Geeky Turn-On

Grace: Wood doesn't actually burn.
Joan: That's insane.
Grace: What burns is the gas released when the wood gets hot. Therefore, the reaction would have to be gasification through oxidation reduction, then combustion.
Luke: It is so hot that you know that.

— Joan of Arcadia

Welcome, viewers, to Nerd Hunter.

Geeks and nerds are odd creatures; their eyes always reflect the pale glow of computer monitors, and their social hierarchy and organizations have puzzled anthropologists for decades.

Today we will examine one particular peculiar oddity; when choosing a mate, the wild Nerd and Geek are not as impressed with physical features, but with spectacular displays of intelligence and geeky knowledge in potential mates. Unlike in the wild, when Hollywood casts non-geeks in the role of potential mates, said potential mates will be at worst Hollywood Homely; in written fiction, they are likely Beautiful All Along.

Those impressed with such displays will reciprocate with their own call of "That's so hot," or "That's such a turn on," or "Marry me."

This reaction is achieved even if said displays are actually threats of pain, insults, technological or other, stranger things that that particular subspecies values. In the end, we may never know the full mysteries behind these magnificent beasts.

When the mating process is successful, some rigorous fluid mechanics ensues in order to grace their species with a new soul.

Inverted Trope to Aroused by Idiocy.

Compare Nerdgasm. Seeing one another's Nerd Hoard can easily cause one of these.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Asteroid in Love:
  • Mira. From the kidroduction and her recollection of the event as she drafts her Shiny Star Challenge entrance essay, it is clear that Ao gave her a very deep impression since Ao knew a lot about astronomy and is passionate about the field—or, in short, Ao was (and still is) an astronomy geek. Given Mira's feelings to her were at one point romantic since she mistook Ao for a boy, this indicates this trope is in operation. Unlike most other examples, however, she is a ditzy Genki Girl.
  • Moe. While she is generally a lesbian Lovable Sex Maniac, there're two girls she's rather partial about: she has a crush on Misa, and has a barely-controlled lust for the aforementioned Ao—the latter two of which also being the geekiest of the cast.
• In Black Lagoon, Greenback Jane is massively aroused by watching Benny break a tricky encryption. The fact that breaking the encryption resulted in her getting a lot of money probably didn't hurt either. Soon they become a sort-of Official Couple.
• Battle Programmer Shirase gives us a female Programmer who tells the main character that seeing the way he coded "Made me a little wet..."
• In Daily Lives of High School Boys, the Literature Girl hijinks towards Hidenori started by her projecting the image of "the boy" to him. "The boy" in her stories was a solitary, introverted otaku— the problem is, Hidenori is not.
• Full Metal Panic!:
  • Sousuke tends to get very happy and enthusiastic whenever he engages in conversation with anyone who's as enthusiastic about Humongous Mecha and battle tactics as he is. The fastest way to gain friendship with him is to be able to speak on equal terms as him.
  • On the other hand, Nami is definitely shown to be this way with him. When he first surprises her and starts talking Arm Slave jargon, her overwhelmed reaction equates to "What a man."
  • Kaname is first introduced complaining that her blind date wasn't interested in talking about Zhuge Liang or the Middle-Eastern geopolitical conflict. And her Final Temptation shows that her idea of a "perfect" Sousuke is a computer/engineering nerd.
• In Kaguya-sama: Love Is War Kaguya ends up getting a necklace from Shirogane as a birthday present after they start dating and absolutely loves it due to convoluted symbolism involving plugging its length into the formula for a pendulum's period. Both Hayasaka and Kashiwagi fail to grasp how something that needlessly complex could be romantic.
• Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove it: Part of Himuro's initial evidence for why she's in love with Yukimura is being "captivated by the sight of him thinking", and both of them are attracted by the other demonstrating their scientific expertise.
• The first Tiger & Bunny Drama CD shows that, back in high school, Kotetsu Kaburagi and Tomoe Amamiya (the future Mrs. Kaburagi) were rather antagonistic towards each other... until she saw him trying to come up with a superhero name for himself.
  Tomoe: Huh!? You're going to try to become a superhero?
  Kotetsu: Go ahead and laugh if you want.
  Tomoe: Oh my God, that's awesome.

Comic Books

• Yorick being attracted to girls with obscure interests is a bit of a Running Gag in Y: The Last Man. A shining example is when he, upon learning that a woman named her boat after the ship in Sirens of Titan, instantly proposed to her. Yorick's sister Hero lampshades this when Beth (not that Beth, the other one) starts rattling off side notes about the Swiss Guards that kidnapped them both in the name of the Catholic Church.
  Hero: Yup, you're definitely the sort of chick my brother would bone.
• Spider-Man:
  • This is actually sort of how Peter and Kitty in Ultimate Spider-Man started going out. Or at least, it's how they flirt.
    Kitty: 'Well, Indiana Jones, you certainly haven't forgotten how to show a lady a good time.'
    Peter: 'Yeah, you're somethin'.'
    Kitty: ...
    Peter: You're supposed to say: 'I'm something all right until I get my five thousand dollars back you're getting more than you bargained for'' No' Nothing'
    Kitty: Wow, you out-geeked me there.
    Peter: Well, I'm sure it won't be the last time.
  • The Ultimate version of Mary-Jane Watson. Which, considering her mainstream counterpart is a cheery, party-girl/glamour model, is a bit of a surprise, and of course, she's a redhead.
  • Mainstream MJ presents us with something of a one-sided variant. While there's no character A says x geeky thing and character B says y geeky thing, it's was pretty clear that during their marriage to each other, MJ considered Peter's science talks a turn on. Y'know, until...
• This trope explains about 50% of the interaction between Oracle and Blue Beetle in Birds of Prey. At least from Ted's side, anyway.
• In Watchmen, Silk Spectre is turned on by the Nite Owl when he goes in-depth about his ship, his costume, and his gadgets. Presumably, she had the same thing going for Dr. Manhattan when they were together.
• Done in Jason X Special. Where after two lovers stumble upon a crater left by what seemed like a meteorite, the woman says "science makes me horny." The two promptly begin having sex right there as the guy starts spouting out scientific equations. Very weird, but they are both VR simulations.
• Tank Vixens: Let's just say that after a discussion on socio-economic infrastructures with Sonya, Firen stops fooling herself into thinking she's the only straight one in the battalion.
• In the Star Trek (IDW) comics, it's shown that while Spock already enjoyed Uhura's company and appreciated her intelligence, it wasn't until she beat him in a game of 3-D chess that he realized he'd fallen in love with her.
• Given a twist in Phil Foglio's XXXenophile: in the story "Hold That Thought", a pretty young female scientist (who looks suspiciously like a certain girl genius), overly absorbed in her work, is exposed to a "semi-virus" that essentially crosswires her sexual drives with her higher cortex functions, ie she literally gets turned on by her intellectual work, and more direct stimulation helps her solve complex problems. Hilarity Ensues.
• A slight variant happens in an issue of Ms. Marvel (2014) when Aamir ropes Kamala into acting as a chaperone for an interaction with a girl he's interested in which is totally not a date.
  Kamala: What's wrong with their eyes? They're all...purple.
  Tyesha: "The Spice is life."
  Kamala: Did you just make a Dune reference?
  Tyesha: Maybe.
  Kamala: Please marry my brother.
  • Another issue has her fall head over heels for a guy in part because he loves the same video games she does, and appears to be a Nice Guy.

