in another life we were arsonists

kath, 23, she/they, mostly bandom and infinite jest ao3 is aliensinflowercrowns

[mikepemulis]

riotgrlpossum >>> mikepemulis

[rockwarbler]

You: Carl started hearing the river and going crazy because he's a primal

Me, enlightened: Carl started to go crazy bc hes 27

[part-timebones]

"Remember, this is a tragedy."

I WILL FIND YOU MATT.

[wherehumorcomestodie]

“That’s the problem with hitting the elites financially. Every time you hurt one, all it does is make another richer. That won’t stop until the baskets overflow with their godsdamned heads.”

-Matt "I'm not a political writer" Dinniman

[parallaxistaken]

DCC BOOK 8 (A PARADE OF HORRIBLES) SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

You have been warned!! This is fanart btw!!

I wanted to draw fanart of that scene…..you know the one with Eris and the coin…..the imagery there was just too good with the last one. “I become what they accuse me of.” I took some creative liberties with it but i hope yall enjoy! and please talk to me about DCC this recent book destroyed me yall…..

[waterkangaroo]

Donut is so....she's a cat. She's a princess. She's a spoiled brat. She's a beautiful precious baby. She's actual royalty. She was born yesterday. She's a full grown adult. She's Carl's best friend. She's his partner in crime. She loves getting lap dances. She frequents the Penis Parade. She's incredibly cunning. She's a child actress. She's a revolutionary. She reads people for filth. She's a mother to a dinosaur. She helped incite a civil war. She's orchestrating a genocide on cocker spaniels. She cannot sing to save her life. She's a cult leader. She's incredibly witty. She does not think ahead. She's a master manipulator. She's a diva. She's the queen of suppressing emotion. She is the epitome of a cat.

[waterkangaroo]

for those wondering why this happened in A Parade of Horribles...

the AI DID warn Harbinger what would happen if he threatened his boy again 🥰

[luxfatale]

Samantha from DCC fan art commissioned by @soongtypehuman ✨

this piece took off a bit on reddit thanks to the very kind human who commissioned me! with their permission it’s now available in my shop!

[waterkangaroo]

what if I was an AI running a deadly dungeon and you were one of my crawlers and we were codefendants in a lawsuit about the extremely powerful game-breaking item that I created specifically for you 🥺👉👈

and what if as a reward for us winning the lawsuit, I gave you "worthless" stock certificates, thereby granting you the elevated legal status you need in order to create a Faction Wars team of your own 🤪

also what if you got eaten by a giant creature again 🥵🥵🥵

[himbotheninth]

*heavy breathing* what if -- ok, ok -- what if i allowed you access to my failsafe that would annihilate everyone, turning me into a cosmic nuclear bomb, killing me and your oppressors and your loved ones in one fell swoop. And what if, holy fuck, what if you set me free instead, allowing me to continue hurting you but also now i can hurt THEM too. And then we kissed. Would that be good for you.

[cintiri]

I cannot believe the first thing Donut does in the new book is instantly call a hit out on Carl's new wife, she's such an icon. She gaslit that snake into thinking she pissed herself. She did it all while heavily traumatized over committing quite possibly the deadliest and most brutal mass casualty event in the history of the crawl. And then she goes back to the grind like it's NOTHING. Princess Donut they could never make me hate you.

[arcadianforests]

Sometimes i think I'm reading in between the lines a little bit with DCC and Carl specifically because there's just something about Carl's wanton regard for his own safety and his relationship with his mother and how that's going to effect his relationship with Dounut i just aaagh

Like obviously Carl's already suvivor's guilt maxxing pre- dungeon. He deeply deeply desires connection and community and family, but he doesn't feel close to even the most prominent people in his life (Bea obviously but also Sam, who he's been friends with since before his mom died and even lived with for a time after getting out of state care). Like I think he's more deeply connected to any of his circle in the dungeon than anyone before. Like he immediately! picked up on Bautista and Katia dating but couldn't see his own girlfriend was cheating on him for years lol

Which exacerbates his martyr looking for a cause deal. He's always like "well if a sacrifice has to be made a sacrifice it should be me" and when he realizes in Bedlam Bride that he is now too important to sacrifice because he's a warlord, it's nothing but a deep and aching grief. He does not want to be the one who keeps soldiering on on the face of all this death. And if it came down to it he would unquestioningly die for Dounut because he cannot bear that grief. He talks a big game about having to keep going when their friends die but the entire universe knows that if Dounut dies he's done.

Because as much as the narrative shies away from naming it as such, Carl feels and treats Dounut as his daughter (I don't wanna get into it to much here but their relationship is paralleled with Dounut's relationship with Mongo, and Miriam's relationship with Prepotente, both of which are more explicitly parent/child). And so I keep coming back to what Signit said near the end of Butcher's Masquerade, about how Tina wants the same thing she does, the same thing Carl does: Tina wants her mother back. I'm convinced that, had he known, Carl would gladly choose to endure years more abuse at the hands of his father, if only his mother was alive and with him.

So I think a major part of the end of this series is Carl having to make a very deliberate choice to save himself, even if it means Dounut suffers for it. Because his mom made the other choice, and he knows it was the wrong one. His sacrifice needs to be bearing Dounut's pain with her, rather than trying to save her from it. Continuing to live and suffer is the harder choice, but it's the one he has to make.

[goatituptown]

My conviction that Carl is very handsome has nothing with the several comments about his appearance which indicate that he is, but is almost solely based on the fact that he was in a long term relationship with Beatrice.

Beatrice strikes me as a person that's deeply invested in appearance, both how her partner looks and how they are perceived by others. Despite her cheating on him she looked at him as the person she wanted to marry, and was trying to manipulate him into proposing. I just genuinely don't think she would do all that if he's not also bringing the benefit of being a smokeshow to the table

[eggsgrubsandpumpkins]

Dungeon Crawler Carl floors 1-3: TeeHee! This big buff guy has a cat named Princess Donut! Dungeons & Dragons! Action/Adventure! Raunchy gore!

Dungeon Crawler Carl floors 4-onward: "Comrades, synchronize your watches. Tonight is the night we light the sparks of the revolution. Tonight is the night we die for our freedom."

[antebellum13]

⚠️Non-HP Universe Post⚠️

[Interested in buying a print or full resolution digital download? Check out my shop on Etsy!

My favourite book series! This is Carl and Princess Donut from the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. Amazing books and amazing audio books because the narrator is so insanely talented you completely forget it’s just one guy!

Information about the painting

References used:

Carl - based very loosely on Tom Hanks from Saving Private Ryan

Donut - Google image search for tortoiseshell Persian cats helped me figure out the coat pattern and smushed face look

Tiara - Google image search for plastic tiara, and then I combined a few of the results for something a little more unique

Glasses - Google image search for rhinestone sunglasses, and then combined for a gaudy look

Butterfly charm - couldn’t find anything I really liked so it’s more of a sort of fairy wing look than anything else 🤷🏻‍♀️

Leather jacket - Google image search

Brushes used (procreate):

Lilydale

Winkleigh

Lichen

Agrarian

Forester

Mintbrush

Canva used to add signature

Native Apple photos app used for post-processing colour balance

[hell-garden]

Me when I'm in the dungeons and this thing shows up and blows me to death with her lasers

[wargoddess9]

Princess Donut from the book series, Dungeon Crawler Carl <3

Tortoiseshell fur is hard to paint. XD;;;