This post will be divided into three portions, the first being about The DOOM Chronicles, the second being about where I’m at with fan fiction in general, and the third being an examination of my fan fic ideas.
Let’s talk DOOM.
It was on this day, July 3rd, six decades ago, way back in 2016, that I began writing what will (ideally) be my final incarnation of DOOM, and my final fan fiction in the DOOM fandom.
I found DOOM a really long time ago, back in the late ‘90s, on a friend’s computer. Specifically, it was DOOM II. I remember playing the first level and getting too close to an Imp and some real kind of horror sinking into me as I realized that the wretched sound I was hearing when it attacked was my character’s flesh ripping open. That left an impression. I played the game here and there until my fan fiction craze hit in 2004 and, of course, I took a stab at writing a story for DOOM II. It was Liberate Tutemae ex Inferis, Latin for Save Yourself From Hell, taken directly from Event Horizon. It was a simple story about a group of Marines who land just outside the main Starport that the first episode of DOOM II takes place in. Their goal is basic: get to the center of the Starport where an evac is occurring.
I have an extremely clear memory of laying on a couch in my friend’s basement with a spiral notebook in hand (I used to write everything down in those spiral notebooks because high school bored the shit out of me and I was always dreaming of fan fiction) and planning the characters and chapters of this story with a mechanical pencil.
I began posting the story August 22nd, 2004, and I finished October 8th. It was roughly 13,000 words long. Barely three or four chapters in modern DOOM length.
More DOOM ideas came and went. I wrote a Halo/DOOM crossover called Resurrection. I was going to write a few others, but they never got off the ground. And finally, after experiencing both the original games in their full glory, DOOM 3, Resurrection of Evil, the film (for better or for worse), and finally the four novels (again, for better or for worse), I began writing what would be the original incarnation of what we have now. It was just called Doom and I began posting it on August 10th, 2006, almost two years to the day after that first story. It featured Jack Ward basically as he is now, perhaps a little more religious (he carried a silver cross on a chain throughout the entire trilogy), and largely followed Episode One of what we have now. It took awhile, but I finally finished it up at roughly 70,000 words on March 5th, 2007.
For a long time, I intended to write a trilogy, but it was a rough time, and I kept getting drawn away by other things. There were a few failed attempts to write some DOOM 3 specific fan fictions, but finally, in late 2009, I rebooted my profile, posted a freshly edited DOOM, and began writing DOOM ][: Hell on Earth. I wrote it in a month and then launched right into Final DOOM and…that one didn’t go so well. I forced myself to finish both stories back to back and the work definitely suffered for it. But I finished it and then for awhile just didn’t touch Doom.
There were a few more attempts to get something going, but finally, in July 2016, presumably inspired by DOOM 2016, I got back on it and, well, here we are.
Six years later, uh…I’m obviously pretty burned out on DOOM right now. Which I feel guilty about. As I write this, I’m within sight of finishing Episode Three, or the portion of the novelization covering DOOM II. I definitely made it more complicated for myself by introducing multiple protagonists, but I also wanted to go all out for this one, because like I said, this is it: this is the last DOOM fan fiction I’m gonna do.
Obviously, I can’t be sure of that, (and at some point I intend to do another crossover of Halo/DOOM because of course I want to do that), but the more time goes on, the more sure I become. Although I actually really like the new DOOM games, and I intend to keep playing them, it’s clear they’re going in a direction, narratively, that I’m just not interested in reproducing or mimicking at all. And that’s sort of my thing. 90% of my motivation as a fan fiction author is: Wow this game is so cool to play! I want to translate that feeling into words and share it with other people! There are some exceptions, but this isn’t one of them. It’s controversial, but my favorite DOOM will always be DOOM 3 apparently. It’s just the one that spoke to me the most.
So what’s going to happen when I wrap Episode Three? Well, the first thing is that I’m going on hiatus for, at the very least, a year. And probably until early 2024. I need like a really long break from DOOM. But what about after that?
This next part has some SPOILERS, so, you know, beware.
