| 1 | Headscratchers for ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''. Spoilers abound. |
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| 3 | [[AC:[[{{Headscratchers/BuffyTheVampireSlayer}} Click here]] to return to the main Headscratchers page.]] |
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| 5 | [[foldercontrol]] |
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| 7 | [[folder:Vampires With Guns]] |
| 8 | * Why in the hell didn't the vampires just shoot Buffy? We know they can use guns. They have shown that they can pop out and surprise Buffy when she was on patrol, if only they just invested in some shotguns and plugged her instead of playing into her strength (hand to hand combat). |
| 9 | ** Buffy got taken down by one shot from a not-very-big handgun. It's just silly MookChivalry that prevents people from shooting her. |
| 10 | ** It's been shown vampires love the hunt. Taking down a Slayer with machine gun fire is tacky. Plus, Slayer blood is yum-tastic. |
| 11 | *** That's a pretty poor justification, she'd be a lot easier to kill and drain dry after you shoot her in the gut, the real reason is Joss seems to hate guns for some reason. |
| 12 | *** Not so, look at ''{{Series/Firefly}}''. |
| 13 | *** I've read frequently over the years that Creator/JossWhedon dislikes guns. He probably considered them a necessary evil with Firefly; you can't really have a shipful of space cowboys without having guns! |
| 14 | ** Maybe they just thought it wouldn't work. "Surely a being made to fight me wouldn't be hurt by something I'm almost immune to. Right?" |
| 15 | ** Darla used two guns in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E7Angel Angel]]". Buffy hid, Darla kept firing like a moron and Angel snuck up on her and staked her. So not for lack of trying, but the gun thing isn't foolproof, you still have to be a competent combatant to fight the Slayer even in season 1. |
| 16 | ** Real reason? The show started in a high school. Guns in a high school? You can see why they didn't. By the later series guns just weren't very Buffy. |
| 17 | *** They actually did use guns where it would make sense for the villain to have them, but in one commentary it was mentioned that when an episode was pulled from reruns after Columbine, they decided to completely scrap the idea of vamps or mooks with guns. |
| 18 | ** Maybe they just didn't have a gun on hand. You're a badass demon that can break a weak, defenseless human with your bare hands, who really gets off on the thrill of seeking, hunting, and tearing open the veins of your defenseless, human prey with your bare teeth. What part of this would be serviced by carrying a gun? Most of the vampires Buffy fights, she found them, often shortly after they rose from their grave. Very few vampires go looking to fight the Slayer; those that do usually want to prove something about how badass they are by fighting and killing the Slayer, and it would hardly prove anything if their big epic battle was, "Did you know guns kill people? It's so cool." Guns don't just grow on trees; in order for a vampire to use one, he has to have one on hand. |
| 19 | *** This makes the most sense. Most of the things aren't hunting Buffy specifically, and anything not Bufy dies pretty easily from their bare hands. Carrying a gun in the off chance of meeting the slayer, who is just one person in all the world, would be akin to paranoia. It should be noted that Spike, one of the few vampires to actually go out of his way to hunt a slayer, and having killed two previously knows how mortal they are, planned on using a shotgun. Also, many hand to hand fights are pretty close, so the rule of "I can kill it with my hands/magic, why use a gun?" still applies. |
| 20 | ** The scene where Warren tries to brag about killing Buffy in a demon bar's also worth noting. The moment he revealed that he simply shot her with a gun, the others started laughing at how naive he is for thinking that'd be enough, and then their skepticism seems to be confirmed by news stories that Buffy's alive. The audience knows how close it really was for her, but it looks like demons and vampires just assume the Slayer can't be taken down that easily (which made Darla breaking vamp tradition for a GunsAkimbo fight with Buffy all the more awesome). |
| 21 | ** I suspect that, if they didn't kill her dead dead dead, that super fast Slayer healing would take care of something as small as an entry wound and a few broken ribs pretty quickly. (A machine gun or the infamous rocket launcher would be a better bet). Also, stealth would have to be involved - Buffy's usually a pretty fast-moving target once the surprise round is over. |
| 22 | ** Vampires would likely be crappy marksmen. Darla's seen using two at the same time, meaning she couldn't aim. They have super strength, speed, and reflexes, but none of that translates to using a gun. And remember, their powers come from bloodlust and raw fury. Great in a scrap, but it's got to be hard to concentrate on aiming and firing when every instinct you have is screaming to rip your prey apart with your teeth. You could make the argument that eventually you'd get a skilled one (maybe military in life) who'd try and ambush her, but I'm pretty sure all the ones smart enough to actually pull it off are smart enough to simply stay the hell away from Buffy. |
| 23 | * This one doesn't bug me so much, but I have always wondered. Guns are not meant to kill vampires, they just hurt like hell. Some guns, some rounds, velocities, sure, I can accept. However was there ever a case where someone tried a .223 or some type of rifle on a vamp? A shot to the heart from a rifle like Johnathan had one would think would do the job better than any stake. Could it be the difficulty of trying to aim at a precise target that led to this not ever being done? |
| 24 | ** I did think a Slayer would be stronger than a gunshot, thus a Slayer has to be the one to kill vampires. However it's been shown that anyone can stake a vampire, so I've just wondered why if a gun was available that would do the job why it was never considered an option. |
| 25 | ** Possibly because the bullets aren't made of wood? I'm pretty sure it's the wooden part of wooden stake that's important here. |
| 26 | ** I'll go back and have a look to see if there was a case where vampires were killed with something other than wood (I'm open to the idea that if there is it was a goof), but would you have a source on wood being needed to stake vampires? |
| 27 | *** In season one Luke points out that metal can't kill him, and in season five Riley pretends to stake Spike using a plastic stake. I can't remember it being explicitly stated that it has to be wood, but the latter example makes it pretty clear. |
| 28 | *** Correct. It has to be in the heart ''and'' wood. Vampires can be killed by tree branches or levitated pencils if they pierce the heart, but not by being impaled through the heart with a steel sword or a plastic wood grain stake. |
| 29 | ** Another thing, why not take a shotgun to a vampire's head? If you destroy the head, it should dust, and if not, it's still pretty harmless. |
| 30 | ** I have a feeling Wesley and Giles know that shotgun trick. But Sunnydale is a small city in which the sound of gunfire is probably rare. Gunshots may well be one of the few things the police can be counted on to deal with. A shotgun is a bulky, costly. noisy weapon that may have to be tossed into the river on a moment's notice when you hear sirens coming. It's also possible there have been incidents in the past when too much firearm use by the council resulted in large numbers of vampires packing heat to retaliate. If you keep the battle silent and sneaky the way they like it they're more likely to stick with hand-to hand combat. |
| 31 | ** I've sometimes wondered how far that 'guns can't kill vampires' rule actually stretches. Hypothetically, say you took a Vulcan minigun and shredded a vampire with hundreds of bullets, would it still be able to recover? How about blasting its head apart with a .50 cal? This is a bit of a nitpicky question I admit, and the fact that the characters in Buffy don't have access to military grade weaponry renders it somewhat of a moot point. |
| 32 | ** I'm sure it could work, shooting a vampire's head off, but you would probably need a gun with a high enough caliber to destroy the entire head (or knock it off). In addition to having a strong enough gun, it should be noted that even most people trained to use guns aren't trained to make headshots, but trained to aim for the center of mass because making a headshot (especailly on extremely fast moving targets) is incredibly difficult. It would probably be easier to just shoot a vampire until it's in a lot of pain and then stake it. |
| 33 | * Most vampires Buffy fights aren't ''actively'' seeking her out, they're simply on the prowl and happen to bump into her. Vampires are generally unarmed with guns when they prowl because they want to ''drink'' the blood directly from the victim, not spill it on the ground. Spike and Darla are really the only ones who make direct, targeted attacks--Spike doesn't fight with guns because he's a BloodKnight who loves a good scuffle, and Darla ''does'' use guns, as already noted. |
| 34 | ** Also, Buffy patrols the cemeteries for newly risen vampires, who would not have guns on them. |
| 35 | [[/folder]] |
| 36 | |
| 37 | [[folder:Flaming Vamps]] |
| 38 | * Why didn't Buffy make greater use of fire to kill vampires? I can understand why white phosphorus rounds or napalm might have been hard to come by, but when attacking a vampire lair, why not use a few Molotov cocktails? |
| 39 | ** Setting urban areas on fire often attracts the police. |
| 40 | ** I agree. It's occurred to me before that perhaps a flare gun would be an extremely useful weapon against vampires. |
| 41 | ** Let's look at her most significant use of fire against vampires: It got her expelled, put a permanent mark on various records (both physical and hearsay), she had to move to a town where nobody knew her any more and the school was on top of the door to hell, nearly got her killed, and could easily have caused far more damage if there were a couple of unexpected factors. That might make her hesitant to use fire, except when it's being held on a conveniently pointy stick and the sharper end is already in use. |
| 42 | *** Another good example is [[JustForFun/MadeOfWin Giles attack on Angelus with a flaming baseball bat]]. The flames didn't exactly help him win that fight. |
| 43 | ** Also let's look at the facts here. Both Angel and Spike have been shown to burst into flames and stay alive long enough to get away. Clearly a flaming vampire doesn't die as quickly as a staked/beheaded one and in the seconds where a flaming vamp is alive it's still a threat to be dealt with. Plus multiple fire implements would cost money especially for refills whereas a pointy stick can be found in nature. |
| 44 | [[/folder]] |
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| 46 | [[folder:The Cross and Christianity]] |
| 47 | * Okay, so I've heard some people present the idea that the cross is a symbol for the sun and that's why it works on vampires (as an alternative to "the power of belief" which would imply ANY religious symbol and possibly any idealogical symbol held sacred by enough people could be used to deter/harm vampires; or that Christianity is the "right" religion which has it's own meta issues and in-verse problems such as Christianity being less than two thousand years old). Wouldn't it imply then that; a) any sort of cross would work - could you ward of vampires with [[http://www.mukwonago.k12.wi.us/~weberja/swissflag.gif the Swiss Flag]], this [[http://www.mp3playerguide.com/cross_shaped_mp3_player.jpg Cross-Shaped mp3 player]] or a [[http://www.lasyfashions.com/images/_products/spclothing/15589d.jpg cross strapped top]]?: and b) that other sun symbols would work just the same - could vampires be detered by [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Circumpunct.png a circled dot, the astrological symbol for the sun and the sign for the Egyptian sun god Ra]] or anything made of gold, which has been frequently associated with the sun in so many cultures/religions? |
| 48 | ** I always thought that the cross and holy water and whatnot were made symbols of divinity *because* of their ability to repel vampires. How this explains why older religions don't have anti-vampire divine objects is beyond me. |
| 49 | *** Holy water doesn't grow on trees, so I'm not sure how that would work. In the end I think this is just Joss not caring. Folkloric vampires were hurt by crosses and holy water because they were holy symbols of God. Buffy vampires are hurt by them just because. On the other hand, while Whedon is an atheist, no definitive answer has to my knowledge been given within the Buffyverse, so maybe God did it. |
| 50 | * What I can't stop wondering is whether a lowercase "t" would have any effect. I just can't shake the thought of a vampire reading a book and wincing at every "t" he came across. |
| 51 | ** It seems to only work with objects ''specifically'' made to be religious symbols. Not once does anyone take two vertical pieces of something, hold them at right angles to each other and use it against a vampire. It is only ever actual Christian crosses that are used. |
| 52 | ** Actually, at one point (I forget which episode), Xander tries to ward off a vampire by making two candlesticks into a cross. The vampire laughs and moves closer, showing that since the cross is not actually a religious symbol, nothing happens. |
| 53 | *** I have a theory that the reason the cross works isn't anything to do with its association to do with Christianity but is instead related to the vampire's inability to enter a person's home without permission. Somehow when you join together a bunch of pieces of wood or brick or stone you turn it from just a physical object into a mystical forcefield which a vampire cannot cross. What if joining together two pieces of a cross somehow achieves the same result? The object itself is turned into a sort of electrified forcefield which, if a vampire touches, burns their flesh. Of course, it wouldn't work if you just lay two pieces of wood across one another (any more than standing under a plank of wood and announcing "this is my home" would keep a vampire out), they'd have to be joined and they may also need to have some significance to a person (in the same way the home does). Given crosses weren't actually used as a symbol in early Christianity, it's possible they were only introduced to the church (along with Holy Water) by someone who knew they repelled vampires. |
| 54 | *** See personally I've always thought it was older than that. That the Ancient Romans probably used crosses as an execution method because they killed vampires. Think about it back 2000 years ago Ancient Rome was probably ripe with vampires the same way LA is in Angel. Not knowing what they were and thinking they were just criminals that were very hard to kill they devise an execution method that kills them as well as ordinary criminals. Then one day this guy named Jesus was killed this way maybe because the Romans saw he was kind of supernatural and was a criminal and just wanted to make sure. Then suddenly it becomes a symbol for Christianity. |
| 55 | [[/folder]] |
| 56 | |
| 57 | [[folder:Drusilla Doesn't Change]] |
| 58 | * The show explained that vampires are just demons that take over a human corpse, so basically when being sired the human actually dies, and a new demon is reborn in their body along with their memories. This kind of makes sense but is contradicted so often in the show, Drusilla being most notable. Why is the vamp version of Drusilla psychic and insane just because her human self was before siring? |
| 59 | ** The show does actually say that the vampire personality is related to the human personality - explicitly in one case, in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E16Doppelgangland Doppelgangland]]", when Willow is freaked out about Wishverse Willow being so evil and skanky and gay. Someone tells her not to worry because the vampire personality has nothing to do with the human personality, and Angel goes, "Well, actually..." Buffy shuts him up, but it's actually been pretty clear from the first episodes. If vamp!Jesse has nothing to do with real Jesse, why does he go out of his way to get Cordelia? Vampire personalities are shaped by the personality of the body they get stuffed into, just with extra added evil and a rejection of social norms that allow them to express repressed elements of their personality. For people who are basically good, this involves a rejection of their despised previous persona (Jesse, and Spike, although it takes Spike awhile). For people who are already evil or borderline bad or just plain mean, like Liam or Harmony, they just get extra more so. Wishverse Willow is a lot like real, souled Willow after she becomes dark. "Bored now", anyone? With Drusilla, she's already crazy when Angel finally kills her, and she's not repressing anything. So Vamp Drusilla is still crazy but with extra bonus obsessing over dead things, blood, etc. -- This is all basically FanWank, I guess, so YMMV. |
| 60 | *** It may be that vampire personalities have the "distilled" versions of their mortal personalities. Vampire Xander and Willow were still together because their defining trait was their love for each other, something revisited in season six. Angelus was a sadistic monster because vampires take pleasure in pain and Liam was a hedonist. Drusilla was a loon because... well, Drusilla was a loon, but she became a kinky, slutty loon once her piety was stripped away by vampirism. Spike was a rebel because William didn't care much for his lifestyle and peers. |
