This video was sponsored by campfire, you know, I remember when they first invented campfires.
Lots of people apparently. Immortality is a very popular very old trope. How old is it?
Well appropriately,
It's a major part of the oldest surviving work of literature the Epic of Gilgamesh dated to about 1800 BCE.
After his best bud Enkidu dies Gilgamesh is overwhelmed by grief and existential terror and starts trying to find a way to...
Not do that.
he seeks out Uttna Pishtim and his wife the survivors of the
Mesopotamian flood myth who were granted immortality by the gods as their reward for saving humanity from extinction. Uttna Pishtim tells Gilgamesh that fearing death
And hunting for immortality will just make the life
he has miserable obviously Gilgamesh doesn't listen and Uttna Pishtim challenges him to stay awake for a week straight and when he fails he asks,
him how he expects to conquer death when he can't even conquer sleep when Gilgamesh leaves Utta Pishtim tells him he can find
a plant at the bottom of the ocean that'll restore his youth but after going to all the trouble of tying rocks to
His feet to get it
It gets stolen by a snake finally recognizing the futility of seeking immortality gilgamesh returns to his city to rule
Wisely and justly until he dies of old age
So immortality kind of a popular subject and it makes sense mortality is basically the only universal human experience
And of course practically speaking, we don't exactly know what to expect from it and that can be scary
So while plenty of people posit a pleasant afterlife or a do-over or other?
post-mortality exploit many people instead look for ways to avoid it a bucket load of prominent historical figures ranging from herodotus to ponce de
leon believed in a fountain of youth the alchemical philosopher's stone was supposed to bring rejuvenation into mortality and many emperors of ancient china sought
immortality through various elixirs most of which contained mercury with predictable results
It makes sense that to us mere mortals immortality would seem universally appealing or does it we'll get back to that
But for now, let's get to immortality and fiction now first off we gotta draw one important distinction
There's a difference between a character who becomes immortal and a character who is meant to be immortal
Gilgamesh deals with several gods who are all naturally immortal but uphisham and his wife were originally mortals who became immortal
there is a difference between immortal because they are not mortal beings and immortal because they won't die like a regular human would
Naturally immortal beings like gods spirits demons fairies elves, etc
Show up in a lot of fiction and generally fall under the umbrella of non-human immortality. They just don't generally die in practical terms
They're figures who are just around and overall
They tend to be more like fixtures in a world than real dynamic characters
But the real juicy plot stuff happens when humans become immortal or when someone who thought they were human turns out to be immortal
So we're mostly gonna focus on that. Now first off not all immortality is created equal
There's a bit of a spectrum
The lowest tier is eternal youth a basic form of immortality where one just stops aging generally
This means you don't need to worry about dying of old age, but you can still be killed
This is a pretty common form of immortality as it's glamorous, but not completely busted
This is also usually what elves and gods have they stay pretty but you can get rid of them if you need to next up
Is magically sustained immortality. This kind of immortality doesn't run all by itself. It needs fuel. Technically speaking
This makes it not immortality but mortality with extra steps since garden variety mortality also requires constant maintenance like food and water anyway
Magically sustained immortality is usually something like a curse or enchantment
Maybe your eternal youth is sustained by a potion or a spell or you stuck your mortality in a duck egg and hit it somewhere
or you're a vampire and you'll die if you don't drink blood this one can also make you harder to kill but it usually gives
You a glaring weakness that can be exploited common in bad guys
But in rare cases it appears in good guys who were cursed with it and are looking for a workaround
Higher on the chain is healing factor immortality where your whole deal is that you bounce back from basically anything?
These characters usually either don't age or age very slowly as their body auto heals from aging itself and their greatest strength
Is that they are incredibly hard to kill how sturdy they are can vary?