I waffled for a bit, and some of you may remember I originally intended to have three protagonists for The DOOM Chronicles. The third one was a guy named Eric and he was supposed to represent the terrifying, nihilistic side of DOOM, a side that isn’t really captured in the games, but is entirely hinted at if you were to look at them through a realistic point of view. In some aspects, DOOM is really bleak and hopeless. I wanted a character that was mentally unstable and riding the razor’s edge between ‘I’m too pissed to die’ and ‘just kill me already and get it over with’. After Episode Two proved to be really difficult to write, I ultimately decided to cut the character. But now I’ve come back around to him after talking with a few others and getting some ideas.
When I do come back, it’ll be with a trilogy of shorter episodes focusing on Eric. Jack more represents the kickass action and Kyra more represents the more objective-focused narration. Eric will represent the darker, grittier, punching demons in the skull and tearing off limbs with your bare hands, drenched in gallons of blood aspect of DOOM. He will not be a happy character.
Once his arc is established, we’ll get back to Jack and Kyra and enter the final phase of the Chronicles, which will take a few more episodes. As it stands right now, I’m looking at a total of eleven Episodes (this includes Zero). All of them save for the last, Episode Ten, will focus on being shorter and more manageable. Hopefully. I’ve gotten really long-winded as time has gone on. I’ll be lucky if I can finish this series up before I’m 40.
Now, about the general state of things.
Uh, they’re not good.
At the beginning of the year, I was optimistic about starting a new original sci-fi/horror series and just to be honest right now: that’s off the table. At least for the near future.
As I mentioned in my January update, I’ve grown more pensive with sharing stuff related to my life. It’s probably due to my anxiety, which, for some reason, has gotten worse over the past several years. Some people have pointed out we’re suffering through an ongoing global pandemic, and they’re right, I’m sure it hasn’t helped, but my anxiety became a genuine problem starting a couple of years before then. I’ve always had anxiety, for as long as I can remember, but it was way more manageable before my 30s. I’m not sure what happened, it just…got worse. Like a lot worse. So did my depression.
My life is busy in the sense that the thing I do as a job takes up a lot of time. I don’t really want to talk about it because it’s…complicated. Yeah, let’s just say it’s complicated, but the thing I can say for sure is I’m really happy doing it and it’s related to writing. But it takes up a lot of my time. That, combined with my mental health issues, and other ordinary, regular, everyday life stuff means that there are just a lot of days where I run out of time and/or motivation, and something needs to go on the chopping block in terms of not getting done. It’s basically always fan fiction.
Part of it is burnout, too, and getting older…I think. I don’t know, it’s really hard to tell. That’s the biggest problem, I think. It’s really hard for me to give a shit about…anything some days. I am burned out on DOOM, I know that much, but it’s more than that. I sit down to write it when I have time and most of the time I just…don’t want to. Like I really don’t want to. And then sometimes I do want to, and I squeeze a chapter out.
This is becoming true for most of my fan fiction. I began and quit Iron Lung 2 in like a week. I actually began work on Bishop’s Lament sometime last year, and then put it away again. I took down Nerves of Steele after 2 and a half years of stalled production. And There Was Another and The Will To Live became absolutely hellish to finish.
Sometimes I think to myself, maybe I’m just sick of writing fan fiction? Maybe I should just step away, maybe forever. The thought scares me, so I turn away from it more often than not.
The most recent development in this particular line of thought is that it might not be true. Which may sound like denial, but let me explain.
I try to look at things as logically as I can. I’m the kind of person who can admit it when I fucked up, or change my mind when someone proves that I’m wrong. It doesn’t always work, obviously, and I have a lot of emotional problems thanks to my depression and anxiety, but I’m still capable of detached, largely unbiased perspective.
As this mindset of ‘maybe I’m just sick of writing fan fiction, maybe I’m done with it’ has settled in over the past year or so, and I truly began to grapple with this being a reality, something sort of hit me.
Every year or so, I sit down and look through my entire database of ideas. Sometimes I throw things out, or relegate them to the ‘maybe’ pile. This is normal. It has happened since the beginning. I had an idea I was really, really into, but time has passed, and now I just don’t care anymore, or the focal point of the idea ended up getting transplanted into a different story, and has now been satisfied.
