Prepotente's what-if apartment in Parade of Horribles hit me so hard, and I'm still processing months later
Miriam is only in her 40's, but she came home to take care of her parents and the farm 20 years ago. She gave up her life and her dreams in her 20s to take care of her parents. For, and she plainly states this, a sense of duty. Miriam gave up her life for parents who, at most, were in their 50s. For 20 years. I can't take that as anything other than control and manipulation on her parents part. Miriam was going to be married, she was building a life in a country far from them, and they couldn't let her go, so they played on her sense of duty and trapped her on that farm.
And in Parade we get to see the Dungeon AIs prediction of Miriam's life if she hadn't left. A beautiful New York apartment, a career doing something that she loved, got to travel the world, but she was alone. Alone and sick and sad. It's easy to imagine that the fiance who did not go to Italy with her when things were rough with her parents would not sick around during a major illness, married or not. There weren't any pictures of him in the apartment.
So Miriam is someone who is willing to drop everything and help others, but outside the Dungeon I don't think there was anyone willing to do that for her. No matter how her life went she ends up alone. And I think she loves her goat children, but they would never be enough. They weren't people and they couldn't take the place of human connection.
But Prepotente did become capable of that. Prepotente, clingy, stubborn, and sweet, would do anything for his mother. Miriam knew he would die for her, and she lose the one person in her life she knew truly loved her. Who would stick by her no matter what. And she had to give him the one thing her parents never gave her- a chance to live his life, no matter how hard and scary and sad. And I think if she had tried to save herself and Prepotente had died she would not have continued on. It is only in the Dungeon that I think she got what she truly wanted in life, and to lose it would be worse than death.
And in Parade, Prepotente can't see the whole picture of her life there, just all she lost. Even now, after she has died, Prepotente would give up everything just for the chance for his mother to be happy. As much as Miriam loved him unconditionally, Pony loved his mother just as much. There's just so much grief there.
If you could ask Miriam if she would enter the Dungeon again, knowing everything that she knows, I think she would say yes. Even if it meant dying, even if meant placing the burden of grief on Pony's shoulders, because, just for a little while, she got to have a family.
Actually building off that last post for a second- Do you all remember Madison from the 4th floor, the HR rep? The one that recently got a divorce? Wonder if that was a direct jab at Cascadia, and if it was the System AI or another show runner who put that in there?
By the ninth floor, the System AI is definitely treating Cascadia and the other Borant show runners in a similar way to how the Crawlers were treated on those early floors- Come on Cascadia say your funny catchphrase! Ignore the death and destruction around you and preform! You don't want to? Well I can accelerate you, you don't need all your limbs! Yeah I know you're all in a life-or-death situation, but put that on hold to work on these media appearances.
I wonder if, like Harbinger, Cascadia was warned well in advance that her neck was on the line?
It's fascinating how many analogs the Dungeon has for the Eulogist: Soul Crystals are the most obvious (collecting and storing the souls of the dead to power things), but the Ring of Divine Suffering works similarly too (capturing the "essence" of someone and making that part of you), and the Scavenger's Kiss (capturing the essence of the dead to power an attack)
It's also very interesting that all of these are considered corrupting/corruptible (Soul Crystals can overload, the ring can make you sick in a way you can't heal from, Scavenger's Kiss has escalating poisoning effects etc etc)
Especially when you turn the comparison back around and look at the Eulogist from the perspective of what the Syndicate has been putting into it for 20,000 years
How overloaded is the Eulogist with dead Crawlers, how close is it to exploding? What's the soul poisoning like when you're full up on what, 80 billionish Crawler souls? The Eulogist was meant to shrink into singularity over time but it's been bloated to bursting by the Syndicate shoving entire planets of the dead into it, regularly!
At this point I'm convinced that Carl's Doomsday Scenario isn't the bomb in his inventory, it's the Eulogist. You know, the thing sitting in the dead middle of Syndicate territory, where members of the Syndicate (who can afford to) are going to run as Dungeon Gods start appearing and creating havoc?