Some of them basically just don't care if you put holes in them. Some of them can regrow lost limbs
Some of them can regenerate from a single cell
Sometimes you risk making more of them if you blow them into too many pieces
It really varies common among both bad guys and tanky good guys. Now the absolute top tier is perfect immortality
This immortality has no weaknesses or caveats you don't age and you can't die
This is much rarer than the other types because it's kind of hard for writers to get out of it
Sees some use and be careful what you wish for stories, but we'll get to that
It's much more common for characters to have almost perfect immortality
Which is like perfect immortality with one weakness most commonly that the immortal still needs their head or heart to live
Usually pretty much ideal
But it sometimes comes with bonus angst and in cases where the negatives fully outweigh the positives we get monkey's paw immortality where you want
Immortality and you technically get what you asked for, but it's really not worth it
the most common version is immortality without eternal youth which turns into a nightmare very quickly, but sometimes you just get like
Congratulations, you've outlived the earth and now you get to suffer through the eternal heat death of the universe, you know
stuff like that
now while a lot of stories put focus on seeking immortality fewer actually involved getting it and this is because
Immortality is kind of hard for writers for several reasons
If your villain is immortal that makes them hard to get rid of and if they're too immortal it becomes functionally impossible
Without some kind of deus ex machinar firing them into the sun
And if your heroes are immortal, then the stakes are somewhat lowered if they don't need to worry about age or death
There's fewer things you can threaten them with of course immortality comes with its own set of problems
But they go unaddressed surprisingly frequently probably because they require actual thought. Oops. Did I say that out loud cause
Here's the thing. Yes dying is scary. And yes
Not dying is pretty much universally appealing but since the expectation of mortality is pretty much the only thing every human being has in common
Removing it can strip away some things that we think of as fundamental to humanity
I'm not going to say that mortality is the only motivation we have because that's straight and not true
But it's kind of the finish line. We do what we do with the understanding that we don't have enough time to do everything
So the time we have is precious
We don't tend to think about it very much
but on some level we
Know that nothing lasts forever and that knowledge helps motivate us when motivation is otherwise lacking. I haven't spoken to someone in a while
And worried it might be a bit awkward to reach out now
well
The awkwardness feels a lot less important if you think about how you might never speak to each other again if you don't say hi
Now want to work on that story or art project, but worried. You're not good enough to do it yet
You might genuinely never get the chance to do it if you keep waiting until you're good enough, etc, etc
That hard limit on how much time we have is an ever-present reminder to use that time
But what happens if you take that away an immortal gets all the time
They need to do everything they want and the price they pay is they lose the one thing they shared with everyone else
The finish line suddenly, they're running a race without a finish line
Are they gonna bother to keep up the same pace stay on the track? Why should they keep running at all?
An immortal's life is paced differently than a mortal one
and the reasons why are
Very structurally fundamental to who they are beyond the whole pacing of life events immortals also struggle with meaningfully connecting with mortals
It's very common for immortals to be bummed out about losing their loved ones
But the true depths of immortal angst run much deeper than that to feel that loss
You have to feel that connection first and how easy is it to connect with someone when functionally speaking you have nothing in common?
It's fairly common for immortals to routinely play at a human life making an identity getting a job settling down
Even starting a family but within 20 years time will have moved on without them and eagle-eyed observers will notice they don't seem to age
And in another few decades when one human lifetime runs, its course the children move out the spouse passes away
The grandchildren are in college
The workplace has been overhauled that immortal has basically outlived their own life and all they can do is move on
Mourn the people they've lost and know that no matter how much they love them
They'll never really be able to go through life together
An immortal is a fixed point and there's no natural place for a fixed point in a mortal lifetime
And that kind of grief can compound over time also
I'm, sorry for getting existentially heavy here, but we are discussing the existential ramifications of never dying
So I couldn't really find a way to avoid it. Here's a kitten
Okay back we go the primary source of immortal angst is that fundamental disconnect between themselves and humanity?
