Trope-a-Day: But Not Too White

But Not Too White: Averted, since this meme never even had the preconditions to become established on Eliéra. The eldrae simply don’t tan in response to UV light, no matter how long they spend working, walking, or basking in the sun.  (Essentially, their ancestors – thanks to the superior immune systems and DNA error-correction mechanisms that go along with their Immortality – no longer gained any evolutionary advantage from being able to tan; and either in the course of that or at some later point, the mechanism broke.  For much the same reason, they can’t sunburn, either – although sunstroke may still be an issue.

Note, of course, that they still have eumelanin – eldrae skin tone does vary, from not-quite-but-almost-albino-white in the eseldrae to coppery in the lumeneldrae, lips and other body parts are pheomelanin pink, and so forth – so the breakage appears to be upstream, in the mechanism that causes melanin release from melanocytes and increased melanogenesis in response to UV exposure.)