Thursday, August 13, 2026

the eye of the Bedlam bride part 1

Recap: Donut gives a recap to her followers. Its spectacular that she was able to make enough money with her fanclub to buy a spot on Faction wars. It makes me wonder if she's effectively an advanced AI with her intelligence being so high.  You know that movie where scarlet johansen is an ai and at one point she tells Jake jillinhall or whoever it was that she's talking to other people and she says she's talking to thousands of people at once?  I wonder if Donut is operating on that kind of unfathomable level.

Flashback:  We find out how Odette got Mordekai's brother killed.

Chapter 1 pg 15

There's a bunch of announcements a out how this floor is gonna work.  You start in whatever area you start in (Cuba for donut and carl) and you're there for 2 weeks.
We are back in time on earth.  You're gonna see things as they were in that part of the world on those dates.  But you cant interact with the people.  Theyre kinda like ghosts.
They act like the dates are arbitrary but carp knows better.  The start date is December 10th so they'll be moving on (presumably to the Bahamas) on the 24th.  Bea and her "friend" flt into the Bahamas on the 26th.  So this whole thing is designed so he will end up seeing Bea interacting with her "friend" during the second half of this floor.
Also, you have 5 spots to capture monsters to be on your team.  I really like Pokémon red/blue as a stand alone video game. I really enjoyed explaining the fighting system to RPG fans that weren't familiar with it.  Im.psyched to see how it goes.

Ch 2 pg 26
Mordecai is a cyclops. 
Samantha can fly now.  Mordecai is freaked out.  They cannot give her that body until they understand what her deal is.  
They go through all their achievements 
Donut opens all her boxes

Ch 3 pg 41
Carl opens all his boxes.
Mordecai does not like how many of the things they got , especially the celestial box carl got, is related to the Gods.
Also Mordecai has an assistant now.
He says dont worry about it so now im DYING to know who it is.

Ch 4 pg 55

They go out into the world.  They keep having people walk into them and their clothes stay behind and they keep walking naked.
They fight a dog monster with a human head.

Ch 5 pg 72
Donut sucks
Shes always running her mouth about how she's gonna kill any dog and most cats she sees.
They find a group of 3 crawlers that are ready to fight to the death because they heard donut say if she ever saw a cat person she would kill them straight away and this group has two prisoners and a nun and the nun is a cat person.

Ch 6 pg 81
They fight some mobs and specifically help the 3 crawlers to capture a monk seal.  Its a seal the does king fu.  And 3 crawlers help.them catch one.  So they each have a kingfu seal.


Ch 7
They fight more mobs together.  Eventually they get to a safe room.  They offer the 3 cralwers a spot.in their guild.  They are not interested. Donut doesnt trust the cat lady and not because she is a cat lady.

Ch 8 pg 102

They watch the recap show.  You really gotta keep your head on a swivel on this level.  On second you're fighting a monster and the next, you're getting hit by a bus.

Samantha reports in.  She had been eaten by a spider lady.  Not just any spider lady.  The titular spider lady.

Ch 9 pg 110
The narrator explains how the card game works 

They spend money to do practice card games.

Ch 10 pg 118

They go into a graveyard.  Theyre fighting all sorta of undead humanoid.  Carl's arm gets frozen.  Thank goodness cat lady is a cleric and heals him.  They twleport to just outside a saferoom.  They go inside the safe room.  Just as they do, carl sees a level 130 tall man.  They open the door to take another look and the boss takes a step inside.

Ch 11 pg 131
The boss wants them to go to the temple and fix his shrine.
The nun is real religious,  and she kinda freaks out whenever one of the game gods are mentioned. Shes screaming out heracy and false idols and what not and donut hates it and wants to get the helll away from.these people asap.
They open fan boxes. Donut gets an auto tune headset and carl gets a massage coupon. 

Ch 12 pg 146 and
They get ready for the show.  The Valtay that was trying to kill carl via Maggie is here as the syndicate Liason. 
The lawyer is there too and he is yelling at zev and the Liason. 

