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{{trope}}
[[File:ikeaerotica_8009ikeaerotica 8009.jpg|link=College Humor|frame|Some Assembly Required.]]
 
 
{{quote|There is nothing duller than dull pornography.|'''[[Agatha Christie]]''', ''[[The Clocks]]''}}
 
Named after the Swedish home furniture retail chain, [['''IKEA Erotica]]''' describes the tendency of badly written sex scenes to be nothing more than "insert tab A into slot B" ''ad nauseam'', as though the readers [[Viewers are Morons|actually didn't know what goes where]]. The result is that the participants might as well be doing nothing more interesting than assembling a flat-pack wardrobe, the kind of affordable, Swedish, some-assembly-required furniture IKEA is known for. The point of erotica is to make the reader feel something of what the characters do, which in most cases will be arousal rather than boredom. It's often a sign that the writer didn't want to have a sex scene here but [[Executive Meddling|got overruled]], or that the writer is sexually inexperienced and writing with the aid of a biology textbook (a lot of [[Fan Fiction]] [[Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls|written by 14-year-old girls]] comes into this category, often minus the biology textbook), making it less of a case of [[Anatomically-Impossible Sex|You Fail Sex Ed]] and more [[Did Not Do the Research|You Haven't Even Taken The Course Yet]]. Examples are too numerous to list, and too forgettable to remember in any case.
 
However, it [[Tropes Are Not Bad|can be used properly]]. IKEA Erotica has its merits as a tool of parody or simply as a means to [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|fool the censors]]. If used from the POV of a [[The Spock|certain type of character]], it can be in interesting insight into their psyche -- providedpsyche—provided, of course, that the rest of the writing is enough to make this [[Stylistic Suck]] apparent. It can also be used if the character simply thinks that the sex sucks ([[Incredibly Lame Pun|and not in a fun way]]).
 
An extremely common feature of [[Porn Without Plot]]. An example of [['''IKEA Erotica]]''' is the line, "He pressed his hard sex against her soft sex and they had sex". A frequently usable antidote: lead up to the act, then pull a [[Discretion Shot]] at the end of the chapter, coming back in during the next chapter when it's all over. It works in cinema, and it can work for you, too!
 
The extreme of [['''IKEA Erotica]]''' is "verbing the noun", in which the scene is given mostly or entirely in subject-verb-object sentences in which the key words could be replaced by anything and you'd have difficulty noticing.
 
Not to be confused with [http://www.furnitureporn.com/ furniture] [https://web.archive.org/web/20131030120913/http://www.strangehorizons.com/2006/20060213/copley-woods-f.shtml porn]. Or [http://www.cockeyed.com/pranks/ikea_party/ikea01.shtml The IKEA Fancy Dress Dinner Party]. Also not to be confused with a [[Cargo Ship]].
Or [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezwhZC4R-eI&feature=related furniture porn].
 
See also [[Fetish Retardant]] and [[Narm]], common consequences of [['''IKEA Erotica]]'''. Contrast with [[Mills and Boon Prose]].
----
=== Dishonorable mentions: ===▼
 
{{noreallife|this is All The Tropes, not Tropes After Dark.}}
== Anime & Manga ==▼
* Used intentionally in ''[[Speed Grapher]]''. If a sex scene isn't [[Fan Disservice]], it's this trope.▼
 
▲=== {{examples|Dishonorable mentions: ===}}
▲== Anime &and Manga ==
▲* Used intentionally in ''[[Speed Grapher]]''. If a sex scene isn't [[Fan Disservice]], it's this trope.
 
== Film ==
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* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445760/ The Wayward Cloud] contains such scenes to deliver irony and a statement against IKEA erotica.
* The [[R-Rated Opening|very first scene]] of ''[[Before the Devil Knows You're Dead]]'' is an achingly passionless sex scene between Andy and his wife. [[Tropes Are Not Bad|Used effectively]] in that it's meant to demonstrate the casual emptiness of Andy's life.
 
