0331: Doom: Repercussions of Evil and Mark II (2024)

Title: Doom: Repercussions of Evil
Author: Peter Chimarea
Media: Video Game
Topic: Doom
Genre: Sci-Fi/Parody
URL: Original
Critiqued by: Delta XIII

Greetings and salutations, everyone! Delta XIII here! I’ve finally decided to step up from just contributing to group riffs and do a guest riff of my own.

As the original story itself is incredibly short, clocking in at only 211 words, I’ve also made this a double-feature by including a later-released rewrite that aims to make it into an actual, coherent story.

As for my riffing format, when I originally wrote this, I was a fan of Cinema Sins, and although I’ve long since gone off that channel, I’ve decided to keep the format, since I feel it works well for me.

And since I know a number of you will probably notice: yes, I have covered this before back at the Library, but that was back in…

*checks notes*

…2018. Dear God, I’m feeling my age catching up to me.
Er, anyway, I figure it wouldn’t hurt to re-cover familiar territory for my return. Don’t worry, this won’t just be a copy-paste of the original riff; I may recycle a few jokes, but it won’t be all of them.

So, without further ado, let’s rip and tear into it, shall we?

EVERYTHING WRONG
WITH
Doom: Repercussions of Evil
(spoilers?)
(iddqd)

IMPORTANT NOTE: I DID NOT WRITE THE STORY THAT FOLLOWS THIS NOTICE! MUST READ THIS INTENTIONALLY BAD TROLLFIC FOR LULZ IF ENJOYMENT IS WISHED! THANK YOU.

Unfortunately, the original story got deleted, so I had to use a repost to get the text for this riff. Shame, but I suppose it can’t be helped (1)

Doom: Repercussions of Evil

John Stalvern waited.

For Godot? (2)

The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air.

Wait, so these malfunctioning lights are just floating in the air? Guess they must’ve been made by Bethesda. (3)

There were demons in the base.

Eh, not really a special occasion, given the universe that we’re in. (4)

He didn’t see them, but had expected them now for years.

Besides the fact that it’s the status quo for Doom, what specifically made John think that demons were gonna show up? (5)

His warnings to Cernel Joson were not listenend to and now it was too late.

“Joson”, one of the lesser-known offshoots of the Joestar family. (6)

Far too late for now, anyway.

I keep looking at this sentence in every possible way, and I still can’t figure it out. (7)

John was a space marine for fourteen years.

After that long without demons, you’d think John would’ve stopped expecting them. (8)

When he was young he watched the spaceships and he said to dad “I want to be on the ships daddy.”

Dad said “No! You will BE KILL BY DEMONS”

Ah, so that’s where John got his demon paranoia from. (9)

There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped.

Hold on, John stopped believing his dad’s warnings about demons, but for some reason he was still expecting them to show up? (10)

But now in the space station base of the UAC he knew there were demons.

So, we’re on a space station as opposed to Mars, Earth, or Hell? That’s certainly different. (11)

“This is Joson” the radio crackered. “You must fight the demons!”
So John gotted his palsma rifle and blew up the wall.

John: That wall will never hurt anyone again! (12)
Also, what the hell is “palsma”? Is it plasma you got from Wish? (13)

“HE GOING TO KILL US” said the demons

Since when did the demons talk? Keep in mind, this was written back in 2002, so nothing even close to that had been established yet. (14)

“I will shoot at him” said the cyberdemon

Cyberdemon Obvious. (15)

and he fired the rocket missiles.

*A DRD agent of the DRD fires and also shoots a rocket missile at Delta, which explodes while exploding and causes a huge explosion*
Good thing death is just a social construct invented by funeral companies to sell more coffins, or I might have been in trouble there.

John plasmaed at him

Hold on, what happened to the palsma he had before? Did he use it all up on the wall and have to switch? (16)

and tried to blew him up.

John tries the fascinating new technique of killing things in the past tense. (17)

But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.

Unfortunately, tense-manipulating murder isn’t great for structural integrity. (18)

“No! I must kill the demons”

The plot of every Doom game summed up in six words! (19)

he shouted The radio said “No, John. You are the demons”
And then John was a zombie.

And that, lumpies and germs, is how memes are made. (20)

Title: Doom: Repercussions of Evil Mark II
Author: Abby Zanella
Media: Video Game
Topic: Doom
Genre: Horror/Sci-Fi
URL: Mark II
Critiqued by: Delta XIII

Now, with the classic out of the way, let’s move on to:

EVERYTHING WRONG
WITH
Doom: Repercussions of Evil Mark II
(spoilers?)
(idkfa)

John Stalvern waited.