They interview with a lady named Rosetta.  Theres entries in the anarchist cookbook by a lady named Rosetta.  Theres no way its the same lady right?
Whoever she is, she's pissing Carl off cause she's asking about his dead mom.

Ch 13 pg 156
Omg,  it totally is the lady from the cookbook.  Shes trying to tell carl what to do with the root vegetable that the peace people gave him.
The syndicate liason catches on and cancels the interview. 

Ch 14 pg 167
They are back in the dungeon and they make a run for the temple.  They make it and carl flags a monster on the way.  They have 2 now.
The other group gets a commandment from their god to fix a different idol in the temple.

Ch 15 pg 180
Things change real fast.  
Bbbbbbb boss battle.
There's a bunch of different shrines.  Each god has a pitch as to why you should repair theirs.  But its not a good that convinces Carl what to do.  Its katia.  She tells him about the crown and says there's a god that can help.
Long story short, that ends up being the winning shrine.
Big problems though.  Carl is infected with fighting slug pox from fighting the level 130 tall man that sent them here in the first.place.  carl flagged him.  Up to 3.
Both of the prisoners are being smited by their god.  Everyone but donut goes into the newly created club vanquisher door, hoping to get healed inside.

ch 16 pg 197
They don't make it into club vanquisher because the prisoners God shows up to truly smite them in person.
The one guy is just turned to dust.  The other guy is not long for this world.
Nun jumps in to help and gets frozen.
The guy still alive tells them all sorts of fun things.
1. The nun is a murderer, she killed all the other nuns in her nunnery. 
2. The guys we think are prisoners were really prison guards at a wo,ens prison.
3.  The nuns cat lady race has a taxoplasmosis feature.
Donut wants to kill her while she's frozen.
Carl says no
The nun unfreeze
Just as ths prison guard is about to die she stabs him with a card flag.

Ch 17 pg 206

Two goddesses show up.  One is a standalone NPC, one is a sponsored goddess. The sponsored one is a ultra rich lady.  She gives carl a quest.to kill 5 spiders a day.  Its a fake quest so she can communicate with him without any monitoring. She has a plan for katia and donut to both make it to the 12th floor.  She says ask mordekai about her.  

Ch 18 pg 216
Carl asks mordekai about her and mordekai says to do whatever she says.
Carl goes into club vanquisher.   They do not like people that are here on god exceptions.   He can only go directly to the healer and he has to have an escort the whole time.  
His escort is a cleric of his God.  He takes him to said God's temple and washes Carl's feet.  In the midst of said foot washing carl realizes this isn't an ,NPC, this is THE AI.  in cas you didnt know, the AI is horny for Carl's feet.
Carl goes to the healer and gets his slug pox healed.

Ch 19 pg 229
They go back to the saferoom and have a long hard talk with katia about what theyre gonna do.  Katia has an assassination qiest for the asistant manager of Da club and if she does it, she'll get to jump to the 12th floor, avoiding the 9th floor thing where she'd have to kill donut.

Ch 20 pg 241
Carl tells donut to leave  catwoman alone.  Problem,  donut has been chatting hateful sh8t at catwoman pretty much nonstop. 
God damn it donut
They're gonna meet with the other war people to talk over the terms of the war.
Did I mention that odette thinks that she's gonna be able to negotiate that everyone on the war council so that everyone related to the war will be protected?  Rich lady that's sponsoring the 2nd lady God says she specifically had made odette believe that when in reality she's gonna get it so that no one has protection. I wonder if she's trying to kill oddette.

Also, mordecai has "hired " a bunch of changeling npc kids to be his "assistants" semi guess they don't die.  
I don't really understand how this is just a thing now.  I would think that any of those npcs from the 3rd floor that were transported to the 6th floor that didn't make it to the 9th floor would have been dead at the beginning of the 7th floor.


Ch 21 pg 249

They go to the war council meeting.  It's mostly donut making fun of people.
Out of nowhere one of the guys on the council's mom shows up.  But it's not really her, it's an NPC pretending to be her.

Ch 22 pg 263
Its juicebox.  She  "kills" a bunch of war council people. They're gonna regenerate tomorrow and discuss more. 
Why is juicebox doing this? She's campaigning for npc rights.  She wants there to be an Npc army.