 
== Literature ==
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** And then it turns out that the guy is Al Gore. No, really.
*** It gets better. The woman he's doing it with? Tipper Gore. ''And neither of them knew at first.''
{{quote| '''HunniBunni:''' It feels like when you ''break a tie vote in the Senate''?<br />
'''Born2Bone:''' Umm, listen, what I meant was...<br />
'''HunniBunni:''' This is ''you'', isn't it, Al? ''ISN'T IT''?? YOU ''BASTARD''!!! YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE ATTENDING A STATE FUNERAL THIS AFTERNOON!!!<br />
'''Born2Bone:''' ''Tipper''?<br />
'''HunniBunni:''' Whoops. }}
* The sex scenes in Greg Egan's novels are so frighteningly banal and usually misjudged from the characters' perspective that he's clearly subverting the whole idea of the things. Yes, people bump naughty bits together from time to time. They also urinate, get cramps, digest food, and flake off skin; there's no tradition of putting scenes specifically depicting ''those'' activities into novels.
* [[Tom Clancy]]'s ''The Bear and The Dragon'' is proof that devout Catholics should never, ever, EVER be allowed to write sex scenes.
** His earlier ones are even worse, especially when Jack [[The LoinLoins SleepsSleep Tonight|can't get it up]] in ''The Sum Of All Fears''.
* [[John Varley]]'s novel ''Mammoth'' contained an [[IKEA Erotica]] scene cringe-inducingly unerotic. "His stiffness into her wetness" or something like that.
* [[How Not to Write A Novel]] points out in a section entitled "Assembly Instructions: Wherein the sex is drained of sex" that this is the likely result of a writer being uncomfortable with the scene; "The result will be something that reads like a medical brochure about erectile dysfunction. What's more, it will read as more perverse than a straightforward 'They fucked all night', and in a disturbing Norman Bates-y way."
* [[Older Than Print]]: An awesome scene early on in the Japanese creation myth ''[[wikipedia:Kojiki|Kojiki]]'': "Izanagi asked his spouse Izanami, 'How's your body formed?' She replied, 'My body, formed though it be formed, has one place that is formed insufficiently.' Then Izanagi said, 'My body, formed though it be formed, has one place that is formed in excess. Therefore I would like to take that place in my body which is formed to excess and insert it into that place in your body that is formed insufficiently and give birth to the land. How would this be?' Izanami replied, 'This would be good.'"
* A rare example of IKEA erotica being used on purpose, for a reason: in [[Greg Bear]]'s novel ''Slant'', a couple sex scenes are described with clinical precision, but it's clear that there's not meant to be any sort of romance or passion. In the first scene, a call girl has sex with a client: she doesn't enjoy it, of course, and he's only doing it to infect her. In the second scene, a man is jumped by his very horny wife, and doesn't really get a chance to enjoy himself either. The obsessively detailed style is repeated throughout the novel to create the feeling of being bombarded by information.
* Used in ''[[The HandmaidsHandmaid's Tale]]'', in order to emphasiseemphasize the fact that sex, for Offred, is now nothing more than a duty.
* ''Kramer's War'' by [[Derek Robinson]] mentions IKEA erotica, but doesn't indulge in it. One character actually thinks the words "Insert Tab A into Slot B" ironically; luckily we are spared the sex scene. Other novels by Robinson prove immune to IKEA erotica.
* [[The Subject Steve]] has this. And IKEA [[Gorn]]. And IKEA social interaction. And IKEA human life. All deliberate, mind you.
* Done for comedic effect in one of Michael Moorcock's "Dancers at the End of Time" novels. The characters are often described as "making love" in a nonspecific manner, but when they actually decide to do it for real (in order to conceive a baby - Jherek Carnelian, the central character) they have some difficulty working out "what goes into where, and so on."
 
 
== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[The Shield]]'' invokes this, intentionally, in an ongoing subversion of [[Hollywood Sex]].
* Episode 6 of ''[[Garth Marenghi's Darkplace]]'' opens with a piece of hilariously bad [[IKEA Erotica]]. Later, Dean Learner gets to go on an epic rant about the standards of modern erotica writing, which ends up veering straight into [[Purple Prose]].
{{quote| '''Learner:''' I read modern writers, and it's "screw this", "he licked her", "she sucked that", "he bit the other", you know, "someone put it there", "he held it", I mean, where's the sensuality?<br />
'''Marenghi:''' Where's "he glided in liquid smooth"? Where's "her wispy mound"? }}
* ''[[Night Court]]'' parodied this once. Mac was discussing assembling a train set, saying "Insert tab A into slot B. Who can't do that?" and Dan (the in-house pervert) just gave him a look and said "You'd be surprised."
* Nearly [[Once Per Episode]] on ''[[Three's Company]]''.
* An example of a character using the trope: Henry Blake's sex classes in ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|Mash]]'' (happened twice).
 
