Good People Have Good Sex

In Heaven, they make love... ...on Earth, they have sex... ...but down here in Hell...down here, they fuck. —Silver, Jack

Main characters and other positive characters always have healthy sex lives. They might go through long periods of not being in a relationship (they may even be Hollywood Dateless) during which they may have a lot of good sex anyway or not. But when they are in one, the sex is frequent and good (unless the relationship is near its end).

Another version is that when villains have sex, it tends to be quick and emotionless. It will often be treated as an act of self-gratification and only the dominant villain will emerge with their desire sated. When heroes make love, it tends to be slow and passionate, with both parties emerging satisfied. This difference can be cause for a Sex Face Turn for a dissatisfied villain.

Of course, this trope applies mainly for experienced adults. For most teenage characters, even and sometimes especially heroes, any on-screen mention of sex will end in awkwardness at best, tragedy at worst. See Their First Time.

Only laughingstock old guys ever need Viagra. In the days before such drugs existed, male impotence was generally perceived as a trait of villains. Impotence leads to insanity, which leads to evil actions, as with General Ripper in Dr. Strangelove or The Man with the Golden Gun.

In many settings, only characters of questionable morality have "weird" sexual preferences. For really old fashioned settings, this may even include gays and lesbians. Since the 1990s, if not before, gayness has been largely freed from this trope.

This excludes Very Special Episodes, pleading for tolerance, and series which intentionally include such preferences to be "edgy". Of course, in the latter, most characters have questionable morality anyway.

Note that this idea of "good sex" is sometimes only held by the sympathetic protagonist, who meets humorless people who consider sexual pleasure as depraved and define "good sex" (or "goodsex") by its absence.

Justified in that one of the primary traits associated with 'good people' is empathy.

This may occasionally be shown as one of rewards given to The Woobie at the end, if s/he manages to survive everything the universe throws at them.

See also Death by Sex and Sexual Karma. Compare Ethical Slut and Safe, Sane, and Consensual. Contrast Sex Is Evil, Sex Is Good.

Examples of Good People Have Good Sex include:

Anime & Manga

• Subverted in Berserk. It takes Casca and Guts at least one try before they can make sweet, sweet love without one of them having a bad bout of temporary insanity caused by post-traumatic stress from childhood sexual abuse. Even then, their moment is the only instance of sex in the series so far that wasn't either Attempted Rape, near-rape, actual rape, demon rape, a pagan orgy, just plain sick, or done out of spite, money, lust, or pity.
• Final Yamato was, until 2009, the last chapter of the Space Battleship Yamato saga. It concludes with the long-awaited wedding of the Official Couple, followed immediately (in the theatrical version) by a tearfully passionate, tender sex scene.
• In Full Metal Panic you have Gauron, who's a Sadomasochistic, Depraved Bisexual pedophile and necrophiliac; Gates, an Ax Crazy rapist Lolicon shown to masturbate to animal nature videos; and the lesbian Creepy Twins Xia Yu Fan and Xia Yu Lan (who also quite possibly have something going on with Gauron) that are shown to be pretty promiscuous. Even the villainous female scientist who only had a small part in the beginning had depraved kinks.
• Subverted in Futari Ecchi. The main characters, both still virgins at the beginning, have to actually learn how to have good sex over time.
  • In one chapter, Makoto and Yura during a trip to hot springs meet with a young couple that looks up to them regarding the development of love relationship. Makoto and Yura, of course, feel proud of this. But later, when Makoto and Yura accidentally find the young couple having sex in the hot springs bath, they almost get an inferiority complex when they find out how that young couple is so much better at sex than them.
• Kare Kano spruced up its one and only sex scene by having flowers cover everything.
• In Kaze to Ki no Uta, the rape scenes are gritty, shocking and clearly show the characters' pain. In contrast, anything with Serge and Gilbert tends to be loving, tender... and surrounded by a lot of flowers.
• Arguably deconstructed in Kemonozume, where good guys Toshihiko and Yuka have extremely good sexual chemistry and would really like to get it on. The only problem is they can't, because Yuka keeps transforming into a huge flesh-eating monster when she's turned on.
• The heroes in Mnemosyne spend their free time having sweaty lesbian encounters. The villains' preferred pastime involve ropes, sharp objects, and innards.
• In Monster, when Eva has flashbacks of Roberto, he is shown as an utterly repulsive pig slobbering all over her body. In contrast, Helenka and Schubert's loving sex scene is gentle and emotive.
• Sensual Phrase has many sex scenes, and several of them are highly enjoyable for the people involved. Although Sakuya's goodness is rather questionable, he is great in bed, and he plays the trope much straighter after he and Aine get married.
• This is one of the major precepts in the work of Tanaka Yutaka, especially with regard to emotional honesty, open communication, and its ilk.
• Madoka and Kyosuke's sex scene in Shin Kimagure Orange Road is a mix of this and Their First Time, as well as very sweet and gentle despite Kyousuke's initial doubts about how selfless he is or not. Madoka reassures him that it'll be okay and also wonders if her and Kyosuke's kids would be esper like him, and after some more chat while naked, Kyousuke pulls the covers off Madoka and they have sex..
• Makie and Renzaburo's sex scene in Wicked City is extremely sweet, paused and slow, especially compared with all the Fan Disservice that has been going on. Doubles as "Glad to Be Alive" Sex as they both have barely survived an attack from the local demonic Dark Action Girl -- who's the same woman that Taki himself had sex with in the beginning.
• Played completely straight in Kouryuu no Mimi, when Natsume and Kanako have super sweet and gentle sex almost at the end of the first OAV. Complete with a really nice piano piece as background music.
• Played straight when Miaka and Taka make love in Fushigi Yuugi, but played with in the case of Nakago and Soi earlier in the story. Soi loves Nakago deeply and is very passionate about their affair, but knows that to him it's just a joyless mechanic meant to revitalize his energy.

