Sherrill] can make images luminesce with the reflected light of language.” — San Diego Union-Tribune In One Piece, the giant warriors Dorry and Broggy have been fighting an endless series of duels for 100 years, getting draws each time, over a disagreement they had in the past. By the present, they have long since forgotten why they fight, only keeping at it for the sake of honor. In Pyramids, the high priest Dios prevented himself from dying by reversing time by sleeping in a pyramid but mentions that the process doesn't preserve memory. Instead, he refers to the written history of the kingdom as his memory. As a result, he can't escape a millennia-long Stable Time Loop. By the time it comes around again it's a surprise. Hetalia: Axis Powers has one in the video game HetaOni, where Italy has so many memories of the time loops he starts to forget things from his real past. this is yet another fabulous book that i found out about while browsing through goodreads. just based on the title alone i had to read it.as neither my local library or my local bookstore had it (what a surprise), i immediately got in my car and drove to a library that is one hour away from where i live, specifically to get this book. while i was there i took out 15 other books, but that's another story.

Award-winning author, narrator, and screenwriter Neil Gaiman personally selected this book, and, using the tools of the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), cast the narrator and produced this work for his audiobook label, Neil Gaiman Presents. Side note on the visceral disturbances: There is a total of one sort-of-sex scene in this book. Crossing as it does the beast-human line, it could easily cause some readers to toss the book aside as grotesque and repellent. To be sure, the way the scene ends is distressing, but not for the reasons one might think — and I won’t explain that here because it’s the anti-climactic climax of the book. But the achingly tender good will with which the girl and the Minotaur approach each other, sadly fumbling towards love, was beautiful to me (and I assume to many others).This (debut, nonetheless) novel does so many things well beyond its sympathetic rendering of a mythical abomination. At one point, M’s constitution is described as one of “gritty resignation,” which can also be said about the narration’s tone. M is never pathetic or hopeless, traits one might expect from so tragic and long a fall (fortunately, his Labyrinth days are mostly hazy half-dreams; even M’s primal defenses are blunted by a self-control he’s exerting after eons of learning that both “possessing a capacity for evil unmatched” and “his own potential for tiny rages” can lead to the kind of dire consequences he no longer welcomes). He’s scared and nervous an awful lot, but mostly in regard to the damage he can unintentionally cause other people and the embarrassment he can bring upon himself, and has a downright endearing habit of bovinely poking at the ground with his very human foot when he isn’t sure of what else to do, but he soldiers on with a hard-won, Zen-like “state of indifference, sometimes blessed, sometimes cursed” that is completely expected from someone who has been everywhere once and who has passively watched the ultimately inconsequential rise and fall of countless civilizations. Spycraft: The "World on Fire" campaign setting has the Immortals as one faction. They succumb to this—at least, the ones who don't die from 'live fast, die old'. This is a story of great pathos and gentleness, a delectable slow-burn of a story that is hypnotic in its rhythms and its blend of slow southern minimum wage life with M’s struggles, sadness and hopes. Sherrill will make you care for M, and he will make M’s hopes your own. By the end of the novel you’ll be cheering for The Minotaur to break out of his isolation, to make the connections he so deeply craves. In House of Suns, the long-lived protagonists who've lived through six million years (though, admittedly, only a couple tens of thousands of those conscious) routinely re-arrange their memory. It's implied that they could hold all of their memories at once, if they wanted to, but having that many memories would affect your personality so drastically that most choose not to. Most of the long-lived characters tend to hold a rough cliff-notes version of their memories in their heads, but not any of the details; the main character intentionally prioritizes "recent" memories, which in part drives the main plot. Unless, of course, the immortal character in question records everything in a diary/volume of books or something, but how often does this happen? note And how long would it take them to reread it all? What if they forgot it again before they finished? What if they forgot that they have a diary in the first place, or even the long-since dead language their first entries were written in?

Blood of the Tribades: The vampires get this (it's even referred to as "the fog"), having great difficulty remembering things which took place long ago. Due to this, they've forgotten what their original religious doctrines were, allowing it to get corrupted over time. Gilgamesh has this problem. He is the oldest immortal, the only being that is truly immortal, (Elders and other immortals can be killed in battle) and has gone insane because of it. He has tried to kill himself a few times; one attempt involved standing under the test of the first atomic bomb. In Dark Souls II, this is one of the symptoms of the Undead Curse. The longer a person is Undead, the more their memories and sanity fade away. Human Effigies can temporarily halt this, but it still seems inevitable. One of them, Lucatiel, begs the Bearer of the Curse to remember her name, as she's forgetting it herself. Dark Souls III reveals the Bearer kept their promise by naming a hat-and-mask set Lucatiel's Mask, which still carries her name centuries after II. This is the most surreal slab of realism you will read all year. Unique and rather wonderful * * Arena * * The pros and cons of this trope are discussed at various points in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and its expansion Torna: The Golden Country. Pyra and Mythra, as the Aegis, hate the fact they must remember the destruction of Torna after 500 years, and at one point subtly express envy that other blades lose their memories when they "die" and are bonded with a new driver. Brighid, by contrast, keeps a diary in each of her "lives" so that she can keep the memories of her past in some form, which is made easier since she's an heirloom blade of a single royal family. And then there's Poppi, the artificial blade, who at one point suffers some minor angst when she realizes she's going to outlive most of her loved ones, but takes comfort in knowing her computer brain will never forget them.In Midnight at the Well of Souls, Nathan Brazil is centuries old but only has a normal human-sized memory and has forgotten a lot of things, including his origins. When he reaches the Well of Souls, it turns out he's been there before, and the Well recognizes him and restores his old memories, including the memory of who he really is. Which he then proceeds to give several deliberately contradictory accounts of over the course of the series. Harn: The Sindar (elves) suffer from an extreme form of this to the point where they will completely forget friends after a long absence. Often an elf will remember songs and tales of events he took part in but have no memory of the actual events. Crystal Singer: The Crystal Singers have this problem, though it's brought on more by long-term exposure to Ballybran crystal than actual age. Killashandra eventually finds a solution to this problem, accidentally. As readers we are not privy to how this occurs except that over the millenia he becomes more humanized but still with the head of a bull. He is a lovely creature and works as a chef in a diner where the food is very very good.