Question Turning into a Vampire...

[Steven123]

Have you ever wondered if every Vampire on BtVS had to feed off the one biteing them before they turned? You just could imagine everyone doing it lol.

In Becoming when we see Darla turning Liam (Angel/Angelus) he feeds off of her, but then in Helpless when Kralik bites Blair, i'm pretty sure he (Blair) just falls to the floor after being bitten, and dosen't feed on Kralik.

Again in Graduation Day, Angel says that Buffy "didn't feed on him" after she makes him drink from her.

So is it just an assumption that you must feed on the one who bites you to turn?

 

[Evil Angelus 95]

I've assumed that it's a necessary part of the process. To quote Buffy on the subject,

"They have to suck your blood, and then you have to suck their blood. It's basically one big sucking fest."

 

[InsaneMystic]

Actually pretty common (though not universal - every author writes their vampires differently. Some even sparkle. 😛) in vampire lore that in order to become a vampire, you need to exchange blood with one... if you're just drained of your blood but don't drink vampire's blood yourself, you won't end up undead, just dead. I'm not sure about the original Stoker novel (been many years since I read it), but the blood exchange bit definitely is in the Coppola movie version of Dracula, itself.

As for the Kralik scene... that one is weird, anyway. The only occasion in the Buffyverse where we see a vampire's victim rise within mere minutes (at most an hour or two) of being killed, when they usually stay dead long enough to be put up in the morgue or even buried. Guess they've read the script to take their cue when they're supposed to rise, eh? 😉

 

[Taake]

In Becoming when we see Darla turning Liam (Angel/Angelus) he feeds off of her, but then in Helpless when Kralik bites Blair, i'm pretty sure he (Blair) just falls to the floor after being bitten, and dosen't feed on Kralik.

I think it's just that we don't get to see him feed on Kralik, the writers leaving it to implication probably for the purpose of suspense.

I agree with InsaneMystic that his rather rapid rising-again is more peculiar...

 

[white avenger]

The mutual feeding thing is, I believe, a relatively new development, or maybe it's just something that was universally ignored in all of the old horror movies. I know that Lugosi and Lee only had to drain their victims, no blood exchange necessary, and, in modern times, Carpenter's "Vampires" and the "Dusk Til Dawn" series, to name two, don't require it. Just as common logic, though, I would think there would have to be something more than just draining the victims, otherwise it wouldn't be more than a few generations before the vampire population outnumbered the people. Another century or so, and all of the warm blooded animals would also be gone, then the multitudes of vampires would simply starve to death for lack of victims.

Actually, though, that is precisely what happened, the vampires outnumbering the humans bit, not the starvation, in the novel, "I Am Legend," and the first movie made from it, starring Vincent Price as Robert Neville. Then, later, a second movie, "The Omega Man," with Charleston Heston in the lead, changed the vampires into the equivalent of super light sensitive lepers. Will Smith, in the latest version, again titled "I Am Legend," changed the lepers into basically flesh eating zombies, the current most popular movie monster. I keep hoping that someone will go back to the original source material and use vampires, but I doubt that they ever will.

(None of which has anything whatsoever to do with the original question, I just thought that I would toss it in for anyone who might be interested)

 

[Buffy Summers]

I know that Lugosi and Lee only had to drain their victims, no blood exchange necessary,

Not true. In Lugosi's Dracula, Dracula cuts his arm and forces Mina to drink, which is why she will become a vampire if she dies before van Helsing et al kill him. It's easy to miss, because they don't show it.

🙂

 

[white avenger]

It's easy to miss, because they don't show it.

🙂

Yep, that would definitely make it easy to miss.

But I haven't seen Lugosi's version in several years, so m memory may not be serving me as well as it once did. It was still the general rule on all of the old vampire movies up until the 80's or 90's though, that all vampire victims rose from the dead, no blood sharing involved.

Now that I think of it, though, there was a scene in one movie right after I got out of the Navy (1974) where Jack Palance, an absolutely bone chilling Dracula, and the only actor who ever got the Dracula "look" to suit me, cut himself and pressed some girl's face into the blood.

Here's the movie in question if anyone's interested

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070003/

 

[Skytteflickan88]

Something I've been thinking of lately, is that the draining of the victim and THEN giving them the blood, it makes me think the blood need to mix in the vampire's veins, before the victim can have the blood. Remember when Darla tried to get turned, and she told the vampire to drink until her heart was slowing down, and then giving her his blood?

But I wonder if the writers actually decided on this, or if they didn't think it through.

 

[white avenger]

But I wonder if the writers actually decided on this, or if they didn't think it through.

Almost certainly, they didn't think it through. I prefer to think that rather than that they just thought that the fans were too dense to notice it.

 

[Buffy Summers]

This is just my own conjecture, but I was under the impression that it is replacing the human's blood with the vampire's.

🙂

 

[ticonderouga]

In Buffy vs Dracula, Dracula tells Buffy that she must be on the cusp of death before drinking from a vampire will change her. Angel also tells the Scoobies in Graduation Day that Buffy didn't drink from him so wouldn't be changed, implying that she was close enough to death that she would have changed.

 

[Skytteflickan88]

In Buffy vs Dracula, Dracula tells Buffy that she must be on the cusp of death before drinking from a vampire will change her. Angel also tells the Scoobies in Graduation Day that Buffy didn't drink from him so wouldn't be changed, implying that she was close enough to death that she would have changed.

I don't understand the part in bold. Are you saying it didn't matter that she didn't drink Angel's blood? From what I gather, the victom needs to be both dying and having drunk from the vampire's blood.

 

[dexeded]

I don't understand the part in bold. Are you saying it didn't matter that she didn't drink Angel's blood? From what I gather, the victom needs to be both dying and having drunk from the vampire's blood.

I think he's saying that it mattered that she didn't drink from Angel--if she had, then she would have been turned, one of the two requirements of becoming a vampire having already been fulfilled at the time (close to death by drainage).

 

[ticonderouga]

I think he's saying that it mattered that she didn't drink from Angel--if she had, then she would have been turned, one of the two requirements of becoming a vampire having already been fulfilled at the time (close to death by drainage).

This is exactly what I meant, that Angel had put Buffy on the brink of death, far enough away that a transfusion would restore her, but if she had fed off Angel she would have become a vampire.