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The Sirens and Ulysses (1837), William Etty
And you sang, "Sail to me, sail to me,
Let me enfold you,
Here I am, here I am
Waiting to hold you"
Tim Buckley, "Song to the Siren" (later covered by This Mortal Coil)

Sirens are beings, usually female (male sirens did turn up in ancient artwork, but were very rare) and at least partly human, who use their enthralling voices to lure people to their doom.

In appearance, they typically have one of three portrayals: some resemble regular human women in all physical aspects, some are mermaids with the lower bodies of fish, and some are part avian instead. This third type is further divided between two common appearances: feathered humanoids with wings as a third set of limbs, and giant birds with human heads. In Classical Mythology, they were strictly women-faced birds; fully humanoid portrayals date to Roman artwork, and the mermaid-like appearance first cropped up in the Middle Ages. Regardless of type, their human parts are typically extremely beautiful, ranging from being very attractive, to just appearing very attractive to those who have been at sea for a long time, to using illusions to cover up a very unsavory reality.

Their most iconic power is their enthralling voices. The precise nature of these voices can vary. In some cases, their singing is simply so beautiful that listeners want nothing other than to continue listening to it, potentially endangering themselves through this selective obliviousness. In other cases, it's actively hypnotic and forces listeners to follow or seek out the siren, and may be used for outright Mind Control. In addition, they may be able to actually change their form to something ideally perfect in the eyes of their victims or at least project a vision of the same, in which case they'll often have some form of Glamour or be Shapeshifting Seducers. In some versions, their powers only work on men. This detail is entirely Newer Than They Think (for example, Princess Ariadne is killed by sirens in some versions of the myth) and has no basis in the original myths.

Sirens rarely have kindly motivations. The mythical Sirens fed on the bodies of shipwrecked sailors who crashed onto rocks while befuddled by their singing, and the modern successors typically follow suit. Sirens thus tend to be predators, literally or metaphorically, who use their singing to enthrall and control other beings. In a modernized Urban Fantasy setting, they may be depicted as Evil Divas.

Sirens often overlap with two other types of female mythical beings. They are often equated with mermaids, who are typically depicted with the sirens' powers and behavior — indeed, many works and real-life languages make no distinction between the two. They also tend to overlap with harpies, Greek myth's other bird-women, and it's fairly common for harpies to be given siren characteristics such as the alluring voice (when they're not unpleasantly shrill instead).

Supertrope to Sirens Are Mermaids. Usually overlaps with Siren Song.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Devilman: Sirene, Amon's paramour, resembles a young woman, but has talons for hands and feet, pure white wings on the sides of her head, and golden antennae rising from her forehead.
  • Sirenmon in Digimon Ghost Game resembles a harpy crossed with a fish and is famed for its melodious voice and sound-based attacks. However, when one ends up in the real world, it begins haunting karaoke booths and attempting to perform for people, unaware that its singing acts as a Brown Note to humans.
  • Gate: Myuute Luna Sires is a siren and a mage. She looks mostly human, but has feathers growing from her body.
  • Sirens in Restaurant to Another World are Winged Humanoids that possess harpy-like bird legs but otherwise human-like upper bodies and waists. In this case the Siren Song of the species is in place regardless of actual song quality, with representative sirens Arius and Iris being Dreadful Musicians that can still mesmerize nearby people despite the terrible sound.

    Art 
  • John William Waterhouse:
    • Ulysses and the Sirens depicts them as bird-like creatures with the heads of women disturbing Ulysses and company.
    • The Siren depicts a beautiful woman (part sea-creature, indicated by her legs) holding a lyre as she watches a man drown beneath her.

    Comic Books 
  • Agents of Atlas: Venus is a rare heroic example of this trope, being retconned into being a siren instead of the actual Goddess of Love, and using her Charm Person powers for good. Even then, it's revealed that she used to be a soulless monster that lured sailors from their ships to devour them and racked up an large bodycount before being given a soul by a mystic and becoming the All-Loving Hero she is today.
  • The DCU:
    • Teen Titans: Siren is a mermaid with a hypnotic song and can turn her tail into legs.
    • Wonder Woman:
      • Wonder Woman has faced off against sirens and those acting under their sway on multiple occasions. The first time is with Mona Menise in Sensation Comics, who is trouble on her own before she picks up a wooden bangle containing a vengeful siren that had been turned into a tree by Aphrodite in antiquity.
      • Wonder Woman (1942): Diana leads a coalition of female heroes to take down a group of android sirens created by Professor Ivo that are attacking the capitol. They only affect men, necessitating the quick gathering of a bunch of super-ladies.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Sirens are a man-eating descendant of the Phorusrhacos, a prehistoric, flightless predatory bird, that use mimicry to fool drunken sailors into getting close enough to eat. They can imitate human voices like many other birds can, and they have markings on their beaks that look like human faces, plumage like flowing blonde hair and ornamentation on their chests resembling a woman's breasts.

