Helltaker: You're reading... romantic comedy?
Modeus: Never heard of this "romance" stuff before. It's the kinkiest thing I've ever seen. Maybe I've been doing things wrong all this time?
Helltaker: What, wanna go on a date?
Modeus: [blushing] I've always known you were a perverted degenerate.
Modeus: Never heard of this "romance" stuff before. It's the kinkiest thing I've ever seen. Maybe I've been doing things wrong all this time?
Helltaker: What, wanna go on a date?
Modeus: [blushing] I've always known you were a perverted degenerate.
Ah, love. It can take many forms. In Western culture, the traditional image of a loving couple involves monogamy, hand-holding, kissing, marriage, sex in the missionary position, and having children. This is as vanilla as it gets. On the opposite end, you have the, let's say "sexually liberated", who engage in polyamory, casual sex, open and shameless discussion of sexuality, and experimenting with various positions, toys, and fetishes.
Generally, people who stick closer to the "traditional" side view behaviors associated with the "liberated" side as taboo, perhaps even immoral, but also as tempting and exciting. So what about the other way around? If someone is involved enough in the kink community, the idea of a vanilla relationship could end up becoming just as exciting to them as kink is to someone who's more sexually conservative. This may have something to do with desiring the comforting familiarity of having one partner who's always there for you at the end of the day.
This trope can also be used to create Deliberate Values Dissonance: in a Free-Love Future, or even among races for whom the concept of "settling down with a partner and raising a family" doesn't exist, what we view as a vanilla relationship could be considered kinky and deviant, which is usually Played for Laughs.
See also Casual Kink, Last Wish Marriage, Marry for Love, In Love with Love, W.A.F.F., and Your Normal Is Our Taboo. Compare True Love is Exceptional and contrast True Love Is Boring. Can also occur with Insatiable Newlyweds.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Yuuutsu-kun to Succubus-san: Demons in general, and succubi in particular. have an inverted idea of what is and is not appropriate in a relationship. Sakuma the succubus, for example, considers watching pornos a wholesome family activity, and, as a result, her Porn Stash consists of books with titles like "Pure Pure Love". The sight of a couple holding hands in public shocks her as she regards it as something that would get censored on television.
Comic Books
- Smut Peddler: 2014 Edition: In "The Wedding Gift", Basim allows Shahira to spend their wedding night with her lover Naji because, on top of wanting her to be happy, the idea of his new wife cheating on him with someone else is his Casual Kink.
Fan Works
- Klingons in Star Trek have a predilection for very rough sex (a broken collarbone on the wedding night is considered a good omen for the marriage). This
Tumblr joke suggests that the Klingon equivalent of BDSM is to "gather in secrecy in dark cellars to engage in sweet, gentle loving, to the scorn of fellow Klingons."
- In Ciaphas Cain, Warmaster of Chaos, Slaaneshi Daemon Princess Emeli, a pure embodiment of lust and depravity, is described as "an innocent maiden" when she's thinking of her mortal beloved. Every single demon that get to see her like that — her retinue, a Khornate Bloodletter, a Nurglite Great Unclean One — is nothing short of aghast and scandalized.
Films — Live-Action
- In Tromeo and Juliet, the titular Tromeo Que has a brief scene where he masturbates furiously to a pornographic interactive computer game with a list of fetishes to pleasure himself to. Which does he choose?
In-game Voice: You chose true love.
- In Preaching to the Perverted, Peter Emery was able to get the BDSM Dominatrix queen Tanya Cheex so drunk that he gets her to admit her darkest fantasy; getting married and having sex with her husband in a hotel room.
- Deadpool 2: Wade and Vanessa have plenty of Casual Kink in their relationship, but also talk about settling down and starting a family as a form of foreplay. Vanessa even makes a romantic gift out of showing Wade that she's no longer on birth control.
Jokes
- A common type of gag among creators of lewd material plays with this trope, treating such things as chaste cuddling, Holding Hands, and emotional intimacy as Faux Horrific acts of depravity, for instance pixilating entwined hands or imposing a Narrative Profanity Filter over wholesome conversation.
Literature
- Aurora in The Robots of Dawn is a Free-Love Future, with exclusivity considered weird even for married people. However, Gremionis is in love with with Gladia and dreams of a monogamous relationship with her:
Gremionis: I don't want anyone else... How should I know why that is? I want Gladia. It's a—it's a kind of madness, except that I think it's the best kind of insanity. I'd be mad not to have that kind of madness.—I don't expect you to understand... Imagine having your mind out of whack and wanting it to stay out of whack. Any mentologist would put me in for major treatment.
- Lenina from Brave New World is shamed by her friends for dating one guy at a time for months on end, as their society encourages all relationships to be purely physical, no-strings-attached hookups.
Live-Action TV
- How I Met Your Mother:
- A more platonic example: Barney requests stories of being Happily Married from Marshall like children ask for fairytales at bedtime.
- In a romantic sense, Marshall and Lily are these to one another since day one of their relationship and never had any other relationship since then, barring the time Marshall almost had a rebound with a loony barista. They bring mementos when they're apart, and they get cranky when they don't have sex, and when they do, they do it literally in a jiffy.
- Played with in "I Think I Like You" from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Rebecca and Greg are Friends with Benefits, and their sex life is doing great, but Rebecca is starting to catch feelings, so as the camera shows him pushing her head down towards his waist she can't stop thinking about getting married to him on a hillside surrounded by ducks. Naturally, it's that she's far more disturbed by.
Video Games
- Helltaker: Modeus, the Lustful Demon, finds out about romance after reading some romantic comedies and finds it to be lewder than anything she's ever seen.
Helltaker: Do you want to go out on a date?
Modeus: [incredibly flustered] I've always known you were a perverted degenerate.
Webcomics
- Canon within the Sunstone timeline, the main characters Lisa and Ally (who are established as being an Aggressive Submissive and Dominatrix respectively in the BDSM community) withhold their usual bondage play in favor of regular sex on their wedding night because they "just tied the ultimate knot."
- In pictures for sad children, Gary goes digging through his roommate's Porn Stash, notes how many of them feature weird fetishes, and asks "Do you have any that simulate being in a meaningful relationship? That is my fetish."
- Parodied in Homestuck, where Caliborn pesters Dirk Strider to draw the vilest, most degenerate pornography Caliborn can imagine... which turn out to be hilariously tame scenarios like a happy couple holding hands, or kissing. Then he subverts it with his last request: he asks for the happy couple to eat their baby. Elsewhere, it's revealed Caliborn is an alien from a species whose romantic relationships are all based on mutual hatred—so love really is a bizarre kink for his species.
- Foxes in Love: Green "tortures" his partner Blue... by showering him in praise and validation. Blue quickly ends up begging for a safeword as if it was an intense BDSM scene.
Web Videos
- During Diamanda Hagan's review of Preaching to the Perverted, it is implied that she shares Tanya's desire to find and marry her one true love. Justified, as Hagan claims that the film is based on true events, with her being the inspiration for Tanya Cheex.
- In Helluva Boss, the Lust ring of Hell is all about raw lust and considers romantic love to be taboo. When Moxxie tries to serenade Millie in a Lust club, the Asmodeus (the Sin of Lust) and Fizzarolli show up to hijack the performance and demand he sing about sex instead. Asmodeus and Fizz are known to be business and sexual partners, but the fact that they're in romantic love is considered scandalous and is also the worst-kept secret in Hell.