Why no vampire armor?

POSTED BY: Shiny
UPDATED: Monday, January 31, 2005 22:19
VIEWED: 6738
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SHINY

Monday, January 24, 2005 5:51 AM

It just occurred to me that vampires are pretty dumb. Why not wear breastplates, flak jackets, or bullet-proof vests? It would sure help against those wooden stakes and crossbow bolts...

Jayne, your mouth is talkin. Might want to look into that.

RAT

Monday, January 24, 2005 6:08 AM

And, why do there clothes go dust too?

-Ratboy

MONTANAGIRL

Monday, January 24, 2005 6:09 AM

I had never thought about it, but that would really make a lot of sense. All you need is something to keep the stake from going through your heart. Everything else might hurt like hell, as Darla put it, but it wouldn't kill you. (Aside from decapitation.)

Great. Now I'm going to be thinking about that every time I watch Angel. I was happy in my ignorance and then you went and made me think.

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All others tolerated.

SHINY

Monday, January 24, 2005 6:30 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by montanagirl:
I had never thought about it, but that would really make a lot of sense. All you need is something to keep the stake from going through your heart. Everything else might hurt like hell, as Darla put it, but it wouldn't kill you. (Aside from decapitation.)

You know, armor with a good high collar plate and a solid helm would take care of that decapitation issue... ;p

Jayne, your mouth is talkin. Might want to look into that.

RAT

Monday, January 24, 2005 7:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Shiny:
You know, armor with a good high collar plate and a solid helm would take care of that decapitation issue...

And dont forget a hood for sunlight!

-Ratboy

BRITCHICK

Monday, January 24, 2005 12:56 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Rat:
And dont forget a hood for sunlight!

-Ratboy

That's a good point Ratboy. Some of these people were incredibly rich - take the Mayor, for example. They could have invested money in having somesort of super-hood developed.

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IDEFIX

Monday, January 24, 2005 1:26 PM

the Mayor was no vampire.
he was a man who had lots of deals with demons to make him live forever, be rich and powerful and in the end become a real demon.

Angel didn't want to become invincible. he could have kept the gem of amara (sp?) if he'd wanted to 'cheat'.

Spike probably thinks it's uncool to wear armor. it's definitely not his style and style is very important to him.

and most of the bad vamps were just plain stupid and mostly too full of themselves to even consider something so resonable.

I think the Master and Trick were the most likely candidates for a stake-proof-vest undergarment thing. being modern vampires with brains and all. but since both got staked they probably just didn't think of it. or you loose too much face in vampire-circles when using something like that. who knows?

cool question though.

Idefix

EMBERS

Monday, January 24, 2005 1:55 PM

Idefix makes a lot of good points,
I just want to add that most vampires don't run into slayers very often...
they can go years, centuries even, only hunting
(and feeding on)
ordinary humans who don't really know how to kill them,
they probably get shot at, stabbed, or sprayed with mace,
but how many people do you know carry wooden stakes around with them?

so they have a tendency to think of themselves as unkillable...
and breast plate protection is not really something they would need or think of....

CYBERSNARK

Monday, January 24, 2005 3:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Rat:
And, why do there clothes go dust too?

I heard a fanwank in another fandom that a lot of magic spells automatically include things that you (A) think of as yours and (B) are on your person (jewelry, clothing, personal weapons, etc).

Which raises the question: if Spike had succeeded in staking himself while wearing Xander's hawaiian shirt, would the shirt have dusted, or would it just end up with a stake-shaped hole in the chest?

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

AMYEL

Monday, January 24, 2005 5:23 PM

Joss has explained that the clothes-dusting was just practical. It would just be too funny for the Scooby Gang to keep picking up clothes every night. They'd end up with trying to hide or throwing away mountains and mountains of clothing. It's probably much easier for the FX crew as well. It's easier to do the effect as a whole rather than just dusting the person and then animating their clothes falling down. Fanwanking is fun if you need to make total sense out of the universe, but you have to consider the aspects of putting on a television show. Most of those kinds of questions are usually answered by "the WB/UPN didn't give them enough money for that".

They did show Connor taking off a vamp's jacket before he dusted once, probably to show that's how Connor got his entire wardrobe (he certainly looked like it).

Spike used to constantly run around under his coat or under blankets and tarps to get around during the day.

In "War Zone" when those vamps went to kidnap Alonna, they did it during the day and wore biohazard suits and motorcycle helmets to protect themselves from the sun.

You also have to think that before Chosen, there was usually only one slayer around. The chances of ending up getting staked or beheaded were pretty slim as long as you could stay the hell away from the slayer, the Scoobies, souled vampires on the quest for redemption, or roving gangs of street-wise kids wanting to take back the night. The ratio of vampires to evil-fighters were still very unbalanced.

But now... well, if I was a vamp I'd invest in a suit of armor...

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