Comics

• In Joss Whedon's last arc of Astonishing X-Men, before the X-Men make their final stand against the Breakworld, Colossus is overwhelmed by the position he finds himself in, as he is supposedly prophesied to destroy the Breakworld. While he and Kitty Pryde are granted shelter by a renegade "pacifist" Breakworlder, as they prepare for bed Kitty distracts Colossus from his emotional turmoil by standing before him completely naked. The next issue we see them in afterglow, and going by the conversion it was very good:

Kitty: Whoof! Colossus: Katya, I... Kitty: Wait, not done with 'Whoof'. You are better than I imagined. And I've imagined.

• Goddess saw villains, anti-heroes, and... pretty much everyone having a strange kink or three.
• Empowered and Thugboy. It greatly helps building up her self-esteem.
• Taken to extremes in the Preacher (Comic Book) graphic novels. The main character, Jesse Custer, prefers having sex with his pretty, blonde girlfriend on the hood of a Cadillac -- or in the driver's seat of a stolen hot-rod during a police pursuit. Meanwhile, virtually all of the villains are either sexual perverts to a ridiculous degree, gay, bisexual, or at least French. Or some combination thereof.
• Spider-Man gets in on the act as well, but zig-zag it a bit in that Peter Parker and Mary Jane are shown to be quite kinky.
• An example can be found in Superman, of all places. After Clark Kent and Lois Lane finally got together, it was made abundantly clear that they can't stop having sex with each other.
• Averted all over the place in Watchmen, though this is possibly due to the moral ambiguity of all the characters. Nevertheless:
  • The first costumed hero, Hooded Justice, is implied to be a) homosexual and b) an S&M enthusiast, though there is a subtle hint in the artwork of one issue that implies that he settled into a stable and loving relationship with another man later in life, thus playing this trope straight. More info can be found here.
  • The first female costumed adventurer, Silhouette, was a lycra-clad lesbian femdom with a horsewhip.
  • Of all the protagonists, Dan Dreiberg (or Nite Owl II) is the closest thing to a truly upstanding, moral idealist in the whole piece, and he has a costume fetish; the first time he and Laurie go at it, he can't get it up at all.
    • His self-esteem is also pretty low at that point. After he and Laurie have gone out and saved people from a burning building, he really feels able to enjoy himself (though he admits the costumes do add a thrill).
  • The first Silk Spectre has an affair with the man who savagely beat and tried to rape her, leading to an interesting discussion of the Rape Is Love trope and Laurie, but that's neither here nor there.
  • Rorschach may actually be a straight example, as he doesn't have sex at all and has a firm Sex Is Evil stance (there's a hint he may be a repressed homosexual), and it's clear he isn't good people.
  • Likewise, Ozymandias doesn't see much personal need for a sexual relation and is more or less Asexual. He lacks the Sex Is Evil mindset, however.
  • Finally, Doctor Manhattan, the only superpowered being in the series uses his powers in the most "interesting" ways during intercourse in hopes of exciting Laurie. Not only does it end up squicking her out but he knew it was inevitable. Since he is mostly without emotion and is more concerned with the nature of science, it makes sense that his sex scene is both fascinating and lifeless.

