Talk:Overheating/@comment-24.114.65.109-20150109171845/@comment-71.163.232.233-20150707004950

In real world terms, fire is not an "element". It's not actually a "thing" in the sense that it's not a physical item, not an element like, say, gold or iron. It is a chemical process of oxidization (chemical reaction involving oxygen) that releases large amounts of energy, which you can observe as heat and light (the flames), among other things. If we really want to get into semantics, the word "fire" is most commonly used to refer to the observable phenomenons of the process, the heat and light, while "burning" is the common name given for the actual oxidization process.

Technically, a person like Willow being immune to damage from fire should mean that she is also immune to heat, as fires generally involve extreme temperatures, and a normal human being would be hurt from such temperatures. The fact that she doesn't burn means she's able to prevent the oxidization process from happening somehow, while the fact she doesn't take any damage from fires at all (including standing too close to fires) means there is also no damage from the heat or smoke or other harmful effects generally involved with fires. The second immunity means she should also be immune to extreme high temperatures in general.

After they changed Willow from fire immunity to only partial resistance in DST however, she now both burns and takes damage from fires. This means she likely also takes part of that damage from the extreme heat generated by fires and it wouldn't be surprising that she also is not immune to overheating.