Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?

Horrifically adorable.
"I'm an intelligent woman. I know the difference between reality and my own dark fantasies. But I thrill at the idea of being taken by a great tentacled beast. My heart races as I imagine my frail and delicate body being controlled, being used by a force too powerful for me to deny. To feel helpless, vulnerable, it scares me yet it excites me. My body aches with desire as I imagine myself being forced to surrender in the most intimate of ways. Can this be so wrong?"
—Kiki, Ghastly's Ghastly Comic

This is what happens when you make love (in either sense of that phrase) with an Eldritch Abomination.[1]

Tentacles are a frequent feature. Can be played for sheer Squick, horror, fetish appeal, laughs or all of the above at the same time.

See also Evil Is Sexy, this trope's partial Super-Trope,[2] Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?, Boldly Coming, and Divine Date.[3] A subtrope of Interspecies Romance.[4] Might lead to Fetus/Enfant Terrible. A common origin for the Anti-Anti-Christ,able to switch sides as a representation of the human side-just as likely to become a Complete Monster though.

No real life examples, please; Sorry, we gotta impose Wikipedia's reliable sources rule on this one.

Examples of Did You Just Romance Cthulhu? include:

Anime and Manga

  • The entire premise of the Nyarko San media franchise.
  • Would The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya count? The girl is a reality warping Humanoid Abomination who has the hots for the (normal) boy, and there are some arcs focused on trying to prevent her from unknowingly re-writing the universe.
    • Or at least, that's how we think it is. A very common fan theory is that the "normal" boy is the actual Humanoid Abomination and doesn't realize it.
    • And he has a friend who lusts after one alien, then dates another one for a few months.
  • The Hentai one-shot Fiend Without A Face is about a girl's loving cohabitation relationship with a... thing that looks like a five-foot tall penis with dozens of smaller penises and tentacles all over its body. Played for d'awwwwwww.
    • Her father tries to take his daughter back by intimidating her lover behind closed doors and is won over when the thing literally has (surprise)sex with him too(of course the daughter has no knowledge of this)! Her visibly dishevelled and blushingly embarassed dad—who obviously enjoyed it—then sheepishly gives them both his blessing.
  • In Tsukihime, the protagonist, Tohno Shiki, has the option of falling in love with the "True Ancestor" of the series' "Vampires", Arcueid Brunestud. Considered an abomination even among her own kind for her monstrous power.
    • It should be noted that, from her point of view, Shiki's the Cthulhu of their relationship, what with him being a natural-born killer of non-humans like herself and his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception meaning that his mind is on the same wavelength as death itself. And considering that the other bearers of those eyes in the Nasuverse are a Celtic God who can make you die with a glance and the living embodiment of Akasha, she's got a good point.
  • Tenchi Muyo!, Works both ways, with Tsunami, Washu and Tokimi supposedly being the omnipotent beings that created everything. They're after Tenchi who is an even more omnipotent being than they are.
  • Kizumonogatari has this as the premise.
  • The OAV of El-Hazard: The Magnificent World. The Demon God destroyed the Precursors; brought ruin upon the land; and threatened to do the same to present-day El Hazard. Then she and the hero fell in love...


Comic Books

Fan Fiction

  • One Zelda fanfiction had a character forced to do this to Ganondorf.
  • As far as the Touhou fandom goes in Shipping, any human who pairs with the cute/sexy Youkai or fantastic folk of Gensokyo would technically qualify for this trope.
  • Naruto is often paired with Kyuubi.


Film

  • Galaxy Quest. The aliens aren't so humanoid in their true form, and we get a glimpse at the woman one of the characters is making out with. This is by the end when they're established as a couple. He is not even slightly squicked; the viewers, maybe not so much.
  • In Dagon, the protagonist has dreams about swimming undersea with a beautiful mermaid. Later, he actually meets her, but resists her attempt at seduction when he finds out that she has tentacles instead of legs. Later on, she turns out to be his sister, and also his destined bride.[5]


