Immortal Procreation Clause: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* In both the manga and anime versions of ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', homunculi, creatures created by alchemy, are stated as unable to reproduce. They exist outside of any ecosystem.

** {{spoiler|Hoenheim}} is immortal and can reproduce, but his children aren't any different than normal.

* The Juraians in ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'' have vast lifespans (one prominent member of the royal family is over 5,000 years old; she looks 35-40, tops), but their birth rates seem to be quite low. The Juraian emperor, for example, has been married to two women (at the same time) for over 700 years, and only had 3 children between them. His mother-in-law (the above-mentioned 5,000 year old Juraian) has only one biological daughter; while she's raised several other children, they were all adopted.

 

* In the ''[[Wildstorm]]'' universe, the effectively immortal Kherubim suffer from an abysmally low birth-rate. Subverted in that it seems they can breed with humans more prolifically than they can with their own kind.

* Most elves of ''[[Elf Quest]]'' can only breed after a "recognition" (which is basically the instincts of two elves deciding the two are genetically very compatible, and forcing them to conceive a child). One of the stories set before the Original Quest mentions that the tribe's [[Healing Hands|Healer]] tried, and was in one case successful, to break that limitation, because there were worries the tribe was too small. And later on {{spoiler|Leetah managed to induce Recognition for Nightfall and Redlance.}}

* [[The Eternals]] are completely infertile with each other, since they are [[Nigh Invulnerable]], simply regenerate when you do hurt them, and are eternally young. Several of them have sired completely normal baseline human offspring with mortal lovers/spouses over the centuries, but this presents [[Mayfly-December Romance|other problems]].

 

* Justified by a similar lack of desire in ''[[Undocumented Features]]''. Humans who have taken the Detian treatment can have children. It's just that the current crop of Detians haven't had very many. For instance, Gryphon has been alive for over 400 years, but only started having children in the last couple decades. Then again, he was incredibly busy as a galactic cop, and then on the run as a wanted man, for much of that time.

 

* In ''[[Highlander]]'' and its various spin offs, the immortals cannot have children. If you believe [[Highlander II the Quickening|the second movie]], it's because they're [[Human Aliens|actually from another planet]]. In the later films (but not in [[Highlander the Series|the TV series]]), Immortals are capable of reproducing until they die for the first time. This is a plot point in [[Highlander Endgame|the fourth]] and [[Highlander: The Source|fifth]] movies.

* ''[[The Man From Earth]]'' fathered many children during his looooong life, but since he is forced to leave his families after a few years, nothing is known about their immortality, apart from one, and he is most certainly mortal.

* In the ''[[Underworld (film)|Underworld]]'' films, the immortal father of the vampire and lycan bloodlines seems to have stopped reproducing after his original three sons. At least, there's no indication that any other Corvinus bloodline existed for Lucien's agents to hunt down.

 

* The Tucks from Natalie Babbitt's ''[[Tuck Everlasting]]'' cannot change; they don't age, they don't die. Mrs. Tuck was past childbearing age when she drank from the spring, so it isn't an issue for the elder Tucks. However, the eldest Tuck son got married in the years after they drank from the spring and before they realized its effects; he had children, but his wife eventually thought he'd made a [[Deal with the Devil]] and left him.

* Brought up in one of Joanne Bertin's ''The Last Dragonlord''. Dragonlords, the people who [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|shapeshift]] between [[Our Dragons Are Different|dragons]] and humans, have exceedingly long lifespans; as of the first book, the youngest is [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|really six hundred years old]], still looks the same, and is still called "little one." They cannot have children with ordinary humans, and while that does not apply between Dragonlords, they voluntarily do not have children, since when they do reproduce their offspring are very nearly always human. The same Dragonlords who enjoy their human friends and grieve and let go when they age and die have a lot more trouble with it when it's their own children.

* The immortals from ''[[The Company Novels]]'', though {{spoiler|Mendoza manages to have children later on in the series. Very, very weirdly.}}

* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''The Boat of Million Years'', the immortals are perfectly capable of reproducing. Unfortunately, the children are never immortal, even when both parents are.

