Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl as a LitRPG apocalypse—a subgenre of speculative fiction that is currently blossoming—involves an analysis of forced oppression and the pursuit of autonomy and self-determination. The LitRPG apocalypse subgenre includes several hallmarks: game mechanics become reality; world collapse and apocalypse; underdog main character(s) fighting to survive; and pursuit of personal power as a form of liberation. As a series, Dungeon Crawler Carl investigates themes of personal agency and awakening to systemic oppression through this LitRPG apocalypse lens.
The main protagonist Carl finds himself outside his Seattle apartment in his underwear, chasing his girlfriend’s show-winning cat—Grand Champion, Breed Winner Regional, National Winner Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk more commonly known as Donut—through sub-freezing temperatures, when Earth is integrated into the Syndicate, a galactic government, as the Earth is mined for resources and becomes the newest setting of the reality TV show Dungeon Crawler World. Every structure has been subsumed from the Earth’s surface and become part of this season’s dungeon. Seeking shelter from certain hypothermia, Carl and Donut enter the dungeon where they gain a character sheet akin to characters in typical role-playing games (e.g. Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft, Fallout, etc.) While exploring the dungeon, Donut receives an upgrade that makes her sentient and sapient. Together, Carl and Donut must traverse the various floors of the 18-floor dungeon, only being able to escape the dungeon and its fan-approved obstacles when they complete the 18th floor. Also, by completing the dungeon, a crawler would gain ownership of their home planet and its resources, freeing it from the corporation responsible for the whole situation in the first place. With the stated goal of liberating themselves and the planet, Carl and Donut delve deeper into the dungeon, overcoming obstacle after obstacle on each floor.
In the most recent book in the series This Inevitable Ruin—book 7 of the series—Carl and Donut find themselves as faction leaders in a floor-wide wargame on the 9th floor of the dungeon that features factions from other worlds in the Syndicate, including some whom Carl and Donut have antagonized while on previous floors. To win and move to the next floor, Carl and Donut need to eliminate every other faction leader. To do so, they recruit other crawlers into their faction and ally with the faction comprised of non-crawler dungeon residents, all of whom were former crawlers who then made a deal to exit the dungeon early in exchange for years of service in the dungeon alongside the dungeon-created non-player characters (NPCs). Carl and Donut receive a surprising boon when former crawlers from other seasons who have served their time sneak into the dungeon to assist them in their war. Central to this gathering of former crawlers are the authors of previous editions of The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook of which Carl is the author for the 25th edition. People who have escaped the dungeon’s oppression—both as crawlers and then as NPCs——return in an attempt to sow chaos and bring an end to Dungeon Crawler World and the Syndicate’s oppression of new planetary conquests.
One such character is Justice Light, a Skyfowl [think humanoid bird creature with the head of a bird and potentially arms but always wings] of the White Cliffs and author of the 8th edition of The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, who in laying traps as part of Carl and Donut’s plan to win the war on the 9th floor interacts with the leader of the NPC faction, a changeling named Juice Box. During this interaction, Justice Light explains how during his indenture to the dungeon, the dungeon AI commanded him and another former crawler to slaughter a village of dungeon-created ice elves for no reason other than they were told to do it. The other crawler refused, and the AI killed him as punishment. Justice Light carried out his orders, but these actions and others like them continue to haunt him. “I am still not free,” he tells Juice Box before telling her about a recurring dream he has where the ice elves commit mass suicide to save him from committing genocide (Dinniman Inevitable 441).
Justice’s burden and dream of liberation from his choice exemplify the liberation motif throughout the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. After all, the dungeon floors function as new chances to strive toward liberation, analogous to Asian religions’ understanding of samsara. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the dungeon reflects various trials or temptations that a person might face in their pursuit of cleanliness or holiness and the ultimate salvation from death in resurrection. Carl and his companions move through each cycle, each floor, and awaken the non-player characters to their true reality as dungeon constructs, allowing them to strive for their liberation or self-determination. Even Donut, a prize-winning cat before the dungeon, gains the awareness of her oppression and understands the injustices done to her—not just in the dungeon but also beforehand with her owner Beatrice.
Borrowing from concepts established by Mircea Eliade, Paulo Freire, and liberation theologians, Dungeon Crawler Carl presents a snapshot of the Eternal Return in the never-ending cycle of creation, destruction, and renewal with the establishment of each floor. Dinniman’s use of The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook as a primer from which Carl develops critical consciousness (conscientização) that then allows him to become a prophetic voice of resistance against the crawlers’ oppressors. He refuses to let the dungeon win and break him. He makes “You will not break me” a mantra that helps push through more difficult situations in the dungeon (Dinniman Inevitable 186). Finally, while the series remains ongoing, the ultimate resolution has yet to be written. However, Carl’s desire for liberation pushes him towards dismantling the entire oppressive system and forcing the Syndicate to reconstruct its society, paralleling the renewal Eliade claims as the escape from the eternal return through establishing paradise in the present.
LitRPG apocalypses is a burgeoning genre that allows for the investigation of people’s responses to systemic oppression. In most cases, LitRPG apocalypses feature protagonists who labor for the liberation of themselves, their communities, and even their planets, whether through establishing themselves as powerful enough to protect their freedoms or by dismantling the oppressive systems thus forcing a renewal or rebirth into something better than before. Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series—and particularly the latest installment This Inevitable Ruin—exemplifies the genre, analyzing oppression and liberation with the misadventures of a guy named Carl and his talking cat Donut. This paper highlights that analysis and uses the works of Mircea Eliade, Pablo Freire, and others to connect Dinniman’s work to the greater conversation regarding liberation.