For the end to come? (1)

He was a space marine, one of Earth’s finest. He’d been trained to give his all in service of his planet, to put his life on the line if necessary. He knew a dozen ways to kill a man with his bare hands, and twice as many ways to do it with a weapon.

Insert Navy SEALS copypasta here. (2)

The concept of fear had been eradicated in him long ago by countless drills and exercises designed to burn away all that was weak and soft and human, leaving behind only a killing machine as sharp as a razor’s blade.

Exclusive footage of John’s training in action. (3)

The lights sparked fitfully once, twice, then went out, plunging the room into utter darkness.

Well. Almost eradicated.

All those drills and exercises, and yet they can’t eliminate a fear of the dark? I would’ve figured that’s the first thing they get rid of. (4)

He stifled the curses that struggled to leave his mouth; making too much noise in his situation would be like taping a neon sign on his back labeled Free Food.

Unbeknownst to John, one of the janitors actually did tape such a sign to his back.
It was me. I was the janitor. (5)

There were demons in the base – honest to God, motherf*cking demons – and from what little he’d garnered on his short-range radio before it went dead, they weren’t too friendly.

What, were you expecting them to be nice, cartoony demons that give out cake and presents and… I dunno, free cursed artifacts, or something? (6)

The half-eaten corpses he’d found littered through the hallways only served to reinforce that image.

Oh come on! I know they’re demons and all, but do they have to be such litterbugs?! I’d only just finished vacuuming! (7)

In a way, he supposed, he’d been expecting it for years. Not that there were going to be demons straight from Giger’s worst nightmares rampant in the base, of course, but he’d known something was up the moment they’d started setting up the teleporter.

John possesses the amazing superpower of Plot-Convenient Danger Sense. (8)

His gut had warned him to be wary of the project, and it was no coincidence that he’d filed a transfer request for a planetside job less than a day after they announced a working prototype.

Unfortunately, John’s PCDS is a bit slow on the uptake, so it only kicks in when it’s far too late to actually help. (9)

Sure, a security job on Earth would pay less than duty in the UAC, but dead people had no use for money.

And yet somehow, video game characters always seem to find money on corpses. (10)

He’d tried to warn his superior officers, but Colonel Joson had laughed off his misgivings and now the f*cker was probably dead too.

I mean, if you think about it, Joson’s just being reasonable; abandoning such a massive (and most likely prohibitively expensive) project just because of one goon’s gut feeling? Yeah, that’d never fly with the top brass. (11)

Joson was a hard man, strict and fair but entirely too entrenched in his ways to believe a single grunt’s superstitions.

Fic thinks it can absolve itself of the previous sin by making the same point that I did. Fic is wrong. (12)

In a way, John supposed, Joson reminded him of his father.

“Random male character reminds me of my father” cliché. (13)

At least, before the man had taken a stray slug to the face when John was five. He’d survived through some sort of miracle, but the slug had nicked his brain and Steven Stalvern had never been quite the same man since.

“Character motivation through parental tragedy” cliché. We’re getting into Ubisoft territory with this, people. Strap in. (14)

“I wanna be on the ships, daddy,” he’d said once, watching the gargantuan shuttles shriek through the air and escape the grasp of Earth’s gravity. He’d been six then, still too young to realize that his father wasn’t the man he’d grown up with for the first five years of his life. He remembered the sense of utter shock and fear he’d felt back then when his dad had whipped around, his eyes nearly bulging from his sockets. Fingers like claws had dug into his shoulders.

“No!” his father had shouted, his voice cracked with the beginnings of insanity. “You’ll be killed by the demons!”

“Bulgy-eyed crazy guy” cliché. (15)

Too frightened to do otherwise, John had believed him completely.

As he grew older and more experienced with the ways of the world, John had realized that his father was insane.

Apparently, it took years for John to figure out that maybe his bulgy-eyed, screaming rambler of a father was crazy. (16)

His adoration had changed swiftly to fear, then disgust before finally settling on a sort of embarrassment. He supposed his insane father was part of the reason he’d applied to the space marines at the tender age of fourteen; a part of his mind had hoped to leave his father behind on Earth along with the painful memories of his childhood.

