Whedonverse Vampire Canon

[surefall]

It's pretty much a statement of fact that if you wanna talk whedonverse vampire canon (hereafter referred to as WVC), you're gonna end up talking about it for yanno, WEEKS. Throw in the whole soul thing and it'll be YEARS. For it is rife with inconsistency, retconning, complete wtf, insufficient explanation, the works. It has holes a mack truck

Comments

[muzivitch]

Ah, yes, but if it weren't for Spike I probably wouldn't have watched ANY Buffy.

[surefall]

Therein lies the rub. For all his contradicting ways, we can't get enough of him on screen. THERE CAN ALWAYS BE MORE SPIKE

[goldenusagi]

Some elements of the show definitely got away from the writers. Spike is leading the group. :) Some things took on a life of their own, despite the message/rules WVC had established.

[surefall]

Yeah. There were a lot of cooks with that soup (writers, actors, etc), so the holes were somewhat inevitable. I also suspect that the group was working off a fairly vague world/character concept that grew with the telling.

Spike just happens to be the biggest sore thumb in the WVC. If he hadn't even been there, most of the more glaring holes simply wouldn't exist.

[jackarono]

Yeah, I think Whedon might have actually started out thinking that "Vampire" was a metaphor, and the metaphor kept shifting-- first for "evil" and then for "outcast". And as soon as the vampires stopped being symbols and started being characters (like, as soon as Darla appeared in Ep 1), the metaphor kind of fell apart. They were too human, not too surprising considering that they ARE human-- human vampires, once-human, former humans, whatever.

You're right-- everything that Joss put forward as "vampire canon", Spike kind of insouciantly obliterated. He even went out in the daylight (under a blanket, yeah, but constantly).

[surefall]

Yeah, I think Whedon might have actually started out thinking that "Vampire" was a metaphor, and the metaphor kept shifting-- first for "evil" and then for "outcast". And as soon as the vampires stopped being symbols and started being characters (like, as soon as Darla appeared in Ep 1), the metaphor kind of fell apart. They were too human, not too surprising considering that they ARE human-- human vampires, once-human, former humans, whatever.

::nods:: Add the human part of vampire in there instead of cookie cutter vampire, and the whole concept explodes. The thing that probably makes it harder to figure out is that WVC keeps insisting "believe what I say, not what I do". And fandom goes "jdsahfssafhakjds we can't!"

There's probably the fact that the original idea is fairly simple/vague ... but with seven seasons and a side series suddenly open, the actual action just exploded past what the original could contain.