I think the frustration I often have when it comes to discussion/analysis/discourse in the VSMP fandom is that a lot of people who I’ve seen discussing it online view it as a “Person vs Monster” narrative, where the vampires (but particularly Scott) are considered the antagonists of the story and the source of all conflict. I, on other hand, view the narrative as fundamentally being a “Person vs Nature” narrative, where Oakhurst itself or “The Curse of Oakhurst” is the antagonist. To clarify, when I say “The Curse of Oakhurst” I am referring to whatever force powers the beacons, leaves the magic books, and enforces the invisible barrier that keeps them all trapped.
There are many ways in which The Curse narratively serves as malicious parody of punitive justice. First and foremost, the way it seeks to punish the "unholy beings” at all costs, all at the expense of twelve bystanders who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The humans are made into unwilling soldiers against “the forces of darkness,” which is particularly cruel when you consider Apo and Legs’ respective trauma. Not to mention that this would inherently imply The Curse views the humans as expendable to its cause, given the obvious risk that the humans can/would be turned or killed by the vampires.
In the beginning the humans are, for the most part, hesitant to take part in any sort of witch hunt. However, The Curse coaxes them at every opportunity to seek out and hunt the vampires. This is pretty plainly illustrated through phrasing of all of the beacon status alerts (ex: purified vs. corrupted, light vs. darkness, etc), but can also be seen in the cure books. The cure books use very stoic, religious language to invoke a very specific narrative. A narrative that gives way to an erratic, hateful rambling in the fourth volume that is literally titled “The Retribution” by “A Vengeful Hand.”
One also has to question the necessity of killing Owen and Scott given they had already been in an unbroken slumber for hundreds of years and already hadn’t been able to hurt anyone in said state. The curse literally woke them up, and made them a danger again. All for what? For the chance that the humans would smite them, along with anyone that had been turned and couldn’t be cured? So that some nebulous “Divine Justice” could be carried out for the benefit of… literally no one? The people who had suffered under Scott’s rule had already successfully liberated themselves and presumably got to live the rest of their lives in peace. Anyone who lost their loved ones at the hands of Owen would have died of natural causes a long time ago. There is no one who could be brought closure by their execution.
In an attempt to “bring Scott and Owen to justice” The Curse succeeds at nothing but creating new victims. It forces the long dead sorrow of the past on a new generation of people.
To look at this from the vampires perspective, Owen and Scott have just woken up from hundreds of years of slumber only to find they were caught in a trap meant to kill them. That they were stuck in a confined environment with twelve people tasked with hunting the two of them down. Yes, both of them have done terrible things. Yes, they turn people ruthlessly, and often with ulterior motives, but ultimately they are acting out of self-preservation. It’s either turn everyone or die, and I can’t really blame them for not simply giving up and letting themselves be murdered. Of course, in an ideal situation, everyone should have the right to choose whether or not to be turned, and their consent should be required. However, this is not an ideal situation, and when your only options are turning some against their will or be killed yourself, the answer is obvious.
This is why I find the ending so thematically fitting/satisfying. Both sides, human and vampire, come together to essentially trick The Curse of Oakhurst. In the end, the two sides that were reluctantly pitted against each other were able to collaborate and find a compromise where almost all the survivors could get out alive.
It sadly does not go as planned, and both Martyn and Ren are lost in the process, but considering they were the most gung ho about indiscriminately killing the vampires from the very start, it does make thematic sense. Inversely, the person who had the most nuanced perspective on vampirism from the very beginning, Abolish, is the only one who gets to walk away as a human.
The antagonist, The Curse, is defeated. The people it used as unwilling soldiers not only outsmarted it and survived, but they survived as vampires. They get to go on to live long, happy, peaceful lives. They never take another human life. They refuse to be what The Curse has painted them as. “The darkness consumes all hope” The Curse claims as the last beacon is corrupted, but as Scott responds: “I can only imagine these beacons were put in by people who had more of a black and white sense of morality.”
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