A couple of questions concerning canon

[indri]

I've checked All Things Philosophical and peasant_'s The Gate but can find nothing to definitively answer a couple of questions. Depending on the answers, I may have to rewrite a key passage or two of the long fic I'm working on. Is anyone able to help?

Did Spike's chip prevent him from injuring or attacking nonhuman animals?

As far as I can tell, all the evidence is equivocal.

(i) Shortly after the chipping, he turns up starving on Giles' doorstep. There's no evidence that he's tried and failed to eat the local domestic animals but there's no sign that he's not tried to.

(ii) Harmony at one point claims that Spike can't even pick flowers, but I am inclined to dismiss this on the grounds that (a) it's Harmony, (b) Spike begs to differ and most importantly, (c) Spike turns up with some wildflowers for Joyce on her death and he presumably picked these himself.

(iii) Spike plays for kittens in poker, but it's unclear whether he eats them or simply uses them as currency.

(iv) Riley says at one point that Spike can't injure any living thing, but see (ii). Also, it's hard to see why this would benefit the Initiative and we don't know if the chip worked exactly as expected.

Can vampires choose not to breathe?

We know that vampires don't need to breathe in the sense that they have no need of oxygen; this was demonstrated early on when Angel was able to turn off the gas in the high school basement. Also, Angel clearly wouldn't have survived his later undersea adventure otherwise. Vamps talk, smoke and pant so they do use their lungs on a daily basis. But can they choose to suppress the urge to breathe? This is what I am not sure about. When The First tortured Spike by dunking him underwater, did this in fact provide us with a demonstration that vampires retain the urge to breath even though they don't need air?

Comments

[binsoup.livejournal.com]

Hi Indri. In Beneath You, there was a shot of Spike about to pounce on a rat though it was not shown if he killed it or not. At that time, I took this to mean that he survived in the high school basement on rodents’ blood without his chip activating. Ergo, he could harm/kill/eat life forms that are not homo sapiens.

I don't know why but I've always seen the Jossverse as having a very anthropomorphic viewpoint, to the extent that living things are almost equated exclusively with humans. The rest of carbon-based organisms (sentient or not) are fodder. Even season 7 Willow harking on the connectedness of things (somewhat an echo of the rhetoric of the environmental movement) or Tara portrayed as "mother earthy" are not enough to convince me that the Jossverse does not privilege human life above all other forms of non-demonic life. Not a problem for me since I watched Buffy for the slayers and the monsters, and not for the flowers and the amoeba.:-)

As for vampires choosing not to breathe, Angel's underwater entrapment is a good argument for this.

[indri]

In Beneath You, there was a shot of Spike about to pounce on a rat

Yes, of course, I knew I was missing somthing obvious. How else would he have survived?

As for vampires choosing not to breathe, Angel's underwater entrapment is a good argument for this.

He could still have been breathing, though, just taking in the same stale air over and over.

[rahirah]

Unfortunately we never saw him bite the rat, which would have settled the question for once and all...or maybe not, since it's arguable that Spike's chip was beginning to malfunction by then.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Clearly vampires can choose to breathe, otherwise they would be unable to speak or smoke. Joss said that his vampires lungs work, they just don't help trees grow (don't convert o2 to Co2). Angel claims he *doesn't* breathe, but we've seen evidence to the contrary (he climbs out of his grave in Becoming and you can seee his breath, AND Darla's). However, Joss has also given the very logical explanation that since his actors have to breathe, the viewers will have to deal with the obvious.

[rahirah]

The evidence on animals is equivocal. I gnashed my teeth over this quite a bit, and finally decided that my purposes would be better served by assuming that the chip affected all animal life native to Earth's dimension. But it would be quite possible to go with it only affecting humans. I would go with whichever fits your plot better.

There have been several occasions when Angel has chosen not to breathe for longer than a human could easily do so--once in an early BtVS episode where he goes and rescues Buffy from a gas-filled school basement, and a S4 AtS episode where he's in a gas-filled elevator. (I think it's the one introducing Gwen Raiden.)

I think it's likely that the urge to breathe is something that varies in intensity from vampire to vampire, and which may decrease with age. Spike, as a very 'human' vamp, may have a harder time suppressing it than Angel does. I've postuated that for Spike, at least, breathing is a stress reaction--he gets upset, he tends to start breathing heavily. So the drowning thing was a vicious circle; the more uncomfortable he was, the more he wanted to breathe, which made him even more uncomfortable...

[onetwomany.livejournal.com]

I take a similar view to Barb on vamps breathing. They clearly in inhale and exhale for some reason. Even Angel pants after a good fight. I'd say it's partially a psychological thing, partially muscle memory - both of which would make it a pretty yucky experience to not be able to breath. Angel, being a more in-control kind of person, and a much older and less human vamp, just deals with that stress a bit better than Spike. Interestingly though, Spike managed to knock Dru unconscious by denying her air, so she seemed the most strongly affected of all...

Chiming in late

[tesla321.livejournal.com]

Spike also uses his breath to smoke. I realize that Joss always uses leather pants on guys to show ee-vil, but the cigarette smoking was such an trademark of Spike. I've also seen it
theorized that vamps have to use their breath to speak,
but I'm not educated in the physiology.