Talk:Vampire (Buffyverse)

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I've created an in-depth article on vampires in Buffy Wiki, feel free to extract information from it.--Gonzalo84 00:27, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Lots of references here that I don't recognize, though I've seen all of both series. I'm guessing that you don't really mean to link to Doug Sanders the golfer. —Tamfang 03:53, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
or to a magazine called The Judge. —Tamfang 19:07, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
or to Caligula's sister Drusilla. —Tamfang 19:46, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Indeed. This information needs to be sourced or (not to sound insensitive) it will get the old nip/tuck. In addition, information from non-Joss material (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Buffy/Canon) ought to be sectioned off lower in the article. - Che Nuevara: Join the Revolution 17:16, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] references needed

There's little point in listing "James and Lisbeth" or "the Roman vampires who rescue Angelus" without at least some reference to the relevant stories. —Tamfang 04:46, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Everything I have written in the article comes from the shows. If you don't know where some information comes from send me a message.--Gonzalo84 14:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Every character and every incident mentioned ought to have a link: if the character is too minor to have an entry, link to the episode. The typical reader cannot be expected to remember every incident. —Tamfang 07:58, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
But I guess you'd rather have me ask you for a reference to each and every item you write. Okay, here goes.
  • In what episodes did these characters appear?
  • Penn
  • Punk vampires (linked to Bachelor Party but that page is no help)
  • Knox the skinhead vampire
  • Whip (name should be added to Into the Woods)
  • James and Elisabeth (listed twice?)
  • Carl and rebel vampires (name should be added to All the Way)
  • Cult of Ul'thar
  • Karl and Paco
  • Russell Winters
  • Dodd McAlvy
  • Boone
  • Dick the Pimp
  • Allen Lloyd
  • When did Angel first visit Merl?
  • When did Spike visit Doc?
  • When was Angel poisoned with
    • "a neural paralytic substance"?
    • Calythia?
  • When did Angel visit Jasmine's zealots' homeworld?
  • When did Gunn visit W&H's suburban hell?
  • When did Buffy and Angel share dreams?
  • When were Spike's legs broken – What's My Line, Part Two or in the old days? (I don't remember that his injury in WML was explicitly described.)
—Tamfang 01:11, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
— a few items checked off, Tamfang 19:09, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
  • When did Angel rescue Kate from an overdose?
—Tamfang 23:06, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
— a few more items checked off, Tamfang 18:54, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
—checked off neural paralytic poison --Jwwalker 01:18, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
—checked off Calynthia powder --Jwwalker 03:43, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
—checked off Jasmine's old world --Jwwalker 04:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] humanity or not humanity

I removed this paragraph:

The Judge himself is another proof of the vampire's "humanity", for which he feels nothing but revolting. He's disgusted by Spike and Dru's affection and Dalton's love for knowledge. Yet he considers Angelus "pure" (but this is not from his absolute lack of humanity, but for his absolute lack of concern/affection towards others)

The Judge's statement "there is no humanity in him (Angel)" contradicts the thesis of this section that a vampire takes much of its personality from its human predecessor; to make it even compatible with that thesis (which is supported by pretty much everything else in the series) it must be twisted, as in the parenthesis, into irrelevance. (If the passage is restored, it ought to link to Innocence, not to The Judge (a magazine).) —Tamfang 19:30, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, when did Darla say "what we were informs what we become"? I heard it too, but can't track it down. —Tamfang 19:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

The Prodigal--65.34.221.203 05:04, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] vampiric charisma

So you can read Cordelia's mind, or what? Given that several times we've seen vampires hypnotize humans, why explicitly reject the notion that there's some unnatural charisma mojo goin' on? If you don't buy it why not simply cut it? —Tamfang 05:18, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] facial wrists??

Is that an attempt at spelling rictus, or a mistranslation, or what? —Tamfang 06:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Psychic abilities

"Angel sends his love." I don't think this is a real demonstration of psychic. As I interpreted while watching Phases, she just had the message before she died. After all, she knew from a previous conversation that Angelus knew Buffy decently well. Any other opinions? Ekarderif 16:02, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Andrew Vorba and Psychic Link

Re: "Andrew Vorba (Never Kill a Boy on the First Date) speaks of a "he" that told him to attack the Scoobies and fight Buffy. This "he" could be the Aurelian vampire that sired him, or a figment of his imagination." I thought it was clear that the "he" being referred to was God. Vorba as a human was a hellfire-and-brimstone Christian, and when he felt the vampire blood lust, he probably figured that God wanted him to kill. --Jwwalker 06:34, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

By the way, did Vorba's tattoos include any crosses? —Tamfang 21:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] nicotine

What's the evidence that Spike is "not affected" by tobacco smoke? And then why does he buy the stuff? —Tamfang 04:45, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, he does not show any of the negative side effects assosiated with long term smoking, nor has he been shown to suffer withdrawl symptoms. Of course, that's just off the top of my head. - Majin Gojira 14:02, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
But we've never seen him try to quit, so how do we know he has no withdrawal symptoms? And vampires are undead, so how do we know his lungs aren't charred and he simply functions with charred lungs? ````
At the very least, Spike takes no issue with Faith saying "The big C not a problem" (meaning cancer), but mentions that his teeth might turn yellow after many years. (That's late season 7, just after she joins the gang.) I don't know about the cravings or withdrawal bit, but I think the lack of negative effects (loss of breath, etc.) would be natural to a vampire who (a) doesn't need to breathe and (b) doesn't suffer from deadly poisons...unless I'm misunderstanding the mythos at play. Kilyle 11:42, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] showy Gypsy stuff

When Spike calls Dracula's tricks "showy Gypsy stuff", is he saying that they're not natural vampire powers (whatever that means), or that they're too frivolous for a serious vampire to bother with? —Tamfang 03:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Definitely the first statement and probably the later as well--he was insulting Dracula at the time, but only the first statement can be held as being accurate given the evidence. --Majin Gojira 10:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I think that his statement tells us that vampires can use smoke-and-mirror magic tricks in addition to their own vampire powers, but that many vampires (especially Spike, with his particular love of direct combat) look down on those who rely so heavily on dramatics. Tambourineman 16:05, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Or that only a vampire as theatrical as Dracula would bother learning them?