Fan Fiction

• Beyond the Dawn, a huge fic inspired by The Silmarillion, contains very tender and poetically depicted love scenes between Beren&Luthien. On the contrary, one of the prominent enemies, mighty orc Boldog, is a real motherfucker. Literally.
• Subverted in Naruto Veangance Revelaitons. Ronan often engages in some fairly disgusting practices while having sex with Sakura, but despite being the protagonists of the fic, Ronan and Sakura are not exactly good people, even though they're intended to be seen as such.
• In Respawn of the Dead (including the Prequel), Heavy and Medic are depicted as having loving, mutually enjoyable sex (although Medic apparently likes to play with scalpels and shows up after an offscreen sex scene with the world's biggest hicky, not to mention the fact Their First Time is after they had way too much fun spychecking Soldier and Scout the hard way). But Soldier humps his shovel and gets off on beating up Medic. In the Prequel, Spy has A Date with Rosie Palms in front of the mirror, disguised as the Engineer, which... just gets worse in the main fic.
• In the Death Note Slash Fic A Cure for Love L notices an immediate change (for the worse) in their sex lives once Light becomes Kira again.
• Played straight and discussed in a Sailor Moon fic from the late 90s, where Mamoru comforts a distressed Usagi when she discovers a porn catalog and asks him if their sex always looks so "ugly." Mamoru reassures her that it's always good and pure and clean between them because they love each other, which the joyless freaks who use the things in the catalog don't know the first thing about.

Film

• Merrily subverted in every incarnation of The Addams Family, where Weird People Have Weird Sex -- and also, very obviously, a terrific time. In fact, Gomez was the only husband in Black and White TVLand who actually lusted after his own wife. He more than made up for the rest of them, too.
• In The Departed, Matt Damon's villain character has at least one bout with erectile dysfunction (tellingly right after he's gotten engaged, betraying his deep-seated trust issues.) The hero, Leonardo DiCaprio, is a lovin' machine.
• In Robert Rodriguez's Desperado, we have an extended, passionate love scene between the main protagonists. Cut to the villain Bucho lying on his bed, smoking a cigar and looking bored while a prostitute bounces up and down on him. Then she kisses him and he blows smoke into her mouth, sending her into a coughing fit.
• The contrast between Georgiana's first time having sex with her husband in The Duchess and her first time having sex with her lover, especially since Minister Gray, despite not looking all that athletic, actually turns out to be quite muscled.
• Played completely straight in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia. Both of the protagonists are in loving relationships and apparently have lots of good sex.
• In Magicians, one of the characters is tormented by his manipulative gay agent who repeatedly mentions his erectile dysfunction in order to prevent him from forming any other relationships. When he finally gets in bed with a woman, his erectile dysfunction is cured.
• When Syndrome learns Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl got married and have children, he flat-out calls them on this. Made even more incredible that this is a Disney film.
• Used in Nanny McPhee. Mr. Brown obviously loved his deceased wife very much and it is kind of apparent, what with the seven children they had. As Ms Quickly noted, "I know what [Mr. Brown] wants with me and it's not marriage, no wonder there's so many of [them]".
• In Revenge of the Nerds, the nerdy Lewis wins the heart of Betty by disguising himself as her boyfriend and giving her good sex. When he reveals the truth, she asks how he got so good at it, and he responds, "All jocks ever think about is sports; all nerds ever think about is sex." Compare to her boyfriend Stan, who is shown at several points in the movie having trouble getting it up.
• Seducing Dr.Lewis has all the villagers having awesome sex when fishing was still strong and plentiful. After they finally manage to get their factory in the village, they finally have good sex once again.
• Averted in Shortbus. Most of the characters struggle with their sex lives but retain their sympathy to the audience.
• In Spartacus the titular hero is straight and monogamous (claims of Ho Yay notwithstanding), the corrupt but essentially sympathetic Gracchus is a womanizer and the outright evil Crassus is a Depraved Bisexual.
• Subverted in Team America: World Police, when the hero finally gets the girl, the puppet-on-puppet sex is Nausea Fuel.
• The secret agents of The Legion to Ensure Total Harmony and Law (L.E.T.H.A.L) in the Andy Sidaris films Malibu Express, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Picasso Trigger, Savage Beach, Guns, Do or Die, Hard Hunted, Fit to Kill, Day of the Warrior and L.E.T.H.A.L Ladies: Return to Savage Beach