| 61 | ** Yes, there is nothing pointing to this "demon" being anything more substantial than a lack of conscience, desire to do evil and an appetite for human blood. There is not a single vampire whose personality doesn't reflect that of his human original, so obviously, it's not a case of demonic personality taking over the human body and using the human memories but case of the human personalities being twisted by the demonic influence. |
| 62 | *** Its more like a case of the demon being "born" with all of that person's memories. Buffy is quite explicit in ''Lie To Me'' that the human and the vampire are NOT the same person and that if a human is made into a vampire, the human is dead. They act like the human because thats all they know; they are somewhat like SuperpoweredEvilSide. |
| 63 | ** It's also worth noting that Dru as a human was pious and chaste, whereas Dru as a vampire was kinky and a big slut. |
| 64 | *** Now, now, Dru could have easilly been a bit more into that after going completely batshit, without being a vampire yet. |
| 65 | ** It's basically Nature vs. Nurture. Becoming a vampire changes your fundamental nature, but since you retain all your human memories, the effect your life experiences have had on your personality remain. |
| 66 | * The comics talk about this topic a bit; apparently, a vampire is the result of the human soul being replaced with the essence of a demon. That does not mean the demon (In this case, Archeus) was simultaneously possessing The Master, Darla, Angelus, Drusilla and Spike all at once, but rather that a whole ''new'' being is created from the transformation itself, and ''that'' being is the one possessing the Host's body. In turn, the vampire takes on traits from their former selves; Angelus cranks up Liam's hedonism to a sadistic degree, while soulless Spike cranks up William's hopeless romanticism to an obsessive degree. From how I understand it, when they get their souls back, they do regain their human personas back. However, Nature vs. Nurture is once again at play in the other direction now. They retain their memories of being soulless, and that still drastically changes them from who they were before they were vampires. To a certain degree, Angel is still self-indulgent, in that he is prone to self-flagellation that is by and large to make himself feel better about Angelus' actions. Ensouled Spike is a quietly self-hating LoveMartyr, largely disillusioned with his original hopeless romantics but still very much lead by his passions. They're off-shoots of who they were as humans, but their time as soulless vampires has also shaped them because that's just what 100-300 years of memories will do to you. |
| 67 | [[/folder]] |
| 68 | |
| 69 | [[folder:Buffy the Accidental Mass Murderer?]] |
| 70 | * So, for years, Buffy runs around Sunnydale happily turning vampires into dust whenever she sees them, because vampires are unredeemably evil and no good can ever come of them. Then one day, along tromps the Initiative, and with their foolish mortal book-learnin' and their silly, mundane technology, they manage to get behavior modification chip into the brain of one of history's most feared vampires. Within three years, that irredeemably soulless creature has volunteered to endure prolonged torture in order to get his soul back and not be evil. If this was possible all along, isn't that a pretty big "oops" for the forces of good? Shouldn't someone, somewhere in this story -- keeping in mind that real people have diverse ethical views -- have experienced some sort of moral crisis when they figured out that vampires are actually capable of ''choosing good'', particularly if they're given a bit of rehabilitative therapy? |
| 71 | ** My thought is that most vampires are alienated from human society almost immediately, so the average vampire never has any reason to want to be good (or at least not violent towards humans). Spike had a chip and, due to the less-than-welcoming nature of vamp society, decided to turn to humans for help, thus bringing him back into human society. After all, it's unlikely that most vampires would care enough to help him out and keep him from starving (it was implied in that season 3 ep "Lover's Walk" that a lot of Sunnydale's vampire population didn't like him at all). Thus, he was slowly, well, ''tamed'' over the course of those three years, and it was really only when he acknowledged that his feelings for Buffy were other than killcrushdestroymaybesleepwith that he even tried to fit in. Even then, nothing would have come of it except that he was brought into the fold when Glory was the Big Bad, in order to protect Buffy and Dawn (and Joyce). In other words, while humans might be able to mass-produce chips or soul-restoring spells, they'd also have to actually work with the vampire and give them a ''reason'' to move away from pure evil. OTOH, you have Harmony, who was never that evil at all. Maybe she's just too dumb to be effective at it. |
| 72 | *** This is all true. While Spike is actually a remarkably successful proof-of-concept for the notion that vampires, with the proper motivation and behavioral control, may actually be capable of rehabilitation...it should be noted that Spike is a ''very'' unusual vampire, and probably should not be assumed, in and of himself, to be a good example of the ''typical'' vampire. While there are other vampires like Spike (an episode of Angel had a vampire commit time-delayed suicide for the chance to avenge the woman he loved), we've also seen plenty of vampires like Angelus, who gave no indication of being anything but cruel, hedonistic monsters. More data is needed before a conclusion can be made as to whether or not Spike's unique circumstances could be mass produced for vampires as a whole. |
| 73 | ** In their quest to fluff Spike and appease his fans the writers didn't care if the whole vampire mythos could be destroyed in the process. The not so meta explanation would be that maybe the Scoobies suspected that Spike was lying - he had never intended to get his soul back, it had somehow happened in some other fashion. Of course, there is precious little evidence for that but it's a fanwank that makes that wallbanging nature of season 7 just a bit more tolerable, for me at least. Of course, Buffy took Spike word for his soul search but that's easily dismissible, since in season 7 Buffy is rather out of touch with reality, especially when it came to Spike. |
| 74 | *** It doesn't break the vampire mythos at all; the soul-search, while a touching display, is still essentially self-serving. Sure, he was choosing to be good, but it was in pursuit of Buffy's love. He wanted to be "what Buffy deserves", that's the way he consistently frames it up until gaining the soul; there's not any particular desire to be a better person because it's right, only to be better for ''her''. The Scoobies and Buffy herself ''are'' skeptical about the possibility of him faking it, Xander in particular seems to be convinced that's the case. But Buffy simply sees the changes in his behaviour and finds it hard to believe it could be an act--and it was exactly the same with Angel in season 1. She took his word for it, when it plausibly could have been an elaborate act to kill or use her in some way. In both cases, it'd be a hell of an act and one that both Angelus and Spike had tried unsuccessfully in the past. Vampires ''can't'' effectively falsify emotions they have no capacity to understand, Buffy's already ''seen'' this up close and personally. |
| 75 | *** Also, it's not until Spike literally calls her to the basement where he remembers stashing the bodies that Buffy truly drops the theory that he might be lying about his soul. A soulless Spike has ''literally no reason'', none whatsoever, to do that. Seriously, if he's pretending to have a soul to get back in Buffy's good graces, he has no modivation to tell her this, she doesn't have any proof that he's hurt anyone by that point. However, ensouled!Spike who's remembering this stuff does, because he's dealing with ''guilt'' over it. He went to her, unprompted, and confessed to remembering murdering several people. Nothing about that action is self-serving in any way, it's a show of true remorse and so Buffy believes him. It's, quite frankly, ''way'' more proof than Angel offered back in season 1. |
| 76 | *** Beyond that, Spike has been like this from ''day one''. In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E3SchoolHard School Hard]]", he switches from "cocky badass BloodKnight" to "extremely doting boyfriend" the second Dru steps into the room. Spike is and literally ''has always been'' a diehard hopeless romantic who'd do anything for his love, this has been a consistent part of his character since he was introduced. When it was Dru, "anything" was forgiving cheating and giving up the opportunity to kill the Slayer when he had her in his grasp because Dru was threatened. When it was Buffy, it was behaving himself and getting a soul when he realized he couldn't ever be right for her without one. |
| 77 | ** Spike is in love with Buffy at the start of season 4, even before he gets his implant. And he underwent that painful resoulification because of his love. The implant actually didn't change him that much. OTOH, his harmlessness helped him come close to Buffy and co. |
| 78 | ** Also, Spike wasn't capable of being good until he regained his soul. Everything he did up to the end of season six was completely selfish, either because he loved Buffy or he needed the money or protection. Which was why Buffy trusted Spike in "The Gift" the most, as everybody else had the lingering doubt of whether it would be better to kill Dawn to save the world, while he had no qualms about the world being destroyed. Vampires can't choose good, the soul allows them the possibility to choose good. Without the soul, they're just purely evil. If Spike didn't love Buffy, he wouldn't have searched for a soul. So it wasn't rehabilitative therapy. |
| 79 | *** I thought it was pretty clear that he cared about Dawn in a sort of big brother sort of way. |
| 80 | *** He was. Remember "Bargaining"? |
| 81 | *** And I thought the reason Buffy trusted Spike to protect Dawn is because in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS5E18Intervention Intervention]]", Spike almost gave his unlife against Glory's interrogation in order to do exactly that. Not because "Oh, he's evil, so he's cool with the apocalypse," but because he's already PROVEN he'll die for her. |
| 82 | *** Exactly. Remember the whole Angelus thing? He hates apocalypses just as much as they do. |
| 83 | ** If I remember correctly, Spike wasn't even trying to get his soul back when he went to see that demon--he wanted to be made ''worse'' so that he wouldn't have to deal with the pain of loving Buffy. But the unspecific phrasing of his request (something along the lines of "I want to be put back the way I was so I can give Buffy what she deserves") could be interpreted as him wanting his soul back in order to become good, so the demon returned it anyway. |
| 84 | *** The entire thing was written so that it would strongly imply Spike wanting to lose the chip and the infatuation, but never outright said it. I took it that, in retrospect, the demon's only real trick was to give back souls, and that the writers intended to have people interpret it their own way (either "Spike wanted his soul back so he went to the soul-returner", "Spike got what he needed and technically asked for ('what [Buffy] deserves' is a reward) instead of what he wanted and the sorcery demon could have granted either wish", or something else). |
| 85 | *** They do seem to proceed from that point as though Spike was really trying to get his soul back (he talks about going through the demon trials for that purpose, Insane!Spike talks about wanting his soul back but not realizing how much it'd hurt, Angel said he only wanted his soul back to get into Buffy's pants and so on), but yeah, it definitely ''seemed'' like Spike was the victim of a JackassGenie at the time (after all, he called Buffy a bitch in the very same sentence that said he was going to give her what she deserves!). Maybe the writers themselves weren't sure which way they wanted to go with his storyline, and intentionally left it vague until the next season. Or the deliberately vague editing of the demon trials was just a RedHerring to mislead the fans about what Season 7 would involve. |
| 86 | *** The idea that Spike wanted his chip removed was an intentional RedHerring. This is confimed in season 7, and there's not a single line of dialouge in S6 that contradicts it -- Spike's lines are just phrased ambiguously until the reveal. The earliest hint is in the little speech he gives at the end of "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E19SeeingRed Seeing Red]]", where stresses that Buffy "has no idea" that he "wasn't always this way"; Buffy knew Spike before he was chipped, but never knew him when he had a soul. |
| 87 | *** Right, Spike says outright in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E2BeneathYou Beneath You]]" that he purposely got his soul. He tells Buffy, "This chip, they did to me. I couldn't help it. But the soul, I got on my own, for you." Crazy!Spike, who is too unhinged to know how to lie, backs this up by saying he did it "to be hers". He had no intent to get rid of his chip, he wasn't tricked, he knew exactly what he was signing up for. The show just wanted the fact he was doing so to be TheReveal, so they deliberately made his dialogue ambiguous. |
| 88 | ** Most of the vampire fighting they do is in self defense. Kind of hard to do rehabilitative work on someone trying to kill you. Also, it seems like soul process is ''very'' hard to do. The gypsy curse incapacitates all but the strongest witches. I suspect there's a reason the demon made Spike go through all, being that resouling is hard to do and he can't just do it for any jackass that shows up. In short, the resoulification isn't something that can really be mass produced and supplied to ''every'' vampire. |
| 89 | *** Re: self-defense, Buffy and Faith once ''burned a nest of vampires while they were sleeping''. Granted, this was Faith's influence, but it's not treated as an atrocity; we're meant to accept (in season three, anyway) that killing vampires is never really a bad thing. Same goes with attacking vampires the second they're out of the ground. I'd imagine being turned and rising from the grave might be a little disorienting -- in fact, I think Angel outright says as much -- but "stake 'em before they knew what hit 'em" is still considered an acceptable Slayer tactic. None of this is a problem if vampires are inherently evil and incapable of redemption, but it's a downer once that gets called into question, considering that technology exists which can render vampires harmless. |
| 90 | *** Additionally, it doesn't constitute self-defense if you go out every night LOOKING for someone to start a fight with you. What Buffy does is vigilante justice, not self-defense. Just a small note, but this troper has long since gotten tired of the term "self-defense" being expanded to include "any time a hero gets in any kind of fight". |
| 91 | ** And, as noted, Spike didn't exactly choose to do good. Being good with a soul is just a by product of his true goal. He was in love with Buffy, and wanted her more than anything, and he knew he wasn't going to win her without a soul. He didn't give a crap about being good without his soul, hence the reason he tried to rape Buffy. |
| 92 | *** That doesn't mean he was incapable of good. He turned his mother out of love for her, he stayed utterly and selflessly devoted to Drusilla for more than a century, and after trying to rape Buffy, was repentant enough to go through the Demon Trials. He was capable of good beyond good as a means to an end. |
| 93 | *** IOW, he was a sociopath, and can do things beneficial to the people around him as long as it falls into his whims. The moment those whims change, or as long as he thinks he can get away with it, he'd still revel in the opportunity to commit sadistic acts of murder. |
| 94 | *** Yeah. Because he's a vampire. I'm not saying that he was a fluffy little bunny; Spike was a remorseless, sadistic killer. But that's not all he was. He wasn't a good guy, but he still ''did good.'' Consciously, by his own free will, for more reasons than "because it might get me a bit of Slayer tail." |
| 95 | *** The key word is repentant. By the end of "Seeing Red", Spike is supposed to be ''overwhelmed with remorse'' at having hurt someone he cared about, when previously, vampires were depicted as being ''incapable'' of remorse. Right before he goes to get his soul back, Spike directly attributes these strange feelings to the chip ("It won't let me be a monster, and I can't be a man"). The implication is that having the bloodlust of a vampire alongside some sort of emergent capacity for empathy is causing him to suffer, and that he choses to resolve this via rit happened that way" variety. |
| 96 | *** It's not so much to ease his own suffering, though I'm sure that's part of it, it's more that he realized he couldn't avoid hurting Buffy without a soul. Spike's personality was so that his own happiness could be effected by the feelings of others he deems "important" to him. When getting a soul, he frames it openly as something he's doing to "give Buffy what she deserves". While he has no capacity for remorse in the traditional sense, he ''did'' have the capacity to want what is genuinely best for people he loved, but "Seeing Red" made him realize he just flat out ''couldn't'' be that for Buffy without a soul. |
