V. Leithkin

Feel free to give me asks about this au

Basic plot: during the crawl: Carl is 18, Donut is 1.

Also Donuts charisma is strong enough to have a servant-like effect on Carl, at least for the first two floors.

As a result, neither are emotionally stable, or have a good sense of morality, and they gain a reputation similar to Lucia mar

What happens next its pretty interesting..

Book one: https://www.tumblr.com/helenvleithkin/818089392943087616/lucia-like-carl-au

Carl: https://www.tumblr.com/helenvleithkin/818147317534392321/dungeon-crawler-carl-lucia-like-au

So here’s a donut vs grimaldi Skech as foreshadowing

Will Katia's relationship with Carl & Donut be similar to the series where it's friendly but with a bit of familial undertones or will it be more familial considering they're much younger?

This question also pertains to other characters like the Meadowlarkers, Mordecai, and Li Jun's group, if you'd like to talk about that!

Alwo thank you for answering my last batch of questions

I love answering questions, you’re very welcome!

The answer is mostly yes, people who don’t know Carl will see him very similar to Lucia (that’s where the names from)

Some of the people who do know him are going to have more familial relationships, especially katia who is going to be a bit like his adoptive mother, as much as she can be anyway

Mordecai will also have a similar role but right now he’s certain they’re going to die. His focus isn’t parental guidance.

I’m not sure How le Jun’s groups relationship with Carl is going to play out, he has saved their lives and I do plan on them meeting back up with him, maybe have Le na beat him up once or twice? I don’t want everybody to be a parental figures, and Carl did think about how He and Le na would not get along In a normal group.

It’s worth saying somewhere so here’s a good place: Carl is 18. He is technically an adult. The problem isn’t that he’s young. The problem is that his life up until the crawl has been so unstable and crazy that he hasn’t really had time to do a lot of “maturing and growing up” and he don’t trust, and in from my understanding, places like the army are known to help with that, so him joining the Coast Guard in the original series made sense, plus he had a few years to just live a normal life, his past is in the past.

as opposed to AU Carl, who is hanging on by two months of living with Beatrice’s family as his only source of normalcy.

This is not a leader. This is more like the type of kid who wouldn’t tell a cop if he killed his father just for some attention.

Does the Royal Court separate from Meadowlark without helping them to the third, or after they've helped them down?

I know you said the AI doesn't have that whole foot fetish and instead messes with Carl in different ways. I was wondering whether the AI was still weirdly fixated on Carl in general, though? Like, apparently giving "special" descriptions, better loot, etc.

Do they still get mongo?

Hi! Glad it’s interesting,

Yes, Carl and Donut stay with the Meadowlark team, but somewhat for different reasons.

When I say, Carl is incredibly reckless in this au I mean it, both Mordecai and the Meadowlark team see him as a danger to himself.

So Mordecai doesn’t tell Carl and donut that they should leave the group because at this point, their odds of survival are better with the team of mature adults, despite being burdened by elderly,

And the meadowlark our team tries Really Really hard to connect with Carl and donut, these are the people who are willing to risk their life to care for the elderly, that same generosity also applies.

As a result the duo don’t separate from the medowlark team as often, and they don’t get mongo (yet)

In the original series, doughnut put a lot of time and effort into training Mongo well, and she did a very good job because of her experiences, the younger Carl and donut would have a pet velociraptor that they couldn’t control,

(Mongo will appear in the later “books”, and he will join the team eventually, I just haven’t decided exactly how)

As for the AI,

In the early books, it’s fixation with Carl is less noticeable so it’s not my plots focus right now, but it is absolutely messing around with Carl

Instead of “daddy” jokes

The AI is making “dad” jokes

There are a lot of jokes and achievements about Carl being an angsty teen, or his family history,

For specific achievements:

he gets an achievement for being one of the the youngest players to make it to the next floor

anytime he does something that’s not legally allowed at his age. He gets in achievement for it. This has great potential. I will be using it.

Sometimes, the AI will give specifically placed notifications or Quests when something inappropriate happens, like a bad attempted at a filter.

The AI going to treat his younger age like a bad trope

Carl is going to be incredibly annoyed and take it very personally

This AU is so interesting and im excited to see where you plan on taking it :3

Thanks I’m glad you’re enjoying it! I have a few rough drafts on how things could go but everything seems to be writing itself.

To answer your question:

I think it’s important to remember that the crawl is reality TV for most of the galaxy, a lot of elements are going to be pushed and pulled to make things more interesting. The AI is programmed to make that happen.

In the original series, the AI’s obsession with Carls feet was a joke with some plot relevance.

It never went away, and Carl never played into it for his own advantage, not unless the AI forced him to.

But this was a 27-year-old man who would not be affected by these things. The joke was that it made him uncomfortable not that it impacted his sense of self (Later on the AI probably became attached to that sort of humor idk) and an audience watching would get a few laughs out of the “running bit”

I highly doubt any audience would enjoy that sort of behavior between a “god like AI” and an 18-year-old who is mentally unstable, it would make people uncomfortable to watch.

everybody say “thank you world destroying aliens”

So the weird foot obsession is probably not going to be a thing in this AU, if only because it’s not marketable, and we can keep the inability to find shoes and pants to still be fun.