    Fan Works 
  • The Bridge (MLP): When Mermares want to woo a stallion, they sometimes sing like this. The song isn't effective on stallions who are completely oblivious to love or celibate, and indeed sounds a bit silly. In this fic's continuity, the Sirens turn out to be Mermares born from Mermare mothers and an unknown father species later revealed to be the Windigos.
  • Halloween Unspectacular: "Report", from the fourth installment, has a slightly different take on sirens. Rather than luring sailors to crash their ships, they're instead presented as creating illusions to lure people ashore and then killing them when they're on land.
  • Ice and Fire (Minecraft): Sirens are mermaids that sit on exposed rocks and use singing to lure players towards them, and then turn into monstrous forms to attack. Their tears can be used to make a flute that will briefly cause enemies to become friendly towards the player.
  • RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: One of the obstacles the Element Bearers face trying to get through the Everfree is a group of Sirens who live in a river and sing to lure food (such as ponies) in so they can eat. Or they would, if they weren't out of harmony with one another. Notably, the story predates the appearance of very similar sirens in canon by a good few years.
  • Sixes and Sevens: Anthea normally looks like a beautiful human woman, but can assume a half-bird form, that of a larger bird, or a small sparrow. She also has the hypnotic singing ability, and tells Michael Carter that he'll need to make sure he can barely hear it if he wants to avoid being taken out alongside the HYDRA forces they're facing.
  • Water Aerobics for the Aquaphobic: During a poorly-planned Hogwarts field trip to Jusenkyo that results in most of the students being cursed into various forms after falling in the enchanted springs, Theodore Nott ends up transformed into a Siren, portrayed as a magical creature resembling a beautiful, very naked woman with sharp teeth and fingernails and a taste for human flesh. When in Siren form, Theodore is less a seductress and more a vicious predator who tries to eat other students, with the seductive appearance being a way to lure humans close enough to strike.

    Films — Animation 
  • Ice Age: Continental Drift: Sirens appear as giant prehistoric lungfish with More Teeth than the Osmond Family. They're also Masters of Illusion, appearing as the object of the beholder's desire... which backfires on them when Scrat goes up to one of them and promptly starts stomping its head into the ground, because he sees it as his acorn. At the end, they manage to take out the film's villain when he comes across them after his defeat in the final battle.
  • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks: The villains, the Dazzlings, were originally merhorse (hippocampi) versions of sirens in Equestria before being banished to the human world by Starswirl the Bearded. They managed to retain some of their magic in the human world, though, final battle aside, they are more-or-less human most of the time. More or less. Funnily enough, the sirens' one weakness in the film, a battle of the bands, actually does have basis in the original Greek myths. Orpheus managed to save Jason's crew by playing music better than theirs...
  • Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas: The sirens are water elementals. The crew only survives because a siren's song doesn't work on women and on animals.
  • The Twelve Tasks of Asterix: One of the titular Labors is simply crossing a particular lake. Halfway across the lake, the characters are lured to the Isle of Pleasure by the sirens' song, rowing so fast they smash their boat on the shore and dig themselves into the ground. Asterix and Obelix succumb to their charms, until Obelix discovers there's no wild boar on the island and leaves in indignation, dragging Asterix with him.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: When the aquatic Talocanians sing in choir, any humans who hear it are enthralled to jump into the water and drown.
  • Mermaids: One of the sisters, Venus, is also a Siren. She's able to hypnotize men with her eyes rather than her voice; however, if they know she is a Siren, she has no power over them.
  • Siren (2010): Silka is a siren who lures men to their madness and doom upon the island.
  • O Brother, Where Art Thou?: Of the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane kind, the leads encounter three singing washerwomen. Conflating them with witches like Circe, it first appears they've turned a character into a toad, though this is later proven untrue. It turns out they're working for the local sheriff, who's a little Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane himself.