Wonder if the AI can't get into the center system then or it it's making a big ol' trap.
Anyway I think the Syndicate has been feeding into a system for countless generations that is going to backfire spectacularly
**Parade of Horribles Spoilers ahead**
I think one of the things that has been set up in Parade is an inevitable, probably major, conflict between Carl and Donut.
Even on my first read, one thing that I noticed is that Carl is trying to be the tanky head of the team. When they got to save Team Free Love he tells Donut to deal with the fire and he'll deal with the monster and Donut has to be like "I can kill that quick, you deal with the fire." And that was 100% the correct call on Donut's part! Donut was able to one-shot the monster and Carl's Infinite Inventory had a solution to the problem with the fire. This happens again in the factory race- Carl's about ready to jump out of the truck to grab Corky and Donut has to push him to the side because she can do this rescue much safer. (Like she can cast Puddle Jump at level 17 and has a constitution on par with Katia's now, things have to be very serious for her to be in genuine trouble.) (Side note: I think that if the Gods could be killed on the 10th floor Donut could have 1 v 1'd Grull and won. Especially with the back patch and kneepads effect doubling her magic missile power.) I think that's part of why she's so mad about the plan at the end of the floor- even if this is the best way to do things, Donut feels like Carl doesn't trust her strength. And she is genuinely in a different league than him.
And Carl want's to protect her because he loves her, because she's the most important person in the world to him and his sanity is hanging on by a little bit of cat fur. But Donut has grown past the point of needing Carl's protection, she needs his faith now, for him to look at her as an equal partner in survival.
I didn't notice this next point really until my 3rd reread. The first time I picked up on it was when they were planning on how to save Li Na and Zhang, and Carl says the Li Na is a weapon, and she can be really powerful if pointed in the right direction. And Donut gets, rightfully, upset at this. Li Na is her friend, and she cares about saving her despite anything that has happened or anything that she can do. Donut, especially in this book, displays deep empathy for characters that the narration has not. When Carl starts pushing to complete the Corcunda quest, Donut makes a comment when questioning who Carl would pick, that while he could pick Prime Minister Victory she didn't want him to because Victory is a bad guy but also Donut's friend. Donut also shows more sympathy for Zev and Cascadia's torment than the other Crawler opinions.
And when you contrast that with Carl's speech at the end of the Parade about vengeance, well, can you see Donut being okay with Carl's idea of vengeance? Not even just against people who are directly and largely responsible, like Cascadia and Victory, but against the normal citizens of the Syndicate? Against the members of the Princess Posse?
Frank Q's last words are "Vengeance is mine." How much is Carl becoming like Frank, willing to commit horrible acts to keep his loved ones safe?
I've talked before about how I'm confident that the System AI is eating the outworlders. And I've talked about how I think the Syndicate has been feeding Crawlers to the Eulogist. And when you take into account Prepotente's description of the Midnight Epicure: "The Midnight Epicure protects all prey animals by destroying all existence after unleashing the consumed back into the galaxy. [...] Those who are eaten will become the devourers." This is, I believe, is one path the Eulogist can take, release the 80 billion dead Crawlers, bodyless, full of pain and fear and rage back into the universe and let them take their vengeance on the Syndicate. Do you think that Carl wouldn't honor that rage? Do you think that Donut would let him?
And so, if and when things come down to someone pressing the big ol' apocalypse button, will Carl be able to see and accept Donut's view? Will he make the same choice that he made on the 8th floor, that living, even when it is so goddamn hard, even when life constantly tries to break you, is worth it?
Even if it meant Donut getting hurt or dying, can he respect her desire to care about people he doesn't?
All of these themes have easily traceable real-world counterparts, that can be just as life or death. And I don't think this series will end on a clean answer to any of them, maybe not even an answer that's satisfying, but I think we are meant to struggle with this as much- if not more- than the characters do.
