Nerd of Mouth Book Club Presents Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1

Your mouth. Who's starting this? You start this, Jake. You're always scared. You know what? You're the best at intros, I think. Well, OK. I'm bad at them. Mm-hmm. You're really good at intros. God damn it, Holden. I will not let you break me. Oh, my folks, imagine a world where everything about your daily life is completely obliterated, maybe literally murdered in front of your eyes. And now in a bold new world of fantasy and adventure, you can make yourself into whatever you want to be. And also, you constantly watch as the life drains from everyone you've ever loved and cared about. It's Dungeon Crawler Crawl. Dungeon Crawl Crawl. I'm sorry. Hold on. I'm very excited. I got a lot of adrenaline. Dungeon Crawler Crawl. Nice. The mushrooms go off. Yeah, it's great. Or as Andrew Lincoln on The Walking Dead would say, Dungeon Crawler Crawl. I'd like to refer to it the rural juror. Genital system. No, this is, yeah, this has been a hard name to pronounce Dungeon Crawler, Carl. And, you know, look, this is our first episode on it. We're really not going to get that deep into it until our ninth episode on it. And episode three is when we really even can talk about what we're talking about. People have already said that the podcast recaps and follow-ups about the books don't even get good until the third episode. Yeah, we're here talking about this book series that totally swept me up in a way that a book series hasn't in a while. I feel like I've been burned in the past, scorn. I realize this now that I haven't gotten into something like this where I'm like, oh, I think I'm just going to read all of these outside of one piece. But in terms of an actual like prose book, I've stayed away from it. I think that is because of how deeply in love I fell with Game of Thrones and Name of the Wind, two book series that were like so explosive on the scene at this certain time in my life. Right around the time I met my now wife and both just dropped off a cliff in terms of continuing the story. Well, now she reads you. I think that's why I stayed away from a series like this for so long, but what I love about this series is it does seem extremely finishable and it's really looking like it's going to be done. And he's saying 10 books and the eighth one's on its way. And he's not that fat or that rich. Yes. So it might actually happen. I know his success like meter hitting maximum. Don't do the TV show yet. Don't do the TV show. Exactly. He just like starts to reach for a Greek captain's hat. Slowly like it's the one ring. I don't want to do the trial of Matt Deniman just yet. And the second that he can't reach the hat because his arms are too stubby. We know that he's George. And at least technically I have to think it's very linear in its construct. He's just trying to get down to the bottom of this dungeon. So I just have to assume he can't write himself into some crazy situation that makes it impossible to go on like George R. R. Martin did. Watch or listen rather to our episode on the trial of George R. R. Martin for that context there. But yeah, I've had a blast guys. I'm really happy Mike forced us to read this book. Well, I want to say thank you to our listeners both on Discord, the Patreon, Facebook, Spotify. People have not in a groundswell, but enough that it stayed with me of like, hey, you should talk about this. You should check this out. Hey, this is good. And you know, and ultimately the most exciting it is to do an episode when it's like, we're going to talk about something because it's good. We don't always get to do that. We've got a Jared Leno episode at some point. I was there was a moment to where I was genuinely worried. This would be like an avatar situation where like I'd come in being super jazzed on the book and both of you would come and be like, we've got sauce. And they're not good. You know what I mean? I'm like, no, don't make me defend this book. No, and that is an avatar situation where you're empirically right. And for some reason your asshole co-hosts can't see it your way. And even though you point out all the flaws and set thing with us, you still say you're right at the end. Right. And I have issues with the book by the way. We can talk about that as well. Like I don't think this is just amazing, but reading this book made me immediately want to be sitting in a beach chair on the beach on a vacation so I could just sit here and just plow through it. I mean, that was the bottom. Reading this book made me wish I was on a beach so I could think about being in a dungeon. But it really was that summer page turner. It just like brought me to that place. And I'm loving it. I picked up the second book. You guys also, I believe, started to get into it. You finished it because you're reading it. I'm reading it. First of all, I'm not reading it, I guess, technically, but I'm doing it the right way, the way most people are doing it, which is through the audiobooks, which are not, if not a bigger hit than the books themselves. The series has so far sold six million copies between all formats. And many people are pointing to the fact that you buy the e-book and then get a discount on the audiobook and then you get all that Kindle style whisper sink where you can read a little bit and then you pick up the audiobook while you're running. I love that they're so smart that they did that. That is like a brilliant way to do it. Yeah, I mean, you know, like, in talking about the history and the making of this series, is kind of the present and future of where literature is going and how we consume it, how it's made. Just, you know, Jeff Hayes, the narrator and sound booth theater, you know, and how they've elevated this stuff. It's, you know, it's interesting, like, we don't think about how it's going to connect to other episodes, but I immediately thought of the subverse dub episode of how people, you know, really fans. Yeah, but yeah, well, there's that gatekeeping bullshit. But then, you know, it's like, if you're like, Matt Denimit doesn't care how you give him his money. Let's just say that first, probably. But then also that, you know, audio books used to be more of a rote, you know, chore. They felt very... I mean, they would come in a pack of like 10 audio cassettes and were exclusively the domain of truckers. Yeah, and now, you know, in the same way that dubbing has been taken over by real fans of a thing, it has, you know, like to the point where I watched Project Hail Mary last night. Hell yeah. And, you know, what was amazing was one of the lead characters was voiced by the guy from the audio book. Oh, cool. And that felt like, that's like the dream of all those guys, I'm sure, that one of them made it. And that's such a Lord and Miller thing to cast him. But it's like, why not get the guy? And I feel like... Wait, who does he play? It's Jeff Hayes, the guy from the audio book. It is not Jeff Hayes. It's a different guy. I didn't look up his name. Yeah, from Project Hail Mary. He's talking about a different thing. Project Hail Mary. Oh, from the audio book of Project Hail Mary. Okay, sorry. I'm easily confused. I thought we were talking about Dungeon Carler-Carle. I didn't do that bad on purpose, but I was like, just say it as it comes. Just say it as you would say it without thinking about it. And it will come out incorrect. Dungeon Carler-Carle, I don't think I have the same issue as you guys. Oh, that's... First of all, you're not constantly having your mouth filled with nerds. You've also got me clusters. And that's also the case with money as a child. So... Oh my God. This is ridiculous. Just because I went to private school, anytime I wanted an action figure, I got it. No matter what you know what I mean. It doesn't mean, you know... Ray Porter, they have... He does The Voice of Rocky for some of the movie. Very cool. So I just want to get a little housekeeping out of the way before we start, because we all read the first book, and we're going to be talking in detail about the first book. But we want to get the non-readers out there hyped up about this series and kind of explain some backdrop and things like that. So we're going to, you know, spend half the episode just talking outside of the actual events of the first book so that people who maybe are curious, but don't want anything spoiled, that's parts for you. Then we're going to let you know when we're going to get into spoiler territory. Review territory. And if you have hit that point where you're like, oh, I actually want to go read this stuff before I hear these guys yuck about it, then you can turn it off and move on. But really, please stay with us for a bit, because if you're at all curious or maybe even not at all curious, but you're listening to this episode because you like the show, stick with it, because I want to sell you on this, I think, a little bit, dear listener, and give a nice, good background of Matt Deniman and the Lit RPG series for the people who like the books as well. So try to make it for, we're trying to do everything for everyone, which is what everyone's doing on the internet these days, and it won't work, but we're going to fucking do it anyways. Here's what we're hoping. We're hoping that our last episode on Magic the Gathering didn't make you bankrupt. And if you still have a little bit of money left. Just morally. So here's an overview for you non-readers out there. Dungeon Crawler Carl, it is a sci-fi lit RPG. We'll be talking about the lit RPG subgenre. And it's written by Matt Deniman. It was initially self-published. We're going to be talking about self-publishing and indie publishing as well today, via online publisher Royal Road until it was picked up by Ace Books, which is a what, Penguin, I believe, yeah, imprint. Penguin, we're one of the big guys, Randy. One of the big guys. It's about Carl and his ex-girlfriend, Cat Princess Donut, and their adventures traveling through a massive dungeon in an intergalactic reality show program after Earth was overtaken by an alien corporation. There are elevator pitches for this, but it is a little bit can be convoluted. The way he gets you into the story pretty quickly and seamlessly is one of the early brilliant things I think about this series, but it is a little convoluted for sure. The way I would kind of do it as an elevator pitch is it's kind of, I guess, too, and someone that listens to this stuff, is it's kind of like Douglas Adams meets Hunger Games, meets Sword Art Online in many ways. It made me, like, annoyed with Hunger Games. Really? Yeah, because this, and it really made me realize, like, what is wrong with Ready Player One and what I liked about Ready Player One is I would also throw Ready Player One into this little mix of, like, oh, if you're familiar with that, it has elements of that. This book has everything I liked about Ready Player One without the bullshit, without the, like, you know, shoved in, like, love story thing, without the, hey, look at this, look at this, remember this, remember this, you know, remember Gundam, remember all that Space Jam stuff. Because I realized actually what I really liked about Ready Player One is the establishment of, like, a world with a rule set and a very specific goal within that world of, like, you need to go find these three Easter eggs or whatever. Well, this is, like, as we get into, like, because we're laying the table for LitRPG, but I felt, like, weirdly guilty about this book because it is so, and, like, the LitRPG genre in general, because when I'm, like, really vibing with this book, it almost feels like I'm watching, like, a really good Let's Play or a really good, like, I'm, like, playing a game alongside it. It doesn't, you know, this is the first fiction book I've, like, picked up in probably over a year at this point, and I just kind of was, like, enjoying myself too much. Like, I was not, like, growing