fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5392 ]

[ SECRET POST #5392 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5392 ⌋

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I'm a huge fan of immortal/human romances, and I have a particular soft spot for vampire romances. It's just a trope I enjoy. At the same time, part of me just Doesn't Get It from the immortal's POV. Example: I know Twilight/Vampire Diaires/etc are made for teen girls, so teen girls are the protagonists. But it just makes no sense why someone that old would be interested in dating a teenager (especially since sex isn't on the table a lot of the time, so you can't even say it's a dirty old man thing). Even if we age the protagonist up to, say, 30, why on Earth would a 100+ person find them interesting? Anybody got book recs where this is done really well, or just thoughts about doing it well?

I mean I can buy it, just because most people are boring to others. As in, of all the people you've ever met in your life, how many have you fallen in love with, and even if you were 100+ years old, would that number be in the double digits even? If I were 1000 years old it's not like I'd have had hundreds of long term relationships because most people just aren't that interesting. Finding someone you like a lot is not easy or anything.

That being said, for this to work, the love interest in question then has to be shown to actually be interesting or somehow a good fit for the immortal in a way other people are not. And most authors settle with "but they were super specially hot" and it falls flat, especially because they tend to be like random teenagers. Frankly I could see vampires falling for older people more than younger, because there'd be more personality and life experience to have in common. So it's not so much "why would a 100+ year old go for a 30 year old," but rather "why is *this* 30 year old a good match when others aren't?" and it's up to the authors to show how, except they usually fail

Major agree, especially on your second paragraph.

Tbh I'm reading a series right now where one of the side characters is a vampire who was 16 when she was turned. She's 1400 years old now, but she's developmentally still 16 because her body literally never and can never finish developing. So she's eternally 16 with all that implies re poor judgment/impulsive actions/misjudging consequences/doing stupid shit. I love it. I love that she's 16 eternally and not just in looks. Some of the older vampires (those who were turned when they were adults) act in loco parentis because, yeah, she still needs parents. She's always going to need parents.

I read a book called Vamped that had something like that. Everyone in this world was turned into vampires and some were turned as children. The other vampires called them 'screamers'.

If the way that you think that immortality would affect human existence is that immortals would be uninterested in younger people, then it seems like they would also probably be bored by the perspectives of a 60 year old or an 80 year old, as well as a 16 year old or a 30 year old. After all, if you're 600 years old, the difference between a 25 year old and a 75 year old is going to be pretty immaterial. So if that's how you think immortality would play out, then the only "realistic" outcome would be that the immortal would be alienated and bored and uninterested in the lives of every mortal human being. And you can write those stories. But that angle closes off a lot of stories. There's only certain kinds of narratives you can have when that's your starting point, and it's very detached from most common genres.

So being mortal humans ourselves, we like to imagine that immortals would see the world in a comparable way to the way that we see it, and would form emotional attachments with mortals. And that also allows us to tell stories that are familiar and satisfying in human terms, instead of stories based on horror or cognitive estrangement. The problem is fundamentally that there's nothing we can really use to judge or understand the experience of being an immortal human. It's totally outside of human understanding, by definition. And I think this is a common theme between a lot of different speculative tropes - there's no guide in human experience that tells us what these situations would be like, and so we fall back on things that are familiar from our own experience even though they're unrealistic because they're familiar and because they allow us to tell stories that are related to our experiences and make sense in human terms. It's the same thing in superhero comics, for example.

Nobody ever really gets older than twenty-five, in their brains, and many people never get beyond fourteen in their head. That is the secret that pretty much every eighty year old tries to tell you when you are young. The only thing that changes is how much energy the old meat machine can pump out without breaking down (eventually, terminally). The boring part is not the mental discrepancy, it is the inability to physically keep up. For vampires, that is not really an issue.