The most recent time I did this, I found myself throwing out almost everything. I would think ‘I don’t really care about this anymore, guess it’s gone’. And when I suddenly realized I was doing it for seriously nearly everything, it hit me that I still care about a lot of these, it’s just that the caring is masked by intense depression. And this idea only strengthened as, over the next several months, I’d remember one of those ideas and be hit with motivation and the thought of ‘Actually, I really want to write that story, even now, years later’.
Now, this particular pattern has happened before, but not in this way, not with this intensity. So I don’t want to convince myself that I’m done with writing fan fiction when in reality I’m just depressed. I can (ideally) fix depression. There are still paths not yet walked. And fan fiction, honestly, is a really core part of who I am. I don’t want to give it up. Even when I struggle to write it, even when months go by without doing it, I still want to want to write fan fiction, if that makes sense. I want to care.
To put it in more specific terms, there are times, a lot of them, when I go to write fan fiction and just do not give a shit about it, but it isn’t the fan fiction I don’t give a shit about, it’s that I don’t give a shit about anything during these times. Whatever else it is I settle on doing (sometimes I’ll do nothing, just sit there and do literally nothing, suffering in silence, waiting for the depression to pass and feeling locked in), it’s not really that I wanted to do it more, it’s just that it took less effort.
In 2013, I walked away from fan fiction because I thought I was well and truly burned out on it. And at the time, I was. I also needed to start my career in writing that could pay my bills. I’ve done that now. I know I still want to write fan fiction, and I know I can get better, emotionally speaking, because I have before, and I know it’s possible to both write professionally and write fan fiction for fun. So I still want to pursue that.
The problem is, I don’t know how long this depression is going to affect me.
And there are other problems, too. I can no longer just write a simple story. When I sit down to write a project, it goes from being perhaps a novel to a massive, 150,000 word novel that is now the beginning of an epic series. I began writing And There Was Another on a whim. It turned into 150,000+ words and 15 months of work, and the beginning of a trilogy that I still intend to write.
And the truth of the matter is that I like it this way. I like writing huge, epic sagas. But I also hate it, because it takes forever. On the one hand, I’ve suffered through a lot to get The DOOM Chronicles to where it is today. And I know that to finish it, I’ll definitely have to suffer more, for years into the future. On the other hand, it’s about 400,000 words of content that clearly people like and have enjoyed reading. As far as I know, it’s the longest DOOM fan fiction ever written. And I’ve definitely had good times writing portions of it. Some of it’s a slog but some of it isn’t, but that’s true of just about every project. There comes a point where I get sick of it no matter how mentally sound I am because that’s just human nature.
So basically yeah, that’s a big thing holding me back from starting up new projects. I know that even the relatively simple ones will likely be over 100,000 words and take a lot of time and it’ll get at least some readers and they’ll be disappointed when I inevitably put it on hiatus or maybe even give up on it. I really don’t want to become that fan fiction writer who cancels project after project.
Where does this actually leave us though, as writer and reader? In essence: I’m not completely sure. For the moment, my only goal now, fan fiction-wise, is to wrap up Episode Three of The DOOM Chronicles. We’re about seven chapters out from the end. After that?
I plan on letting some time pass, maybe a few days, maybe a week or two, essentially just letting the dust settle. I would say that potentially, the likeliest thing that’s going to happen is I may just step back and take the rest of the year off and away from fan fiction. It’s not sure, but it’s definitely possible.
The other option is starting another fan fiction. Obviously, it’d be a new project, given I don’t have anything else in progress.
With that being said, let’s take a look at my actual fan fiction ideas that are still around.
This final portion will be divided up into two parts. The first part is stuff I’m still doing for sure, the second is stuff I may do.
I went on a bit of a tangent last week and suddenly decided: you know what? I want to know how many words I’ve written. I spent six straight hours looking through old documents, ancient files, and online resources trying to cobble this information together and it was quite the fucking nostalgia trip. I looked through everything I had ever written, or started writing, and also things I had just planned, or had the barest idea of. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this, but this is definitely the most in-depth look and analysis I’ve done.