Literature

  • H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror". Yog-Sothoth has sex with a human woman and produces the offspring who will be known as Wilbur Whateley.
    • Oh, and it's hinted at that her elderly father was acting as the, er, vessel for Yog at the time.
  • Likewise, several Cthulhu Mythos tales deal with this:
    • Michael Shea's "Fat Face" involves a woman who becomes interested in a rather large, but kindly man. It's not a man, and it doesn't end well.
    • Played with Ramsey Campbell's "The Faces At Pine Dunes". The protagonist and his girlfriend is investigate his parents' strange behavior. His father is a Human/Eldritch Abomination hybrid, and so is the protagonist.
  • "The Dunwich Horror" was inspired by Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, which also features sex (or some kind of mating) between a human woman and an Eldritch Abomination. The resulting daughter is an eerily beautiful Humanoid Abomination whose unspeakable acts (strongly implied to be sexual in nature) lead to madness and suicide.
  • Done as part of a Deal with the Devil in The Dresden Files when Harry takes up the mantle of the Winter Knight. Harry states that it wasn't sex, no matter what it looked like. You can't have sex with a hurricane, or make love to a storm.
  • Star Wars Fate of the Jedi: Luke has an encounter with Abeloth. She impersonates each of his previous girlfriends and then sets out to kill the ones that are still alive. Loving a Skywalker can be so complicated.
  • The entire point of the Light Novels Nyarko San, except that it's the Cthulhu-side person herself who initiates the relationship to the human protagonist (to varying degree of success). And no, it's not nasty... most of the time.
  • Grendel's mother was allegedly an eldritch abomination - and supposedly the biblical Cain decided she was just too sexy to resist. The gods struck him dead on the spot, and his lover then birthed the monstrous Grendel to remember her late lamented beau by. In some accounts Grendel had two brothers that were almost as nightmarish, including a shark that swam through the sky.


Live-Action TV

  • Angel has Wesley romancing Illyria at the end of season 5. Played With in that they're never 'together,' and it's not clear until the series finale that Illyria returned his affections, as evidenced by her compassion and grief at Wesley's death.
    • Actually Wesley subverts this trope. He in no way, shape or form "romances" Illyria. Not once, not ever. He kept her around purely because she reminded him of Fred, and when Illyria tried to get physically intimate with Wesley he rebuffed her. Only at Wesley's death was he willing to let Illyria pretend to be Fred so he could spend his last moment with his lost love, or a close approximation.


Music

  • The song "Width of a Circle" by David Bowie describes a consensual encounter with some sort of Eldritch Abomination. Remember, kids, Drugs Are Bad!
  • Also Norm Sherman's "Heartache Over Innsmouth", which is just what it sounds like.


Tabletop Games

  • Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game) tabletop game has a few:
    • Yog-Sothoth can mate with human females, creating the Spawn of Yog-Sothoth.
    • Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign. A woman named Hypatia Masters apparently mated with a Great Old One (she became pregnant and had its child).
    • Supplement The Fungi from Yuggoth. After donning a pair of magical glasses a woman is raped by an other-dimensional monster and becomes pregnant with its child.
    • The "Love's Lonely Children" adventure features a couple who are Y'Golonac cultists. Y'Golonac is basically the Mythos entity of Squick incarnate. The husband is possessed and bodily transforms into Y'Golonac, while his wife... worships. And they got their daughter involved in it, too...
  • Exalted
    • In one of the more contested passages in the guide for Infernals, it's suggested that new Infernals are passed around the Yozis for... "initiation." The Yozis are crippled godlike entities that take forms such as a city of brass and basalt, a hundred thousand crystalline spheres of fire, and an ever-twisting river. The sheer physics alone... But, for good or ill, the actual process would be a bit less mind-hurting, as the Yozis can create humaniform avatars called jouten. This is not necessarily an improvement.
    • The Yozi Adorjan (who mostly appears in the form of an extremely violent wind) also mated with a Solar Exalt (through a dream...) and conceived daughters by him (half of whom were normal human children, the other half shed their mortal bodies when they reached maturity and became sentient winds like their mother).
    • The god(des) Luna was created (partially) for the purpose of seducing the Primordial Gaia (and fell in love with her instead). Gaia's most commonly seen form is her humanoid jouten, but mentions are made of her other, greater forms, that are vast, primal and slightly terrifying to the other gods (although Luna, while typically humanoid, can take some pretty eldritch forms herself, so the line between regular romance and romancing Cthulu is a bit blurred).
  • The "aberrant" bloodline in Pathfinder—which eventually turns your character into a Humanoid Abomination—implies something like this in a sorcerer's ancestry.
  • "Romance" might not be the right word for it, but this is part of the graduation ceremony for the Drow priestesses of Lolth in the Forgotten Realms. The joint graduation ceremony between female priestesses and male warriors consists of the two groups engaging in a drug-fueled orgy. One "lucky" priestess mates with a glabrezu—a four-armed pincered dog-faced demon—instead of another Drow. It bears mentioning that glabrezu can't shapeshift. This is considered an honor, and the resulting hybrid children (called draegloths) have a special place in Drow society.