Fan Works

• In Lasting Fame, hearing Minx talk about technology does this to Techrat.
• Us and Them: Sephiroth gets very turned on when Aeris does something devious. As Aeris is explaining how she infiltrated the dreams of a woman who'd been writing erotic fiction based on them, he is about ready to pounce on her.
  Aeris: Honestly, the sexiest lingerie I could possibly wear doesn't compare to when I do something devious, does it?
• The scene in Supergirl (2015) fic Future Shock where Cat and Kara are laying out a business plan, and they have to keep stopping because Kara is so turned on by Cat's intelligence it keeps degenerating into a make out session.
• Instinctive Logic reveals that intellectual debate is foreplay on Vulcan. Spock is rather uneasy when Bones reminds him of this, as he just heard Jayme Kirk passionately deconstructing the Kobayashi Maru simulation, demonstrating superior intelligence and logic, and Spock was rather fascinated by her arguments.
• Hilariously exploited in Knock His Socks Off, where after Marinette finds out Adrien is an anime fan, she dresses up in a skirt and black cat-themed thigh-high socks. The sight of her dressed like an anime schoolgirl causes Adrien to have a Nosebleed.
• Guys Being Dudes: Arlo ends up using "I love you so much" as a catchphrase whenever Spark does something that fits his particular brand of geekdom, like addressing him as "dark lord" or making a Falling in Reverse reference.
• In the Miraculous Ladybug fic the challenge which must not be named Adrien blissfully describes his fiancee as a "gaming goddess" when he sees her playing Ultimate Mecha Strike while wearing his shirt.

Film — Live-Action

• One of the factors in Doc Brown falling in love with Clara in Back to the Future Part III is a shared interest in the works of Jules Verne, the prototype for Science Fiction as we know it.
• One of the reasons Denys fell so hard for Karen Blixen in Out of Africa was her ability to tell stories... really, really good stories.
• Mikaela in the Transformers Film Series manages to make both Sam and Leo fall for her with her detailed knowledge of cars and engineering. But then, that pales in comparison to her other assets.
• In 17 Again (2009), two characters fall madly in love with each other when they discover that the other speaks Elvish. Cue the following exchange:
  "You can plunder my dungeon any day."
  "I'll bring the longbow."
• Commander Galloway in A Few Good Men is very thorough and very book-smart. She also rants.
  Galloway: If this case is handled in the same fast-food, slick-ass, Persian Bazaar manner with which you seem to handle everything else, then something's gonna get missed. And I wouldn't be doing my job if I allowed Dawson and Downey to spend any more time in prison than absolutely necessary because their attorney had predetermined the path of least resistance.
  Kaffee: Wow. I'm sexually aroused, Commander.
• In Mozart and the Whale Isabel is turned on by Donald's math abilities.
• In The Sorcerer's Apprentice, near the end Dave tries to let Becky off so she doesn't end up in danger, explaining to her about the evil sorceress trying to destroy the world, and Becky (who has no magical powers) says that she wants to help and insists on going with him. He responds: "You're sexy."
• In the third Halloweentown movie, Dylan and Natalie bond over their AP classes. His glasses fog up when she gets a high score on his favorite arcade game.
  • In the fourth movie, he is interested in Scarlet Sinister not just for her looks, but also because she speaks Latin the first time he meets her.
• Cube 2: Hypercube. When Julia tells the nerdy game developer Max that she knows about the computer company Cyberthrill, he excitedly asks her if she's into computer games. It's actually just a subsidiary of the MegaCorp she works for.
• Cloverfield has Hud going nuts when Marlena mentions Superman. The viral marketing and fake Myspace profile for him confirms that he's a massive geek.
  "You know who Superman is!?"
  • Subverted and lampshaded when Marlena points out that Superman is... well, Superman.
    "Oh, my God. You know who Superman is? I'm, like, feeling something. Are you aware of the existence of Garfield?
• Implied in Spider-Man: Far From Home, where Peter plans to impress MJ with a black dahlia necklace since he knows about her interest in true crime, and he lists her intelligence as one of the things about her that attracts him.

Folklore

• Older Than Feudalism: Little actual historical information is known of legendary Chinese strategist Zhuge Liang's wife Huang, but popular folktales characterize her as a plain-to-unattractive woman who was extremely gifted in astronomy, strategy, and geography. According to a record written around 429 CE, Zhuge Liang asked for Lady Huang's hand in marriage specifically upon hearing of her great intelligence, and he was particularly impressed by her numerous mechanical inventions. (A different version of the story claims that Huang was actually quite beautiful but spread rumors of her own ugliness as a Secret Test of Character for potential suitors. Zhuge Liang was the one who passed. This can still be considered a Geeky Turn-On since in nearly all tellings of the story, both fall in love when they realize they've met their equal in cleverness.)
• Many Impossible Task stories, such as the variations on the "peasant girl saves her father from the whims of a capricious king by answering his bizarre riddles; he's so impressed that he marries her" theme. In some versions it even saves the marriage — the king has a case brought before him about the ownership of a colt (or whatever) and absent-mindedly rules that the man who owned the wagon the colt was born under owns the colt, rather than the man who owns the mare. His wife hears about this and advises the rightful owner to set up a fishnet in the middle of the road when the king rides by, and when asked for an explanation, to say, "It's as easy to catch fish in the middle of the road as it is for a wagon to give birth to a colt." The king gets the message, but is annoyed at being shown up and divorces her — she can take anything she wants from the palace, but she has to be gone by morning. He wakes up to find himself being trundled down the road in a wheelbarrow; he said she could have anything she wanted, and all she wanted was him. D'awww.
• In Irish Mythology, Cu Chulainn and Emer's first meeting was essentially two intelligent supermodels having a conversation so full of riddles that nobody else could understand them. In modern times, not even the audience can figure it out right off the bat.

