So you know how lifespan after undeath doesn't count for shipping purposes?

[conuly]

Which is why it's not skeevy at all for a 457 year old man to date a 18 year old woman so long as he was 20 when he turned, because he's still 20 in every meaningful sense?

Logically speaking, though, that's gotta cause problems at the other end, when the 38 year old woman looks around and realizes that the man who was mature and sophisticated when she was a teen is now very not, and she's thoroughly outgrown him.

I don't think enough people really think this one through. Unless you're willing to be turned into a vampire, you probably shouldn't make any long term commitments.

Comments

[gwydion]

It always creeped me out, that age gap thing.

[conuly]

Yes, well, presumably that's why you're not dating any vampires, or at least none who were turned over 100 years ago.

[gwydion]

Well, not the only reason....

[conuly]

There are many reasons this is a good idea. I support this life choice.

[calimac]

remember when vampires were skeevy? I've seen it written that Bela Lugosi in a tux was the turning point, the birth of the sexy vampire.

I also momentarily forgot what "shipping" meant, and had an image of a post about cargo vessels.

[conuly]

I wasn't around for skeevy vampires, or at least, not for vampires who are so disgusting that nothing can overcome it, even temporarily.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I saw Nosferatu fairly young-not that I remember much about the content.

The Bela Lugosi strain is quite strong and at one point was enough even a child of five could grasp a Halloween vampire gliding through the supermarket (on the way to work, we could dress but I needed to shop)

Vampire the Masquerade did present various flavors of the preternatural night denizens. (White Wolf Games, after the short run TV)

[sallymn]

Hey, in Merlin fanfic writers happily have Merlin being immortal and waiting for Arthur for well over a thousand years...

(Okay, he was able to age himself into an old man, but neither the canon nor the fanfic seemed interested in anything inbetween)

I can't actually remember how the 'what happens now that he's back and ageing and... you're still immortal early-twenties-at-most, aren't you?' went for the most part. That trope didn't really work for me, I didn't judge it, just didn't read/keep it.

[conuly]

Geez, Merlin, get some therapy.

Actually, I don't think they're a great couple to begin with, but anyway.

[sallymn]

I have problems with it, I admit I prefer either gen or au stories where the power thing between them (and Arthur's damn obliviousness) can be juggled with. The actors and chemistry still draw me in, though.

[wpadmirer]

LOL!

[sabotabby]

There's so much interesting stuff that can be done with this, but it hardly ever is. I think Octavia Butler wrestled with some of the issues and made it skeevy but that also made it hard to read.

[conuly]

That's Butler for you.

[pauamma]

Echoes of struldbruggs (3rd Gulliver's travel) and his initial reaction to learning of their existence.

[conuly]

Yes, yes... I certainly have read the entire work and am intimately familiar with this example, definitely.

[poliphilo]

I don't think any fiction has really grappled with what it would be like to be 457 years old. I suspect anyone who hung around on earth that long would be either wholly depraved or wholly enlightened- and very little interested in having romantic entanglements with ordinary mortals.

[siliconshaman]

You underestimate the power of habit... pretty sure a lot of those 475 years would be doing the same old thing, thinking the same old way.

Times change, people generally don't.

[poliphilo]

But until we actually meet someone who's 457 years old we'll never know for sure...

[siliconshaman]

That might take awhile... but yeah.

[conuly]

Or... it might not. They could be all around us!

[frandroid]

But the prospect of near-eternal life I think would amplify people's personality. You know how people in their 60s DGAF? Imagine at 220, then 475. Either it's DGAF psychopath, or DGAF SJW, etc... Without the prospect of death you would get a hardening of purpose and clarity of self-knowledge in many. Or a disdain of anyone without at least 200 years of living under their belt.

And then maybe through their life, sometimes that amplification of personality would push them to an unhealthy extreme, and would then force a reckoning. (After being cast out of 5 different cities, eventually you decide you want to see what you can do to settle down, etc...) So I think there's space for breaking habits. Plus, history, you know. :)

[landofnowhere]

My mind immediately went to the TMBG song:


In my darkest hour I'm talking like this
For I am one thousand years old.

[siliconshaman]

An extreme example of a common phenomenon, which is to say, a lot of people only grow up so far... and maturity and actual chronological age are not causally related. Quite a lot of people hit a certain level of maturity... and stick there.

[conuly]

Tragic, really.

[erinptah]

When I'm the one with these ships, it's less "the vampire counts as a 20-year-old" and more "the vampire doesn't map to specific human age categories in any meaningful way, and I'm not trying to make them."

...although I can't think of any where I imagine them happily getting together when the mortal partner is barely-legal, so it doesn't push the issue as much.

Either way, I do think "the mortal partner gains immortality" is the long-term happy endgame a lot of shippers have in mind.

[conuly]

Listen, I'm not turning immortal for some dude. Not if I can't make my pets immortal too, anyway.

[mindstalk]

People usually outlive their pets as it is...

[conuly]

Yeah, and it sucks, which is why I am not taking any route to immortality unless I have enough serum (or whatever) to turn all my pets immortal too.

[silveradept]

I kind of always assumed that the vampires would get broken up with or get bored and they wouldn't stick around with someone long enough for the maturity gap to ever become a problem. Because dating someone for long enough for this to become that kind of problem seems dangerous for other aspects of being a vampire.

[pauamma]

Returned to this entry while cleaning up old emails, and my mind went to _The tale of the adopted daughter_ in _Time enough for love_ (which has nothing to do with vampires strictly speaking, admittedly). That has its own set of icky aspects, but it deals with this one reasonably, I think.

[hudebnik]

As I was watching Season 3 of "Discovery of Witches" last month, Jack's story made me think "what could be worse than being a brooding teenager for 400 years? No wonder he killed all those people!"

Ursula LeGuin wrote a number of stories about a society in which there is instantaneous (albeit expensive and rare) communication between star systems, while physically getting from one to another takes hundreds of years from the non-relativistic perspective of those at each end. Plays hell with long-distance relationships.