The THINGS GETTING ME THROUGH: DOOM 2016

(Please note that this entry does contain some images and content that are NSFW due to violence and grotesqueness.)

HELLO AND WELCOME TO MY NEW SERIES

Welcome to the first post of a new series where I talk about the things getting me through… you know. The world right now.

This is inspired by a video Innuendo Studios posted during the pandemic. Okay, I lied, this is inspired by the title of a video Innuendo Studios posted during the pandemic. I never actually watched it. BUT WAIT! I have watched many of the other videos on their channel (their series The Alt-Right Playbook is an amazing resource for why our political system and government have developed the way that they have) so I’m not some fake fan! 

In this series, I’m going to write about things that have been particularly helpful in keeping my sanity intact. Being a nerd and loving stories, most of the entries are going to focus on a piece of story-based media, but there will be examples outside of those.

But not this week. This week, I’m talking about Doom.

DOOM

Pretend you are me for a few seconds. Ignore the urge to rank every state fish. It’s early - like, really early - on November 6th, 2024. Technically it’s still night. It has just become clear that we are facing another four years of the orange man, plus Republican control of the other two branches.

As a trans person, facing down a tenure of people who directly based large portions of their campaigns against my rights to exist as a person made me feel a lot of things. Upset. Depressed. Scared.

And angry. 

So I turned on Doom.

RIP AND TEAR

Doom is a first-person shooter game released in 2016 by Bethesda Softworks. The fifth game in the Doom franchise, the game is a revamp of the formula, bringing back the high-octane power fantasy of the original 1993 game but updating the systems to be in line with video game standards of the 2010s.

In Doom, you play as the Doom Slayer (it’s a creative name, shut up), a powerful soldier of chaos. The slayer wakes up in a facility on Mars as Hell lets loose around him. Literally. Like there’s demons and fire and…you get it. He (you) grabs a giant gun and is given a directive: rip and tear.

What follows is a descent into violence, destruction, and a ridiculous amount of heavy metal. You are the only thing standing in the way of an encroaching tide of devil spawn. Well, you and a menagerie of guns, grenades, and a freaking chainsaw.

A DEMON AMONGST DEMONS

If you’re ever feeling upset, powerless, like nothing good is ever going to happen again, then your therapists will suggest coping mechanisms. Meditation, journaling, volunteer work. Things that soothe the body and soul and help people.

You know what else is meditative? Slicing a demon in half with a chainsaw. You want something to write about in your journal? Write about the time you blew that hell spawn apart with a shotgun to the face. Want to volunteer and feel good about helping humanity? What better service to humanity is there than ripping the eye out of a demon’s head and shoving it down its throat? Doom is really the best therapy you can have and I don’t know how mental health practices are still in business post 2016 (note: this is a joke. A joke. I’m joking. Mental health support is very important and everyone should go to therapy and oh god there’s an army of angry mental health professionals outside my door-)

The greatest thing about Doom is that Hell’s legions are scared of you. They have legends about you, and as soon as they realize what they are facing, they pull out every stop, every grunt, every soldier, every monster to put you down, but you just keep coming. You are who they have nightmares about, who they worry about, who they tell their kids ghost stories about (do demons have kids? I’m unfamiliar with the reproductive cycles of the infernal beings of Hades). In the wake of a world that seems to be spending so much time raising fears about my pronouns, it feels great to play a game where the forces of evil are running from me.

Doom took me a week to complete. One week of catharsis in the face of darkness. It was legitimately helpful to my mental state and provided me with many of the tools my brain needed to stop dwelling on…everything, and be able to put energy on constructive ways to improve things for everyone facing oppression right now.

In short, I highly recommend Doom, and as one final bit of support, I will provide this totally real not paraphrased or changed quote from G.K. Chesterton. “Doom does not teach people that demons exist. People know that demons exist. Doom teaches people that demons can be turned into infernal confetti with a missile launcher. And that’s beautiful.”