Age Without Youth: Difference between revisions

This is a(n ugly) sister trope to [[Vain Sorceress]], who hides her aging with [[Functional Magic|magic]]. Compare [[Immortality Immorality]] and [[Who Wants to Live Forever?]]. May be a punishment [[The Grim Reaper|Death]] levies on [[Enemies with Death|its enemies]], or a [[The Problem with Fighting Death|result of being defeated.]] The inversion of this trope is [[Not Growing Up Sucks]].

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

 

== Comic Books ==

* [[Dracula]] in the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Buffy]]'' comics (especially his story in ''Tales of the Vampires'') doesn't age - but he actually looks like an extremely old man. His youthful appearance is just an illusion, one which [[Glamour Failure|fails]] at one point during his fight with Buffy before he makes the above quote.

* ''[[X-Men]]''/Gambit character Amanda Mueller, alias "Black Womb" for her part in a secret mutant-breeding program, was very long-lived, but slowly aged into a shriveled form that didn't quite look like a normal elderly woman, more like someone mummified but still alive (that could simply be the artist's style).

 

== Film ==

* Max Schreck, the vampire actor (based on the real life actor who portrayed ''[[Nosferatu]]'') in ''[[Shadow of the Vampire]]'', appears to suffer from this: though he is still powerful enough to defend himself, his outward appearance has become decidedly grotesque, his blood lust has become almost uncontrollable ("I feed like old men piss," he remarks), and much of his memories from his early life as a vampire have faded. At one point, Schreck himself quotes Tennyson's poem.

* In ''[[The Hunger]]'', vampire Miriam Blaylock possesses eternal life and youth. Her chosen companions will share her endless existence... except they only retain their youth for about two hundred years before rapidly aging into a husk.

 

== Literature ==

* [[Ursula K. Le Guin]]'s short story "The Island of the Immortals" features an island where such [[Immortality|immortals]] occasionally appear; though they may age quite slowly, they do not remain young forever. Worse, even the most grievous injuries cannot kill them {{spoiler|and eventually the sheer weight of suffering turns them into (very large) diamonds}}.

* Jonathan Swift, ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'': One of the kingdoms Gulliver encounters on his third voyage has the Struldbrugs, [[Immortality|immortals]] who just get more senile and decrepit as they age.

* In L. Jagi Lamplighter's ''[[Prospero's Daughter]]'' trilogy, Eramus can cure anything that would kill you but can't grant youth; he and Miranda had experimented.

* Aginor, one of [[Quirky Miniboss Squad|the Forsaken]] from ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' had this happen; bound inside [[God of Evil|the Dark One's]] prison, but only on the edges of it, he was kept alive for ''three thousand years'' by his master's power but not stopped from aging. When finally freed, he looks more like a desiccated corpse than a living man. His comrade Balthamel also appears to have had this problem, but hid his features behind a leather mask from shame and horror, so what form the decay took with him is never made clear. The other Forsaken, deeper within the prison, were held in complete stasis and did not visibly age during their imprisonment.

* This is what Marcellus Pye in ''[[Septimus Heap]]'' ends up with after making a potion of eternal life that lacked a critical component, making him look old and withered 500 years later. [[Subverted]], since Septimus Heap succeeds in making the potion again with the critical component and to give it to the ailing Marcellus.

* In [[Snorri Sturluson]]'s ''[[Heimskringla]]'', King Aun (''alias'' Ani) of Sweden one by one sacrifices nine of his sons to Odin to prolong his own life, even though he becomes increasingly decrepit all the while.

* In the novels of Deverry, the wizard Nevyn is unable to die until he fulfills a rash promise he made in his youth. He continued to age normally until he got into his nineties. After that, his body remained that of a somewhat vigorous ninety-year-old. But by the time he died at four hundred and seventy five, he was having some memory trouble—his mind couldn't handle all the information that was in there.

 

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'': The Master is thousands of years old, and as such has become less human-looking and more monstrous than the typical [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampire]]. Also, {{spoiler|when he dies his skeleton doesn't turn to dust with the rest of him.}}

* Cassandra from ''[[Doctor Who]]'' has aged to the point where she's literally nothing but a brain in a vat and a patch of skin. She decides the right way to solve this is via [[Grand Theft Me]].

* The entire planet {{spoiler|apart from Jack}} suffers from this in ''[[Torchwood: Miracle Day]]''. When you think about how much of the population is liable to die of old age on any given day, then a lot of people must be in a living hell, and it's only going to get worse.

 

* As stated above, Tithonus the cricket. Eos' sister [[Three Faces of Eve|Selene]], the moon, averted this trope when she fell in love with a mortal, carefully asking Zeus to freeze Endymion ([[Sailor Moon|no, not that one]], nor [[Hyperion|that other one]]) just as he was, in that moment - so she had an ever-sleeping ([[And I Must Scream|hopefully!]]), eternal [[Bishounen]] for company.

** A more tragic example is the story of the [http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/greek-mythology.php?deity=SIBYL-OF-CUMAE Sibyl of Cumae], who ended up "''a tiny wrinkly little thing. The priests hung her on the wall in a bottle and charged extra to see the talking curio. By this time the only words she would come out with were: 'I want to die'.''"

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* ''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]'' mostly averts this... except in one case: the Oberloch bloodline. Each [[Prestige Class|bloodline]] has a flaw that comes with activating it. For the Oberlochs, that flaw is, despite being [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampires]], ''they still age''. Physical Attributes go down for every 50 years the vampire's been alive, to the point that elders of the line are basically shriveled old crones who only get pull because the Oberlochs believe ''very'' strongly in family values. Though I'm sure the fact that they get [[Compelling Voice|Dominate]] has some influence...

** Also, they get superhuman strength as a clan discipline. Granny has a surprisingly strong grip...

 

== Western Animation ==

* An episode of ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures|The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest]]'' featured a man who was cursed with eternal life without eternal youth. {{spoiler|And he still looks better than his former friend whose [[Deal with the Devil]] turned him into a soulless squid monster. Incidentally, it was his "friend" who cursed him in the first place.}}

* Morgan Le Fey in ''[[Justice League (animation)|Justice League Unlimited]]'' wears a mask all the time so nobody can see her face. She has to continually absorb [[Life Energy]] to stay young. Her son, on the other hand, stays young all the time... until he gets sick of being a child in "Kid's Stuff" and magically makes himself older... which breaks his eternal youth and causes him to quickly reach his true age. As the episode ends, {{spoiler|he is an extremely old man and Morgan is taking care of him, like she would with a baby}}.

 

== Real Life ==

* Pray that [[All the Myriad Ways|quantum]] [[wikipedia:Quantum immortality|immortality]] doesn't give you this.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Aging Tropes]]

[[Category:Power At a Price]]

[[Category:This Index Will Live Forever]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]