Excellent comment! +1000000000

The only vampire/human romance I really enjoyed was Robin McKinley's Sunshine, partially because while the human and vampire protagonists are into each other, the vampire is still really alien and creepy, just less so than their mutual enemies that trap them both together.

And when they get distracted from not dying/being destroyed by enemy vampires by their attraction to each other, the vampire has to put the brakes on and say it's a bad idea because they need to focus on survival.

I think setting it in a modernish world where magic and magical creatures exist out in the open helps it avoid some of the more annoying (to me, anyway) vampire/urban fantasy tropes.

Sunshine is so good.

Sunshine is bad, it gives you cancer.

A lot of those romances just solve it the quick and easy way by having the explanation that the immortal's mind doesn't age, so if they look like a teenager then they still have a teenager's mind. It's not the most creative, but it solves the question of why they'd be interested in a real teenager. Because for all intents and purposes, they are one too. Just an immortal one.

see, i don't follow that line of thought, this idea that if a human(-ish being) kept aging that they would exponentially get more mature, more knowledgable, more sophisticated - because they won't retain literally everything that has happened in those 100+ years. unless you go by the "frozen in time" angle, in which case the objection also doesn't apply

Yeah, I feel like a being that did remember every little detail since they became immortal, assuming they were human before, would eventually go insane or at the very least develop a very alien mindset from the average human.

Maybe especially if their memories of their human life were still like most people's memories, where they mostly remembered stuff tied to strong emotions, big milestones, and habits, in a kind of imprecise and hazy way.

Imagine that once their experiences divulged from that they started to lose them, but everything since they, idk, punched their way out of their coffin or woke up on a morgue slab was crystal clear and never faded. Yikes.

Sort of OT: does anyone like Hotel Transylvania by Chelsea Yarbro? Is it good? I'm thinking of reading it.

I would imagine that the young mortal's verve for life might be engaging for an immortal struggling with ennui and boredom. 'Everything becomes new when seen through their eyes!' sort of thing.

And. Some people just click.

Yes, I agree with this. I think mainstream writers tend to steer away from this angle because the potential for it to be extremely problematic is high. I mean, there's definitely something parasitic about being old and having seen it all and wanting to attach one's self to youth, because youth is fresh and bright and curious and undiminished. Personally, though, I'm totally here for exploring that angle--especially if it's a romance and the love between the characters is genuine, while also being problematic.

It really, really helps if the young human is written as having genuinely interesting qualities, though. As opposed to just a bland Mary Sue who is special because they're special the narrative says so just go with it.

Mm. Complicated relationships can be *interesting*. (And I don't think the two sides to a relationship have to be identical to be mutually fulfilling.)

If people are worried about vampires coming off as parasitic they're doing vampires wrong. They are literally leeches on society draining the blood of the young to prolong their unnaturally long lifespan.

I agree I enjoy it when creators lean into it.

There's a lot of ways to write vampires, all of them legitimate. Personally I prefer my vampires as conscience-having humans who also happen to need human blood to survive. The tension between "I don't want to harm anyone" and "I need human blood" is where it's at.

The thing with immortals and super long lived types, is the rest of us are basically pets to them. So don't let Omni-Man dogsit for you, is what I am saying here.

I’m fascinated with that last sentence. It’s so true, oof.

I think one of the things I enjoy in romances like that is the trope being flipped. Immortal being believes seducing/killing/controlling this one human won't even be a challenge, only to get seduced themselves/outsmarted/their ass kicked/fall head over heels.

I don't have any recs, but I think the idea is interesting. A college student (lets say, all vampire stories should take place in college- no curfew) has grown up with technology the vampire finds foriegn. She's used to a world that moves too quickly to keep up with. She has that optimism and desire for self improvement that a stagnant, jaded, literal corpse could find enticing.

I mean, why does anyone like anyone? We're all mostly boring most if the time. And vampires would be extra boring: no recipes to share and all their stories involve people you don't know.

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[ SECRET POST #5392 ]

Immortal romances

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