Posts Tagged → Dungeon Crawler Carl

Everyone’s grandpa got one for Christmas one year and frankly it ruined that song forever

There was a big fire about a mile away from where we are staying. You could see it burning from the front porch. They put it out in fairly short order, but it’s still … unsettling to think about. Looking at a map of wildfires in the area really gives you a better understanding of where all this goddamned smoke is coming from.

Obviously not to scale.

I’m about half-way through The Butcher’s Masquerade. Holy cow is this an angry book. One of the most surprising things about this series is the anger, in my opinion. Carl is just straight-up murdering POWs, if you want to call them that. As bad as that is, he’s killing them while talking shit because he knows their families are watching.

Is it justified? Most people would say so. The aliens Carl is mercilessly slaughtering are the same aliens who destroyed Earth, the same aliens who subjugated the human race and forced everyone into a deadly competition for the entertainment of the rest of the universe. If those bastards don’t deserve to be the target of guerrilla warfare, then who the hell does?

Still, it feels like Carl has crossed a line. Somewhere between “blowing up that monster that’s trying to eat me” and “cracking jokes before curb-stomping some bitch.” It’s a level of violence that borders on “torture porn” — Carl just gave some mantis-lady a case of “enthusiastic double gonorrhea,” which sets a fire on her crotch that can never be put out. It’s horrible.

And I’m 100% with it.

These books are so popular largely because they tap into an anger that so many of us are feeling. I’m not a young man, but it does seem like these books are popular with young men. And, while it isn’t strictly young men who don’t normally read novels who are making this series successful, hitting that demographic has certainly helped. People in America are fucking pissed off, and we can see that same anger in Carl. We root for that anger when we see it.

I did wince, though, when Carl stuck the goose’s head in the garbage disposal.

Boy, did I not enjoy More Songs About Buildings and Food by Talking Heads. The album is from 1978. It has 11 tracks. I listened to it this morning while doing some chores around the house, watering plants, and hanging out by the stream. I tried so hard to find something to latch on to. But there just wasn’t much.

”Take Me to the River” is a legitimately good song. Groovy bass line, cool vibe. David Byrne is doing his best to keep himself in check with no unusual yips or squeaks, which must have been tough for him when the song was recorded. “Turn it down to about a 4, Dave,” his bandmates told him. “You’re at an 8 now. Cut that in half, okay? 50% less. That’s the sweet spot.”

That song, however, is disqualified due to its affiliation with Big-Mouth Billy Bass.

talking heads: 77 & the gate of the feral gods in smoky montana

Sometimes you’re by a campfire and, no matter where you sit, the smoke and ash blow right into your face. You get up and move, but the smoke seems to follow you. You move again. The smoke moves again. You curse and say, “This fucking happens every time I go camping.”

Well, that’s what it’s like in Montana right now.

Spokane, Washington, is apparently burning down (thanks to arson!) and the smoke is just … everywhere. It’s spreading across the northwest like a Lovecraftian haze, turning the horizon into a Japanese landscape painting.

Minus the boat.

If you haven’t seen the effects of these fires, you should check out some of the videos. Entire neighborhoods in Washington’s second biggest city are being reduced to ash.

I was talking to Sarah the other day about why I don’t think I’ve ever given Talking Heads a fair shake.

”David Byrne sings like he’s joking. Like, if I’m singing while I’m doing chores around the house, just faffing about not putting any thought into what I’m saying and just belting out whatever crap comes to mind, that’s what David Byrne sounds like.” I would guess that he really does put thought into his lyrics and vocal affectation, but he often comes across just sounding silly. I think he wants to sound silly.

When I was younger, music was something that I connected to on an almost visceral level. I liked artists who put passion into the way they expressed anger or happiness or excitement or loss. It was borderline offensive to me that other artists didn’t take it seriously.

”He’s up there dancing with a fucking lamp,” I thought. “Who likes this shit?”

I’ve never been able to hear Talking Heads without an accompanying mental eye roll. I figured it wasn’t fair that I disliked them without ever listening to them, though, so I’m going through their discography while I read Dungeon Crawler Carl.