    Literature 
  • Blood Singer: Sirens are human-looking semi-immortal women with telepathic abilities that let them control heterosexual men and also have a strong affinity for the ocean and aquatic creatures. It is stated that when calling out to males, some sirens focus their summons through music, but most use telepathy.
  • The Divine Comedy: Dante has a dream about a siren just before he ascends to the top layers of Purgatory. She represents desire for things that are not ultimately satisfying. Like money, food, and sex, she presents herself as something beautiful, but the siren is covering her deathly stench. It is only when a saint and a wise poet reveal her true nature is Dante released from her spell.
  • Dream Girl: The mermaid Áine seduces rapists, abusers, and murderers by sneaking into their rooms at night and singing to them (basically hypnotizing them), then "accidentally" bumping into them on the street and causing them to fall in love with her and her "quirky" ways. Then she kills them and drinks their blood.
  • Dreamscape Voyager Trilogy: Sirens are a class of creature that include harpies and rivermaids. Their singing has a hypnotic effect, the strength of which is based on the victim's attraction to women.
  • InCryptid: In Singing the Comic-Con Blues, Antimony, Artie, Sarah, and Verity track down a siren who's been using her compulsive voice to make convention patrons drown themselves.
  • Magic University: Here, they can be male along with female, they're all bisexual and appear just like humans. They also have many more abilities than just alluring people, such as foretelling the future, projecting visions, mind reading and most plot-relevant, feeding on human sexual energy.
  • My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister: Sirens are physically identical to humans, save for their long hair which wraps around their arms to give the impression of wings. Although classified as marine, they are more associated with the sky due to their bird nature and can drown in water.
  • The Orphan's Tales: Catherynne M. Valente harkens to old school sirens with bird-women with beautiful voices — that is, they are birds from the waist up and human from the waist down. They live alone on their craggy island, and have no idea the effect their singing has on sailors — which is that the sailors hear the voices of the women that they love best, and almost always jump overboard to be with them. When the sirens learn what their songs have wrought, they vow to be silent forever.
  • Percy Jackson and the Olympians portrays sirens in a tweaked version of their Greek Mythology incarnation, as horrible giant condor-like creatures with long necks and the heads of women, faces dripping with the remains of their victims. Their song conjures visions of whatever the listener desires the most, compelling them to swim towards their islands and die on the sharp rocks surrounding it.
  • Saintess Summons Skeletons: Sirens are sea monsters that hunt in packs, and when they find a ship, they work together to use strong hypnotizing chants to take control of the crew, forcing them to jump overboard so the sirens can tear them apart in a feeding frenzy. Although the protagonists never see the regular sirens, they do fight a siren queen, a huge four-winged flying half-fish half-bird monster with strong elemental attack magic.
    Alith: I don't hear anything?
    Zarrow: You won't until they target you. They all focus on one person and they empty the ship one man at a time.
  • Siren Novels: The title character is a monster who is mostly similar to the original Greek myth. Her true form is that of a monster with both avian and piscine traits, but her song projects a glamour that makes her look like a beautiful woman in addition to entrancing humans, and she prefers to seduce the human men she preys on before eating them. She also answers to the name of Ligeia, and implies that she is one of the original Greek sirens.
  • Septimus Heap: The Syren is an unseen monster who uses her call to lure and strand Nicko and the Cerys onto Syren island.
  • Watersong: The sirens can captivate men with their voices, luring them to be eaten. Their voices also work on women, though not as well; it merely clouds their minds rather than fully captivating them.