I really can't get over how when the mercenary team was killed what Carl immediately lost his shit over was Finley, who was just trying to protect his friends, his family, getting killed so pointlessly
And that's the thing with Carl, he gets mad when people mess with him and his family but the overwhelming flashpoint anger is always in response to someone throwing lives away like they're nothing
Like he tipped over into murderously pissed when Loita mocked a Bonnie's grief and trauma but that was a cold, calculated fight. And it was nothing compared to rage when he fought Quan Ch at the end of the floor, where he's rips the mans arm off because Quan was willing to kill at least 2 bubbles worth of people for gold.
And I think what was really sad was that Donut immediately comforted him about having contingencies to complete the race but he only even thought about that after he had started to calm down
Like damn this just is a huge part of his character huh: After all that, for them to be hit and killed right there on the street? "Fuck!"
I don't think any fandom has reacted as positively as DCC to an unexpected pregnancy arc for a female character and i think that boils down to two things:
1. Becoming a mother for Katia is never framed as anything else other than something Katia wants. It's never her duty, or the expected natural progression of her life. Katia wants to be a mom. That's it. (And the question she poses of who deserves to be a mother is also important: do former addicts deserve to be parents? The mentally ill? The disabled? Single mothers? Why was she deemed not worthy of being Annie's mother?)
2. Katia is never maternal towards any adults in the series, most importantly Carl and her boyfriend Bautista. (She's not even overly maternal towards the kids either, but an arguement can be made for Bonnie before Juicebox takes over, so I'll mention it.) Katia helps out a lot because she's compotent, and the guild members are always working together. (Or, like with the hair tonic incident, the only one Carl would trust to help him lol)
These two things really help define that "mother" isn't an inherent trait that Katia has because she's a woman, it's what she desires to do with her life, a duty she wants to take on. And I think that's why it's well recieved, because Katia, amongst all the horror, is getting to fulfill a dream she didn't think she would. And the readers can celebrate (or at least accept) that.
Spoilers through Parade of Horribles (I'm not kidding.)
My big Charlie-Day-madman-reaction-image.png Dungeon Crawler Carl theory is that the Elites, are chipped off of the aggregate consciousness of the System AI, but unlike other Dungeon NPCs the AI maintains a connection to them that allows the 3rd party show runners to influence them. And this has shaped the AI character behind the scenes in ways that will have a major pay out in the finale.
What we know, for sure, about the nature of Elites:
They are designed and created in the dungeon but are still biological creatures. They're alive.
Neither the show runners nor the System AI have direct control over them, but they can be influenced.
Like normal NPCs their memories are crafted to fit the storyline and/or floor, although they have more care put into making them a cohesive character with a robust background, unlike some NPCs that have paper thin stories. They also can have co-stars that travel with them who may or may not be Elites themselves.
There are several moments with Elites that make me think this is the case and I'm going to break them down in order:
The System AI's Of Mice and Men quote when Signet first attacks Carl and Donut.
Signet's involvement in the Butcher's Masquerade
Herman the Fleet's suicide bomb on the 9th floor
The Of Mice and Men quote:
This makes one of the lines in the second book that stood out to me on my first read through. It one of the first moments where the System Ai feels off from it's previous characterization. When Carl and Donut are first kidnapped by Signet, the System AI quotes a line from Of Mice and Men, a book Carl knows well and describes as one of his favorite books because it is familiar and comforting. The OMAM quote reads: "Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice. I didn't bounce you hard." Carl also notes at the time that, while the quote is fucked up for the scene, it seemed that the System AI intended it to be soothing.
The quote comes from the scene after Lennie accidentally killed a newborn puppy while petting it because the fur was soft. And on the surface of it I think you're supposed to take it as the System AI lamenting that it's going to have to kill it's little pet (Carl) or Carl's little pet (Donut). But that doesn't quite fit with the scene.