Video Games

  • Literally in Cthulhu Saves the World, of course. Umi falls in love with Cthulhu pretty much at first sight, but he considers them "strictly in a rock star-groupie relationship." By the end though, he comes to return her feelings.
  • Saya no Uta is about the main character (unknowingly) romancing one of these. He suffers from a condition which caused him to view everything as Eldritch Locations and everyone as Eldritch Abominations, which is why Saya, who herself was an Eldritch Abomination, was the only one to look normal in his eyes.
  • Demonbane originated as Eroge based on Cthulhu Mythos. The best example is probably when Nyarlathotep has sex with Kuro after he got possessed and transformed into Wilbur Whateley.
  • Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: Adell has delivered a Cooldown Kiss to Zenon, God of all Overlords.
  • In The Sims 2, Olive Specter canonically had sex with the Grim Reaper (which, incidentally, you can't replicate in-game) and it's strongly implied that he's the father of her only child (which you actually can, though it requires cheats).
  • It's not entirely certain what the girl in Where We Remain is, but we know that she's spent a very long time magically bound in a cave, that she didn't have a name before the hero gave her one, and that she has some rather nifty (if limited) abilities. Given that the wind spirits on the island are described as her "brothers," it would seem that she's nonhuman rather than just some sort of spellcaster.
  • In Persona 3 Portable, on the Female Main Character's route, you're given the chance to initiate a romantic S.Link with Ryoji Mochizuki, the human form of Nyx Avatar. That is, you can make the personification of Death itself fall in love with you.
    • While it's not an official social link, a male main character is asked to show Elizabeth what sex is like. The female main character can similarly win the affection of, and have an Optional Sexual Encounter with, Elizabeth's younger brother Theodore. It's not clear exactly what Elizabeth and Theodore are, but whatever they are, it's not human, and as the game's Bonus Bosses they are just as if not more powerful than the abovementioned Ryoji.
  • In The Bard's Tale, you're unknowingly setting free (or not) a Demon Queen. You guessed it, Caleigh. Though she does keep her promise to you.
  • One of the potential love interests in Dragon Age II is a Humanoid Abomination. Several characters discuss and lampshade the squickier aspects of the relationship. For those unfamiliar with the setting, Abominations are humans who have been possessed by spirits/demons. This means that every intimate encounter Hawke shares with his/her Abomination Love Interest is technically a threesome.

Web Comics


Web Original

  • In the Whateley Universe, Sara Waite is a Humanoid Abomination, so anyone she has sex with counts. Further, she's the product of just such a pairing.
    • For that matter, her father Gothmog is by all accounts still quite popular with the ladies.
  • This Deviant ART image. Horrifically adorable!
  • Cracked.com uses this as one of the potential next Twilight-style monster/teenager romance trends here.
  • In Tales Of Gnosis College Moira Weir has a series of encounters that fall into this trope.
  • /tg/ likes these.


Western Animation

  1. ↑ Or a Starfish Alien doing a passable imitation of one.
  2. ↑ Evil Is Sexy applies to humans as well, and, well, not all Eldritch Abominations are evil
  3. ↑ Boldly Coming and Divine Date differ from this in that, normally, the entity being dated in question is not something you'd encounter as an antagonist in a horror story
  4. ↑ And parented by Tropes That Will Never Happen, of all things (The entry "Did You Just Suck Off Cthulhu?" had enough entries of possible examples that somebody realized it was tropeable)
  5. ↑ While featuring a village full of otherworldly interbreeding, this one gets super-bonus-points for actually being based on a Lovecraft story.
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