** It is worth noting that Tellus Secundus, the planet where the story begins, has an unusually high population of near-immortal "Howards" and in consequence has instigated population controls. The planet's chief executive mentions to Lazarus Long that he'll grant an exception to any woman Lazarus feels like having a child with. Lazarus himself is a special case as, being over two thousand years old and born at the start of the Howard experiment, he can claim over 80 percent of the galactic population and over 99 percent of Howards as his descendants to some degree or another.

* Sort of the case in the universe of the novels ''[[American Gods]]'' and ''[[Anansi Boys]]'' with two notable exceptions. In the former, Wednesday (Odin) tells Shadow that people like him generally "shoot blanks" {{spoiler|Shadow is Wednesday's son with a human woman, but rather than being a completely new god or simply human, he is an incarnation of the God Baldr}}. We are also informed in ''[[American Gods]]'' that Mr. Nancy (Anansi) has a son, Charlie, who is the protagonist of ''[[Anansi Boys]]'' and is seemingly completely normal. {{spoiler|His brother, Spider, who was split from him, is basically a god, although the protagonist turns out to have [[Reality Warper]] powers}}. Charlie ends up having children, who seem to be human {{spoiler|while Spider appears to be infertile}}.

* The [[Our Dragons Are Different|Kantri]] of ''[[Tales of Kolmar]]'' can live around two thousand years and are considered mature at two hundred fifty. About two hundred of them fled to the Dragon's Isle five thousand years ago and never increased their numbers. One observes with frustration that they ''should'' have increased, but the species seems demoralized and getting more so. There are fewer mated pairs and even fewer births happening all the time. It's mentioned with great concern that there have been [[Dying Race|only three births in the past eight hundred years]] - and the Kantri with their huge claws are helpless in the face of complications of birth. If a human hadn't stepped in and midwifed during ''Song In The Silence'', [[Death by Childbirth|the first birth in three hundred years would have ended tragically]]. Also, Kantri only feel the desire to have sex a dozen or so times in their long lives, and the act is difficult and painful, not fun. Mated pairs enjoy 'joining souls', but this gets no one pregnant.

 

* In ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'', The Asgard are not capable of sexual reproduction; they lost the ability due to extensive genetic alteration. To achieve immortality, they upload clone bodies with their memories when their old bodies die. Eventually even this tactic fails.

** The Goa'uld, as a parasitic race, is only very rarely capable of sexual reproduction, and the resulting child is very dangerous; thus the practice is proscribed. The normal life cycle of Goa'uld includes the spawning of new parasites by extremely rare slug-like queens, with Jaffa specially prepared to incubate the larvae; this almost always happens off-screen.

* An episode of ''[[The Twilight Zone]]'' features a movie actress who remained remarkably youthful despite starring in films from the Silent Age (this taking place in the 1960s). She was accompanied by an old woman who acted as a maid. {{spoiler|Turns out the actress is none other than Cleopatra, who regains her youth by draining the life force from other people. And the old woman? It's her mortal ''daughter''.}}

 

 

* Most of the various immortal races in the ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'' are like this. Only the weakest 14th or 15th generation vampires in ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' can have children, who end up as [[Dhampyr|dhampirs]], only extremely yang-imbalanced [[Kindred of the East]] can have children (their version of dhampyrs), and that's made increasingly complicated by the fact that a female Kuei-Jin has to remain yang-imbalanced throughout the pregnancy, and demons from ''[[Demon: The Fallen]]'' might possess human bodies, but they lack the spark of life to create true progeny.

** The original mummies were sterile too. However, their successors, the mummies of ''[[Mummy: The Resurrection]]'', are fertile, capable of having mortal children (justified, as the mummies' immortality is the result of the Spell of Life).

* Invoked by [[Jerkass Gods|Tzeentch]] in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy]]''. The ancient race of Dragon Ogres asked the Lord of Change for a boon, to make them immortal. He did, but also rendered them sterile. Most of the still-living Dragon Ogres consider this to be Tzeench's idea of a joke.

