garlic in angel

POSTED BY: est120
UPDATED: Monday, October 18, 2004 01:30
VIEWED: 6687
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EST120

Friday, October 15, 2004 11:06 PM

okay, i vaguely remember someone asking whether vampires in the show were susceptible to garlic. i was watching the episode "the prodigal" and there is a scene where angelus is confronting his biological father. he comments that his father is "boarding up the windows" and "smearing that foul herb in the doorways". obviously, angelus is refering to the garlic. of course, his father may be simply believing in incorrect rumors about vampires, but then he says that angelus cannot enter a place where he has not been invited, so one might be able to assume that he knows what he is talking about. anyway to that person that asked the question, perhaps this offers some clarification.

ROCKETJOCK

Saturday, October 16, 2004 2:57 AM

I don't have an answer to this, but I'd like to raise a related question, i.e., do vampires in the Whedonverse have a weakness for silver? I don't recall any incident of silver bullets or knives being used against a vamp; Buffy almost always used stakes, and Gunn used a crossbow or similar large projectile; both effective, but a little illogical if a bullet would work.

"Hermanos! The Devil has built a robot! Andale!" -- Numero Cinco

LINDLEY

Saturday, October 16, 2004 3:13 AM

IIRC, silver bullets are for werewolves in the Whedonverse.

QUICKSAND

Saturday, October 16, 2004 6:51 AM

Yeah, but certain vampire-verses state that silver is deadly to vampires as well as werewolves.

Liberties are always taken-- as in, say, "Interview with the Vampire" where vampries can travel quickly in dark patches, or "Blade" where we see silver used to niiiiiice effect. (squish)

Sunlight doesn't always work instantly on "Angel" ... in fact sometimes a bad vampire would incinerate instantly, while in other episodes Angel or Spike would shield their eyes, run into shadows, and only be smoking a bit.

In all, I'd say garlic just doesn't make for a very interesting way to kill a vampire during a fight. But surely it works.

Or else newly-turned Angelus just didn't like garlic as a human, either.

EST120

Saturday, October 16, 2004 2:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Quicksand:
Yeah, but certain vampire-verses state that silver is deadly to vampires as well as werewolves.

Liberties are always taken-- as in, say, "Interview with the Vampire" where vampries can travel quickly in dark patches, or "Blade" where we see silver used to niiiiiice effect. (squish)

in contrast, in underworld, the vampires entire arsenal against the werewolves is silver. one would assume that the vampires could safely handle silver without getting killed in the process. just another example of "it depends on who you ask" i guess. my impression was always silver for werewolves and not for vampires, so when i first saw blade, i was quite confused.

as for the sunlight, angel states a few times that he and other vampires cannot withstand "direct" sunlight which explains why he can hang out in rooms with windows that are lit by sunlight, but he cannot walk through the patches of sunlight coming through the windows.

ROCKETJOCK

Saturday, October 16, 2004 6:28 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Quicksand:
my impression was always silver for werewolves and not for vampires, so when i first saw blade, i was quite confused.

Traditionally both werewolves and vampires are vulnerable to silver. The usual reason given is that Judas was paid for his betrayal of Christ with thirty pieces of silver (or "thirty silver pennies", depending on the translation.) Having been used for the ultimate evil, silver henceforth rejected all other evils in atonement.

Herbwise, vampires are traditionally vulnerable to the scent and/or taste of garlic, while werewolves are repelled by wolfsbane. Noteworthily, both are mildly antibiotic, so if you subscribe to the theory that vampirism/lycanthopy are microrganism-based diseases, it makes a kind of sense.

But the question on the table here isn't vampire/werewolf traditions, but the ground rules in Joss Whedon's universe. Anyone writing of vampires/werewolves has to pick and choose from the many legends. It's a necessity. Legends differ from country to country, region to region. If you accept them all, it gives the beasies too many weaknesses.

For example, Polish tradition says that if you scatter poppyseed or hempseed in a vampire's path, it must stop and count them all before it can move on. Scatter enough, and you can keep one paralyzed until dawn.

Obviously this one hasn't passed into common parlance, but things can change. It used to be that TV and movies tended to ignore the "vampires must be invited into private homes" rule; somewhere around the time of The Lost Boys it became a general Hollywood assumption. I credit Marvel comic's excellent "Tomb of Dracula" series of the seventies for bringing this idea into popular acceptance, but it was always a part of middle European vampire folklore.

A Hammer film of the early seventies, Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter assumed that all the legends were correct, but that vampirism had many variant breeds. A bit of dialogue I'm probably misquoting goes something like "God in his wisdom created fifteen hundred separate species of parrot. Did you think Satan was any less inventive?"

A bit of fiction I'm working on assumes that silver harms vampires because it's too good a conductor of the semi-mystical, semi-physical force that animates them; it "short-circuits" the flow, and burns them out. Wooden stakes are effective for the opposite reason; wood is a non-conductor, and blocks the power flow entirely.

But that's my universe, my playground. Joss has his own, and he's generally pretty good about establishing the ground rules. He seems to have never been particularly clear about garlic, but it's safe to assume that silver is ineffective against Whedon-type vampires, simply because nobody ever used it against them.

"Hermanos! The Devil has built a robot! Andale!" -- Numero Cinco

QUICKSAND

Saturday, October 16, 2004 8:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by est120:
my impression was always silver for werewolves and not for vampires, so when i first saw blade, i was quite confused.

Just wanted to clarify who wrote that. ;)

As mentioned above, there are historical reasons why silver is a Metal of the Earth (or whatever), and can cause damage to the undead or demon-related beings. It's important to remember, to avoid confusion, that EVERY vampire-verse is different...

Remember in "The Lost Boys" where they state specifically that vampires are a lil softer, so that's why gettin' the wooden stake through their rib cage is easier. In "Dracula," our heroes need a wooden mallet to even get the wooden stake that far.

Also (and more subtle), is the way in which a vampire has to be invited. In some movies, the vampire just has an aversion to walking in the door... he'll shy away from it, like he/she's uncomfortable. In Buffy/Angel, they'll hit the doorway like it's an invisible glass wall. Which, while good for a laugh, is hardly traditional vampuire lore.

Little things like that. You gotta know the verse's individual rules (Whedon, Rice, Stoker, whoever) and hopefully they list them out for you in an obvious way, but that's not always the case.

-Q-

DELIA

Sunday, October 17, 2004 1:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Quicksand:
In all, I'd say garlic just doesn't make for a very interesting way to kill a vampire during a fight. But surely it works.

Or else newly-turned Angelus just didn't like garlic as a human, either.

We see garlic in Buffy's arsenal in Welcome to the Hellmouth, then rarely again. I read somewhere it's because Nicholas Brendan is allergic to it, so they didn't use in much on Buffy, and the Buffy rules set up Angel.

Besides, as Quicksand said, do we really want to see our heroes lobbing pasta dishes at bad guys?

___________________________________________
Angel: People who don't care about anything will never understand the people who do.
Hamilton: Yeah, but we won't care.

QUICKSAND

Sunday, October 17, 2004 2:28 AM

Ironic, then... the human was allergic to garlic. ;)

Yeah, didn't make a very good fighting utensil, but... still, would have been nifty for a random garlic-cameo somewhere in there... like, Angel were trying to figure out how to kill an unstoppable vampire, and Fred just served him pasta alfredo or something.

KANGER33

Sunday, October 17, 2004 2:47 AM

I was always really confused on the garlic issue too. Mainly because: didn't Spike really like hot wings? Any recipe I've ever seen for those has a fair amount of garlic in it.

But I can also remember one instance in season 6 (I think) where Buffy hung garlic on her window.

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