Angel: Buffy, be careful with this gift. A lot of things that seem strong, good and powerful, they can be painful. Buffy: Like say... immortality? Angel: Exactly. I'm dying to get rid of that.Put your hand down. This is not a vote.The worst fate possible might well be immortality. Sure, you might like the idea that you get to live forever and see what the world's like hundreds of years from now, but what's eternal life compared to the pain of life in general? From eventual boredom to eternal entrapment and torture to the emotional anguish of seeing your loved ones die, one by one, as you stay fixed in time.When done Anviliciously, this can seem like Sour Grapes on the part of the very much mortal writers. May be used as a Fantastic Aesop.This attitude toward immortality is Older Than Feudalism, going back at least as far as the Greek myths about Tithonos's Age Without Youth and Prometheus's punishment and of course the appeal behind He why is your hand still up!?Compare Blessed with Suck for those that angst as well as And I Must Scream for the mindset this can create.Contrast Living Forever Is Awesome for those who like it, and Immortality Seeker for those who seek it, and Eternal Love where immortals fall in love. See Living Forever Is No Big Deal for the middle ground.See also Immortality Hurts, which is a subtrope. Immunity Disability is a supertrope (here, the "immunity" is to death).See Analysis for more horrifying details.

open/close all folders

Asian Animation

Films Animated

Folklore

Manhwa

Music

A thousand years have come and gone, but time has passed me by Stars stopped in the sky Frozen in an everlasting view Waiting for the world to end, weary of the night Praying for the light Prison of the lost Xanadu

And there's never gonna be enough money And there's never gonna be drugs And we're never gonna get old And there's never gonna be enough bullets And there's never gonna be sex And we're never gonna get old

If I've lived a thousand times before And if I'm gonna live anymore Always brings me down Everyone wants to live forever Thinkin' that it'd be a lot better... Everyone wants to live forever But no one ever gets it together

Radiation got me as well made me immortal in this hell An old dream coming true but why now when there is nothing to do? Since then I've been searching around going from town to town Could it only have happened to me? Am I doomed to be I'm the last man on earth

Newspaper Comics

Tabletop Games

Radio

Theatre

"Eternity is permanent boredom A cheerless cycle with neither beginning, nor end For all the time the same is repeated from the start No exultation, no horror Only the boring Idiotic Eternity"

Visual Novels

Web Comics

Web Animation

Web Original

Nothing ever really happens to me. I am completely safe from harm, and this is a great burden... I think that one day, this world will simply talk itself to death, and I will be left to flit about in the void. I will be the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives Nowhere.

Western Animation

Freeze: You want to live like this? Abandoned and alone, A prisoner in a world you can see but never touch. Old and infirm as you are, I'd trade a thousand of my frozen years for your worst day.

Real Life

Go here to read the rest:

Who Wants to Live Forever? - TV Tropes