Title: Dungeon Keeper Ami
Author: Pusakuronu
Rating: M
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pairing: N/A
Status: WIP
Summary: A portal accident in the first season of the Sailor Moon series leaves Sailor Mercury stuck in another world, inside of an abandoned Dungeon with an irate Horned Reaper looking for its freedom. What follows from there is Sailor Mercury, magical girl and defender of love and justice, being considered by the Dungeon Keeper world to be Evil with a Capital E due to her bonding with the Dungeon Heart and losing her soul to the Dark Gods.

Link: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...-moon-dungeon-keeper-story-only-thread.30066/
Misc.: Only posts by Pusakuronu count as being part of the DKA story.


When I first heard of this story, I was a bit skeptical of it. Most Sailor Moon stories aren't very well written, and I didn't expect this story to be any different. Imagine my surprise when I found it to be a veryy well written setting with engaging characters and an entertaining plot. It has managed to keep my attention since then as things went from bad to worse and yet still somehow stayed true to the feeling of both settings. Well, as true as you can be to the Dungeon Keeper setting considering how empty it is. The events that go throughout the story, and the ways that Mercury has gone about to ensure her own survival without violating everything she stands for in the process have been entertaining.

The author has stated that this story will be put up on fanfiction.net once it's been completed at AnimeAddventure, but that the FFN version will have the minor mistakes/errors fixed. It is currently well over 300,000 words long at the moment, and receives updates on average of about once every two to three weeks (it used to get updates about once a week before irl shenanigans slowed that down).


The author moved their stories to Sufficient Velocity. Thanks to Xarlor for the info.

 

What knowledge of both canons is required to get this story?

 

I read this ages ago, and it's a tribute to my love of the Dungeon Keeper series that I got as far into it as I did. The protagonist is an idiot, the plot moves at a glacial pace and the medium is absolutely stupid for reading a story by a single author. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're stupendously bored and love Dungeon Keeper.

 

This story gets a 3.5 for me personally, but overall, for the Library, it'd probably be more a 3 than 4. There's a lot of interesting parts to it, a long with some very interesting ideas employed, but there's also a lot of stuff thrown in there bogging it down.

Like Tehan said, the plot moves incredibly slowly. One thing after another setting back Mercury, yet she makes some strides forward. There are some interesting running gags going through it. Her enemies thinking she's into kinky sex being one of them. There are a few funny moments between her and Zoicite, I think was his name. Though their romance is typical crush on her part obliviousness on his.

Writing is average fair, though conversation is better than most fanfiction out there. Characterization is fairly consistent throughout for Mercury and Zoicite, along with her human minions, but it doesn't get too deep with them. She's fairly rounded out, but the others lack anything than their given roles.

Where I left off it seemed some Big Hot-shot antagonist had been introduced, who was actually pretty ingenious with his schemes. It looked like his appearance could respark my interest in the fic, but I never came back to it. Like the OP said, it's a beast. And it's hard to sometimes wade through it. I've taken four breaks from it over the past few years.

In conclusion, there's enough of interesting ideas and world-building, along with Mercury's evil/good internal struggle, to draw me back, but the slow pacing does eventually turn me off.

I might pick it up again just to see how far it's progressed. Not sure.

3/5

 

Reading it in one sitting, it does move quickly, but considering it's going through one to two updates a month, it can feel like the story is moving glacially slow at times if you're already caught up. Comparable to a serial in some ways, but also easy to lose track of info at the same time as a consequence.

Knowing the basics of Sailor Moon would help. The Dungeon Keeper setting has a lot of hints at what's going on in it within the games, but the DK world is also very empty as well considering we don't get to physically see a lot of it. The DK aspect of the story therefore has a lot of world building done based on what's shown in the games. Therefore, knowledge of the DK games isn't needed, even if it does add some more amusement to what's going on at times.

 

How do I read that?
It looks to me like a choose-your-own-adventure story.
Is there a preferred way like always choose the first option?

 

The link lists every chapter, in the order they were released, and lists who posted them on the right of it. Only posts by Pusakuronu count as being part of the DKA story.

 

There was an update to the story made today.

 

I finished the story now and I really enjoyed it.
It needs some time to really get going, but once it did I was fascinated.

I don't know more than the basic setup of the plot of Sailor Moon and I only played a bit of Dungeon Keeper years ago, but I didn't need to know much.

The biggest compliment I would give, is that it isn't dumb. There are lots of great and fascinating ideas in the story and it's pretty rare for someone to hold an idiot ball.
There are some characters in it who I consider to be having a typical anime-personality. If you really hate anime and that's one of your pet-peeves you may not like the story much because of that.
It's generally light-hearted, which is fun, but it doesn't shy away from some darker themes either if it's appropriate to the story.

A lot of the secondary characters are missing a real personality apart from their function/their trope, but that's the only big criticism I would level against the story.

Still, overall enjoyment: 5/5.

 

Anime adventure seems to be down permanently, so Pusakuronu imported the story to sufficient velocity https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...-moon-dungeon-keeper-story-only-thread.30066/.

 

Thanks for the link.