Literature

• Eric Flint, more then once in both the 1632 and Belisarius series. He seems unusual (though not unique) in making tender and aesthetically pleasing sex scenes that do seem to fit well with the plot. Too often such things are a Lowest Common Denominator passage.
• Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights. While the Sultan wasn't a good person (indeed he recognizably acted like a stereotypical serial killer), Sheherazade was a noble and heroic woman as well as being skillful.
• Atlas Shrugged, being an Author Tract written by Ayn Rand, treats this as a Writer on Board issue: Strawman Socialists can't help but believe that Sex Is Evil; Rearden has the misfortune to be married to one of them, so Dagny justifies the consummation of her affair with him by her having experienced a guiltless pleasure greater than anything they could tolerate.
• Shows up somewhat unexpectedly in Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (perhaps not so unexpectedly considering the sympathetic treatment of Good Bad Girl Sissy). One chapter introduces an unmarried mother who proudly walks down the street with her baby carriage. The "good housewives" who shriek and throw stones at her are said also to have Bad Sex:

There was no longer high joy for them in the act of love. They endured the love-making rigidly, praying all the while that another child would not result. This bitter submissiveness made the man ugly and brutal. To most of them, the love act had become a brutality on both sides; the sooner over with, the better. They resented this girl because they felt this had not been so with her and the father of her child.

