Quandary about Spike's Chip.

[fenderlove]

When Spike was chipped, would the chip fire if he killed an animal? In S4, the Initiative fellows said that he couldn't hurt "any living thing" and there was the joke about him not being able to pick a flower (Spike says he could), but in S6, he's obviously feeding off of kittens at least a fraction of the time. Here's what I want to know- do you think that the chip would fire when he fed off of an animal? 'Cause getting a migraine just for what little blood would be in a cat doesn't seem worth it. Do you think maybe he killed them first and then drained them? Do you think that it fired but not to the point of causing him a headache? Or did the chip just not fire at all? Seems like it would be easier just to microwave bagged blood and be done with it.

Now I'm sad 'cause I'm thinking about Spike eating kittens... Poor little panda baby Siamese kittens. :(

Comments

[whichclothes.livejournal.com]

I think he'd be able to kill animals. He was able to kill demons and at least some of them were living.

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

It's understandable that he could fight vampires and such since they aren't alive, but yeah, I did wonder why he could fight and kill demons that are intrinsically alive. I wonder if the chip is more tied to how Spike's brain processes information. Like, if he thinks of what he's killing as a living person or not. Maybe it's not the "deep molecular suntan" that made Spike able to fight Buffy after her death but that he thought of her as dead but walking like him. Of course, the government really could have sensors that detect living human flesh that could work through the bouncy castle of radio anomalies that is someone's skull...

Speaking of Spike's lollipop head, how is his brain still able to be operated on? When we get that x-ray view of Angel when he's zapped by Gwen in "Ground State," it looks like his organs are all shriveled. Would Spike's heart have to be started for him to be operated on; is that why when he first tried to get the chip out that the doctor he and Harmony snatched had such a hard time? So, so many questions about vampire biology.

[whichclothes.livejournal.com]

And I don't think Josh was very consistent about vamp biology anyway. There are all the questions you have, plus others, like how can a vampire get an erection without blood circulation?

[fenderlove.livejournal.com]

Whedon jokingly said it was rigor mortis, which if he was serious is just weird.

I often had a question about if vampires really had any cold dead seed. To make Connor, Angel has to have some in some form or fashion. If, like Anne Rice vampires, any change in the body will eventually revert to the state it was in in death, then it's reasonable to assume that vampires regenerate the seed that was in their body at the time of death... which means that if they spent that seed within a few hours of regeneration, the seed would still be motile and viable for impregnation... which lends credence to the whole dmaphir thing and why male vampires in legend are the only ones able to procreate with humans. Males regenerate their seed constantly, females are stuck with what they were born with... which would ultimately decay very soon after death... I've thought too much about this... *head-desk*

[whichclothes.livejournal.com]

You have given it a lot of thought. :-) And incidentally, I do know it's Joss. Man, I need to learn to type!