  • Xanth: In The Source of Magic, the Siren is the sister of the Gorgon and has a half-human body. While playing her dulcimer, she can sing an entrancing song that causes males to travel to her location.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Charmed (1998): "Siren Song" features a Siren as the Monster of the Week. According to the Book of Shadows, she was a mortal woman who seduced a married man but was burned alive by the townspeople. Now she hypnotizes married men with her song, which lures the wives to the scene of the crime where she burns them both alive.
  • The Legend of Dick and Dom: "Sirens" has the sirens as beautiful women with songs that draw in and possibly mind-control men — who promptly start trying to impress them with lies about being rich and fit — but sound like screeching to women. They imprison men and feed them up before eating them. The sirens also seem to have glamour; when they turn it off, they are still beautiful but have fangs and claws.
  • My Babysitter's a Vampire has an episode with a Siren as a Monster of the Week, who uses her voice to make people uncontrollably violent. Interestingly enough, the main characters actually assume that she's a mermaid at first, but it turns out that she isn't one.
  • Once Upon a Time has a siren as the guardian of a lake whose waters can heal any curse. She can change herself to look like anyone else, and drowns anyone that approaches the lake. Prince Charming manages to resist her charms, even after she makes herself look like Snow White, and kills her. Unfortunately, this eventually causes the lake to go dry.
  • Red Dwarf: The Psirens are basically a retelling of the sirens story Recycled In Space. They lure passing spacecraft onto their asteroids by using telepathy to read the minds of the crew and create enticing illusions. While the victim is thus distracted, the Psiren shoves a straw in their ear and sucks out their brain.
  • Saturday Night Live has a spoof of the Odyssey where Odysseus has his men put beeswax in their ears and tie him to the mast to resist the Sirens, whose singing enchants sailors to crash against the rocks of their island. However, they sing songs by female artists from The '90s like Lisa Loeb, Paula Cole, Shania Twain, Sheryl Crowe and TLC which Odysseus can't help but love and sing along to:
    The Sirens: [singing] I don't want to wait, for our lives to be over...
    Odysseus: [singing] I want to know right now, what will it be! How do I know the words?! I only know manly sea-chants!
  • So Weird: One episode deals with a siren who looks like Jewel Staite and sings in a nightclub. Any man who hears her falls under her spell, while women think her voice is pleasant but can't understand the fuss all the men are making over her.
  • Supernatural had a gorgeous female siren who works as a stripper and convinces her clients to kill the woman closest to them, usually their wife or elderly, sick mother. She's revealed to be a hideous, melting fish thing whenever seen in a mirror. Sam starts getting involved with a Hospital Hottie who appears to be the siren, but she's actually a Red Herring. The siren morphed into an attractive male FBI agent who had befriended Dean, in order to get him to kill the most important man in his life (his brother, Sam).
  • Tidelands (Netflix):
    • They can call men into the sea with their songs to have sex (drowning the humans while doing so) and bear many hybrid children from this as a result.
    • Both sirens and the hybrids can manipulate water or blood to a limited degree.
    • Hybrids live for many decades with no signs of aging at least if in regular contact with seawater. The sirens on the other hand appear to live forever.
    • Sirens simply leave their babies on shore where they live afterward.
    • Hybrids also have the ability to breathe underwater.
    • A hybrid can cause harm or heal humans through affecting the blood in parts of their bodies.
    • Sirens look like women with pure white skin and hair, but black eyes.
  • What We Do in the Shadows (2019) at one point features a siren named Shelia. Appearance-wise, she appears as the more traditional part-bird version of them, with a human top half and a bird-like bottom half. Colin and Lazlo end up getting stuck on an island due to them following her singing.