| 97 | ** The way I saw it was that vampires are really already dead so in that way "killing" them isn't as much killing as finishing the job and giving the deceased a chance to rest in peace. Giving a vampire a soul isn't really a nice thing to do in general because it obviously is torture for the soul that gets returned. The better way is to destroy the vampire and let the soul be in peace. (I had this idea that the souls of the people turned into vampires exist in some sort of limbo, never being able to move on before the vampire is gone. Just my own headcanon of course but it makes sense to me.) Also, there are just waaay too many vampires around and they are by nature unable to live in balance with their environment, basically they are bad even for themselves. They don't die on their own and they don't have any natural enemies except for the Slayer. If there was no one killing them, their numbers would grow exponentially and they'd kill all humans and animals to extinction. Angel and Spike are really just exceptions because now that they have their souls back, they have reasons to stay because of emotional bonds with the living and the need to redeem themselves, neither of which they would have had if they were never re-ensouled. |
| 98 | ** There's no way to ''make'' a vampire fall in love with a human (well, there ''are'' love spells, but when have spells like that ever been reliable in the Buffyverse?). And even if they do fall in love with a human, they can only care about doing good by proxy, as a way of pleasing the person they love, and since vampires are immortal while humans aren't, that's only a temporary solution. Getting their soul back is the only way to make a vampire care about doing good for its own sake, and the only known ways to give a vampire a soul are either too insanely difficult to be practical (the African demon's trials) or designed to only work on one, specific vampire (Angel's curse). |
| 99 | ** To some extend a vampire is a walking corpse. Is like a sentient zombie that does not decompose, the human soul goes away and the body is reanimated by a demonic force but is a corpse at the end. So, to kill a vampire is really an act of mercy, at least for the human that was before. And in the case of Spike, Spike is a very ''very'' special kind of vampire. He sires his mother out of love for her, is against the idea of ending the world and care for Dawn for apparently non-selfish reasons, but no other vampire, nor even Angelus, shows that kind o behavior. Maybe Spike's transformation was different, maybe retaining part of the soul or something like that, and he is a unique case |
| 100 | ** A sentient zombie that doesn't decompose? Isn't that a person? |
| 101 | ** No, because a person is a living human being tht grows old. A vampire is a re-animated corpse, like a zombie, with two key differences; do not rot and is forever frozen on the age of his/hers death and retains self-awareness/sentience whatever you want to call it. |
| 102 | *** ''And retains self-awareness/sentience''. That's kind of more important in "is it a person" than "does it age or have a heartbeat". |
| 103 | *** Not really. Several animals like chimps have sentience, we still don't consider them persons. Psychopaths have sentience but are incapable of feeling remorse, guilt or empathy (that's why they are so hard to handle as only the fear of punishment works and most of them get the death penalty anyway), is possible that some day computers may develop sentience and we probably still won't consider them persons. Sentience do not mean having morals or empathy, which is what all vampires lack (as they lack souls with the exceptions that we all know). |
| 104 | *** Okay, use "sapient" instead of "sentient". If computers or corpses ever become sapient, the only reason not to consider them people would be straight-up FantasticRacism. Vampires are psychopaths (except for Spike's emergent empathy), but psychopaths are still people, and it would be more humane and ethical for the Watchers' Council to figure out a way to give them due process and imprison or execute them the way we treat human psychopaths. Buffy, though, is mostly doing her best under the system she's stuck with, so I think the Watchers, the Initiative, and any other large nebulous organisations aware of the supernatural are the ones to blame here. |
| 105 | *** Well, that's what the Initiative did. They kept them alive and fed for a lot of time instead of outright killing them until they could figure out how to stop them from harming others without killing them (resulting in the development of the chip). And we know how that turn out to be... |
| 106 | *** You're right - and it turned out to work (although ideally the chip would have allowed Spike to fight back against humans in self-defence (and even more ideally they'd have got his consent to implant it), but that's what R&D is for). The Initiative failed because they made an evil demon cyborg, not because of their efforts with Spike. |
| 107 | *** We don't know if the chip is complex enough to allow exceptions like self-defense, and he could have consented but the alternative to not consent is not pretty. The Initiative was more humane over demons and vampires, not because they consider them people but because they consider them animals, thus applying the basic ethic protocols that scientists normally apply to animals. That's why they are caged, fed and not generally mistreated except for experimentation. Not the best from their perspective but a better treatment that the one the Watchers' give. Yet, before technology was advanced enough the only alternative to the chip other than killing the vampires would be to keep them locked indefinitely (as they are immortal) whilst constantly providing them of a daily ration of human or at least animal blood. Which sounds incredibly expensive and difficult to do. Especially because any new vampire would have to be accommodate in there too with an exponential growing of the inmates population that would never die or rehabilitate, would require a liquid that is very difficult to find and provide (especially before the existence of modern medicine) and would become a risk in the case of escape because you’ll have hundreds of angry violent mass murderers in the same area (which is exactly what happened, and granted the cause was Adam's actions but even without Adam in the equation the risk a containtment failure is always a possibility). No wonder why no one attempted that before, the logistic alone is quite difficult and it will require humungous amounts of effort, money and time and all of that just to be humane over the fate of creatures that torture humans for fun and may have kill people you know and will kill you if they ever escape, if you're lucky and they don't torture you first. Add to that that many vampires may prefer death than be caged forever, and who can blame them? Thus, although it can't be blame on no one to not ever have thought in containing vampires instead of killing them in less technologically advanced times, the chip is indeed more humane, and yet it almost drove Spike to suicide, and Spike is the more empathic (or least psychopathic) non-souled vampire we know. |
| 108 | * The way this troper sees it is this; Spike is the exception rather than the norm for vampires. It was the very specific make-up of his human personality--a hopeless romantic and an extreme devotion to those important to him--that stuck with him through transformation and facilitated him being able to self-rehabilitate for long enough to get a soul. He did not, however, spontaneously develop the ability to empathize while soulless. Not truly, where he could do something ''completely'' un-selfishly. Even things like enduring Glory's torture, were, on some level, self-serving. He specifically says to Buffy that ''he'' couldn't live with her being in that much pain--it's not a show of his empathy, but that his affections for her were deep enough that her happiness has an effect on his own. Even getting his soul was for Buffy, because he loved her and wanted to be what she needed and deserved. Yes, he could overwrite even his own self-preservation instincts for that love, but it was mostly because to him, hurting the ones he loves feels worse than death--it still all goes back to him, as it always does for vampires. The particular the way his psychology is wired just meant that, unlike most vampires, his own feelings could be effected by those important to him. |
| 109 | ** Season 7 actually does a good job subtly showing the difference between this devotion and true selflessness. Soulless Spike had gone to get a soul in order to come back and be "Buffy's", but upon getting that soul he initially tries to outright ''hide'' it and only wishes to offer his help. The truth only comes out because his sanity slips. It's a paradox to say, but soulless Spike would have made ''damn sure'' Buffy knew exactly how much he'd gone through for her. Ensouled Spike is, by comparison, so disgusted with himself that he doesn't want to be viewed as anything other than the monster the Scoobies see him as and goes out of his way to maintain the facade that he's exactly how he was. He has truly no expectation for forgiveness, and holds himself accountable for those actions--even though, within the rules of the universe, he kinda... ''isn't'' responsible at that point. There's smaller things too; Buffy frets over him being in pain in "Potential" and his response is to downplay his injury, rather than revel in the attention like his soulless self would have. Rather than playing the wounded LoveMartyr to her face, he makes a point of telling Buffy he's not being noble when he assures her not to worry about him because of her date, and only lets his expression drop once she's walked away. Etc. |
| 110 | ** TLDR; Spike's an extraordinary exception. The pieces just plain had to fall in just the right places to facilitate his redemption, because he not only needed his particular cocktail of personality traits, but also happen to fall in love with a good person. It doesn't necessarily mean the sentiment that a majority of vampires are a considerable inherent threat is now false or that rehabilitation is feasible on their entire population. |
| 111 | * There is doubtless some FantasticRacism / WhatMeasureIsAMook involved, but the main point is that brainwashing a villain to make him good is generally considered more evil than straight-up killing him (it is orwellian, as it involves a more complete erasure of him than killing). This is true in the buffyverse - that's why ensouling a vampire is a "curse" and it's the whole point of The Initiative plotline. And if the idea is the heroes should be expected to take affirmative measures to take opponents alive just in case they should reform spontaneously, that's generally reserved for fiction with no-kill rules stronger than the buffyverse has. |
| 112 | [[/folder]] |
| 113 | |
| 114 | [[folder:Vampires on the foodchain]] |
| 115 | * Why are vampires so low on the official food chain? They are physically nearly as strong as most demons. There are few species that seem to really outclass them in brute strength. They are one of very few species with specific ways of being killed. If required they can get the numbers up incredibly quickly incomparisan to pretty much any threats to them. Other than possibly a vengence demons and the Deathwaw Clan I wouldn't want to be any of many species vulnerable to guns, swords and cars. |
| 116 | ** Because none of that means anything when the demons around them can, and on various occasions have, killed them just by casually breaking their heads off. They're harder to kill than most demons, but with very few exceptions, they're not tough enough to actually win a fight with said demons, and despite their specific death conditions, what they're actually killed by is so easy (fire, beheading, sunlight) that they just die like flies anyway. They're the locusts of the demon world; they're annoying, they breathe fast, and the only way they're in any way threatening to the bigger animals is if they swarm. And even then, you can just turn the hose (daylight, for the purpose of this metaphor) on them and wash them away. |
| 117 | *** We see a few demons most of them clear into the uber class that casually rip off vampire heads. The only low teir demon to dust a vamp was the leader of the gang in Season six. Between Buffy and Angel we see PLENTY of demons who have absolutely no demonstrated power aside from being ugly and implied strength. |
| 118 | ** The vampires could easily rule the wide demon community if they actually got it into their heads to do it. As the Master pointed out in "Wish", most vampires are so caught-up in the hunting routine that they overlook other things. Most of them don't care for power as long as they can hunt, kill and feed. Thus they never really bother to build power bases like other demons and happily lead insignificant unlives alone or work as minions to masters that may not be stronger than them but treat them well and provide fringe benefits like protection by reputation. |
| 119 | ** It gets pointed out to us in the Mayor story arc that the demons running around on Earth (like the ones Angel kills by the bushel in Los Angeles) aren't "real" demons but little pansy diluted ones. So vamps might be high on the food chain in our dimension, but if you take all the dimensions together, including the ones populated by the "real" demons and the PTB, vampires aren't real great shakes. |
| 120 | ** I always thought it was because how they were made, that they came from "Lowly humans" made demons who we can for the most part guess came from demon-demon unions thought they were naturally superior to vamps. |
| 121 | ** Vamps are actually pretty flimsy as demons go. Sure, they can only be killed by a handful of specific methods, but they are ridiculously vulnerable to those methods - the sunlight is, itself, a huge vulnerability that few (if any) other demons have. Stakes? As soon as something pointy and wood touches their chest with the pointy end mostly pointed at the heart, they suddenly completely lack a sternum and the soft tissue has the structural integrity of an overfilled water balloon. (And this isn't a 'Slayer Strength' thing, since we've seen ordinary mortals do it on more than one occasion.) Beheading? As soon as something sharp hits the neck, again, bye-bye bones, hello water balloon. (And again, normal people have been shown vorpalizing vamps, instead of hacking away, so not just Slayer Strength...though that trick with the cymbal at the Bronze in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E2TheHarvest The Harvest]]" is probably something only a Slayer could pull off.) |
| 122 | [[/folder]] |
| 123 | |
| 124 | [[folder:Vampire Sustainability]] |
| 125 | * How in the bloody hell have vampires not eaten everyone on the planet? They feed probably every other night, at least once per night if they're successful and sometimes, in the case of vampires like Angelus, kill whenever they're bored. They are worse than weeds, appearing ''everywhere'' and impossible to purge successfully (despite them being completely aware that they are protected by incredibly talented vampire killers, even Sunnydale and Los Angeles are never without vampires). The method of creating a new vampire is absurdly simple, a single vampire easily capable of forming their own personal army (something which Harmony almost did). Individuals are easily capable of living for centuries with death tolls in the thousands, even Spike, a fool and a braggart who seemed to deliberately seek Slayers, managing to survive for quite some time. There were only a pathetically small minority of humans who knew about vampires and how to kill them, and even less who were actually capable of overcoming their literally superhuman abilities. When Los Angeles and the surrounding area lost sunlight, in a matter of '''''days''''' the entire city descended into chaos and slaughter, vampires feasting and turning with reckless abandon. Certainly if things got bad now a few doses of high explosive would be in order, but for the vast majority of human history the only weapons were deviations on "stick pointy end into enemy".\ |
| 126 | This isn't even ''[[ImprobableFoodBudget need]]'' [[ImprobableFoodBudget to eat]]? It makes it more confusing because Spike (possibly in addition to Angelus) has been shown urinating, but that was mostly to show respect and could have been completely voluntary, and it works completely differently, anyway (stomach to blood to kidneys then expelled, instead of just being pushed through a glorified tube while being broken down, with little bits absorbed along the way). Mostly, I just want to know what happened to Spike's Wheatabix. |
| 127 | ** Spike has, on one occasion, mentioned how emaciated vampires look (though that was pleading for blood, so I dunno if it's true), so I would guess that what they eat is just converted into energy. Also, Angel does need to buy blood, so I'm not sure about that one. He doesn't go around killing people, or rats, and I think that even if they don't /need/ to eat, it's at least more comfortable to. |
| 128 | *** Right, sorry, I was referencing the entry on the ImprobableFoodBudget page, and should have made that more clear. Thanks for everything else, though. |
| 129 | ** You're going on what you know about the population per square kilometer of vampires above a Hellmouth. Which is, like, what? 100+ on average? Elsewhere it'd be closer to 4-5. If that. Big cities would, of course, have more. Places like Australia, if they have any, would be like 0.2. |
| 130 | *** Even a single vampire can go on a killing spree with devastating results. Turn an Angelus-esque vampire loose with a presumed desire to sire every other victim and you have the makings of an army before a fortnight. I surmise the theory was vampires simply did not have a desire to multiple due to their antisocial tendencies. This is likely why more recent shows introduced more convoluted ways that simply made 'breeding' something of a chore. |
