Ageless people
Agelessness can be attributed to individuals whose physical or mental characteristics appear young for their biological age.
The Castrati singers of the Renaissance aged differently from other men due to the lack of testosterone and other hormones, which may have altered their appearance and stature. Specifically, Alessandro Moreschi (1858–1922) was described as having no facial hair and a childish voice and appearance.
Modern examples
The illusion of agelessness seems to be a goal for many individuals, such as Hollywood celebrities, that have been known to strive for, sometimes undergoing extensive and/or risky cosmetic surgeries. Demi Moore, Naomi Campbell, Eminem, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Madonna are particularly mentioned in the media for their alleged efforts to appear 'forever young'. Television host Dick Clark was often described as "America's Oldest Teenager." Many of his viewers report difficulty in perceiving typical signs of aging since the 1960s, despite him being born in 1929. The age of Andy Milonakis is also ambiguous to many viewers since he is known to possess a hormone disorder, which allows him to perform the role of a young teenager in his shows despite being much older. Another celebrity who is commonly described as having the appearance of a teenager is the actor Eddie Redmayne, born 1982, due to his virtual lack of beard growth, causing many people to report he appears no older than 20 years of age.
Actress Suzanne Somers attributed her youthful appearance to the use of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. Her 2006 book Ageless continues the theme of her 2004 book The Sexy Years that restoring hormones (especially sex hormones) to youthful levels is the primary key to an ageless appearance.
Methods to achieve agelessness
Cosmetics exist largely to supposedly aid in attempts to diminish the effects of age. The use of such cosmetics has been known to sometimes create conflicting age indicators (for example, red hair belonging to a wrinkled face), making age determination difficult.
Botox, silicone implants, tummy tucks, facelifts, and nosejobs are examples of surgeries that attempt to remove the signs of aging. Sooner or later, however, the effects of the passing years do start to show on the body as it endures wear and tear. Scientists all over the world are also working on finding the reason of aging and have developed various theories, however, much more research is needed before this phenomenon can be fully understood and potentially controlled.
Comics and cartoons
Agelessness is prominent in anime, manga, cartoons, comic books, comic strips, and other illustrated media. Characters and situations are staged in an eternal present where change and causality are considered arbitrary and disposable. Ageless characters in comic books often appear as superheroes, deriving immortal or timeless properties from accelerated or supernatural healing, time travel, interdimensional origin, and other fictional devices. In comics and cartoons, agelessness is sometimes used to preserve continuity in a floating timeline or an episodic format respectively. For example, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Garfield, Ash Ketchum and Tom and Jerry are ageless cartoon and comic characters.
Video games
Like in comics and cartoons, agelessness is also used in some video games, such as video game characters like Link, Mario and Sonic.
Pulp literature
Long-running series of pulp novels can develop ageless characters. The main characters in The Hardy Boys have remained 17 and 18, and have been located approximately in the "present day" since 1926. The same can be said for the Nancy Drew series. Nancy has remained 18 years old for many decades (although she started out at the age of 16).
James Bond is also known by many as an ageless character. Some of his ally characters, including M, Q, Miss Moneypenny, Bill Tanner and Felix Leiter also do not age throughout both the novel and film series, which began in 1953 and 1962 respectively. Ian Fleming, the creator of Bond, tinkered with details of Bond's early life and changed dates to ensure Bond was always the appropriate age for his stories, a practice called retconning.
Fantasy literature
Tolkien's Elves are an iconic example of creatures who are ageless. They are not subject to entropy and decay, unlike Men and the rest of the Middle-earth. Tolkien described his elves as young-looking, yet with some properties of 'wisdom' and experience in their eyes and behaviour; Tolkien also stated that Elves do experience change and aging—not by growing old, but by altering other features of their appearance. The combination of physical youth and immense mental maturity can render the perceived age of an Elf undefinable and alien by mortal standards.
The Aes Sedai of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series are described as ageless. A feature of their magical abilities extends life and makes their age difficult to place despite their white hair and physical frailty.
