oh god, he's asking a question!!!

i know this has been discussed a million times, but i'm too lazy to check to see. mebbe it hasn't been discussed a million times. i don't give a damn. if you want to remove this thread or put it in post hell, go ahead. i'm not trying to piss anyone off. although i can be an insensitive bastard. i'm gonna get bfg'd twice for this.

why doesn't anyone like the doom novels. i thought they were pretty good (although a female on the frontlines? no way). flynn is an okay name, i don't really care what his name is, because everytime i think of doomguy, i think of me. you know, _first person_ shooter? so what's the deal? everytime i hear someone mention anything from the novel everyone's all over him like a pack of imps on a marine. just curious. you can bfg me if you want for asking seeing as i know you want to. just be happy this isn't in third person.

I'M A TROLL!!!

that better? shit, ask a question and somebody comments on your damn signiture. well, at least it was noticed.

I'm sure conducting a forum search on the string "doom novels" would uproot several colorful discussions in which you could discern the reason why the books are the object of extreme dislike for many people.

I loved the first novel. My favorite book ever. I didn't see anythign wrong with it. The second book was a bit more boring, and the 3rd one seemed to leave the idea of Doom behind.

The fourth one I never got to finish, as the book fell apart on me. All I remember was Flynn and Arlene running around on some sandy planet, talking through some sort of throat communicators, running after the "Newbie" (lol), and talking about rail guns.

But, I loved the first one. One of the few (I think there's three of them, but this is the only one I finished) novels I ever read for fun.

People don't like the novels because it's "pulp fiction." They just don't feel like they match the game. It seems that they barely make sense in the context of the game.

The books, in and of themselves, are okay for cheap novels. They'd be alright if the Doom name weren't associated with them; it's a totally different story in a totally different context.

IMJack said:

...They just don't feel like they match the game. It seems that they barely make sense in the context of the game.

Strange...I could easily follow his steps through the levels in the first novel...

I love the first 2 novels. The last 2, blech.

I started scanning the novels into text format, but only got about 100 pages into the first book before I found out it'd take forever to go through all 4. Maybe if I'm bored for a few days.

elbryan42 said:

I love the first 2 novels. The last 2, blech.

I started scanning the novels into text format, but only got about 100 pages into the first book before I found out it'd take forever to go through all 4. Maybe if I'm bored for a few days.

great... I'd like to read them, at the least the first one... :)

The first 3 levels of the novel (E1M1-E1M3) are available on in-span.net, and have been there for some 8 years now. What I'd like to know is, how do the novels compare to the first 3 levels? Do you imagine walking through the levels as they really are, as in the first three chapters? I really seemed to enjoy reading them about 7 years ago.

Hah, just wait until BBG sees this. I might answer the question later, but I don't feel like doing that now.

OOOOOOH A DOOM NOVELS POST! Lets see....the novels are gay for many reasons, some which I will now list here.

Flynn Taggart - gay fucking name, I hate the name, everyone that has this name must die, the person(s) that thought up this name should get cancer and if you know anyone with this name, point at them and throw very sharp stones at them.

Arlene Sanders - ok, wtf, there's a Doom chick now? Whatever. The book describes her as muscular yet sexy, but you know what? She's a fucking nerd too. She sucks.

Jill Lovelace - a 14 year old computer hacker that is described also as "sexy". Ok, now the Doomguy is a fucking pedophile too? God...

Albert Gallatin - a fucking Mormon sniper that lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. He's a fat fuck and I hate him.

Salt Lake City - yeah, right, the Mormons really have super underground tunnels and shit under the fucking town. Fuck you die.

Sears and Roebuck - wtf, aliens are friends. Let's see here. They cannot be not paired, they cannot see individuals (they'll see a phantom clone of another you if they're looking at you or some shit). They speak retard English and they're fucking pussies.

The "Freds" - yeah, ok, so the "demons" are really aliens called "Freds". The authors of the novels must have been doing more drugs than Orion when they thought that up.