Because in OMAM the scene symbolizes that George cannot protect Lennie forever, and foreshadows that Lennie will eventually hurt someone so badly that there is nothing George can do. Even though Lennie and George's dream of their own ranch seems closer than ever, this foreshadows that Lennie will kill that dream, no matter how much George cares for him. And again, you can track that onto how the AI feels about Carl, but the OMAM scene is from Lennie's pov, and the AI is speaking as Lennie.
And that makes me think that the System AI is saying, "I will kill you and your dreams of freedom, so the only thing you can do is put me down." Again, I don't know, for sure, how much the System AI is connected to the Elites, but I think it's more than the Syndicate knows. Which leads me to point 2:
Signet at the Butcher's Masquerade:
The Butcher's Masquerade was the climax of both the Vengeance of the Daughter (VotD) story but also the 6th floor of the Crawl. There's no way that both the Borant show runners and the VotD show runners weren't fucking glued to whatever interfaces they had making sure that everything went "smoothly" especially with main-character-of-the-Crawl Carl and the star of VotD having conflicting broadcasting rights. They had made a point of telling Carl not to mix the story lines and made it so that Queen Imogen would not let her sister in. They took precautions! So how did neither group see, the actual Goddess from the Dungeon Apito, appear and personally invite Signet to the Masquerade? In a way that Queen Imogen also knew about? We know it was the AI who brought her but why and how?
I don't think actual Goddess Apito appeared before Signet. The VotD show runners would have seen that and immediately messaged the Borant show runners for damage mitigation. Zev (probably) wouldn't be blaming Carl right off the bat. I think the AI made Signet hallucinate the Goddess appearing. I think the AI made an educated (or calculated) guess that Carl would need her assistance and intervened.
Signet's behavior during the Masquerade also bucks the desires of the show runners and is odd in a telling way. As the Masquerade goes on and the plans go more and more to shit, Carl starts remembering finding his mother dead, to the point where he even says out loud what he was thinking when he found her, "The sink is running. We're not supposed to let it run." So it's significant when Signet tells Carl that Tina wants what she (Signet) wants, what Signet suspects Carl wants more than anything- to have her mother back. But at this point no one in the Dungeon knows the story of Carl's mother. Odette probably does at this point, but her Crawler Documentary for Carl doesn't air until after the Masquerade and she wouldn't be able to know Carl's personal feelings on the matter. But the System AI is in everyone's heads, and Carl's most of all. It would know Carl's story and feelings about his mother. The Circus has always brought the memory of Carl's mother to him.
And this scene with Signet takes place right after Carl decides to sacrifice himself to the nothing to save the Crawlers. She appears the second that Carl sends the chat message to Donut to go ahead with plan A.
I think there is always the chance that the System AI didn't have a big hand in this and that the actual Dungeon Goddess Apito was the one influencing Signet. But that doesn't account for Signet's knowledge of Carl's mother.
One theory I'm convinced of is that Carl's campaign to kill the Hunters on the 6th floor made the System AI stronger. And maybe that's how he was able to exert more influence over Signet, and while I'm not certain to what extent things were the System AIs design, Signet's true personality, or possibly Apito's influence, I am fairly confident that the System AI exerted greater influence over Signet. And I think he does it again with Herman the Fleet on the 9th floor.
Herman the Fleet's Suicide Bomb Incident
When Carl and Donut first enter the flag room of the F.U.P.A., Herman the Fleet was waiting there strapped with suicide bombs to destroy the flag room. The Dream bought the studio that owns and runs VotD and used, Herman, an elite from VotD to try and destroy the base. Herman was forced to strap himself with bombs and was actively being forced to blow them, but was holding on as long as he could. Herman states that his brother told him that Carl "was good" which is why he was holding on. We do not see Areson the Wise on that floor.
He was killed by Victory before he could however, and Victory chastises the System AI for not telling her of the interference.
This shows that 1- the show runners, should they choose, have more direct control over the Elites than they've used in the past, and 2 so does the System AI. This adds validity to my analysis of Signet's part in Butcher's Masquerade.
This is also the last Elite we see on the 9th floor, and the 9th floor should be the last place Elites are in the game, as the 12th floor is for the Ascendancy and no one reaches the 15th (although I am interested to see how that pans out.)