Fun Fact: Since 2003, I’ve written approximately 4.4M words of fan fiction. Yes, million. Which, given that was almost twenty years ago now, isn’t that impressive. That’s roughly 225,000 words per year. Although it gets a bit better if you chop out 2003, since I only wrote about 20,000 words that year, and also chop out 2014, the year I basically didn’t do any fan fic. Though that’s still only around a quarter million words per year. And most of it isn’t even available anymore.
But anyway, let’s have a look.
First, here’s the stuff I’m going to do FOR SURE.
The DOOM Chronicles: Like I said, I’ve sunk 6 years and 400,000 words into this motherfucker. I don’t care how long it takes, I’m finishing it.
My Half-Life Series: It might be hard to believe, but I still actually really care about this series. I’ve got the next three books planned out pretty solidly, and a rough idea of what I want to happen up through the end. Much like DOOM, I want to write one definitive series for Half-Life and then be done with it forever.
And There Was Another/KOTOR III: I’m for sure doing this. I might compromise on the pair of And There Was Another stories, maybe pare it down to just one, or two shorter ones, but I am for damn sure doing KOTOR III. I’ve got way, way, way too many ideas not to.
Halo: Oh boy. Yeah, I shit the bed on this one. Never should’ve started Nerves of Steele. But taking it down made me realize that I now have an opportunity: a reworking. Back in 2013, I began envisioning an epic Halo series following my three old school protagonists: Alex Steele, Owen Frost, and John Miller (To Be A Marine, most of you probably don’t remember that). I had a whole awesome narrative worked out, with huge crossovers with other games. By the time I finally got around to Nerves of Steele, though, I settled for having mainly just Alex Steele, and then the protagonists from Gathering Darkness & The Will To Live being part of this shared universe. Now I’m wondering if maybe I should go back to that original idea? Because I really like it. Regardless, I’m doing this. The problem is, this will be, by far, the most massive undertaking I’ve ever attempted, and will take a really, really, really long time to actually finish. Because of this, I’m hesitating on starting it up again, especially after fucking up my last attempt. So for now, I’m just sticking it in the background.
And those are the ones that I’m 100% positive about. Yeah, quite the whittled down list compared to what I used to talk about. So what’s left? What are the maybes?
I did kind of a ‘does this spark joy?’ examination of every idea I’ve ever had, planned, attempted, or finished, and then every game I’ve ever played and remembered, and from that, I made a list ideas that I still give a shit about. Here’s a look at that list.
An Untitled Halo Horror Fan Fiction: As I mentioned on my Facebook earlier, I was shot in the brain with this kickass Halo horror fan fic idea a few weeks ago and I’ve been wanting to write it ever since. Might just say fuck it and do this.
Rock Raiders: Back in 2017, I began planning an epic retelling of Lego Rock Raiders, because I loved this game. I still do, and I still plan on giving this one a shot.
Red Faction: So I still really, really want to do a rewrite of Hunter’s War, my Red Faction 1 fan fiction that was the story of a miner just trying to survive the chaos. I even began working on it several years back and I loved what I had, I just didn’t have the time to keep going. I’m almost certainly going to do this one. It has a good, definitive end. I get sparks of wanting to do something for Red Faction 3 & 4, but I’m not sure there’s enough there to sustain the fire of a whole story.
StarFox: THIS FUCKING GAME. If you really know me or have followed my fan fic history at all, you know that StarFox left a deep, deep scar on my psyche. I’ve written so many stories for StarFox that I’ve then abandoned. The ironic thing is I don’t actually care that much about the characters or the series, but for some reason I really want to write something set around StarFox 64. I recently came up with an idea for a dark, emotional action-horror story following, of all people, Wolf O’Donnell, and I may yet do it. And I have a secret project that I’m still unwilling to discuss, but enough time has passed that I wonder if I should even try it. If, instead, I should just put all my ideas, all my wants for a StarFox narrative, into this one Wolf story. Sometimes I feel positive I’ll do it, I even began writing it earlier this year and I really like what I wrote, but then I stopped, wondering if it was a mistake. I just don’t know.