The "Newbies" - a "hive" culture (each individual is actually connected mentally or something) that evolves really fast and shit. They eventually infect future humans. Wtf kind of bullshit name is that?

Future Humans - fucking weirdos. They don't believe in other people, so basically if they see another person get shot they're like "whatever" and go on with their own lives. They're also afraid of death so much that even a little prick on their skin scares the shit out of them. They're fucking pussies.

In the first novel there is a fucking talking Imp. Yeah right, fuck you.

In the second novel an Imp is smart enough to be carrying a satchel charge. BULLSHIT.

Names of demons :

Imps - spineys
Demons - pinkeys
Spectres - ghosts
Lost Souls - flying skulls
Cacodemons - pumpkins
Baron of Hell - Hell Prince
Hell Knight - Hell Prince
Mancubus - fatty
Archvile - fireeater
Chaingunners - Clydes (fucking die)
Cyberdemon - Steam Demon
Spiderdemon - Spidermind
Zombies - Zombies
Revenant - Boney (oh and they supposedly wear boxer shorts too)
Arachnatrons - Spider Baby
Pain Elemental - Superpumpkins

In the second novel the pressure dome on Deimos is cracked so they are losing oxygen. They get this genius idea of BUILDING A FUCKING ROCKET SHIP TO TAKE THEM TO EARTH. Eventually, they start going slightly nuts but yeah, they do it and crash AND SURVIVE near Salt Lake City. Whatever, yeah right, eat my ballhairs.

Yeah, the forth novel, ok, Arlene is crying because Albert is still on Earth. Why does this matter? Well, her and Fly (Flynn's equally gay nickname) are traveling the speed of light, so 2 weeks in their time is like 5 decades or whatever. Then they get trapped by the "Newbies" and get put into a computer simulation where Flynn "converts" the demons to follow him. Fucking stupid shit. Then they capture a "Newbie" soul and shit and they are stuck in the simulation, which is good because it is based on their memory which is lame as well.

In any respect, the Doom Novels are fucking ultra gay. I have read all 4 novels and am pissed that I wasted the money on them. THEY FUCKING SUCK DIE IF YOU LIKE THEM.

BigBadGangsta said:

BBG'S POST

Hahahahhaha, Oh god, I cant help but die laughing everytime I see this. Ahahahahahhaha, priceless.

Luckily I haven't read them, and luckily I haven't thought of it, seeing the strong hate against them, and not to mention I dunn like readin, with the exception of a few I have read.

Ok, I just read This excerpt from the book which is the second excerpt I've read (I read another one about two years ago).

Anyway, judging from this excerpt and gayass names aside, this part is ok written in some areas (the author is quite descriptive about Flynn's attitude towards being a marine), but in other areas it's damn childish.

Anyway, if this excerpt is the first chapter then the story picks up way too fast. We briefly hear how he beat up his superior (in flashback descriptions), but nothing descriping this event in detail - something I consider a must - maybe we hear about that later in the novel, I dunno. Then there's this stupid thing about Flynn being guarded by two numbnuts who do nothing but ask each other the same question ("What do you think has happened?") over and over again until our cheesy ass hero brings forth his theory about the UAC having trespassed the alien territory by building their bases around the "gateways" which lo and behold turns out to be the right theory (judging by what else I've heard about the novel)! Lame and much too predictive even considering that you never played Doom!

And then there's stuff that I hear about the Novels.

As a hardcore Doom zealot I can in no way accept the following ideas put into a novel based directly off of the game that I love:

Humans arrive on Mars to discover that some odd artefacts not built by humans are there. These artefacts are named "gateways" - it is not properly explained why, so basically this makes no sense at all. Plus this is a damn cheap solution to just have some alien artefacts there that one day open a door to the alien's home world - lame! The game strongly suggests that the humans built the gateways, put forth by this one part in the Doom backstory:

"The military, UAC's biggest supplier, has used the remote facilities on Phobos and Deimos to conduct various secret projects including research on interdimensional space travel"

Which is also the most interesting part because it tells a tale about how the catastrophe is started by humans and many good story ideas can be derived from this.