Television and soap operas
On television, the process of a character (usually a child) aging unusually fast has been a common feature in soap operas and is known as Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome or "SORAS". The reverse effect, where characters fail to age at the typical rate they should or in fact become younger, is known by a more recent, opposite term known as de-SORAS. On the British television show Doctor Who , which involves time travel, all of the Doctor's incarnations appear not to age, except for the First Doctor. It's also implied on The Sarah Jane Adventures episode "Death of the Doctor" that the Doctor's first companions Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright have never aged since their travels; Also, despite the fact that 10 years of the life of the Pond-Williams passed between "The Eleventh Hour" and "The Angels Take Manhattan", they didn't show any major traits associated with aging. Several characters on ABC's 2011 TV series Once Upon a Time do not age, either through the effects of the Dark Curse or spending time in Neverland; in the case of Hook, both are true. Other characters, such as Rumplestiltskin or Merlin and his apprentice, do not age due to the fact that they possess immortality.
An elf is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology, being mentioned in the Icelandic Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda.
Valinor or the Blessed Realms is a fictional location in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the home of the immortal Valar on the continent of Aman, far to the west of Middle-earth; he used the name Aman mainly to mean Valinor. It included Eldamar, the land of the Elves, who as immortals were permitted to live in Valinor.
Finwë and Míriel are fictional characters from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. Finwë is the first King of the Noldor Elves; he leads his people on the journey from Middle-earth to Valinor in the blessed realm of Aman. His first wife is Míriel, who, uniquely among immortal Elves, dies while giving birth to their only child Fëanor, creator of the Silmarils; her spirit later serves the godlike Vala queen Vairë. Finwë is the first person to be murdered in Valinor: he is killed by the Dark Lord Morgoth, who is intent on stealing the Silmarils. The event sets off the Flight of the Noldor from Valinor back to Beleriand in Middle-earth, and its disastrous consequences.
Fëanor is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion. He creates the Tengwar script, the palantír seeing-stones, and the three Silmarils, the skilfully-forged jewels that give the book their name and theme, triggering division and destruction. He is the eldest son of Finwë, the King of the Noldor Elves, and his first wife Míriel.
A half-elf is a mythological or fictional being, the offspring of an immortal elf and a mortal man. They are often depicted as very beautiful and endowed with magical powers; they may be presented as torn between the two worlds that they inhabit. Half-elves became known in modern times mainly through J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings but have origins in Norse mythology. A half-elf appeared in Lord Dunsany's 1924 book The King of Elfland's Daughter.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the history of Arda, also called the history of Middle-earth, began when the Ainur entered Arda, following the creation events in the Ainulindalë and long ages of labour throughout Eä, the fictional universe. Time from that point was measured using Valian Years, though the subsequent history of Arda was divided into three time periods using different years, known as the Years of the Lamps, the Years of the Trees, and the Years of the Sun. A separate, overlapping chronology divides the history into 'Ages of the Children of Ilúvatar'. The first such Age began with the Awakening of the Elves during the Years of the Trees and continued for the first six centuries of the Years of the Sun. All the subsequent Ages took place during the Years of the Sun. Most Middle-earth stories take place in the first three Ages of the Children of Ilúvatar.
Mythopoeia, or mythopoesis, is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where an artificial or fictionalized mythology is created by the writer of prose, poetry, or other literary forms. The concept was introduced by J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1930s. The authors in this genre integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction. Mythopoeia is also the act of creating a mythology.
In many works of modern fantasy, elves are depicted as a race or species of pointy-eared humanoid beings. These depictions arise from the álfar of Norse mythology influencing elves in fantasy as being semi-divine and of human stature, whose key traits are being friendly with nature and animals. However, this differs from Norse and the traditional elves found in Middle Ages folklore and Victorian era literature.
