certified lion man enjoyer

I feel like this is perhaps why the conversation in C3 fan spaces has primarily moved to the adulation of Ludinus. Unless it's shortly after a new Bells Hells one-shot, in which case the conversation turns to the typical insecure braggadocio about how they're obviously better than any other party, the fandom response for Bells Hells themselves is mostly screenshots and video clips without commentary beyond the usual bland cooing that always accompanied them. It is Ludinus who now occupies the C3 fan imagination. The problem is, there's not much of a remaining story about him to be had. He was a man who spent a millennium working towards the death of the gods. He failed miserably because his plan was completely reliant on either the cooperation of Ruidusborn or the forcible seizing of their powers. He failed to earn the former nor achieve the latter, and it is now likely permanently out of his reach. He seems to cling now to the consolation prize of Catatheosis, and to Bells Hells, who do not seem to care for him at all.

It is the adulation that's most puzzling - it's neither the fond "just a silly guy" failboy type of blorbo-fication, nor the "step on me" villain fandom. It is, frankly, a desperate and pathetic cling similar to his own, to the only significant character who still thinks killing the gods was a good idea, and who was not permanently killed by Bells Hells some time prior to the story's endgame nor is dead at the hands of the unambiguously triumphant Vox Machina and Mighty Nein.

The thing about Ludinus is that once the mystery of his past is revealed, he becomes rather dull. He has the sort of backstory that lets people claim he's sympathetic but which is canceled out by his complete failure to learn a single lesson from it in his thousand years of life. He is single-minded but unprincipled, intelligent on paper yet bizarrely easily foiled, a charismatic cult leader whom no one really likes and really only a couple of people fear. His master plan is to sic an ancient evil on the gods in an event that is all but guaranteed to be even more catastrophic than the inciting incident that led to his own trauma. He reminds me of the protagonist of To Build a Fire, who freezes to death in the Yukon territory, killed by the harsh climate but doomed to that fate by a lack of imagination. Like any cheap grifter he promises something so vague that the suckers born each minute, some during Ruidus flares, latch onto it, and like any cheap grifter he fails to deliver but rather claims it was all part of the plan before absconding with what little he still has.

The Vampire Lestat 3.01

+ honorable mention: