History Literature / DungeonCrawlerCarl

** Outside the game world, the books' covers don't do a great job presenting Donut. They get it right in that she's a flat-faced Persian, but they don't do well with her coloring. She's described as a tortoiseshell by the text, which should mean she has some kind of brindled coat, a mix of of dark and light fur (think calico, but with streaks instead of patches). Rather than, say, a mostly black cat with red splats or a brown cat with bits of white and brown, Donut is usually a long-haired ginger or tan with a uniform color. It works just fine, but it ain't torty. GC BWR NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk is a prize winning ''tortoiseshell'', thank you very much. (It's possible she's intended to be a torty with a much milder brindle than would be reasonable to show up on a low-budget self-published book cover, but we should demand high standards for our princesses.)

''Dungeon Crawler Carl'' is a LitRPG story by "Doctor Hepa" (Matt Dinniman), originally published serially on [[https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/29358/dungeon-crawler-carl-book-5-the-hunting-grounds Royal Road]] and then later as a series of books via Amazon. The first six books are complete as of July 2023.

** The dungeon as a whole operates this way as often as it subverts it. Sometimes it gives crawlers items because it would be so damn awesome for them to have that item. Other times it makes it a point to screw the crawler over. This is how Elle [=McGibbons=] ended up a floating death ice princess and Li Na ended up a chain demon, while Carl is stuck wearing a sleeveless holed leather jacket, heart boxers, and knee pads over bare feet.

** The Kua-Tin are no better. Cascadia, who has been in charge of designing the dungeon, is the one telling the crawlers to stop sucking and get out there and kill, kill, kill!

* SecretLegacy: [[spoiler:The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook is the latest in a long line of seemingly worthless items that have appeared in various crawls since the fifteenth season (first author still unknown). Each one appears innocuous except when read by the person it was meant for, and will disappear if that person talks about it, dies, or tries to share it. Crawlers can leave notes to each other from crawl to crawl, mostly recipes for important potions and explosives, but also monster information and--most importantly--secrets about how to circumvent system protections and eventually bring the entire system down. The exact criteria for the Cookbook are not explained, but each owner is essentially the same person, dedicated to vengeance for their destroyed world and passing everything they can to the next generation. In addition to Carl, several other contributors to the Cookbook are alive and well and working to bring down the Crawl, if not the Syndicate as a whole]].

* RuleOfCool: Like ''Film/JurassicPark'', the books portray velociraptors incorrectly. They were about the size of a turkey, not a horse (albeit six feet long, with the tail). However, they're just so damn awesome this way.

* HorribleJudgeOfCharacter: Where Carl tends to be fairly level-headed and capable of sussing out whether someone is friend or foe, Donut leaps wildly between the extremes of trusting someone because they seem nice or hating them because they say something nice about dogs.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Carl's ex-girlfriend Bea did this, as she was taught by her mother to never let Carl know how smart she was--they both believed that men can't handle intelligent women. This trait passed on to Donut more than a little, and she plays up her ignorance and childishness when people are watching. Carl is worried because people are ''always'' watching, so she never takes off the mask.

* MarkedToDie: Crawlers can get a skill literally called "Marked for Death", where they select a target and must then kill that person, which grants them stat boosts when they do. Of course, it also brands them with skulls. And they can't heal themselves in any way until they've killed the target. And they can't lift the mark without killing them. It's still an unreasonably powerful skill in the right hands, since the stat boosts become ever greater as they kill more marks.

** Despite a full investigation, [[spoiler:the murder of Loita via exploding toy]] can't be successfully pinned on Carl. The investigator is impressed.

* InexplicablyAwesome: Agatha, from the Meadow Lark retirement home, just strolls through the dungeon leaving people scratching their heads in her wake. There are some indications that she is one of the Valtay and got caught up in the dungeon by mistake, but that still doesn't really explain how she's surviving and progressing without doing the usual crawler things.

** Outside the game world, the books' covers don't do a great job presenting Donut. They get it right in that hse's a flat-faced Persian, but they don't do well with her coloring. She's described as a tortoiseshell by the text, which should mean she has some kind of brindled coat, a mix of of dark and light fur (think calico, but with streaks instead of patches). Rather than, say, a mostly black cat with red splats or a brown cat with bits of white and brown, Donut is usually a long-haired ginger or tan with a uniform color. It works just fine, but it ain't torty. GC BWR NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk is a prize winning ''tortoiseshell'', thank you very much. (It's possible she's intended to be a torty with a much milder brindle than would be reasonable to show up on a low-budget self-published book cover, but we should demand high standards for our princesses.)

* CoversAlwaysLie: When Carl is given a fan-sponsored box with a choice of different rewards, he takes a risk and chooses the single book. Congratulations, it's a recipe book for things like cooking goblins! At least, that's what it looks like in public. Away from prying eyes, it's revealed to be [[spoiler:''The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook'', a volume kept secret from the Syndicate, where past generations of crawlers have recorded their thoughts, plans, and discoveries, all with a view to burning the system down. From how to break ghostly possession, to which potion recipes are effective against undead, to the nature of the force fields protecting sysadmins during out-of-dungeon broadcasts, Carl finds their many tips and tricks invaluable; his biggest challenge is finding ways to use them without anyone guessing the book exists]].

* SkeletonKey: With emphasis on the "skeleton". [[spoiler:Carl's "Scavenger's Daughter" back patch gives him the ''Mysterious Bone Key'' ability, which will permanently consume the entire patch plus one of his own bones to produce a single-use key for any lock in the Dungeon. The choice of bone depends on the complexity of the needed key.]]

* ShownTheirWork: Dinniman frequently includes details that demonstrate he's done his research on a wide variety of topics in order to include them in the story. For example, Donut's full name is GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk. GC means Grand Champion, BWR means Breed Winner Regional, and NW means National Winner, while Queen Anne is an upscale neighborhood in Seattle and she's thus the Chonk of Queen Anne and her title of Princess isn't redundant with that of Queen. And that's just for her name ''and is never explained in the books''.

* AMillionIsAStatistic: Thoroughly averted. Nearly everyone on Earth dies in the initial collapse and a little more than fourteen million people make it into the dungeon and the numbers drop shockingly fast, with several million dead by the end of the first day. Carl is horrified and motivated to get revenge by the scale of the death he's seeing. As the crawlers make it deeper into the dungeon, it gets ''inverted'', with the number of surviving crawlers being a point of pride, honor, and revenge. They may have been reduced to the population of a small, backwater city, but goddammit if they're not going to make those bastards hurt.

* RainbowPimpGear: Yes, Carl wears boxer shorts, a trollskin shirt covering a single nipple ring, a bandana, and no shoes. At least he's distinctive?

* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: After [[spoiler:Miriam Dom lets herself die so that Prepotente can survive]], he sets out to either kill everyone remotely responsible, or die trying. Carl can relate.
* MyRuleFuIsStrongerThanYours: Along with RefugeInAudacity and AchievementsInIgnorance, this is Carl's stock in trade. He's good at discovering loopholes and taking advantage of his knowledge of the systems at play to thoroughly break the dungeon. After he gets [[spoiler:''The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook'']] in ''The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook'', he just gets more effective.