Quake 4: I’ve got an idea that’s over a decade old, like 2006 old. Basically it’s: Quake 4 but in the snow. Yeah, I know, super original. Lately I’ve been wondering if it’ll just end up kind of like The Will To Live but Quake 4 flavored, and that made me hesitate. Would people want that? I don’t know, but even to this day I look at that idea and think ‘fuck yes I want to write this’. I also feel like Quake 4 gets no love, and there should be at least one serious fan fiction dedicated to it, for all the fans of, specifically, Quake 4. So I’m almost surely gonna do this.
Wolfenstein 2009: In much the same manner as Quake 4 and DOOM 3, I love Wolfenstein 2009 the most. Yeah, I guess I just love the least popular games of a franchise the most for some reason. (Infinite Warfare is my favorite Call of Duty, lol). This one is less certain, but I replay Wolf2009 every year or so, and think to myself, “Man, I really want to write something set in or after this game.” I even made a kickass cover for it and began thinking of ideas and how it’d work. So who knows? I think it needs love, too.
Far Cry - Primal: I fucking love this game. Seriously, why the hell aren’t there other games where you play a caveman? I go back and forth on this one. I’ve got an idea for a story, nothing special, just capturing the feel of the game following another Wenja trying to survive and ultimately joining Takkar’s tribe and helping throughout the campaign.
Terminator: Yeah, the idea of a story set in the Future War seriously appeals to me. Especially after playing Terminator - Resistance. Got an idea and it probably will be a one off…probably. Maybe. It might be. Could be a trilogy, though? This is one of those: On a long enough timeline, I will write a terminator fan fiction kind of situations.
Area 51: The idea of writing a loose adaptation of the Area 51 games (the arcades and the original Xbox game, NOT Blacksite, damn that game sucked so hard), still appeals to me.
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: I know, what?! But I started writing a story back in 2006 of a darker, grittier narrative set in that universe, and it still kinda appeals to me.
TES - Oblivion: I dabbled in Oblivion fan fiction a lot in the late 2000s. I though the universe had totally died for me, but playing through Oblivion again this year and looking back over my old fan fics…you know, maybe not. It appeals again.
StarCraft: I also dabbled in StarCraft fan fiction, my most massive dabbling being an utterly huge crossover of Halo and StarCraft written back in 2005. But for some reason, the idea of writing a survival/romance about some Marines trying to make it through the original campaigns, fighting Zerg and Protoss and other asshole humans, it endures. Somehow, this idea endures in its appeal. I still really love it.
The Long Dark: This is something I go back and forth on. The idea of doing a character-driven survival narrative set in the sandbox is really appealing. I even thought up a protagonist and some ideas. I also really want to do a horror-themed story. But…I don’t know. I’m less sure about this one.
AVP: Yeah, I still get a spark when I think about Aliens vs. Predator. Just Marines surviving, fighting for their lives on some godforsaken planet, fighting Xenos and Predators…sounds cool.
Majesty: Ha ha, has anyone here even heard of that game? I used to play the SHIT out of it, and way back in 2004 I had an epic trilogy planned. But it never even got to the planning stages. I still think about it though.
The Suffering: I was originally planning on novelizing both games, and adapting a third to finish out a trilogy. Now I’m less sure. But I still think those games are kickass. Maybe when my ideas boil down a lot more and there’s less left on the table I’ll give it another shot.
F.E.A.R.: Like The Suffering, I was once planning on novelizing the first game and the two DLC expansions, and then finishing it out my own way, but my ‘give a shit’ about F.E.A.R. has diminished so much over time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a classic, its appeal though has dimmed. That being said, I began writing a crossover of F.E.A.R. and Cold Fear a long time ago and that idea still managed to get one hook into my brain when I glanced over it again. So maybe.
Mario: Oh man. In 2007 I began working on an insane gritty retelling of Super Mario 64. Basically, imagine Super Mario 64, but if it were thrown into a blender with Sin City and Chuck Palahnuik (the guy that wrote Fight Club). I still like this idea, but I dunno. Might be too ‘teen edgy’ for me nowadays to truly pull off or even want to pull off.
Dead Space: I had huge, epic plans for Dead Space fan fiction. It’s one of my favorite games of all time. But now I’m a lot less sure. It’d be a huge undertaking, and I only have so many huge undertakings in me.
