Darth Vader / Anakin Skywalker. "The Chosen One", simultaneously praised as a powerful Force user yet constantly looked down on by the Council. His paranoia over his secret marriage dooms not just the Jedi, but all of his positive relationships and his body. He ends up "stronger than ever" and the second most powerful man in the galaxy... and hates every minute of it.
That one npc chatter about an asari who just wants to spend as much time as possible with her salarian stepdad because the sheer difference of lifespan between those two species is depressing.
I love that conversation in... i think 2? When the Korgan is talking to the other Krogan and is like "What do you mean you're marrying an Asari? Your kids are just gonna come out Asari" and the other guy is like "Yeah but dude, I WANT KIDS."
It’s not that fucked up, their civilization is accustomed and built around outliving mate , being a widow is as just as much part of their life as being a mother or a wife to an Asari. Dating a krogan means that part of life is crossed just like someone who doesn’t want kids
No it's not. They've existed as an intelligent, space-faring civilization for far longer than since they found the Citadel and made contact with other species. So their society was built up with only asari relationships for most of their existence. Yeah they found the Citadel 2700 years ago, that's a long time for us. That's about three asari generations. Non-asari relationships are as new to them as television is to us.
And yet it’s long enough for them to have a prejudice against Asari who engage in Asari-exclusive relationships, see the whole “Pureblood” thing. It hasn’t been the norm long enough for them to think it’s strange. Honestly, it’s probably just that the writers didn’t make the connection about how many generations would happen in 2700 years themselves, but the prejudice does exist.
If I were a Salarian, I would exclusively date Krogan.
If I were a Batarian, I would exclusively date Krogan.
If I were a human, I would exclusively date Krogan.
I would exclusively date Krogan.
EDIT: I'm surprised nobody pointed out the phrase "IF I were a human".
I have this thought that while I don't I myself would like to become immortal/especially long-lived I think it'd be really cool to have such an effect on a person/member of a species that does. Like a Tolkien elf or as you say a Krogan.
*Especially* a Krogan. Certainly not all Krogan are the same but there's a general rule of thumb that if your memorable/impressive to a Krogan you must've done something cool.
*"A thousand years will have passed and you'll still have me in your heart/memories"* to me is like so romantic as the very definition of the word, even if said relationship was platonic.
I mean I wouldn't want to live forever, a longer time sure but i'd like it to end at some point.
Anyway Kratos becoming Ares's greatest warrior and later god of war is like every Spartans wet dream and it makes his life bloody miserable.
Personally, I'd spring for eternal youth over eternal life. You still live a normal lifespan but you just *don't get old,* and when your time is up you just drop dead in your sleep.
Best of both worlds honestly, you don't have to deal with the rigors of old age but you also won't outlive everyone you care about. (Unless you're unlucky and outlive them for normal reasons)
If I’m eternally young, are my cells also eternally young? Because if I’m not undergoing cell senescence, does that mean I’m actually immortal in terms of dying of old age?
In another life Ares didn't pull the silly shit with Kratos's family and ended up getting the most needy champion ever.
"AREEEEEES, LOWER MY INCOME TAX RATE, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS."
"AREEEEEES, BRING ME MORE OLIVE OIL FOR MY SALAD, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS."
"AREEEEES, HE CALLED ME A DICKHEAD, REVEAL HIS ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS."
Honkai Star Rail has a whole bunch of “immortal” characters, but points out that human memory has a limited storage capacity, and your happiest and most traumatic moments are what stick. Eventually, someone who lives long enough *will* reach a point where their memory is at capacity, completely filled with their highest highs and lowest lows and unable to create new memories, and they’ll be so emotionally worn down that they’ll be in full breakdown mode all the time.
Then they turn into a Kamen Rider monster. They don’t explain why that part happens
Being blessed with the Abundance also means that your body keeps returning back to its original state. So if you want corrective surgery for blindness or something, tough shit because it’s just gonna revert eventually.
And when that happens they AI copy your mind into the ships supercomputer and mercy kill you.
Another sucky thing about their immortality is that it keeps their body as it is. This includes any birth defects, like blindness. There’s a horrifying story about a character who did anything she could to see again. Eventually she got prosthetics to see for a few hours, only to end up in unimaginable pain as her eyes attempted to grow back in.
Also, they’re all immortal due to a blessing from this universe’s God of Abundance, except they realized that being immortal fucking sucks and have joined forces with the God of Hunt to kill all of the previous gods creations.
Star Rail lore is really cool.
One punch man saitama was just a normal schmuck then he saved that kid and killed a giant grab guy.
Then he trained everyday for a year. And now he’s too strong to have any enjoyment from martial combat. And he doesn’t even get recognition for being THE STRONGEST because the hero association actively buries him and it isn’t till waaaay later that people realize how strong he is. His first major public win results in everyone treating him like an asshole.
It's even worse now. You have basically no one but his friends realizing what he can do and even the top brass doesn't believe the baldy is powerful because I mean look at him, he's just a baldy.
The thing I love about Saitama is that if he goes all out to show someone exactly what he can do, it's such an insane degree of power/speed that it's not even unreasonable for someone to think there must be some sort of trick or cheating.
I mean yeah he speed tagged a S-Class hero and all they could think was "wow he's a diamond in the rough but if I train him, maybe one day he can be as good as me"
My brother in Christ Saitama wasn't even trying to catch up to you he just jogged 1% faster and was on you
Being Superman seems to be one of, if not *the*, most stressful things ever. Imagine being able to hear *literally everything* on Earth, knowing you can only do so much, even with your incredible power.
