#vsmp ending

V!Apokuna is one of the characters who plays most directly into the idea of vampirism as assault and whose narrative post turning focuses heavily on the trauma that assault causes and the difficulties it causes in her life.

Apo for the first few days is left to wander unsure of how to handle this sudden hunger, trying to figure out exactly what she is in the aftermath of it all, pretending that she’s still the same. She deals with feelings of isolation, feelings amplified by the fact she doesn’t know if there’s anyway to tell her friends what happened without being outcast.

Eventually though she does tell someone but due to a combination of social stigma, and poor wording she’s left trapped in a room till Martyn returns with more people. This failed confession strains her relationship with the others, but she still wants to help them and so she proposes that she plays as a double agent to get the town more information.

And so she goes to the vampires, and tries to work on gathering information, unfortunately Apo’s charisma is low and she cannot hide her disdain for Scott, or the fact that above all she wants to return to Cherri. This motivation leads her to learning from Owen that she cannot return to Cherri while the humans are alive. At this point the cure is theoretical and while she prefers the townsfolk more than anything she needs to get back to Cherri, she doesn’t know if she can still be accepted as she is but it doesn’t matter as long as she can return to the person who matters to her more than anything.

And so she decided to bring a peace offering to Pyro, she does what vampires are supposed to do, what was done to her. She leads truffle to the castle and offers her as food, and Pyro is horrified. Truffle is kind and innocent, what purpose would killing them serve.

“Truffle wants this, truffle wants to die”

Over and over throughout the series Apo has been told that she asked to be turned, that she deserved it, that it was her fault. Her killing truffle is a renenactment of her turning, and Pyro the other person involved with truffle doesn’t get it. They don’t make the connection and instead view it as an act of cruelty and so he begins plotting with Owen to kill her.

Ultimately Apo is not killed and makes it to the final episode, aligning her self firmly (though temporarily) with the humans, she is interested in a cure but ultimately her first priority is escaping.

Throughout the final episode she tries to tell people about her turning but is repeatedly misunderstood or undermined. Cleo was one of my favorite characters in V!smp up till the later half when she began behaving in a way that was cruel. I still enjoy her and thinks they played a wonderfully complex character, but their treatment of specifically Apo made me a bit less fond overall mostly because their words led them to feel further isolated. M/Sausage though is a much larger perpetrator of this issue , after begging to be turned he is (granted by accident) and then turns on Apo putting her into danger. M then lives out the fantasy of being a powerful vampire before deciding to flip flop on both sides while pushing the idea that Apo will need to die.

Fortunately in this instance Pearl, Ren, and Martyn have her back pointing out the ludicrousness of trying for days to get turned and then expecting the person who turned him to sacrifice their life because he was all done living out his vampire fantasies.

Apo fights tooth and nail throughout the final episode and survives to the final meeting where Scott and Legs propose the plan.

It’s good, sure she’ll have to keep living with this trauma for the rest of her life, but most the townsfolk will survive, the people she just managed to rekindle a relationship with will make it out and she’ll go home to Cherri.

And then Martyn dies, because of her blood. Because she saved him, and then Ren is cut down. Sausage blames her for both of their deaths. He doesn’t blame the vampires who threw Martyn from the bridge in the first place, he blames Apo.

But it’s over and she gets to go home. She gets to see Cherri again even if it’s as a vampire, even though she’ll have to live with this for the rest of her life, she’ll have the one she loves most beside her.

She has to live remembering everyone she lost, either to death or deception. She’ll live knowing that Scott the person who turned her and turned people against her is out there, and she has to hope he was being honest about changing, or that Abolish will cut him down if he doesn’t.

Don’t know how to conclude this, I’m a big fan of V!Apo’s charcter.

VSMP, thoughts and analysis, big head up here I am talking about the characters and I think all the CCs are awesome and managed to portray wonderfully complex characters!

Overall I think the ending was pretty good with their being only one thing that sours it for me.

Scott Goldsmith

Scott was the main POV I started with and I watched all his episodes, I think his character learning to care and feel was good but he didn’t get a redemption, which makes his, Drift, and Shelby’s ending feel uneasy. The reason for this being that V!Scott is an abusive Charcter who did not apologize or make reparations to many of his victims.

Apo, Pyro, Shelby, Cleo, and Drift were all violently attacked and he then proceeded to gaslight them and those around them to sell the idea that it was good that they were turned, or that they asked for it. Throughout the series he undermined Apo, and Pyro’s support network pushing Pyro into violence and Apo into isolation. The way he speaks about Apos turning shows a lack of remorse and every time she expresses anger about what he did he claims she made a deal, or that she attacked him as if he didn’t coerce her by threatening her life as well as the townsfolk’s.

All of the charcters in VSMP are flawed and most are morally grey but Scott is hardly morally grey, he’s starts out as an aristocrat who was sealed away for enslaving a town to serve him, and when he wakes up he decides that instead of trying to sustain himself in animal blood to start seeking out victims, his co-vampire Owen is also guilty of this but at least seems to act with the idea that vampirism is a good thing, a gift, though that doesn’t absolve him of cruelty but I’ll discuss Owen later.

V!Scott believes he is entitled to other people and their bodies.

And at the end of the story he maintains a relationship with two of his victims while getting leave behind the others who will have to live (in pyros case die) with the trauma he caused.

I’ve seen people interpret vampirism as queerness and I think that’s a cool lense, it’s not a direct analogy and reading it as such hurts certain aspects of the story. vampirism is analogous to different things in different POV’s. That said no matter how it’s ultimately viewed by the charcters as a gift or a curse it’s undeniable that the charcters feel that forcefully turning people is wrong.

“You know what you don’t get? You got to choose being changed. We have to just accept it.”-Shelby ep 5

Shelby ultimately enjoys being a vampire but she’s still able to understand that what happened to her and others is wrong.

So in summary for Scott, I don’t think he redeemed himself and the fact he’s entrenched himself in the lives of two of his victims feels icky to me. Though I am happy to see he isn’t just free to fuck around and is being observed by Abolish.

I’m going to make another post for Apo because she was my favorite character by far. I’ll also prolly talk about Owen and Avid. If yall want my thoughts on any other characters or would like me to elaborate on anything lemme know.