Elf's Random Musings

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 lotof 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.