Ah yes, clearly the best way to escape a crazy parent is to… become a child soldier. (17)

Now he was in his late twenties, and for some reason his father’s words came back unbidden.

He let a wry grin spread across his face. Crazy his old man might have been, but for once in his life he’d been right. There were demons in outer space.

“Crazy guy turns out to be right” cliché. (18)

John was abruptly jerked back to reality when his radio crackled loudly, the sound painfully loud in the silence. This time he did curse, quickly lowering the volume until only he could hear it. He’d thought his radio was dead, damn it!

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think jumpscares translate well into text. (19)

“-is Joson,” the radio said, the voice coming through it sounding oddly distorted, barely recognizable. It crackled unsteadily, and John could only make out bits of pieces of what it was saying. “You’ve got to-” Another bout of static. “Demons!”

“Unclear transmission” cliché. (20)

“I can’t hear you clearly, Joson,” John said as loudly as he thought he could manage, then frowned as he shook the radio. It was dead again.

“Communication device suddenly dies” cliché. Has anyone managed to fill out their cliché bingo card yet? (21)

After a moment he shrugged and put it out of his head; the radio had made too much noise and he had to move now unless he felt like being demon fodder sometime soon.

John decides to ignore a potentially important warning because of reasons. (22)

He didn’t have the time to ponder the mystery of a spontaneously dying radio, and Joson’s orders had been clear enough.

What? No they weren’t! You even said yourself that you didn’t hear Joson clearly. What if you misinterpreted the orders and ended up shooting civilians? (23)

It was time to strike back.

Unslinging the plasma rifle strapped across his back, he held it in front of him and started walking cautiously through the halls, wishing with all his might that he had a pair of night-vision goggles.

So much darkness! He must have ended up in Doom 3! (24)

It was too dark to see anything, and the way the base’s halls were built meant that sound conducted in strange ways.

The UAC apparently thinks that their bases need to have such confusing layouts that they become complete labyrinths. (25)

Something growled beside him.

Suddenly and from beside. (26)

Conscious thought took a back seat in his mind as he spun, raised the rifle and fired in one smooth movement, throwing himself to the side at the same time.

John decides to show off what he learned at the Max Payne School of Shoot-Dodging. (27)

John’s eyes widened as the burst of coruscating plasma lit up the dark hallway like the sun, and he realized he’d just fired at a wall.

Hold on, if that was a wall, then what the hell did John see moving beside him? (28)

The cell impacted and blew the barrier apart, exposing the room beyond.

Either the UAC skimped on construction materials and made the walls out of balsa wood and paper, or John’s “plasma rifle” is actually a BFG-9000. (29)

John nearly gagged at the stench of rot and fetid decay.

His mind fell into an odd sense of detached calm as he catalogued the number of demons that were now concentrating solely on him. There were at least a dozen of the generic footsoldier types, a few spider-like monstrosities, and something huge lurking in the dimly lit shadows behind them.

Knowing Doom, there’s probably a powerup or a new weapon in a room this heavily guarded. (30)

He looked out of the corner of his eye for his rifle, but it had been knocked away by the force of the explosion, coming to a rest in a corner five feet away.

One of the eyeless demons was the first to speak, its voice like the crunch of crushed glass. “Here to kill us, boy?” it asked, dark mirth evident in its words.

This version was released in 2008, so as far as I know, there still wouldn’t have been talking demons at this point. (31)

It would have said more, but the huge thing in the shadows moved forward and grasped its head in one colossal hand, pulverizing it before it could do more than utter a startled yelp.

That demon is a team killer. (32)

The demon was a strange amalgam of flesh and technology, with wires and blinking lights embedded throughout its gargantuan body. Even without what looked like a rocket launcher grafted to one arm, it would have presented an intimidating sight.

I’m gonna remove a sin here, because goddamn, that is a fantastic description for the Cyberdemon! (31)

When it spoke, its words were like a rockslide in progress. “No idle chatter. Die.”

Oh come on, the guy said one sentence, and it was a taunt! That hardly counts as “idle chatter”! (32)

It pointed the rocket launcher at John, fired, and as he dove to the side

John continues to utilize his Max Payne dodging skills. (33)

the marine only had time for a blurred recollection – when dodging explosives, move away from the wall – before the rocket screamed past him and slammed into the wall.