Furthermore, these artefacts spring to life and evil aliens come through the gate - talk about butchering the Doom franchise! Aliens, pah! Wtf happened to all the hellish and occult elements in the game??? The absolute most important aspects of Doom are kept out of this wretched book series!

Then there are the names of the demons which are downright cheesy and if BBG is right about the revenants wearing boxer shorts then It just shows HOW fucking lame and silly these books are.

The novels pretty much give me the impression of being done by two guys who are so dead afraid of demons and the notion of Hell, that they did everything they could to avoid using it, completely ignoring that id made the game with Hell and demons in mind (why else would they call the monsters 'demons'!?). I have the opinion that if you don't like demons in the Doom universe you should never ever do a novel or a movie based on the games because then you're too far off.

ahh, good old copy and paste job from bbg.

gatewatcher said:

IF I TROLL ONE MORE FUCKING TIME, I WILL BE BANNED

Heh heh, better watch yourself GW :)

yes, i can see all of your complaints. i didn't really give a shit about the name, lots of people have gay names (my name is johnathan richard w*****, how gay is that?) but the fact that they had a female marine was stupid. i'm mormon btw so don't fuck with me on that issue. i didn't read the second book but nonetheless don't start snappin' at the religion. i also don't see how they have the balls to compare it to robert a heinlein's excellent novel starship troopers. but yes, i see everyone's hate now. and i agree with a lot i guess.

bastards called the mancubi 'fatties' >:(

I liked the first two books, the first being closest to the origional and the second being... a book that I finished reading. :) And I read very few books. Takes books like LoTR, the Xanth series, and some weird stuff like a guy taking over the body of an alien animal (don't ask) and somehow saving people, or something. A very memorable book. :D

I was gonna list reasons why I liked the first two, but considering the crowd, it wouldn't matter anyway. :)

given all the times bbg has copy-pasted his little critique of the doom novels, why hasn't anybody taken five minutes to point out that it sucks?

you don't for a second take into consideration any of the things that make a good book; plot/character development, choice of words and writing technique, concept/originality, among other things. instead you choose to, for one, make fun of unusual or silly characters and their names. being... yourself, you should know that far more laughable concepts then an alien race named 'the newbies' have been expressed in movies, literature, art and music and been taken seriously. quite frankly if i was a marine stuck in FLYNN TAGGART'S situation i'd call teh damn cacodemons something like pumpkins too; the doom book crew doesn't need to worry about naming the damned demons something scientific or catchy, they just need something to fucking call them by so that they can call them out to each other. hey, Jill Loveload! watch out for the CLYDE that's about to put a bullet through your skull! and, there is nothing wrong with the name Flynn Taggart. it had to be said, and i said it. the only reason anyone is ever pissed when they see it in some new member's fanfiction is because it isn't stamped all over the story in the doom instruction manual as the 'official' name.

i agree with you that some of the names are ridiculous. pairtuclarly the 'freds' and the 'newbies', but silly names do not negate any potential redeeming qualities of a book.

and why do you point out inconsistencies between the game and novels as a reason not to read them? earth to bbg: doom the game has virtually no plot. there's a paragraph of backstory id threw together and the closest thing to plot progression that exists is the trap at the end of knee deep in the dead. you can't write a book, at least not a good one based entirely on the doom storyline. do YOU want to read a hundred or more pages detailing the adventures of a nameless man in green tights as he runs at 60mph through miles of corridors and shoots the same demons over and over and over? if you do you're really unfit to critique a piece of literature.

and if you think they could've done a better job changing it for a book, fucking say so! and explain why!

even when you do actually attempt to cover something important, you don't take the time to explain your reasoning, or to communicate to anybody just why in the fuck a certain character or plot item should 'eat your ballhairs'...

...but it's alright, because i know you never wrote the damn thing as a serious criticism in the first place. a page of cheap sarcasm makes you look cool... at least be funny next time. and the fact that you made doom anomaly laugh doesn't matter, everyone knows he's a fucking crack baby or something.

and i haven't read the doom novels.