• The Crap Saccharine World / Dystopia in Brave New World has casual promiscuity that removes all intimacy from sex.
• Discussed in Meyer's Breaking Dawn. Despite being a good person, Edward's rock-hard body, super speed/strength, and vampire instincts cause him to accidentally bruise the still-human Bella on their honeymoon (while biting a few pillows). Bella apparently likes it rough, but Edward feels that not being gentle in bed makes him a bad person, tying into his issues with his own violence and his massive self-hatred complex, and refuses to have sex with her again, no matter how much she begs. When she finally convinces him to give it another try, he doesn't give her any more bruises, though he does break the headboard of the bed. Of course, when she is eventually turned, the bruising no longer becomes a problem. The other Cullens also apparently have extremely violent, house-breaking sex, but they seem to like it.
• The "Bad People Have Bad Sex" aspect of this trope is spoofed in the fictitious play "The Courier's Tragedy" in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. In the play, all the villains are incestuous perverts. At no point in the novel does anybody have good sex, but they all appear to enjoy what they have. The Handsome Lech is compared, within the text, to Humbert Humbert.
• Michael and Charity from The Dresden Files. They have seven children (partly because they're devoutly Catholic; the only reason there were no more is the result of what Fake!Harry did to Charity while she was heavily pregnant with number 7) and in "It's My Birthday, Too" we find out that every Valentine's Day their kids have to barricade themselves in their rooms from the noise.
• In John Shirley's Eclipse series, this is very much so -- he at one point has a juxtaposition of good and bad characters' sex scenes to make the point. Of course, the whole series is left-wing political porn seemingly designed to boost spirits (at least) during the Reagan Darkness.
• Subverted in The Guardians; when the angel-human hybrids are adjusting to their new powers and senses, they're encouraged to get it all out of their system. One novice spent 30 years having orgies before he finally grew bored of it. Even mature Guardians aren't above a little Power Perversion Potential.
• The happily married and loving Arthur and Molly Weasley. As Draco Malfoy points out to Ron in the first book, they have more kids than they could afford.
  • Word of God says their son Charlie Weasley never got married because he was not interested, so this might be a subversion.
• This was very common in the James Bond novels, where Bond himself is of course a Chivalrous Pervert, and many of the villains were depicted as perverted, psycho homosexuals, or impotent. One of the few cases where Fleming's pop psychology was close to Truth in Television is depicting the Psycho for Hire Red Grant in From Russia with Love as a homicidal maniac incapable of any kind of arousal except for arguably that he gets from killing. There is some link between sociopathy and lack of sex drive which is explicitly part of some characters and would certainly explain others.
• Used constantly in early Dean Koontz books. The heroes always have amazing sex (written about at length), while the villains are usually repulsed by sex or (their own!) genitalia.
• Both played straight and averted in the Kushiel's Avatar and Kushiel's Legacy trilogies. One of the major ideas of the series -- which features an entire nation whose "hat" is kinky sex -- is that the real difference between "good" and "bad" sex isn't kinkiness (the heroine is a sadomasochist) but rather consent. The good characters care about it. The evil characters don't.
• Richard Littlejohn's Hell in a Handcart: the Complete Monsters have violent BDSM sex, Les Collaborateurs all masturbate with police truncheons or busts of Karl Marx or copies of the Evening Standard (and are all universally gay), the Sidekick has sex, but with a woman he's not fond of, and the protagonist... doesn't have sex at all but just receives random blowjobs from his wife (who has to make do otherwise with vibrators).
• Elea and Paikan, the very happily married couple in Rene Barjavel's The Ice People. Twice. And the second time is an awful Tear Jerker because all the scenes with them together are flashbacks which Elea is letting us see eight hundred thousand years later.
• In Death: Big time. Witness In Death reveals that Richard Draco was a Complete Monster who used rape drugs on a lot of women, filmed the sex acts without the women's knowledge or consent, and when Areena Mansfield had sex with him shortly before his death, all she could express was disgust and disinterest.
• Mercedes Lackey: Good People Have Good Sex, and bad people have bad, bad sex -- "bad" being defined, in Lackey's lexicon, as "anything involving even the suggestion of physical restraint, control, power, or trust". Anyone in a Lackey book who expresses even the faintest hint of interest in consensually tying someone to a bed will inevitably end up torture-slaughtering children for sexual thrills -- in gratuitously, lasciviously graphic detail.
• Night Watch usually subverts or averts its Morality Tropes, but not this one. Alisa has the best sex of her life with a Light Other, described in very un-kinky fashion. Her Dark Other lover was only willing to engage in sadomasochistic play, and judging by what little was described of it, magic was the only thing that kept it in the "safe" part of Safe, Sane, and Consensual.
• The Dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four has the Party's aim of eliminating all sexual pleasure and eventually make sexual intercourse itself obsolete even for procreation.
• In the Outlander series, Jamie and Claire have really good sex. In contrast, evil Depraved Bisexual Captain John Randall is incapable of getting hard unless he's beating or torturing the person he's raping. And even then, it's shown that unless the victim is Jamie, he still might not get hard.
• Paradise Lost: Milton delivers a Take That to the Moral Guardians of his time by including sex (a lot of sex, according to Eve) in Adam's and Eve's perfect life in Eden.
• Played straight, averted, and subverted throughout in the Star Wars Expanded Universe:
  • First, Luke and Mara regularly use double entendres around each other, but some of these have an S&M subtext, e.g. "I hope he doesn't mean the same thing as when I call you master," subverting it.
    • Luke also had a one-night stand with Akanah in the Black Fleet books. In typical Luke style, he was emotionally attached to her, and then learned everything she told him was a lie.
  • Played straight in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, where Admiral Daala has homophobic thoughts.
  • Played straight and averted in The Courtship of Princess Leia, with a (good) race of amazons that enslave men and a (bad) queen who tries to seduce and kill Luke, and her (good) son imagines the two of them having sex.
  • Averted in The Joiner King, with Zekk fantasizing about sex with Jaina, Alema Rar, and Jag.
  • Played straight in Invincible by having Tahiri molest Ben. Eventually he inspires her to perform a High Heel Face Turn.
  • Corran Horn, depending on the book, averts it (his sexual history includes a Selonian) and plays it straight (having sex with Mirax every time they see each other, and having plenty of history with human women).
  • Leonia Tavira, the main antagonist of I, Jedi, plays it straight, having sex with her underlings as a reward.
  • Oddly, the Jedi of the Old Republic avert the trope by having as much sex as they want, so long as there's no emotional attachment.
  • To finally ensure it's played straight, Luke and Leia never ever mention the former's previous crush on the latter.
  • The Yuuzhan Vong, of course. An entire species of sadomasochists.
  • Karen Traviss's Mandalorians don't give a toss about homosexuality.
• Played straight in the Tom Clancy novel The Sum of All Fears. Jack's wife, Cathy, spends much of the first two-thirds of the novel sexually frustrated and unhappy, as Jack's increased drinking and continual work difficulties cut into his sex drive. She eventually comes to think he is having an affair behind her back. However, once the whole mess is cleaned up, they have a long, long romp that seems to revitalize Jack something fierce
• Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana is more a case of Free People Have Good Sex: while Tigana is in the grip of two foreign tyrants, the only forms of sex depicted are prostitution, rape, incest, BDSM or sex under false pretenses. Not until the Tiganans prepare to rise up against their dictators is "healthy" sex depicted.
• Harry Turtledove's Alternate History body of work is large enough that Turtledove's feelings about sex are now absolutely clear: the only acceptable sex is between a husband and wife (and thanks to his inability to write a good sex scene, the feeling comes across that even that isn't acceptable).
• Wicked Lovely: None of the fey courts are exactly good, but their relative levels of sexual Hollywood-ness does depend on their nature somewhat. Summer fey are shown to be very passionate but mostly vanilla. Winter fey are largely frigid. Dark fey are very kinky, and whilst this is generally shown as seductive, if destructive, but some of the back story takes this WAY too far. High court fey are shown to not really be that into sex (it's so illogical!) With the exceptions of Sorcha, who it is mentioned was once with Irial, former king of the dark court, and they, umm, 'did business' with one another against a willow tree.
• Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Most certainly played straight with Jack and Nikki, Myra and Charles, and Yoko and Harry. In the book Fast Track, Rena Gold has had sex with Maxwell Zenowicz, and she frankly is disgusted and tired of it by that point.
• Played straight in Catherine Anderson's novels, where any sex the hero or heroine has had before each other was joyless, pointless, awkward, or in the heroine's case not consensual.