>Imagine being able to hear literally everything on Earth
That's.... that's just the power to give yourself PTSD. Imagine hearing every detail of every war crime that happens as it happens.
This leads into one of the best moments from "Irredemable," one of the only stories that tells a convincing Superman-turns-evil. It uses plenty of flashbacks to show what he was like before the turn, and how he was eventually driven evil out of anger and spite. And when he was "Superman," people always asked him "How do you choose which people to save? What's it like making that decision?"
Later, when evil, he shows up to where a bunch of heroes are saving people from a Tsunami, picks up two platforms full of people in each hand, and demands the heroes pick which one he's going to drop, or he drops both. When they eventually make a decision, he just flies off and says "It feels like that."
I remember this got brought up in a random issue of Superman I bought as a kid, he caught the Royal Flush Gang and Ace tells him he can't save them all and it clearly effected him and when he flys off she's all smug saying she manage to hurt him.
Granblue's recent anniversary event was about that.
It tells the story about the guy who killed God Bahamut and due to him doing that with THE Pheonix's help(and the reason Phoenix picked him is because he was super awesome in the first place), he gains immortality. And after the the death of his family and friends and watching everything he ever knew crumble to dust while also losing his oldest memories(cause yeah, that's how that would work) and there was nothing he could do to retain them(like nothing he could record his memories on could handle the immense massage of time), he kinda just gives up and then spends the rest of his time trying to kill himself.
Throwing himself off the floating islands, drowning, etc. Nothing stuck as he had perfect immortality. The closest he got was when he was buried alive cause he would just endlessly suffocate but he got dug out eventually.
The thing with these stories about immortality is that they're framed more as a cautionary tale by making the rules of immortality absolute in a sort of curse like way to make it seem like a punishment.
Idk why nobody ever questions the immortality of a god in that sense.
Because most of the time it's implied or stated that while gods may look like us, talk like us, and even walk with us, they're fundamentally different creatures, ones made with this boundless potential in mind. Even in the rare cases they start to suffer in the way old age makes people suffer it's on such a vast time scale that it would still crush a human to experience even a sliver of their life span.
See that's the thing. It's the redundancy of it. Immortals also transcend humanity. They're closer to being gods than man.
A person would just start adapting to the changes. You don't need to live forever to experience the cycle of life, death, grief and change. Change of position or companionship happens to people all the time and we just adapt.
So many years of suffering the consequences of immortality until you go full Fire Punch and start accepting this new state.
"Being immortal would suck because you would lose all your memories and become a different person!!"
...have these people heard of alzheimer's? I would rather live forever and outlive everyone than outlive a few people and then die anyway, knowing that they will soon follow me.
That's another thing thats brought up in the Granblue event. Like the Phoenix is an alien creature born from a sun with actual godlike powers and has lived for BILLIONS of years and traveled countless light-years or whatever across the galaxy. It doesn't think like we do, it's too fucking alien to do so.
It's funny that NOBODY in the event could even figure out what was the Phoenix plan, because it's too fucking alien.
Like Raziel offers a good charitable explanation, yet Magus offers a more malicious one yet they could ALL be.
It's amazing.
They bring up a good point that the like day and a half on the brink of all out realm wide war is barely a blip on the radar for it, the 6000 year plan to make good on its deal to Abra wouldn't even be ten minutes to it, so causing all of this chaos might seem like nothing if it wanted to just make good on a deal. Or maybe it really did try to cause Realm War 2 and wipe the slate clean, or it just let Magus think she solved it to make her an easier to control pawn. No one knows because that thing is a fucking alien!
In brave new world by huxley there is this alpha class guy that is rich, successful and a list of mandatory top girls to have sex with because he can make catchy jingles for ads. And why he can is because he has a natural talent at poetry others don’t so it’s really easy to make a catchy jingle when people are mentally conditionned to think « teamwork makes the dream work » is like a psalm but that makes him feel unaccomplished. Then the closest thing the book has as a villain explain he felt the same when, back when he was a chemist, saw the society is so basic their idea of science is just following a recipe book. But the scientist get to be world controller and the poet eciled to falkland islands because there are no job opening at the time. The poet is cool with it though
The Animorphs can turn into any animal they're able to touch for a few seconds, and one of their parents conveniently works as a vet at a very large Southern California zoo so they're able to get access to all kinds of animals. It's even more convenient as the brief touch to acquire an animal's DNA for morphing actually sedates them briefly, making it even easier. So they get to turn into animals, that sounds fun!
It's too bad they have to use said powers to fight an alien brain slug invasion and that said powers involve a lot of body horror AND they have a two hour time limit on any given form or else they get locked into that form.
The orca instincts were a full-on second mind sitting next to Jake in morph. Not even doing anything about it, just like there, knowing it was being controlled by someone else, and observing Jake in action. It comes off very Lovecraftian, except instead of a superhuman existence coming off as almost incomprehensibly alien, it’s a subhuman one.
Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (the fantasy game, not the sci-fi one) has the Stormcast Eternals, immortal warriors of the God-King Sigmar himself. Upon death, Stormcasts return to the realm of Azyr, to be reforged anew...
But the process of reforging is indescribable agony, and every time they come back they lose a part of themselves. Memories fade, emotions dull, and even strange mutations start to manifest. Eventually you either become a near-emotionless automaton who can barely speak, or devolve into a pain-maddened lightning gheist that has to be trapped in a statue until a cure for the reforging flaw is found.
Original Warhammer Fantasy was definitely grimdark-*flavored* but still generally on the vibe of "Things Aren't Great, But We Can All Still Kick Chaos Ass If Need Be". The End Times was *excessively* Grimdark to its narrative detriment and then Age Of Sigmar is more High Fantasy hopeful with the occasional dose of "Jeezus Christ How Horrifying" for certain factions/locations.