my mind. Do you mean in a sense, like, I had where I was, like, can you really not enjoy something that isn't, or, like, can you just enjoy something that isn't a video game? Yes, but literally, like, the point of, like, you know, a book, a novel, like, you are in someone's internal world, you are seeing perspectives outside your own, you are getting closer to, like, the heart of the human experience, but, like, this is definitely not Anna Karenina, this is not, you know, Ulysses, this is not, like, the kind of thing where I feel like I can swirl a glass of cavernet and be, like, ah, yes, like, the words, but just to bring that back, even something like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, like, it is so grounded in gaming and pop culture and our modern world, but deep down, and I had this revelation, the original, like, the original point of fantasy novels was I want to leave my mundane kind of world and enter the world of fairy tales and folklore and mythology, where there are solid rules and there is, like, valor and ethics and heroes grow in direct progress, yeah. There's real progression, so you, not only are the characters evolving like you want them to in a story, but you're actually, getting a sense of, like, oh, they're more, they're literally, their punches two points more powerful now, and, like, that has an effect on everything moving forward and in an engaging way. That's what I'm saying, that I shouldn't be ashamed of lit RPGs, because it's the same instinct, that same desire to, like, kind of move beyond this kind of gray, muddy world where your effort, your intentions kind of just slop together in these weird ways that don't really make a lot of sense on the outset, to a world where the choices you make, the things you do, have, like, meaning and further along your quest. Yeah, I wanted to do a... It's just now the language isn't fairy tales, the language is video games. I wanted to do a follow-up with Lexi at some point, because she started listening to the audiobook, and she's seemingly getting into it, and she, the problem is, I really would rather even talk to someone with even less knowledge of gaming to see if, if, how it, how it is with someone who has, does not speak the language at all. I mean, I definitely speak at the least of the three of us. Sure. What, I mean, how did you feel about this very gamified literature world? You know, it's interesting, like, I have the same, probably deeper struggles with reading than you do, Jake, if there ain't no pictures. It's always been, you know, tough for me, like, just, I constantly look at the page count. Mm-hmm. Like, like reading a book is a dungeon to me, and I, and I, I do have an English degree. But I, and I've always preferred, and this really helped with the book, and to me, it's such a big thing that no one ever talks about when they're recommending books. First person over third person, I always prefer. I really like the conversational nature, and this book is written in the first person. So, you know, it is from Carl's perspective, and I, I enjoy that. You know, I think that it's much more, much more connected. And I, I bought the physical copy, and, and I got the audio book. I mostly ended up doing the audio book, but I read every once in a while just to, just to make myself read, you know, just to like, like, you know, my wife works at home, and I have a child, and I have a dog. So it's a noisy place, but there's like, after, after, from 10pm to like 1130, is my time enough at last, and the glasses haven't broken yet. And just reading this book was like really refreshing. It was, you know, it's interesting. It, like the comedy of it, I'd say, works a lot better when you're listening to the audio book. Okay. Version of it, where, because not all the jokes land. And that's, look, I, I appreciate the attempts at jokes. Well, I'm going to make an attempt at putting in a commercial break right here, but we'll get back to Mike right in a second. Products and services, use the promo code. Yeah, I will say though, and it's, because I, this is a great thing to bring up. I have a really hard time with comedy in reading prose, right? My dad was a big comedy literature person. He loved Dave Berry. That was like, he loved Dave Berry. Had like every, and I read Dave Berry books growing up because he had so many of them. I've often referred to him as the William Shakespeare of observations about salad bars. And then I think I say the way of Shakespeare of South Florida. I think it's a Florida guy, you know, he was published in, I think it was the Miami Herald. And remember, yeah, remember Dave Berry had his own sitcom? No, yeah. Dave's world with Harry Anderson. Yeah. From night court. I felt seen. I felt seen like in a way, like there's such an important. And me, Shaq Taylor from Designing Women. Oh, I was just, Chloe said I was actually going to do a movie about Dave Berry, just called Ham. But yeah, and then, you know, everyone's like, you know, Confederacy of Dunstice is the funniest book ever. And I read it and didn't have that same connection that I felt other people did. Even Hitchhiker's Guide, I really enjoy a lot, but I again, don't have, I think, the same, like, just visceral reaction people have to the comedy of that book. It's rare to read a book and laugh out loud. Yeah. You know, I like, many a teenager, I like Kurt Vonnegut. And, you know, I'd read it. I'd be like, that's a funny idea. Actually, even this goes even deeper with my dad. He loves comedy, literature stuff, PG Woodhouse. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Comedy, right? He has like, bookshelves, he has like every PG Woodhouse, but he has bookshelves filled with just PG Woodhouse. Is that Jeeves and Wooster? Jeeves and Wooster. Yeah, yeah. And many other things, you know, made fun of British, highfalutin' British life and the class system there and everything. And my dad loved, loved PG Woodhouse. You know, the other interesting thing- Terry Pratchett also, you gotta mention. Terry Pratchett, we gotta mention. We did an episode on Terry Pratchett, but again, as much as I enjoyed Terry Pratchett, I wasn't like, haha! I will also say too, just to give a little background for me, in reading and upgrading, my dad's like such a big reader, but so not into sci-fi or fantasy. Just not into it. Just look kind of, and you can kind of tell, kind of looks down on it, right? So it took me a long time to get into fantasy and sci-fi because of that. And I think what's really fascinating is that TV and video games and our phones and all this stuff has really destroyed our attention span and our ability to read. So Matt Dinaman making a book that feels like TV. 100%. It works. It does something. Because, you know, we don't- I've also thought about this a lot. You know, Romanosy is a big genre, but it's more, more affecting, I think, the female and, you could say queer community, the like kind of cis straight guy. I don't know. It feels like this was our version of Romanosy. And, uh, well, we'll get into that because I think especially when we get past the spoiler mark, like there's some really interesting things happening with this universe that Dinaman is kind of saying through the dungeon crawler, Carl, got it! Universe. Nice. And I just, you know, like, because we just never talk about reading, you know, it was funny. I was in a writer's room recently and everybody was just talking about their favorite books and I'm like, they found a way to shut me the fuck up without talking about sports. Like, I just, and then, and then I just ended up talking to one of the guys after just putting him aside. I'm like, how do you even have the time? Like, because he's a dad of two, you know, our buddy Jared Logan, you know, and I was like, how do you- A dad of two, if you will. Yeah. Oh my god, Jake. What? Fight me on that. That was gold. I wish- You just hear like, uh, microphones getting pushed around and stuff, we just start grappling with each other. Wait, wait, so there's the rat controller's parenting? Yes. It's all there. It's all there. I was so fucking bad about it, man. I'm so bad about it, dude. I'm so mad at you right now. I just, I angle him right now. Oh, we should go back to doing remote episodes. I have to go back to suburban New York. Now imagine reading data to eat in a book and you would just be like, anyone give it the true laugh that the comedy, I think it's a great pun. Thank you. I think it's awesome and further proof you're more clever than holding. Well, oh my god. Just because I joke about shooting blast loads all over the room. That doesn't mean I'm not clever. Mike Lawrence snipe. Did we expect it? No. Was it deserved? Yeah. Not really. Why did that fuck me up? I don't even know. I'm going to be thinking about that in the middle of my stream later today. Why did you joke about that to me so hard? I didn't like that how much you yucked his yuck. But it's just to bring it all the way back. Are you in a similar place where I am where like, you're like, oh, I'm reading, but you don't feel like that like swell of like, ah, yes, I'm reading Pride. And it's kind of fucking you up a little. Yeah. Well, now that those go into the audio book bit of it at times that it does not, you know, I do think, yeah, however you, like just a book is how you did just a book. It does feel like I'm cheating a little bit. Yeah. You know, but at the same time, I am enjoying it more. And I'll be honest, it's like, it is harder for me to just sit down and, you know, read something. Whereas I played like a good amount of Sons of Sparta while listening to this. Yeah. You can also multitask. Yeah. And that, and that helps, you know, I was, I was out at like the playground, you know, and, and my kid is at a point now where it's like, can you please just like go over there so I can enjoy life? And you know, it's a hard thing. And I'm like, all right, in the dungeon. Every moment this, like this last week, I've just like something doesn't work out. Like we, we were going to go somewhere and you fell asleep in the car. And my wife was like, well, I'm going to go in anyways. I'm like to the dungeon. And I just sat there and listened and I was like, this is fun. Yeah. I think I have the opposite problem with audio books where I, I zone out too much. And then, and then I get frustrated because I keep having to like, Yeah, you got to like, wait, what happened? And I can do that with a podcast where people are just like talking and, you know, if I, not this podcast, not this one, but most of them, but yeah, if people are talking about a, you know, on a video game podcast or something like that, and I zone out for a little bit, whatever, if I really need to rewind, I will to like get the context of what they're saying. But yeah, I don't have that issue. But when I'm listening to an audio book, I really want to like get, you know, every little bit. But I do have fond memories of audio books. My mom used to take me to like a essentially blockbuster video, but for audio books. What's called a library? Well, it was like specifically, she had a membership there and it wasn't a library, it was like a specific, and they had like everything and I'd go and usually get an audio book of Stephen King short stories and then go home and put puzzles together and listen to the audio book. It was some really fond memories of like when I was most alone and, you know, and should have been sad, but I was very excited to be enjoying, you know, my time that way. The same way that we grew up with video games and through this kind of like populist kind of genre fiction, we get to engage with that knowledge base. So too did like our parents generation with Stephen King. Yeah, it wasn't high literature, but they grew up getting molested by greasers in New England. Yeah. And they got to engage with that knowledge in kind of a more like digestible novel format. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I love talking about reading and listening and what it is, you know, because it's I guess to explain why it's important. I mean, it engages the theater of the mind. And I think one of my favorite things about this book series in particular is I really viscerally see everything in every scene. Like I feel like I really have, and I struggle sometimes to create the look of characters and the look of environments and things when I'm reading this book, I feel like I am in the dungeon. Like I am transported there. And it probably does help probably my background in being such a game, you know, being in the gamer zone. But I do I do like love. I just am just like you were saying, I am transported to the dungeon when I read this book. And I feel like I do go to a different place. And the reason why people say it's important for a lot of things, we can kind of get into that. I have a feeling we're going to have a future episode about reading versus audio books, potentially versus adaptation to television and film. I think that could be an interesting discussion. But there's a psychology there. I mean, there's there's science there about what why people say it's important to actually read and engage in this way. And it's because you're getting your mind to do some jumping jacks in a way that it's not normally doing and attempt to create all these spaces and characters and activities going on. And again, really want to give this book series its flowers for doing a great job of that for me personally. So this was a massive tangent because I feel like we all had our thoughts about like picking up a book again in a very unbook world. And you know what, look, there there are probably people listening to this that are just rolling their eyes at that. And that's OK. And there are probably people that feel seen right now and great. Yeah. But this is a unique form of book that I don't think any of us had engaged with before where stats and levels and inventories were like not just like flavor text, but like important like parts of the story that we're encouraged to keep track of. Yeah, I think what surprised me is like, I mean, Jane Austen did a good job of letting you know just how much pride and prejudice these character. Why do I feel like that's going to be a thing too, where we start stat, statting like. Oh, oh, there's the same way they did pride and prejudice and zombies. Exactly. But like I said, they're going to add a layer of like her like love meter, you know, got a plus two and she has a lowercase scarlet letter. It's not as impactful as me. She's only kind of a whore. Her shame stat just went down to, you know, points. You know what I mean? Can I save my manner and an awarding arranged marriage in the dungeon? You know, we did an episode on sort of the dungeon is the marriage. We did an episode on sort of online. So we talked a little bit about like kind of this very general genre. But you know, there's a part of me who thought like, oh, this guy just like wanted to write kind of a book and a video game world. And so he did that. No, no, no. He was very inspired by like a very already established thing happening, but very specifically in indie and self publishing in that world. Because the bigger publishing houses, really this book is the thing that cracked it. I mean, he even said in interviews, he's like, I don't think the I still would tell people to publish indie if they're going to do lit RPG because the traditional this called trad publishing, the traditional publishing houses don't get the genre or its audience at this point. And so don't know how to properly serve it. You know, and this kind of this book series is the first one that really pushed the genre over into like the modern larger lexicon. So hold on, pretend I didn't spend a good part of the early 2000s on Russian websites. What is lit RPG? So the precursors of the genre first appeared in the late 70s. You've got Quag Keep published in 1978 by Andrew Norton, which centers around characters in a D&D game. You also have Dream Park by Larry Niven, which centers around a LARP style, LARP style games within a reality TV show in the future. Essentially, as long as D&D existed very shortly after they were like figured out how to create novels around it. I mean, even the original, I even saw cited the original D&D cartoon because it is kids getting like sucked into a Dungeons and Dragons world and dealing with that. You know, I mean, you also have like, I also did kind of think of like Jumanji, you know, and we had sort of this concept of getting sucked into a game. If you die in the game, you die for real as a meta brain, just cataclysm that rocks anybody who plays the game and feels the emotional beats of a story. Or you go in as an innocent child and come out as coaked up Robin Williams. The jungle is crazy out there. I made a monkey $50 for stealing one of his jokes. But in the 90s, we moved from tabletop to screen. That was clever. With the ad-ed scene. I'm so damn clever. You're so good. How clever are you? I realized why I said it. Okay. It's because you won. I do like Jake a lot. But here's why I wonder. Oh, here we go. You had a backhanded insult at me. What do you mean? Would you deadhead to me? No, no, no. Oh, okay. No, you said to Jake, you should do the intro. You're the best at intros. You're taking that. I'm just sitting here. I'm just sitting here. And then you said it again. And I know that he is, but you could have at least acknowledged me. I'm just trying to pump our boy up, bro. There's going to be a weird swipe at you in like a Grammy awards in two years. And you're going to be like, there's no way. Jake, I just want you to know this last two minutes. This is what it's like to be a child of divorce. You know how you feel like you were at the center of it, but then you were just pushed and we were yelling at each other? But in the 90s, we moved from tabletop to screen with the advent of video games. And what really influenced the books was the evolution specifically of the MMORPG genre. We started in the 90s. These were these larger, more open-ended virtual worlds that players wanted to exist in for hours on end together. Oh, it's like I have a second life in the video game, that kind of thing. And the light novel series, magical circle guru guru, was first published in Japan in 1993. It was a comedy centered around kids in a JRPG. Okay, we found the most Japanese to American translation that we've ever had on the show. Was it magical circle? Magical circle guru guru. That's like an onomatopoeia, like something spinning or something that's like very round is like guru guru guru guru. Like that's, it makes sense in the language. Yeah. But the, no, it's also kind of similar to what happened with the lit RPG in the West. The light novel was a very popular format where it was like shorter, cheaper paper, more frivolous kind of whims and ideas were able to- Is the light novel not like goosebumps or like anamorphs? Essentially. Well, that's YA, which is its own kind of thing. But like the one to one, the Japanese version of it. Like I was thinking about that. Is it not the same kind of thing where it's shorter, it's more simple, simplified? It doesn't have to be explicitly for children. For children, I guess. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, you could have a crazy idea. I mean, that's modern isekai. The joke now is like, I became a vending machine in a fantasy setting and my girlfriend is an orc. Like you can just write that title and then just blurp out like some fun ideas you have with that premise. Glurp, glurp. Glurp, glurp. Let's say that. Are the furries that got into it because of animorphs more creative than the ones that got into it because of Sonic Discuss? Honestly, the way animorphs describes me coming an animal, if you're like, ooh, I got to get me some of that mind wrinkling horror of bone snapping, you are the king of furries. Yes. Animorphs secretly goes really hard, Mike. We discovered that in our Animorphs episode, we did a long time ago. Animorphs actually gets fucked. It's honest, I withdraw a huge comparison from Animorphs to Dungeon Crawler Carl, given the way that like galactic politics and the horrors of war deeply are a part of this universe. See, and people thought I was just doing a tangent for no reason. I knew about the horrors of war connection. Mike's playing 40 chess over here, guys. You gotta understand, he's always got to play it. So yeah, so also, you know, you have, and though Ready Player One lacks certain qualities to make it a full on lit RPG, it still came out in 2011, was massively popular, definitely had a major hand in the subgenre and its growing popularity, but the name lit RPG, as Jake already previously mentioned, came from Russia in 2012 or 2013, depending on what site you're looking at, and was the first place that had a dedicated section in bookshops, libraries, dedicated specifically to the lit RPG genre. In my country, book reads you. Yeah, I'm very interested in why it's, is it because Russia is so clinical about things, that they're like, this, yeah, in order for the story to make sense, man gain five points, man stronger now. Like, is that kind of the idea? I mean, there is this kind of halo of brutality with Russian games, you know, Tarkov, Pathologic, there's this darkness and kind of the fun of game mechanics kind of matched with the darkness of survival and really just like unfriendly worlds, it kind of works. Also, Russia was huge for web-based publishing. That was actually, I'm trying to, what was, there was like, at the height of like sci-fi and like post matrix, there were all these like Russian kind of cool kung fu movies that were coming out. I already for Night Watch, Night Squad. Yeah, yeah. I already forgot the name of it, but all that started as web released incremental novels, it gave authors freedom to engage with their audience in real time, it allowed for more unique voices or more at least niche of genres to emerge. It's just one of those things that distributing via web, these like high concept fantasy sci-fi ideas, became a viable path towards a career as a writer in Russia. And Matt Deniman said, the lit RPG genre as a whole requires a specific type of book, cover art and release schedule to be successful. And to this day, I haven't seen a larger publisher successfully field a lit RPG that really hits with the community. I think this is before he got picked up by Ace, but that said, I think that's a good segue to talk about Matt Deniman after these ads. Yes. So not much is known about Matt Deniman's early life. I'm scared, Jake and Mike. I'm scared that in a year from now, we're gonna have to come back and be like, we're apologized for the dungeon call. We didn't realize in high school, he spent several days straight putting gay teenagers in a dumpster and laughing. Yeah, that he was the butt slicer of New York City in the early 20s. Let me just say the only thing scarier than someone getting successfully canceled is realizing that you're in the community that doesn't care. That's true. That's very true. We like his books more now. Grip, grip. Yeah, exactly. He's the butt slicer at three points to his constitution. The butt slicer? Yeah. You know, achievement. The slicer. I think I was sort of like the round table days. There was someone going around with like a razor slicing people's butts in the strip way. Yeah, Mark Normand. Yeah, probably. With his fingers? Yeah. Sliced me a couple of times. So like I said, not much is known, but his dad was in the military, so he grew up on military bases traveling around a lot. He talked about their little like video rental space that they had on each military base, and that's where he'd go and specifically rent horror movies. He loved horror at an early age. This is very important for I think what creates the stew that is Dungeon Crawler Carl. Everything I write, I consider horror, he said, but it's