Having projectiles that can vocalize was certainly… a choice. I guess demons just like to be different. (34)

Then the plasma rifle was in his hands again and he fired blindly, scoring a line of white-hot plasma across the giant demon’s chest. It snarled in pain and swatted at him, just barely missing and instead burying its massive fist into the wall behind him. John raised his rifle for another shot

That’s why you should have remembered the old pro-tip, John! (35)

when an ominous groan sounded above him.

Already weakened by plasma fire and rocket explosions, the supporting walls collapsed entirely as the cyberdemon pulled its fist free, bringing the ceiling down in an avalanche of rubble and slabs of concrete. John was dimly aware of the demon’s enraged howl as it was buried by the falling ceiling.

…huh. I guess collapsing a building on it works, too. (36)

When the dust settled, John found himself somehow miraculously alive, though his lower body had been pinned by a piece of the wall he’d been standing in front of.

Ah, the wall got revenge on John for destroying that other one earlier. (37)

He’d fared far better than the demons, who were all dead, judging from the blackish, acidic blood leaking from under the rubble.

I’ve played a fair amount of Doom, and I’m pretty sure the demons bleed red. (38)

He struggled for a while before giving up; the rock was too heavy to move all at once, and if he tried to move too much he risked bringing the whole thing down on his head. He took a moment to look around, squinting through the dim light. His plasma rifle was busted beyond repair, the delicate energy cells that powered it had been smashed.

With the amount of damage being described here, I feel like those cells should have exploded. (39)

His radio had gone kaput for good, too; a large chunk of concrete falling squarely on it had seen to that.

“Inconveniently destroyed communication device” cliché. (40)

Then, impossibly, Joson’s voice came from the radio again.

“Broken communicator suddenly starts working” cliché. (41)

“Lying down on the job, John?” it asked, this time free of static. Now that he could hear it clearly, John thought to himself that it didn’t really sound that much like Joson at all. It sounded… older, somehow. No, older was the wrong word. Ancient. The jovial, familiar tone of its voice was too cheerful to be anything but fake, and there was something lurking deep inside it that was far, far worse than Colonel Earl Joson could ever be.

Sudden demonically possessed radio. (42)

“What are you?” he found himself asking, ignoring for the moment the impossibility of talking to a smashed radio. Somehow it didn’t surprise him at all when it replied.

“My name isn’t important, John.”

And suddenly, this has become a crossover with Hatred. (43)

Its voice was full of ancient malice and glee, and mixed with a deep, raw hunger that grated at his mind. “What matters is that you’re not killing any demons.

“The demons were really people” plot twist. (44)

They killed your father, you know. He knew they were out there and they killed him for it.”

I’d ask how the demons managed to find John’s father, but, I mean, they’re demons. It’d probably be weirder if they couldn’t. (45)

The shout tore itself from John’s throat unbidden. “No!” It didn’t enter his mind at all how that disembodied Voice would know about his dad. Suddenly he was six years old again, staring up at his insane father, seeing the stark terror in the older man’s eyes and loving him despite it. He wanted to reassure his dad. “I’m gonna kill all the demons!”

John’s burgeoning insanity makes him scream like a typical CoD player. (46)

“Oh?” Somehow John got the impression that the owner of that Voice was shaking its head sadly, mockingly. “No, John. You don’t understand.” It took a moment, letting him stew in the silence before slowly, lovingly, revealing the truth.

“You killed your father, John. You are the demon.”

Somewhere, a gopher turns dramatically. (47)

It was true, John realized. He’d killed his father without even laying a hand on him, running away to the stars. He’d left his dad alone with… them. He’d left and they’d come from the shadows, falling on his father and devouring him. He felt the pain of it tearing at his chest, the agony more real than imagined. Then he looked down and gasped; it wasn’t guilt that was making him hurt. His flesh was actually rotting away, whole patches of it sloughing off to reveal the bone underneath.

Then the darkness, accompanied by the sound of low laughter, crept up on his senses and claimed him.

I have no jokes to make for this part. This is actually pretty genuinely horrifying. Minus ten sins for effective imagery. (37)

Classic Sin Total: 20
Mark II Sin Total: 37
Full Sin Total: 57
Sentence: Being kill by demons

Well, that was fun! It’s pretty good to be back, honestly.

I don’t expect to become a full, frequent contributor, since I tend to get sidetracked fairly easily, but who knows? I may just come back for another guest riff at some point in the future.

Until then, though, see you later (probably in the comments section or a group riff).