Live-Action TV

• In Twenty Four, Jack and Renee spend nearly forty minutes having sex, which she describes as perfect. Charles Logan meanwhile apparently finishes in about 2 minutes. Similarly when Vladimir Laitanan (who previously beat and raped Renee) blackmails her into sleeping with him, they are done in 9 minutes.
• Sheridan and Delenn's wedding night would have been this in Babylon 5. Unfortunately G'kar's cybernetic peeping tom gave this an annoying bit of Mood Dissonance.
• No-one in The Bill engages in "rough sex". If anyone says that, it's a rape or domestic abuse situation.
• Subverted in Breaking Bad, where Walt's unexpected transformation into a criminal has nothing but positive effects on his sex life with his wife. Apparently Morally Ambiguous People Have Good Sex too...
• In earlier seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the amoral mass-murdering vampires Spike and Dru have a happy, long-term relationship. It's so blatantly loving it would be sickeningly sweet if they weren't constantly killing people. Meanwhile, the good guys are entangled in a mess of love polygons and generally incapable of expressing attraction or communicating with their partner once in a relationship.
  • When Buffy's morally ambiguous counterpart, Faith, takes over her body, she attempts to get kinky with Buffy's boyfriend, Riley. To her initial disappointment he insists on missionary position, under the covers. She found the intimacy of it to be... distressing.
  • Contrast the rough and kinky sex between Buffy and a soulless Spike in Season 6, versus their tender bedroom interaction the following season after Spike gets his soul.
• Played with very slightly in Castle, in which it's hinted that both Castle and Beckett have mildly kinky bedroom tastes.
• Averted in Criminal Minds, where one episode has a man's wife ask "what's gotten into you tonight?" in a voice clearly implying that they just had very good sex. What had got into him is that earlier that day, he shot someone. Of course, maybe that sex was in his head, as he turns out to be a hallucinating psychotic.
• Subverted in Ed. After seasons of Will They or Won't They?, Ed and Carol finally get together. They jump into bed with the right slow-motion effects and stirring music. But the next shot shows two, very disappointed individuals.
• Wash and Zoe of Firefly seem to have a pretty good sex life going. It might be a partial subversion however, since they don't mind getting a little wild. Same for Simon and Kaylee, who are quite happy to do it by the ship's engine.
  • Played painfully straight in "Heart of Gold". Mal and Nandi's sweaty, wrapped in sheets lovemaking is juxtaposed to the episode's bad guy ordering a prostitute to blow him in front of his henchmen.
  • A companion won't even service anyone they consider bad. Inara once tells a sweet young man that he should feel confident and special. If she had been hired for his Jerkass father, she wouldn't have even come.
• Marshall and Lily from How I Met Your Mother have an awesome sex life and they're wonderful people. Amusingly, the show deliberately subverts the traditional All Women Are Prudes / All Men Are Perverts dynamics; Marshall's a horny son of a gun, but Lily's usually the one pushing for sex. When they went three weeks without sex, Lily developed the shakes.
• Avoided to a degree in Jack of All Trades episode, "X Marquis the Spot", where the people on Agony Island (most notably Hans and Helga) are depicted as shunned by society for their love of bondage, but not wrong or evil. The Marquis is evil, but that has more to do with him being French than being a sadomasochist. At the end of the episode, Emilia mentions that although S&M isn't for everyone, there's nothing inherently evil about it. Jack is too creeped out to agree.
• Lois and Hal are sexually very active. Very active.

Malik: Only twice per week? Hal: Oh, per week... Fourteen.