Literature

• 2666: Liz Norton’s debating skills are what got Pelletier and Espinoza interested in her.
• Early on in Jim Butcher's White Night, Murphy quotes Monty Python and the Holy Grail at Harry. He responds with the second half of the quote, and then:
  Harry: And you're really turning me on with the Monty Python reference, Murph.
• Admiral Alexander didn't realize his feelings for Honor Harrington until she embarked on a passionate defense of new weapons systems proposed by her on a board headed by his archrival.
• The title character of The English Patient realizes his attraction to Katharine Clifton when she reads aloud from Herodotus' Histories. The story she reads probably doesn't hurt.
• If any readers had the slightest doubt whether or not Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane were made for each other, it was dispelled the minute they started quoting the classics at each other; the only person who didn't catch on immediately was Harriet.
• In The Silmarillion, Fëanor's wife Nerdanel^note That her name contains the word "nerd" seems to be a happy coincidence. Considered 'not the fairest among her people', the Noldor widely wondered what the canonically gorgeous king's son and prodigious polymath wanted with her, but Nerdanel became widely renowned for her wisdom, being the only one who could 'restrain Fëanor' in the beginning. She also was a skilled sculptress, whose more abstract works escaped comprehension. Both of these things perhaps comprise an acceptable example of elven geekdom.
• The title character Doctor Sally by P. G. Wodehouse starts to take an interest in Bill when she finds out he's not just an Idle Rich layabout, but she really warms up to him when she finds out he can recite all the common bacteria found in milk.
• According to comic-esque novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexei, the main character's new nerdy friend gets metaphorical boners from books.
• Scherarzade in Arabian Nights won the heart of a psychopathic tyrant-and cured him of his psychopathy-by telling hundreds of stories while making love.
• I Am Not a Serial Killer: Marci proving to be more than a match for John in criminology is the first sign that she's more than a casual Satellite Love Interest. She points out an angle for a psych profile that even he hadn't considered....then asks why he's staring at her. John picks up his jaw in time to call her brilliant.
• In one Dying Earth story, Guyal of Sfere seeks out the long-lost Museum of Mankind. Facing unknown danger with a young woman he's just met, he emphatically declares his craving for knowledge. Her reply: "Guyal of Sfere, I am yours, I melt for you..."
• In Little Women, Louisa May Alcott commits a Writer Revolt in magnificent fashion. Heroine Jo March winds up married to her best friend and beta-reader, with whom she bonds when he starts editing her stories for her, and it is adorable.
• Queen Ehlana, from The Tamuli series, has just assisted a fellow ruler with a self-coup. In the aftermath, someone requests that Xanetia read Ehlana's current thoughts to prove that she can read minds.
  Xanetia: She hath, as well, certain designs of an intimate nature upon her husband, for political activity doth ever stir that side of her personality.
• In Heart of Steel, Alistair's initial interest in Julia is due to his own loneliness and her beauty, but he falls even harder for her when he discovers she is well-versed in medicine (and rants at him about how her leg transplant should be impossible based on what she knows).
• The first time Prudence and Scobie meet in Don't Call Me Ishmael!, she is impressed by his debating. He is reduced to Gibberish of Love when she compliments him on it and they later get together.
  Prue: You were just brilliant... and trust me, I know brilliant.
• Journey to Chaos:
  • When Annala is enchanted to seduce her fellow nerd, her tactics are the minutes of the Mana Mutation Summit and a discussion of them from various religious, social and political perspectives. Eric is quickly won over.
  • The Dnnac Ledo public library has a "private reading room" that is implied to be reserved for bookworms who get aroused by their studies.
• During the reception for the Newton astronauts in Rama II, Nicole and Richard bond over Richard waxing on the matching plan of the gala conference room to the Rama spaceship, and on discussing dolphin (and extraterrestrial) intelligence.
• Badass Bookworm Isabella of A Memoir by Lady Trent married Jacob partially because he was also a nerd with a large library, who was supportive of her scientific pursuits. Later, she's attracted to Suhail for similar reasons, as he is to her.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In "The Singularity", Fitz compares his relationship with Simmons to "the singularity in trans-humanism." Simmons is initially confused but as Fitz explains, she follows his reasoning and finds the description both apt and romantic.
  Simmons: Just to be clear, are you comparing us sleeping together to crossing the event horizon?
  Fitz: Yeah.
  Simmons: It's quite lovely when you think about it like that. And also terrifying.
  Fitz: Yeah, exactly. So we should stop thinking altogether...
  Simmons: And just do.
• On Angel:
  • Wesley responds to Fred's description of a demon's life cycle ("A Hole in the World") with "Are you trying to turn me on?"
  • Cordelia's taste in men is wide-ranging. She's been turned on by financial analysis, Xander's goofy wit, and pretty much everything Wesley said before their disastrous first kiss. The financial analysis bit is a particularly noticeable version of this trope.
    David: Oh. That's easy. You could look into seller financing, take over the owner's payments and skip the bank completely, or you could make a play for a preservation grant. Offer to restore the original décor and get the city and the feds to give you a tax break and a loan at a sweetheart rate. Or you could apply for an FHA and get a PMI in lieu of a down payment.
    [everyone stares]
    Cordelia: Is anybody else getting warm? Do that 'tax breaks,' FHA and PMI part again.
  • Fred. You have no idea. (Probably too many to list.)
    Fred: My family used to go to The Nutcracker every Christmas, and I had my first sexual dream about the Mouse King!
• Surprisingly enough, generally averted on The Big Bang Theory. Whenever Penny expresses interest or familiarity with any of the guys' geeky habits it's generally considered a surprise but nothing so great that it changes how they see her. The fact she hangs out with them at all is considered enough of an appeal. In one episode she was trying to sort of "lay claim" to them when a new, attractive tenant was shamelessly flirting and manipulating them; her sudden interest in Battlestar Galactica was seen as odd, not hot. That said, when she and Leonard had finally gotten together she made a Star Wars reference (complete with listing the proper character and movie) that got Leonard really excited, and it's implied that while the guys were away between Seasons 2 and 3, she went to see a Star Trek movie by herself.
  • In "The Psychic Vortex", Raj can only convince Sheldon to be his wingman at a university mixer by giving him a Lantern, which Sheldon insists on taking. It attracts two girls, one of whom is mildly interested, and her friend who is clearly head over heels for Sheldon because of it.
  • Amy's "experiment" to make Sheldon more attracted to her included "playing doctor, Star Trek style".