 

* In ''[[Creatures]]'' games, there are many "immortal" third-party breeds; the majority of them are infertile by default, because immortal creatures capable of breeding would overpopulate the world pretty quick.

** But the Fast Ager Norns, who tend to evolve spontaneously in many C3/DS wolfing runs, avert this ''hard''. Maturing within seconds, [[Explosive Breeder|very fertile]], and immortal, they will easily max out your population no matter what population limit you choose. They're basically the cancer of the norn population.

* In-game documents and supplemental materials for the ''[[Myst]]'' series reveal that the D'ni, whose lifespans could run into a fourth century, reproduced very slowly due to the narrow window (30 hours every 72 days) in which their women could conceive.

 

* As a demonstration of why this trope is often necessary, the site ''Grudgematch'' had a [http://www.grudge-match.com/History/bond-indy.shtml hilarious take on the disastrous consequences] of James Bond winning immortality in the grudgematch: massive inbreeding due to James' libido.

* Elves in ''[[Tales of MU]]'' are true immortals in terms of lifespan, and generally quite sexually potent as part of their being [[Our Elves Are Better|better than everybody]]. They keep their birth rate low by doing things that don't produce children.

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130926100444/http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/03/why-vampires-would-have-a-popu.html This blog post] hilariously suggested that romances like the one in ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' ''prevent'' vampires from population problems.

 

* ''[[Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures]]'': Cubi Clans are led by a Tri-winged Succubus or Incubus, who are as close to immortal as one can get with a an ungodly long lifespan and are so powerful very few dare to challenge them. The catch is they cannot have children of their own. The character Fa'lina shows how this can be bad, being a clan leader and being the last surviving member of said clan.

** In addition to Cubi, no new members of the Fae race may be born until living members willingly and deliberately die. They can have children with just about anything, but, [http://www.missmab.com/Demo/HG06.php well...]

* The fae of ''[[Drowtales]]'' have a version on this, in that they're [[Immortality|type II immortals]] and have very low fertility rates in even the best of times. Diva'ratrika Val'Sharen is over a thousand and has only had five (surviving) daughters and one son, while her daughter Zala'ess has had many more and her sister outright that she's had to do [[Really Gets Around|a lot of screwing around]] to get that many. [[Word of God]] is that female fae do not get periods, which probably explains why the birthrate is so low and why even very old fae like {{spoiler|Ash'waren}} who is a dark elf and over 1,000, can still be having children since they do not have an equivalent of menopause.

 

* Averted with amoebae, and other single celled organisms that reproduce by binary fission. When you split in half (as opposed to budding off a daughter cell), you can consider both resulting amoebae to be an extension of the life of the parent. In short, every single amoeba on the planet is the very first amoeba. They're immortal and reproduce like crazy. Good thing they're fairly low on the food chain, so their hypothetical immortality isn't much of a problem.

* Throughout history people have attempted to discover the secret to eternal life and [[wikipedia:Aubrey de Grey|Audrey De Grey]] is probably the most famous example in modern science. He has come up with his own theories and has even gone so far as to speculate that once humanity has stopped, and reversed, the ageing process; people will have to file a form to have children and then wait for other people to die (through natural causes or requested suicide) to be given the go ahead.

* Because human oocytes (eggs) are produced by a woman's ovaries before she, herself, is born, an immortal woman's capacity for natural reproduction would inevitably expire when her supply runs out, even if she never goes through menopause (assuming the science at some point won't be able to reboot the ova production mechanism, of course). She could, however, give birth to a baby conceived ''in vitro'' from a donor egg.

* An [https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-zombie-gene-protects-elephants-from-cancer?utm_source=pocket-newtab article by Viviane Callier about cancer in elephants] describes a 2009 study suggesting a tradeoff between cancer suppression and fertility. Larger and longer-lived animals need to dial up the measures against mutations (DNA copying mistakes) that lead to cancer, and these measures interfere with pathways involved in reproduction.

 

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