This is why many immortals mostly hang out with other immortals
Sometimes their whole arc is about seeking out someone else like them. It gives them a community that exists in the same time frame
They do but there aren't many immortal characters who can completely avoid mortals and that's where the weirdness starts
How strange does it feel to reconnect with someone when you haven't seen each other for years or decades?
You've got an idea of who they are based on how you knew them at the time
But since you've been gone, they've been through stuff
You don't even know about and grown into a completely different person, you know them, but you don't know who they are now
And they have the same dynamic with you
They remember somebody but you've grown and changed since then and they kind of have to get to know you all over again
well
How much weirder would it be if they hadn't changed at all?
like someone you knew in 4th grade who's still 10 while you're wrapping up a phd
What would you have to talk about if you're not the same person to them then?
Who are they to you and from their perspective they haven't changed but this person they used to know is suddenly older and more mature
And it's like they blinked and suddenly you have nothing in common anymore what happened with an immortal character?
This is what dealing with everyone is. Like they're constantly playing catch-up because mortals race through life milestones at a speed
The immortal doesn't deal with anymore
There's only enough time to do so many things before they hit the finish line
But an immortal has no finish line and the time scale mortals used to measure their lives doesn't really work for someone
completely disconnected from that
This is why some immortals end up befriending families instead of individuals regularly showing up meeting the new generation
Commiserating with the older ones getting people confused with their nearly identical great grandparents stuff like that, but there's still a distance there
It's an impersonal connection where the mortals involved are largely interchangeable and immortal can't really comfortably immerse themselves in a mortal social circle
It's the natural isolation of being surrounded by people completely invested in something
You have no stake in coupled with the awareness that you have a very limited time to be with these people
It would be like being forced to watch the 93rd episode of a telenovela
You've never heard of with your high school graduating class the night before summer vacation
This is all the time you have to spend together and they're spending it on something that doesn't matter to you
Many immortal characters are at least somewhat disconnected from their environment for this exact reason
Even the young ones know they aren't going to age with their peers and probably don't get too invested in their smaller scale
Personal antics as a result then once you've lived out a lifetime or two
It starts getting harder to get invested in new people
And once you've lost a true love it becomes very easy to close yourself off
So that doesn't happen again
but a human turned immortal is just as susceptible to loneliness as a mortal human is and that kind of
Isolation isn't good for them either without a really solid immortal support network and immortal is kind of stuck in
a no-win scenario when it comes to human socialization
But this isn't the only reason immortals can lose their luster and a lot of their humanity after a few hundred years
Have you ever become suddenly aware of the fact that you're currently at a high point that you're living?
One of the best moments of your life and you're unlikely to hit this kind of peak again
It's a bittersweet realization because even though you're sad that it's a passing thing
You still feel the elation of experiencing that beautiful moment and you know, you're better for having lived it for me
It was a dinosaur dig, but that's not the point
The point is what if you were immortal you wouldn't need to worry about not having enough time
But if you knew your life would go on forever would those high points still feel as meaningful or unique?
Anything that's impressive because it's once in a lifetime automatically loses its shine in this context
You climbed everest got wasted at oktoberfest went over niagara falls in a barrel and put your face on time magazine
But do any of those things matter is a bucket list still fulfilling if you have infinite time to fill it
Out and suppose you had a dream job a career milestone
You can put in the work to accomplish your dreams and build the life
You've always wanted but you know in a few decades, you'll have to leave it behind no matter what you build for yourself
You won't be able to keep it forever and forever is the only time scale that matters to an immortal
And speaking as an artist. There's often a very powerful drive to create art
That'll outlast you but what do you do?