    Music 

    Myths & Religion 
  • Classical Mythology:
    • The Odyssey: Odysseus runs into an island home to the sirens, who are bird-women who lure sailors with their enchanting voices and music. His men stuff their ears with wax, but, true to form, Odysseus just has them tie him to the mast, because he wants to hear the songs and be able to say that he's the only man to have heard the song and lived. It's also noteworthy that in the original, their song tempts him with knowledge and fame rather than with sex.
    • In The Argonautica, the Argonauts also run into the Sirens. They survive thanks to Orpheus, who sings an even more beautiful song that drowns out their call. Some versions of this one say that the Sirens are so heartbroken at being defeated that they cry out in anguish and throw themselves off of their island.
    • According to some myths, the Sirens used to be friends with Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. After she was kidnapped by Hades to be his wife, the unfortunate handmaidens were transformed into bird women by Persephone's vengeful mother, Demeter, for failing to find her.

    Newspaper Comics 
  • During an arc in FoxTrot where Peter's dreaming he's Odysseus, he encounters a siren (as portrayed by his sister Paige) who states that her singing drives men to crash their ships into rocks. As it turns out, this is less because of its hypnotic properties and more because the song she chooses is a medley of various Boy Band tunes — when Peter finds out, she doesn't even get to sing before he screams at his men to crash the ship so they can avoid listening to her.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Harpies are given the Sirens' trait of possessing an alluring voice that draws victims to their location. The 1st edition Monster Manual outright mentions that "those that dwell along seacoasts are generally known as sirens."
    • Sirines are aquatic fey who appear as humanoid females, and are known for their beauty and charming voices, and touches that can stupefy other beings. They aren't malicious, though, and will usually have some fun with those who succumb to their charms for a few hours before returning to their home waters.
    • Ravenloft has sirens, in the form of undead mermaids whose upper bodies are that of bloated, half-rotten corpses. They hide their disgusting forms with advanced illusion spells before using their singing to lure in victims, who might take a few rounds to notice that the "mermaids'" tender "caresses" are actually raking attacks with bony talons.
  • Magic: The Gathering: Sirens are an uncommon creature races, primarily Blue and occasionally Black, resembling winged and feathered humans with hypnotic voices and running the gamut from beautiful to hideous.
    • The Sirens of Theros, the first set and plane where they appeared, are fairly true to the Greek myth, outside of resembling feathered women with wings sprouting from their shoulders rather than woman-headed birds. They collect everything from jewels to bones and feed only on sapient species. Shipwrecked humans are their primary prey.
    • Ixalan has more avian sirens whose wings and arms are the same limbs, which also happen to be pirates. Notably, some are male, and there is a full inversion of Sirens Are Mermaids by showing one seducing a merfolk.
  • Pathfinder has both harpies and sirens, both of which are depicted as bird-women with beautiful singing voices that can hypnotize listeners. Harpies have a more humanoid appearance, but are vicious, cruel predators with a Usually Chaotic Evil Character Alignment and absolutely appalling hygiene. Sirens, meanwhile, are more monstrous (human-sized female raptorial birds with the heads of beautiful women), but also more benevolent (Usually Chaotic Neutral). The best illustration of the difference is how they treat their lovers since, as a One-Gender Race, they need to mate with humanoid men to procreate: harpies usually eat their lovers when they're finished, and this is so ingrained in their twisted "culture" that it's actually considered shameful to let a lover live, whilst sirens dote on their lovers (or those they want to claim as their lovers) to the point they are known to commit suicide, or straight-up die of heartbreak, if those lovers run away.
  • Shadowrun: Sirens, creatures of unknown origin and resembling small pterodactyls, possess hypnotic calls that evoke profound emotional trances and cause listeners to stand still in a daze or actively walk towards their sources. As sirens are aggressive predators, they are believed to use this ability to hunt.
  • Blue Planet: The stories say that if you hear eerie atonal music on an empty beach at night, that's the singer-in-the-dark waiting for you. Since nobody who encounters them rather than fleeing is ever seen again, that's all anyone knows, and all reports of singers-in-the-dark are at least secondhand. Everything about them sounds like folklore... except for the recently-discovered audio footage.

    Theater 
  • The Golden Apple represents the sirens as a group of singers in a waterfront dive who sing "Goona-Goona". In this tale, Ulysses doesn't think to plug his men's ears, and most of them end up shanghaied.