mixed together with comedy and RPG to make it more palatable. He also got into video games at an early age. His brother actually had a Magnavox Odyssey too. Wow. Yeah, old school. And he later got an NES. In college, he gets really into RuneScape, which is his first MMO RPG. We did a RuneScape episode, by the way. I'm glad. You know what? I'm glad I distinguished and noble RuneScape player is responsible for this, not one of these crude World of Warcraft slobs. He actually avoided World of Warcraft because he was so addicted to RuneScape, and he was like, when Wow hit, he was like, I can't. It's one of those. And I'm just glad we're mentioning RuneScape for all the people who are like, how is this eight-part lit RPG series nerdy? Exactly. We got to really give a basis here. Put a ton of hours in the Skyrope. There's going to be a future chapter of the book where he's just fishing for an entire year. Yeah, yeah. He also played Dungeons and Dragons. So, you know, we've got all this in the Dungeon Carle Carle stew. He started his first novel in high school, which later evolved into the trilogy The Shivered Sky, a book about a war between heaven and hell and which hell wins. This is released in 2003. And as far as authors goes, I wasn't familiar with these guys. I might look a little more into them. He says horror novelist Robert R. McCammon made him fall in love with storytelling and his favorite author is Guy Gavriel Kaye, quote, even though he's like a Michelin five-star prose crafter where I'm like a corner hot dog stand. To make ends meet while writing. People love their hot dogs. Yeah, I know. That's the thing, though, man. I'm probably going to take the hot dog over to the Michelin restaurant. To make ends meet while writing early on, he got a job going to cat shows and drawing illustrations of cats and their owners. This is like the one big thing everyone knows about him. You read any article about or any interview with Matt Deniman. This is the one thing that always gets brought up because, of course, it makes him more endearing to the public. And it's a big part of the stew. Yeah, and it's a big part of the stew. You know, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we'll talk about Princess Donut a lot very soon. And I, you know, when I was reading this, I was like, you know, about his life. I'm like, oh, yeah, everyone's gone through the, you know, they were into D&D and this and that. I'm like, it is the most interesting thing. Like, who does that? This guy did. Yeah, yeah. He said it was like the one thing he could draw was Gats. So I looked this up and you can still find Matt Deniman art for sale at like workplaceart.com or IKEA bought several of his designs. I was going to say IKEA got some of his designs for just prints, for herb stuff. That's amazing. So that's how he's like making ends meet, but he's not, you know, crushing it financially, of course. And in 2013, he releases The Grinding, a body horn of, like, it reminds me of a boss fight in the first book, a body horror novel about a monster called The Grinder that essentially catamari domicies any living thing it touches. It's just a big meatball that's like adding anything, any living thing it touches to it and like congealing it and turning it into weapons and stuff like that. It's a weirdly a recurring theme in his works, apparently. Okay, got you. Because yeah, that is definitely a very reminiscent of a boss fight. Wait, The Grinder is a recurring theme? Yeah, definitely. Or what's the name of that Castlevania boss? The Castlevania? Matt Interman, though. We have to say it again just to go back. Matt Interman. Matt Interman. Matt Interman. Matt Interman. Matt Interman says, I've been a fan of this sort of thing for a long time. I've been a gamer my whole life, talking about the lit RPG genre when he discovers that. The whole stuck in a game aspect. Wait, you having me say it again was insulting me. What are you talking about? No, I spoke over it. I thought I was going to say it. I spoke over it. I thought I was going to say it. I spoke over it. I'm not gunning for you today, Mike. I'm not. Am I the only one with a gun? You're like methamphetamine paranoid right now. No, it's not. Some people bring guns to a night fight. You brought guns to a daycare center. It's called a podcast. So yeah, the whole stuck in a game aspect, Benjamin said, of the story has been something I've been chasing since I saw the original Tron movie as a kid. When I discovered there was a whole genre of books that revolved around that premise, I knew I'd found a home. I also think Mike Lawrence is a shitty comic. Wow, that's so weird he said that. That's so weird he said that. That's insane. I mean, hey, if they're the only thing worse than being talked about, it's not being talked about. And you thought his drawings were candy. So, Denimann also has a daughter that loves reality TV shows. So we've seen a ton of reality all the way back with a VH1 flavor of love years up to 90 day fiance. He also has a friend who worked on the show House Hunters. And from him, he learned just how they cheat everything. Like the folks that already been living in their chosen house for months before they quote unquote chose it in the show. Just breaking all the facade of what reality is. And Matt said, I tend to poke funds at all sorts of stuff, but most of it focuses on our obsession of keeping up appearances at social media culture and reality television and Cocker Spaniels. So yeah, so now we get to Carl. So he's embedded in the lit RPG genre. He puts out two books in a series called Dominion of Blade, starting in 2017. This is a sword and sorcery game that was causing fatalities. So it got shut down. And then this guy Jonah wakes up one day in the game with no memory of how he got there. And he's got to fight his way through this world that has been abandoned. But then he puts out Kaiju Battlefield Surgeon. This sounds brutal. The more I learn about this book. Yeah, it's body horror and lit RPG. This came out in 2019 and it's very dark. It's dealing in grief and guts. And you're like a medic for these giant Kaiju monsters. That exists solely to be tortured by the world's wealthy and powerful. Yeah. And so you're constantly fixing up these fucked up Kaiju. But also there's a child that dies is a big part of it and the character dealing with the grief of that. Instead of a sassy cat, his only friend is a tapeworm that is slowly killing him. Yeah. It's fucking insane. Look, look, man, we, you know, there's first drafts. We finagle. We find things, you know, the publisher was probably, he's self-published, right? Yeah, yeah. Royal Roads. So, yeah. Yeah. And it's just, you know, it's like, you know there was someone who was like, what if the tapeworm that's killing him is a cat that's a friend? Here, have a donut. And, you know, I also think that when he's trying to lay all this stuff down, he's like working through his major horror input that he has. Yeah. And he's like kind of leaning harder on that in Kaiju. But I think his background in horror and the brutality of Dungeon Carler Carl is such an important ingredient. Oh, yeah. That makes it, it's like the combination of the irreverent humor, especially geared towards like making fun of reality TV and stuff like that, mixed in with that brutal nature of the book. And these two things kind of working together is what makes it so engaging at least for me. The phrase I've heard in reference to his writing style is narrative anesthesia. That there will be a like, just a barrage of snarky jokes coming from like the game AI, the achievements system is like a great way for him to just dump some one-liners and like literally write roast jokes about his characters. And then just as you're just still chuckling and moving along, something brutal will happen. And the fact, and without that, like that comedy or that like kind of Reddit style sarcasm that's like kind of peppered throughout the books, you would put it down if it was just the horrors. But then the net result is by, you know, the time you hit the later books, you've been through so much shit as has Carl that like you, this universe, like the darkness of it is like just too real and you've lived so much of it. And I feel like I would put it down if it was just the comedy. And I think this really helps the first person narrative drive this where he will get really into the whimsy and the rigmarole of all the roles and then just, oh, the world is gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another million people died while I was paying attention to something else. And, you know, like if we could talk about, in this is mainly an audiobook thing, and I know that this changes over time apparently, but in the first book, everyone says it's very apparent. Jeff Hayes is doing a Patrick Warburden. Now, do you know that by the- Patrick Warburden is in the series. In the audiobook, I think it's in the sixth book, they actually get him to do voices because of this, which again, just is a really good eye into their brilliant connection with their audience and the way they work with their audience, which we're going to get into more in a little bit with the Patreon, but yeah. But I watched an interview with Jeff Hayes, and this is what made me think of the anime subbing-dubbing thing, where he just said, he's like, I was reading this character, where he's kind of, you know, confident, but a dummy, but has a good heart, and he's like, that is literally every character. Patrick Warburden, you know, the cronk and all that. He's like, so I'll just be Patrick Warburden, but I think as the fandom swelled, and as people really had a personal connection, he worked on the character as well. I mean, I think Denimine added layers to him, but you know, it's- because it is- but you're first like, I could see how jarring it is if someone's listening to that audiobook, is like, I woke up yesterday, and it was a crazy summer. The- I watched an interview with Jeff Hayes, and it was fairly recent, so he was like, could you do book one, Carl, and then like book eight, Carl? And he's like, oh yeah, sure, it's like, god damn it, doughnut. First it's like, god damn it, doughnut! And it kind of reflects how much the character is going through all this. I will also say, going back to the mix between horror and comedy, one tricksy thing that he does that's so smart to get away with like, whiffing jokes is, well all the jokes are coming from this evil annoying obnoxious reality show AI thing, so he can always be like, I hate these fucking guys, like after any joke, right? He can be like, that joke sucked, you know? So it always like just gets you- it just makes it more palatable. How could they even think that was comedy? Yeah, exactly. So anyways, this is a Reddit post titled Five Years ago Today on December 26, 2019 from Matt Deniman on the Dungeon Carler Carl subreddit, which is something he frequents quite a lot. I was sitting at my computer still feeling ill from a cold that had been lingering for a while. My most recent book, Kaiju Battlefield Surgeon, was finishing up its initial run, and I knew it was finally time to get back to work. Kaiju was doing okay, but I knew from the start that a story about the death of a child wouldn't land well amongst the average lit RPG reader. I pulled up the manuscript I'd been tinkering with. The book was Dominion of Blades 3, The Thieves of Granger. The book opens with Gretchen and Popper in prison and an acolyte from the Scrivener's Guild coming to write their story. That book is written like Ocean's Eleven. Everything is a misdirection. It's like a massive game of mousetrap. It was overwhelming, especially since I knew DOB1 had gotten such a mixed reception. That plus I worried I wasn't yet up to the challenge of writing such a complicated plot in a way that'll make sense. So I did what I always do when I'm stuck. I opened up a new document and just started to free