  • The A plot of "The Holographic Excitation" can basically be described as 'Leonard explains sciencey stuff and Penny jumps his bones for it.'
  • "The Egg Salad Equivalency" ends with Penny revealing she bought a pair of nerd glasses in order to invoke this. Leonard's skeptical at first...and then she puts them on.
    Penny: Molecules.
    Leonard: Oh my god you look so smart and hot!
    He then leads her off to his room so he can "take off everything except those glasses...and maybe the boots."
  • In a more serious and sweet example, Penny undergoes this when she sees Leonard at work. After realizing she doesn't spend as much time with him, she proceeds to observe him at work. She is awestruck by just how confident and comfortable he is teaching her whenever he is in his field and she finds this attractive.
  • At Sheldon and Amy's wedding, Stuart's date, Denise (who originally went with him because Mark Hamill was going to be at the wedding) becomes more attracted to Stuart as he demonstrates his extensive Star Wars knowledge.
• In Bones, after Angela has described a complicated procedure:
  Hodgins: That's so cool.
  Cam: You don't even know what that means.
  Hodgins: No, but I'm really turned on right now. I'm turned on by her brain. I'd like to see her brain totally naked.
  Sweets: That's really disturbing.
  • More recently, when Booth had to temporarily wear glasses when he was having problems with his vision, he was worried about aging but Brennan thought they looked sexy on him. When his vision began to clear, Brennan was actually disappointed because she wanted to see him wearing his glasses in bed. Booth promised Brennan that he would keep the glasses for just such an occasion.
• This is a consistent source of amusement in Brooklyn Nine-Nine with the relationship between Jake and super nerd Amy. She sounds legitimately turned on when Jake tells her that he needs her to get super high-strung and make a travel itinerary to get them from the middle of nowhere in Texas to the main Precinct in New York before ten in the morning next day. She’s also turned on by Jake offering to quiz her and Jake dresses up as Melvin Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System. Jake takes her to a barrel museum, starts rattling off obscure facts about the barrels and the similarly named 18th century guys who made then, gets embarrassed at how incredibly boring he's being...and then a clearly aroused Amy forcefully insists that he keep going. To top it off, she prints out a copy of Jake's perfect attendance record (from his high school) to use in the bedroom.
  Jake: Keep it in your pants Santiago.
  Amy: Oh, that is exactly where this is going.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "The Gift", Anya comes up with some very helpful suggestions to win the day. Xander's worshipful comment of how hot smart girls are prompts Unlucky Childhood Friend (now gay) Willow to remark somewhat wistfully, "You couldn't have figured that out in tenth grade?"
• Call the Midwife: A large part of the attraction between Dr Patrick Turner and his wife Shelagh (an experienced nurse-midwife) is their brilliant medical minds. In episode 4x03, Shelagh sets about deducing the source of a dysentery epidemic; the look on Patrick's face when she finds it and shares her conclusions can only be described as, "You are so hot right now." It gets even more explicit a couple of episodes later, when Shelagh turns up in a nurse's uniform for the first time ever (having worn the habit^note yes, she was a nun when they fell in love, and didn't that cause a whole host of issues in her pre-marriage career) and he looks like he'd quite rather like to scoop her up and take her to bed that minute.
• Caprica: This one is a subversion since a): Zoe never liked the military and hates military technology and b): she is his top-secret military robot. Although she really did like him, she was still using him.
  Zoe: [extended explanation of how to program a computer to generate an infinite variety of trees]
  Philomon: [gazing raptly into her eyes] I work with top-secret military robots.
  Zoe: That's really hot.
  [commence making out]
• From Castle:
  • "Vampire Weekend". They're investigating the murder of a comic artist.
    Castle: He was good. His stuff reminds me of early Frank Miller.
    Beckett: Which Frank? Epic or Dark Horse?
    Castle: That is the sexiest thing I've ever heard you say.
  • And from "Suicide Squeeze":
    Castle: Did you just use the word "veritable" in a sentence?"
    Beckett: Yes.
    Castle: Sexy.
    Beckett: You should hear me say "fallacious".
• On Chuck, the title character and his girlfriend Jill turn each other on by communicating a time for a meeting through a chemistry-based code to avoid surveillance.
• Community - Abed accepts offers from both Shirley and Annie to fix him up with a date for a dance, specifically so he can play out the classic Two-Timer Date trope. As he repeatedly changes costumes in the coat room, Rachel the attendant quickly catches on and joins in helping him out. Abed is so caught up in playing, though, that he nearly misses noticing the growing attraction between them.
• Criminal Minds: The hacker battle between Garcia and Kevin^note who is played by Xander, as can be seen here. (Note that this is before they'd ever met face-to-face.)
  Garcia: Oh, you seriously not trying to backhack me!
• Doctor Who: Rose to the Doctor in "Doomsday":
  "I love it when you talk technical."
  • In "The Impossible Astronaut", The Doctor playfully (accurately?) accuses River Song of this:
  The Doctor: Doctor Song, you've got that face on again.
  River: What face?
  The Doctor: The "He's hot when he's clever" face.
  River: This is my normal face.
  The Doctor: Yes it is.
  River: Oh, shut up.
  The Doctor: Not a chance.
• In Dollhouse, both Topher and Bennett end up essentially Squeeing over each other's technological knowledge and aptitude. Not to mention both Tophers' reaction to her wearing glasses on a chain.
• Eureka:
  • Fargo and Holly. Of course, when you have a character portrayed by Felicia Day, you gotta figure it's going to be on the horizon. It's kind of a common situation, given the setting.
  • Subverted once when Zane made a basic Doctor Who reference and Lupo didn't understand it. He was very disappointed.
• Firefly:
  • There's a rather endearing example in "Shindig". The resident Wrench Wench, Kaylee, accompanies Mal to a grand ball. She is snubbed for her store-bought dress by the resident Alpha Bitch, when an elderly gentleman cuts said Alpha Bitch down by commenting on her loose corset. Kaylee, grateful, starts a conversation with him. A few minutes later, she's surrounded by several more gentlemen engrossed in her highly technical talk of spaceship frames and engines. When one of them tries to ask her to dance, the rest shush him so Kaylee can keep talking.
  • For that matter, Kaylee's arrival on Serenity was the result of another geeky mating call: Kaylee turned up to enjoy some nookie with the previous engineer, but it turned out that she was just sleeping with him because the engine, er, got her engine running, and when it came out that she knew how to fix it and he didn't, he was fired and she was hired.
  • Simon agrees, sort of, in "Jaynestown", saying that Kaylee is especially pretty when covered in engine grease.
  • Zoe is clearly turned on in the pilot by Wash's awesome flying.