| 131 | ** Most vampires don't seem to be that strong; while a few have Buffy-level strength, most aren't even superhuman, just slightly stronger than they were before becoming a vampire. Now consider that, everytime they want to feed, they have to attack and subdue another person, can only do so in public places thanks to the MustBeInvited rule, and have to get back inside before the sun comes up and burns them to death. I'd wager most vampires don't last very long before this high-risk lifestyle gets them killed one way or another. As for forming a vampire army, keeping dozens/hundreds of vampires fed means killing dozens/hundreds of people on a regular basis, which is likely to either deplete the local human population, causing the vampires to starve, or attract the attention of vampire hunters. And with such a large army, keeping the location where they hide from the daylight a secret is going to be difficult/impossible, making a deadly ambush quite easy. |
| 132 | [[/folder]] |
| 133 | |
| 134 | [[folder:Vampires and Sunlight]] |
| 135 | * With the exception of those with NominalImportance that manage to last a few seconds, it is almost always the case that the ''instant'' a vampire is hit with direct sunlight they burst into flames, dusted soon after. How, then, are they able to go outside without at the very least constantly sizzling, considering that, you know, sunlight is reflected ''everywhere''? Even moonlight is just reflected sunlight. Does the light somehow lose it's vampire-igniting effects after it impacts another object (which is insane considering it impacts the atmosphere)? Do vampires have a certain threshold of sunlight that they can't cross otherwise they endure CriticalExistenceFailure (also absurd considering morning and evening sun is just as dangerous as midday sun)?\ |
| 136 | Relatedly, does that mean that areas of the planet with regular cloudy days are vulnerable to vampire attacks even during the day? It would certainly explain why the Watchers are based in Britain despite ostensibly beginning somewhere in central Africa. |
| 137 | * Remember, vampires operate under magical laws, not strictly physical ones. It's only direct sunlight that gets them. Spike can stand in a shaded alleyway, lounge under a tree, or run around under a blanket, all during the daytime. After all, the night sky is filled with suns, lightyears away, and in ''Series/{{Angel}}'', Angel can be under the Pylean sun no problem. Clearly the nature of vampires makes it such that only a direct beam of light from our particular star kills them. |
| 138 | * Additionaly it's been stated by word of god that after Spike was sired he and Angelus bonded by attempting to endure the suns rays for as long as they could to prove their toughness. As a result the both of them have built up a tolorance and allow them to survive short exposures to direct sun, and even prolonged exposure to the sun with protection, like Spikes famous blanket of protection. |
| 139 | * I'm guessing the sunlight reflecting off the moon is too weak to affect vampires. Only when the light comes directly from the sun is it intense enough to cause a reaction. |
| 140 | ** [[EpilepticTrees Because vampires don't show up in reflections.]] |
| 141 | * In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E13Surprise Surprise]]", Angel says that airline flight isn't an option because there's no way to guard against the sun. In the ''Spike'' comics (don't know which) it shows Spike catching a flight, with a sword even, on a plane full of supernaturals, clearly illustrating and stating that there is at least one airline that caters to supernaturals. When exactly was it established, is what I'm wondering. |
| 142 | ** In the comics, TheMasquerade was blown wide open a few years after seasons 7/5 and the general public now knows about supernaturals--Harmony is an outright celebrity for being a vampire. Capitalism being what it is, airlines would absolutely start catering to a new, untapped revenue stream in the form of Supernaturals. |
| 143 | * In Lovers Walk, Spike gets his hand burned right away due to not noticing it’s already sunrise. However, at the final scene of the episode, he’s driving in broad daylight and you can see that small ray of sunlight beaming towards him from the small hole of his car. Why is he not getting burned by this? |
| 144 | [[/folder]] |
| 145 | |
| 146 | [[folder:Vampire Imaging]] |
| 147 | * A minor point, but one that constantly irritated me: vampires don't have reflections in mirrors, but they do show up in photographs and in film? Buuuh? |
| 148 | ** One explanation: It's mentioned at one point in ''Angel'' (possibly the Pylea arc?) that the demon within can't stand the sight of itself. So it clouds reflections in mirrors but not in photos or film which it doesn't understand. That would also explain the occasional small reflection throughout both shows; if the demon's not aware that it's casting a reflection, it doesn't cloud it. |
| 149 | ** I heard somewhere, possibly in a commentary that there's a deleted scene where someone asks Angel about it, and he responds with "It's meta-physics, not physics." |
| 150 | ** Most cameras don't have any mirrors in the optical path between the lens and the film. SLR cameras have them in the path between the lens, and the ''viewfinder'', but when you actually take the picture, the mirror pops up, giving the light from the lens a straight path to the film, so if you took a picture with an SLR camera, you wouldn't see a vampire in the viewfinder, but it would show up on the film. |
| 151 | *** One of the few consumer cameras that did use mirrors were the Polaroid instant cameras, that folded flat, and spat the picture out the front after you took it. |
| 152 | ** Not me explaining anything, but how cool would that spy-film of Buffy fighting a Vampire that Spike made in the second season been if it would have shown Buffy fighting... nothing. Having Spike filling in the missing pieces. |
| 153 | [[/folder]] |
| 154 | |
| 155 | [[folder:Why Don't Ya Just Stake Drusilla]] |
| 156 | * Why did they never get around to dispatching uber-evil Drusilla? And then she showed up in ''Angel'', also unstaked! Is Joss saving that for a comic or something? Kendra must be avenged! |
| 157 | ** It's also arguable that Drusilla is at least as much a victim as anything else. How much of what she does is her fault, and how much is Angelus's? |
| 158 | *** Honestly I think this hits the nail on the head. Dru's evil, but she was also a victim who was driven there by Angelus. It just seemed in poor taste. Yeah, it leaves her as a bit of a KarmaHoudini where Kendra is concerned, but I feel her backstory made the writers never really feel right about killing her. She didn't ''choose'' to be evil, after all. |
| 159 | ** Rumor has it that Creator/JulietLandau refused to appear in anything other than flashbacks or illusions after ''Buffy'' Season 5 to prevent her character from being killed off. |
| 160 | *** That can't be the only reason; she ''does'' show up in the comics. They try giving her a soul (Spike's, actually. Don't ask me how that works.), but it only makes her more insane and miserable, so they take it back but still never stake her. The comics wrapped up with her still alive. |
| 161 | ** I think Buffy never actually had the chance to stake her. As for Angel... maybe he just couldn't bring himself to do it? |
| 162 | ** In "[[Recap/AngelS02E11Redefinition Redefinition]]", Angel set Dru and Darla on fire fully intending to kill both of them. And then Drusilla never showed her face in ''Angel'' again. In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS5E14Crush Crush]]", Drusilla literally just walked away while Buffy was acting all disgusted. |
| 163 | [[/folder]] |
| 164 | |
| 165 | |
| 166 | [[folder:Why Don't Ya Just Stake Spike]] |
| 167 | * Why didn't the Scoobies kill Spike in Season 4? He's still unrepentantly evil, he's done nothing to imply that he might ''stop'' being evil anytime soon, and he frequently said that he wants them all dead. Hell, as of Faith's return, he a) had never actually helped them fight demons that we see, despite his "let's kill something!" speech, and b) ''had'' declared his intention to sic Faith on the lot of them and then laugh. |
| 168 | ** BECAUSE HE'S A MAIN CHARACTER!? You might as well ask why they didn't kill off Buffy permanently. |
| 169 | ** Spike was literally helpless. The only thing he could ''actually'' kill were animals and demons (once he figured that out), so even though he threatened them, they weren't going to kill him until he actual became a threat (which he never did until Season 7, when the First overrode the chip somehow). |
| 170 | *** Just because he couldn't rip anybody apart didn't make him harmless. He was a threat when he could help Faith find the good guys and kill them in their sleep, he was a threat when he helped Adam isolate Buffy inside the Initiative, he was a threat in Season 5 when he and Harmony held hostage the only person in the state who could save Riley's life, and that's just in the episodes I've seen so far. Also, it's not like they've never killed vampires just for being vampires. |
| 171 | *** There's a lot to indicate that for all their outward vitriol, Spike had humanized himself too much to the Scoobies by then. They often found themselves trusting him more than they should, listening to him when they shouldn't, relying on his help. Yeah, he was evil, but he'd been around enough that he was no longer just some vampire to them. He was Spike, an individual person with thoughts, feelings, and insights who'd helped them several times over. Killing him over what he had the potential to do wouldn't have been an easy choice to make--it wasn't just killing a faceless monster at that point, it'd be killing a person, which is something Buffy has always struggled with. Even when he had kidnapped Riley's doctor, he hadn't done so with the express purpose of killing Riley, he'd been trying to remove his chip. And surely, if he'd been successful, Buffy ''would'' have killed him. But Spike's helplessness combined with his proximity made staking the guy, even when he crosses some lines, feel wrong. They simply knew him too well, it was going to take a real big thing to get them to go through with ending him. |
| 172 | ** Riley states that Buffy felt sorry for him in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS5E1BuffyTheVsDracula Buffy vs. Dracula]]". While it may not make complete sense, that's her stance. And actually, they've never killed harmless vampires before. Really, the only vampires that are harmless were Spike and Angel. All the others actually kill and eat humans. |
| 173 | *** Actually, Buffy ''did'' when she killed the vampire "prostitutes" that Riley was getting his fix from... and notably, the other Scoobies thought she was out of line for it and she likely wouldn't have done so if she wasn't so upset about Riley. So yeah, the Scoobies don't really believe in killing harmless Vampires, but Angel and Spike were generally the only truly harmless ones. |
| 174 | ** Even a chipped Spike is not easy to kill, especially in season 4 when he hadn't been fully Spikeified yet, and the good guys had bigger things to deal with. Also, by the end of the season, Spike was working with them more than he was working against them, even if it was in {{enemy mine}} type situations. |
| 175 | ** What WAS implied was that Spike loved Buffy from day one. Buffy learned to tolerate him because she wouldn't kill him when he was helpless and he kept hanging around. She just had a sexual relationship with him in season six and fell in love with him in season seven. (You can tell she was in love with him because she chose to spend her final hours with Spike when she could have spent them with Angel.) When she finally admitted it, Spike just couldn't believe she did and that's what lead to the statement "No, you don't". |
| 176 | *** Yeah, right. Barely episodes before that Buffy referred to Angel by saying "I loved him more than I will ever love anything in this life!" She wouldn't have said that if she cared very deeply about Spike. I don't think Buffy was ever in love with Spike, or if she was it wasn't the kind of obsessive all-encompassing need that Spike defined love as. |
| 177 | *** Love doesn't work the way you think it does. Just because she loved Angel ''more than anything'' doesn't preclude her from loving someone else. How do you think people end up remarrying after a spouse dies? |
| 178 | *** No, I'm sorry, but love doesn't work the way ''you'' think it does. You can love someone, and have them die, and then fall in love again, and I understand that it's possible to love both of them. But if she loved Angel ''more than'' Spike, with both of them alive, it's pretty clear he's getting the short end of the stick - just like Riley. You can't love someone completely if you're still more involved with someone else. |
| 179 | *** You don't have to love someone ''completely'' to love someone. Quoth Wesley in the other series, a lot of peope have to make do with ''acceptable'' happiness. Just because she was still in love with Angel doesn't mean she felt absolutely nothing towards Spike. Love isn't a FalseDichotomy where you either '''completely love someone with all your heart or soul''' or could care less if they went off and died tomorrow; there are degrees of love. What Buffy had with Angel was fluffy puppy teenage love, the kind of love that seems perfect and absolute and eternal, and it's important to note that Angel was the one that ended it; Buffy still loved him, he's the one that walked away. What Buffy had with Riley was a nice, normal boyfriend and a nice, normal life that she can't handle because of who she is. What Buffy had with Chip!Spike was a mutually destructive exercise in futility, which both Buffy and Spike called it out on at different times. What Buffy had with Souled!Spike was hard, painful, and complicated, the kind of relationship that can either be grown into, or broken apart, because it needs time to develop into something real. Of course Buffy loved Angel more than any of the other relationships here. He was her first love, her first sexual experience, and her perfect teenage puppy love. That doesn't preclude her from ever loving again, and it certainly doesn't mean that Angel was the ''right'' relationship for her. Even Buffy herself notes this in her Cookie Dough speech. |
| 180 | *** She didn't love him, she found him comforting. Guy tried to rape her, soul or no soul you don't come back from that. Whether she loved Angel or not, more complex. But she didn't NEED either by that point. Cookie dough and all that jazz. But yeah, Spike fell for her from that creepy stalker bit in the Bronze in "School Hard." It's Spike's tragedy to love women who can't love him back, Cecily, Drusilla, Buffy, Fred... |
| 181 | *** ...No it isn’t. Dru loved him, just not monogamously, and he was never ''in love'' with Fred in the first place. The argument that Buffy only found him “comforting” is plain false. Did she look comforted by him babbling incoherently in the church? You think she found him comforting when he was tied to a chair and begging to be killed? Fact is, Buffy went out of her way to protect and support him long before he was functioning well enough to return the favour. It wasn’t because he was comforting, it was because she cared about him. Would I say he outranked Angel by the end of season 7? No. She was only beginning to truly love him, she’d only known him with his soul for a year, and had known Angel for 7. [[spoiler: But in the comics, the tables eventually turn, and with both of them alive and ensouled, she chooses Spike. Her season 12 MaybeEverAfter is teased to be with him too.]] By then, he could easily justifiably be called her SecondLove. |
| 182 | *** It's odd how everyone rags on Spike for that and conveniently forgets Xander did exactly the same thing. Except without spending a year in a horribly abusive (both ways) relationship with her first. |
| 183 | *** Of course Xander was under the control of an evil hyena spirit at the time. Spike has no such excuse. |
| 184 | *** Yes he does. He's a vampire. Vampires have evil demons in them that make them ''evil''. |
| 185 | *** In addition to being a vampire, it's the fact that Buffy and Spike were in an extremely unhealthy yes/no sexual relationship for a year beforehand, in which it was firmly established that the word "no" is foreplay and actually means "yes". How was he supposed to know she actually meant it this time? What Spike did was still wrong, but it isn't like he just got up one morning in a raping mood; it was simply the endcap to a whole sequence of wrong events for which neither Buffy nor Spike can be considered to be 100% responsible for. |
| 186 | *** One thing I've found weird is how people are willing to forgive Angel's actions as Angelus but are unwilling to see that ensouled Spike is no more responsible for the attempted rape than Angel is responsible for Angelus killing Ms Calendar. I think Buffy is more than capable of making that distinction. |
| 187 | *** The Scooby's are actually still hesitant about Angel even after he gets his soul back, particularly Xander and Giles early on. It's also of note that Angel had decades of time as an ensouled vampire, feeling remorse and resentment for his deeds to the point of changing as a person, essentially cultivating an entirely separate persona from Angelus, making the distinction between who is and isn't guilty of the murders seem to fit. Spike was just Spike with a soul. His personality, mannerisms, attitude, etc. didn't really change, he just became racked with guilt for his deeds. So unlike Angel and Angelus who you could legitimately excuse as a case of mystical DID at that point, Ensouled!Spike was still the Spike that tried to rape her months earlier, just with the new-found ability to feel bad about it. |
| 188 | *** No he isn't. Spike is only similar to himself when soulless on the superficial level of retaining the demon's bad boy style. There's tons of differences in how he presents himself post-soul; [[note]] his once-genuine confidence is a smokescreen to hide a ''raging'' InferioritySuperiorityComplex; he's capable of genuine selflessness; his obsessive qualities are replaced with CourtlyLove. [[/note]] Angel ''really'' isn't as different from Angelus as you say; Angel also shares Angelus' personality and mannerisms, Angelus is just ''so unyieldingly malicious'' (and his mannerisms aren't as distinct as Spike's in general) that it doesn't seem like it. Angelus is evil Angel, Soulless!Spike is evil Ensouled!Spike. The two entities feel they are but aren't the same, because they share memories and key personality traits but the ensouled versions are legitimately ''incapable'' of the things their soulless counterparts have done. Seeing Red wouldn't have happened any more with ensouled!Spike than Jenny's death would have with Angel. |