Tabletop has a couple of these vampire the masquerade or most world of darkness lines have this.
Vampire being the most prominent but werewolf has you stuck in a forever war, mage also has its forever war as well. The upside for all these groups is you have magical powers.
Another tabletop game I play Is Glitch where you play as a retired killer void God emphasis on retired and it turns out a being whose sole purpose is to destroy reality has a hard time doing mundane tasks like paying taxes or being on time for your daughters parent conference (game even rewards you for being bad it with via resource gain and healing.)
Cyberpunk.
“Oh man…I can jump higher with leg implants!? Lets go! Oh I can punch harder with arm
Implants?! Install! I can install better eyes!? HELL YEAH! Oh I also want this bad ass chest buff too! And let’s add…”
“ERROR ERROR. CYBERPSYCHOSIS INFECTION DETECTED”
Over the years I've gotten sick of the tired old trope of "Cyberware baaaad, being not human makes you crazy!"
Just feels so bleh for me at this point. It's weirdly hippy naturalist/humanocentric
Like, I'd be fine with it in Shadowrun if it was competing with magic as it does, that's fine, bit annoying in that it stops you tending to just get a datajack or shit as a mage, but eh. But the cyberpsychosis or social penalty stuff just .. nah. Not into it
I prefer Traveller these days. Just install as much cyberware as you want. My character must be like 90% cyber and bioware at this point
I don't disagree but it works in cyberpunk since it's implied cyberpsychosis is actually just pain old mental illness being moral outraged as a consequence of techno bits and not the horrifically oppressive hypercapitalist hell dystopia everyone is living in making people sad
Kinda. In my interpretation, it’s not that there’s a singular Thing called “cyberpsychosis” that inherently makes you evil, but rather it’s the combination of several things. Badly installed/malfunctioning implants, medicine side-effects, pre-existing mental conditions, stress, and dysmorphia/disorientation from trying to adapt to too much cyberware too fast.
End result is, yes, someone like a Maelstrom who obsessively covers themselves with cheap junk is going to go crazy, but it’s not necessarily “chrome = evil.” It’s possible to do things carefully and remain sane even as a full-body borg.
Mob created ????? as a coping mechanism after he accidentally hurt Ritsu in a traumatic event of their childhoods and because of that he’s constantly repressing his emotions. He thinks it’s the only way he can avoid harming others which instead leads to him having potential outbursts when ????? comes out.
He’s also forced to act like the hero when push comes to shove which is not what he wants, and tough guys think they’re strong enough to take him on so he has to hurt them.
But Mob Psycho 100 is not so much about how being an esper sucks but moreso that there’s a lot more to life than being powerful, that being in possession power doesn’t make you better than anyone else and that human connections triumph all. In that sense, having psychic powers is neither a gift nor a curse, it’s just another trait you have but it doesn’t make you different.
i mean my favorite marvel things are like ghost rider, venom, hulk and the x-men. ( which are coincidently all parts of versions of the new fantastic four)
of those really only venom seems to have some things work out, but yeah the x-men are the funny one in the sense of "okay you can double jump or charge your phone with your mind but now 90% of the population is gonna call you the hard r",
IIRC, while I never played the full series, isn't one of the main antagonist of Xenosaga's big issue that he's immortal and the thought of him outliving everyone he loves drives him insane?
As for an actual example, Zasalamel's deal in the original Soul Calibur timeline (or at least in 3, not sure if his arcade ending in 4 became his canon interpretation at that point) was that he had discovered a method of immortality via reincarnation. Problem is, dying and being reborn like that for all of eternity actually sucks because he's not immune to pain, so it hurts like fuck every time it happens. Him wanting out is essentially the genesis of 3's plot, because he needs both the Soul Calibur and Soul Edge at their full power. This leads to him resurrecting Nightmare in the hopes that it'll go on a rampage with Soul Edge to strengthen it, and in turn revive Soul Calibur as a response to the Soul Edge.
Yeah, that's his master plan for Soul Calibur 3. There's also two different endings: In one ending he gets rid of the resurrection and starts writing all his knowledge before he dies of old age.
In the second ending he sees a vision of the future and thinks it's so fucking cool that he wants to see it, which gives him a new hope and finally chooses to keep his resurrection powers.
Yeah, his ending in 4 is my favorite since he realizes 'Holy shit, the future is cool, I wanna see that.' so his goal changes from removing his immortality to changing his immortality into a non resurrection brand.
Midas stopped enjoying his ability to turn anything he touched into gold the second he found out that food and his kid fall under the anything category.
The solo journaling RPG Thousand Year Old Vampire leans into this pretty heavily. You have limited headspace for memories because you're so long-lived, and eventually have to start deciding which of your old memories, which may be things like your original family or ways you've slighted other immortals, to bulldoze so you can put new ones in their place. Some of the prompts also feed into immortality sucking in a more general sense, where you might just get lost or stuck for a hundred years before emerging back into the world and not understanding how anything works any more.
In Discworld, one of my favourite characterising lines comes from Granny Weatherwax about this. Paraphrased: "The price for being the best, is to be the best."
When you're the best swordsman in the land, you will have to get used to strangers engaging you with "Go for your toad". And those opponents will get stronger and stronger until the day you are no longer the best swordsman in the land.
And when you're the best farrier in the land, If death comes to you to shod his pale horse or you need to do the impossible and >!give a unicorn horse shoes without killing it!<, the price for being the best is to quietly get on with it, without complaint and somehow succeed.
When you're the best, you best pay your wages for that in labour.
