Beyond Selidor

I feel like I've probably oversold this post as well-put-together meta when it is mostly a lot of bullet points with me going "WTF? WTF?," which I guess is basically the Dungeon Crawler Carl experience in a nutshell. Anyway! It's a month until Parade of Horribles comes out, so I figured I'd better post before the post was obsolete. *g*

This is mostly stuff that I've picked up on in reading/rereading and am wondering what will be resolved (and when, given that there's supposedly 3 more books, and ( spoiler ) I also wanted to do a little speculation about endings. Because despite people on reddit being very vocal about Dinniman being a horror writer and how it's not going to end happily and everyone will die, I don't believe that to be the case, necessarily, based on my reading of the books. (I mean, is it likely? Sure. Do I want that ending? Nope!)

The first, less salient, point in my favor is that the books open with Carl telling the story in a way that sounds like he's looking back on it, that he's been through it and lived to tell the tale. This is typical in novels written in first person past tense; however, ( spoilers )

The second, more important, point, to me, is the theme of the story that's being told – one of resistance and revolution, anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism – and having that be snuffed out in favor of late stage capitalism and status quo antebellum being restored is just...I don't see it (especially not now). I guess even if everyone dies, the changes Carl et al. have forced on the galaxy will linger, at least for a while, but I am not sure anymore that even Carl dies at the end (I would have said 98% yes he does, but I read some interesting meta on tumblr that made me wonder if he will in fact survive and why, rooted in his own past trauma to make it make sense).

I do think a lot of our favorites will die, probably horribly, but I also think Donut will make it out alive. I cannot imagine killing the cat at this point. It would be interesting and somewhat surprising to make Carl live in the new world too. (I am not just saying this because he's my blorbo, but that might be a major factor in it.) Though how – given his primal race – could be as something new and different (or its own horror, given the givens), which might as well be death in some ways? Metamorphosis, at least. Idk.

Anyway, I've wrestled with how to organize this – by character? by theme? – and decided to go with *drumroll* location! It seemed to make the most sense to me, anyway.

There's spoilers for all 7 books (I am not a member of the Patreon so I haven't read any excerpts from book 8 or the extra material from the print versions of the books) from here on out.

We'll start wide with ( the galaxy )

Which brings us to ( earth's surface )

And then, the most important location, ( the dungeon )

I'm sure there are things I've forgotten/missed/am making too much or too little of, but there is just so much going on that I needed to track it all somehow, and so here we are. If you've read the books, what do you think?

*I said this on tumblr, but I do hope someone makes a Carl vid to Springsteen's Trapped - it's definitely #1 on the Carl playlist I did not actually make but which lives in my head while I contemplate inchoate fic ideas I will never write.

***