  • While prostitution and brothels are widespread throughout the Verse, Companions are highly-educated, cultured, artistic and intelligent women of high status in society (in fact, aside for perhaps Simon and River, Inara is probably of a higher social class than the entire rest of the crew) who are often valued by their clients more for these reasons than for just their appearance and for the sex.
  • Mal's evening with Nandi in "Heart of Gold" starts with a display of her collection of antique weaponry.
• Subverted in For All Mankind when a female astronaut and a male NASA employee start discussing their mutual interest in movies and are promptly told to stop flirting with each other. It's only later that we discover they're both gay. However because they hang out with each other due to their mutual interests, everyone assumes they're an item and they end up getting married just to maintain the façade.
• Pretty much every attraction in Fringe has this at some point. Peter's reaction to Olivia's ability to count cards, to Astrid's and Olivia's communing on coded messages and many a female viewer's reaction to Peter.
• Holby City: While it's not the primary factor in their romance, consultant surgeons Berenice "Bernie" Wolfe and Serena Campbell quite obviously find each other's skill in the operating theatre (and medical competence in general) extremely attractive (Bernie is a brilliant ex-Army trauma surgeon, Serena an equally brilliant vascular surgeon). It's hard to flirt when you're wrist-deep in some unfortunate person's cracked-open chest, but with Bernie and Serena, the chemistry just crackles every time they lock eyes over the operating table.
• In How I Met Your Mother Ted considers a woman being a Star Wars fan a big turn-on. When he and Barney are hitting on a pair of girls together, and one of them compares the blizzard outside to the planet Hoth, Ted tells Barney, "Dibs."
  • A later episode reveals Barney feels the same way when he and Robin have sex while Robin's wearing the stormtrooper armor visible in his apartment for the whole series.
  • Another episode has Ted having trouble finding a connection with a younger girl until her phone goes off with R2-D2 noises. Then she says she only saw the prequel trilogy. You can practically hear his teeth grinding for a moment before he goes "Close enough!"
• In the iCarly episode "iSaved Your Life", Carly tells Freddie that his computer talk is geeky and cute at the same time, leading to her coining the combination word 'cukey'.
• In Kingdom (2007), because lawyers are professional geeks. Lyle and his girlfriend Emily in the final episode of the third series:
  Emily: Anything exciting?
  Lyle: (standing up, slightly husky) Strict liability negligence polluted river case. No win, no fee.
  Emily: God, I love it when you talk dirty.
  Lyle and Emily: Commence snogging
• The titular Madam Secretary, Elizabeth McCord, finds her husband Henry's intelligence (he has a doctorate in theology) very sexy. Almost as sexy as she finds his morals.
• In The Middleman, Wendy Watson and her boyfriend find an ultra-rare, frequently banned video game, Gut Wrencher 1, which is described as "the goriest side-scroller in history, banned in 17 countries, the only video game to be denounced by both Tipper Gore and the Dalai Lama". Wendy is especially excited because they are playing the arcade version (of which they only made 150 before it went set-top), which has "4 levels of sheer carnage" which the set-top version did not have. When they beat the 86th level of Blood Lust Catamite (though it took 18 dollars in quarters and Wendy's use of the Scud Missile), they finally resolve their up to this point UST.
• Modern Family: In one episode, Alex let slip that she has a fantasy about being kissed in the science museum.
• NCIS: This happens every now and then when McGee Technobabbles something or other, be it hacking, codes, or cracking something with super geek powers. Abby makes a comment along the lines of, "And it's completely getting me hot"/"Sometime I think I love you". Abby is a master manipulator of this trope too.
  Abby: (to Gibbs, who has just walked in) McGee is rewiring my hotbox.
  McGee: That’s er, er, a nickname for a bundle of receptors in the firewall. That regulates the flow of energy throughout the system. See when stimulated correctly it sends waves and waves of rhythmic pulses (Gibbs can't even look at McGee at this point) waves, waves that, er, that hypercrank the, er, transfer speed, er, that digitised infor- Abby?
• NCIS: Los Angeles: Kensi did like it when Deeks used his detective skills and attention to detail to figure out what happened at a crime scene.
  Deeks: (noticing Kensi is standing behind him grinning) Oh, yeah? You like that, don't you?
  Kensi: (stepping closer) I do. I do love when you talk detective.
  Deeks: Well, I can talk detective to you all night long.
  Kensi: I know you can.
  Deeks: (as Kensi starts to run her hands across his jacket) I can talk search warrants...chain of custody...
  Kensi: (slightly husky) Mm-hmm...
• NUMB3RS: Charlie is trying to break a code for one of his FBI cases, but he's only gotten halfway. Amita looks it over and tells him the solution to the second half. Charlie just stares at her for a moment before blurting out, "Do you want to go out sometime?"
• On one episode of Parks and Recreation, Official Couple Ben and Leslie are overheard role-playing as political figures.
  Leslie: Oh, President Reagan, my blazer popped open.
  Ben: Well, Maggie Thatcher, our countries have always had a... special relationship. Let's see if I can't do something about that for you.
• Peep Show: "She knows about cubits, she's uncomfortable in her own skin — she's one of me!"
• In Person of Interest, Harold Finch notices Grace Hendricks and thinks she's attractive but only gets seriously interested after he checks her out online and finds out she's an "ardent lover of Charles Dickens." Conversely, Grace lights up when he starts talking passionately about the artistry of Giorgio de Chirico.
  • Finch has also shown evidence throughout the series of tending to be attracted to smart, literate women.
• Not stereotypically geeky, but in Pushing Daisies, Alfredo Aldarisio becomes intensely attracted to Olive when she asks if he's ever felt like all the oxygen left the room. She's talking metaphorically, but he has a phobia of the Earth literally losing all its atmosphere and everyone floating into space and feels that she's a kindred spirit.
• In Psych, a Running Gag is that Gus attempts to invoke this with his frequent chat-up line alluding to Pluto being downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet: "You hear about Pluto? That's messed up, right?"
• The guests on QI sometimes exhibit this, given the nature of the show.
  • One memorable episode featured Rory McGrath continually impressing with his knowledge of things like periodic table numbers and Latin animal names, to Stephen's increased pleasure.
    Jimmy Carr: Rory I believe you've pulled.
    Stephen Fry: (Coyly) All it takes is a keen mind.
• Quark. Ficus is unaffected by the Lotus-Eater Machine in "Goodbye Polumbus", until he sees a beautiful woman in Nerd Glasses with whom he can discuss E = MC Hammer. She gets extremely turned on by this, taking off her glasses and letting down her hair until she's on the verge of a Nerdgasm. Cut to her lying next to Fiscus puffing on a cigarette, and he hasn't even got to calculus.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Sabrina's aunt Zelda Spellman often falls for guys who share her interest in science. One of the earliest examples is in the episode "The true adventures of Rudy Kazootie" where Zelda gets attracted to Sabrina's biology teacher, Mr. Pool, and vice versa, when talking about some science thing I can't even pronounce^note polyvinyl chloride.