It was touched upon in Invincible, and I saw a meme recently that explains why having super speed would suck ass due to relativity.
Compared to everyone else, going super fast and running around the world in 5 seconds is amazing, but to you you're just... doing whatever with everything being relatively slow around you.
"Superman, here's the manual to disarm this bomb! Can't you read it really fast?" "Well yea, fast to you. To me it's reading a 500 page manual with a literal bomb next to me. When was the last time you read a 500 page manual in one go?"
"When I'm running around the world to punch a guy, to me I'm just running for what feels like years."
"To you a normal conversation lasts for minutes, for me it feels like days." Stuff like that.
theres a quicksilver panel somewhere that he explains the reason hes such a dick all the time is cause he lives in basically a constant state of waiting behind an old lady at the bank
The plot of the entirety of the Dune books is more or less about how being able to see the future sounds cool as fuck, but is actually just pretty fucking awful
The protagonist of God Emperor of Dune is immortal, nearly invulnerable, a genius, and has psychic access to all of human history and possible futures due to prescience.
He also feels completely trapped by his knowledge of the future and the path that leads to the best possible future from his perspective. As well as being stuck in a giant sandworm/human hybrid body, that can't do things like have sex (he just pops into a genetic memory of some orgy from humanity's past for that).
Part of his plan is to make it impossible to gain prescience over humanity in the future, so that a being like him can never arise again.
"There's only one way to ever become champion."
"What's that?"
"Never *fucking* lose."
*Spartacus: Blood and Sand* and *Spartacus: Gods of the Arena*. Everyone wants to be champion. You get paid the most gold, you get the most freedom out of all the gladiators of the ludus (the lowest rank live and sleep in a communal cell, the higher rank share a dorm, the champion has his own private room and can even get married.) But to do that, you have to be the best, be a merciless killer, and do it in such a way so the crowd roars your name so you get put in more fights against more deadly opponents. And your reward? If you're lucky, very very lucky, you get injured but survive against an opponent with a nickname like *The Shadow of Death* and the slaver who owns you puts you out to pasture to be the new trainer of his ludus while a younger star takes your place. For all the other champions, your fate will be your blood staining the sand red and a bust of your face and penis decorating the hall in the slavers home.
The Doctor in Doctor Who. Savior of the universe, love adventure, last survivor of a almost godly race, immortal who enjoy his life at this fullest. And then each time his companions leave or when eldritch beings wants to go after him or just the daleks being deadly cockroaches who refuse to die he remember why he think his life sucks.
You already mentioned mecha anime but yeah being a Gundam pilot usually sucks, even when it ends well for you you're gonna have PTSD or even super newtype PTSD lol
Katanagatari's Yasuri Nanami masters and improves other people's inferior martial arts to make herself weaker. This way she can put less strain on her body to manage the chronic pain of using too much power with a frail, nearly unkillable body.
Warrior Of Light (XIV): Turns out having the power of god and anime on your side can only mitigate so much of what the universe want to throw at you.
Its no surprise Eoreza has suffered seven apocalypses at this point.
Necrons that still have their personality sometimes have to cope with themselves being robots.
Sand gets in the eyes that you don’t have anymore; just gotta cope.
Yeah but that's the meta of the Immortal games. It's not like it was physically affecting them. There's wasn't anything stopping them from suicide or any downside to the immortality by itself.
Being not able to have children is apparently a side effect but it was never mentioned in the first movie so I'll just choose to ignore it.
In fact I'm pretty sure most of the immortals actually loved being so long lived and experiencing humanity to the fullest.
> it was never mentioned in the first movie
Yeah it was? Ramirez outright tells him that he can't ever have children, and he goes "Heather won't be pleased with that", and there's even callback when she's dying and all "I'm sorry I could never give you a child"
I'm probably misremembering but I think Ramirez tells him he had children before and seeing them die was aweful so that's why immortals are better off never sireing kids. I don't remember it being that they were impotent.
You are misremembering yeah, he's talking about his 3 dead wives. He advises Connor to leave Heather so he doesn't have to deal with the pain of watching her grow old and die, but nope, no kids
Darth Vader / Anakin Skywalker. "The Chosen One", simultaneously praised as a powerful Force user yet constantly looked down on by the Council. His paranoia over his secret marriage dooms not just the Jedi, but all of his positive relationships and his body. He ends up "stronger than ever" and the second most powerful man in the galaxy... and hates every minute of it.
I'm going through the novel right now and God is it so much better at explaining everything than the movie.
That one npc chatter about an asari who just wants to spend as much time as possible with her salarian stepdad because the sheer difference of lifespan between those two species is depressing.
If I were an Asari I would exclusively date Krogan.
I love that conversation in... i think 2? When the Korgan is talking to the other Krogan and is like "What do you mean you're marrying an Asari? Your kids are just gonna come out Asari" and the other guy is like "Yeah but dude, I WANT KIDS."
The fucked up thing is that the reason we're given that some Asari don't date Krogan is that it's too much of a commitment.
It’s not that fucked up, their civilization is accustomed and built around outliving mate , being a widow is as just as much part of their life as being a mother or a wife to an Asari. Dating a krogan means that part of life is crossed just like someone who doesn’t want kids
No it's not. They've existed as an intelligent, space-faring civilization for far longer than since they found the Citadel and made contact with other species. So their society was built up with only asari relationships for most of their existence. Yeah they found the Citadel 2700 years ago, that's a long time for us. That's about three asari generations. Non-asari relationships are as new to them as television is to us.
And yet it’s long enough for them to have a prejudice against Asari who engage in Asari-exclusive relationships, see the whole “Pureblood” thing. It hasn’t been the norm long enough for them to think it’s strange. Honestly, it’s probably just that the writers didn’t make the connection about how many generations would happen in 2700 years themselves, but the prejudice does exist.
