Thank you all for your answers to my questions!
I think that any Dungeon core Danmachi fanfic will have to start way before cannon, because dungeon core stories are progression fantasies most of the time.
I would probably at least try reading it it at some point if someone posted something like that though.
Great point, and while I do agree, it would most likely have to start off far,
F a r into the past, we have a few surprise tools that will help us out in both creating the beginning of the fic, and dealing with later story elements
Time skips, Descriptive writing, Flashbacks, General avoidance of unnecessary Tinker-Babble (Worm Term) Overuse (ie, don't make an entire chapter filled to the brim with creature creation details). Finally, we have a notebook to write your general storyline in so you can either lessen the number of plot holes in the story, or
make a few plot holes for a surprise twist, and generally stick to the plot. 5-6 chapters filled with creation babble, and time-skips until we get to Modern-Day Orario, to fulfill both Generalized Dungeon World Building and Progression fantasy before we get to
The Real Shit™, No 30 chapters before we get to the actual plot or never hit it at all because world-building, the world has already been built, there is a foundation, We got ourselves some fancy decorations to help with the aesthetics and of course, we got all the fancy tools to make this look
Awesome.
And you're asking why there aren't more plots centered on the dungeon and its core? Because the dungeon core exists to decenter the plot away from the dungeon.
A 'real' dungeon has a builder who built it for a specific reason, and the creatures in it need food, and the intelligent creatures in it have social organization and need a reason to stay there, and the loot in the dungeon has to have been brought to the dungeon somehow. A real dungeon has a backstory.
A core-made dungeon answers all these questions with "dungeon core" and there's nothing more to say, so the story can go back to focusing on the brave adventurers delving into it, and their romances and their levelups.
Very good point on why dungeon core fics usually don't Pop up as much. So I raise to you fics like Dungeon Keeper Ami, where the Mc, Ami Controls the dungeon and its functions but is not a core, can move around, and the Dungeon Hearts are very plot-relevant, essentially being made by dark gods.
However, while it counters your point about no dungeon being made for a specific purpose (that is, to corrupt shit and kill people and give sacrifices to the evil gods), it does not fulfill all the other goals, but it fills surprisingly most of them, such as the "intelligent creatures in it have social organization and need a reason to stay there" requirement, but I am unsure if it fits the "need food" requirement. It's almost there, but once more, it's still explained by "we has magic Heart thingy made by evil god(s) hu he", so the backstory and some other requirements are......iffy at best.
For the Danmachi dungeon story, for the Dungeon itself to fulfill Most of those requirements, we need the Dungeon-Insert to be neither a simple core nor Dungeon keeper.
No, we need to aim higher.
For our glorious Mc other than bell will be the creator of the dungeon themselves. Molding and creating Stone, Steel and other materials inside the dungeon itself, including the monsters and labyrinths.
That's right, we get a living, breathing character that actually makes the dungeon, whether out of boredom, a passion project, or they get sufficiently pissed off, or just decide to cause chaos one day and create random things (because i would totally do all of these things myself, just purely out of curiosity and an insatiable need to see things in my mind made in steel and flesh).
Intelligent creatures? Xenos in Danmachi can't truly leave the dungeon for fear of being killed by every adventurer in Orario, its literally filled with well over 600+ adventurers, and that's definitely an understatement. Even in the Dungeon they aren't fully safe, as even other non-intelligent monsters will come after them, while the dungeon itself makes hidden rooms and things for said Xenos to hide in to not get killed. Even if we fixed the problem of monster infighting, we still have Orario itself as a problem, since its still generally safer inside the dungeon, with hidden safe villages, than outside, where there is too many familias to count, and even more adventurers.
The Food requirement honestly js more " eh" than anything else, its sort of optional, i mean monsters in Danmachi are weird, and fade away into dust, and only eat the magic crystals of other monsters, so i can see Eating be optional, but its a fairly good point. Perhaps in the fic, Monsters will eat, but need overall less food than a creature of their size normally would need (think a snake, and eating a mouse or a rat feeds it for a week or two, depending on meal size), while Dungeon grown food is eaten by both Unintelligent, and Intelligent monsters so they grow strong.
Nothing much can be sorta done for the loot, since its all materials anyways, and they usually come from the monsters, or the ore veins in the dungeon itself.
In 'the Dungeon without a System' the story from the adventurers perspective is one of delving an Ancient lost place of mystery and the place could have been told as successive migrations of people settling on the same island and trying to exploit migrating down.
The core side gives us an omniscient perspective pulling back the curtain and showing us the mind behind the place. The core themselves is fun to read, but where that side shines is how it tells you what to expect, what the characters who have actual family and friends in the world will get to face in their struggles to delve deeper and explore the place
I love this response, as its sorta how i image my story to go.
We see bell, other adventures, maybe some few throw-away smucks to kill from the drunk idiot (Soma) Familla entering the dungeon, finding mysteries, or dying horribly, and we finally get a Pov change to Dungeon-Chan, and see what their thoughts on all this, then we get a very big hint go something that is about to either be encountered, or talked about very soon.
The focus on the core as the MC the one who designed the place allows the writer to focus on multiple parties instead of just one. With the creations of the core being the glue that holds their stories together. It also allows for lethal accidents to be less detrimental, because individual stories were not the point.
Exactly, while Dungeon-Chan is important, so is many of the characters in the story, and everyone should at least have the spotlight.
My idea for the story itself is That, for the first 5-6 chapters, its Dungeon-Chan time, then we get Bell and Hestia Povs for a chapter or two, introducing more characters, and their own personal thoughts.
Because canon Danmachi is slowly answering those questions over the course of the series, so I think there's a lack of desire by most fans to invent their own completely alternate explanation.
A great, but sad point. I saw a fanfic about Dark souls mixed with Danmachi, and how the Last Kiln became the core of the dungeon itself in the final floor. It was great and interesting, and deserves more chapters, but people seem to not use the opportunity given to them by the lack of information.
See, while we still don't know what pilots the dungeon, Or why, we can still fit our own interpretations for what is what, and why it even is, like why does the dungeon hate gods? Does it fear them?
It's a blank slate that is being filled very slowly as time goes on, but it is still a blank slate, with a LOT of potential for an very interesting read.