 
== Tabletop Games ==
* The [[DarthWiki/So Bad It's Horrible]] ''[[FATAL]]'' has formulae for calculating the exact measurements of a character's primary and secondary sex characteristics. Thankfully this part is optional, but it's there.
** Well, theoretically optional, but given the rest of the manual's emphasis on the least arousing sex this side of a court-ordered chemical sterilization, you might as well just do it. You're already a sex offender just for agreeing to play the game; just as well hang for a sheep as a lamb.
 
== Video Games ==
 
== Videogames ==
* Considering the purposes they're purchased for, it's ''amazing'' just how bad the writing in most English hentai games is when it comes to sex scenes. In most cases, the writers probably either:
** 1.# Have much more interest in writing a story than shoehorning in what the [[Executive Meddling|executives]] consider to be the selling point of these games. Game requires adult content to sell? Fine, here's a stupid sex scene, now let me get back to the interesting bit. In some of these games, you can cut the sex completely without missing anything in the plot, and probably make it ''better'' - these may get an all-ages console releases.
** 2.# Know exactly how silly the game they're writing for are, so why bother making it good? [[They Just Didn't Care]] anyway. In fact, why not making the sex even dumber than it already is. They may even garner some cheap laughs from [[So Bad It's Good|how bad it is]]. The term "[[wikipedia:Sexploitation film|sexploitation]]" is invented and reserved for this kind of things, as shown below.
** 3.# Got some [[wikipedia:Ghostwriter|ghostwriters]] involved somewhere in the process. You can tell from the clear difference in writing between the erotic scenes and the rest of the game.
* [[Divi-dead]] [[Up to Eleven|takes it to a whole other level]] with such gems as "shove your eggplant up to my ribcage!", and the hero always, always, '''always''' finishes with '''"I'm BLASTING!"'''
* It can probably be explained mostly with poor translation job by people who had little to no actual experience, since those games were originally in Japanese.
** Sometimes even when the translation is good, it's often too clinical, and marred with [[Unsound Effect|strange sound effects]].
* Used to [[Tropes Are Not Bad|great effect]] in [[Katawa Shoujo]] whenever a sex scene is supposed to be awkward.
 
 
== Web Originals ==
* [http://i412.photobucket.com/albums/pp210/notdazzled/fail-owned-nut-ad-fail.jpg This sign]{{Dead link}}, as documented on the Fail Blog.
** Text reads ''"not without a washer!"'' in Portuguese, by the way.
* The [[Porn Without Plot]] of certain fixations and fetishes can turn into matherotica, when the author decides that the best way to spark the reader's libido is by rattling off measurements. A blend of [[IKEA Erotica]] and a failure to [[Show, Don't Tell]], it misunderstands the thrill of the impossible which fuels these fantasies as "her breasts had become even bigger and heavier, growing five pounds and a full two inches in diameter in the course of one day, making her a 62FF."
* "[[Fate/stay night|Please put your...that!]] [[Rule 34|Y-your PoNoS!]] [[Doujinshi|To my...my...Here!]] [[Narm|...My VAGooo!!!]] [[Crowning Moment of Funny|And J-J-JAM IT IN!]]" [[Memetic Mutation]] [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/jam-it-in-you-lost-me ahoy].
** Completely justified, as the male lead is so dense that he doesn't even know what sex is and needs to have it explained to him.
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** This song is that rare and wonderful thing, a successful attempt at deliberately creating something [[So Bad It's Good]].
* In [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara]]'s review of ''The New Guardians #1'':
{{quote| '''Linkara''': "Considering your team's mission statement is only about procreation, you really don't need to know all that much. Insert A into B, repeat as needed."}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130311215243/http://askikeapony.tumblr.com/post/15996463518/granted-i-wore-my-tail-a-little-differently-back Literal IKEA Erotica].
 
 
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** "He rubbed her shoulder sensually." That's not sexy! You can't do someone in the shoulder!
* This gem from [[South Park]] (which also sounds like it might be a schoolground rhyme):
{{quote| It's a man's obligation to stick his boneration in a woman's separation. This sort of penetration increases the population of the younger generation.}}
** Another South Park example showing both the sheer terrifying wonder of Butter's twisted crazy upbringing, and perhaps a little [[Truth in Television]]:
{{quote| You see, Jimmy, when a man's penis becomes hard, the man puts it into a lady, into her vagina. Then, the hard penis sneezes milk inside the lady's tunnel and after it's all done sneezing milk the penis stops being hard and the man loses interest in the lady.}}
 
{{reflist}}
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