I’m awfully glad that I got back into this series. The Gate of the Feral Gods has been a blast so far. I’ve got a lot of time to read while we’re in Montana, so I’ve made tremendous progress with it — I should finish the book today.

I got book 5 — The Butcher’s Masquerade — at a little bookstore called Country Bookshop in Bozeman, which is a fantastic little place and very well curated. My suitcase didn’t need the extra weight, but we all make our sacrifices.

Dear john we had a lot of good times didn’t we oh boy those were good times anywho I’m seeing someone else

I’m going to take a little break from Dungeon Crawler Carl. I have nothing against it, to be honest. It’s been a great series–it’s just had the unfortunate distinction of being the series I was reading while Dad was getting sicker.

I listen to audiobooks when falling asleep, and for the last several weeks, the soothing sounds of Carl shouting “Goddamnit, Donut!” have been the soundtrack to my snoozes. This has created a bit of an unfair association, and I (well … Sarah and I, actually) realized we should probably listen to something a little more innocuous.

… This reads like a break-up letter to a book series.

Honestly, I just want a change of pace, vibe, scenery, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it. I need to get my head straight, so I’m just going to start with something new.

In essence: “It’s not you; it’s me.”

I’ll probably come back to Carl later. Maybe as a destination-read or something that will help remove the negative association. Hard to be mad at any book you read on a beach, that’s what my ol’ Nana used to say.

(I don’t believe my Nana ever so much as set foot on a beach. At least not without complaining about it.)

Anywho.

For the last few days, Sarah and I have just been listening to The Lord of the Rings as we fall asleep. It’s a book we’ve both read several times, so we can really just start at any point in the story and not miss a beat. It’s safe. It’s also an audiobook I don’t feel the need to finish, and an audiobook I (probably) won’t associate with my dad dying.

Sarah and I also went to Barnes & Noble today and I looked for books off of my list of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, which is more challenging than it ought to be. (I know there are a lot of great books out there and shelf space is limited, but we can all agree that bookstores should have at least one copy of The Power & the Glory, right? Right, fellas…?)

I found a slight little thing called The All of It by Jeannette Haien, which I know next-to-nothing about. (The only thing I DO know for certain about the book is that it has a rowboat on the cover.) I’m glad it’ll be my next read because, even if I don’t like it, it’s only around 145 pages.

… and now I’m justifying my rebound novel. I actually called it a “slight little thing!”

Ha! What a world.

She awakens in her aqueous lair and rises through seas lakes and rivers and into the municipal water system where I wait patiently with my pants down

Sarah got me a bidet for my birthday. It’s a little attachment that goes under the back of your toilet normal seat. Not a separate appliance, but just a little one that you add on to your regular toilet. It plugs into the water line like a Super Nintendo only instead of turning to channel 3 the bidet shoots a little stream of water at your B-hole. It feels like a mermaid violently licking your undercarriage and it is a game changer.

Bidets are things that have never really “landed” in America. While the word “bidet” is French (the word means “pony” — it’s a little joke), I’ve always thought of them as an Asian thing. Mostly because that’s where I first encountered and absolutely fell in love with them, but also because of the electric Japanese toilet seat trend that started decades ago and into which bidets were folded.

Sarah and I fell in love with them when we lived in Bali, where our main bathroom had what we called a “butt gun” (not technically a bidet, but the same effect) that sprayed water hard enough to bruise your balls if you didn’t aim it right. It was risky, but I swear my butt crack has never felt fresher.

The bidet we just installed isn’t quite as intense, but it’s still refreshingly firm. Like Poseidon’s handshake!

A lot of Americans will roll their eyes at this, but it goes to show how much people are willing to stick to an old habit even when there’s something better out there. Every person I know who has regularly used a bidet has said they loved it. Several of them have joined the cult of bidet enthusiasts (I’m a proud member!) who go around advocating them strangers both in person and in the blog-o-sphere. I am convinced that not only are they wayyyy more sanitary, but that the majority of Americans would love them if they tried them.

It’s just that once you’ve experienced the feeling of having the shit blown out of your ass by a high-pressure stream of water, you realize that there’s no going back. Conventional toilet paper — even that bougie 4-ply stuff — just doesn’t cut it. All you heathens sticking to your Charmin are missing out.