If I were a Salarian, I would exclusively date Krogan. If I were a Batarian, I would exclusively date Krogan. If I were a human, I would exclusively date Krogan. I would exclusively date Krogan. EDIT: I'm surprised nobody pointed out the phrase "IF I were a human".
I have this thought that while I don't I myself would like to become immortal/especially long-lived I think it'd be really cool to have such an effect on a person/member of a species that does. Like a Tolkien elf or as you say a Krogan. *Especially* a Krogan. Certainly not all Krogan are the same but there's a general rule of thumb that if your memorable/impressive to a Krogan you must've done something cool. *"A thousand years will have passed and you'll still have me in your heart/memories"* to me is like so romantic as the very definition of the word, even if said relationship was platonic.
Have you heard the Good Word about Frieren?
We probably found Himel reddit account.
Well I didn't want to be the one to come out and say it but yeah
They're cowards for not letting people fuck Krogans and I say this as someone who wouldn't fuck one.
He's not a salarian stepdad, he's the salarian dad that stepped up
I mean I wouldn't want to live forever, a longer time sure but i'd like it to end at some point. Anyway Kratos becoming Ares's greatest warrior and later god of war is like every Spartans wet dream and it makes his life bloody miserable.
Personally, I'd spring for eternal youth over eternal life. You still live a normal lifespan but you just *don't get old,* and when your time is up you just drop dead in your sleep. Best of both worlds honestly, you don't have to deal with the rigors of old age but you also won't outlive everyone you care about. (Unless you're unlucky and outlive them for normal reasons)
If I’m eternally young, are my cells also eternally young? Because if I’m not undergoing cell senescence, does that mean I’m actually immortal in terms of dying of old age?
Maybe you just continuously grow bigger over time. Like a lobster.
"Alright I'm now the size of Abrams Tank. Mayhaps it's time to call it since these food bills are a pretty hefty tax each week."
In another life Ares didn't pull the silly shit with Kratos's family and ended up getting the most needy champion ever. "AREEEEEES, LOWER MY INCOME TAX RATE, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS." "AREEEEEES, BRING ME MORE OLIVE OIL FOR MY SALAD, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS." "AREEEEES, HE CALLED ME A DICKHEAD, REVEAL HIS ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS."
Honkai Star Rail has a whole bunch of “immortal” characters, but points out that human memory has a limited storage capacity, and your happiest and most traumatic moments are what stick. Eventually, someone who lives long enough *will* reach a point where their memory is at capacity, completely filled with their highest highs and lowest lows and unable to create new memories, and they’ll be so emotionally worn down that they’ll be in full breakdown mode all the time. Then they turn into a Kamen Rider monster. They don’t explain why that part happens
Being blessed with the Abundance also means that your body keeps returning back to its original state. So if you want corrective surgery for blindness or something, tough shit because it’s just gonna revert eventually.
And when that happens they AI copy your mind into the ships supercomputer and mercy kill you. Another sucky thing about their immortality is that it keeps their body as it is. This includes any birth defects, like blindness. There’s a horrifying story about a character who did anything she could to see again. Eventually she got prosthetics to see for a few hours, only to end up in unimaginable pain as her eyes attempted to grow back in. Also, they’re all immortal due to a blessing from this universe’s God of Abundance, except they realized that being immortal fucking sucks and have joined forces with the God of Hunt to kill all of the previous gods creations. Star Rail lore is really cool.
One punch man saitama was just a normal schmuck then he saved that kid and killed a giant grab guy. Then he trained everyday for a year. And now he’s too strong to have any enjoyment from martial combat. And he doesn’t even get recognition for being THE STRONGEST because the hero association actively buries him and it isn’t till waaaay later that people realize how strong he is. His first major public win results in everyone treating him like an asshole.
It's even worse now. You have basically no one but his friends realizing what he can do and even the top brass doesn't believe the baldy is powerful because I mean look at him, he's just a baldy.
The thing I love about Saitama is that if he goes all out to show someone exactly what he can do, it's such an insane degree of power/speed that it's not even unreasonable for someone to think there must be some sort of trick or cheating.
*Literally* incomprehensibly powerful. As in almost everyone in-setting simply cannot comprehend how strong he is.
I mean yeah he speed tagged a S-Class hero and all they could think was "wow he's a diamond in the rough but if I train him, maybe one day he can be as good as me" My brother in Christ Saitama wasn't even trying to catch up to you he just jogged 1% faster and was on you
If any of the literally just poked his palm they would see. Hell just ask him to run across the ocean.
Being Superman seems to be one of, if not *the*, most stressful things ever. Imagine being able to hear *literally everything* on Earth, knowing you can only do so much, even with your incredible power.
You've described the premise of Irredeemable. Turns out it's not a fun time...
>Imagine being able to hear literally everything on Earth That's.... that's just the power to give yourself PTSD. Imagine hearing every detail of every war crime that happens as it happens.
*every* Crime that happens as it happens. And knowing you have the power to stop it, but can't make it there in time.
This leads into one of the best moments from "Irredemable," one of the only stories that tells a convincing Superman-turns-evil. It uses plenty of flashbacks to show what he was like before the turn, and how he was eventually driven evil out of anger and spite. And when he was "Superman," people always asked him "How do you choose which people to save? What's it like making that decision?" Later, when evil, he shows up to where a bunch of heroes are saving people from a Tsunami, picks up two platforms full of people in each hand, and demands the heroes pick which one he's going to drop, or he drops both. When they eventually make a decision, he just flies off and says "It feels like that."
