What is your opinion about Marius/Pandora? Like, I shipped it real hard when I read the books, but at 14 I couldn’t really see the problematic aspects of it (i.e. everything). Now, over ten years later, I see it, but I still think, despite everything, they were the happiest they seem able to ever be, in the 200 years they were together- despite all the fights (or maybe because of it?). And I really don’t understand why there are so few M/P shippers, since most of us read it as young teens anyway
Anon, your message sat in my inbox for over a week because I don’t remember enough about their relationship to answer this question.
I’ll open it up to anyone to answer!
I love Marius & Pandora together, they give me life and when they’re getting along it’s like the closest thing to a healthy relationship Marius has ever had in this series. Anne said she based their penchant for bickering with each other on how she and her husband Stan used to be, so I think it’s really easy to read Pandora as Marius being a Complete Dick as usual but it’s another situation where you have to take AR context into it a little bit and I think in a lot of ways she was making the point about how sometimes people can genuinely love each other while clashing during everyday domestic life.
For me personally there’s an IDEA of Marius/Pandora that has never really had a chance to happen, because they were still relatively young (in comparison to how old they are now) when they were together, and I think they were still very volatile and emotional as baby vampires at the time, and I think there’s a lot of potential for them to have a really fulfilling relationship now if they decide to. But Pandora has a really important role in Marius’s life because he’s a person who like HATES BEING DISOBEYED and one of the reasons they clash so much is that she AINT ABOUT MARIUS’S BULLSHIT and she’s always been able to call him on his garbage and refuse him and argue with him and challenge him.
And like, despite the mountain of evidence that points to Marius being a Complete Dick, I do think that within the Riceverse he truly loves the people he involves himself with, even though his version of love is often unhealthy and dangerous. And I think it’s important that even though they got on each other’s nerves and she was a pain in his ass, he loved her so desperately and pined after her for centuries.
I think in the scope of VC (and this is speaking towards like a hypothetical eternity that none of us will ever see because it would hypothetically stretch past any our lives haha) that if Marius can ever redeem himself as a person, Pandora might be the one to challenge him and drive him to change. She’s sort of a key to Marius’s past that no one else in this world can be and I think that would be invaluable when it comes to knocking him off his pedestal.
I have a lot of headcanon fantasy about how good they could maybe be for each other and it would be really satisfying for me if Marius could like, stop being a douche because I really like so much else about him as a character. And it would also be satisfying for Anne to utilize Pandora as a character because I think she has a lot of potential but she’s turned into like a ~sad vampire lady~ background accessory and I’m not a fan. And knowing AR and how these books go, she’s not gonna take advantage of this because she doesn’t seem to feel the need to challenge Marius anyway.
VC PROTIP: I know a lot of people skip Pandora but HONESTLY LIKE THERE’S SO MUCH DIRT ON MARIUS IN IT LOL like he’s such an asshole in it and I think it’s really good contextual evidence about him that’s worth reading. It’s enjoyable as a Marius fan but I imagine it’s also validating to get more material on hating him, too, if you’re on that side.
I-want-my-IWTV 