[BOOK] Dungeon Crawler Carl - Spoilers Ahead

[StarlightNecromancer]

So LitRPG is a genre that a lot of people are now starting to get into. Its not a new one, nor are most people totally unfamiliar with it I feel like. A lot of folks here might be familiar with Log Horizon, //.hack, or Sword Art Online (or, to be real, any of the anime that's coming out lately especially on crunchyroll. From Slop to Masterwork a LOT of it has been LitRPG). One of the sub-genres that's gotten popular within the book space is "System Apocalypse" in which the game-elements are happening in real life for one reason or another, and the introduction of "The System" is what heralds the end of the world.

Dungeon Crawler Carl LitRPG System Apocalypse about well, the end of humanity. More specifically its about the exploitation of those who are not deemed as people, "human" being a broad term as "the system" here is the result of extremely powerful AI and aliens who don't understand it. The Crawl is a televised event, everyone who is a part of the crawl effectively all become livestreamers; you don't get a choice in this you're told to go to a dungeon entrance or risk roughing it on a now destroyed planet surface. When the corporation that's running the crawl shows up they quickly extract as much material as possible to run whatever version they're doing this season, Borant often does an 18-floor dungeon crawl where as the season prior the corp that ran it did a battle royal.

The people who have to take part in this, Earth this season, aren't people to anyone running it. To anyone watching it. Props, things to buy merch of if they get popular. There's people who write fanfiction about their favorite crawlers, and make things called "snicks" which are effectively the same thing culturally speaking but exclusively video instead. There's no laws or anything to protect the image of a crawler, it'd be like asking for the protection of that head of lettuce that lasted longer than Liz Truss's run as PM. Even if they survive the crawl, Crawlers aren't seen as people. Anyone who knows you're a crawler looks at you as if you're just a rather intelligent animal rather than a fully realized person. You're just living IP that's run its course and now you work at a gas station in the asscrack of the universe with barely $5 to your name.

Most who survive their run of Dungeon Crawler Worlds sign themselves into indenturship to the corp that ran their season, how long they have to work depends on how far in they got. Its not worth signing before floor 10, and deals made after floor 12 tends to get better. It could still be thousands of years before you're freed. Most die before then, as you can still be killed by monsters in the dungeon or crawlers themselves. Or if you tried to refuse orders, by the dungeon AI for breaking the terms of your contract.

Its very much about how places that aren't the Imperial Core are open and often subject to exploitation for the enjoyment and satisfaction of those in the Core. People dying and suffering isn't a byproduct, it is the product. Its the point, the purpose. Dance for me, dance for my entertainment. Once they kill off enough of human population the planet becomes open for resource extraction. Quite literally, genocide is the main TV Event, and what comes after is the "boring" mining stuff "no one cares about" and is "just an unfortunate fact of life". There's mention in the book about how people on the tunnel (interstellar internet) will talk about the horrors of the crawl and how cruel it is, but its always at a remove. Very exceedingly few actually care, to put into perspective, its about the same way people talk about lithium mining or cocoa farming. We want microchips and chocolate, and its gotta come from somewhere.

There's conventions based around the Crawl, merch, and entire fan cultures. Crawlers do not get a choice about participation. They are to dance and smile for the camera. You're not a person, you're barely a character in a tv show.

The series follows a guy named Carl, and girlfriend's show cat named Doughnut (or for her full title "GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk", who both narrowly avoided dying because they happened to be outside when the collection procedure was enacted. Carl watched his apartment just vanish into a hole into the earth and one of his neighbors die in front of him as a result. He manages to chase Doughnut into the entrance of the dungeon and that's where it all begins for him. Additionally with Carl specifically there's a level of exploitation on top of all the other shit: Dude is constantly sexually harassed and the narrative makes it expressly clear that its not "teehee haha look at this!", he is being sexually harassed by an AI of infinite power that can and will kill him if he doesn't cater to its fetishes. If he doesn't do something related to its fetish for too long, its taken that sexual frustration out on other crawlers. He hates it, everyone around him hates it, and the people who have the power to do something about it not only don't care but actively encourages it because it makes for good TV.

It was described once by a reviewer who didn't like the book as "An extended B-Tier shitpost given life", and this is honestly why I liked it. There's a lot of criticism to had about this book and I'm not gonna deny that, there is no such thing as a piece of media that is free of critism and there's definitely moments that made me uncomfortable and I wonder if the point it was trying to make was worth it. (See: The Horder boss in the first book on the first floor. I see a lot of readers cite her as the reason why they stopped, and that's like, extremely reasonable.)

Its getting a tv adaptation, and I'm not really thrilled about that after it was said that its most likely going to be live action. But it is also getting a webtoon adaption so, there's that.