Ch 23 pg 277

All their friends are at the desperate club and they talk about their feelings a little.  Katia and Carl chat about their assasination plan. You know they're gonna do it cause the book is called dungeon crawler Carl.  But right now it looks kinda hopeless.  They have to kill her and then take her body up to the assassin guild, which is accessed via a secret door in the Male strip club.  Carl goes to check it out.

Ch 24 pg 287
They go back out to the fake Havana.  The crabs have had enough.  They are attacking the seals enmasse. Pick a side.  The seals are obviously good, the crabs are obviously bad and if you dont pick a side its even worse as the entirety of Cuba will likely be destroyed in the war to come.

Ch 25 pg 295
They flag a krab.  The funny part is that he's talking to himself like hes trying to get all psyched up to fight the seals.  He's standing on top of a semi truck container.  Donut casts hole and he goes into the container.  Carl uses a phase through walls potion.  There's a lot of warning about how these work.  You can only go through inorganic material.  So its really limiting.  But in this situation where he jumps into the truck, mushes the crab a bunch and flags it, it works out.
Also, there's an announcement that the ctlady has taken up with the seals.
Im real curious to see which side Carl chooses.  My guess is seals cause donut thinks crabs are gross.

Ch 26 pg 304
They make their way to.samantha and her giant spider friend.  The spider agrees to be turned into a card because she wants to make it to the next floor to reunite with her husband.  

Ch 27 pg 318
There's a bunch of announcements and yheyre all bad.  The worst one is that to get to stage 2 you have to have a key.   Theres way more people than keys.  So a lot.of people are going to die.

Ch 28 pg 325
Even though she's a card now, carl won't shut up about how the titular giant spider is not to be trusted. 

They go do a test card fight.  They start by.putting out uzi Jesus.  He seems cool.  He's not. The second they put out our titular spider he fills her full of lead and she kills him.  The other teams best card is Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. He's incorporial until you kill tha other 8 reindeer. After some amount of shenhannegans,  titular spider turns all the reindeer blind and insane and they kill each other. Then she jumps on Rudolph and tears him in 2 and eats his guts.
Also, Carl feels like titular spider is doing something to him.  



Ch 29 pg 336
They do more practice card fighting.  They pretty much always win easily because they summon titular spider lady and she just destroys anything in her path.  But largely nothing else goes well. Neother Uzi Jesus nor big disease guy follow orders.  their second best card is the crab, but he has no self confidence and all the other cards bully him. 
They finally get to a card match that's an even fight and they get destroyed becuase donut straight up sucks at this game.  

Ch 30 pg 349
They go to the desperado club and Katia is detoxing from the four drugs she's addicted to.   Carl doesnt have time for this.  They have to do their assasination NOW!!!  Everyone is pissed off.  Maybe they'll start to actually hate each other and then when they have to kill each other to get keys it won't be such a big deal.

.ch 31 pg 358
Carl and katia and Samantha get ready for the assassination. 

Ch 32 pg 366
The plan goes to shit before it even starts.  Carl tells some crawlers on the dance floor gtfo and one of them attacks Carl.  Some demon that hates Samantha some how escaped the nothing to get her to try to kill Samantha. 
Carl tells Katia to pull the plug.
Katia is all, you only get one shot and im not throwing away my shot.

Carl is just sort of scurrying around and trying to stay alive and ends up in the kitchen with Astrid.  For a second he is considering ceasing the moment and killing her.  Then she kills a troll with her blood boiling magic and it tempers Carl's enthusiasm significantly.   She also talks about if she dies he needs to tell her husband and children that she tried.  Also, her husband is the one that gave them the mission to kill Astrid.  Katia is using her cards to fight.  That means she can't really fight.  But she can take potions, and she takes an invisible potion and while Astrid is distracted katia grabs her, Carl rips her wings off and a crow monster from Katia 's deck rips her eyes out and kills her.

