Mermaid Problem/Playing With

Basic Trope: A male character starts a romance with a mermaid and can't figure out how to go all the way.

• Straight: Bob the human meets Alice the mermaid - they fall in love but can't make love.
• Exaggerated: Bob will vow to never have sex due to his love for Alice.
• Justified: Alice the mermaid lays eggs.
• Inverted: Alice the mermaid can not figure out how to make love to Bob the human.
  • Alternately, Alice is a "reverse mermaid" (fish above the waist, human below).
  • Or Alice is a human woman and Bob is a merman.
  • The same problem, but with a bird woman instead of a mermaid.
• Subverted: "She has a mouth."
  • External fertilization.
  • Turn out that part of her scales, just below her waist, can split and reveal vital organ.
• Double Subverted: Alice insanely bites down like a shark when he tries it.
• Parodied: Bob is a "mersexuial" but has no idea how to make love with mermaids. It amuses mermaids to not tell him.
• Deconstructed: Despite superficial similarities, mermaids and humans are far too biologically different for a romantic or sexual relationship to work. They have fundamental misconceptions about how such a relationship would work - Bob can't get past her lack of 'equipment', Alice doesn't understand why he sees sex as more than just reproduction. They have a short, rocky relationship and go their separate ways.
• Reconstructed: Bob has a fetish for mermaids, and Alice has a fascination with humans. They make it work.
• Zig Zagged: Bob and Alice the mermaid can't make love. Alice has herself turned into a human. Bob turns himself into a merman. Of course since she was a Mermaid until recently, Alice knows just what to do.
• Averted: Alice is a human woman wearing a prosthetic tail over her legs.
  • Mermaids in this setting are aquatic mammals and possess fairly similar genitalia.
  • Bob and Alice don't want to have sex
  • Alice has two tails instead of one, with female genitalia in between.
• Enforced: "We can't have love making on screen. Make Alice a mermaid."
• Lampshaded: Bob: "I have to do WHAT?"
• Invoked: Bob is trapped on a planet of incompatible mermaids as a form of Ironic Hell.
• Defied: Bob has no problem working out the biology of her kind.
• Discussed: Alice: "I'm ready Bob, take me now!" Bob: "How do I do that?" Alice: "Loser."
• Conversed: Alice: "My boyfriend will not make love to me." Carol "He is a human. Did you ever tell him how?"
• Played For Laughs: "I put it where?"
• Played For Drama: Alice thinks because of this problem she and Bob were never meant to be.

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Back to the Mermaid Problem - we think the answer may involve seamen.