| 189 | *** The Angel/Angelus "separate entity" stuff is more a result of bad writing in Angel's Season 4 than anything. Since the beginning of Buffy and in most Angel's seasons it is clear that Angelus is just Angel without a soul (which is not an entity itself). In many instances of Angel's series (especially in Season 2, 3 and 5) you can see glimpses of his darkness (Angelus) coming through, making it clear they are the same person/entity/character/whatever. Angel and Angelus personalities are not stark different as many people say. Angel in Season 5 shows this very well. If you compare Angelus in Buffy Season 2 to Angel in Angel's season 5 there isn't much difference, except that he is one of the "good guys" now. He also talks about his pasts deeds as Angelus as himself, sometimes in a very nonchalant way. |
| 190 | *** Actually, in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E7LieToMe Lie to Me]]" - just a few episodes before Angel lost his soul- Buffy flat out says that a vampire is a demon walking around in a human corpse. It has all of their memories, and seems to be a blank slate of sorts otherwise, but it isn't the same entity. Angel just has a GuiltComplex, probably in part stemming from the fact that the only reason he is a vampire is that, in life, he was a useless drunk with a weakness for the ladies, and the black sheep of the family as a result. That and killing said family. Basically, he blames Liam for Angelus. |
| 191 | *** The ability to feel bad about it is ''all'' that separates a vampire without a soul from their human counterpart. If Spike had had a soul ''it wouldn't have happened.'' He is not responsible for the event at all. The reason he didn't change much is because, unlike Angel, he realized ''it wasn't his fault.'' Spike doesn't feel guilty for the crimes he committed when he didn't have his soul, so he doesn't have the same internal conflict that made Angel and Angelus separate entities. Ensouled!Spike is not the same person, simply because he ''can'' feel bad about it. |
| 192 | *** I'd never argue for a RealLife attempted-rapist the way I argue for Spike, but I think there's a FantasticAesop at work. This being who supposedly lacks a moral compass (but despite that has been ''trying'' to learn to act morally, if only to avoid offending Buffy) gets blamed for failing to act in a consistently moral manner. The act chosen to convey his internal flaws isn't something a souled being wouldn't have done[[note]]in the last 24 hours, how many RealLife humans have raped their friends and co-workers, anyway?[[/note]]. If you consider "moral compass isn't working" to be a serious handicap, then Buffy's toying with him all season was even more out-of-line than it seems on the surface. And if Spike mostly learns things like a Pavlov's dog (which you could reduce him to, by some accounts), then Buffy ''trained him'' to disregard her repeated denials, and he had no natural resources to make him think "Oh wait, this isn't how it's supposed to be done" (and no natural relationships to weigh it against). Every time I watched that scene, I was struck by how there wasn't a moment there where he ''meant'' to do wrong by her; it's only once she kicks him away that he even realizes she really didn't want him right then. I call communication failure, not wrongdoing on Spike's part. |
| 193 | *** This 100%, any other scenario and I would have never forgiven him, but within the rules of the buffyverse vamps and that alone, he sincerely hadn't intended to hurt her. What happened was still horrible and wrong, of course, but their relationship had treated violence, insults and disregard for both of their consent as foreplay for ''months'' by that point. He was soulless and thus the lines of what is and isn't acceptable had become impossible for him to navigate when he could no longer read Buffy's reactions accurately. When she kicked him away and he saw her crying, ''that's'' when it occurred to him that he really had been forcing himself on her. [[note]] You'll notice, the first thing he does when she kicks him is look shocked and babble out "I wasn't going to--!". He hadn't realized that no meant no for real this time, and had assumed things would just turn into sex like it always had. The issue the scene is supposed to highlight is that Spike having to use others around him to dictate right and wrong was an unreconcilable problem, as people don't always react in their own best interests and can't healthily be used in such a manner without something internal to also help lead him. [[/note]] |
| 194 | *** It doesn't help that the series repeatedly contradicts its own [[OurSoulsAreDifferent vague definition of "soul"]]. The human characters (with, at times, the show's blessing) claim Spike can't be a good man, but he manages heroic sacrifices and many other good qualities well in advance of the soul. They claim he can't love, but devoted love was his defining trait literally from Day One. |
| 195 | *** Actually, it's not contradicts itself, they're just wrong. The way a vampire works is a demon possesses a body and the soul leaves it. Each demon is an individual who bases their personality on the person they are now in control of, normally taking it up to eleven. For example, Willow, while not knowing it, is bi/gay (whichever it is) and has a mean/sadistic side. Vampire Willow takes the sadism and bisexuality to 11, as well as her innocence at the same time. Spike was a hopeless romantic in life. Take that up to 11 and combine it with over 100 years of evil and modern Spike is easily explained. Liam was a hedonist in life. Angelus was essentially the same, but with douchebaggery substituted for sadism because vampires enjoy pain. So on and so forth. |
| 196 | *** In short, the demon Flanderizes you. |
| 197 | ** It's important to keep in mind that none of the human characters have ever been a soulless vampire, nor have most if not all of the human Watchers who passed on this information, nor the haround and just helpless enough that the thought of killing him in cold blood left a bad aftertaste, and after Intervention, he was one of the gang. |
| 198 | ** Spike was supposed to be a disposable villain, but, storyline aside, he lived basically because the fans liked him too much. Legions of Spike fangirls would've had Joss' head. Spike was a replacement Angel, filling in the spot of a guy who'd been around a long, long time who was trying to live with what he did, but with more snark and bleached hair. |
| 199 | *** Actually, Joss stated in interviews that Spike was more meant to be a replacement for Cordie, just as Anya replaced Oz. AlphaBitch to FullyEmbracedFiend seems like a big jump, but he largely does fulfill her role; he added a dissident voice to the now homogeneously lawful-good guys and offered BrutalHonesty when needed. In season 4, Riley more squarely fits the role of "Angel-replacement", at least where character dynamics are concerned. |
| 200 | ** He was a replacement Angel, but InUniverse too. Buffy had enjoyed the advantages of a supernatural partner backing her up with Angel and Faith, but once they're out of the picture Spike is the only alternative. Buffy knows from experience that there'll be times when she's out of action, outnumbered, or simply can't be everywhere at once. Furthermore because Buffy hates Spike she'd assume there wouldn't be the same emotional 'complications'. |
| 201 | ** Spike suggests that Buffy can't stake him because "You like men who hurt you. You need the pain we cause you. [[ThePowerOfHate You need the hate. You need it to do your job, to be the Slayer]]." While this can apply to their destructive romance in Season 6, it can also apply to Season 5 when Buffy is worried that she's becoming an emotionally shut-down killer. |
| 202 | * First, it's because they're trying to find out about The Initiative from him. Then, it's simply because he's helpless and for all his big talk, he can't touch them. Spike may have ''tried'' to kill them before, but by season 4 he's never been successful so there's no serious bad blood there. Buffy can justify stakings if she's literally being attacked, but it's going to feel a little [[BuffySpeak murder-y]] when the guy can't fight back. Eventually, it's because he's extra muscle and an asset. Remember, in season 4, they've lost Oz, Cordie and Angel all in pretty close concession. Willow and Tara are still relative newcomers to magic, so they don't have much combat utility yet. All of the fighting falls squarely on Buffy's shoulders now without Faith or Angel around, so Spike's fighting skills (which are even better than Angel's, and thus nothing to stick their noses up at even if everyone hates him) make him worth keeping around. It's implied they probably ''would'' have staked him for "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerSE20TheYokoFactor The Yoko Factor]]" if he hadn't stepped in to save them last minute. |
| 203 | ** Beyond that, by season 5, I think whether she actually ''liked'' him or not, Spike had, just through proximity to herself and her friends, humanized himself. He did this more than Angel because Angel still had that clear line of delineation between himself and the average vampire, and without that line, he was just as bad if not ''worse'' than other vampires. Spike didn't have such a line, but still offered insight into vampires as ''people'' with thoughts and feelings. He provoked a new moral quandary; there's a person in there somewhere who's been twisted into a demon and he is not evil by choice, but by a nature that he can't really help. How right is it to murder someone, a person who you know and have worked with, when they couldn't fight back based on what they ''could'' do? I don't find it that hard to understand why she'd struggle to find it in her to stake him at that point. He's been too close for too long. |
| 204 | [[/folder]] |
| 205 | |
| 206 | [[folder: Sexy Vampire Sex]] |
| 207 | * As we all know, Buffy has slept with Angel and Spike. However, vampires are explicitly stated to have no pulse, and, we can surmise, no blood flow. If the penis engorges by increased flow of blood to it, how the hell could a pair of beings with no blood flow "get it up"? No amount of Viagra would solve that problem. |
| 208 | ** On a related note, they are also mentioned to have no body heat, so wouldn't having sex with them be uncomfortably cold? |
| 209 | *** No more so than sitting on a couch naked. They should pick up whatever temperature is around, and this is California. Also, some people LIKE the cold... you know, that way. |
| 210 | *** Back up a bit. How is it that Buffy and Dawn each ''kissed'' a vampire without noticing his lips were cold? |
| 211 | *** In Dawn's case, they were outside on Halloween night. A normal human's lips might have been pretty cold as well. Buffy and Angel were inside, but it was night then as well. |
| 212 | *** In the ''Angel'' episode with the blind assassin, it's shown that vampires' muscles do generate some heat when they move, so maybe sex gets them warm. |
| 213 | *** Spike implies in "Normal Again" that yes, Buffy ''does'' in fact have a cold fetish and he and Buffy have used ice during sex before. "Put ice on her neck, she likes that." Given their relationship, it's not difficult to parse out why he knows that. |
| 214 | ** At one point Spike taunts Buffy that she must like that about vampires (the cold body thing, not the lack-of-erection thing). |
| 215 | ** Vampires are dead bodies magically animated by a demon inside. ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' was a show that had werewolves, a giant preying mantis that ate virgins, robots, and a Hellgod. Conceivably, vampires getting erections is one of the ''least'' improbable aspects about the show. |
| 216 | *** Also, vampires definitely have at least some blood flow: witness Spike and Drusilla's bloodplay in "School Hard". How that squares with not having a pulse is another question... |
| 217 | ** They have enough blood flow to move. Really if they had absolutely no blood flow, rigor mortis would set in. They also have enough blood flow to become drunk and for Spike to incapacitate Dru by stopping the blood flow to her brain. It's demonic magic, they have blood flow of some kind, they just don't use their heart to do it. |
| 218 | *** Bearing in mind that the Dru thing is a FanWank to explain how Spike manages to strangle her into subconsciousness when she doesn't breathe. On the subject of massive misfires regarding vampires not breathing, lets look at how Angel can't do CPR, yet he can ''smoke''! |
| 219 | *** When you strangle someone unconscious, you're not cutting off their air supply - that would take ''minutes'' to render anyone unconscious. You're cutting off the blood flow to their brain by squeezing the carotid arteries. That's not the problem here. The problem is that if she doesn't breathe, her blood isn't oxygenated anyway. |
| 220 | *** Smoking merely requires you to be able to able to inhale and exhale ''anything''. Artificial respiration requires you to be exhaling a specific gas (notably, carbon dioxide - it helps trigger the breathing reflex) in addition to the oxygen you're trying to get into the recipient. Vampires are capable of the former, but lacking actual functioning metabolism, not the latter. |
| 221 | *** Even if a vampire's exhaled air has the same composition as normal atmospheric air, it ought to be better than the increasingly-deoxygenated air that's sitting in an unconscious person's lungs. Heck, that's what "bagging" a patient with one of those plastic squeeze-bulbs is for: it may not help stimulate their taking a breath, but at least it'll keep the person from ''dying'' on the spot. |
| 222 | *** And he can have breath warm enough to cause condensation in cool air, as shown when he dug himself out of his grave! |
| 223 | *** And vampires' ability to talk? You know they never even mentioned why they could see him at all. |
| 224 | *** And how come The First tortured Spike... by holding his head underwater? Am I just not getting something here or is that scene completely ridiculous? |
| 225 | *** Playing to his vanity? Dunking his head in water must be hell on his hair! |
| 226 | *** Think about it, vampires have enhanced reflexes. There's no line about only some being enhanced, or some no longer existing. One human reflex is freaking the hell out when water is in your lungs. There's a liquid you can breathe. People still freak out at first while it fills your lungs. There's no reason to assume that vampires wouldn't freak out ten times as much when drowning, even though they'll be fine. |
| 227 | *** Apparently the water Spike was tortured with in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E10BringOnTheNight Bring on the Night]]" was intended to be holy water (probably supplied by Caleb), but the sfx team forgot to add the smoke effects. |
| 228 | ** Probably just carelessness, but there is one plausible explanation (or HandWave) in that motion would make a disturbance on the thermal scanner, so the moving "cold object" would tip them off. Of course, this doesn't explain why he showed up as a ''person-shaped blob'' of blue, but that could be so that the viewer clearly saw what they were talking about on the interface. |
| 229 | *** In "[[Recap/AngelS01E21BlindDate Blind Date]]", it's shown that vampires create heat when they move. |
| 230 | *** That was not "heat vision" it was "sound vision". It just wasn't done very well (first season budgets being what they are). Think of what was visually represented in that episode as another version of how Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} "sees" things. |
| 231 | [[/folder]] |
| 232 | |
| 233 | [[folder:Consecrated Ground]] |
| 234 | * If consecrated ground burns vampires, how do they dig their way out of graves without huge problems? I'd think it would function like holy water, where touching it just burns but too much can dust... did they just forget? |
| 235 | ** I'm pretty certain it was never stated that consecrated ground hurts vampires. They're often seen in churches, for one thing. The only time any vampire grave caused trouble was when the Master's minions went to dig up his skeleton, and that was because Giles, Willow and Xander had performed a mystic ritual over the grave. |
| 236 | *** That's the incident I was talking about-- the vampires digging up the Master say (with hands smoking) "The ground is consecrated-- it burns!". But I guess maybe it's Willow, Xander, and Giles' extra protection, not the consecration, that's doing it. I guess it just seems like the vampires should know that. |
| 237 | *** This troper interpreted that what they meant by "consecrated" was "lots of holy water poured on the spot". Why should vampires necessarily use the standard meaning of the word, when it has much more significant meanings to them; stuff that hurts them by mystical means without being explicitly enchanted, like crosses and the holy water. |
| 238 | *** Maybe the consecration of graves is a specific spell that Christians once used (similar to the way the blessing used on holy water is an anti-vampire charm, and they used it as part of the funeral ceremony in place of putting all of their corpses face-down or head-down or putting burnt ash or a bag of some specific flower's petals in the grave dirt). Most funerals just don't do the spell properly any more, and if they do it's because of a fortunately placed bit of preformer error. |