Liam the Bard said:

and why do you point out inconsistencies between the game and novels as a reason not to read them? earth to bbg: doom the game has virtually no plot. there's a paragraph of backstory id threw together and the closest thing to plot progression that exists is the trap at the end of knee deep in the dead. you can't write a book, at least not a good one based entirely on the doom storyline. do YOU want to read a hundred or more pages detailing the adventures of a nameless man in green tights as he runs at 60mph through miles of corridors and shoots the same demons over and over and over? if you do you're really unfit to critique a piece of literature.

and if you think they could've done a better job changing it for a book, fucking say so! and explain why!

even when you do actually attempt to cover something important, you don't take the time to explain your reasoning, or to communicate to anybody just why in the fuck a certain character or plot item should 'eat your ballhairs'...

You're sounding downright stupid now, you know that?

Firstly, BBG and I are not exclusively criticizing the novels on the basis that they're inconsistent with the story line in Doom, we're bashing the novels because of the DIRECTION the novel authors chose to deviate from the game. I've read a couple of kickass fan fics that did deviate a lot from the game's story line - I didn't bash 'em for that (maybe I mentioned that, "heh, this thing doesn't quite follow the Doom storyline but what the heck...").

I thought you had read stories in the fan fic forum and if that was the case, you'd know full well that a lot of us doomers are quite capable of writing decent stories over the Doom universe, most of which can kick the Doom novels all the way to Jupiter.

And secondly, yes, gayass names do spoil people's interest in a book - I for one have a hard time taking a book serious if the main character has a gawdawful name that would be better to ignore if I could.

Liam the Bard said:
given all the times bbg has copy-pasted his little critique of the doom novels, why hasn't anybody taken five minutes to point out that it sucks?

Yeah, it does suck, I've got to improve upon it anyway.

you don't for a second take into consideration any of the things that make a good book; plot/character development, choice of words and writing technique, concept/originality, among other things.

If you'd read the novels, you'd see that the plot is insanely deviant of the Doom backstory. They could have developed the story as the baddies as Demons. That, for me, would have given the book mad ++ points. The characters don't have any real development. What you learn about them when their first introduced is all you get to know. Pretty much, the wording is repetetive, not to mention boring. Plus, an assload of stupid sci-fi movie refrences are stuffed into the first book, making people go "huh?"

instead you choose to, for one, make fun of unusual or silly characters and their names.

Would you still say that if the main character's name was Squigle McBoomfuh?

being... yourself, you should know that far more laughable concepts then an alien race named 'the newbies' have been expressed in movies, literature, art and music and been taken seriously.

Wonderful, but ever hear that critics overlook those things as a part of the "art" whereas fans like me and countless others that hate the books know that it was just fucking stupid.

quite frankly if i was a marine stuck in FLYNN TAGGART'S situation i'd call teh damn cacodemons something like pumpkins too; the doom book crew doesn't need to worry about naming the damned demons something scientific or catchy, they just need something to fucking call them by so that they can call them out to each other. hey, Jill Loveload! watch out for the CLYDE that's about to put a bullet through your skull!

Some of the names are ok, but fucking hell...clydes? Pumpkins? Wtf?

and, there is nothing wrong with the name Flynn Taggart. it had to be said, and i said it. the only reason anyone is ever pissed when they see it in some new member's fanfiction is because it isn't stamped all over the story in the doom instruction manual as the 'official' name.

Or maybe because it IS a crappy name.

i agree with you that some of the names are ridiculous. pairtuclarly the 'freds' and the 'newbies', but silly names do not negate any potential redeeming qualities of a book.

The redeeming qualities of these books? Well, the cool "3d"ness of the DOOM logo on the books was pretty cool and the covers were sweet. Some moments were pretty good IMO, but others were just Goddamn boring. I did SOMEWHAT enjoy the 3rd book.

and why do you point out inconsistencies between the game and novels as a reason not to read them? earth to bbg: doom the game has virtually no plot.