    Video Games 
  • The Binding of Isaac: The Siren is a boss that can be encountered in the Mausoleum that can summon familiars to protect herself and even temporarily steal your familiars by singing. Aside from her mechanics, she's quite thematically different from a traditional siren. She's a black-skinned Horned Humanoid that doesn't have anything to do with water, making her appear more like a succubus.
  • Black & White 2: The Siren wonder is Exactly What It Says on the Tin — casting it upon an enemy civilization will summon an enthralling vision of the Siren, who uses her charms to turn everybody in her radius into your willing followers.
  • Cassette Beasts: Sirenade's second bio page says that the original sirens were bird-women, not mermaids. It's a humanoid, winged... thing that has an incredibly loud singing voice.
  • Darkest Dungeon features a Siren as one of the Cove's bosses. She resembles a horrid-looking mermaid and she has the ability to entrall one of your team members to fight at her side for a few turns.
  • Dragalia Lost has a humanoid dragon named Siren. Although she loves to sing like most depictions, she isn’t malicious in the slightest, and just wants to share her voice with the world. There are rumors about her using her singing to lure sailors into sinking their ships, but Siren never means to harm anyone.
  • Dragon's Dogma: Sirens are a variant of Harpies found in Bitterblack Isles. Their song can heal nearby enemies.
  • Siren 1: Referenced in the first game: no actual "Siren" creature is featured but there's a sound that lures the inhabitants of a town to their doom. The second game does feature an actual siren, which looks like a bizarre sort of mermaid when it's finally shown.
  • Gems of War: The Siren unit — here depicted as a winged purple humanoid — has Lure as its special ability, damaging a selected target.
  • Grandia: Played for laughs in the first game. During a voyage across the sea, Justin is suckered into making a stop at an island inhabited by identical-looking mermaids. The girls are actually a lure used by a giant angler fish to eat unwary seamen.
  • Final Fantasy: Siren sometimes appears, usually as a summon which causes a status ailment.
    • Final Fantasy V: Siren is a boss monster who nearly enthralls the party with images of their family members. Galuf's amnesia saves him, as he doesn't recognize the image shown to him.
    • Final Fantasy VI: Siren is a summon that randomly silences all enemies or does minor damage with an ability called Lunatic Voice.
    • Final Fantasy VIII: Siren is a summon who deals non-elemental damage and silences all enemies.
    • Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings: Siren is the water summon. She can also cause the stop status ailment.
    • Final Fantasy XIV portrays sirens as Winged Humanoids who lure sailors to their deaths with their hypnotic music. Once dead, sirens raise their victims as undead servants. Sirens are also now an Endangered Species since the pirate lord Mistbeard led a purge against the dangerous creatures five years back.
  • Monster Hunter: Rise: The Somnacanth is an eerily beautiful leviathan with a prominent mermaid theme to its design: its humanlike face and long hair-like fins give it the image of a bestial mermaid, and along with singing haunting melodies, it can lull prey to sleep with an exhaled sedative it produces from a special organ before going in for the kill.
  • Path of Exile: The Act 1 final boss, Merveil, is a siren who causes shipwrecks and captures male sailors to produce monstrous "children" for her. Her first form is that of a beautiful sorceress, but hurt her enough and she reverts into a squid-like monster. Her den is also brimming with treasure from shipwrecks she caused, though ironically the player can't take any of it because the gold and jewels of her hoard are worthless in Wraeclast.
  • A Total War Saga: TROY:
    • In Truth Behind the Myth mode, the sirens are an all-female unit of scantily clad soldiers who "charm" enemies to approach them before opening fire. Combined with their high foot speed, this also allows them to do things like lure key units out of formation or into ambushes.
    • In Mythos mode, sirens are white-feathered women with bird wings and talons for hands and feet — unlike mythical sirens, but like the game's harpies, they have humanoid instead of wholly avian bodies.
  • Touhou: Mystia Lorelei isn't explicitly a siren but she's a bird-person who lures unsuspecting travelers to their deaths with a magic singing voice, so she's pretty obviously a siren. Although nowadays she's more likely to sell them food instead of eating them. Uniquely, her song also causes night blindness. Anyone who hears it has no choice but to follow the sound of Mystia's voice or else wander in complete darkness. Mystia tells the unfortunate one that the night blindness can be cured by the food she sells, but in reality she just lifts the curse while the 'customer' eats. Mystia scams people like this very frequently.
  • Warcraft III: Naga sirens are amphibious and four-armed snake women whose lines references singing but have no song-based abilities (instead they spawn parasites inside enemies, create icy armor, or cause tornadoes to lift enemies in the air.
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has Sirens of the mermaid type with large wings as a monster commonly found around Skellige. This model type is shared with a stronger variation called an Ekhidna which actually bears a pretty close resemblance to its namesake.

    Web Animation 
  • The Sorceress War: Siren as Selphie's summon. Selphie summons her to fight the Elvoret in Dollet (the monster from whom she is Drawn in the game) and she seems to have powers more like a banshee as her voice deafens the monster long enough for Squall to kill it.

