#vsmp thoughts

What if it’s not as simple as Scott and Owen being evil manipulators, and Pyro and Shelby being their poor innocent victims? What if they are all just really fucked up people who are in desperate need of companionship, for one reason or another?

Pyro consistently chooses to torment the townsfolk because he wants to, because he was bullied his whole life and now wants to take that pain out on other people. Scott never told him to do that. In fact, most of the time when Scott puts his foot down its because Pyro goes too far, and over indulges in drinking from the humans, “stealing Scott’s meal.” As bad as it sounds, I kind of get why Scott gets angry at him for wanting a cure, because it is deeply hypocritical. Lets also not forget that the only reason Pyro wanted a cure in the first place was because he thought being a vampire meant he couldn’t leave Oakhurst/had to serve Scott forever, once Scott clarifies that’s not the case his reservations about being a vampire are completely gone.

Shelby is literally willing to overlook any atrocity the others commit as long as they are kind to her and make her feel included. For as much as she claims she wants peace and to never hurt anyone, she actively makes excuses for the other three, and enables them to continue harming the humans. If anything she has less of an excuse than Pyro does, because she is not afraid of Scott, she could have gone back to Oakhurst any time she wanted but chose not to, because the Castle Vampires treat her better. People make a big deal about Owen tampering with the note Avid left, but I don’t think that ultimately would have changed anything. For as much as she hides behind “the townsfolk wouldn’t accept me,” the truth of the matter is that in the Castle she is The Favorite, and in Oakhurst she’s just “Bigfoot Girl” (who the humans only seem to care about when they think she's missing and/or dead), so why would she ever want to go back there?

For all his posturing, for all the distance he keeps, and icy tones he uses, Owen does care deeply about the fledglings. It’s why he crashes out so hard in Session 5 when Pyro betrays and then discounts him. Owen has been shown multiple times attempting to protect and provide for the fledglings at his own expense, even going so far as to try and feed Apo and Cleo blood from his own body (something Scott would never do). He does not tell Shelby the townsfolk will never accept her because he wants to isolate and control her, he says that because he believes it and he wants to protect her. Despite dramatically announcing he's on on no one’s side after his “snap” in Session 5, he cannot bring himself to part from the Family, and even still collaborates with them on the castle and jokes around with them. It even seemed that Owen was going to ask Shelby to leave Oakhurst with him before they got interrupted.

It is true that Scott is ultimately only in it for himself, but he has demonstrate time and time again that he has no real interest in controlling the actions of the other vampires. In fact, he is very amenable regarding how the other family members want to go about things. He is willing to play the political game when the others want to convince the humans to their side, and when Owen decides he wants to start killing people, he is quick to agree to that as well. Despite clearly wanting to let Apo, Drift, Cleo, and Avid join the Castle, he insists that the other family members be consulted and that they make that decision as a group. Scott is completely self-motivated, but he knows that teamwork is essential to his own survival, and that he needs people he can truly rely upon. He also has the emotional intelligence to know what reliable teamwork requires, and is willing to invest the effort into achieving that.

Do they all consistently refuse to take accountability for the harm they cause one another? Yes.

Is the acceptance they show one another far less conditional than that of the townspeople? Also yes.

What I love about bloodletting is that its very much not the “I can fix him” / “I can make him worse” dynamic, but instead it’s them both simultaneously thinking “I can fix him” while having very different, mutually exclusive ideas of what “fixing” means.

They have every reason to hate each other. They are opposites. They should be enemies. Yet, they share a level of emotional intimacy far deeper than any bond they have on their respective sides. Both of them have an inherent need for the other that neither can bring themselves to ignore.

Owen is maligned by the others for his uncompromising anger, while Legundo is looked up to for his level-headed, highly empathetic nature. Yet, what most of the others don’t know is that Legundo struggles with anger management, and almost physically assaulted Avid for building a “Wellness Center” and undermining his medical practice. IRL Legundo also revealed that V!Legs hates Scott, has always hated Scott, and considered murdering him when they spoke privately. He decided against it not for moral reasons, but the impracticality of getting away with it.

Owen is not the only one who’s angry.

Their respective anger is rooted in a strong sense of justice. Said strong sense of justice is rooted in an all-consuming pain that haunts them from their past. Both of them recognize that in the other, and because of this, each of them sees the other as simply “misguided.” Both think they can convince the other to their side, if just given enough of a reason.

And the thing is: They are both wrong. They are also both right.

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.

It’s literally Castle, but they’re both vampires and it’s an urban fantasy vibe

In TV spinoff style its mostly original adventures starring Drift and Sausage with minimal reference to the events of vsmp, with few exceptions…

Scott and Shelby are regularly occurring characters, but mostly are just there to fuel the interpersonal subplot of the episode. They sometimes intentionally or inadvertently help Drift solve the case with their insight. Also, romantic subplot between Drift and Shelby??? 👀

There is the occasional somber moment where Drift and/or Sausage reflect on the tragic events of Oakhurst and the friends they lost

Sometimes there are special episodes where other vsmp survivors appear to join their investigation

Abolish jumps in on an investigation where the culprit is suspected of being a malevolent vampire targeted by the organization he works for

Cleo is visiting New York for an episode because Scott and Shelby offered to help her find the perfect anniversary gift for Pearl, but ends up getting roped into Drift and Sausage’s hijinks

Pearl gets her own episode too, because when Drift suspects a werewolf is the culprit, there’s only one person she knows to consult

There’s even an episode where Drift and Sausage’s investigation leads them to the town where Apo and Cherri now live (Cherri has either been turned or is very old, but very happy). Apo is initially pissed, because she never wanted to see any of them again, but helps anyway in order to apprehend the killer and protect her home. Perhaps the three of them are able to make amends by the end of the episode, and both Sausage and Apo can share a cathartic moment where they commiserate over being the last surviving members of the militia.

All the episodes previously described are scattered few and far between several seasons of episodic adventures.