Quote:
Originally Posted by Tenzen12
If you are going to live for milenias, you will either detach yourself from everything, or take pleasure from small things to fullest, because you know they will gone soon and either is right answer.
|
Or compress all the millenia long experiences into some form of wisdom, where there is no loss of important discoveries. And those many-many discoveries gathered over thousands of years would show as the character acts.
Or posses the ability to memorize everything, and to navigate that huge amount of informations, without having to forget anything.
Or above everything, having a spirit which can withstand immortality without breaking down. And actually enjoying the passage of millenias, as old things develop and new things surface.
But those are rarely seen setups for immortals(or close immortals) in fictions.
Most often the characterization of immortals or similar, when there is some effort in the writing, is close to the ones you mentioned. Either depressed or bland. (though,
"well written bland" is different from just badly written)
The common characterizations of immortals basically stop at
"a normal human faced with a very long life" (plus some cosmetics to add a sense of exotic)
A normal human with a normal memory, so they forget most of their long lifes, rendering their supposed immortality quite bland and hardly recognizable from other characters with common lifespans.
A normal human with an human sized spirit (or mentality), which often breaks down when stressed with an existence longer than an human existence, leading to the cliche of
"depression from immortality".
(the characters from films like Highlander sort of managed both, bland + depressed)
In that sense Frieren is still mostly inside the standard, for what concerns long lived characters, when there is some effort in the writing.
Nothing exceptional, as characters with millenary wisdom, or with absurdly huge memory, from what we have seen so far, at least.
Though she loves her deplorable magic hunt.
And she also seem to be starting to appreciate more what was left in her after the time spent with others. Which is a good development, possibly moving away from the cliche of "immortal depression", to a "spirit which can withstand time".