[edit] Time before rebirth

It seems to me that we should note that the time interval between death and rebirth as a vampire is depicted in a completely inconsistent manner. On the one hand, we seem to have examples where only a few hours pass. On the other hand, Buffy is always patrolling the graveyards for new graves, from which vampires periodically erupt. Such newly born vampires must have been dead for several days, since it usually takes a few days before one has a funeral and is buried. I don't think we should try to rationalize this, just to say that it's been ill-defined by the show. john k 18:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

The latest edit to that section says The new vampire "rises" after the human has died between nightime hours as shown in Angel when Darla was turned. What does this mean? —Tamfang 00:07, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, nightime has been corrected to nighttime, but I still don't know what "between nighttime hours" means. —Tamfang 07:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm guessing by "between nighttime hours" they mean the person was sired at night. Basically, here's my interpretation. If a guy gets sired at night, he will rise in a couple hours on that same night. However, if he somehow gets sired during the day, then he rises at a much later time, as in some different night. Or maybe the next night, and the guy just had a very speedy funeral.

[edit] Invitations

There is a contradiction in the Invitations section. Dorm rooms are listed as a type of "temporary accommodations" that vampires can enter uninvited. The very next bullet point indicates that vampires do need invitations to enter dorm rooms. Both statements cite the same two episodes. UncreativeNameMaker 07:45, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this just hasn't been worded properly. I think to go into the dorm building the vamps don't need an invite as it's essentially a public place, but to enter the room where someone actually lives then they would need an invite. Maybe it just need to be clarified, by someone who can watch the relevant episode.--NeilEvans 11:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vampire Psychology

The article discusses Anne Pratt (Spike's mum), saying that she is an example of a vampire who was too inhibited to say that Spike was too attached to her in life, but was free to say them once she had no soul. I had a different interpretation, so I rewatched Lies My Parents Told Me. It seems that Spike's original interpretation of events was (as the article says) that she was finally saying what she had always felt, and that is why the event was so deeply traumatic to him. But at the end, when Spike has dealt with his mother issues and diffused his hypnotic trigger, it seems that he has come to a different conclusion - that his mother loved him dearly, and that it was just the demon talking and not her. This indicates to me that she was an example of a vampire trying (as Angelus did when he lost his soul in Buffy Season 2) to stamp out all the good, loving elements of humanity from her human life, contradicting what this article now says. So, I think that Anne Pratt should be catagorized as a vampire who was the corrupt opposite of her human self instead. What do others think? Tambourineman 16:18, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it's still open to interpretaion. It could be that his mother did have some slight feeling of being smothered by William's love and the vampire now living in her body twisted it to such an extent to what we see in the episode. We know that some vestiges of the human personality of left over after siring, but that the demon twist, and degrades any vestige of humanity.--NeilEvans 16:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Drowning Torture

Two pieces within the article speak of the vampire not needing to breathe, yet possibly retaining the reflex. How does Spike's drowning torture fit into this?

When was that? —Tamfang 05:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Physically, he struggles to escape, then goes limp or passes out; a moment after returning to air, he spits out water (clears his lungs), then starts to breathe deeply (pant?) and seems weakened. The easiest interpretation of this is that he was struggling for breath, that taking water into his lungs knocked him out (briefly), and that upon returning to air he had to refill his body's oxygen supply. Unless this is a total flub on the part of the writers, how can it be accounted for? Two questions here:

Question One: If a vampire doesn't need to breathe, how can drowning be torture (of the type shown, which is denying breath), and why does Spike pant to regain oxygen? (Is it merely that Spike, in over a century, never learned how to do without breath for a while?)

Question Two: Is a vampire whose lungs are filled with fluid conscious? in pain? capable of activity? I would imagine painful, but I doubt it knocks them out...isn't Angel conscious while he's under the ocean? If the vampire is still conscious and still capable of movement, why does Spike struggle and then go limp? If he goes limp consciously, to reduce the torture, then why did he struggle at all, the first or at least the second time? It doesn't seem like he's playing his captors. Anyway, would like to see some accounting of this put on the page--thanks. Kilyle 12:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the simple answer is that it's almost certainly a writing screw-up. Putting aside that meta explanation and coming up with an in-story reason is going to cause us some problems, since we're not allowed to speculate. We might be able to come up with any number of plausible guesses, but Wikipedia can't. If it warrants a mention then it'll have to be something purely factual, describing what happened with no attempt to add any explanatory interpretation.--Nalvage 13:33, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Another case where Spike's breathing is (at least arguably) handled wrong is late in season 4: he comes to Giles's door, stops, hyperventilates a bit, knocks and announces, panting for verisimilitude, that the soldier-boys (or someone else?) are after him. —Tamfang 05:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
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