I see enough of a plot to make a novel from it.

there's a paragraph of backstory id threw together and the closest thing to plot progression that exists is the trap at the end of knee deep in the dead. you can't write a book, at least not a good one based entirely on the doom storyline. do YOU want to read a hundred or more pages detailing the adventures of a nameless man in green tights as he runs at 60mph through miles of corridors and shoots the same demons over and over and over?

Like I said before, in the books, they were aliens, not demons, which totally made them less scary. Second off, the book didn't really have any cool surprises that made you wonder "what's going to happen next?".

and if you think they could've done a better job changing it for a book, fucking say so! and explain why!

1) take out the fact that the Flynn has to look at everything from the viewpoint of a Goddamn priest

2) make the aliens demons

3) a few more characters wouldn't hurt

4) the 3rd and 4th novels went WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY off-track and should have been better thought out.

even when you do actually attempt to cover something important, you don't take the time to explain your reasoning, or to communicate to anybody just why in the fuck a certain character or plot item should 'eat your ballhairs'...

Like I said, I have to improve on my copy-paste Doom novels post thingy.

...but it's alright, because i know you never wrote the damn thing as a serious criticism in the first place. a page of cheap sarcasm makes you look cool... at least be funny next time. and the fact that you made doom anomaly laugh doesn't matter, everyone knows he's a fucking crack baby or something.

Actually, I was being serious when I wrote that, a little sarcasm here and there, and I don't need to be funny. Why should I give a damn if I make you or anyone else laugh?

and i haven't read the doom novels.

Then do so and see for yourself how damn terrible they are.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and if you think they could've done a better job changing it for a book, fucking say so! and explain why!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



1) take out the fact that the Flynn has to look at everything from the viewpoint of a Goddamn priest

2) make the aliens demons

3) a few more characters wouldn't hurt

4) the 3rd and 4th novels went WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY off-track and should have been better thought out.

5) Make sure that the journey to Hell is in the book and that Hell is described as a twisted, nightmarish place.

6) Make sure that the HUMANS made the gateways as actual machines meant for teleportation - this was completely lost in the Novels and it sucked because of it.

7) Make things make sense - having two marines build a small spacecraft to take them even a short distance does not make sense!!! A space craft, even a very simple, unmanned one is fucking complex to make, something which requires a degree in advanced physics and lots of knowledge in technical machinery - I DOUBT a couple of marines have that knowledge.

8) Shorten it down to only two novels roughly descriping the events in Doom 1 and Doom 2 and maybe a third novel descriping how humanity have to deal with wiping out the last demons.


Oh yeah, and Flynn Taggart IS a gay name. Taggart on its own sounds ok to me, but Flynn sounds like a fucking wuss boy name and together with Taggert it sounds like a complete disaster!
And I've seen people come up with names for the doomguy in their fan fics that weren't "stamped all over in the Doom manual" either but they were a zillion times better than Flynn Taggert. Examples are:
"Ryan Storms", "Alexander McMillan" and "McKnight" (forgot the first name so "McKnight" is only the surname)

Liam wins.

Taggart on its own sounds ok to me, but Flynn sounds like a fucking wuss boy name and together with Taggert it sounds like a complete disaster!

That's key reasoning right there, because we all know anyone named Flynn has to be gay. Uh, ok.

doom novel burning, my house, midnight.

just a thought, somebody got the idea to officially write a doom novel, then a second, and for some god awful reason a thrid and fourth, and they all turned out really shitty. i thought the game's story was good imo, and i didn't need all this other bullshit to motivate me to play. now, as an example, resident evil had a strong story and tried to weave the story into the gameplay as much as possible, but somebody still wrote a novel based on it nonetheless. i haven't read it. so a thought, will somebody write a novel based on doom iii, a heavily story based game now, after it's released? i hope not, especially after the job done with the first four novels. i swear to god, if dafydd ab hugh starts to write a novel based on doom iii, somebody's gonna kill him. i just know it.

unless i'm wrong, thank god no one fucked with quake by writing an official novel.