| 239 | *** "Consecration" simply means "to associate with something sacred." Some books on Wicca, for example, refer to the consecration of one's tools. When Giles and co perform a ritual over the grave, they ''are'' consecrating it by associating with a sacred deity...just not necessarily the same deity the majority of Earth's population is familiar with. |
| 240 | * Maybe it does, and some (or even many) vampires simply burn up before they even dig their way out of the ground completely. It would explain why vampires haven't taken over the world, considering how many of them seem to make vampires on a whim. |
| 241 | [[/folder]] |
| 242 | |
| 243 | [[folder:Vampire Heart Removal, Stake Immunity]] |
| 244 | * This isn't really [=BtVS=]-specific, but applies to all vampires. Vampires die/dust if they get a wooden stake to the heart, right? But since vampires have no pulse, their heart doesn't actually have any biological function. So why doesn't some vampire get a vampire surgeon to cut him open and remove his heart. Then he'd be immune to stakes, right? Even huge great support beams. Throw a blanket over your head and it's as good as the Ring of Amarra. |
| 245 | ** ...watch ''Angel''. That actually happened in one episode. He was invincible for a few hours, then inevitable death. Apparently vampires do need their hearts to live. Biology be damned, this is ''mystical''. |
| 246 | ** The canonical comic ''Tales of the Vampires'' had a vampire who replaced had his heart replaced with a silver one... which somehow let him go out in the sun and removed the inevitable death part of simply removing the heart, but still allowed him to be killed by decapitation and (presumably) immolation... it never really elaborated why it works like that or why more vampires don't do it. |
| 247 | ** It's not the biological function of the heart that's important. It's a mystical thing. Destroy the heart, destroy the vamp. In fact in the Old World of Darkness there was a power that would let a vamp remove his/her heart and bury it in a jar and it would make them more or less invincible. But if the heart were destroyed the vamp would die. And you can't watch it 24/7. |
| 248 | *** Serpentis 5, 'The Heart of Darkness' if anyone's interested. |
| 249 | ** It's possible that while putting a vampire's heart in a block of lead in a cement-filled sinkhole would prevent staking, it would also remove the heart from its owner's field of personal space and allow it to be magically immolated with as much ease as a cow heart in the next room. |
| 250 | * Why not have a demon surgeon open up your chest, put a mold that's about three inches larger than your heart around it with a funnel, pour in molten steel and let it harden? Instantly unstakeable. |
| 251 | ** Leaving aside the entire issue of molten steel and vampire flammability, it would likely be hideously uncomfortable, painful, and not much use anyway. So the Slayer jams a stake in your chest and finds out it doesn't work? Next stop, she just breaks your shins, flips you over face-down, and stakes you from behind. And if that doesn't work, she cuts off your head or sets you on fire. |
| 252 | *** Assuming you haven't already torn her head off during her ill-advised staking attempt. Not to mention the fact that the staking attempt would be no more successful from behind if the heart is ''encased'' in steel. |
| 253 | *** Given that Slayers are stronger and tougher than most vampires, I think this would only matter if it were done by a "name" highly skilled vampire. Also, molten metal will burn/melt flesh; a much better idea would be to forge the metal protection plate outside the body, and screw it together inside the chest cavity. |
| 254 | *** Painful, expensive, requires specialized help, and works a maximum of one time (as the next attempt to kill the vampire in question will quite sensibly involve cutting his head off or setting him on fire)... yeah, its not a mystery why most vampires don't bother. |
| 255 | *** Will be like asking why vampires don’t use a metal collar around the neck to avoid beheading or use fire-proof cloth to avoid burning. Probably vampires don’t go around expecting to be kill, in a similar way on how humans don’t use helmets or bulletproof vests unless they are in a special situation that requires it. |
| 256 | [[/folder]] |
| 257 | |
| 258 | [[folder:Crosses and Holy Water]] |
| 259 | * In ''Buffy'', vampires have existed since before the crucifixion. At what point did crosses become harmful to them? And holy water, for that matter...? |
| 260 | ** Perhaps it's incidental. A bunch of Romans mages got together and decided on a symbol to ward off vampires and settled on crosses because they're relatively common and easy to make. Then Jesus got nailed to one and everyone started wearing 'em, because nothing pleases someone more than seeing a representation of their method of execution. Couldn't say holy water. |
| 261 | *** And maybe the Romans executed people by crucifying them because that was a sure-fire way to prevent them from becoming vampires. If a crucified person was becoming a vampire, the cross would either kill the demon before they could turn fully, or kill the vampire once they were turned (and still stuck on the cross.) |
| 262 | ** Maybe they don't harm vampires because they're holy; they're holy because they harm vampires. Whatever property these objects have that causes them to harm vampires was considered confirmation that they were, in fact, holy. |
| 263 | *** Also, ([[RealLife IRL]]) crosses were a symbol of a sun god before they were a Christian symbol. Maybe they were considered sacred to the sun god because they damaged vampires in a way similar to the sun. |
| 264 | ** Maybe it's backed up by belief, and anything considered holy by a sufficiently large quantity of people has that effect on vampires. They use crosses in the show, because the Watchers, as well as the residents of Sunnydale, are from a predominantly Christian culture and thus naturally assume that crosses are holy, and use them. To my knowledge, it's never verified that other popular holy symbols don't work. It only even comes up when Willow brings up that the Rosenbergs might not appreciate having crosses nailed to their walls, and at that point in the show, she probably wouldn't think to question Giles. It is entirely possible that if she had tried nailing a Star of David to her wall or brandishing a menorah, it would have worked just as well. |
| 265 | *** Except that a Star of David or a menorah wouldn't have any of the power of a cross, because neither has the power in Judaism that a cross has in Christianity. The symbols are just effective signs of the religion the way an M is for UsefulNotes/McDonalds, not actually believed to hold any power. There are actually remarkably few analogues for a Christian cross in the modern world--a symbol that is ascribed holy power in an of itself. Most of the others from history belong to pre-Judeo-Christian religions--which are often shown to be pro-demon in the Buffyverse. |
| 266 | *** The interesting part is that Christianity is not the only religion that uses the Cross as a symbol and not all Christian Churches use the same kind of Cross either. The Orthodox Cross is [[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:OrthodoxCross.svg like this]]. Would be interesting to see if the Orthodox Cross affects vampires or not and/or if the Cross from another religion like the Ankh does. |
| 267 | ** Before it became a Christian symbol, the cross was a symbol for the sun, and in magic a symbol for a thing can stand in for the real thing. Another ancient symbol for Christianity is the fish. Imagine a meeting of early Christians debating what their primary symbol should be. In the middle of the debate between the cross, and the fish proponents a bunch of vampires attack. The fish proponents wave their fishes at the vampires and get eaten. The cross proponents survive. |
| 268 | ** Even the vampires don't know for certain. The Master, a vampire who is probably older than Christianity, wonders why he is so afraid of crosses while staring Turok-Han, just that the Turok-Han and vampires came from the same source: the last Old One. The Turok-Han were probably the foot soldiers in that particular Old One's army, created from a portion of its power. Later on, the same Old One used the last of its power in a different way, to infect human beings and change them into vampires. So the vampires and Turok-Han come from the same source and could be considered relatives, but, just like humans and Neandethals, neither one evolved from the other. |
| 269 | *** Vampires are TheVirus. This leaves plenty of room for evolution. |
| 270 | *** Evolution requires mutation. As far as we can tell, being sired by a vampire means acquiring all the standard strengths and weaknesses of vampirism, even with exceptional circumstances. Drusilla, for example, sired Spike, but he doesn't acquire any of her extra superpowers. Nor does Darla, who was sired by the Master. The only exception is Sam Lawson, sired when Angel had a soul and thus unable to take sadistic pleasure in the various vampiric atrocities, but that was an exceptionally unique case, and we don't know if Sam would have passed his "condition" down if he had sired anyone else. In short, vampires can't evolve because vampirism never changes: being sired is being sired, and you always get the same situation afterwards. |
| 271 | *** Though the fact that having a soul effects the vampires one sires suggests that the human side does have at least a tiny bit of influence on vampirism, and humans are theoretically a constantly evolving species. It would at least lead to vampires having different mental capabilities and initial physical structures as time goes on. |
| 272 | *** The only other vampire sired by someone with a soul that gets a lot of screen time is Holden Webster, Buffy's vamped classmate from "Conversations With Dead People". While he does seem a bit friendlier than the typical vamp, he's also pretty unapologetically evil in a way that Sam wasn't. It's possible that Sam is just an anomaly, or that the gypsy curse got passed onto him when he was sired. Which isn't really a mutation of the vampirism virus, but an artifact of the curse. |
| 273 | *** Regarding mutation, why do you assume LamarckWasRight about vampires? Skills acquired by a human before or after he became a vampire have no reason to be inherited by the next victim, nor is this necessary for the evolution of vampires. [[SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic Testing the existence of mutations would require bringing many vampires to Pylea in order to reveal the true form of their inner demons and then hunt for differences among them]]. |
| 274 | *** That's the point. The discussion was initially about whether vampires can evolve, with one commenter suggesting that, since vampirism is TheVirus, that means that they can. I suggested that they ''can't'', because every vampire we observe being vamped gets the exact same powers and weaknesses, without exception, regardless of the circumstances. The reason the idea of Lamarck being right came up is because that's the only way for vampires to even ''potentially'' evolve. As it is, though, that's not the case. Vampirism can't change, so it doesn't evolve. |
| 275 | *** And I answered by pointing out that, since we don't see the demons within, we can't compare them. In Series/StargateSG1, all goa'uld hosts had [[GlowingEyesOfDoom glowing eyes]], a [[EvilSoundsDeep deep voice]] and a [[HealingFactor healing factor]]. But goa'uld symbiotes, while similar, didn't look all exactly the same. On the other hand, now that I think again about it... |
| 276 | ** "As Neanderthals are to human beings, the Turok-Han are to vampires" could mean that the Turok-Han were made from Neanderthals or other ancient hominids. In this case, vampire evolution would just be human evolution + vampirism. |
| 277 | * How effective are crosses? Willow nails a cross to her window to prevent Angelus from entering. Apparently, vampires can hold crosses, only getting burnt a little, not to mention that it's okay for them to touch crosses if they just cover their hand (Spike held a cross to see if it has any effect on Harmony.) Sometimes they repel vampires from a reasonable distance, but other times, they can just kick them out of your hand (which Angel has done.) |
| 278 | ** Probably about as effective as a hot pan on you. If someone nails searing metal to their window, you're not going to want to touch it. If you hold it for a short time, you'll only get burnt a little. If you cover your hand, you're fine. If someone is standing over you with hot metal, and holding it toward your face, you'll listen to pretty much anything they care to say, but if you're fighting, you might trust your shoe or boot to protect you, and kick the pan out of their hand. Crosses damage and hurt vamps, this doesn't mean that it's a mystical ward, just something they prefer to avoid. |
| 279 | ** Willow nailing a cross to her wall was part of a specific ritual to "uninvite" a vampire to your home. The cross itself wasn't keeping Angelus out (Willow immediately covered with it a curtain because her Jewish family wouldn't approve), rather it was an ingredient in or focus for the spell that revoked Angel's ability to enter Willow's home whenever he pleased because he had previously been invited in. |
| 280 | [[/folder]] |
| 281 | |
| 282 | [[folder:Vampire Armor]] |
| 283 | * Why does no vampire ever wear armor? Having a piece of wood pushed through their (apparently unnaturally fragile) sternum seems to be one of the few things that can kill them - you would think a stab vest would be a wise acquisition. Some of them (eg. Kakistos and the Master have even been around long enough that old school armour would be something they'd remember, and possibly even been trained to wear. |
| 284 | ** The Master and Kakistos were (probably) cocky. Also, Kakistos was immune to stakes that aren't huge (like support beams). |
| 285 | * I take it we've all noticed how clothes worn by Vampires mysteriously turn to dust with them - unless they're plot related, thus making it easy for the less than cunning members of the Scooby Gang (which might well be all of them) to spot the key item? |
| 286 | ** Stakes sometimes dust too. The rule seems to be that an item doesn't dust only when a living being is directly touching it when the vampire dusts. There are a few exceptions, but that seems to be the standard. |
| 287 | *** Metal seems to survive too. The Order of Unpronounceable Ring in series 2 for instance. |
| 288 | [[/folder]] |
| 289 | |
| 290 | [[folder:Vampire Pain]] |
| 291 | * In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E12Potential Potential]]", Dawn says that vampires 'feel pain, but don't let it deter them'. If this is true then how come Spike's chip can stop him from killing people. |
| 292 | ** The pain from being hit by a regular, non-superpowered teenage girl is probably a lot less severe than an electric shock to the brain. |
| 293 | ** Also, there are different components of how pain is processed in the brain. It's not just processed as a physical sensation but also as an emotional experience. It could be that vampires normally feel the physical sensation without the emotional reaction (kind of like someone on valium - they can feel pain but it doesn't bother them) but the emotional reaction part of the pain processing system is still functional and Spike's brain chip activated that system? (It could also be activated in situations where vampires feel pain from something that actually endangers them - after all, vampires seem to have a pretty normal pain reaction to being burnt by sunlight.) |
| 294 | ** It could also be Dawn was just saying "Vampires are tough, and [[{{Determinator}} don't let pain stop them]] from trying to kill you." They feel pain, but have Demonic SuperStrength. It's not exactly complicated. |
| 295 | ** It's also entirely canon that vampires heal quickly. They're clearly not numb to pain; Angelus is in ''quite'' a lot of pain when Buffy kicked him in the groin, and Spike's chip, as well as several fights he has with Buffy, obviously affected him. However, because vampires heal quickly, they can ''recover'' from the slowdown from an injury very quickly. This doesn't apply to Spike's chip because literally every time he ''tries'' to harm someone, that pain is jolted directly to his brain all over again, negating the healing factor. |
| 296 | [[/folder]] |
| 297 | |
| 298 | [[folder:No Wounds from Stakes]] |
| 299 | * Why does staking never leave a big injury in the vampire's chest? Whenever somebody jams a stake in their hearts, there's never a hole, they seem fine until they dust. Even that time Riley shoved a fake wooden stake in Spike. It wasn't real wood, but it was still sharp and big, Spike should've had a wound from that. Now, there are the usual answers for a question like, and I tried to think them all out. None fit for this show though. It can't be because that'd be too gory, as they've shown some pretty nasty vampire injuries before on Buffy. It couldn't be for special effects, as they have both enough SE power to make the lumpy vampire face, and around mid season 2, they can show the vampire skeleton as they die. They can render bones falling, but they can't make a messy hole on somebody? |
| 300 | ** It wouldn't be that big and messy. Vampires don't have a pulse, so their blood is just kind of there; it wouldn't pour out like it would with a human. The hole in the vampire's shirt would be relatively small, or at least small enough that moving his arms would probably cover the mark in his flesh. Besides, an inch-wide hole just isn't that visible, especially if it closed when the stake was removed, as puncture wounds often do. |
| 301 | [[/folder]] |
| 302 | |
| 303 | [[folder:How long does it take for someone to turn into a vampire?]] |
