Instant Seduction

Lyle: [Handsome Rob approaches Becky, the cable technician, in the parking lot. Lyle watches, amazed] Are you kidding me? How does he do that? How do you do that? What are you saying?
Lyle: [speaking as Handsome Rob] Hey, how are you?
Lyle: [speaking as Becky] Oh, I'm good!
Lyle: [Handsome Rob] Nice to meet you. I'm Handsome Rob. And you are?
Lyle: [Becky] Oh, my name's Becky, but it's written on my shirt!
Lyle: [Handsome Rob] Listen, I'm gonna need your shirt, and your truck.
Lyle: [Becky] Perfect! I'll give them both to you. Would you like my virginity as well?
Lyle: [Handsome Rob] If it's on the menu.
Lyle: [Becky] Oh, you're so witty! Why don't you take advantage of me?
Lyle: [Handsome Rob] Yeah, you're not too bright, are you?
Lyle: [Becky] No.
Lyle: [Handsome Rob] Perfect.

—The Italian Job (the remake)

A common feature of The Pornomancer is the ability to seduce women in the course of a five minute conversation. It gets across just how irresistible the guy is to women - to be able to go from "hi, my name is" to sex that quickly must by necessity involve some serious skill. For good guys this can often be the first step to a successful infiltration operation. Mind you, most just do it 'cause they want to get laid.

Oddly enough, this skill is never shown on screen. The reason for this is because, well, there's not really any plausible way to show this skill. Any such conversation is going to end up being a letdown to the audience because the woman must be either extremely stupid or extremely eager for sex to begin with for this to work. Both cases severely lessen the impact of a successful attempt. Better off for the audience to just guess what could have been said.

This trope is, to an extent, Truth in Television, with the important caveat that no one is ever 100% successful in their pick-up attempts in Real Life. (That said, No real life examples, please; this is All The Tropes, not Tropes After Dark.) Again, in fiction, the perfect success ratings are important to establishing the character's skill.

Happens very rarely with women, since in fiction usually all they have to do is Show Some Leg or even blithely say "want to have sex?" to get most guys into the sack with them, and therefore it's not considered a special ability. (This may have something to do with the insistence on only casting highly mainstream-attractive women in the first place. Or perhaps that Most Writers Are Male and All Men Are Perverts.)

The seduction can turn into an Informed Ability if the character in question is shown stumbling over lines any time we do see them talk to a woman. Also note that a character does not necessarily need to be The Pornomancer in order to make this work- this is just the usual portrayal.

See also: Take Our Word for It. Not to be confused with Instant Sedation, which hopefully has nothing to do with this trope.

Examples of Instant Seduction include:

Anime and Manga

• In GTO: The Early Years, Abe does this to the (supposedly) frigid hottest girl in the school, convincing her to skip class and go to a Love Hotel. It stands to reason that this is how he acquired most of his Sexy Man, Instant Harem.
• In an extra for Eyeshield 21, it's revealed that it took Agon 5 minutes to pick up a college girl at the gym and get her to come with him (Agon himself is in 11th grade). Good-speed indeed.
  • He then subverts the trope by having the poor girl drive him to a football game instead.

Film

• Handsome Rob from the The Italian Job remake, as per the quote above.
• We actually get to see a conversation like this in Iron Man, while Tony Stark is still in his Jerkass phase, and it's about as believable as one would expect. A television reporter, who is skeptical of his good will, asks him some questions, he gives brief answers to her questions, asks her to sleep with him...and she does. Just like that.
  • To be fair, the "just like that" was a Gilligan Cut. They might have skipped over the lines that actually did the work. Also being charming, handsome and embarrassingly wealthy tends to improve one's odds.
    • And, of course, Pepper Potts was decidedly less than impressed with this reporter when she stumbles out of Stark's bed in the morning. She implies to the reporter very clearly that Stark's mainly good at reading women he can easily persuade to jump in the sack with him.
• Casanova in the film of the same name. I feel this edit is not even needed, since The Casanova doesn't have his reputation for squat. Doubly in this film because he's portrayed by Johnny fucking Depp.
• Famously averted in The Graduate. Despite her good looks (and him being rather plain and heavily implied to be a virgin) Mrs. Robinson has to practically throw herself at Ben before he gets the idea, and then he runs off all scandalized. When he does agree to get a hotel room with her, he worries what his parents would think if they found out, is generally horribly nervous, and has to be talked into it again.

