceived a child as a result.) Another has Hercules and Theseus visit the Amazons. The queen, wishing to enjoy Theseus' company for a few days, refuses to let them leave before Hercules gets fifty Amazons pregnant. You can guess how long that lasted.
    • Odysseus, during his quest to return home from the Trojan War. He gets shipwrecked twice and is forced to become the love slave of both Circe and Calypso respectively. This is treated relatively seriously; though Odysseus could only admit that both of his lovers were more attractive than his wife Penelope, the only thing he really wanted was to return to his One True Love.
  • Norse Mythology has Freyja. Ironically, she is a Love Goddess and was well known for Really Getting Around, but there is one myth in which she went to buy a necklace from four dwarves, and you can guess what price they demanded. Let's put it this way: everybody got what they wanted those four nights.

    Video Games 
  • Fable:
    • You, if you have trouble keeping it in your pants. So long as you're amicable and nice (and sometimes, even if you're not), you're guaranteed to have at least one NPC eager to roll in the hay with you even if you weren't really trying.
    • In Fable II eligible citizens will eventually fall for a famous hero simply by virtue of said hero's reputation. A particularly heroic player character will easily capture the hearts of pretty much everyone attracted to his or her gender. It eventually becomes normal to be propositioned when you're just passing through a town or village. Even an outright evil PC will still get random advances from people who are into evil bastards.
  • Dragon Age: Origins:
    • Alistair starts as a virgin and is rather clueless in regards to women, but during the course of one playthrough, you can help him bed the pirate queen Isabela, Queen Anora, his hated rival Morrigan, and yourself, provided that you "harden" him (EMOTIONALLY) first.
    • The Warden can wind up this way themselves, as several romances can be initiated simply by being friendly.
  • A Dance with Rogues, a fanmade Neverwinter Nights module, has the Princess Protagonist who can be this or The Pornomancer. Depending on how you play her.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Double Homework, the girls in the protagonist's summer school class throw themselves at him, practically offering him sex. Nor does an official relationship stop them - he can still have sex with all his classmates even if he chooses to be in a “committed” relationship with Lauren. This is somewhat justified, though, as the entire classroom situation is set up so that the protagonist will be in a prime position to sleep with with all the girls in his class.

    Web Comics 
  • Troy of Big Break (2019) apparently is able extract powerful pheromones from his body, causing any woman who sees him to instantly want to have sex with him. Doesn't help that he also has a Gag Penis and is oddly proficient in pleasuring women. However, being a Nice Guy, he refuses to take any sinister advantage of that ability.
  • Gary of Ménage à 3, except he doesn't always get as far as full sex, after starting out as an Unlucky Everydude. Along with his dorky and passive charm, it turns out he's got a talent for cunnilingus, which makes every woman (and some men) willing to try any dirty trick to get him. Amber even blindfolded him to make him think he was kissing someone else while he went down on her. Thus far, he has been utterly incapable of saying the word "No" and sticking with it. Only comedy, and the occasional collision between multiple women, sometimes literally at the door to his bedroom, have kept him from actual sex with most of these pursuers.
  • In Girly, there was an antagonist only known as Chupacabra, who women are extremely attracted to, it becomes a plot point to stop him. Later becomes a regular cast member known as Chuy who, for most of the series, tries to avoid women at all cost. Apparently an inherited trait from his father. Chuy is almost a literal pornomancer, as these things happen by accident and he cannot turn it off. This ability even rubs off on his eventual wife, Autumn.
  • Ivan the Apprentice of Oglaf is a Technical Virgin who by his own description is often "having sex things done to me" rather than instigating them himself. The few times he actually tries to pursue sexual activity, the object of his desire is planning to cruelly trick him instead.


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