A magic ring is a mythical, folkloric or fictional piece of jewelry, usually a finger ring, that is purported to have supernatural properties or powers. It appears frequently in fantasy and fairy tales. Magic rings are found in the folklore of every country where rings are worn. Some magic rings can endow the wearer with a variety of abilities including invisibility and immortality. Others can grant wishes or spells such as neverending love and happiness. Sometimes, magic rings can be cursed, as in the mythical ring that was recovered by Sigurð from the hoard of the worm Fáfnir in Norse mythology or the fictional ring that features in The Lord of the Rings. More often, however, they are featured as forces for good, or as a neutral tool whose value is dependent upon the wearer.
The elf is a humanoid race in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, one of the primary races available for player characters, and play a central role in the narratives of many setting worlds of the game. Elves are described as renowned for their grace and mastery of magic and weapons such as the bow and sword. Becoming physically mature by the age of 25 and emotionally mature at around 125, they are also famously long-lived, capable of living more than half a millennium and remaining physically youthful. Possessed of innate beauty and easy gracefulness, they are viewed as both wondrous and haughty by other races in-universe; however, their natural detachment is seen by some as introversion or xenophobia. They were usually portrayed as antagonistic towards dwarves.
Kingo Sunen is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He first appeared in The Eternals #11 and was created by Jack Kirby. He is depicted as a member of the Eternals, a fictional race in the Marvel Comics universe.
Eternal youth is the concept of human physical immortality free of ageing. The youth referred to is usually meant to be in contrast to the depredations of aging, rather than a specific age of the human lifespan. Eternal youth is common in mythology, and is a popular theme in fiction.
J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy books on Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, drew on a wide array of influences including language, Christianity, mythology, archaeology, ancient and modern literature, and personal experience. He was inspired primarily by his profession, philology; his work centred on the study of Old English literature, especially Beowulf, and he acknowledged its importance to his writings.
Númenor, also called Elenna-nórë or Westernesse, is a fictional place in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings. It was the kingdom occupying a large island to the west of Middle-earth, the main setting of Tolkien's writings, and was the greatest civilization of Men. However, after centuries of prosperity many of the inhabitants ceased to worship the One God, Eru Ilúvatar, and rebelled against the Valar, resulting in the destruction of the island and the death of most of its people. Tolkien intended Númenor to allude to the legendary Atlantis. Commentators have noted that the destruction of Númenor echoes the Biblical stories of the fall of man and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and John Milton's Paradise Lost.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's writings, Elves are the first fictional race to appear in Middle-earth. Unlike Men and Dwarves, Elves are immortal, though they can be killed in battle. If so, their souls go to the Halls of Mandos in Aman. After a long life in Middle-earth, Elves yearn for the Earthly Paradise of Valinor, and can sail there from the Grey Havens. They feature in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Their history is described in detail in The Silmarillion.
The Valar are characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. They are "angelic powers" or "gods" subordinate to the one God. The Ainulindalë describes how those of the Ainur who choose to enter the World (Arda) to complete its material development after its form is determined by the Music of the Ainur are called the Valar, or "the Powers of the World". The Valaquenta indicates that the Elves generally reserve the term "Valar" for the mightiest of these, calling the others the Maiar.
The Silmarillion is a collection of myths and stories in varying styles by the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. It was edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, assisted by the fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay. It tells of Eä, a fictional universe that includes the Blessed Realm of Valinor, the once-great region of Beleriand, the sunken island of Númenor, and the continent of Middle-earth, where Tolkien's most popular works—The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—are set. After the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien's publisher Stanley Unwin requested a sequel, and Tolkien offered a draft of the writings that would later become The Silmarillion. Unwin rejected this proposal, calling the draft obscure and "too Celtic", so Tolkien began working on a new story that eventually became The Lord of the Rings.
Christianity is a central theme in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional works about Middle-earth, but the specifics are always kept hidden. This allows for the books' meaning to be personally interpreted by the reader, instead of the author detailing a strict, set meaning.
J. R. R. Tolkien built a process of decline and fall in Middle-earth into both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.
