My love for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" isn't something I
keep close to the chest. Even to this day I still claim Joss as one of
my key inspirations in writing. I can also admit when he does wrong,
but I also know when he gets screwed over by Fox *Cough*Firefly*Cough*
or the WB *Cough*Angel*Cough*. (Even though with Angel, half a season
later the current CEO who replaced the one who canceled the show
admitted it was a bad move. It was one of their highest rated shows,
especially among male demographics which the network desperately
needed.)
Anyway, Buffy, Angel, Spike, and even Giles I could see getting away
with staking vampires with just their hands. However, Willow, Xander,
and Cordelia not so much. See the body is a resilient thing and its
pretty tough, and unless something happens when a vampire becomes a
vampire that makes them like jello, it would be pretty hard to get a
wooden stake into a person.
I'd like to note that "From Dusk Till Dawn" specifically said that
vampires had a softer body and mentioned how hard it would be for a
stake to get into a normal body. So at least they explained why tiny
Juliette Lewis was able to pull a Buffy before Buffy even aired (well
there's the movie, but the less said about the better).
Then, there's "Blade:Trinity" that had Jessica Biel, who admittedly is
pretty buff, go toe to toe with vampires without any supernatural
abilities. When in the previous two Blade movies it pretty much
explicitly showed that unarmed even a trained human was pretty much
toast. However, Miss Abigail Whistler was pulling out kung-fu that
would have made Buffy blush even though there was no way for her to do
that.
So you're like, "Okay Elf, what are you on?"
Well, after like over a decade later I can poke fun at this trope.
TV and movies liked to show underweight teenagers (or fake
teenagers) with no muscle mass to speak of thrusting shards of wood into
vampires’ hearts. Sometimes it was explained away about some little,
young thing having supernatural strength, but when it came to her
mundane friends that were backing her up? No explanation what so ever.
Forest could easily buy the large and Hollywood fit vampire boyfriend
bare handedly staking his former undead brethren, but the sidekicks? Not
so much. Forest knew very well that flesh and muscle was resilient,
and then there was the whole rib cage that acted as protective casing
for most of the major organs. Then there was the whole thing that wood
wasn’t something that could cut through flesh for the most part. No, to
get a wooden stake into a vampire required a lot of upper body strength
It felt entirely too good to write that honestly.
If you want to see more glib sarcasm, go read "The Law Unto Herself Chronicles: The Stolen".
(Hey I had to get that out there.)
Also, in other words, self-promotion is a fucking bitch.
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