• There was a Saturday Night Live sketch with a phone sex line for nerds. There was a Star Trek girl, a Star Wars girl, a Lord of the Rings girl and a Doctor Who girl (among others), all of them knowledgeable on their topic.
• On Seinfeld, when George hires a secretary, Jerry assumes he's going to hire some hot woman to stare at all day, but George says if he does that, he'll be too busy staring to get any work done, so he's going for pure competence. After turning down multiple attractive women, he hires a dour-looking woman who turns out to be so competent that it turns him on anyway and he ends up sleeping with her.
• Sherlock's deductions in Sherlock have this effect on Watson, in a non-sexual way (probably), but then there was his encounter with Irene Adler.
  Sherlock: Please don't tell me that was remarkable or amazing. John's already expressed that thought in every way imaginable.
  Irene: I would have you right here until you begged for mercy... twice.
• Shtisel: Yosa'le, who's a Friend to Bugs, only becomes more attracted to Shira Levi when he learns she works in a lab with fruit flies.
• Sports Night has Jeremy and Natalie. "Say some computer things. Right now." Subverted in one scene, where Natalie gets hot and bothered over Jeremy's Techno Babble until she gets mad that he obliviously keeps rambling instead of playing "phone sex" with her.
  • In Season 2, when Jeremy and Natalie have broken up, Jeremy is over at a bar one night, and becomes attracted to a woman named Jenny because she corrects him about the parallelogram he's trying to make, and she's turned on by the fact he works at "Sports Night". Subverted again when it actually doesn't go anywhere (though nothing to do with the geeky turn-on; he finds out she's a porn star).
• Stargate Atlantis: Dr. Weir distracts a scientist by talking about World of Warcraft. Incompetently.
• Star Trek: Kirk falls for Edith Keeler ("City on the Edge of Forever") not when he sees how pretty she is (and this is Joan Collins, after all) but when he hears her enthusiastically discussing the possibilities of space travel and atomic energy. And then Spock gets very very jealous.
• Step by Step:
  • The geeky child and his date have the geek version of Slap-Slap-Kiss: Going back and forth trying to stump each other with increasingly difficult trivia questions turns into a make-out session.
  • Another example might be JT falling for Sam because of her skills as a mechanic. Now where have I heard that before?
• Cody and Bailey from The Suite Life on Deck tend to revolt others when they coo nerdy facts to each other and Cody often comments "I love that you know that."
• In Top Gear, pretty much whenever James May talks about physics, like during the Winter Olympics where he explained gravity is pretty much a constant around the world. It gets flung right back at him when, during a challenge, he drives a group of people home from the pub and talked shop with the woman who owned the car. (She knew more about the car than he did.)
• On Veronica Mars:
  • Mac and Max get into an "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" conversation about whether Mac can take down Max's term-paper-selling website. Logan picks up on the subtext and wonders if he could sell tickets for this "hot nerd-on-nerd action."
  • When Mac sees the supercomputer, she remarks "Hello, lover!"
• In The Vicar of Dibley, Hugo's proposal to Alice begins "In the words of Sigourney Weaver in Aliens..." Alice immediately begins excitedly quoting all her favourite lines, regardless of whether they make sense in context or not. (The one he was going for was "I will never leave you. That's a promise.")
• Claudia on Warehouse 13 after learning that Todd is in the witness protection program, and instead of being someone who works in a hardware store and knows nothing about computers, is actually a very, very good hacker. Next scene during their make-out session, she has him talk about computer coding in between kissing.
  • Also, in the episode Warehouse 13.1, after fighting robots off with a freaking lightsaber together with Eureka's Fargo, she says "Marry me".
  • In an earlier episode, Pete complains that Artie sees them as Redshirts, and Myka replies that he doesn't see them as Redshirts at all. Pete's reaction: "It is awesome that you knew what I meant!"
• The West Wing does this a ton:
  • Discussed by C.J. and Toby:
    Toby: You negotiated that?
    C.J.: Yeah.
    Toby: And they agreed to it?
    C.J.: You want to make out with me right now, don't you?
    Toby: Well, when don't I?
  • Or the scene where the President admits that he loves when his wife goes into Doctor mode.
  • Or "Process Stories", when Bartlet, Leo, and Bruno Gianelli all flirt with their womenfolk using data from that night's landslide election victory.
    Bartlet: I won the Dakotas. The Badlands. The Black Hills. But let's go down, way down, to the Deep South and the humid bayou of Louisiana and its nine electoral votes. What manner of man it must take to win the state. Which by the way is the only one operating under the Napoleonic Code of France, and I still don't know what that's all about, but back to me...
    Abbey: Hon, this is like, hot nerd talk?
    Bartlet: [handing her a drink] Who's your commander-in-chief?
    Abbey: [taking it] You are.
    Bartlet: And do the women like him? Oh yes … to the tune of fifty-eight percent!
  • In the second half of 20 Hours for America, Mallory (Leo's daughter) admits to Sam (with whom she has some Unresolved Sexual Tension from the first couple of seasons) that she was "weak" after hearing a speech that Sam wrote.
• The X-Files's Mulder has lots of those.
  • In "Piper Maru":
    Mulder: Looks like the fuselage of a plane.
    Scully: It's a North American P-51 Mustang.
    Mulder: I just got very turned on.
  • In "Chinga":
    Mulder: Maybe you don't know what you're looking for.
    Scully: Like evidence of conjury or the black arts, or shamanism, divination, Wicca or any kind of pagan or neopagan practices. Charms, cards, familiars, bloodstones, or hex signs or any kind of ritual tableaux associated with the occult, Santeria, voudoun, Macumba, or any high or low magic.
    Mulder: Scully?
    Scully: Yes?
    Mulder: Marry me.
  • In "War of the Coprophages":
    Scully: The very idea of intelligent alien life is not only astronomically improbable but, at its most basic level, downright anti-Darwinian.
    Mulder: Scully...what are you wearing?
  • Also, in "Kill Switch", the Lone Gunmen were turned on by Invisigoth's programming expertise much more than by her actual hotness (of which there was a-plenty).
  • In "First Person Shooter", a record reveals the suspect as a sexy young woman in Stripperiffic outfit. Byers' reaction: "Holy Toledo..." Frohike's follow-up: "...she is packing a flintlock!"
• In Wynonna Earp, while at the spa, Waverly is intrigued when Rosita compares imperfections to champagne having bubbles. This, along with other emotional problems she was having, lead to an impulsive kiss between them, which they both quickly regretted.
  Rosita: Bubbles are made from carbon dioxide rising from nucleation points. And nucleation points are these small defects in the glass that trap these tiny vibrating pockets of the carbon dioxide. So no defect, no bubbles, no magic.