And yeah, I'm not surprised Anime Adventures is down. Over the past couple of years, that site has pretty much died.

 

So just spent all weekend immersing myself in this story and absolutely loved it. To preface, I'm coming from having zero knowledge on the Dungeon Keeper game and having some basic Sailor Moon knowledge from reading a bunch of Ranma crossovers.

The logical comparison for Dungeon Keeper Ami is the FoZ/Overlord crossover, Overlady. Both feature a female protagonist being thrown into the role of a dark lord on the basis of acquiring certain magical powers that give them control over minions. The key difference on what keeps Dungeon Keeper Ami interesting, where Overlady got a bit dull after a few laughs, is that the former takes itself a bit more seriously.

There's certainly a lighthearted, comical feel to many of the scenes of Ami interacting with her minions, allies and enemies. There's plenty of fun gags that kept me smiling all the way through, such as her efforts on trying to enforce hygiene on Goblins and Bile Demons, her fighting off Faeries of Love and Justice and surprisingly, even the ongoing jokes about her kinky reputation.

But what really keeps you interested in the fic is that interspersed in those lighthearted, there's a bunch of scenes to remind you that while many of her minions seem more comical in the context you see them in, the terror and suffering they visit on the world is very real - Ami seeing first person POV memories of another Keeper raping women for the sole purpose of siring his own human sacrifices, to being tortured by a Dark God, to seeing the Hell visited on the Avatar islands, what the Death God visited on civilian sacrifices, the Reaper casually threatening rape and so on all play that role in ensuring that despite the lighthearted feel, the story doesn't become a pure parody.

One of the main highlights in this fic was Ami's development. She was the perfect character for this - having all the innocence and naivete of an Inner Senshi while simultaneously also being the logical, rational one who would more likely justify decisions that seem to go against her morals for the greater good. It's done well enough that when Ami starts asking Jadeite to collect life force to sacrifice to Queen Metalia, it seems like a completely justifiable and logical decision instead of a comical joke.

A large amount of the fic is on Ami's wars with other Keepers, which go into a lot of detail into battles from a tactical level as well all the development that goes in between. Ami relies a lot on her general academic mindset along with some of her knowledge of modern technology to overcome the stark disadvantage she has over basically everyone else in the world. This sort of trope usually annoys the crap out of me, but given that it never really puts overpowers Ami - instead feeling like desperate attempts to just barely allow her to win - it worked for me.

The other highlight is the recurring subplots based around various other characters in the story interacting with her. It may sound boring and cheap, but it was one of the aspects of the story that kept me interested - and amongst all the dry battles, there was always at least one subplot focused around this. The trope of good guys misinterpreting her actions as evil plots is used for reasonable comic relief, but it doesn't go too far, with many of the more intelligent players (such as King Abrlecht, his spymaster, the Avatars, etc) willing to accept Ami at the very least as a Keeper not looking for conflict, though still being suspicious of her motives. Somehow, this never actually got repetitive to me.

The main issue with this fic is that the narrative is WAY too slow. Expect chapters and chapters covering the details of every battle, lots of musings of Ami trying to come up with new magical applications and so on. There's just too many words, and you very quickly learn that to get through the immense length of this fic you need to start skim reading like crazy. It was bearable when I had the 400k words or however long this fic actually is to read, but on a weekly update basis? I can see why someone might lose interest.

Overall, a 4/5. It's pretty impressive that a fic with this sort of concept managed to keep me interested all the way through, and we don't see Ami (or characters like her really) as the protagonist in enough (good) fics. Unfortunately, any fic that has me skim reading as hard as this fic doesn't deserve anything higher.

 

Mind putting this in the OP Dark Minion?

 

I just did. Is it complete?

 

I don't think so.

 

Still ongoing and unlikely to end anytime soon.

 

Can pretty much just echo Jarik for large parts, Ami as a protagonist worked pretty well and her development was rather interesting, her team/minions are all pretty interesting, the worldbuilding is fun enough and the fact that it's always two steps progress, one step back keeps things interesting without descending into basebuilding porn.

However, yeah, it has not business being as long as it is, one does skim from time to time, I am not as sold as Jarik is on the whiplash between the silly, more comical levels of lightheartedness and then have rape and infant sacrifices be addressed a few lines later.

A few running-gags did wear out their welcome to me, like the whole reputation of being a deviant and all the shenanigans feeding into that, which was anime level of fanservice in a more systemized way, getting naked for arbitrary reasons or curses that damge/alter clothes and some shit like that (not that I am all that fond of the "evil=sexual" trope as it is).

And character development, whilst good, is also rather slow. The scene Jarik mentioned, for example, was the highlight of the fic and it was so well earned and executed, but after that it kinda puts on the brakes for me. So much happened to Ami, and yet, where we are now, she still has a lot of the same hang-ups and stuff as she did at the beginning of the story. I get that change is not always fast and all but 400k or so words later, one kinda expects a bit more.

The story also feels as if it has barely reached the halfway marker, if at that.

Still, it is a fun story that had me laugh a few times, had memorable lines and scenes here and there and kept me engaged all throughout.

4/5