.
Ch 33 pg 386

They make their way up to the strip club.  Everyone is sobbing cause they lost a lot of friends to the demon.  
Katia has the magic orchid that might transport her directly to the 12th floor, or get her pregnant or triple her constitution. 
So its not guaranteed to solve their problems.  Either way, shes gonna wait til the end of the 9th floor to use it.

Ch 34 pg 397
Turns out all the strippers are actually mercenaries that are hiding out in the strip club so they don't get hired and end up.dieing.  the club is gonna shutdown so to prevent them from getting all mercenaried,  carl hires them.   The initial idea was to hire Astrid's sons, but they're gonna be busy getting revenge aganist their dad.

Donut loves this soo9o99 much. 

Ch 35 pg 406
They go on odette's show.
They think shes gonna ask to be their adjunct. But instead she brings on 3 candidates for the job.

Ch 36 pg 412

They picked the orc lady, mostly becuase carl's lawyer was enthusiasticly supportive of her.  I hope we get to hear more about that.

Im currently #25 on 16 copies.  So I should be able to get the second half in a month.

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

gun, with occasional music

Ch 1
Main character is named Metcalf. Like Eric from support. Metcalf is a PI.  He was hired by Maynard Stanhunt to rough up his wife and convince her to go home of maybe even drag her home.  Metcalf hates that, so he quit that job.   Now Maynard Stanhunt is dead.
Someone is in Metcalf's office.  Probably to hire him in relation to Maynard Stanhunt's death.
Wb: They don't imprison criminals in thus world,  they freeze them.

Ch 2

Orton Angwine is the someone. Metcalf 's first name is Conrad.  Conrad is a professional pain in the ass.
Wb: people don't talk to strangers here and everyone has a karma card.  If you've done things the society deems good, you have a lot of karma points on your card.  If you do things the inquisitors decide are bad, you have less.
Orton has 0 karma points. Its because he is accused of killing Maynard Stanhunt. I guess they take away your karma points before your trial.
Metcalf wants no part of it.  It's bad enough he worked for a guy that got killed. He's sure the inquisitors are probably gonna f8nd a way to punish him for that. If he takes Orton's case he could just as likely end up with 0 Karma points.
Orton goes so far as to say, help me Conrad Metcalf,  you're my only hope.  Metcalf doesn't care.  He suggests memory erasing drugs.  Orton leaves. Metcalf does drugs all my himself.

Ch 3
Metcalf decides to go to Stanhunt's office.  The front desk lady tells him to take a hike.  He tells her hes gonna be back in 2 hours and Stanhunt's business partner Dr Testafer better be ready for him.
I got the impression hes trying to imply he had blackmail material and if he doesnt get compensated for it, the world will know Stanhunt's dirty laundry. 
The inquisition is downstairs and they doc Metcalf 15 karma points.
Now Metcalf has to come up with a plan.  He has no idea what hes going.to say to the doctor in 2 hours.
There's a fun backstory about how his genitals are dysfunctional becuase he did a nerve swap with his former girlfriend and she bailed before it could be undone.
Also I think the lady on the elevator was a mutated cow.

Ch 4 pg 18
Metcalf goes to visit Maynard Stanhunt's wife. Shes staying with a lady who's son is a baby head and moved out.  Shes replaced him with a mutated cat girl.

Ch 5 pg 27
Metcalf talks to doctor Testafer. It doesnt appear to be very informative. 

Ch 6 pg 33
Metcalf has 65 karma points.
The investigators come by Metcalf's office and hassle him a bit.  They basically tell him  Orton Angwine is a lost cause.  If Metcalf stays involved,  he might go down with him.

Ch7 pg 40

Metcalf likes Orton Angwine becuase hes more pathetic than him.

Ch 8 pg 52
Matcalf goes to check out the hotel where Stanhunt died.  He gets pistol whipped by a kangaroo.

Ch 9 pg 61
Metcalf goes to the doctor's house.  He has a mutant sheep and it tells him stuff about the kangaroos boss.
The sheep and doctor both tell Metcalf hes better off leaving well enough alone.
The sheep is fun, she tells him the kangaroos boss is a lot like Metcalf. They both barge in and demand stuff.  But the kangaroos boss is aware that hes evil.  He doesnt pull punches and thats why hes so dangerous. 

cH 10 pg 72
Metcalf goes to visit pansy green, Orton Angwine's sister.  She tells him Orton has it all wrong, she was never lovers with Maynard Stanhunt. 