• Averted in Pushing Daisies, where the two leads are unable to touch without one of them dying, but have a fulfilling monogamous relationship anyway. It's mentioned at one point that Ned, the male lead, has invented "contraptions" to enable them to have some sort of sex life, so their choices are essentially between "no sex" and "extremely kinky sex", and it appears that at least some of the time, they go for the latter option.
• The Viagra example is played with in an episode of Scrubs. Elliot assumes the above about it and then, while in the cafeteria, Dr. Cox sets her straight by having everyone in the room close their eyes, then asks anyone who's ever used Viagra for recreational purposes to chime their glass. The room is filled with ringing.
  • Dr. Cox and Jordan's sex life is interesting. They're both usually not very nice people, and they look at their own relationship with a lot of scorn. They have both stated that they absolutely do not "make love" and Jordan even uses it as a threat to Perry once.

Jordan: If you don't, I'm going to stop having sex with you and start making love.

• The Secret Life Of The American Teenager. Played straight with Amy and Ricky -- the insensitive, school man-whore/male slut -- have terrible sex when he impregnates her at band camp, but subverted in other cases. Ben and Adrian appear to have enjoyed their romp (or at least she did), and they did it solely for revenge purposes. Not to mention Ricky and Adrian, the school sluts, have a fine old time together. Sex is the show, so this trope is either played straight or subverted all the time.
• Used throughout 7th Heaven.
• Skins constitutes a rare example of this in teen dramas. Sex is never depicted as an intrinsically negative experience; in fact, it's great when it's with the right person. If it's ever bad, it's because you're not where you should be. (See Sid's quote about having "great sex for three days and guilty sex for the rest.") Although sometimes, bad people have good sex, too.
• In Supernatural, when Dean Winchester apparently has sex with his women of the week, it tends to be slow-moving and passionate. His former love interest Lisa Braeden states that he was the best night of her life. When Sam has sex (particularly when under the influence of demon blood) it tends to be a lot more aggressive and well... falls into the "fuck" category.
• Played straight in Veronica Mars, of all places. Veronica and Logan have a happy, healthy sex life, whereas in the season two finale it is hinted that Beaver couldn't get it up with Mac, right before the revelation that he is the Big Bad serial killer of the season, who murdered an entire Bus Full of Innocents. Made even worse when you look at the back story: earlier in the show, Beaver once raped Veronica when she was lying unconscious, implying that he's a complete sexual pervert. Also, he had Chlamydia, which he passed on to Veronica.
• In the Masters of Horror episode "Jenifer", the first indication that Frank is becoming obsessed with Jenifer is when he can't stop fantasizing about her while having a bout of rough sex with his wife, which she clearly isn't enjoying.

Religion

• Perhaps the ur-example, The Bible's Song of Songs uses a collection of love poetry exchanged between a married couple (by some traditions, Solomon and one of his wives), who are not shy about saying exactly what they love about each other, as a metaphor for the loving relationship between God and his followers.

Videogames

• In Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, Catalina, by far one of the craziest characters of the game, turns out to be into S&M during the cut scene for the "Gone Courting" mission. We don't see anything of the act itself, but she proceeds to chain C.J. to a rack and then takes a whip to him before getting down to business.
• In Mass Effect 2, there are two points at which a male Shepard can have sex with the criminal Jack. The Renegade sex option is based solely on sex and rather violent; afterward, Jack will only curse at you if approached. The Paragon sex option is based on your interest in Jack as a person and is not only intimate and gentle but theraputic for Jack.
• In Metal Gear Solid 3, Volgin is a Depraved Bisexual S&M enthusiast that loves using electric torture. Let's just say that EVA's experience sleeping with him wasn't very pleasant for her. Now, Big Boss on the other hand, was a gentle, good experience for her.
• In the fan-produced Dance With Rogues Neverwinter Nights module series, the character Vico is a psychotic axe-crazy blackguard. Unless your character insists, he will try to have anal sex with you at every opportunity. Anden and Bran, both good characters, tend to prefer missionary or reverse missionary. Curiously, Rizzen (the drow) has no major differences from Bran's style.
  • In the fan-produced Bastard of Kosigan module series, most sexual encounters are treated as amoral or downright evil (it was specifically not written for paladins); so far every one except for the prostitute in Cologne or the 'good' option with Yannia has been rather unconventional (usually involving a tree, a wall, or a table).
• Travis Touchdown locks himself in with Sylvia, and all we hear is shotgun blasts coming from inside.
• In the Persona games, from Persona 3 onwards, the Player Character is given the opportunity to sleep with almost any of the love interests whose S-Links have been completed. The scenes are not given explicit detail, since this ain't an Eroge, but it's heavily implied that both Main Characters are very loving and gentle. Heck, it can also be implied that there is NO full-blown sex in some cases.