I haven't even seen a Doom novel in my life, but if I came across one I'd buy it. Same goes for the movie.

Coopersville said:

I haven't even seen a Doom novel in my life, but if I came across one I'd buy it. Same goes for the movie.

So you are willing to blasphemize(sp) Doom? :P

prehaps the doom novels werent supposed to be baserd on the doom story, prehaps some wrote a in-depth description of a "what if...?" answer. i agree with liam on many of his points, even if the main characters name is squigly mcboomfuh, id still read, i dont focus on the characters names all the time, i focus on what happens to them.\

dont flame me!

/me hides!

Coopersville said:
I haven't even seen a Doom novel in my life, but if I came across one I'd buy it. Same goes for the movie.

ravage said:
So you are willing to blasphemize(sp) Doom? :P

Despite the fact that I’ve werazed the master levels, I’d still by them the second I see them in a store

dsm said:

Firstly, BBG and I are not exclusively criticizing the novels on the basis that they're inconsistent with the story line in Doom, we're bashing the novels because of the DIRECTION the novel authors chose to deviate from the game. I've read a couple of kickass fan fics that did deviate a lot from the game's story line - I didn't bash 'em for that (maybe I mentioned that, "heh, this thing doesn't quite follow the Doom storyline but what the heck...").

are you some kind of mega-troll or are you just too stupid to read what you quote? smack-dab in between your quote tags:

I said:

and if you think they could've done a better job changing it for a book, fucking say so! and explain why!

where i acknowledged the possibility that bbg didn't care that it differed from doom's storyline, but that it did so in an unacceptably stupid way, and suggested that if that's true then next time he decides to rant about the doom novels he should explicitly state it.

if you did so in your review, i don't care because i wasn't talking about your review. in the very first line of my post i made my thesis statement: bbg's criticism of the doom novels sucks. continued use of the pronoun 'you' (singular) instead of 'you guys' (plural), 'yall' (plural), or 'you ignorant cockmongers' (also plural) suggests that my comments are directed at one person, who already been designated as bbg

i do not read fan fiction, and even if i did your comment about the talent of doomworld's fanfic authors is stupid and irrelevent anyway because the point of critiquing something is to critique it and not to simply point out things that are better.

BBG said:
Wonderful, but ever hear that critics overlook those things as a part of the "art" whereas fans like me and countless others that hate the books know that it was just fucking stupid.

if an action/suspense book i was interested in featured a main character named Squigle McBoomfuh, i would be weirded out at any reviewer who didn't mention it. my point, however, was never that such ridiculous things should never be pointed out in a review, but that listing every single one and making up some kind of stupid, smartass remark for every one is not thouroughly critiquing it.

as for 'Flynn Taggart', of course not everybody's going to like it; not every boy is named John and not every girl is named Mary. but there's no logical reason to lash out at anybody who mentions it.

dsm said:

Oh yeah, and Flynn Taggart IS a gay name. Taggart on its own sounds ok to me, but Flynn sounds like a fucking wuss boy name and together with Taggert it sounds like a complete disaster!
And I've seen people come up with names for the doomguy in their fan fics that weren't "stamped all over in the Doom manual" either but they were a zillion times better than Flynn Taggert. Examples are:
"Ryan Storms", "Alexander McMillan" and "McKnight" (forgot the first name so "McKnight" is only the surname)

Usually, I'd agree with you dsm, but here I can't. When I think the name Flynn I usually think of a large, claymore wielding Celt. Not in anyway wuss boy like. Second, sometimes people have names you don't like, that doesn't make them bad. I think the thing that pisses you off is that every time you think of 'Flynn Taggart' you think of how retarded his character was. The real thing that sucks about the book is the way it was written. I think it's a good idea to show deep into a characters thoughts when their aren't that many of them, but not when they have the same mentality as those found in soap operas.

Also, I never liked the thought that these guys were demons from the Christian version of hell as so many people here imply, and I'd prefere that they never really told you what they are.

Oh yeah... Ryan Storms? Sorry, but that sounds to me like calling him "Mighty Max".