Ch 11 pg 82
Metcalf decides to visit te inquisitors office.  His prize is a punch in the gut and getting docked 25 karma points. He's down to 40 now.

Ch 12 pg 91
Metcalf has a fight with the kangaroo and he wins and ye calls the kangaroos boss and the boss agrees to meet Metcalf. He also tells him he's got it all wrong.  

Ch 13 pg 98
Orton comes to Metcalf's office and tells him he went to the doctor's home and saw blood on a door handle and ran away.
Metcalf goes to check it out.  The doctor's sheep person is dead.  Not just dead.  Cut wide open.   This gives Metcalf the heebeejeebees. 

Ch 14 pg 102
Metcalf calls the inquisitors and reports the sheep's death. They say to stay put, they'll send someone.  He runs for it.  Orton is sleeping on his couch when the inquisitors show.  Metcalf feels bad about that.

Ch 15 pg 106
Metcalf gets drugs.  He bribes the drug guy to tell him what everyone else does for the drugs and has him inspect Pansy's drugs and finds it's a drug that's now illegal called blanketrol that's a more powerful early version of forgetall that results in the user turning into an empty shell.

Ch 16 pg 112

He goes to phoneblums house which turns out to be a hologram and his real house is an underground coomplex.  Phoneblum tells him the case is over.  If he promises to mind his own business he will get his karma points back.  He doesn't and he gets knocked out. 

Ch 17 pg 126
He wakes up in his car and goes back to his office.  Celeste Stanhunt is there.  She says she wants to hire him to protect her because she doesn't think orton killed her husband and is worried whoever did might want to killit's back.  She tries to come onto him and he smacks her in the face.  Maybe I don't mind if he dies.

Ch 18 pg 136
He goes back to his apartment where he knows the interrogators will be.  He gets punched in the gut and loses another 15 karma points.  One of them tries to take his license but he strangles that guy for a bit and gets its back.

Ch 19 pg 142
He goes to the architects 9ffice to ask about the plans he found in Pansy 'shouse.  Turns out Phoneblum is their customer.  Metcalf thinks the bunk room must be for baby heads.

Ch 20 pg 149
Barry Green is Patsy's baby head son.  Metcalf tracks him down. Tells him who us father is might be important. Someone has plans of building a baby head bungalow. That means someone cares about them.  They shouldn't be dri king their lives away in a building that should be condemned. 
Nothing in this book has spoken to what year it is.  At the hotel the baby heads are squatting in, Metcalf sees an old calendar from 2008. So its way past 2008.
Also, he is called a worthless, diddlyass jumbo puppet tool.

Ch 21 pg 159
Metcalf goes to visit the guy that had the job before him.  Turns out its a mutated monkey.  He wasn't hired by the husband. He was hired by phoneblum.  He discovered celeste's boyfriend. Phoneblum wanted the mutated chimp to kill him.  He said no.  My understanding is the kangaroo shot him.

Ch 22 pg 170
Metcalf goes t0 visit Penny.  The baby heads are there.  He has a theory, Celeste is their mom and phoneblum is their dad.
Baby head asks again how Metcalf feels about being  a worthless, diddlyass jumbo puppet tool..  Metcalf tells them truth and justice are two different things. 

Ch 23 pg 175
Metcalf goes to a bar that he thinks he can get information from. He pretty much doesnt.  What he gets when he asks about blanketol is a package hes told to take to a drug msn.

Ch 24
Metcalf leaves the bar and the doctor and the kangaroo are outside.  In side, the bartender is angry because Metcalf stuffed him.  Bartender and another huge guy come out.  There's a big fight and Metcalf gets away.

Ch 25 pg 192
Metcalf goes back to hs office.  The inquisitors are there.  The lady inquisitor warns him not to go upstairs. 
They go back to his car and talk about the case.  They are listening to the police radio to make sure no one else is coming. They hear stanhunt on the radio.  Its related to a sex club.  Lady investigator tells Metcalf to get out, he doesnt need this kinda heat.  He says hes gonna go there anyway,  why waste the gas?