If you'll outlast both your art and your audience
You successfully tell your story and then live long enough to see it bastardized rewritten censored by victorians rendered
Unrecognizable by cultural telephone and eventually forgotten you make art in the hopes that you'll make people happy and change lives
But no matter how good your art is every life. You touch will still be gone in less than a century
The accomplishment loses its luster the high point feels a lot less high. Ok
That was pretty heavy have another kitten but with all that in mind. It's pretty clear
why many immortals rapidly lose their grip on humanity and their motivation to do
Well basically anything but it doesn't happen all at once
there are many different kinds of immortal characters and many of them are really just different stages of the immortal life cycle the youngest ones
Are the oblivious immortals they're immortal
But they haven't been for very long or they've been insulated by largely spending time with other immortals without the whole loved one's aging thing
to spark angst and introspection
these guys basically still act like regular humans sometimes to a distracting degree if your character is over a century old and
Still acts like a high schooler your audience might be a bit thrown
Following this variant is the immature immortal an immortal who really doesn't act their age
This one is surprisingly common in naturally immortal beings like gods possibly because when your life is consequence free
nobody can really stop you from acting like a spoiled child and or a complete menace but it also shows up in human immortals which
Usually seems to be the result of either deliberate characterization or poor writing
Sometimes it can be hard to tell
And then not to be confused with the previous two versions is the immortal child an immortal who became immortal at a very young age
This is basically always extremely bad and these characters are typically antagonists either
They stay their apparent age mentally as well as physically or they never gain
Any more maturity no matter how many centuries they live and how much knowledge they gain these characters are basically walking
Tragedies whether or not the story acknowledges this directly. I mean how many people have pointed out?
That peter pan is really kind of a nightmare
Anyway in a mortal that lives long enough to really get a feel for their own immortality might end up becoming a walking
Textbook a character who's used their long life to travel basically everywhere pop into every major historical event and hang out with and or smooch
Every major historical figure the walking textbook is a fairly common secondary character since they make a good font of exposition for more mortal
less well-traveled protagonists these guys can have frankly unrealistic levels of experience one might start questioning the
Practicalities of how exactly this character managed to locate themselves at every major historical event
But if an immortal lives long enough among humans and sees enough of them die they're liable to become an angsty immortal
These guys are just really bummed out by all the people they've lost and how they can never truly belong and stuff
They can also be angsty about other stuff like how people keep getting upset with them for being immortal or if their immortality comes
with a caveat of some kind but it's more commonly about losing people and or
Being a monster
The problem is less that they aren't dying and more that their loved ones are and while they often complain about it
They rarely actually do anything about it
And if they do decide to do something about it
They usually become a lonely immortal and immortal who practices responsible social distancing and avoids getting attached wherever they can but in
Order for them to feature in any kind of plot. They usually have to get attached to at least one other character
So mostly these stories involve the lonely immortal becoming a little less lonely for, you know a few decades
Anyway, if that goes on too long, you're liable to get a tired immortal
These immortals have long since exhausted their bucket list and are just tired man
They've lived too many lives lost too many loved ones and or witnessed too many atrocities to be really about that stuff anymore
Tired immortals also usually only feature in stories where their character arc involves rediscovering the benefits of love
Either that or they're looking for a way to die or both cheerful, of course
Not every immortal has to dip into angst some of them become cavalier immortals who?
Intellectually understand that humans all die eventually but never seem particularly broken up about it
Whether they've been overexposed to that sort of thing
Or they just don't think about it that much or if the writer doesn't particularly want this fun immortal character to be crushed
Under the weight of centuries of grief these characters often hang around mortals without any real issue
There's some significant overlap between this and the immature immortal and it can sometimes seem like the writer maybe didn't fully think the implications through
But sometimes these guys are just really good at compartmentalizing
There are also immortals among friends who compensate for all that isolation and angst by finding one or more other immortals to hang out with
These guys are usually pretty well adjusted. Honestly now the typical endpoint for an immortal is the wildly inhuman immortal
It's kind of an asymptotic limit for formerly human immortal characters
They approach it eventually no matter how long it takes to become noticeable
Basically when they live long enough their moral compass kind of wears away the needle's still pointing somewhere
But they don't really know where anymore if all human life is ephemeral and fleeting
anyway
Does human life hold value does human suffering and without the fear of death compassion for others or unfinished personal goals?
