OK, I’ll admit I’m new to watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Perhaps this has already been covered in the show’s mythology, but how do vampires heal?
For example: Spike, a vampire was staked thru the heart, but with a plastic stake. This didn’t kill him. Now, is he going to spend the rest of his antilife with a gaping hole in his chest? If vampires are undead, and they don’t have a pulse, presumably they have no cellular action going on. But, apparently they heal. How?
The only things I know about Vampires comes from Cecil’s bit in one of the books going into the various species of vampire and how to kill them. Didn’t go into healing, tho…
As a diehard Buffy fan, I would humbly suggest that the mechaniations of a TV show’s mythology can be found only in the mind of it’s creator. BTW, Buffy, like everything dealing with vampires, has its own mythology- there is great overlap, but details can be very unique.
It’s been said that vamps have accellerated healing. Like slayers, no? Vamps are demons, and who knows the metabolism of demons? It’s magic, and the magic on the show leaves a lot of the explaining to the wayside. Just as well- I’m all for more Faith in leather pants, less serious talk.
If you want to see people passionately hash out your question, though, I suggest the message boards on buffy.com, mightybigtv.com, or any of the 80 million fan sites. Brace yourself for horrible spelling, an f-you approach to the English language at large, and people who have virtually every single script memorized and will refer to proof from a line in an episode 3 years ago.
I’m more a Willow guy myself. If I can just convince Miss Hannigan that I’m the guy for her…
OK, back on topic, I realize that the show has its own mythos, but what about vampires in general? Has any culture addressed this? The only stuff I come up with in my searches is creepy goth kids…
It gets into the question of just what vampires are. The most popular mythos is that they are walking corpses kept animated by blood. But I seem to gather that originally they were considered a sort of psychic projection, or a solidified ghost. That was why they didn’t show in a mirror- they weren’t really there in a sense. The actual body stayed in it’s coffin, and destroying that would eliminate those super skeeter bites.