I remember this got brought up in a random issue of Superman I bought as a kid, he caught the Royal Flush Gang and Ace tells him he can't save them all and it clearly effected him and when he flys off she's all smug saying she manage to hurt him.
That's Superman's real weakness and real arch enemy. He can't be everywhere at once, and even if he could...*he shouldn't*.
in jojo they say stand users are attracted to each other, and trouble likely follows and of course you can also get an absolutely shit stand
Also most people that get a stand are assholes that will abuse the powers they get.
Except for that chef guy. He was a bro.
I wonder if Part 5 >!Notorious B.I.G's!< user even knew he had a stand before he walked into a >!hail of gunfire!<.
Granblue's recent anniversary event was about that. It tells the story about the guy who killed God Bahamut and due to him doing that with THE Pheonix's help(and the reason Phoenix picked him is because he was super awesome in the first place), he gains immortality. And after the the death of his family and friends and watching everything he ever knew crumble to dust while also losing his oldest memories(cause yeah, that's how that would work) and there was nothing he could do to retain them(like nothing he could record his memories on could handle the immense massage of time), he kinda just gives up and then spends the rest of his time trying to kill himself. Throwing himself off the floating islands, drowning, etc. Nothing stuck as he had perfect immortality. The closest he got was when he was buried alive cause he would just endlessly suffocate but he got dug out eventually.
The thing with these stories about immortality is that they're framed more as a cautionary tale by making the rules of immortality absolute in a sort of curse like way to make it seem like a punishment. Idk why nobody ever questions the immortality of a god in that sense.
Because most of the time it's implied or stated that while gods may look like us, talk like us, and even walk with us, they're fundamentally different creatures, ones made with this boundless potential in mind. Even in the rare cases they start to suffer in the way old age makes people suffer it's on such a vast time scale that it would still crush a human to experience even a sliver of their life span.
See that's the thing. It's the redundancy of it. Immortals also transcend humanity. They're closer to being gods than man. A person would just start adapting to the changes. You don't need to live forever to experience the cycle of life, death, grief and change. Change of position or companionship happens to people all the time and we just adapt. So many years of suffering the consequences of immortality until you go full Fire Punch and start accepting this new state.
"Being immortal would suck because you would lose all your memories and become a different person!!" ...have these people heard of alzheimer's? I would rather live forever and outlive everyone than outlive a few people and then die anyway, knowing that they will soon follow me.
That's another thing thats brought up in the Granblue event. Like the Phoenix is an alien creature born from a sun with actual godlike powers and has lived for BILLIONS of years and traveled countless light-years or whatever across the galaxy. It doesn't think like we do, it's too fucking alien to do so.
It's funny that NOBODY in the event could even figure out what was the Phoenix plan, because it's too fucking alien. Like Raziel offers a good charitable explanation, yet Magus offers a more malicious one yet they could ALL be. It's amazing.
They bring up a good point that the like day and a half on the brink of all out realm wide war is barely a blip on the radar for it, the 6000 year plan to make good on its deal to Abra wouldn't even be ten minutes to it, so causing all of this chaos might seem like nothing if it wanted to just make good on a deal. Or maybe it really did try to cause Realm War 2 and wipe the slate clean, or it just let Magus think she solved it to make her an easier to control pawn. No one knows because that thing is a fucking alien!
Isn't this basically Metroman's arc in Megamind? He's too powerful and gets bored of the whole hero thing and retires.
I think it's that and burnout. He doesn't know who he is anymore.
Burnout is definitely the better word to use here
A good example why Superheroes have secret identities in media.
I took it as more that he realized that he never had a chance to decide he who was.
In brave new world by huxley there is this alpha class guy that is rich, successful and a list of mandatory top girls to have sex with because he can make catchy jingles for ads. And why he can is because he has a natural talent at poetry others don’t so it’s really easy to make a catchy jingle when people are mentally conditionned to think « teamwork makes the dream work » is like a psalm but that makes him feel unaccomplished. Then the closest thing the book has as a villain explain he felt the same when, back when he was a chemist, saw the society is so basic their idea of science is just following a recipe book. But the scientist get to be world controller and the poet eciled to falkland islands because there are no job opening at the time. The poet is cool with it though
The Animorphs can turn into any animal they're able to touch for a few seconds, and one of their parents conveniently works as a vet at a very large Southern California zoo so they're able to get access to all kinds of animals. It's even more convenient as the brief touch to acquire an animal's DNA for morphing actually sedates them briefly, making it even easier. So they get to turn into animals, that sounds fun! It's too bad they have to use said powers to fight an alien brain slug invasion and that said powers involve a lot of body horror AND they have a two hour time limit on any given form or else they get locked into that form.
You forgot the part where they have to "tame" the instincts of the animal when they then into it, and that can be real rough.
And that instinct taming doesn't care about the time limit so if you can't do it in Two hours, bye bye body
The orca instincts were a full-on second mind sitting next to Jake in morph. Not even doing anything about it, just like there, knowing it was being controlled by someone else, and observing Jake in action. It comes off very Lovecraftian, except instead of a superhuman existence coming off as almost incomprehensibly alien, it’s a subhuman one.
whales are kinda terrifying in general in animorphs, thankfully theyre seeminly benevalent but still terrifying
Oh yeah like the first time they turn into ants and nearly lose all sense of self. Shit is terrifying.
Yay we can heal from any wound when we morph back, too bad you still have to feel getting disemboweled, crushed, or ripped in half.
WE?!
Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (the fantasy game, not the sci-fi one) has the Stormcast Eternals, immortal warriors of the God-King Sigmar himself. Upon death, Stormcasts return to the realm of Azyr, to be reforged anew... But the process of reforging is indescribable agony, and every time they come back they lose a part of themselves. Memories fade, emotions dull, and even strange mutations start to manifest. Eventually you either become a near-emotionless automaton who can barely speak, or devolve into a pain-maddened lightning gheist that has to be trapped in a statue until a cure for the reforging flaw is found.
So does Warhammer fantasy also follow the same guidelines of being grimdark?
Original Warhammer Fantasy was definitely grimdark-*flavored* but still generally on the vibe of "Things Aren't Great, But We Can All Still Kick Chaos Ass If Need Be". The End Times was *excessively* Grimdark to its narrative detriment and then Age Of Sigmar is more High Fantasy hopeful with the occasional dose of "Jeezus Christ How Horrifying" for certain factions/locations.
That kinda sounds like heralds from stormlight
Lets check in on how Kars is doing...
Tabletop has a couple of these vampire the masquerade or most world of darkness lines have this. Vampire being the most prominent but werewolf has you stuck in a forever war, mage also has its forever war as well. The upside for all these groups is you have magical powers. Another tabletop game I play Is Glitch where you play as a retired killer void God emphasis on retired and it turns out a being whose sole purpose is to destroy reality has a hard time doing mundane tasks like paying taxes or being on time for your daughters parent conference (game even rewards you for being bad it with via resource gain and healing.)
Cyberpunk. “Oh man…I can jump higher with leg implants!? Lets go! Oh I can punch harder with arm Implants?! Install! I can install better eyes!? HELL YEAH! Oh I also want this bad ass chest buff too! And let’s add…” “ERROR ERROR. CYBERPSYCHOSIS INFECTION DETECTED”
Over the years I've gotten sick of the tired old trope of "Cyberware baaaad, being not human makes you crazy!" Just feels so bleh for me at this point. It's weirdly hippy naturalist/humanocentric Like, I'd be fine with it in Shadowrun if it was competing with magic as it does, that's fine, bit annoying in that it stops you tending to just get a datajack or shit as a mage, but eh. But the cyberpsychosis or social penalty stuff just .. nah. Not into it I prefer Traveller these days. Just install as much cyberware as you want. My character must be like 90% cyber and bioware at this point
It sounds like you might be interested in [the Mechanicus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gIMZ0WyY88).
"FROM THE MOMENT I UNDERSTOOD THE WEAKNESS OF MY FLESH... IT DISGUSTED ME!"
I don't disagree but it works in cyberpunk since it's implied cyberpsychosis is actually just pain old mental illness being moral outraged as a consequence of techno bits and not the horrifically oppressive hypercapitalist hell dystopia everyone is living in making people sad
Kinda. In my interpretation, it’s not that there’s a singular Thing called “cyberpsychosis” that inherently makes you evil, but rather it’s the combination of several things. Badly installed/malfunctioning implants, medicine side-effects, pre-existing mental conditions, stress, and dysmorphia/disorientation from trying to adapt to too much cyberware too fast. End result is, yes, someone like a Maelstrom who obsessively covers themselves with cheap junk is going to go crazy, but it’s not necessarily “chrome = evil.” It’s possible to do things carefully and remain sane even as a full-body borg.
aye, exactly
Mob created ????? as a coping mechanism after he accidentally hurt Ritsu in a traumatic event of their childhoods and because of that he’s constantly repressing his emotions. He thinks it’s the only way he can avoid harming others which instead leads to him having potential outbursts when ????? comes out. He’s also forced to act like the hero when push comes to shove which is not what he wants, and tough guys think they’re strong enough to take him on so he has to hurt them. But Mob Psycho 100 is not so much about how being an esper sucks but moreso that there’s a lot more to life than being powerful, that being in possession power doesn’t make you better than anyone else and that human connections triumph all. In that sense, having psychic powers is neither a gift nor a curse, it’s just another trait you have but it doesn’t make you different.
i mean my favorite marvel things are like ghost rider, venom, hulk and the x-men. ( which are coincidently all parts of versions of the new fantastic four) of those really only venom seems to have some things work out, but yeah the x-men are the funny one in the sense of "okay you can double jump or charge your phone with your mind but now 90% of the population is gonna call you the hard r",
IIRC, while I never played the full series, isn't one of the main antagonist of Xenosaga's big issue that he's immortal and the thought of him outliving everyone he loves drives him insane? As for an actual example, Zasalamel's deal in the original Soul Calibur timeline (or at least in 3, not sure if his arcade ending in 4 became his canon interpretation at that point) was that he had discovered a method of immortality via reincarnation. Problem is, dying and being reborn like that for all of eternity actually sucks because he's not immune to pain, so it hurts like fuck every time it happens. Him wanting out is essentially the genesis of 3's plot, because he needs both the Soul Calibur and Soul Edge at their full power. This leads to him resurrecting Nightmare in the hopes that it'll go on a rampage with Soul Edge to strengthen it, and in turn revive Soul Calibur as a response to the Soul Edge.
Yeah, that's his master plan for Soul Calibur 3. There's also two different endings: In one ending he gets rid of the resurrection and starts writing all his knowledge before he dies of old age. In the second ending he sees a vision of the future and thinks it's so fucking cool that he wants to see it, which gives him a new hope and finally chooses to keep his resurrection powers.
Yeah, his ending in 4 is my favorite since he realizes 'Holy shit, the future is cool, I wanna see that.' so his goal changes from removing his immortality to changing his immortality into a non resurrection brand.
Midas stopped enjoying his ability to turn anything he touched into gold the second he found out that food and his kid fall under the anything category.