What's left to motivate them much of what we consider humanity is grounded in our mortality and our connection with others
When you remove those factors that humanity begins to lose its color
It may take hundreds of years thousands of years hundreds of thousands of years
But eventually the immortal will lose those last traces of humanity and settle into something very different not necessarily evil
But very morally distinct of course some immortals lose the moral compass very quickly when you basically can't die
It's pretty easy to go power mad
And that's how you get problem immortals who make trouble like they're angling for a promotion in the troublemaking department whether they're chaotic pleasure seekers
long-term master manipulators or just public nuisances
These guys are very commonly villains because they basically took a hard turn into power abuse and thus dodge all that
inconveniently heroic angsty business by straight up not seeing mortals as people and
Sometimes these problem immortals can get slammed with a good old-fashioned existential crisis and become
Paranoid immortals who are terrified of death even more now that it's not supposed to be able to get to them
This is quite common with magically sustained immortals who?
Actively sought out their immortality as now that they have it they are terrified of losing it
These guys are popular antagonists in karmic downfall stories
Now regardless of the specific type immortals present a unique set of writing pitfalls pros and cons
The biggest pro is the unique character trajectory
An immortal character can follow all other things being equal and immortal character will live forever eliminating the common motivators of fear of death
desire to accomplish this thing before dying and in some cases
Even the standard heroic motivation of protect the people and things I care about meaning most standard character motives are kind of off the table
But as discussed this can lead to very inhuman characters over time which leads to the biggest con
It's not easy for a regular human to properly conceive of what centuries of millennia of life experience will do to a person
Many immortal characters end up feeling way, too
Normal or flat as a result and your audience might end up being a little jarred by how for instance this immortal
centuries old character can have such adolescent motivations
another pro is that an immortal character can have an extremely eventful backstory many people roll their eyes at implausibly youthful protagonists who've somehow had
Three major badass careers by the tender age of just learned. What a cosign is
But your immortal character can have plausibly gotten up to all kinds of shenanigans all over the world
Of course
The corresponding con is that it's easy to go a bit overboard here looping your character into every major historical event is tempting
But unwise another pro is that if your character is immortal you can put them in some very spectacular fights
Obviously this doesn't apply so much if they're just the ageless type
But if your character is largely unkillable
They can go through some pretty ridiculous stuff and that can be good for the drama
But on the other hand an unkillable character in a fight is automatically fairly low stakes sure they can die
but anything short of that isn't really a threat so you risk a
Dramatic confrontation turning into empty spectacle if you just toss two immortals into a blender and crank the dial
now while the mortals are very popular characters, there are only a small handful of
Immortality-centric plots first and most classic is seeking immortality where a character tries to become immortal
Usually they don't succeed and if they do they usually wish they hadn't extremely common in cautionary tales
then there's kill the immortal a common folktale format where the villain is somehow immortal but has a weakness usually a very specific one and
The heroes must figure out that weakness to get rid of the villain for good
There's also I don't want to be immortal anymore when an immortal character gets sick of their lot in
Eternal life and tries to find a way to go back to being a regular mortal
this is
Usually less about them dying and more about them being able to have a nice normal life with someone but in the cases of much
Sturdier immortals they might just be looking for something that'll keep them down for good very common with angsty immortals
And finally, there's oops all immortals a story format wherein basically, every major character is immortal
Usually the same kind of immortal this levels the playing field somewhat and helps reduce the angst factor
What exactly the plot is can vary a lot? Maybe the immortals are fighting. Maybe someone's gonna become an immortal
Maybe it's an immortal love story, etc. Etc. Lots of variants with this one. Oh boy
this ran really long immortal characters can be
Really interesting and it always bums me out when people write them like regular humans when by all rights
They should probably be about 30 existential crisis by volume
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