More importantly, the AI can replace it.

The AI likes to play into dynamics and tropes that are pre-existing. The more popular the character, the more reinforced the dynamic or trope.

Heckla is a good example: that Nordic Valkyrie warrior woman was 100% reinforced from the system and audience. If nobody knew her, it probably wouldn’t do that.

So what tropes and dynamics’s does Carl have?

Easy: His lack of agency. His teenage angst. His inability to trust adults. His recklessness. The fact that he was controlled by a cat for two floors.

The system AI is going to put him in situations where those traits are pushed back onto him, even if he tries to grow out of them.

The AI doesn’t want him to mature. The audience won’t like it if he matures. not unless it’s more interesting than the current version of himself.

The AI is also going to push donut to be more controlling and sociopathic, it wants her to be childish and cruel and Carl to suffer for it because it’s what made them likable in the first place. it won’t let them separated unless one of them is dead

At least for now, that’s what its intentions are. To have the angsty raging teen and sociopathic child trope. How much the AI goes crazy and what it means is yet to be fully determined.

So is the AI any different: absolutely not

Also, do you have any idea what Katia's going to be like in the AU? (In relation to Carl & Donut, since a lot of her development hinged on her time with them in the series)

Btw I JUST encountered your stuff and I love it already!!

Most people are going to be the same age as in the original book. The only people with age differences are going to be the people who were related to Carl and doughnut before the crawl. ( including Carl’s father, wink wink.)

Katia had a character arc in the original series, I don’t think that will be as present here. she will join the group though and her roll in it will be different. I think she’s ~30 in the original series and she’ll be ~30 in this AU

Based on my Lucia like Carl au

She’s not evil in the AU but she lacks a moral compass and can be incredibly cruel and manipulative at times (at least in the first book)

Somewhat Inspired by hailingstorm’s 18 year old Carl au

The idea of a younger Carl has been floating around in my brain for a while, here’s my own twist on it,

what if the 18 year-old Carl and Donut gained a reputation very similar to Lucia mar? not the same issues, but reputation.

In this one, a few details would be slightly different.

for one:,Carl would’ve moved out at 18 and moved in with his girlfriend (still Beatrice) She likely either lived with her parents or is one or two years older than him,

Most of the dungeon would play out very similar up to donut being transformed, in this AU, Donut and Carl’s dynamic is going to be very different

The first big change I’m making is that donuts charisma has a major effect on Carl,

it’s not the same as Lucias relationship with her dogs,

Donut is still a child. Who wants childish things, if she ask Carl for something unreasonable he’ll refuse, and the charm will be broken for a while, but if she asks him to kill a room full of goblin babies by pressing the detonation, that charm will override his very weak and fragile 18y/o sense of morality,

the justification, for this is wisdom is a stat that counters, charisma, and Carl lacks wisdom in his younger years

In the original series, Carl had a mentoring role for doughnut for a while, he would help her understand how to process the situation they were in (the mask speech at the end of books 6) and was generally the voice of reason to her irrationally, (with plenty of role reversal sprinkled throughout)

In this one, neither are going to be mature, therefore they are both twice as reckless, and both will have a deep distrust of any adults, and a undeveloped sense of morality, between Beatrice and Carls parental issues, plus frank and Maggie, (and their daughter who in this au Carl receives killing credit for) this issue becomes devastating

This becomes an issue When they run into the medowlark folks, who practically begged them to join their team. They see a cat who’s only been sentient a few days old. And an 18-year-old, whose life before the crawl was obvious messed up someway. And is unusually attached to the cat and oscillates between older brother like and borderline servile at times

Carl will be a player killer in this au, will receive killing credit for Frank and Maggie’s daughter, and as a result donut will have killed the guy who peed on the wall (it’s only fair. I got a skull too!)

They will have also succeeded in killing the rage elemental, instead of playing it safe, they risk it and timed the explosion correctly, this could result in a celestial box and something like Carl getting his gloom wraith phase early 

Seeing Carl killed the rage elemental and gain its abilities, would have finally push the medowlark to stop trying so hard to get him to join their team, and be a bit more afraid of him, Carl does not take this well and refuses to use it around them, resulting in the fight against the ball of swine playing out very similar,

I’m probably going to do an update to this AU to finish flushing out book one,

And a part two for the next book, etc.

two notable changes will be mordicais relation with the group (was very structured and temporary as a game guide so a lot of the relationship would be similar) and Carl gaining the Charisma necessary to break out of donuts subtle charm

Plus, katia-adoptia

I caught my first fish at a lake, it was a largemouth bass, I think I took an obligatory photo,

but it turned out so funny. Neither of us looked impressed. We were both looking equally unhappy with the situation So I had to re-create it.