write. I completely emptied my brain and let it all spill out. I figured I'd write something fast and simple and uncomplicated with simple characters that has no deep undercurrent or backstory. I thought of a man and I thought some life into him. A simple guy with an uncomplicated life other than an unfaithful girlfriend who left her pain in the ass cat behind. That was the story. Characters first, always. I put them together and went about discovering what happened next. I wrote, the transformation occurred at approximately 2.23 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. As far as I could tell, anyone who was indoors when it happened died instantly. And after I wrote that, I kept writing and I didn't stop. I'm still writing. This was December 26, 2019. Happy birthday, Carl and Donut. That's the story. Layed it out right there for us. And I think that's really interesting. And he talks about how he is a pancer. He refers to himself as a pancer in terms of how he writes. And that is short for fly by the seat of your pants as opposed to a plotter. Which definitely, for me, makes me go, oh, God, because I don't want another situation where this thing doesn't end or whatever. But his output is insane. And I do think it is coming up through, as he already mentioned, release schedule for LidRPG. I do think it is his relationship with his fans and just the output style of the genre. Like, he cranks these fuckers out, man. He is very, very steady with his output. And his plan is 10 books and eight is coming out this year. Like, eight is coming out in like a month. It's actually done if you're a patron. You can actually read the entire thing. Yeah, let's talk about that distribution model for a sec. I find it really fascinating. Yeah, so he starts putting chapters out on Royal Road's website. And for the first time, he's getting audience feedback. And at their urging, he started a Patreon to put out advanced chapters. And then, pandemic hits. He said there's no better motivation than starving to death. And he just starts pumping chapters out, really, to make money on that Patreon. Because there's no more cat shows. Yeah, and so, you know, and then the book starts hitting big on Royal Road, thus feeding the Patreon. But also on Patreon, it's really cool. He has his patrons vote on settings, on stuff that's coming out of the loot boxes, on things like that. And he like, purposely has them like, put him in a corner. Because he likes to have to come up with out-of-the-box solutions to get out of any situation he's in. He does not let them vote on anything that Carl or Donut would do or say, anything like that. But like, the world of the dungeon, that stuff can be a bit of fair game. And he says, like, that's his process, though. He really likes to be put in a tough spot and have to like, write his way out of it. I think it's amazing, too. Like, historically, like, this goes back to the history of the novel. Uh-huh. That it was called a novel because it was a novelty. And it would often be published in increments. Mm-hmm. And then there was a collection afterwards. But like, I know like, a lot of Dickens stuff. You didn't just get the book. You know what it was for me, and reminded me of you talking about light novels? Green Mile. My mom and I would go and get each, because it was like a six book or five book series that was coming out like once a month. And we would be so excited when the new one would drop. And they would be at the grocery store. They used to have that like book-matchy section. Those itty-bitty little floppy chapters. And it was such a fun way to read that book. You know? And because my mom and I would both read it, within a day or two, because it was just like one part of the book. And then talk to each other about it. It was like a really cool way to do it. Yeah, because I mean, you look at it now. I mean, there was a time when Oprah was the biggest thing in literature for real. Right? If you were a part of the book club, and you would see that everywhere. And now, this Patreon model of connecting with your fan base, playing with your fan base. You know, the dungeon crawler Carl fan base is so loyal. And I think a lot of it has to do with this. All the fan art that you see. And what's amazing, I mean, this is a good lesson to creatives. You don't have to do it the trad way, right? And those people will come to you anyway when there's enough money. Because now the books are in all these places that would have never sold it. Totally. Absolutely. I'll talk about processes that connects to this a little bit. So when he's working on it, he writes a first draft, then he edits it heavily. Then it goes to an editor who gets back with him with notes. He does another big edit. Then it goes to a different editor that's more of like a line editor. He then listens to a computer reading transcript of it so we can hear it. And then it goes to Patreon. And the reason why I brought this up was this. That gives him one more pass. So it goes to Patreon. He gets that feedback. Which I think a very valuable part of this process. I don't think Donut would have said that. I don't think, yeah. Maybe, yeah. Yeah, I'm not shredding into the nitty gritty of how that specifically what changes from there to then, but he does another pass after that. And then it goes out to the public. So that's really cool that you have this extremely interactive to the point where they're helping him revise. They're literally affecting the story itself and being able to say, hey, I vote for this thing to come out of this loot box or this monster to be the boss fight. That kind of stuff. And it's fascinating too that you look. The first book is what about like 420 something pages. And then the second book is a little bit shorter. A little bit, but it's the shortest one by far. And then as you continue, and you look at the pandemic, right? And the Patreon process really makes these books longer. These are eating them out. And but it's also, you have a much longer relationship with the book of, yeah, like, you know, yeah, waiting every month or so. Like, oh my God, this is the best. As opposed to here it goes, you read it in two days and it's done. Yeah, it's really cool. And I saw people commenting like, wow, I can't believe the books, this new book that's coming out there. Like it's already done on Patreon. So there's like a kind of a finished version of it. You can go at your own pace. If you're reading the hard covers, you can like read it like it was any other book series. If you're doing the audio books, you're on your own time. Also this feeling, unlike, of course, I have to compare to our George R. R. Barton episode. There's such a feeling of, no, this thing is happening and it's always happening. Like chapters are constantly coming out on Patreon. This thing's not stopping. And I think another thing that brought me into the series was early on, I caught wind of some tier lists and stuff like that. And I know for a fact that like the books that people like the most aren't like the very first one that it gets better and better as it goes, you know, kind of like how I got into one piece. Like I love knowing for me, if I'm going to get into a book series, I love knowing, no, this is good right now, but it gets like even better book four, you know, book five. So yeah, that gets me really high. And it's fascinating because he has a different book that came out recently, you know, Operation Bounce House. But it's like, and now you have, that came out three months before this next parade of horribles, but man, does that not describe what's going on in politics at right? And it does get a little bit vaguely political. We can talk about that. I'm about to open up the floodgates. I only have a couple more things. I was just going to say real quick, I thought this was interesting. In crunch mode, he will pick a different spot every day to write. It's usually a coffee shop. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, so it's not hard to find multiple different coffee shops in the, within like a five mile radius. And he also has blasting chaotic music when he writes, usually some sort of screamo metal, which makes a lot of sense if you like, when you read those books. But that's pretty much it. We already talked about the audio books, so I think we're good there. I think it's time to release the Crick Aaron and talk about book one of Dungeon Carly-Carly. I was just going to say that. Spoilery way. I'm on his Patreon, 19,279 paid members as of, you know, right now when we're recording. He's got the book tour that's coming. I mean, it's like, it's going to be amazing because it's like, he's going to do this tour. I'm sure most of the people there have already read the book, but now it's like, and they've already paid for it through the Patreon, but now they're just going to buy it again to get it signed. It's, there's supplemental, really, there's supplemental stuff in the hardcover books. There's like a whole novella that's released that takes place behind the scenes of the dungeon. Which I really enjoyed it. I'm excited to get to the next one. In the audio books, they'll like add character banter or like specific moments to make it flow better, which we did not kind of talk about sound booth theater. Jeff Hayes. So good, man. You know, was just a struggling voice actor, former musician, doing these kind of voices.com random just like gigs every now and again. Yeah. And kind of with dungeon crawler Carl, he kind of boosted this new immersive form where he adds music, he adds extra voice actors, although many of the voices he does himself. I was shocked when I realized it was him doing the voice of princess donut in the audio books. Yeah. People say that Jeff Hayes is just extremely convincing with his female characters that people think it's definitely like a real actual woman. And isn't that amazing. A cat woman, no less. Yeah, no less. All right. Let's talk about this book. Should we get issues out of the way or talk about the or give it the gush? So this is it. This is the line of spoilers. Yeah. Yes. We're an hour in. This is like that kind of worked out. Yeah. I didn't work really well. You get, you know, anybody who hasn't ready yet gets the full thing and now we're going to dive in a little bit deeper to the actual events of the book. So where should we start? I think we got to talk about the comedy. I think one of the initial roadblocks is the kind of it just the redditeness of it is just screaming out of like so many of the early chapters. I did laugh out loud a couple of times. Really? I will say. Do you remember like what was like a huge moment? No, I think there was a couple of like, you know, some of those some of those item description things got me, you know, for sure. Just being so ridiculous and outlandish, you know, I think it just some of the visuals. I really liked a lot just in like the boss fights and stuff. I know though that, you know, speaking of crack care and like that kind of stuff for you, which was at least embedded in the story. Like these aliens are trying to take modern day like just things they've gleamed from earth and like repackage them in a boss fight or you also add the boss fight with the juicer. Yeah. Like bro dude kind of guy. They literally went in an asshole box. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I mean, and you said that stuff didn't quite click with you. It didn't quite click with me. It's again, maybe it's my own hangups about like, oh, I'm finally reading a book. Oh no, it's a book for Redditors. But I obviously, you know, Douglas Adams made fun of bureaucrats like it's it's like, I think it fades very quickly, especially when I got into book two. There's like way less of that. That's the weird thing, right? Because there's other boss fights that are more like traditional RPG. You're talking about the big pig fuck pile. Yeah. Yeah. The big pig fuck pile or the goblins. I did like the MLM thing though. I thought that was funny with the cracker and I thought that the shake that they had to make. It was like disgusting. I thought that was pretty good. I don't know, Mike, did anything stand out for you or stand against for you when it came to the and I have one big one that was not palatable for me, but we'll get to that in a second. You know, I think just in terms of the comedy, I yeah, it yeah, there was a bro-iness to it at times that was was hard to like, you know, ignore. But like I said, I do think it is a lot more palatable in the audio book. You know, I was about to ask how the jokes are sold. Yeah, because, you know, I mean, because it's just continuing, you know what I mean? It's like you read a bad joke or an idea you don't like in a book and you're like just sitting there looking at it a lot of times, you know, whereas it's like, oh, you moved on to the next thing. And I think that, you know, also Jeff Hayes is, you know, performing yet the his his AI voice where he really promotes things sounds exactly like my favorite Dark Wing Duck villain liquidator, who basically is Hydro Man as a dog. But, you know, he and he always spoke in like advertising slogans and stuff. And it's very like it's that that's similar delivery. And and it added to a lot of the stuff that I think on paper where this is originally from, it wouldn't have worked as well. And, you know, you know, Carl himself is fascinating how they want you to think he's like this average guy, but they add like that Coast Guard stuff. And, you know, because they're just like, well, he can't be the most. It reminds me of so many of those books, those way work like way more egregious, bro. He books like he's an ex Navy SEAL return to normal life. Like there's always that kind of storyline. So of course, I'm like, I read this Coast Guard thing, but at least he does a good job of being like, yeah, but we weren't like in the shit. Yeah. You know, which is okay. So you have some training, but you weren't like some bad ass in the military. You did some push ups, but you also had tons of downtime where you played D&D and just dicked around. Yeah, yeah. So that worked for me at least. I think the humor that worked the best. I mean, and it does feel like one of the breakaway characters and I love that it has the real life connections is Princess Donut. I was about to say it in that I love the idea that she has insights to his relationship that he doesn't have. Yeah, I will say the one thing though, this is actually my big issue I have that I'm hoping actually eventually maybe even resolves a little bit is because I'm about to go in on how much I love Princess Donut. So please to hear me out with that first. It is the whole like Beatrice, his ex is just this like whore that cheated on him a bunch. And that that he found out on Instagram and that gimmick of her of Princess Donut always bringing up like these things that just showed how much of a of a, you know, Philander or whatever she is. And it just felt so like Iroly and like, and also very like, you know, I and I'm hoping now at this point it's like you have to I'm assuming Beatrice is going to show up at some point in this. I'm hoping it redeems it a little bit is I'm like, I kind of would rather get an idea of like where Carl sucked as a boyfriend. I keep thinking about that one episode of 30 Rock where like, I love it. I don't know about it. I don't know about it. Thinks about how like she was picked on through high school. And then she was the bully. Yeah. That is like one of my favorite episodes of a thing. Yeah. Because that was my life. Like looking back, I was like, Oh, I was the prick. Yeah. I was such a prick. The and I thought I was the put upon one in all through middle and high school. And I was such a dickhead. So this is really like there was an initial road bump that I hit with this book where, you know, he is like, he's just a simple man who's just like, just has some common sense ideas and he keeps himself and like he's not a complicated guy. And he's kind of a troop and like this, this world of reality TV and whatever. And like, you know, but luckily I played a bunch of video games. So I know how this thing where it's very much in this style of power fantasy that many similar works kind of do. But then as you get more into it, you realize there's no harem. He's not like, like the female characters by like the end of book one are all like contorted into these monstrosities. He's going deliberately out of his way to help people, not just for his own sense of you know, personal nobility, but because he resents this world, this hyper capitalist, hyper media saturated, hyper oppressive, hyper extractive system that he just woke up one day to discover was like behind everything. And the whole bunch is, you know, you will not break me like I will not succumb to your cynical shit. Learning to compromise, having to perform in many ways on all these shows, trying to game the system. That's where Princess donut shines. And I want to go back to Princess. Let me just finish this one point. And Princess donut just or version of her, I just added to Fortnite a few days ago. Yes. No. Yeah. Of perfect, wonderful. But it's a side kick that like looks yeah, it's got the tiara and yeah, but just if you're like me and your chud sense is always like blaring when you don't want it to or you're just like always like scared like, oh, is this going to turn Chuddy? There was a post that a dinamined put on his subreddit where he was like, don't post politics. And I was like, here we go. And I clicked and he was like, obviously, there's politics in my book. You've read my books, you understand who I'm naming as like enemies. But if you make this place into just another place where people that are like on the other side feel attacked, they will just knee jerk like bounce off and never get to experience this world, never hear what I'm trying to say. And like I like I know what I'm doing with these books. I want people to love these books and like get lessons from it that I feel are important. And like, what I was really saying is you're fucking my bag. He's saying it, but also I actually love when someone is just like, yeah, this is like, I am making this for people to like cut through the bullshit and like actually talk to them. Which I think it could kind of do. It's got the elements you're talking about that would maybe draw in somebody that wears it, let's say a certain kind of hat and brings them in, you know? And then maybe have a certain style of anime girl profile picture. But I actually, I think that's like kind of brilliant because as the book goes on and as like the world kind of builds, it is offering the bare knuckle battles, the brutality, the horror, like all of this extreme kind of thrills that a lot of other genre fiction delivers on. But he's telling a story about like human beings under impossible circumstances against systems that are so big that they can barely be conceived of. And I'm on team Let Him Cook. Yeah. And so you mentioned a couple of things I want to get to. So let's go back to Princess Jonah first. I was wrong about the Fortnite. They people just created their own. Oh, okay. Yeah. My bad. My bad. I'm sorry. He's going to get in there soon though. I was like, I've been playing Fortnite every day. I don't remember that. But I apologize. Princess Jonah, like the, just all the stuff where she just immediately like, don't, don't just, let's look at it. Let's talk about it. She's immediately jumped into it. And like all the personifications of annoying cat bullshit is so good. The egomania, the charm stuff, all that stuff just works really well. Her, oh, and the, the fame fucker stuff, like her getting the way she gets so excited about like doing television and stuff. It just works so well. And his opinion of her in the beginning and his evolution of his opinion of her, I actually felt really seen his opinion of cats in general, early on, and this kind of like grumpy relationship with the way that internet feels about cats. And I've had a little bit of that. I don't like dislike cats at all. But you know, I do make fun of the way the internet is always like, look at this asshole. Isn't it cute? Like how much this thing is being a prick. Isn't that so fun and cute? And I just, I've always been like, no, no. The transition from like, oh, it's wouldn't be funny if cats talked and they'd be like just like kind of self interested, like impulsive, preening weirdos, like very so gradually and almost imperceptibly, she becomes a one of the most fully rounded characters I've like read in genre. And I get scared for it. It's such, so smart to have this glass cannon situation. Because when the shit starts going down, I do get like, I feel protective of her, you know, where I get worried when she when things get serious. Because she's technically stronger than Carl throughout the books. And yeah, she's the party leader. But she's so easily taken out to constitution. Yeah. So that stuff works really well. And then the other thing I wanted to talk about was the is the how well the more gruesome horror elements, I feel like work just very well for this, like the blood and the guts of it all really, really is visceral and strong. Because I think, you know, when you're playing a video game, and it's all bullshit and digital and everything, I mean, you can just run through whatever, even if it is gory on the screen. And it's one thing. But I think that Matt Deniman does a really good job of being like, no, no, what if you actually did have to squish a bunch of bugs with your naked foot? You know what I mean? Like, I think that and just describing the guts of it all, he does a great job of that. And I love that horror background. Just the gravity of the scenario, because it's not that he's pulled into a virtual world. The concept is, is that, you know, the vast network of alien governments and factions and corporations, just in a single instant within the first page of the book, flattens and kills every single person on earth that was within a structure. And the survivors, the matter from the meat of the people to the minerals and the buildings is used to convert like the core of the earth into this dungeon is like the idea of the counter that throughout the book, throughout everything you see just like they started with like, you know, how many million people, 3 million, 5 million, something like that. And eventually, at this point where I'm at there, they've just hit a million. And that was, yeah. We talked about the irony of a book that's beloved and celebrating nerd culture, punishing everyone except people who are outside. That is so funny. Yeah. Yeah, you had to technically be outside of a building for you to live in this situation. Even cars. Even, yeah, like if there was a roof over your head. All just went whoomp and got kind of sucked down below and it's being all repurposed. And again, that like that world building is really, it helps so much to be like, this safe room looks like a Popeyes. And you just go, done, I'm there. I'm in the room. We're good. I think that's such a good smart trick for world building when you just go, oh, everything's repurposed. So now I can just tell you kind of what this space is, you know, and I'm right there with them instead of it just being in my head a generic safe room. Playing enough video games too, when you're like, it's like a standard medieval village and like there's like this kind of tower in the middle. You're like, okay, yeah, I know what that looks like. Yeah. Yeah, I will say one thing that that that bumped me a little bit. Sure. And, you know, to the point where it's even mentioned in the book and like made fun of is just the insane amount of rules and exposition. And I know that that is, that is, I'll let RPG and everything is a bit of a draw for me. I think I'm drawn to rule sets and stuff like that. There's been times where like I was like reading or, uh, probably listening while I was doing the dishes and I would get a little fuzzy with all the details with all this. I think I think we're seeing it on and then being like, oh, shit, Mordecai is still talking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and, and, and, and I, and I feel yeah, like that there is that, and then you have Zev, like the amount of characters that feel like they pop up just to explain things. And, and I think what, what I don't like about it, and, and I understand why, why it is necessary. And, and I think it didn't am in a few times as like, yeah, I know I'm going crazy here, but, um, but I think is that it takes away from the immediacy of, of, of, of what you're, what you're reading of what you're immersed in, where the amount that he talks about level nine and, you know, and I, I mean, he's talking about that at the beginning. Oh, you wouldn't even have to worry about that till level 10. Yeah. I think I'm showing them the page of when they're going, picking their like, uh, race and class spoiler alert and book two. Um, like this, I feel like would be very difficult to hear and is a lot more palatable to the bomb. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's literally just, yeah, plus one of the bomb search skill, uh, plus one of the trap engineer skill. I do think that's when reading it on the page is a lot more palatable. Cause you can kind of look at all this stuff and reread it if you're curious, but you know, kind of move on. Whereas I feel like I would just be overloaded if I just had someone tell me this stuff. And it, well, you know, and it takes away stakes at times where he's like, I've got 20,000 health potions. Yeah. So I'm not supposed to worry about what happens. No, because of the potion sickness of debuff. Yeah. You can't take too many at once. Exactly. And I do love that. I think that I, I've meant to mention this way earlier on is like the, the stakes are still very much there because there is no, like at least so far in the book, there's no like second life or continue in this video game. You're dead. You're fucking dead for real. You died in the game. You died in real life. You just used a whiny complaint debuff on me. But no, I see how that stuff works and works against. I do agree about the exposition characters, but what I do love about it, I do love an establishment of a rule set is working for me. I'm realizing this now in general in life and whatever, like I like to be a sort of set up with a rule set. And more importantly than that, what I love with the exposition characters is all the shit where this is what makes me want to just go through the whole thing when they're like, now level five, that's where this shit's fucking down and level, you don't even want to know about level nine. And like, they just throw little tidbits out that made me go, I can't wait to get to level nine. Because then there's a part of me like, should I just read level nine? No, because you have to read levels three and six to understand level nine. Because it's an ongoing story, a side story line, which I also think is brilliant. This is one of the things that I guess, this is a lit RPG thing in general that I always nitpick. I'm always like, if I'm really invested in a character in a universe, especially in a setting like this, I'm like, well, why don't they just pop the airlock? Or why don't they do this? Or the classic thing from Lord of the Rings is why didn't they just call the Eagles? Which is so dumb. What are you talking about? The Eagles would immediately be spotted by the giant fucking eyeball and then that's very fast. They're not very fast and big. It would have not worked. The whole point was they had to sneak the fucking ring in. That is the most idiotic anyways. Regardless, the, you know, there'll be a thing where Carl would be like, well, wait a minute, I have a magic shield and Mordecai is like, that only works on physical attacks. And like in real time, the character is also trying to suss out his options. While you, as the reader, just naturally are also kind of like thinking about the tool set that they've established and like what he could possibly do. It's kind of, I find it very engaging in a way that I, you know, you can't do in a classic fantasy. And yeah, you're making me think back to one, in terms of the visceral stuff. Like I loved in that first, like, I think it was the first neighborhood boss fight. No, no, no, maybe the, no, it's the second neighborhood boss fight, where they go after the goblin encampment and they send that bomb in and it's such a like cheap, kind of shitty way to do the boss fight because they just send this big dumb bomb in and also leave the boss doors and they just push a cart full of explosives. Yeah. They just, they totally like cheat the fight or whatever. And then, and then, and then the explosion is so crazy that like they can't hear and like they're almost near death and you like get a real sense of that. I love taking a video game and just adding this layer of like reality to it. And it's like, yeah, why, of course, if you were stuck in this situation, you'd figure out how to like skirt around, you know, not even deal with the fight itself kind of thing, you know, and then still giving you like really good, uh, very like visceral, active things happening. I did, I did laugh when, after all that was cleared and it was just like achievement, you've killed a bunch of babies. Yeah. Especially the dark humor really does work for me. I think that was hilarious. And then him wrestling with that. I think that that, you know, having the joke, but then having the follow through of real gravity, I think, you know, it really helped with it. Because that's the other part of the, we didn't mention this part of the universe, all the NPCs, all the mobs, all the bosses are all in theory, real people from across the universe that like have been sucked into the dungeon and indentured into it and are held in this weird stasis. So when he kills like something, he's killed like a, in sold individual person that has been sucked into this horrible nightmare scenario. I love adding a bunch of threats of different types too in a story like this. So having the other crawlers be a thing that is coming to play in the first book that you know is going to come more and more into play as, because this, the way the dungeon is set up is it narrows as it goes down. And so you're going to be facing more and more of these crawlers is such a good layer for me of like, man, they're dealing with threats from every conceivable angle here and dealing with all these different hardships to overcome. I think really worked for me as well. That was so brutal. When the Meadowlark team, one of the, one of the core groups, I guess allies is there was a fire alarm tripped at an old folks home. So all of the residents were like outside when it happened. And so it's just like their attendance kind of like dragging, especially before like any of the skills or classes or species are chosen. They're just like trying to drag a bunch of like dementia patients through this brutal world. And they hit on one character and she's like, Oh, I had to like kill a couple of them because they were like too wounded and it was an accident or whatever. I already forgot the details, but I got a lot of stat buffs from that. Yeah, yeah. Which is like so dark and great. Also, that was a really impactful moment. Like a very vibrant moment for me in terms of the visual was all the old people that decided to stay in the Waffle House and just they were singing songs when the dungeon floor collapsed. And like, I thought that was such a beautiful like, and I was thinking too, I was like, why would, if I was that old, I would definitely stay in the Waffle House. Like I was like, why are any of these people trying to continue on? There's like no hope for them. I mean, dementia is its own dungeon crawl. Yeah, it, yeah. Whenever it touched on things like that at the very end, the stuff with I'm forgetting the character's name who was the bad guy where they're going to kill the Maggie Mai, the Asian people. Oh, the maestro. Yeah, the maestro. That's it. Which just made me think of Bob Cobb from Seinfeld. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm glad you brought that up because I want to get more into this stuff, the show and everything, the show within the show. Yeah. And, you know, and it really, I mean, it was very effective in showing Carl's humanity. And like I said, that's where I think like the first person really went, you know, it's him explaining a thing to you. But then the commentary of how he feels about it, I think is like so important that you don't always get in a third person thing and him just like, you know, there's like, there is, you know, there is a problem of like if he wins, right? It's like everything's still destroyed. It doesn't go back. Yeah, yeah. Right. He just gets control of it or something. He just gets his freedom allegedly. But I mean, no one's ever made it all the way out. I don't even think he is because they're going to book 10. And I know for a fact what floor book like eight is. It's like 10 or 11. A common theme with characters like Mordecai and other NPCs is that they will start like bribing you with a way out that isn't like true yet. Odette has that. The show host of The Better Show had that where she made it to floor 12, which again, this is the shit I fucking love, right? It's like, oh, you find out a little bit about like 12 and, you know, he's no one's made it past floor 13. I don't think we've met or found out about rather the person who made it to floor 13. Have we? So, Deb didn't make it past 12 because they gave her a way out. And so she took it, right? To be the host of the show and all that kind of stuff. Which still serves the system. And the thing I want to bring up that I love that's kind of circling around all this, I love the layer of having to also play for an audience and game everything in this other way. Every chapter starts with your likes, your favorites and like, and then patrons that they tie Patreon to it. When you find out that they're just giving doughnut endless torches because it's hilarious. Yeah. And you find out that they're purposely not giving him shoes and you're like, right, that makes so much sense. And then there's this other layer where they can't say things out loud that are annoying them. And how you do things matters. Yes. You know, how you kill things. I mean, I think yeah, it's great social commentary that, you know, with Princess Doughnut of charisma is the ultimate power. Yeah. Because it's its own, it's kind of like in a, in another video game thing where like in a Fallout game or Skyrim or whatever, where like there's combat and then there's just interactions that you need to have your wits, your intelligence, your charisma. And often those interactions can keep you out of entire combat scenarios you wouldn't even have. Yeah. If your stats are high enough. Well, you look at like Gambit and it's the dumbest fucking costume ever, but his charisma. Yeah. But the shows, every time they're on an interview, it's like the tone shifts and it is still a battle. Yeah. It is still about using a phrase we love on this show, getting over without compromising your principles. And that is just as captivating as all the traps and the boss fights. And I know like right now they're on the rise. I know there's going to be a point in the series where like their numbers start tanking. Yeah. And they do something that turns everybody off or whatever, you know, and then going back to the maestro and Glur Glurp and that show and that there's this whole other arena. It really reminded me too of like, you know, like rotten dot com. It's like 4chan audience, essentially. Right. Yeah. No, it's literally like he called, you know, if he was writing this in 2020, he was just getting