TheTragicAngel

1: The in group deserves everything and the outgroup deserves nothing. Everything the in group does is good and justified, everything the outgroup does is not. 

This is the bedrock of the gaslight, gatekeep, goldsmith social interaction special, and the governing principal behind what Scott is willing to justify and when. Basically, if he or someone he likes did it, then he will defend it and deny even the concept that it might have been wrongdoing. People that are not members of his coven generally have their actions weighed by how dangerous or inconvenient they are to himself or His People. 

The most obvious example of this is the interactions with v!Avid in episode 6 and 7. In episode 6, he complains about Avid burning down Shelby’s house, but in episode 7 he defends it by claiming that “it was ugly”. The same instance of the same action performed by the same person goes from something worth complaining about to something worth depending based entirely on where they stand in Scott’s regard.

Note also that this rule has no interest in fairness or reality. If Shelby says “the sky is green and the moon is made of cheese”, and Martyn says “no it's not”, then Scott will back up Shelby because Shelby is coven and Martyn is not. If Shelby kills Martyn, Scott will immediately decide that Martyn had it coming. If Shelby kills Martyn, burns down the town, and declares her desire to destroy the world and rule over the ashes with an iron fist, Scott will fully support her in that endeavor.

2: A lone vampire is a dead vampire. Your power is directly proportional to the number of people that answer to you

On one level, this is just mechanically true for vampires smp. Every person turned is another set of hands that can corrupt the beacons, and, just as importantly, one more person taken away from the effort to consecrate them. Even if that person never switches sides, the fact that they can’t consecrate any more or use the various human powers makes it a worthwhile effort, which is why there was a general OOC limit to turning only one human per episode. (and they had to take a break from turning people if they accidentally turned too many)

a more character driven level, Scott is very much a social threat, and acts the part. Turning people lets him acquire minions, who are easier to manage than outsiders, and generally aren’t going to cause him problems.

Vampirism is generally more then enough to force someone into his faction, because once someone is turned the humans will do the bulk of the work in driving the new vampire away from them and into Scott’s waiting arms. It’s a phenomena Scott is very confident about and takes shameless advantage of.

This is also why in episodes where Scott doesn’t turn anyone (due to the OOC limits), it’s styled as him stopping because the new vampires aren’t joining up- growing his power base is the main benefit of turning new vampires, and when that peters out he becomes more hesitant to do so.

3. Your actions should always advance your agenda

In other words, Scott mixes business and pleasure in the sense that his hobbies always contain some practical value. 

This is, honestly, the one Scott haters get wrong the most. While there’s nothing wrong with having a villain in your story, Scott isn’t the sort of person to torture someone in his basement for the sake of it when he could be torturing someone in his basement for information, or to break them down into something more psychologically dependent on him. 

Even if recreation is his main goal, he should ideally have a secondary goal as a matter of both practicality and preference- it’s just more fun for him if he’s being paid to be evil. (or buy some ice cream. Or pet a dog. Or help someone out)

4. Betrayal is a crime of the highest order. Loyalty is a virtue of the highest order. 

What, exactly, Scott considers betrayal varies over the course of the series, but this is generally the governing principal behind the various times he menaced Pyro, why he didn’t see v!Avid’s murder coming, and why he was both so pleased with v!Avid and so angered by his death. 

Scott Goldsmith values loyalty, and to a degree both expects it as his due and considers it an obligation to give loyalty in turn. This isn’t surprising- most Scott Smajor characters run along lines of loyalty and devotion. Scott Goldsmith is not an exception just because he is also a Dracula. 

5. Support your allies however you can

Scott is, in fact, an incredibly dedicated ally. He does things like give Pyro food while having low hunger himself as early as episode 2, and the tendency to act like that only goes up over time.

This makes a certain amount of sense- helping other members of your faction also helps you because you’re all working together for a single goal. In Scott’s case this is especially true, since as the leader he’s deciding a disproportionate amount of the group’s goals. A well fed minion is a productive minion. A productive minion is a lot more likely to succeed at your goals. 

This one is the part that can be the hardest to reconcile with Scott’s everything else. However, it’s important to remember that Scott is not immune to the desire for companionship, and also that he actually needs to keep people on side in order to not die. In some ways, this is very much an extension of rule 2.

6. (new) be a good friend

Over the course of the series, Scott gradually gets attached to the other vampires, and comes to see them as companions with needs he should consider outside of their mutual victory. He realizes that he likes the people around him, and he wants them to be happy. That he cares about them as people, and not just as tools.

The process of this takes the entire series, but by the end of it his friends are a big enough priority that he points out opportunities to escape to his own detriment.

In conclusion:

1. Scott’s core character concept is “guy that is trying to get a good grade in Minecraft Hunger Games, something that is normal to want and possible to achieve”

2. Scott Goldsmith does not so much have a moral compass as he has a set of rules designed to keep him alive. The bad parts of this are obvious, but there are good parts, too: when it mattered most, Scott was able to change and grow to suit the people around him. Owen and Ren, by contrast, violently self destructed and that hurt the people around them because they were too rigid in their personal convictions.

4. The support he offers to other people in the coven is real and sincerely meant. The expectation that those coven members will aid and abet his own misdeeds is also very real. Scott himself doesn’t recognize the difference until the end of the series, where he asks Abolish to stop him from doing bad things. 

5. The finale of vampires smp from Scott’s pov very much pivots around v!Avid’s death. It turns out that the rules that Scott shaped himself around weren’t as ironclad as he thought, because the people around him would literally rather die than put up with them. The mechanics that demand violence and bloodshed can be subverted in a way that causes unnecessary death and suffering.

And, to be clear, Owen and Pyro are dead to him as soon as they do this. In part because he’s planning on killing them himself, yes, but also because their actions are tactical suicide.

When he next talks to Pyro in what is basically his eulogy, Scott thanks him for the reminder that he should expect death and misery, because as far as he’s concerned death and misery are the normal course of events. Scott was winning so much he forgot that murder boxes suck, actually.

This is increasingly a problem because, by the laws of murderboxes, Shelby and Drift are almost certainly going to die- they both struggle with pvp, don’t have the aggression to cover for it, and with Pyro and Owen lost they don’t have enough front liners to cover their weaknesses. If things continue the way they’re “supposed” to, more people that Scott cares about are going to die.

So, Scott starts looking for another way out. After all, if the rules can be broken in ways that are bad, maybe they can be broken in ways that are good. Maybe they don’t have to kill everyone. Maybe murderboxes are bullshit, and all of this was entirely unnecessary.

So he starts looking, and, surprisingly enough, there is a path out. It’s not easy or bloodless, but it is a strict improvement over the status quo. It’s an option that keeps his friends alive.

Of course, just leaving this murderbox isn’t enough. Scott still has to deconstruct the murderbox in his own head, because otherwise his actions will simply create another murderbox around him.

That’s a bad outcome, so he enlists Abolish to kill him if he starts causing problems.Scott’s not great with morals, but he’s excellent with rules and practical consequences. So long as backsliding into the worst of his old behavior is guaranteed to go badly for him, he can be fairly sure that he won’t do that.