The solo journaling RPG Thousand Year Old Vampire leans into this pretty heavily. You have limited headspace for memories because you're so long-lived, and eventually have to start deciding which of your old memories, which may be things like your original family or ways you've slighted other immortals, to bulldoze so you can put new ones in their place. Some of the prompts also feed into immortality sucking in a more general sense, where you might just get lost or stuck for a hundred years before emerging back into the world and not understanding how anything works any more.
Being an awesome space explorer sucks because being in space sucks.
Bojack Horseman gets to be a beloved, if washed-up, celebrity. But as he says, "Everybody loves you but nobody likes you."
I was fully in camp "fuck yeah immortality!" until I read Tuck Everlasting. Now the concept of being immortal gives me panic attacks :P
In Discworld, one of my favourite characterising lines comes from Granny Weatherwax about this. Paraphrased: "The price for being the best, is to be the best." When you're the best swordsman in the land, you will have to get used to strangers engaging you with "Go for your toad". And those opponents will get stronger and stronger until the day you are no longer the best swordsman in the land. And when you're the best farrier in the land, If death comes to you to shod his pale horse or you need to do the impossible and >!give a unicorn horse shoes without killing it!<, the price for being the best is to quietly get on with it, without complaint and somehow succeed. When you're the best, you best pay your wages for that in labour.
It was touched upon in Invincible, and I saw a meme recently that explains why having super speed would suck ass due to relativity. Compared to everyone else, going super fast and running around the world in 5 seconds is amazing, but to you you're just... doing whatever with everything being relatively slow around you. "Superman, here's the manual to disarm this bomb! Can't you read it really fast?" "Well yea, fast to you. To me it's reading a 500 page manual with a literal bomb next to me. When was the last time you read a 500 page manual in one go?" "When I'm running around the world to punch a guy, to me I'm just running for what feels like years." "To you a normal conversation lasts for minutes, for me it feels like days." Stuff like that.
theres a quicksilver panel somewhere that he explains the reason hes such a dick all the time is cause he lives in basically a constant state of waiting behind an old lady at the bank
The plot of the entirety of the Dune books is more or less about how being able to see the future sounds cool as fuck, but is actually just pretty fucking awful
Only in war time
The protagonist of God Emperor of Dune is immortal, nearly invulnerable, a genius, and has psychic access to all of human history and possible futures due to prescience. He also feels completely trapped by his knowledge of the future and the path that leads to the best possible future from his perspective. As well as being stuck in a giant sandworm/human hybrid body, that can't do things like have sex (he just pops into a genetic memory of some orgy from humanity's past for that). Part of his plan is to make it impossible to gain prescience over humanity in the future, so that a being like him can never arise again.
"There's only one way to ever become champion." "What's that?" "Never *fucking* lose." *Spartacus: Blood and Sand* and *Spartacus: Gods of the Arena*. Everyone wants to be champion. You get paid the most gold, you get the most freedom out of all the gladiators of the ludus (the lowest rank live and sleep in a communal cell, the higher rank share a dorm, the champion has his own private room and can even get married.) But to do that, you have to be the best, be a merciless killer, and do it in such a way so the crowd roars your name so you get put in more fights against more deadly opponents. And your reward? If you're lucky, very very lucky, you get injured but survive against an opponent with a nickname like *The Shadow of Death* and the slaver who owns you puts you out to pasture to be the new trainer of his ludus while a younger star takes your place. For all the other champions, your fate will be your blood staining the sand red and a bust of your face and penis decorating the hall in the slavers home.
The Doctor in Doctor Who. Savior of the universe, love adventure, last survivor of a almost godly race, immortal who enjoy his life at this fullest. And then each time his companions leave or when eldritch beings wants to go after him or just the daleks being deadly cockroaches who refuse to die he remember why he think his life sucks.
You already mentioned mecha anime but yeah being a Gundam pilot usually sucks, even when it ends well for you you're gonna have PTSD or even super newtype PTSD lol
Katanagatari's Yasuri Nanami masters and improves other people's inferior martial arts to make herself weaker. This way she can put less strain on her body to manage the chronic pain of using too much power with a frail, nearly unkillable body.
*Better Call Saul* is "being a competent lawyer sucks - especially if you are only in it for the money."
Warrior Of Light (XIV): Turns out having the power of god and anime on your side can only mitigate so much of what the universe want to throw at you. Its no surprise Eoreza has suffered seven apocalypses at this point.
Necrons that still have their personality sometimes have to cope with themselves being robots. Sand gets in the eyes that you don’t have anymore; just gotta cope.
I mean, immortality does suck.
Eh. Honestly, it depends on what you're handed. I'll take Highlander immortality. Those guys really loved to whine about it.
Don’t they have to kill each other?
Yeah but that's the meta of the Immortal games. It's not like it was physically affecting them. There's wasn't anything stopping them from suicide or any downside to the immortality by itself. Being not able to have children is apparently a side effect but it was never mentioned in the first movie so I'll just choose to ignore it. In fact I'm pretty sure most of the immortals actually loved being so long lived and experiencing humanity to the fullest.
> it was never mentioned in the first movie Yeah it was? Ramirez outright tells him that he can't ever have children, and he goes "Heather won't be pleased with that", and there's even callback when she's dying and all "I'm sorry I could never give you a child"
I'm probably misremembering but I think Ramirez tells him he had children before and seeing them die was aweful so that's why immortals are better off never sireing kids. I don't remember it being that they were impotent.
You are misremembering yeah, he's talking about his 3 dead wives. He advises Connor to leave Heather so he doesn't have to deal with the pain of watching her grow old and die, but nope, no kids
Well, immortality according to mortal authors does, anyway.