Forum: Story Ideas

How does one handle immortality? Living millennia watching friends, spouses, children, grandchildren all grow old and die while you don't age? How do you keep your sanity?

I have seen a couple of stories with a Male MC that was immortal and had to deal with these issues...but never seen one with a Female MC. Also most of those stories usually skirted the issues, acknowledging the problems but not really addressing how the MC handles them.

I am hoping someone will read this and write a story that does address those issues.

How does one handle immortality?

It somewhat depends on what kind of immortality. It also depends on whether or not they are the only immortal or if there are others and what you would consider sane.

The literal meaning of immortality means the person can never die no matter what happens. You could reduce their body to hamburger and that still wouldn't be enough to kill them.

Very little fiction deals with true immortals. You will typically see one of two things.

The most common is what I prefer to call eternal rather than immortal. The eternal doesn't age (past a certain point) and may be immune to disease, but they can die by violent means.

Rare, but still more common than true immortals is what I will call serial mortality. The person can die normally, but death is not permanent, they will spontaneously resurrect.

To address the question asked: How do they keep their sanity?

It may depend on how you define sanity. An eternal could commit suicide.

Assuming suicide is off the table, mostly likely they eventually stop having mortal friends or otherwise caring much about mortals. They will look on mortals they way we view very short lived animals such as insects.

There are some fairly short lived small mammals and fish that people keep as pets. The immortal may have a few mortals that they view that way.

I'm not sure if this would/could be considered sane.

I've read a couple of Vampire novels that deal with this issue; and also some cultivation novels that try to do the same.

Dominion's Son, thanks for making the distinction. I would have called your "eternal" types "unaging" instead.

Some MCs get burned by their loved ones dying, and avoiding any deep connections afterwards. Some embrace mortality of their loved ones, and make connections knowing they will be temporary, but treasuring them even more.

Some treat mortals as basically farm animals, not even pets. You don't get attached to cows in your herd. They only maintain connections with other immortals.

Some go through extraordinary lengths trying to extend the lives of their loved ones, even by extreme methods.

MC that was immortal ... never seen one with a Female MC.

Bruce Bretthauer had one, Kalliste, which at least touched on these issues; she was thus reluctant to get involved with the male MC who had discovered her uniqueness. Bruce posted as Prince von Vlox here, but IDK if Kalliste story was posted here, if so, it was withdrawn to post on the big river site. Still here (but premier) is the series
Kalliste's Storytime, which is a series of shorts as told by Kalliste presented by her as fables but actually her recollections of various events, often that the gods had directed her to.

I also recall a dead-tree story (probably a short in a collection), all I can recall is that the immortal is very tired of life, and after an accident, her partner (a mundane who knows of her immortality and that she is tired of life) authorises the removal of all organs etc for transplants; she wakes after a longer-than-normal regeneration inside the coffin as the cremation starts. The kicker (spoiler) is that a young girl elsewhere in the hospital doesn't have the surgery scars she should have after her heart transplant.

You all bring up some good points about specifying the "type" of immortality and whether solo or grouped.

In my mind, I was thinking solo... one person who found that they never aged, never got diseases, wounds - no matter how severe - healed fairly rapidly (though not immediately - think days instead of weeks or weeks instead of months). I even envision this MC trying to commit suicide a few times and it never works.

I could see how, if they were one of a group of immortals, they could come to see the rest of humanity as pets or inferior insects... but I think that would be just a by-product of "group-think". I don't think that would be the case if the immortal was solo. I think in that case they would vacillate between total immersion in humanity and avoiding them for long periods. The total immersion periods would come about from loneliness, social neediness, and wanting to belong. The avoidance periods would usually happen due to becoming overwhelmed with feelings of loss upon outliving those they have come to care about.
How would these experiences shape their personality? How would it effect their bonding ability? Their mental/emotional stability?

I can imagine their avoidance periods becoming longer and longer over the centuries as they continually experience loss during their immersion periods and need more time for those losses to dull. Eventually maybe decades between immersion periods... or even a century.

Now imagine all the changes the world / societies have gone through in the last century... then imagine the effect those cumulative changes would have on someone in this constant cycle of immersion/loss/avoidance... How would dealing with those vast number/types of changes effect them? Especially considering their possible mental/emotional fragility at that point if they have been through this cycle for millennia at this point?

Also, the world has gone through such a massive population explosion over the last century and there are fewer and fewer places to go where you can avoid human contact...so where would this immortal go on their next "avoidance" round? Would there be any place? If not, how would that affect them and what would they do?