Anthro-demonology.
Nov. 21st, 2016 07:47 pmIt's understandable why Buffy and Angel never focused much time or energy on examining vampire society as a concept, even though it's something they could have done because there's clearly something there worth looking at. Nothing nearly so elaborate as what there was on True Blood, with its sheriffs and magistrates and queens and kings, but definitely a thread that could've been woven into a rope across the two shows. Not a civilization, but something close to resembling a culture.
The few vampires that got genuine attention and development were all outliers in one way or another, especially the way Darla, Angel, Drusilla, and Spike formed a vampire family together, going so far as to very clearly cast the pairs into parents and children. If anything, Dru and Spike spending about a hundred years together as a traveling couple is downright ordinary, and one of the two typical vampire arrangements.
The other is nesting. A bunch of unrelated, often differently-sired vampires coming to live together in close proximity, in a shared space. It happens often enough that it's practically expected of vampires, new ones especially, and storming into a nest is a good strategy to deal with many vampires all at once. Vampires who otherwise don't know each other and are, generally, a group of kids trying to figure out the world together without any adult influence. If vampires were pure predators, however intelligent they are, they'd find their own territories and not share any hunting grounds. But they do share the same prey sources with each other, generally before striking out on their own and going someplace new.
Buffy's vampires aren't often shown as having good or strong relationships with their sires, which is another way the Whirlwind stands apart, so far outside the norm for what vampires are typically depicted as doing in terms of social behavior. But there's still social behavior to be depicted. For other vampires to learn and to be taught. Things like Halloween being the one night of the year everyone stays home, or the myth that is the Slayer, how to commune with pure demons and the depth of magic's hold on the world. They don't dig their way out of the grave knowing any of that. Very rarely does their sire stick around long-term. It's almost like the anthropology of children's culture, how stories and rhymes and myths can appear without any adult influence.
It's fascinating and compelling, and almost a shame that vampires were most commonly depicted as soulless predatory creatures, since the nesting alone points to the persistence of humanity, even in vague remnants. Given how the shows were set up and constructed, it's hard to imagine how that sort of cultural study would take place, other than looking to the Whirlwind members for ethnographic interviews about a society they don't even participate in all that much. Which Giles and Wesley totally could both have done, at least twice, to figure out if something happening around Sunnydale or LA is at all typical and ordinary, or if it's as far removed from those concepts as the vampire they've got regular and ready access to talk to.
The few vampires that got genuine attention and development were all outliers in one way or another, especially the way Darla, Angel, Drusilla, and Spike formed a vampire family together, going so far as to very clearly cast the pairs into parents and children. If anything, Dru and Spike spending about a hundred years together as a traveling couple is downright ordinary, and one of the two typical vampire arrangements.
The other is nesting. A bunch of unrelated, often differently-sired vampires coming to live together in close proximity, in a shared space. It happens often enough that it's practically expected of vampires, new ones especially, and storming into a nest is a good strategy to deal with many vampires all at once. Vampires who otherwise don't know each other and are, generally, a group of kids trying to figure out the world together without any adult influence. If vampires were pure predators, however intelligent they are, they'd find their own territories and not share any hunting grounds. But they do share the same prey sources with each other, generally before striking out on their own and going someplace new.
Buffy's vampires aren't often shown as having good or strong relationships with their sires, which is another way the Whirlwind stands apart, so far outside the norm for what vampires are typically depicted as doing in terms of social behavior. But there's still social behavior to be depicted. For other vampires to learn and to be taught. Things like Halloween being the one night of the year everyone stays home, or the myth that is the Slayer, how to commune with pure demons and the depth of magic's hold on the world. They don't dig their way out of the grave knowing any of that. Very rarely does their sire stick around long-term. It's almost like the anthropology of children's culture, how stories and rhymes and myths can appear without any adult influence.
It's fascinating and compelling, and almost a shame that vampires were most commonly depicted as soulless predatory creatures, since the nesting alone points to the persistence of humanity, even in vague remnants. Given how the shows were set up and constructed, it's hard to imagine how that sort of cultural study would take place, other than looking to the Whirlwind members for ethnographic interviews about a society they don't even participate in all that much. Which Giles and Wesley totally could both have done, at least twice, to figure out if something happening around Sunnydale or LA is at all typical and ordinary, or if it's as far removed from those concepts as the vampire they've got regular and ready access to talk to.
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