If I remember right, it's one night. Drusilla turned Darla in AtS, and I'm fairly sure Darla rose the following night. (It's been a while since I've watched it, but I know that canon info exists. \o/)

Thanks, I know I've read fics where it's taken more, so I wasn't sure if it was really covered in canon.

OK so that sparked my curiosity... went through several web sites... and found this:

Vampires Rising
In the movie, a vampire takes 3 days to rise from the grave, but there's no such time limit on the series. Sometimes on the show they can rise later that night; other times it seems to be a matter of minutes... whichever the episode's plot calls for ;)

(Info lifted at: http://inner-moppet.net/hemery/differences.html )

And I have to agree with him/her. Been re-watching it and that's pretty much what I've seen. (And I remember the movie well and it was 3 days)

Very useful, thank you!
btw, love that icon ;)

Wlkm, I know how info helps a plot. :)

:) Glad you liked the Icon.

I'm trying to remember how long William's mother said he was missing for in "Lies My Parents Told Me" (I think that's the BtVS episode). So far as I remember it was around the 3 day mark. So that sounds pretty good... Although, of course, canon and fiction don't always go hand in hand (for good reason, yay slash! ;).

Hmmm, I think you're right. Though maybe William was living it up vamp style and killing people for one of those nights. Who knows.
And yeah, Yay Slash!
*does the dance of slashy goodness*
*realizes it looks stupid and goes back to writing*
:)

I agree with them pretty much making it last as long as they wanted. My theory is the more blood the quicker the rise. We often see the 'cannon fodder' vamps buried (something that in the US usually takes 3-4 days, but may be quicker on the Hellmouth) but when Spike and Angelus had need for certain students (The chick from parent teachers night, for Spike, and the girl at the funeral home they thought had been attacked by an animal, for Angelus) They rise a LOT quicker.

If it was less than about three days, you'd never get the body buried before it woke up.
I think this was one of those points where the show avoided any rules, so they could do what they liked, depending on what they needed for dramatic effect.
I tend to work on the theory that a lot of blood makes for a more successful transformation, which takes longer to be assimilated, while a small amount of blood can create a dumb minion overnight, if necessary.

I've always seen it as working in the opposite way. The more blood, the faster the turn. If the turning works like a virus, which it seems to, it would take longer for a small amount of blood to make it's way through-out the whole body, converting the human blood and tissue as it goes.

Ah, well, I am of the "there is a difference between a minion and a childe school" of vampire law, so the idea that more blood makes a childe is a starting point. After that, I figure that to make a more intelligent childe, it would take the demon longer to wake up in its new body. The extra time being needed for a more complete integration, particularly of the brain and memories.

The mythology of BTVs is at best ambiguous and inconsistent. The writing was for a tv show so quite simply the mythology was changed to fit in with plot requirements of that episode. If it required that the vampire rise in a matter of minutes, it did so.

William/Spike is an example of this. In Afterlife he talks to a newly resurrected Buffy:

SPIKE I do. Clawed her way out of a coffin, that's how. (to Buffy)
Isn't that right?
Buffy looks at her hands as if they belong to someone else.
BUFFY I ... Yes. I had to do that.
SPIKE Done it myself.

The implication is that William was buried and rose from the grave yet in Lies My Parents Told Me a newly risen William with Drusilla is clean, no sign of mud or dirt and his mother Anne says:

ANNE Where have you been? I've been beside myself with worry for
days...

Given she had Consumption and not Alzheimer’s disease, Anne appears to have forgotten her own son’s funeral! It would take a minimum of three days for William to have been discovered, buried and rise.

Western Vampire mythology is different from that of say Asia or the Far East; but the following would seem to apply

1. The age and strength of the Sire has a direct correlation with the time for ANY off spring to rise.
2. ‘Cannon fodder’ Minions may rise in hours. Childer between two and seven days. Other strengths of offspring anywhere in between. There have been stories however of Vampires being dormant for centuries before rising.
3. Darla rose quickly because despite being mentally unstable Drusilla is an old, powerful Vampire. She’d been a Vampire before. (The Demon was waiting in the wings as it were to return.)

Quite simply correlate the length of time with the strength and age of the Sire and the type of offspring created.

I'm thinking that Dru buried him just so he'd have that experience. Or maybe the flowers told her to, who knows.

Possibly by Drusilla but highly unlikely. His clothes were those he wore at the party and when he was turned. They were spotless.

THAT i blame on the piss-poor continuity of the show, specifically and most tv shows in general.

Unless Spike were lying to make Buffy feel better, which....eh. I'm not totally convinced he'd lie about *that*.

And Dru *did* bury Darla, so...she likes to do it.

I'm thinking you can go with whatever time you like. Remember the school-girl that Dru turned, the one who was supposed to be making the 'Parents Day' banner with Buffy? She rose in a matter of hours.

So i'm thinking it's pretty much a matter of 'writers convenience'.