Music

• The song Conventional Lover by Speck, describing a romantic date in geek terms, and no, "conventional" here does not mean "stereotypical." It means... well, if you don't know, you're probably on the wrong trope.
• At the end of one concert performance of "In A Little While", after showing footage of the space station, Bono sings "Space travel turns me on." several times.
• The song Geeks in Love by Lemon Demon is completely about this trope.
  As far as I can tell
  While other lovers go through hell
  We know we're too cool for damnnation
  We may not be cutting edge
  But we won't take your mainstream pledge
  For we don't need your admiration
• This cheerful (and NSFW) ditty about Ray Bradbury.
• "Lady Java": A cover of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance"... ABOUT JAVA.
• Ludo does this a lot. In Laundry Girl, for example, the eponymous girl tells the narrator to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• "Get Our Geek On" and "Talk Nerdy to Me" by Possible Oscar deal with such themes.
• Many a Wizard Rock song, both of the in-character and Meta-W Rock varieties.
  • Notable examples of the latter are The Whomping Willows' "Fall In Love Tonight" and Lauren Fairweather's "Painfully Obvious".
• Possibly a minor example with MC Chris' Nrrrd Grrrl.
• Brian Wilson's regrettable attempt at rapping, "Smart Girls," is all about this.
  Smart girls, talkin' 'bout smart girls
  Sexy legs with high IQs
  Smart girls, I love the smart girls
  You brainy babes with your attitudes

Professional Wrestling

• Exploited when AJ Lee was sending Kaitlyn fake messages from a secret admirer. The messages would contain Simpsons quotes and other various references to things Kaitlyn liked. Behind the scenes, this was Kaitlyn's idea herself; the script called for stock presents like chocolates and jewelry - but she suggested it be things she herself would be turned on by.
• A.J. Lee herself made good use of this when competing on NXT Season 3. She said she was representing all the nerds out there, and wore a Ninja Turtle costume for Halloween. It should be noted that NXT was fan voted.

Theater

• In Fiddler on the Roof, Fyedka first notices Chava at the bookseller's, noting - when he finally manages to talk to her - that "Not many girls in this town are into books."
• In the musical version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, it turns out that Belle and the Beast are both huge fans of fantasy books. This scene was first shown in the movie (cut but then restored), however, the musical version expands on their conversation more.
• In Steve Martin's play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, when the countess arrives and finds Einstein, she says: "Now what's that you were saying about it being impossible to distinguish motion produced by an outside gravitational force?" and Einstein says aside: "God, she's sexy!"

Newspaper Comics

• Variation: In a Dilbert comic strip, Dilbert asked out Webmistress Ming and she asked him why he would be attracted to someone who was never nice to him. He replied that "Good personalities are overrated", to which she said "You're getting me all hot over here".
  • Mordac and Ming also started dating after insulting the other's firewall and HTML skills respectively. They embrace passionately and one says, "Talk COBOL to me, baby!"
• Foxtrot:
  • There are several, with Jason, of course. After Eileen Jacobsen hits on him, he asks Peter to state the specs of a powerful computer so that he can show the same face Eileen made. Peter does. Jason gets a goofy grin and hearts float around his head.
  • In another strip, Roger catches Jason ogling a National Geographic magazine. He expresses pride that Jason is checking out topless tribal women like he used to. Gilligan Cut to Jason the next day at school showing Marcus the magazine - National Geographic's Apollo 11 issue with "moon map centerfold".
  • Another strip has Andy mentioning finding him drooling of Paige's Cosmo. He was looking at a Pentium ad.

Video Games

• Arknights: Executor's promotion record is a discussion between Rhodes Island's female engineering staff about asking him out after he helped them fix the backup systems, though unfortunately for them Executor is Oblivious to Love and brushed off the attempt.
• Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal introduces Ratchet's Girl of the Week Sasha with her telling him about her impressive spaceship, citing size, weaponry, living quarters with game system, etc. Ratchet promptly asks her to marry him (not literally, just as playful banter).
• Following exchange between our two engineers from Mass Effect 2:
  Gabby: The new armor reinforcements really threw off the gravimetric profiles. But engines are good to go. I rebalanced the Gillbourne coefficients and adjusted the anterior intakes on the second tier stabilizers.
  Ken: I love it when you talk dirty.
• In Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, Bentley admits to being sweet on Penelope after she makes a NASA reference.
• In Planescape: Torment, the reformed succubus Grace runs the 'Brothel Of Slaking Intellectual Lusts' which is exactly what it sounds like- a place where people go to have conversation, really good conversation, with the lady of their choice. (Well, not always- one of the prostitutes is mute, and her patrons pay money to just talk a lot at her, without fear of being interrupted.) Each 'prostitute' is good at a different type of conversation; for example, Yves loves to tell stories, and Dolora is a Robot Girl of great intelligence who loves debate.
• Coming Out on Top features Phil, a stoic, pragmatic US Marine, who just so happens to get incredibly turned on when the Playable Character succeeds at a pub trivia competition. If he responds to his admission with 'But was it hotter than Death Valley on July 10, 1913?' he will lose all self-control and jump them.
• A female Inquisitor romancing Cullen in Dragon Age: Inquisition can advance the relationship by joining him for a game of chess. The romance will move forward regardless of who wins, as long as the flirt dialogue options are selected; but if she actually beats him, by choosing the 'play fair' option, he seems particularly interested and wants a rematch.
  • Likewise, a female elven Inquisitor who romances Solas can gain Relationship Values very quickly by discussing things like magic, the Fade, and ancient elven history.

Visual Novels

• In Double Homework, this is the reason why Amy is Dennis’s favorite classmate:
  Dennis: She is a Twitch babe!
• In Ikemen Sengoku, this happens at least once on genius astrophysicist-turned-ninja Sasuke's route.
  Sasuke: I need additional mass to contain the supernova occurring in my heart, now that you and I are living together.
  Main Character: I guess that would be a type Ia supernova, since you and I are binary stars, huh?
  Sasuke: God, I love you so much. Kiss me.
• At its core, Steins;Gate is about a pair of nerdy virgin tsundere 2channers who fall in love as they argue over theoretical physics, prevent SERN's future dystopia, and trade meme-laden barbs.