Visual Novels

• Played with in Fate/stay night, in that it's not so much the moral uprightness of the characters that results in good sex, but rather their motivation for having sex in the first place. When the characters have sex for some reason other than its own sake, at least one of the participants doesn't enjoy it.
• Inverted by Shiki from Tsukihime during Arcueid's and Akiha's routes, him being far too rough in one and kind of a Jerkass in the other. The other three routes play the trope straight, typically characterized by "initial round of sex for a specific purpose, second round for love." Meaning, ironically, Shiki only plays the trope straight by way of Deus Sex Machina.
  • However, he can potentially play this very straight during Kohaku's route. If the cards and choices are played right, Shiki will learn about Kohaku's Rape as Backstory, realize that she didn't feel anything when they had sex before, and then go out of his way to make her feel good.
• Katawa Shoujo zigzags the trope all around: Hisao and his girlfriend of choice will sometimes have really good and really sweet sex, but it severely depends on the circumstances:
  • In Shizune's route, her and Hisao's first time is pretty nice but a bit weird since she turns out to be surprisingly kinky. If midway through the route Hisao chooses to cheat on her with a Misha who is VERY out of it neither of them enjoy it (plus it leads to the Bad End of the route), and if he DOESN'T cheat on her the "reward" is one of the most explicit and pleasant sex scenes in the whole game..
  • In Hanako's route, their one and only sex scene is laced with anguish and anxiety, plus physical difficulties due to her extensive burn scars (which reduce her flexibility), his fear that he might hurt her needlessly or his heart might act up, and the troubled circumstances surrounding their sex act.

• While School Days is better known for Makoto being quite a jackass to his potential girls in the anime, the game itself can play this trope completely straight if the player chooses correctly. The kinder and more moral Makoto is played as, the better the sex scene is; on the other hand, if Makoto is played either as an asshole or as too spineless to do the right thing, the upcoming sex will be portrayed as really awkward and there WILL be in-game consequences, which may include even Bad Ends.

Webcomics

• Miranda and Donovan Deegan are both in their 60s and still very much in love with each other.
• The page quote above comes from Jack, in which this seems to be an immutable law of the world. You could also replace "on Earth" with "in Purgatory."
• This trope is the basis for about half of Joyce and Walky.
• In one Palindramas guest strip, the cartoonist and his wife show their love with the help of a palindrome (and a couple of DVDs).
• Marigold of Questionable Content will tell you that Hermione and Ginny "totally had sex, and it was the most amazing sex in the history of wizarding or muggles or even Space Wizards (who had a lot of sex but it was really bad sex because they were all evil)."
• In Sandra and Woo, according to Lily, Woo is "infinitely better" at sex than at billiards.
• In most of RH Junior's webcomics - particularly Nip and Tuck and Goblin Hollow - only the Happily Married have good sex lives. Sex is only ever mentioned otherwise in the context of either "Good girls don't" and "Sleazebags do."
• In Everyday Heroes, Mr. Mighty and Jane still have a happy marriage after 17 years.
  • Subverted by Dr. and Mrs. Goode, a normal couple who apparently like to spice things up a bit.

Web Original

• Played with in Ilivais X. Mille certainly isn't a bad person, as she represents the idealistic and heroic attitude a Super Robot Genre protagonist SHOULD possess. But she's also shown to be incredibly lustful and dominant, having her way with others solely to satisfy her needs. As such sleeping with Essen, an undoubtedly Neutral Good character, came across as awkward and made any kind of friendship strained from that point. But her more loaded interactions with the far more morally ambiguous Iriana are strangely romantic and tender, even if they're loaded with that undertone that Iriana feels too weak to be able to say no.

Western Animation

• Similarly, Peter and Lois Griffin are occasionally showed to have a good if... diverse sex life. One memorable instance involves the two of them discussing the threat to the moral fibre of their neighborhood posed by drugs, while getting ready for a heavy BDSM session. The safe-word is "banana".
• Used in Justice League's episode "The Great Brain Robbery." The quality of the sex is (heavily implied to be) one of the things that tips Tala off to Lex Luthor not being himself.

Tala: Baby, you were so... different. So attentive. So caring. So... enthusiastic. Flash (in Lex's body): Uh... Tala: I like it! (resting her head on his shoulder happily)

• • When Lex is restored to his own body, Tala simply responds with a dejected "Aww."
• For all of Homer's idiocy and his general Jerkass tendencies, he sexes up Marge but good. It's one of the little ways the show has of showing the strength of the connection between Marge and Homer.
• Parodied in an episode of Drawn Together where Xandir has sex with "Tim Tommeson" (Captain Hero's altar ego). He tells "Tim" he's had loads of gay sex, but that was "the first time he ever made love".