THIS IS AN AMAZING IDEA and I sat on this in my inbox for a long time because I don’t know that much about D&D and I wish I had more to add to this situation. But like, YEAH like D&D Night at Trinity Gate, third Wednesday every month, sounds perfect. Everyone can come over. I’m more partial to the idea that it’s Armand & Friends and that Lestat comes over and crashes the party and acts like a douche but yeah man I think this DEFINITELY HAPPENS.
Oh man. A small selection because apparently my brain took this and ran with it a bit
“No, Lestat, being a bard does NOT mean you sing all your dialogue”
Daniel as DM because he’s the only one who’s even remotely unbiased
“I am going to smite you SO hard, you won’t even know what smote you. Say bonjour to my TWO-HANDED BROADAXE, you little goblin shit!” *rolls a critical miss*
“Oh, that’s great. Just great. I can’t believe you just said that. We have ONE healer in this party, so do you think just once you could keep your big mouth shut and try NOT to get us all killed?”
“Well maybe if St Francis over here *jabs thumb in Louis’ direction* had picked some USEFUL skills instead of “talking to animals” this wouldn’t have happened”
“Pardon? My charisma stats alone have saved this mission like three times THIS EVENING”
//meanwhile Armand is a min/maxing munchkin who number crunches all his stats and barely misses breaking the game
//Nicolas rolls bard and insists Lestat reroll priest/cleric “if he wants to be so ‘good’”
//totally. Spends points and money with extreme deliberation and keeps absolute track of his gear and any and all bonuses so he never forgets to make use of them at opportune moments
//y e p. Meanwhile Lestat playing chaotic neutral or some shit just so he can fuck with Armand with impunity
//I have no idea how to play D&D but you know I am ALL about COVEN GAME NIGHT!!!!!
Personally, idk if he’s really that compatible with the description anymore for my headcanon, either as young mortal David or David 2.0 (*if you catch my drift, y’know, David Talbot at the end of TOBT) but I’d love to screentest him as a Talamasca agent, or a vampire, maybe Santino? He’s only 37 yrs old, still plenty of life in him yet!
He’s also been a model for Dolce & Gabbana, which I headcanon as one of Lestat’s fave fashion labels.
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 