Brevity- Doom: Repercussions of Evil by Peter Chimaera

Hello, and welcome back to Fanfic Masochism.

They say brevity is the soul of wit, but that doesn’t exactly hold true when it comes to fanfiction. While there are times where keeping things short and simple is a good thing, there are times were just a teensy bit more description would be better. Look back to my review of Legend of Skye Dumbass; if AvatarAvani just fleshed out a few things, then the story would have been a bit more enjoyable (as it turns out, the story is actually getting revised as we speak… I’ll check back up on that in a few months). Or even more recently, shadow alchemist4532’s trainwreck of a Star Wars fic would have been more palatable if there was less fighting and more character development… and proper formatting, but that’s neither here nor there.

So, with that being said, I just want to point out that today’s topic is probably one of the shortest stories I’ve ever read, and its lack of detail is something to behold. Really, the whole thing is 212 words long, not including the title. What fic am I talking about here?

Doom: Repercussions of Evil by Peter Chimaera.

Now, Peter Chimaera and squirrelking have a lot of things in common; both are writers of video game fanfics (among other things in Peter’s case) who tend to focus on characters named John who are total Gary Stus. Said Gary Stus proceed to kill a lot of enemies and generally act “Badass”.

They’re also both trolls, but I’m reviewing this fic not only to point out how much it sucks, but also to bring up the point that they could have easily been written by a first time writer, and that there are a few mistakes that could have been avoided.

So, without further ado, here’s my review of Doom: Repercussions of Evil. Spoilers ahead.

John Stalvern waited. The lights aboved him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were demons in the base. He didn’t see them, but he had expected them now for years.

John Stalvern is apparently the name of Doomguy… I think I liked him better when he was just Doomguy. Also, I would like a little more description as to where they are. Anyone who’s played the DOOM games knows it takes place on Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, but what about those readers who haven’t? Spend a little more time setting the scene, so then people don’t get lost in what’s going on.

We then get John’s backstory. He’s been a space marine for close to forteen years, and when he was little he used to watch the ships… watch the ships doing what? Going into space? Coming back from space? Landing? WHAT ARE THE SPACESHIPS DOING?

He said to dad “I want to be on the ships daddy.”

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

Inconsistent CAPITALIZATIONS are never GOOD for EMPHASIZING things, and make DIALOGUE seem CLUNKY.

I call this Frank Miller Syndrome:

Exibit A: Crazy Steve

But John doesn’t believe his dad’s tales of demons, until forteen years later when he knows that the base is being attacked by demons.

…

I’m no psychologist, but I’m certain that a person wouldn’t just drop their beliefs of forteen years based solely on one encounter… I now realize how similar this fic is to “Harry Potter turns to the Lord”.

Guh.

“This is Joson,” the radio crackered. “You must fight the demons!”

So John gotted his plasma rifle and blew up the wall.

Yes! We must fight the bad guys! Let’s blow up our base while we’re at it!

Also, spell check is your friend.

“HE GOING TO KILL US” said the demons “I will shoot at him” said the cyberdemon and he fired the rocket missiles.

CYBERDEMON?!

My thoughts exactly.

John tries to shoot the cyberdemon, but the ceiling collapses and traps everyone under piles of rubble… Why did the ceiling collapse? Is it because John’s such a lousy shot that he completely missed the giant monster trying to kill him? Was there structural damage from earlier?

Which is what I can say for this entire thing; there’s pretty much nothing here. We have a hero, a villain, a fight scene, and that’s about it. There’s no plot (not that DOOM had much of a plot to begin with), no emotions, and not much in the way of atmosphere or suspense. When writing a story, be sure to flesh out the details and expand upon things like emotions and setting, so your reader gets a good view of what you want to say.

“No! I must kill the demons” he shouted The radio said “No, John. You are the demons.”

And then John was a zombie.

… That’s it? That’s how you’re finishing this story? The hero gets pinned by some rubble, and all of the sudden he’s the bad guy… bad guys? But… where’s the rest of it? Where’s the plot? The emotional drama? An explanation as to why John is not the demons (and a zombie)?

WHERE IS EVERYTHING?!

This story is bad. For one, it makes no sense, and there are plenty of opportunities where… anything could be developed, but we don’t get that. Granted, it was done on purpose, but if it wasn’t I’d still have the same reaction. First time writers, take note: expand upon your thoughts and ideas, and they will form a good narrative. Just throwing everything out like this… well, I’m still left with a lot of questions that need to be answered.

I consider this to be very similar to Half-Life: Full Life Consequences in terms of bad. It sucks, but it’s an enjoyable kind of suck. And you can make nice dramatic readings out of it:

And it could have been a lot worse. It could have been My Inner Life.

(Note: I would have reviewed a longer fic this week, but I had to deal with a couple of back to back papers for college and I didn’t want to get distracted. I promise something longer for next week)