| 304 | * It seems like the length of time it takes for someone to turn into a vampire depends only on the necessities of the plot. Sometimes they rise after they're buried (Ford, Holden, and many others). Sometimes it's when they're in the funeral home (Theresa, that one woman in early S7). Sometimes it's in the hospital (like in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS5E16TheBody The Body]]"). Sometimes it's within minutes (Jesse and the watcher sired by Zachary Kralik). But it's always because someone rising then serves the plot in some way. It's annoying. |
| 305 | ** It's not within minutes, it's more a matter of hours or days. It was indicated that Jesse was sired at night, after Darla brought him to the Master. Xander and Buffy didn't go after him until the following day, by which point he was merely pretending to be human and to have been attacked, since that was his role as bait. Blair, the Watcher killed by Kralik, was unconscious for awhile - Kralik had to wait for him to wake up after turning him. Also, vampires in funeral homes or hospitals could've been there a while - funeral homes in Sunnydale likely never run out of business and probably have several viewings and bodies to prepare and can't get to all of them in a day. The hospitals are probably equally busy. As for emerging after burial, funerals tend to take place during the day, so the vamp emerges the following night. Yes, it is inconsistent and plot-serving but it's not as bad as you make it out to be. |
| 306 | [[/folder]] |
| 307 | |
| 308 | [[folder:That one vampire crawling up the building in "Deep Down"]] |
| 309 | * What the hell? Why only that one time? |
| 310 | [[/folder]] |
| 311 | |
| 312 | [[folder: Vampires are evil]] |
| 313 | * I get it. It wouldn't be the same show if we had to figure out exactly how evil each vampire is prior to them being staked. If we accept the original story that a vampire isn't a person, everything you were goes to the afterlife and a demon high jacks your body. By about season three we know that simply isn't the case, apparently the only thing that goes away is the ability to know the difference between right and wrong. The thing is my ability to know the difference right and wrong doesn't by definition make me chaotic stupid. For starters there should be a certain amount of vampires who simply like being on the low down not drawing undo attention. We know there are humans who want to be bitten. I know if I was a vampire I would have found that cult of stupid kids and feed just enough and let them go mostly unharmed. It's simply logical. |
| 314 | ** That was dealt with briefly in Season 5. There are vampire groups who feed on willing humans without killing them, and the Watchers' Council generally doesn't bother with alerting the Slayer to them because they're not a threat. Most of the vamps we see in the show are the ones who run into Buffy on the streets while actively hunting for prey, or the ones who get recruited as minions. Others, such as vampire scholar Dalton in Season 2, typically just stay out of the limelight (and out of Buffy's way). |
| 315 | ** It just seems to me that there should be more of them. As far as we can tell demons in the Buffyverse are evil by definition. They're demons but the demons we meet are almost split evenly between good and bad, even more so if you look into Angel. Vampires are pretty much all evil. And I don't think that the council doesn't bother with the vampire feeding houses NORMALLY I think Glory was a sufficient threat that Giles would have ignored them. The council honestly would be wise to encourage said behavior. You do this you don't get slayed. Though to be fair the Council is proven to be dangerously retarded at time. |
| 316 | *** There may well ''be'' more of them - a vampire that lies low and doesn't kill anyone is a vampire that the Slayer has no reason to notice. It's established very early on that Buffy does not in fact have magical vampire radar; she recognizes vampires by their predatory behavior and, in extreme cases, when they vamp out. A vampire with more sustainable feeding habits would probably stay out of her way - for that matter, if a vampire just wants to be left alone, why would they hang around Sunnydale? Most "peaceful" vampires probably leave town as soon as possible. No point in tempting fate by staying in the same town as the Slayer, if you aren't actively trying to use the Hellmouth for something or take advantage of the fact that the mundanes don't really notice when people turn up dead or missing in Sunnydale. |
| 317 | *** Buffy is SUPPOSED to have magical vampire radar though. In both the movie (which is supposed to be at least semi-cannon) but also in the series proper it's pointed out that Buffy should be able to pick a vampire out of a crowd and NOT because their fashion sense is twenty years out of date. Considering Giles expects her to simply be able to do it naturally it's kinda off that NO Slayer we've seen is capable of this seemingly basic Slayer ability. |
| 318 | *** This was explicitly stated by Giles in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E1WelcomeToTheHellmouth Welcome to the Hellmouth]]". Something about how Buffy should "just ''know'', without looking, without thinking about it". One possibility is that Buffy is just really bad at using the mental parts of the Slayer Power Package. The potentials in S7 are pretty much ''all'' shown to be better than Buffy was at drawing on the collective instincts and skills of the Slayer heritage. |
| 319 | [[/folder]] |
| 320 | |
| 321 | [[folder: Vampire breath]] |
| 322 | * Okay, so after Buffy drowns in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS1E12ProphecyGirl Prophecy Girl]]", Angel says he can't perform CPR because he has no breath. However, there are times when vampires are shown to be breathing, Spike in particular. He breathes hard after he and Buffy are done screwing, and the Ubervamp is able to enact drowning torture on him, both of which shouldn't happen if he doesn't breath. I can live with it, it's just kinda weird... |
| 323 | ** There were a few details about vampires the show gradually changed after Season 1, and the breath thing's apparently one of them. At the time the writers figured vampires don't breathe (presumably being able to speak was meant to be a mystical thing) and then later they decided that they do breathe, they just don't need to. For the in-story explanation, maybe there's a supernatural element to a vampire's breath that keeps CPR from working: the air they exhale can't give life because they're not alive. Air is air in the real world, but vampires follow their own mystical rules, and maybe that's one of them. |
| 324 | ** I think it's a combination of the writers being a bit random and the disadvantage of working with real people. Of course Spike was breathing hard after sex. How else were we to know what happened? Was Buffy gonna show up with the money shot still in place? As for the drowning torture is possible that it's psychological and something that's simply drilled into the human part of his mind. You know in the same way that there are lots of people who are afraid to fly even though its safer than driving. Something in our minds is simply hard wired that flying is wrong. |
| 325 | ** And then there is "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS2E22BecomingPart2 Becoming Part 2]]" where Spike renders Drusilla unconscious by putting her in a choke hold... |
| 326 | ** The water-torture scene was supposed to be with holy water, but they forgot to add the smoke effects. The vampires obviously need to intake air to talk, and presumably simulate breathing out of habit even if they don't really need oxygen to survive. It does make the "no CPR"-thing pretty hard to explain, though. |
| 327 | *** Angel was panicking and blurted out the first thing that came to mind in response to the idea "vampire gives CPR". Or maybe he just didn't know how to do CPR and didn't want to admit that in front of Xander. |
| 328 | ** Even if you do not require oxygen, inhaling water is still very very painful. The only trouble with using drowing to torture a vampire, is forcing them to inhale. |
| 329 | ** Vampires would probably still breathe as an ingrained reflex, but they do not ''technically'' need it to survive. They're still walking around in demonized human bodies with demonized human brains, after all, and our brains are wired to keep us automatically breathing when we aren't actively thinking about it. This would explain Angel and Spike very clearly getting winded from time to time--their brains are telling them they should be winded, so they instinctively act out the physiological response to it even though they aren't actually. As noted, the water torture was meant to be with Holy Water, leaving that point moot. However, with sex, I imagine it's likely that Spike's brain simply tells him the fact that he's exerting himself = heavy breathing. He could, in theory, hold his breath and continue on like it's nothing, but he'd have to put active effort into it. |
| 330 | [[/folder]] |
| 331 | |
| 332 | [[folder: Possession]] |
| 333 | * In the episode with the evil tattoo demon, the demon can't possess Angel since he's a vampire and thus already kind of possessed, but in a later episode featuring a pair of ghosts, one of them has no problem taking him over. |
| 334 | ** Maybe a ghost is different from a demon? When the demon Eyghon (tattoo dude) attempted to possess Angel, the two demons fought over possession of the body. It isn't that he can't be possessed by another demon its that his demon is going to be really unhappy about this arrangement and fight. However technically Angel has two beings possessing him all the time--the demon and the soul of Liam. Soul of Liam is usually in control and the demon is (apparently) unable to expel it. If a ghost is a soul then maybe the demon is incapable of expelling it just like it is incapable of expelling the soul of Liam. |
| 335 | ** Vampires CAN be possessed, in the example you stated the demon enters Angel's body but is then overpowered by the demon already inhabiting his body. Eygon just lost the fight. |
| 336 | [[/folder]] |
| 337 | |
| 338 | [[folder: Game face]] |
| 339 | * Plot important vampires (Spike, Drusilla, Angelus, Wishverse Willow and Xander) will almost always have they're human face when alone, but vampire mooks seem to have the demon face on unless they're around humans. Why? |
| 340 | ** The Doylist explanation is probably that plot-important vamps are just that, plot important, so it's important that they have human faces so that the audience can more easily recognize/identify them. Also, they're needed a lot more, and it's probably uncomfortable to spend all that time in vamp makeup. The Watsonian explanation is probably that vampire mooks are just that, mooks. They spend most of their time around other demons so they don't need to show their human faces and their job description requires the extras that being vamped out provides. Plot-important vamps interact with humans more so they're probably used to being in human-mode more than they are in vamp mode. |
| 341 | ** Vampires are stronger when they're wearing their game face. Plot-important vampires don't need their game face as much, and most of them are extremely vain. Mooks need their game face to stand a chance against the Slayer and are too busy being mooks to worry about appearances. |
| 342 | ** Maybe vampire mooks wear their game faces all the time so that they'll look tough, while stronger vampires are confidant enough in their power not to bother. Alternatively, it could be that leader-type vampires like being the most attractive person in the room, and so demand their minions stay in ugly bumpy form all the time. |
| 343 | ** The meta explanation is that the producers think ViewersAreMorons, they probably thought that unless they have their vampires faces on we, the audience, won’t know they're vampires and we’ll tell ourselves “What the hell are those guys doing around The Master/Spike/Drusilla/Main Vampire Villain”. |
| 344 | ** On a practical level, it probably allowed for vampire mook actors/stuntmen to be reused more seamlessly. It homogenizes them so you don't really notice when the same vampires show up as random one-off mooks, despite having already been dusted a few episodes ago. Spike, Dru, Angelus, and even Harmony are reoccurring characters and ''meant'' to be recognized by the audience, thus more emphasis is put on their human faces. |
| 345 | [[/folder]] |
| 346 | |
| 347 | [[folder: Bright Colors?]] |
| 348 | * In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E9TheWish The Wish]]", one of the White Hats says that "Everyone knows vampires are attracted to bright colors." So why do they all wear black? |
| 349 | ** My guess is two-fold. First just cus your attracted to something doesn't mean you wear it. I'm attracted to women in short skirts and high heels and other than that one time. . .nevermind. Second I suspect they are just flat wrong. It's possible that vampire seeing is only slightly better than human and that black may just blend better and give you a better chance of going unseen and in a city where you need to be able to run wearing heels is a bit suicidal but my first guess is they are just plain wrong. Certainly nothing we see afterwards supports that claim. |
| 350 | ** If everyone is in dull colors (as in the Wishverse) then those people who wear bright colors will stand out and thus be singled out. It's just that the school kids didn't entirely understand the reasons. |
| 351 | ** There's actually good, fairly scientific reason why vampires would be attracted to bright colors. The way low-light vision works in humans is the rods in your retina detect very low levels of light, and are very sensitive, but they don't perceive color. Vampires have very good low-light vision (necessary for a nocturnal predator, and Angel makes a few comments about being able to see well in near-darkness), so the photoreceptors in their eyes are even more sensitive. Bright colors contrast more against dark backgrounds (what you find at night), so people wearing bright colors are more visible to vampires, and thus more "attractive." [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark#Sight Same reason sharks are attracted to bright colors, despite being actually or functionally colorblind.]] |
| 352 | [[/folder]] |
| 353 | |
| 354 | [[folder: Invitations]] |
| 355 | * Specifically my question regards the plaque above Sunnydale High School, but this folder could probably be used for any other invitation-related questions too. Anywho, the plaque in question reads: "Enter all who seek knowledge" or something like that, which apparently qualifies as an invitation to vampires. (This is the reason that Angelus is able to enter the school without anyone inviting him in, FridgeLogic about a school being considered a residence notwithstanding.) However, the sign is written in Latin, not English. So, if a vampire who didn't understand Latin, or who just didn't understand enough to grasp the message, read the sign, would they find themselves unable to enter? |
| 356 | ** For the answer to this, we'll ignore the fact that the school is a public building; the question here, ultimately, is whether or not an invitation in a language not understood by the vampire will still let him into a residence. To my knowledge, we've never had this situation come up in the story that we've seen. We have, however, seen something similar: when Angelus [[spoiler: murdered Holtz's family]], the little girl that answered the door stepped aside to let him in, gesturing that it was okay for him to enter. This was not sufficient. Even though he understood the welcoming body language, he had to wait for a verbal invitation before he could step over the threshold. This suggests that understanding the invitation is irrelevant; there have to be words. Now, if understanding of the invitation is irrelevant, it could well be argued that an invitation in any language will suffice, so long as the words are spoken or written. While this makes logical sense, however, it is still far from conclusive. |
| 357 | *** It's never confirmed one way or the other that Angel actually needed the verbal invitation. He might not have been in the mood to test it since if he was wrong the gig would have been up. |
| 358 | * Equally interesting question. Why don't vampires spend a little bit of time getting to know their prey? Work with me here for a moment. As Angel proves when Cordi gets an apartment an invitation doesn't need to be made at the moment, you don't even need to own the property at the time. Though Cordi's phrasing leaves that a bit in question. Can you imagine how many "Sure come over anytime" Angel could get spending a night at a club? Sure he'd have to figure out where they lived but it seems worth the pay off. |
| 359 | * On the subject is the garage, assuming it's attached as it is in many houses, considered part of your residence? More specifically does being in the car qualify as an invitation and if it does is it somehow limited to the garage? If for example a vampire got a ride from someone would the magic of the invitation block him prior to entering the garage, prior to entering the house proper or simply bypass it all because someone who opens the garage door with you in their car and drives into said garage has clearly invited you in even if they never verbally said it? |
| 360 | * Why doesn't a person's bedroom qualify as a residence? In ''Angel'' we learn that clearly a hotel room can satisfy the spell since it prevents Angel from entering Fred's room without her express permission. So why doesn't an individual bed room? It doesn't seem to be legal ownership (like in ''Series/VampireDiaries'') because Angel owns the hotel. If it's simply spending enough time then your average teens room should fulfill that requirement. For that matter is Xander's basement considered separate from Xander's parent's home for the purposes of the magic? |