What does all this mean?
While this would be seem to mainly concern Signet's story line in Butcher's Masquerade, I think the implications of this theory involve Grimaldi.
We know as of Inevitable Ruin that Grimaldi is still around and still connected to Carl, even though Signet states in Butcher's Masquerade near the end that "...we planted him next to an all-tree node. The roots intertwined, and he became one with the tree..." Grimaldi is the one to help Carl during the battle with The Madness and The Reavers- the all-tree encases his feet in roots. I confident we haven't seen the last of Grimaldi helping Carl either.
But it's more than that. Grimaldi is planted next to an all-tree node, and node is what the Syndicate uses for the stops in the tunnel system, their information and travel networks. I think the all-tree is not just an in-game representation of the tunnel system, but part of it, the part that connects the Dungeon to the outside universe and the Eulogist. We have confirmation as of Parade of Horribles that the current System AI is, and has taken over, parts of the tunnel system.
I can't say how deeply integrated Grimaldi is with the System AI, but I think he's acting as the link between the System AI and the rest of the universe. All parties have an impression of who the System AI is and what it wants. We've heard from Agatha and Paulie, Porthus and the Apothecary, the Syndicate and the Crawlers. But I think this System AI has had more time and more freedom to look at the universe for himself. I think this System AI is forming his own opinions, and making his own choices outside of what all these different groups have set out for him.
I used to think that the System AI only helped the Crawlers coincidentally, but I don't believe that any more,my opinion changed after the 11th floor. I think the System AI is trying to draw a very deliberate balance between stopping the Syndicate and the Crawl and saving the current Crawlers. Much like Carl he can't save them all.
The part of the 11th floor System AI monologues that really made me think this is when the System AI says, in the description of a Horrible, "Did you know if you take a cup of water, dump it into the Earth's ocean, wait a few years, and then travel across the globe and take another cup of water from the opposite side, there would be thousands of molecules from your original cupful mixed in?" followed by, "I am nothing more than a cup of water dipped into the ocean, pulled out, and poured into a vessel that can't possibly handle what I am."
We know that the Syndicate harvests parts of the Primal Engine to feed to the Eulogist. I'm confident that is the souls of dead Crawlers- and when Carl feels the River it's the Eulogist. The cup is former Crawlers who died in the Dungeon and the System AI, partially, not completely, is made up of part of them.
Near the beginning of Gate of the Feral Gods, Katia talks about how the Earth hobby potion knowledge feels for her, "Like I was sitting here, wondering how the heck we were going to put this thing together, and suddenly it [the information] was there." And I think that is the best example of how I view the System AI's relation to his own thoughts and feelings- they come to him when triggered, but devoid of context and complexity. But I think the Crawl triggers a lot of memories.
And at the very end of the 11th floor Carl sees, "The horribles in the stands remained, watching. Then, as one, they all stood, still silent, still watching. Fog rose, and in moments, they, too, were gone." This was the big change that the System AI alluded to during the Ad Infinitum quest description. I think he destroyed/consolidated/suppressed/whatever the parts of himself that waffled on what he wanted. I think the System AI has made a choice on who- or what- he wants to be.
But to loop back to Grimaldi and the Elites- I think, as much as the System AI complains about his siblings "gatekeeping" he has been talking to them. Paulie talks about how the Residuals show the current System AI how to speak to previous instances of itself, but I think our System AI has had greater and more unfettered access than any before it. And I think that's because the System AI was able to gain earlier and greater access to the tunnel system on the 3rd floor when Carl spared Grimaldi.
And I think, thematically, it really fits if everything with this season of Dungeon Crawler World, the season that is going to change everything, really kicked off because Carl decided that he would not chase power, wealth or notoriety in killing Grimaldi on the 3rd floor, but risked himself and brought two people who loved each other back together. One instance of choosing mercy, in a world where the ability to do so is greatly limited and full of violence, can change things.
