The Dream Quest of Unknown Me

I'm walking home the other day free associating when it occurs to me that Buffy's Immortal was none other than Mr Flint, a character from the "Star Trek TOS" episode "Requiem for Methuselah". He had been born in 3834 BC and after he was pierced in the heart in a battle, found he could not die. He was known to us as Johannes Brahms, Leonardo da Vinci, Solomon, Alexander the Great, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin and many others. One of the names he gave was Abramson so possibly he was using that when he met Buffy. I tried to see some of Buffy in Rayna but there was none so I must assume Buffy was not his ideal woman. The Immortal probably looked much younger before he left Earth and began to age. There's crossover potential there (unless it's already been done unbeknownst to me) - anyone know?

Came across an old link that I thought I'd post just in case anyone's missed it. It's Queer Eye for the Undead Guy. LOL.

Last night I watched "House" for the first time. I was astonished. I've seen Hugh Laurie play twits like Bertie Wooster and various characters in the "Blackadder" series but as House he's so different and his American accent is terrific. He really is a surprisingly (to me) good actor.

For Entertainment Weekly's interesting analysis of the new map from "Lost" go here.

a clowder of cats
an unkindness of ravens
a convocation of eagles
a seethe of vampires??
I'm in the middle of Moon Called by Patricia Briggs (and so far it's excellent) when I came across this phrase for a group of vampires. As far as I know (I googled) it's original with her. In fics I've read, vampires groups are called families or clans and I can't recall any other collective name for them. Are there any others out there?

I was also thinking about their blood consumption. How often do they feed and how much blood must they consume? The average human contains about 6 quarts of blood. Over 2 quarts can lost before it's fatal (presuming it's soon replaced) yet in many depictions of vampire feedings in movies and TV, they seem to take just a few sips before discarding their victim who we presume to be dead. How much blood can they drink in such a short time? In "The Initiative" BtVS ep 4.7, we learn that vampires are room temperature so we may assume they are somewhat like cold-blooded creatures which, since they don't have to maintain an internal body temperature, feed less frequently then warm-blooded mammals. This makes sense because if there are 38,500 people in Sunnydale, surely a death a day (and this is just one vampire) would make a sizeable dent in the population, eventually coming to the attention of the mundanes no matter how stupid they appear to be. It makes far more sense for vampires to keep consorts, pets and/or bloodcows and to set up vampire brothels like those seen in "Into the Woods" BtVS ep 5.10 if they exist anywhere else besides oblivious Sunnydale. Of course there is the vampire equivalent of being on a vegetarian diet when they consume cow, pig or otter blood but that does not seem to appeal to the majority of vampires.

A few days ago calic0cat asked at BC if there were any floorplans and stuff regarding Giles' apartment and The Magic Shop for her new fic. Unfortunately I wasn't much help though it was something I was interested in. You'd think with all the trivia about BtVS out there that someone might have posted something especially as in the S2 DVD set there's a section on the blueprints from BtVS. Eventually she found 2 sites that were a bit of help and I thought I'd pass them on:

thread at the Buffy Trivia guide with a fan-drawn floorplan of la Casa Summers.

Giles' Sunnydale apartment

A comment yesterday by runevampyr made me realize that many new fans might be ignoring works of earlier BtVS fanwriters simply through ignorance of their existence. I was a fan of BtVS from the first episode on March 10, 1997 but didn't discover the Buffyverse-on-the-Web until the fall of 2001. That's about half of its existence. There are sites out there that appear abandoned like Windzweaver's with its sadly unfinished "The Day the Demons Won" or even off the web entirely only to be found by the Wayback Machine ie "Spike's Princess: He's to Die For" with its "All I Needed to Know in Life I Learned from Spike".
The Buffyverse-on-the-Web is like an enormous mansion with thousands of doors. Some of these doors open into richly appointed libraries and others open into empty cyberspace that once contained something of interest, something now lost forever. Who wrote the first BtVS fanfic? Where was it posted as Fanfiction.net didn't go online until October 1998? I wonder who remains from that First Wave of fans and fanwriters. Are any still reading or writing? The only possible ones I know of are James Walkswithwind and Laure Alexander but then I've been staying in the Spander section and don't know about the rest of the Buffyverse.
If I could I'd establish a BtVS/AtS Fanfiction Hall of Fame where the best fanfics could be archived, or at least linked to, so that they could be preserved for us and future readers. The fics would be nominated by fans and it would be open to all types of fics het or slash. When a new fan would venture into the BotW at least s/he could have taste of what has been written since 1997. Alas I don't have the knowledge to do this but maybe the idea could be bounced about and someone might act on it. I think it's important.

( All I Needed to Know in Life I Learned from Spike )