Ch 26 pg 200

Its Celeste. She's been torn to pieces.  
Lady investigator and Metcalf go to his place.

Ch 27 pg 213

The bad guy investigator comes and drags Metcalf off to the freezer while lady investigator is still asleep in his bedroom.

Six years later

Ch 1 pg 215

The whole freezer thing is weird.  You go in and then you come out and it feels.like no time at all.
The chimpanzee investigator os there to greet him when he gets out.

Ch 2 pg 220
Metcalf goes back to the chimpanzee's apartment. They drink.  Chimpanzee tells him there's no more private investigators anymore. Only the government ones ask questions. Also, there's only one drug mix and its mostly forgetall 

Ch 3
Metcalf goes to Pansy's house.  She still lives there.  But her mind is empty. if she wants to remember something,  she has to ask her Alexa and it gives her spotty information  Barry shows up a d tells pansy to leave.  He pulls a gun and calls the kangaroo. Metcalf gets the jump on him by telling him Phoneblum is his dad.
He takes the gun and leaves. 

Ch 4 pg 238

Metcalf goes to dr Testafer's house.  
He grabs his memory and asks it a bunch of questions. He's got a new theory.  Celeste didnt step out on Maynard with phoneblum.  She was with phoneblum and he was abusive and dr Testafer helped her get away from him and then he set her up with Maynard. 
I guess this means phoneblum is the murderer.

Ch 5 pg 247
Metcalf decides to go to phoneblums and almost immediately realizes this was a huge mistake just hides and runs away.

Ch 6 pg 251
He calls Walter (chimpanzee,  formerr PI) cause he needs moral support.  They go to the organization headquarters. Turns out lady investigator is in charge now. He tells her the whole story.
Celeste was with phoneblum and had a baby.  She runs away to dr Testafer.
He didnt want her and Maynard to become a thing.  Instead of killing everyone, phoneblum sets up illegal business dealings with the doctors. Mostly blanketroling the lights out of the recently unfrozen to be sex slaves.
Penny is one of these and is hired to be Barry's nanny.  

Somehow Barry went babyhead instead of being a normal baby.  I dont really understand how that happened.  Babies cant go to the doctor by themselves to get a baby head procedure. One of the involved adults must have been involved.  But the way its described its like Barry did it himself.

So we have the much more recent fall out between Maynard and Celeste.  I dont know if we ever got details on that.  We were just sort of dumped into Metcalf telling Maynard he found nothing.

This is where it gets crazy.

Walter was hired to follow Celeste after Metcalf and witnessed her having an affair at the same hotel Maynard was found dead at.  Maynard tries to pay Walter to kill the boyfriend.
TWIST: Maynard is the boyfriend. But hes been a using forgetall and forgets that he's been trying to reconcile with Celeste and part of said was hooking up at this sleepy hotel.
Walter refuses and Maynard tells phoneblum to kill the boyfriend and phoneblum puts Joey on it.  Joey doesn't know who Maynard is, so when he sees Celeste leave the seedy hotel, he jumps in and tears Maynard to pieces.   Maynard effectively killed himself.
With Maynard gone and the illegal business basically done, phoneblum has Joey kill Celeste. 

Ch 7 pg 262
Metcalf goes to see phoneblum, intending to kill him.  But there's no light behind those eyes anymore.  Either the ravages of age or too much forgetall.  He has no idea who Metcalf is.  What's the point of revenge murder if the guy you're killing doesn't even understand. 

Joey, on the other hand, very much still has his wits about him.  Metcalf kills him and steals his car.

Ch 8 pg 270

Metcalf turns himself in.  He figures things suck now maybe they'll suck less in the future.  And if they don't,  cause more trouble and get frozen again.
In a tragic ending, he thinks he's gotten over the withdrawals and might just be clean, but someone offers him drugs he says are his own personal blend and Metcalf goes for it.  If there's a sequel, we can see how he shakes off that monkey.