My main character is in a rather unique situation I'm finding it difficult to wrap my head around, and I was wondering if I could get some feedback, because I'm having trouble getting any real sense of what must be going through his and his parents' heads because of it. Basically it's an urban fantasy story about "immortals", mythical humanoids descended from humans who "mutated" due to their innate magic reacting with their environment. They can die, but only from trauma, not from old age or disease or the like. The only immortal species that matter for this are vampires and lycanthropes, the two immortal species that my main character's parents are. Cyrus Drake, you see, is a vampire-lycanthrope hybrid, and unfortunately this comes with some of the baggage being a hybrid would have in real life. For one thing, he's sterile. He can't have children. The other problem, and the main point of this thread, is that at the start of the story, his parents' magical genes... didn't quite have a perfect interaction with each other. Vampires, due to the fact that the undead do not age, are born as normal living humans, and don't become vampires until their death, which usually of course happens when they come of age. Unfortunately, Cyrus's body got that particular memo from his father's vampire genes. He is, for all intents and purposes, a completely normal, completely mortal human. And what with the unpredictability of how hybrid magical genes mix together... nobody actually has any idea if he'll survive his "first" death at all, or if he'll even be undead if he does, or a living immortal instead like his lycanthrope mother. Cyrus Drake's future is completely uncertain and unknowable. When he dies, whether that be from a car accident tomorrow or from brain cancer when he's 89, he could either: a: Become a living immortal, and if he's not yet at his prime he'll keep aging there normally and then stop, and if he's past his prime he'll quickly revert back to it and stay there. b: Become an undead immortal, and look like whatever he looked like before his death, no matter how old or young. c: Die. And he has absolutely no idea what the odds of any of these outcomes are, because there's just no way to know. And with that baggage, he's lived for 21 years engulfed in immortal culture and life, living in a community populated entirely by immortals and humans in the know about them. His parents keep training him for the life he might one day have. He's had two immortal bodyguards follow him around protecting him since as far back as he can remember. He's fluent in both English and Wolftongue, the language of growls and other canine noises that lycans use to communicate in wolf form. He's got two half-siblings older than Mount Rushmore and dozens of centuries-old nieces and nephews whom he sees every year at the Drake Clan family reunion. And here he is, just a hair's breadth away from being a part of this world, but never knowing if he'll actually be in it, or on what terms. I can't even begin to imagine what he would have decided for himself about what his attitude about this is going to be, or what advice his parents will have told him, or what they felt about their child's "birth defect". Even though this state of affairs isn't going to last very long, it's crucial to Cyrus's characterization at the start of the story, and I'm finding myself struggling to put myself in his shoes. Does anyone have any takes on this?
Seems to me he lives exactly like all of us do. We have no idea what might happen after death. We also know we will die at some point, no idea when or how. So his choices are really the exact choices any of us can make.
First of all, let me congratulate on hooking me and throwing a puzzle I don't remember seeing in a book; ever That said, I imagine his attitude to his own 'birth defect' would depend on how others treat him. I imagine him getting mobbed (in a subtle way), because he is just on the outside, never completely in, but children feel this kind of things very acutely. Being mobbed doesn't feel good. He could get cynic, could lash out at others around him, but he could also get very independent, disinclined to take any crap from anyone, because Fuck you, I'm living my own life and you don't get a say in it!
I think the best way to go about this is to emphasise on the conflict between a mortal and immortal mindset. Think of how an immortal society would look like, the needs and wants as such (they probably care less about dangerous thrill seeks, while looking forward to the next flyby of a comet). And then, you can contrast that with each of our existentialist fears of non-existence. Then using that as a base, you could use it to build his character. If you ask me, he's probably a little insecure with those questions constantly at the back of his head with a long existence denied...
This is a really interesting concept and I echo what the others said you should focus on fleshing out the character after thinking what an immortal society would look like etc etc.
Maybe he doesn't want to take his mortal life for granted, just in case he's not immortal. He'll have plenty of time to be immortal, unless Cyrus wants to be *young-looking* and immortal (since I think you said they stay immortal at the age of their death, and who would want to look like an unattractive raisin for the rest of eternity). Or maybe being grateful for his mortal life is the advice of his parents, but he's scared of losing that world of immortality that he feels entitled to, and can't get the possibility out of his head (perhaps he falls in love with somebody immortal). Perhaps there is somebody, antagonist or otherwise, who claims to have the power to discern his fate. But is knowing his fate something Cyrus is prepared for, assuming this person isn't clowning him? (i.e. would knowing when you're going to die lessen or worsen your death anxiety?) Maybe he doesn't want to be immortal because Cyrus believes it'd eventually become boring and meaningless? Just food for thought.
the death should probably be a turning point in the story where the character learns more about himself beyond where he fits in within the mechanics of the universe.
Thanks so much for everyone's advice so far! I've been hanging back and waiting to see what people say before replying to anything specific, but I feel now's a good time to start replying. That is indeed a big concern. He *might* go back to looking young after dying of old age, but only if he turns out to be a living immortal like his mother. If he turns out to be undead like his father, there's basically no way for him to get his youth back ever if he doesn't die young. If he's undead, living out his full human life is akin to basically disfiguring himself in the long run. But while vampire culture makes a huge deal about protecting its pre-undeath vampires owing to the permanent impact it might have on your appearance (there are countless horror stories of vampires entering undeath at very young ages), and while they also make a huge deal about eating, grooming, and exercising like you might one day never get a chance to look better (because of course you might not), I don't think Cyrus would seriously consider "suicide" in the name of vanity. Especially since he has no idea what his hybrid form will even look like, and he's well aware of this. Not every immortal species is capable of passing for human, and the town he lives in largely exists so that these people don't have to hide in caves for the rest of their lives to stay a secret from broader human society. For all he knows he could be stuck permanently with a face covered in hair and fangs like a sabertooth tiger (though historically, if both of your parents' species can pass, chances are you can pass too, but it's not a guarantee). One thing in this regard that he's definitely felt the impact of is a subtle, indirect sense that the circumstances of his birth have made him an embarrassment to his parents. This isn't a feeling he gets from his parents, mind you, but from the ruder and more cynical outskirts of the Drake Clan. See, the Drake Clan was one of the first immortal clans to openly advocate the mixing of species, recognizing that the racist blood feuds and fights for territory accomplish almost nothing, and that in the long run they're going to need each other's skills in order to survive, a philosophy that only wound up being proven right when the Veil of Ignorance (think the Statute of Secrecy from Harry Potter) made it a lot harder for a lot of immortal species to survive on their own while keeping themselves a secret. His parents fell in love centuries ago and moved to America while it was still a colony to make their own clan in order to prove that vampires and lycans were better off working together than fighting each other, and Cyrus, a whopping 200+ years later, was the couple's first successful pregnancy (hybrids are rather difficult to conceive, and certain quirks of lycan fertility didn't help). He was, albeit unfairly, expected by many to be a physical representation of the successful union of their species, a representation more than 200 years in the making. And here he wound up, with their genes apparently mixing terribly, causing the more cynical members of the clan, frustrated by the difficult-to-reconcile cultural and lifestyle differences of the two species, to look at him like some kind of physical manifestation of the depth of his parents' delusion.
