Power High

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
She seems to be enjoying it a bit too much...

Power feels good...

And for some that is true in a very literally sense. When a character either gains superpowers (often coupled with Powers as Programs) or becomes more powerful they will feel pleasure sometimes expressed in a similar way to an orgasm. Often used as means of Getting Crap Past the Radar.

The pleasure this power gives is usually expressed to phrases like "Yes!, yes! yes!", "I can feel the power surging through my veins", "This feels so good" or similar, often in a very explicit way.

What ever the case it is made clear that the person is really enjoying the pleasure his/her new powers give. A probable side effect of this is that the person in question will have an addiction similar to drugs making "superpowers" similar to a G-Rated Drug.

This trope is mostly associated with villain characters. As they are the most likely to express pleasure when gaining power as opposed to heroic characters that are more likely expected not to enjoy their powers.

See also Evil Feels Good, Good Feels Good, Drunk with Power, Orgasmic Combat and Power Is Sexy.

Not to be confused with Super-Hero School.

Examples of Power High include:

Anime and Manga

  • Inverted in Princess Tutu. Rue actually feels pain when she transforms.
  • In Puella Magi Kazumi Magica Ahiri after becoming YUURI says "haha this is great!... this powers are the best." All of this while pulling her tongue out of her mouth and looking very very pleased in a suggestive way. as it can be seen here.
    • Along with Yuuri from Kazumi Magica, Kazumi has a moment of this in chapter 1 in her first battle.
  • The reason the modern Claymores from Claymore are exclusively female is because release of yoki (demonic energy that powers them) is this to men. To be even exacter, male Claymores (produced long ago) experienced the power-up as sexual pleasure and Awakened almost immediately.
  • Mecha pilots in Taiyou No Tsubasa react in a very orgasmic way when their mechs combine. The mechs gain a lot of power from the resulting Mind Meld, but the moaning and facial expressions are probably just there for Fan Service.
  • In Dragonball Z: Piccolo's infamous "Yes! Yes! I feel great! I can do this!" moment when he fuses with Nail. Nail even teases him about it in in The Abridged Series
  • Masane in Witchblade enjoyed her combat form... very much, until she both got the hang of it and realized how taxing the transformation is. One of the first times, she briefly crouches high on the wall, murmurs "Amazing." and licks her lips, looking at incoming rocket swarm, before jumping. There's a lot of such scenes.
  • A rare example of a protagonist doing this is Kazuma from S-Cry-ed. Particularly once he gets his first Alter upgrade.

"More power! And more! SHINE BRIGHTER!!"

    • This has more to do with his desperate need for more power as he fights a Knight Templar government agency.

Film -- Animated

  • In Disney's Aladdin, Jafar wishes to become a genie. His wish is fulfilled and while gaining "phenomenal cosmic powers" he proclaims "The power, the absolute power! The universe is mine to command, to control!" (This scene can be seen here). His enjoyment falls short however thanks to Aladdin's Batman Gambit.

Film -- Live Action

  • In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. When Tia Dalma is released from her human form and regains her godly powers by becoming Calypso, she makes a familiar expression that makes her enjoyment very evident.This can be seen here.
  • When Tony Stark inserts the new element into his arc-reactor in Iron Man 2, he gets a very sudden high.
  • An inversion is evidenced in the first X-Men movie.

Rogue: "Does it hurt when [your claws] come out?"
Wolverine: "Every time."

  • In Spider-Man 3, when Peter gets the symbiote he states that "I feel wow... this feels good!" See it here.

Live Action TV

Literature

  • In the Wheel of Time, the One Power is so addictive that most channelers who lose the ability to channel die of despair within a year or two, The True Power, the Power supplied by the Dark One to his favoured minions is even more addictive.
  • Everworld: Senna claims using magic "...filled me up, rushed through me, the sensation of power more erotic than any fantasy, more exciting. The power, I loved it so, it filled me and fulfilled me. It was mind, it was body, it was sex and money and power and revenge and triumph all rolled into one."
  • Labyrinths of Echo had the Order of the Holey Chalice, where power was acquired by drinking from bottomless cups. The protagonist given a taste of this felt literally power-drunk, which an ex-adept confirmed to be the normal effect—and noted that it's important to discern the real power boost from illusions of power. The Order's acolytes were given the taste of power from their masters' cups now and then and became full members after they learned to keep the liquid from spilling on their own. As a result, it was one of the magical traditions with very, very motivated apprentices, but no training on self-discipline at all.
    • When one of their Minor Magisters, already well-adapted to this, stole the reserve of power from a lot of huge aquariums. He remembers very little from the next few years, but managed to earn the monicker "Mad Fishmonger", among the mages half of whom were obviously batshit insane and the rest just dangerously obsessed. In the city which (according to himself, much later) everyone in right mind left in haste long ago on account of the civil war between these overpowered nutcases.
    • Once was used in a mental attack against Max, after which instead of hunting an enemy he shredded annoying, but harmless phantasms in happy bloodthirst—and since he didn't actually receive any extra power, ended up so weak and vulnerable that his boss could neither leave nor use strong magic around him before arranging an external protection.

Music

Tabletop Games

  • In Forgotten Realms, elven magic users in the area of raising mythal (city-scale spell field) had a peculiar reaction: spontaneously levitate and space out. Elminster in Myth Drannor had a scene when one elven gardener found his noble lady and her handmaiden floating naked over the basin, staring into nowhere and "moaning a chant." He had no options but to shake his head and conclude that "pleasure spells were certainly becoming powerful things these days." The tales spread, and much later some elven wizards (including one Wizard Guild's dean in Raven Bluff) became mythal proponents just because they heard colourful descriptions of this effect.
  • Amber Diceless Role-Playing. In the section on the character Merlin, it says that the magical powers possessed by Amberites make the user feel so good that they can become addictive.

Video Games

Web Comics

  • Girl Genius had a hilarious moment when when the new Heterodyne is subjected to the effect of Dyne water plus electroshock for the first time and feels (and looks) godlike. Later the Castle implies it's a normal reaction:

Agatha: I believe another forty-five point three seconds, and I would have exploded or something. [...] Oh, yeah... I have got to try that again!

    • And later an even more hilarious moment when Her Undying Majesty found out about this little incident just by looking at Agatha, implied she herself feels like this constantly and "reassured" that

Albia: Later, you'll only have to worry about exploding other people!
Agatha: What people?
Albia: (just as happily) Why, all of them!"

Web Original

Dr. Octogonapus: "Feel the power, Randal! Let it seep up your thighs and penetrate your body! Let it penetrate you, Randal!"
Randal: "It feels good!"
Dr. Octogonapus: "Now release! Let it build up and release!"
Randal: "Hnnn… BLAAAAH!!"

Western Animation

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