Doom fanfic (a snippet scene and a rant)

[Sarcose]

"Oremor nhoj, em llik tsum uoy, emag eht niw ot!"

The twisted words reverberated throughout a many-stories-high stadium of rust and glowing waste. To his left and right, and on ledges high above, inhuman figures flailed and writhed in almost-anger. Many of them had weapons. Some dared to fire. He paid them no heed. Towering over him was a massive, half-living face etched and grown into a wall atop an overlook hundreds of feet up and stretching many hundreds more, all the way to the ceiling and wider than his field of vision. A goat's head, cosmically huge, twisted into demonic form with dingy bone exposed and merging somewhere into metallic plates and hoses. Engines whirred distantly. He sniffed, and familiar stenches filled his nose through the battered old filter of his helmet: coppery blood, stinging rot, feces, sulphur.

Through a pulsing, bleeding hole in the giant forehead he could see a shimmering, swirling, almost liquid mass just beneath the surface.

An explosion rocked the ground next to him, making his ears ring and causing him to almost lose balance. A hot mass collided with his back like a large punch. He ignored both sensations.

That "brain," as he chose to call it, glowed white hot for but a second, and with a thundrous burst that made the walls resound, a formless thing leapt or was thrown from within. With such force it travelled the air to land all the way on the other side of the stadium, next to him. He watched it amass as a familiar thing on the floor, all pile of limbs and awkwardness as it oriented itself, then lift itself to a standing position. He levelled his pump-action at its chest and stared into its hate-filled eyes.

It took scarce time to ready a flame in its claw, its brown skin stretching over unnatural muscles that clenched to produce a spark that ignited in an instant. It did not fear him like the others. With a loud bang death blossomed in its chest and it fell.

When he recovered from the recoil and pumped another round into the chamber he saw that the others took it as a cue to attack, and all hell broke loose. The imagery was not lost on him. Knocking skeletons with absurd cannons, near shapeless four-limbed blobs of fat with flame plasma launchers for arms, sinewy commanders that could undo death and cause spontaneous combustion, and more. Those that had been there when he entered the stadium, and those that continued to birth from the thing giving sinister tone to the whole battlefield. They all slung munitions at him wrought of hell, and he brought them pain and defeat. He felt a rush of endorphines and it was good, but it subsided almost as fast as it came. If this had been a morning workout he would have changed routines long ago.

He kept eyeing that brain and its demonic birthing. There was a rocket launcher strapped to his back. Thinking back to the "words" it spoke to him would have made him laugh - but for the small bursts of adrenaline he felt now and then, he could scarce muster a change in his bored expression. The demons were all waging personal wars on him from across the stadium, but none dare approach. They feared him. That first imp, though... They are brought here full of violence and determination. Then their buddies somehow let them know what is waiting for them.

He climbed to a higher level, almost walking past monsters of all shapes. They had such poor aim, but he suspected half of the chaos aroud him was intentionally misfired. An army surrounded him and he was their devil. This time he did laugh. A quiet chuckle.

He stared into the biomechanical rendition of Baphomet, birthing monsters from its forehead in biblical fashion. He hefted the cold, personal launcher onto his shoulders. Flames and bullets grazed his armor and pierced his flesh as he knelt. He aimed. He fired.

The end came loud. It came firey. It came violent. But it mostly came loud.

He just watched.

[Sarcose]

Four adverbs in that very short scene. My writing has gotten very rusty. (personal rule ingrained in me by my published grandfather: adverbs look unprofessional)

I'm putting a separate post in to say that that's the whole story. It would look better as a standalone page or something so it has a physical stopping point. The abrupt stop is intentional.

Spoiler

should I change it to "he JUST watched." or "he ONLY watched." ? Edit: I changed it. On a piece of paper it would look appropriate. As a forum post it looked like it was meant to lead into another post.

[Sarcose]

Another idea I'm thinking of. A story told in the perspective of a space marine who survived the initial attack on Phobos who is not Doomguy but a part of a "last surviving squad", but

Spoiler

it makes references to ambiguously dispassionate, bureaucratic "superiors" and builds up horror style to the "encroaching demons" when we eventually learn the perspective character is one of the first former humans standing in E1M1 waiting for Doomguy to come and kill him. Too cliche? In my mind the prose sounds good but summed up like that I don't like it so much. I think a zombie story told "realistically" would be tragic - e.g., it is sad that the antagonists even exist. But giving Doomguy a reason to doubt killing them (again) is antithetical to the source material. I don't know if I can write it well enough.

I've always thought the atmosphere of this game has had a lot of untapped potential for characterization, but I think there is a great risk in portraying that character very poorly. The primary story of Doom I think is a Man vs. Himself conflict, with Man vs. Nature underlying. There is a reason no one discusses "Man vs. Demon" in literature classes.