Webcomics

• Popped up at least once in Casey and Andy: A "geek knowledge" quiz, where Casey mostly scores the big points, while Mary provides slightly blander replies. Then she gets an extremely obscure question about the The Lord of the Rings 'verse right, and Casey replies, "It's so hot that you know that."
• This is one of the chief recurring themes of xkcd.
  • In this one, the male character is beaten up by Summer Glau and thinks "I've never been so turned on in my life."
  • And again in Map Projections, in which the narrator speaks mainly in armchair psychology... save for the obscure Waterman butterfly projection, which ends with "Are you doing anything tonight?"
• Random Guy (it's his name, really) is immensely attracted to Jayden from Jayden and Crusader when Jayden is talking about Futurama in a geeky fashion on this page
• Girl Genius: A Running Gag. Sparks consider a good For Science! far more arousing than anything else in the world.
  • It seems that the best way to impress Agatha (or any Spark) is with a fully-equipped workshop. Not a euphemism.
    Violetta: Jeez, you Sparks get all into your freakish, twisted, courtship rituals...
  • Or a project they can really sink their teeth into. Again, not a euphemism.
  • Gil fell in love with Agatha before he even knew she was a Spark, simply because she was the first girl he'd ever met who was smart enough to understand what he was talking about.
  • His brain pretty much melts to a submissive, gooey sludge when Agatha wants to Strap Him to an Operating Table.
    Agatha: HA! There you are! Get on the slab - I want to get to work!
    Gil: Wow!
    Moloch: ...Spooky girl's all yours, pal.
• In Something*Positive, Tamara had an intrauterine device installed after a pregnancy scare. Her boyfriend Mike had been sort of hoping she was pregnant and got disappointed...until she pointed out she was technically a cyborg now, which perked him up a bit.
  • Something Positive also features Nerdrotica, Aubrey's phone sex business "for geeks and by geeks"
• Meta Example: Mel'arnach of Drowtales suffered several major redesigns both to her attire and her personality. With each remake, she became less insane and more dressed. In a scene that takes place before the reveal, she is shown as completely sane, fully dressed, and discussing clan politics with one of her guards. The fans were delighted.
• Dumbing of Age: Alternate Universe Amber has started screening potential boyfriends thanks to her particular Geeky Turn Ons.
  • It resurfaces after she and Danny break up, and she talks to Dorothy about it after seeing him move on without her.
  Dorothy: Would it help soothe your sorrow if I point out that he's some sort of ukulele dweeb now?
  Amber: (blushing and biting her lip) Oh, GOD no. THAT made me want to tear his clothes off right there on the sidewalk.
• In Tripping Over You, Milo's interest in Liam began during an extended conversation about time travel paradoxes.
• In Mystic Revolution, L33t_ninj4 gets turned on (more than usual) when Lourdes uses "the word pwn in a sentence".
• In Skin Horse, Nick gets turned on by girls who know about Smart Hulk, and which comics he appears in.
• The Fox Sister: Alex crushes hard on Yun Hee after finding out she's studying biology.
• In Subnormality, the geeky talk of a hot costumer makes the owner of a hobby shop literally melt.
• Schtein in String Theory (2009) falls for Delia the moment she suggests a way to improve the station's plasma fusion generator.
• When Ramona of Sticky Dilly Buns reminisces about her sexual past, it turns out that her turn-ons can get very geeky...
  Ramona: He started by whispering my yaoi pull list into my ear.
• Nathan and Anne in S.S.D.D. initially start flirting over physical attraction, but what keeps them interested in each other is their shared interest in electronics. Anne actually kisses Nathan for the first time when he properly identifies the basic resistor spectrum.

Web Original

• Analyst Bronies React: After Applejack kicks away a boulder, a picture of Maud Pie proposes to her.
• Arthéon from Noob is The Roleplayer, but is surrounded by people who tend to Play the Game, Skip the Story. He immediately falls in love when he meets a female player who shares his interest in the game's background and his dream to find a unique item and wants to marry her after finding the item in question at her side.
• Happens in this Not Always Right story: A client calls a phone sex hotline, asks the girl to call herself "Cortana"... and she turns out to be a Halo fan herself.
  • The host for a Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying group likes to thwart door-to-door salesmen by only speaking to them in Klingon. Then one responds in the same, and makes the entire sales pitch in Klingon. The host buys his product, invites him to the next D&D session, and three years later they're married.
    Comment by DTIBA: Yeah, if you could do your entire sales pitch in my fictional language of choice, I'd buy whatever you're selling, too.
• Henry and Jenny's mutual attraction is built on these in the web series We Need Girlfriends.
• Texts From Last Night has quite a few gems.
• In this Tumblr post, a complaint about the "craziness" of the English language elicits a lengthy etymology session from another user. Yet another Tumblr user reblogs the entire lesson, commenting, "I have never been so turned on in my entire life."
• Mister Cool of the Whateley Universe is a supervillain who in Real Life is a physics grad student. When a fellow physics grad student (female) realizes he has built his own working cryogenic armored suit, she doesn't call the police. She jumps him.

Western Animation

• In The Simpsons episode Lisa's Wedding (set in the future) Lisa and Hugh are reading a book together to decide who could read it faster:
  Hugh: I'll get the dictionary.
  Lisa: Why?
  Hugh: You'll see when you get there: the word "stochastic".
  Lisa: "Pertaining to a process involving a randomly determined sequence of observations". [They make out]
• On Total Drama Action, Leshawna seems to secretly enjoy watching her nerdy love interest, Harold, practice his weird yo-yo tricks. So does Heather.
• In an episode of Totally Spies!, Alex falls hard for a TV character, but then is crushed when she discovers that he is a computer-animated virtual character. However, she immediately falls for the computer programmer who created the character.
• In Archer, Krieger's hologramatic girlfriend gets this at the thought of Neil deGrasse Tyson.
• In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Flint immediately falls for Sam when he sees her knowledge on science.
• In Adventure Beast episode "When Love Goes Wrong", BTG's dorky field assistant Dietrich falls in love with an equally dorky zoo guide named Hilda.
• The Mitchells vs. the Machines: A Puppy Love version. Aaron Mitchell has a huge obsession with dinosaurs and has a crush on his neighbor, Abby Posey. When they find each other in a Dinosaur themed shop, she points out some inacurracies with the dinosaurs there, which makes his crush go into overdrive.

Real Life

• The word 'sapiophilia' means turned on by intelligence.
• Some historians theorize that Cleopatra was not that physically attractive, but rather was considered so partially because she was so smart; among other things, she was fluent in several languages. Being politically powerful also didn't hurt.
• In countries in which respectable women were traditionally cloistered, it has sometimes been the case that courtesans were able to ply their trade less because of their looks and more because they were educated and could carry on an interesting conversation.
• President John Adams fell for his wife Abigail precisely because she was a bluestocking who could match wits with him and enjoy it. They flirted passionately using allusions to Classical literature — both before and after their marriage — while also discussing the political situation of the day in exhaustive detail. Abigail was well-read, well-informed, and well-educated, and John was never afraid to ask her for advice; she served as his chief adviser throughout his life. And they produced some of the spiciest love letters ever written.

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