Time for a reader question!

Humor, definitely. While there are a lot of horrific scenes in the first two books — hello Krasue! — they all work in service to something else. Usually something funny. A lot of times, it’s the descriptions of the mobs that Carl and Donut (his partner/Persian cat) fight, which are “written” by the game-controlling AI in a snarky tone. Think Bill Burr writing the cut scene texts for Skyrim.

Besides, there’s a wealth of horror out there that relies on comedic elements. Most of it, I would argue. Carl definitely has a shared element with the Human Centipede franchise and the whole “gore porn” sub-genre of horror. There’s a perverse humor in asking, “How far can I push this? Just how GROSS can this scene get?” It’s all tongue-in-cheek. A sideshow. A circus.

The whole point of it is to laugh at the bloody, floating prostitute heads with glistening innards dangling down from their neck holes. What else are you supposed to do with characters like that?

Blogging about diseases is boring and sad but I need to remember these things so here we are

I haven’t been reading much. Well, I’m still reading a little, but I’m so preoccupied that in my off time I just veg out and either watch YouTube or TikTok. Still, I’ve gotten through Dungeon Crawler Carl and am currently working through the second book in the series, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. I’m doing the print version and the audiobook (which is interestingly done).

The series is fine. I like the relative mindlessness of it. Blowing up goblins and punching monsters so hard they explode. There are some unique aspects to the plot structure that are worth examining on a serious level — I feel like the arc of the story is built to be understood from a macroscopic lens; characters will make more sense the more books you get into the story. It’s as if the author planned on writing hundreds of thousands of words and just thought, “We’ll get to it eventually.”

As a writer, I’m used to doing this stuff quickly — I’m borderline minimalist. “Get to it!” that’s my motto. Or, as Vonnegut puts it, “Start as close to the end as possible.” Don’t waste words; your readers’ time is valuable and you should use it well. Reading Carl reminds me how flexible these rules are, because there’s a lot of stuff I don’t get or simply wouldn’t do.

It’s unfathomable to me that we don’t have more information about Carl’s ex-girlfriend yet, even though you know she’s going to make an appearance (or be brought back up somehow.)

I’m also not a fan of giving readers actual numbers for strength and intelligence. This book will give each character a level and stats, all of which are explicitly told to readers. Is this why they’re calling it “LitRPG?” (Horrible, horrible name IMO. And maybe, overall, just a bad idea.)

Increases in ability should be shown through action not spreadsheets. The spreadsheets were only ever created for RPGs like D&D where you couldn’t easily show strength or intelligence through action. In a narrative, though, all we have is time to show how characters act. That’s the whole point of a story.

I will never read a sentence like, “My strength was at 30 so I was confident I could win the fight,” and think, “That’s some good writing!”

I know, I know, not everything needs to be literary. Besides my gripes at the LitRPG genre in general, Dungeon Crawler Carl has been fun so far.

Anywho.

My dad has a feeding tube installed in his stomach and is out of the hospital, but his condition doesn’t seem to be…improving, or at least not improving rapidly. While he’s glad to be home, he really doesn’t have a lot of energy. I don’t know if that’s from the cancer or if it’s from weeks of not being able to swallow due to the tumor in his esophagus (which is growing rapidly), but it isn’t a good sign.

Sarah, my brother, and I went down to visit yesterday. Dad was able to get up and move around, but not much. He can’t swallow anything at all and chews on ice like they have you do in the hospital. His headaches are getting bad. He has a big red bottle of hydrocodone you can inject in his feeding tube.

Radiation treatments start this Thursday and will continue for most of April. Chemo will start after that, depending on how the radiation goes.

A “home run” at this point isn’t a cure; a home run is shrinking the tumor in dad’s throat enough that he can swallow food. Not only will that make his quality of life much better, but being able to get more nutrition will be an added bonus. Dad loves eating and I hate thought of him missing out on food he enjoys in favor of the flavorless goop that goes right into his belly.

Time marches forward.

School continues. The ACTs are tomorrow and I get to proctor.

Sarcastic yay.