| 361 | ** Permission to enter has to be granted by an individual who lives in the residence. The reason that a hotel room is different than a bedroom is the same way with an apartment. Someone who spends money to stay in a room separates that room from the hotel because they (for all magical intents) are the new owner of the residence. Because hotel rooms are legally the residence of whomever is staying in one, Fred being allowed to stay in one is a polite extension by Angel. The room becomes "hers", outside of the rest of the hotel (which is public property). Similarly, if a person is sleeping over at a friends' house, it =/= a residence. If a person was granted permission to use the house as a residence by whoever owns the house, it = a residence. Bedrooms are considered a part of the house as a whole because they are classified as such by the definition of a house. In the case of Xander, who is renting a room in the basement from his parents and therefore not living in the main house, he can extend an invitation to his basement, but is incapable of extending an invitation to the main house. |
| 362 | *** Make you wonder what happens in socialist countries where there is no private property. |
| 363 | *** Probably the same rules that mean Angel and Spike needed invitations to Buffy and Willow's campus dorm room. The room was technically owned by the university, but it was assigned to and inhabited by Buffy and Willow, which counts more in a mystical context. |
| 364 | *** Angel, at least, needed an invitation into Buffy's dorm room if I recall correctly. It was actually a rather interesting scene, if it did indeed take place at the dorm, where Angel asks Buffy if he can come in, she replies "I guess," Angel looks at the doorframe and replies "I need more than that," at which point Buffy offers a full invitation. This tells us a number of interesting things: One, that vampires can, on some level, "sense" whether they have in fact been invited or not. Two, that a "vague" invitation doesn't count, it needs to be a definitive "yes." Three, that a private residence, however that's defined mystically for purposes of the Invitation, can exist within a public building. Granted, we don't know if Angel needed an invitation to enter the dormitory building, but he did need one to enter Buffy's dorm room within that building, and we've seen other vampires (like Spike) prowling dormitory corridors, so it's likely the dorm itself is considered "public" for purposes of Invitation. I don't recall if it was addressed how Spike entered Buffy and Willow's dorm room when he attempted (and failed) to bite her. |
| 365 | *** Spike got in by simply knocking without saying anything, and Willow, without thinking, invited him in with a verbal "come in". This tells us that the person offering the invitation doesn't need to know who they're inviting in for it to qualify. |
| 366 | [[/folder]] |
| 367 | |
| 368 | [[folder: Combat Skills]] |
| 369 | * This is a point I wondered about quite a lot. How is it that a newly risen vampire is shown with, apparently, a [[Franchise/TheMatrix Matrix]]-style martial arts program installed? Dawn lampshades it in one episode I think. I mean it makes sense for Spike and Angel, they've been alive for a very long time, Spike in particular blends several different styles. From what we've seen of the vamps, there's a fair amount of fighting involved, so it makes sense for them to learn after a while. But for the ones who've just popped out of a grave, how are they throwing kicks and punches like the ones they are? That's not just brawling, that's fairly decent technique. Just wondering |
| 370 | ** While it comes across as technique I think you're overstating it a bit and your Matrix answer was closer to right. We know vampires have super human strength, dexterity and reflexes. It "looks" like good technique but it's probably actually Matrix-Fu and as Buffy proves more often than not they, even after quite a while, aren't on par with a trained fighter with their reflexes and strength. |
| 371 | ** Well, the official explanation for vampirism is that a vampire isn't the actual person who died, it's a demon possessing the person's body, so maybe the demon comes equipped with some fighting skills. |
| 372 | [[/folder]] |
| 373 | |
| 374 | [[folder: Ownership.]] |
| 375 | * Is it ever established at all how ownership technically functions in the Buffyverse? It's demonstrated on Angel for example that you don't own a house and vampires can enter. It's also shown that despite Angel owning the hotel itself Fred owned her room to a sufficient degree that he needed an invite to enter. While it's never shown to work a book store owner threatens to start sleeping in his store to keep vampires from coming and going at will. Would that have worked? More to the point what would happen potentially to a vampire physically on the premises when the title changed hands? While clearly a bunch of children couldn't manage it would the uninvite ritual be made null if Buffy and her friends simply handed the deeds to their homes to the person standing to their right every time they needed to fix this. (That's functionally what they do in Vampire Diaries and True Blood is quite literally play rules lawyer with the magic to keep vamps out. |
| 376 | ** For vampire-inviting purposes, "ownership" seems to require two things -- one, the owner of the property (who can also be you) has agreed that this room/apartment/house/etc, is intended as your permanent place of residence, and two, the property in question must be private property. This explains Fred's room (Angel, the owner of the building, has agreed to rent that room to Fred as the place where she lives full-time), apartments, houses, etc., but also explains why Faith's hotel room and the high school and etc. aren't covered (they're public buildings and/or not intended for permanent residency). |
| 377 | [[/folder]] |
| 378 | |
| 379 | [[folder:World destruction]] |
| 380 | * Why some vampires want to destroy the world and bringing up the Apocalypse? The Master in season one wants to open the Hellmouth and then in season two Angelus, Spike and Drusilla want the world to be absorbed into a hell dimension (even when Spike changes his mind at some point). Why? Vampires need humans to feed and to reproduce, if all humans get killed by demons then they won’t have human blood to feed and starve and they can’t create new vampires. Besides it’s establish that vampires aren’t popular among demons so in a hell dimension and/or a post-Apocaliptic Earth rule by more powerful demons they’ll be exterminate or enslave. |
| 381 | * Well there's two reasons I can see: 1) neither of those apocalypses is actually going to directly kill people. It's just going to make life really really torturous and awful, but humans will still exist. They'll just be terrified all of the time and maybe be easier prey. 2) way back when the First Slayer was created, vampires were subservient to the Old Ones. Maybe some of the demons are inhabiting vampires still have that loyalty. But really, you're right, it's kind of weird that none of them were looking for the sort of apocalypse that brings about eternal night (no, that was done by a demon who I'm pretty sure could go out in the sun....) |
| 382 | ** OK, it does makes sense that not all humans are going to die, but probably many will, if not the majority, so even if it makes them an easier prey, the number of their food source will be reduce drastically. On the loyalty for the Old Ones, well indeed people do crazy thinks out of blind faith, yet in both cases is very risky. |
| 383 | *** Most vampires don't want to destroy the world, pretty much exactly for the reason for you stated. As Spike said, "We like to talk big. Vampires do. 'I'm going to destroy the world.' That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your friends over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You've got... dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people. Billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here. But then someone comes along with a vision. With a real... passion for destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye, Picadilly. Farewell, Leicester Bloody Square. You know what I'm saying?" Vampires aren't just creatures forced to live off blood, they're evil creatures, some more than others. Some, like Angelus, thrive off of doing harm (take what he did to Drusilla; he could have just fed off her but he chose to torment her ForTheEvulz). It was like art to him. Destroying the world would be a masterpiece in destruction. It doesn't need to make practical sense or be a good way to set yourself up for your retirement. It's sort of the reverse of Angel standing up against the Circle of the Black Thorn; he knew there'd be hell to pay and it may not have a longterm gain, but it was a chance to do something that, by his value system, was worth taking hell for. |
| 384 | ** The Master and his Order of Aurelius are established as basically "Fundamentalist" vampires. They're demons who worship the Old Ones and want to do their bidding, and their bidding is "end the world," so that's what they have in mind as a goal. Spike scoffs at this, killing the Anointed One and stating that "We're going to have a little less ritual around here, and a little more fun!" Spike cares about the perks of being an immortal vampire with no conscience, not the great endgame of the high and mighty demonic powers. Likewise, Angelus is shown to have declined joining the Master and his Order since he never really cared about fundamentalist vampire faith, he wanted to travel the world and drink the blood of beautiful maidens. Angelus only really cares about trying to end the world once, in the Season 2 finale of ''Buffy'', and that may be due to everything that had gone on between his ensouled counterpart and Buffy herself. |
| 385 | [[/folder]] |
| 386 | |
| 387 | [[folder:Siring like rabbits]] |
| 388 | * We see several examples of people turning into vampires with no clear indication that they ever drank blood from the vampire turning them: |
| 389 | ** Harmony is bitten in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E22GraduationDayPart2 Graduation Day Part 2]]", did the vampire biting her had time to make her drink her blood in the middle of a battle? |
| 390 | ** We see Buffy patrolling in the Cemetery and basically at least one vampire wake up every night. Yet, siring someone seems to be not only something painful (as a vampire you’ll have to harm yourself in some way to make you bleed) and psychological meaningful (sired vampires have some sort of family relationship as shown in Darla-Angelus-Drusilla-Spike group), so, it’s seems that every vampire feeds of a random victim and then sires him/her no matter or the above said and the victim is then buried and rises. |
| 391 | ** In "Lie to Me", Ford asks to be turn into a vampire in exchange for delivering Buffy to Spike and co., yet Buffy escapes and Spike is angry, it is implied that Spike just want to kill him now, not just turning him as he promessed, yet we later saw that Ford is dead and that he did wakes up as a vampire, so are we suppose to believe that Spike did fulfil his part of the deal even when he didn’t get what he wanted? |
| 392 | *** Yes, Spike did it, Ford did do his part of the deal after all. Spike also left his body behind so Buffy would be able to find and stake him immediately. |
| 393 | ** And of course, the big question; why would vampires want to sire someone? Bringing more vampires into existence will cause more competence and reductions of the food source, something problematic especially in a small town. Is understandable that they sire someone once in a while for different reasons but they seem to sire everyone they bite. |
| 394 | * I think the show doesn’t make it clear but it seems that just take a vampire bite to turn into a vampire, not to drink the vampire’s blood. |
| 395 | ** Well, no, Buffy says in the first episode outright that they need to be fed vampire blood to turn. Buffyverse adapts the classic Dracula method of turning, it's very common vampire lore--the sire has to drain the siree of most of their blood then feed them a substantial amount of their own. We're also later ''shown'' Angel/Liam being turned by Darla this way. If all it took was a bite then Buffy (who was bit by The Master in season 1 and Angel in season 3) and Willow (who was bit by Harmony in season 4) would both be vampires. |
| 396 | * Harmony is a hottie. Reasons to sire here are easy enough to justify, just how there was time is a bit nuts. In Sunnydale Buffy seems to be slaughtering them as quickly as they are made so the idea that vamps are making new vampires simply so there is someone to distract Buffy while they run doesn't seem improbable. The family relationship mentioned is being a bit overstated. The Darla chain which includes the Master appears to be a fairly special case. Granted we don't get to know many vampires well but it doesn't seem to be a mystic bond even among those four. With Ford it boils down to Spike being a man of his word and frustrated though he may be Ford did in fact gift wrap the slayer for him. It was entirely his own fault he couldn't keep her. Finally the series makes it explicitly clear that you have to drink vampire blood to turn. |
| 397 | * It seems vampires sire in order to have a romantic/sexual companion or an underling, if our main line of vamps is any indication. What exactly makes them decide to sire the particular person probably varies; Angelus was obsessed with breaking the pure and sweet Drusilla, and the way Dru talks about William suggests that she likely had a vision about him. Harmony was probably sired, as noted above, for being pretty but it's likely her sire died in the fight, hence she later ends up with Spike. |
| 398 | [[/folder]] |
| 399 | |
| 400 | [[folder: Vampire Hair Growth/Muscle Building]] |
| 401 | * Do vampires grow hair and can they build up more muscle mass post-transformation? It's fairly common vampire mythos that they either don't, or their bodies try to maintain what it looked like when it was turned. Neither seems to be the case here, however. There's an episode in season 3 where Angelus is shown with a moustache, but Liam was cleanly-shaved when he was turned, which means he's either wearing a fake (which is something I absolutely doubt Angelus would do) or it grew out after his transformation. Spike likewise is clearly shown to have his hair grown out in the first episode of season 7, as you can clearly see his dark roots are showing under his bleached hair--which implies he used to be maintaining it, and recently stopped due to going insane. |
| 402 | * Where muscle-mass is concerned, well... seeing as they both fill out the MrFanservice role, we're all very acquainted with the fact that Angel and Spike are both pretty dang cut. However, I find it hard to believe drunken hedonistic Liam or dorky upper-class William would have been secretly shredded underneath their period-appropriate attire. And before anyone says it: Yes, in reality they ''were'' because the actors were, but realistically there's no reason men of their era and station would have physiques like that. They weren't physical labourers; one was a drunken party boy, and the other a shy nerdy poet. That suggests they built the muscle-mass post-transformation instead, which leads to the question of if vampire muscle atrophies? Could they get fat if all they did is drink blood and sit around? |
| 403 | [[/folder]] |
| 404 | |
| 405 | [[folder: Eating Human Food]] |
| 406 | * Spike is shown repeatedly eating actual food from seasons 4-7 but... how does his body even process that? Do vampires still have bodily functions like digestion? Does it even offer sustenance? Does Spike have the vampiric equivalent of pica? |
| 407 | ** No nutrition from non-blood, just taste and texture. |
| 408 | [[/folder]] |
| 409 | |
| 410 | [[folder: Spike's Burial]] |
| 411 | * In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS6E3AfterLife After Life]]", upon seeing Buffy's bloodied knuckles, Spike is quickly able to surmise that she'd clawed her way through her coffin as he's a vampire and thus had to do the same thing when he was turned. However, in "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS7E17LiesMyParentsToldMe Lies My Parents Told Me]]", William's mother expresses that she's been worried sick about him for disappearing for a few days--meaning she wasn't aware he'd been killed, and thus held no funeral. Even back in the 1880's, the authorities would have at least ''tried'' to identify bodies found before burying them namelessly, so it seems far-fetched that William would have been buried before either rising or being identified first. Vampires clearly don't require burial in order to rise, as we've seen several rise while in morgues and funerals, and even Spike's mother herself seems to have been simply left in the house to rise. As such, Drusilla/Angelus/Darla have no reason to bury him and on the contrary, it's easier for them not to bother. So how exactly could he have ended up clawing his way out of a coffin? |
| 412 | ** Over on Angel they established that Drusilla is a fan of giving her 'children' a proper burial so they get the full experience when they rise. |
| 413 | [[/folder]] |
| 414 | |
| 415 | [[folder: Where do the souls go?]] |
| 416 | So vampires are the result of the human soul being replaced by a demon's essence and the demon is not that exact person demonized, but rather a new being built with the blueprint of the original host's memories and personality. Season 2 suggests that the original "consciousness" is with the soul, as Angel is confused upon regaining his and presumably only came to understand the situation after Angelus' memories of the last several weeks/months kicked in later. So where was the soul in the meantime? Was it in heaven? Was it dormant or in purgatory? When getting their souls the first time, did Liam and William remember being in heaven or whatever, or did they only remember just before turning and their immediate surroundings until the demon's memories hit them? |
| 417 | [[/folder]] |
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