The Callisto Protocol: I wrote one theoretical fan fiction for it, and now the game has an actual release date. I thought for sure I’d love it, but…I don’t know. I’m less sure now. No idea why. I still intend to play it, but maybe I’ll just play it and leave it at that.
Iron Lung: I started writing that sequel to Iron Lung, and then really fast I hit the ‘I’m having trouble caring about this anymore’ wall, which I feel really bad about. This is why I try not to jump into things. Maybe it’ll come back, though. Sorry if you were reading this, I genuinely feel bad and might finish it out of guilt someday.
The Thing: As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve felt the urge to take another crack at my The Thing series idea. It’d basically be a reboot. But, once more, huge undertaking, only so many of those left for me.
State of Decay: Basically the exact same as The Thing. I’m still playing SoD2 and am looking forward to the third game, and it makes me want to write a sweeping series for it, but it would be huge and I don’t know if I could manage the interest for that long. Zombies are cool but…they’re not that cool.
MineCraft: I know, what? But back in 2009, I secretly began writing a fan fiction and never really told anyone about it. I had actually totally forgotten about it until I looked back through my documents again last week. The idea still appeals. But I don’t know, MineCraft is so massive and complex nowadays, and the story didn’t really have an ending in sight, just more exploration and building. Really unsure about this one.
Gears of War: For a long time I was kind of sure I was going to write something in this universe, now I’m almost sure I’m not. I finally played the new Gears games and although 4 felt like a massive dud, 5 blew me away. It was amazing. I hope 6 will, too. But I don’t know, I think I’m just tired of Gears, writing-wise.
Turok 2008: The last on the list. This one is probably a huge head-scratcher, right? Because I’ve never mentioned it before. But every now and then I think about that game. There I go again, liking the oddball in the series. I actually played Turok back in the day, like a lot, and I played and beat Turok 2008 and although I thought it was not a good game, I liked the setting and the general atmosphere. Mercenaries vs dinosaurs in space. I mean come on, that’s kickass. I began working on a fan fic for it, but it never got anywhere. I still think about it sometimes, though. What I imagine will happen, though, is that I’ll fire up the game again and start playing through it and just quit, realizing it’s a shit idea. But maybe not? Maybe I’ll think “You know what? It’s got some flaws, but I still like it! Let’s do a fan fic.” It seems unlikely though.
And that’s it. That’s all my ideas that are left that I give even something of a shit about. Unless I’ve forgotten something, which is entirely possible. Lifelong depression and anxiety causes memory problems.
Out of all these, which one might I select next? Nothing is for sure, but here’s my answer.
If I’m feeling particularly responsible, I’ll finally write the next Half Life story, Bishop’s Lament. But I haven’t been feeling very responsible for awhile now.
If I’m feeling less responsible, I’ll likely get going on that Halo horror story. Or I may take a real stab at my depressing StarFox story. The Quake 4 story has also been speaking to me strongly lately. And finally, maybe that StarCraft story. I don’t know why, but it reached out and grabbed me hard when I recalled it. Like, I’ve got StarCraft on the brain. It just keeps interrupting my day. I think of my Marine protagonist, fighting desperately for his life on the baked-earth plains of Mar Sara, barely escaping as the Protoss burn the planet, then investigating a derelict space station, all while falling in love with a fellow Marine, or maybe a crazed Firebat? Or shit, maybe a Ghost? Point is: I would choose one of these stories.
If I’m feeling absolutely reckless, maybe I’ll fire up like all of these one after the other, bouncing back and forth between them as it pleases me.
Right now, I’ve got no idea.
The last thing I’ll say is this: If you’re reading this, then thanks. A lot. From the bottom of my heart, my readers mean a lot to me. It’s why I keep going with this fan fiction thing. I want to write cool things that make people happy to read. I’ve wanted that since I was 15 years old, writing on a brand new Dell desktop in my mom’s kitchen, and I still want to do it as a 34 year old married professional author with my own house and stomach problems.
All of my fan fics are dedicated to you, the readers.
-Obsidian