Jokes

• An old joke that suggests that the secret is persistence and volume (as in the example from The Mentalist under Live Action TV):

Bob sees Charlie walk up to a woman, say something, and get his face slapped.
"What did you say?"
"I said 'Hi! Wanna screw?' -- same thing I always say to a hot babe."
"Wow... you must get slapped a lot."
"Yeah... but I also get laid a lot!"

• • Adds whole new meaning to the proverbial Chinese phrase "thick-faced" (i.e. shameless), that.

Literature

• Remo Williams of the Destroyer series possesses this by virtue of secrets of Sinanju, the martial art he practices. Explained away by the fact that women are simple creatures governed entirely by emotion and are therefore easily manipulable.
  • Except that it is specifically stated that what Remo is doing is causing the women he uses this on extreme physical pleasure. It's never implied in any of the first hundred or so that it has anything to do with women being emotional and easily manipulated—it's the ability to manipulate nerve centers to cause pleasure as only someone trained in Sinanju can.
    • No, that refers to the Sinanju art of lovemaking, which is intensely pleasant for the woman and utterly boring for Remo. Remo mainly attracts women through pheromones (a side effect of his training). He later finds out that a diet of shark meat disrupts this effect and uses it to get some reprieve during flights and similar situations.
• The Game: "Watching Mystery work, I noticed that he used the exact same openers, routines, and lines-and got a phone number or a tonguedown nearly every time, even if the woman was with a boyfriend. I'd never seen anything like it. Sometimes a woman he was talking to was even moved to tears."
  • Unique example, because the process isn't only shown, it's dissected, analyzed and compared with similar processes.

Live Action TV

• Analyzed in an episode of The Mentalist, where one of the suspects in a murder is a "pick-up artist." He talks about his tricks for getting a woman into bed every night, but he also admits that he strikes out a lot—the key is to keep going, so through sheer volume he finds at least one receptive woman each day. As Jane (who has the potential to be this kind of person) explains, it's a good system for one-night stands, but is horrible for establishing a long-term relationship.
  • The same episode plays the trope for maximum comedy effect by having the resident stoic Kimball Cho perform instant seduction at a bar as part of an undercover operation... which he proceeds to do without ever deviating from his trademark deadpan, stone-faced persona. What takes the scene to near-CMoA levels is that the Instant Seduction conversations actually are depicted on-screen, and despite (or because of) his demeanor, Cho has a high and actually quite credible success rate.
  • In another episode of the show, Patrick Jane makes a bet that he can seduce the woman of Riggsby's choice. Riggsby picks the widow of the victim, not expecting Jane to actually try it.
• Okona from the Star Trek:The Next Generation episode uses this on apparently every other woman on the ship. To the point where you start wondering whether they have STDs in the future and should be worrying about this.
• Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl. He can seduce anyone, both male and female, in five minutes or less.
• Captain Jack Harkness of the 2005 revival of Doctor Who and of Torchwood. Somewhat subverted in Doctor Who in that it never gets past 'hi', although that can be easily attributed to the family-friendly nature of the show. Torchwood demonstrates that it is completely plausible that, should The Doctor not be there to get in the way, Captain Jack will engage in sexytime with anyone.
• Leverage features this during The Lonely Hearts Job. It is first used by a team of female grifters to con rich men out of their money. It is explicitly discussed that they rely on large amounts of eye contact and other simple tricks to make their marks fall in love with them. Nate also fakes a more genuine version of this as part of a con. Although it is largely subverted with him in that he and Sophie were already a couple, though she did force him to make it look genuine as opposed to allowing him to script it.

Video Games

• The hero of the Neverwinter Nights mod The Bastard of Kosigan can do this if his Charisma is high enough. At least sixteen will do it.
  • As can the heroine of A Dance With Rogues, who must have a Charisma of 14 anyway.

Web Comics

• Tip from Skin Horse. It's referred to in-story as a superpower (semi-jokingly).
• In Sluggy Freelance Torg once tried this on Gwynn. He failed horribly.
• In Least I Could Do, this ability is attributed to Rayne, the main character. Whenever he tries to pick up a woman on-screen, he uses a comedic routine that leads to failure, whereas his off-screen attempts leads to immediate sex, often in public places.
  • In an extreme example, one series has Rayne's brother dragging him off to go skiing. Rayne gets injured and is strapped to a gurney by an attractive paramedic. He leaves the comic for a single panel, and when we look back he's in the middle of sex with the paramedic. In the snow, while he's injured.
• In Something*Positive, Jason possesses this skill, though it's attributed to some sort of genius math formula that somehow makes this possible.