like the barest hints of Joe Rogan clips on TikTok. Yeah. But he cut with the maestro character called on this kind of like posturing macho bloodthirsty, just like child audience of wayward galactic men. Yes. And he plays him for all it's worth. And those and that has massive repercussions in the you already read in the second book. Like that's like going to affect things and levels like way after this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because of the lineage of the maestro and the and all that stuff, which I think is great. And I love getting and I know it's even though maybe it is kind of overtold and not shown. I do love the fact that there is like this one corporation that's running this dungeon show, but there are other corporations that run other types of these shows and they kind of they have to so that it can keep being this ongoing thing and that there's relationships there and the the Borant company doesn't necessarily get along with some of the other companies that has to have dealings with and all that that shit is just interesting. There's a dune level intrigue happening in this series. That's cool. That's like on this other level happening above their personal sufferings, which is again so relevant to what we're dealing with in our modern day. I God, I don't think I'm going to stop reading these. Man, I don't think so either. You know, more shout outs as we start to wrap things up. Mordecai. I'm really fascinated in that character and what all is going on there because he's clearly has a problem with alcohol and we're going to get my thing more into his backstory and his relationship with Odette. And there's just a lot of interesting character things that are just makes me want to keep reading and keep going. And the pop culture humor of he's just master splinter at the beginning because that's who that's just who it would be. But also that he's something different every time. Yeah, is really cool. We're all building. Yeah, it's like just creating all of these different layers of things you can play with. Like now I want to read the other books to see what's going to happen and you know, and what's he going to be. And you know, it's like, I know that Carl makes it through at least six more, but you know, but even you know, how he does it and everything. And yeah, I mean, I think it's a good story and the way it's told is really fun. The Borat Corporation of just a Borat. I think that's a fun pun. Yeah, I think the three of us, we all really, really dug this. I mean, if you know, and I thought about it, right? Like we could have tried to tackle the whole series and that seemed insane for seven. I made it through two of these books with two weeks notice and most of that was at double speed on it. But I will say it is a testament to how strong this book is in terms of being a page turn, which why I still want to, if you made it this far and you haven't read these books yet and you still want to hear all these spoilers, like man, this was over 400 pages. And I crushed through that book. I think I read it in a week and change and immediately went out to Barnes and Noble and picked up the next book in the series, which by the way, again, prominently displayed right when I walked in all the books on hardback right alongside Fourth Wing and all the other big hot series right now, which was very cool to see. And Anne picked up the hard back. They didn't, I was going to get this off back of the second book. They didn't have it. And I was like, fuck it. And I'll probably end up, Oh no, if you're going to fuck it, you got to go hard back. Exactly. And I love holding a hard back nice hardback book in my hand on the porch, reading. And it also changes my dynamic. I'm not hidden in the back of the apartment playing a video game. I'm now like out in the mix with the family because I'm like sitting, you know, during even time where it's my me time. I'm kind of opting more to be like, as when he just continually jabs an electrical outlet with a fork, just jumps on me until I stop. It's important to show her that you're reading, you know, and it's an interesting thing of like, you know, we read every night to, to our son. And it's like, I know that's going to go away at some point. And Mike, she grabs a book herself. That's awesome. It's beautiful. Yeah. And that's not all the time. And oftentimes, like I just said, she jumps on me until I put the book down. But, you know, she'll do that sometimes. And you're right. And that is such a good model. You know, and it makes me sad that people don't, not everybody does read to their kid, you know, it should be such a staple in a kid's growth. It was so amazing was like the other day. And I, and I saw these books at the, at the store was Logan ran past the toys and went to the book section to look at the books. That's so cool. Oh my God. That's so cool. I'm, I'm raising a, a nerd that might make money. A practical nerd. Well, I think, Hey, does that cover it? Any other thoughts on dungeon crawler, Carl? I just, I cannot stress enough that say the name, Jake. Dungeon, Carl, Carl. Dungeon, Carl, Carl. Let's do it five times. Dungeon, Carl, Carl. Dungeon, Carl, Carl. Dungeon, Carl, Carl. All right. Three times is enough. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Five whole times. I got, I got ambitious. That's too much content for the people. You know what? I get why George R. R. Martin didn't finish. Yeah. I know, you know, nothing's, I don't know how they're going to turn this into a TV show of Seth MacFarlane. I think that's the best way to say it. That's where we got to end it. Is he who's, is he who are, which people were like, honestly, if Ted on Peacock proves they can do a little cartoon sidekick, like consistently, they're the team that could do Princess Donut, but I would have loved an animated series. If I had my druthers, honestly, and I know this is probably like too expensive to do, but actually something that's more akin to a dark crystal or something like that, where like the monsters, it's gory, but the monsters are still these like practical puppet kind of things. So there's a bit of unreality. So you can kind of handle the gore a little bit better and make it a little more palatable, but it still is like super violent. Like, do you know what I'm getting at? Like kind of, kind of this more visceral thing that is still a little fantastical so that you can like just, I don't know, it'll just work better. I think what we really need to do is let the guy finish the books first. Yes, yes, please. Start filming the second the last word is typed, but don't start till then. Uh, I so agree with Mike. Bran won the dungeon? How about, but he's not even a character from this book. That makes no fucking sense. But it is one of the, oh my God, the Rizzler wins! The Rizzler! I mean, his charisma is the Rizzler. Yeah, I would love, please put Rizzler in Dungeon Crawler, Carl. I've called for it. Honestly, we barely touched the books. There's probably like a weird obese tech talk kid that is like has level 99 intelligence. I know there's a sentient, but he gets work ethic. Bumps, bumps, buffs from his abusive parents. Yeah. I know there's a runaway hit character that is a sentient, uh, sex doll head trying to find its body that everyone loves. So I'm excited to meet that character. That's a weird way to end this. You know, they fucking had a dinosaur at the end of the first one. It's like these people, I, you know what? I am dumb enough. I am dumb enough that when they described this like chickeny feathered thing, and then it was like, no, that's a velociraptor. Oh, and it got me. Yeah. I, uh, yeah. By the way, we even talk about mango and how charming mango is. And mango is the end. Yeah. And I mean, and it's, it's the smart Disney formula. You have the one, I mean, maybe mango ends up talking, but you have the talking animal side thinking you have the not talking. Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah. Uh, you know what's going to happen. It's inevitable. There's no way. I mean, as soon as I started reading this, I was like, Oh, Sue already bought these rights. You know, I mean, me reading it with an executive brain, I'd be like, before I was finished with like the third chapter, I'd be trying to figure out who has the rights and if we can buy them up. You know what I mean? I mean, it's just, it's gonna happen. And I mean, I mean, Paramount, I mean the board corporation is just going to, I know it's another one of those squid game things too, where it's going to like turn into the thing it's commenting on, but regardless, um, you know, and adaptations coming and, uh, that's essentially the skinny on it. All right. It's time to finish. We have to be done. This, this was great. I had so much fun doing kind of a book club thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. If you want to hear more episodes like this, let us know. Yeah. Um, this was really fun to do. Other books tell us, you know, we want to, we want to be on the cutting edge if you wheel. Yeah, please. Sometimes of what, what is in the nerd zeitgeist right now. And this book definitely, people really liked the absolute DC episode. Much like the Matt Deniman Patreon relationship, you know, as, as Mike told it in the beginning, you guys had a real effect on us doing this episode. And we want to continue to have you guys influence what happens on the show. And you should see our drawings of cats. We really need the money. Jake's decent at it, but not you, Mike. I did it again. What is going on with me today? No, it makes me feel every time you're mean to me, it makes me feel okay about being mean to you. Exactly. There you go. You prick. A human centipede of cruelty. If you would like to do something, a regular human centipede is cruel. I don't know why you need to, sorry. If you would like to spread some kindness in the world, I would highly recommend you check out our Patreon, patreon.com. It is one of the best ways you can support the show. And hey, there's a entire bonus show, a separate podcast. If you've ever hit the end of an episode and been like, God, I wish I could keep listening. It's over on the Patreon. It's the Nerd of Mouse Scream and Shout where we cover the latest nerd news, what we're currently watching, playing, reading, and it is a grand old time. I highly recommend it. And at a higher layers, we do watch alongs, covering stuff that we've been covering on the show. We did a read along with the annual Absolute Batman and that was a blast. Yeah, one piece live action as well over there. Jake and I are watching that, patreon.com forward slash nerd of mouth. Do we do? I mean, yeah, how do we cover this on a Patreon? Do we do? Do we do a read along of that side story? There's fan animations. There's also Hold Nerd or so on Twitch. Also, also, Jizz Mike. There's no rules, man. Oh, okay. I mean, I always, I did you do puppet Jared? Yeah, give him puppeteer. I mean, because, you know, you do puppet Jared and then I go last because Holden believes I'm great at outros because you're so good at intro. That's true. That's true. Even though I'm not, but you know, that's what it is. Yeah, so you go and then I'll go. Follow me on blue sky at best Jake Young Instagram at best Jake Young. And if you want to have a rollicking good time, check out twitch.tv slash puppet Jared. That's named my little Vtuber avatar. The flagship stream is the cartoon dumpster, a weekly deep dive into some of the most gonzo bizarre and atrocious animated shows of the 70s, 80s and 90s. We recently hit a weird run of She-Ra, which if you don't remember what actually happens in that show, good Lord. Good Lord. There's a lot of, I don't want to say emasculation kink, but it's there. And that's 7pm Eastern on Thursdays. Dumpster 7pm Eastern Thursdays twitch.tv slash puppet Jared. And as always, make love burden, not war burden. Yeah. 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