    Webcomics 
  • Free Spirit (2014): "Song of the Siren" alludes to these. When Winnie discovers that her singing can hypnotize mortals, Jessie reminds her about the Sirens of Classical Mythology, whose singing caused sailors to crash their boats against jagged rocks. Later, Winnie's singing unintentionally causes two instances of vehicles almost crashing, the second of which involves a boat and jagged rocks.
  • Val and Isaac: Sirens can only enthrall people attracted to women, so the asexual Isaac can safely sit by them harvesting their song, but he shouldn't call his lesbian sister while doing so.
  • Walking in the Dark: One story arc deals with a siren that's prowling near a lighthouse luring anyone unfortunate enough to hear its song toward the sea.
  • Wapsi Square: Atsali is a human-looking half-siren teenager (complete with wings), whose singing can cause uncontrollable desire in both males and females, and both human and supernatural creatures. A subversion, since she also believes that this is a terrible thing to do, akin to rape, and spends a good deal of time trying to fight against the assumptions that others at her school make about her, as a result of her lineage. The fact that she's a tall blonde beauty with large breasts doesn't help the matter.
  • Nix Of Nothing: The sirens of lakewood all have a Compelling Voice,look more elf than human and have sharp pointy teeth.

    Western Animation 
  • American Dragon: Jake Long: One episode features a mind-controlling siren as a villain, but she doesn't spend any time in or near the ocean. It also subverts expectations because the siren is a dowdy, geeky girl, not one of the hot cheerleaders that the characters had suspected, who takes advantage of the assumption since nobody would suspect her of being the siren when other, prettier girls are nearby.
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force: One episode features Carl meeting three sirens (well, two sirens and a kidnapped John Kruk) living in the Aqua Teens' house while the trio were being held hostage in a cave by their vampire landlord. What Carl thought was gonna be a great time turns out to be an utter Gorn fest that involves hooks, drunkenly singing "The Ocean" by Led Zeppelin, and nipples.
  • Arthur includes Sirens in DW's retelling of The Odyssey. Unlike in the original story, they look like beautiful women who lack the attributes of birds, and they try to lure the sailors by playing DW's favorite song, "Crazy Bus".
  • The Backyardigans: In "Sinbad Sails Alone", Tyrone and Pablo encounter Siren Uniqua when they travel to her island to get water. They then play a game of "Siren Says" with a mambo song to match.
    When I say "Siren Says" you do
    Exactly whatever I told you to
    But if you do something Siren didn't say
    You gotta go back — that's how we play.
  • In Disenchantment, the sirens aren't bird-women or fish-women, but singing walruses of all things. They still try to lure sailors with their voices. For what it's worth, Prince Merkimer survives swimming out to meet them, suggesting they're friendlier than sirens.
  • Extreme Ghostbusters: The Bad Powers, Bad People trope is surprisingly averted by the Siren, as she's one of the very few ghosts that actually care about the mortals she seduces with her singing voice. Her sister Banshee forces her into stealing the youth of her listeners to sustain her strength. She finally develops a backbone and rejects her sister when she coerces her to steal the remaining life force of her agefied audience (including Roland, who fell under her spell) and willingly allows herself and her sister to be captured and put into containment by the team.
  • The Godzilla Power Hour: The Calico washes up on the shore of a cursed island ruled by a siren named Morphea and her two sisters. In addition to Mind Control powers, they also have a pet giant Chimera for Godzilla to fight.
  • Lloyd in Space: One episode has an exchange student from the center of the universe named Sirenia who can hypnotize the boys, albeit with her eyes instead of her voice. The only way to break the spell is to get a boy from the same place to hypnotize her.
  • Martin Mystery: One episode has the gang encounter a siren who attacks a nearby town out of anger after a relationship with a sailor turns sour. Unlike the myths, the siren could change between a beautiful lady and a bird monster at will.
  • Samurai Jack: Three sirens up in "The Scotsman Saves Jack". The Scotsman doesn't demonstrate any particular willpower, he just doesn't like the music, and he drowns their singing out with his preferred tunes. They aren't bird-women or fish-people, but resemble beautiful, glowing human women. They're also the three heads of a single being.
  • The Simpsons: In "Tales from the Public Domain", Homer (as Odysseus) is lured to the Island of Sirens, only to discover that the Sirens in question are Patty and Selma. He gets out of there pretty quick.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants: The episode “The Bikini Bottom Triangle” has a few sirens… who don’t act much different from typical teenage girls. Their song has the power to activate a giant vacuum, which has been responsible for various missing items around town.

Alternative Title(s): Our Sirens Are Louder, Enthralling Siren

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Sirens

As the herd sails away from Gut and his crew, they encounter a more amphibious threat.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (9 votes)

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Main / OurSirensAreDifferent

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