DOOM: Repercussions of Evil / You Are The Demons

About

“DOOM: Repercussions of Evil” is an amateur fanfiction written by Peter Chimaera in 2002. Set in the universe of the videogame DOOM, this notorious short story gained a cult status among fanfiction communities and imageboard sites for its carefree grammar and punctuation. Peter’s work also spawned a number of parodies and a snowclone catchphrase “No, X. You are the Y,” which pokes fun at the ridiculous plot twist at the ending that goes something like “No, John. You are the demons.”

“No! I must kill the demons” he shouted The radio said “No, John. You are the demons” And then John was a zombie.

- DOOM: Repercussions of Evil (2002) by Peter Chimaera

Origin

March 8th 2002: Peter Chimaera^[1] decided to join Fanfiction.net, a website where amateur authors write and share their own stories based upon pre-existing works.

March 19th 2002: Peter Chimaera posted his first fiction about Digimons^[2]. From a purely objective standpoint, this is a poorly written piece of fiction due to the lack of structure, spelling errors, and grammatical errors. Yet, the comments ironically encourage him^[3], seeing him as some kind of “lulz maker”.

The fanfiction.net wiki article, through the comment of a user named Hyena1, who revealed himself to be Peter Chimaera’s alter ego/alternate account for more “normal fanfictions”^[4], describes him as:

“your typical fanfiction nut who never read anything with more than 15 pages, has an attention span of about 6 minutes depending on what he’s eaten in the past 12, and despite having English as a first language, just can’t figure out those pesky rules of spelling and grammar.”

To many, Peter Chimaera appears as a troll writer. That is to say, many suspect that this was written in a purposefully poor manner for the sake of causing others to share their distaste.

June 25th 2002: Peter decided to publish another of his works: DOOM: Repercussions of Evil.
That fiction has been removed from FanFiction.net further on. Fortunately, it has also been screencapped:

The Appeal

Compared to all of Chimaera’s previous works, DOOM:RoE stands apart from the rest by embodying all of the tropes, flaws and mistakes of a stereotypical fanfiction.

The encouraging comments were made in an ironic method similar to those of The 3 Wolf Moon T-shirt case, and exploded beyond Fanfiction.net.

In brief, it was so awful, so bad, that it became so good and entertaining; particularly the ending. “And Then John Was a Zombie” now serves as a reference to what is regarded by many as one of the most awesomely-bad fanfictions on the web.

More comments about the article are available in the Encyclopedia Dramatica entry.
Here’s an excerpt from it:

Wow… just wow… this story.. where to begin… let’s just say I “plasmaed” my shorts after reading it…

--Insomniac3


This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read! Chimaera has managed to do things which no Doom fan has ever done before

--Stupid Bunny


Genius! Pure genius! This is a cautionary tale that stresses the negative consequences of joining the armed forces. It also explores a Freudian struggle between a man and his father. Furthermore, I believe this story truly stresses that black-and-white thinking is detrimental to humankind, as you can neither say that John is a good person nor that the demons are truly evil Eventually, we learn that John’s amplified sense of masculinity leads to his downfall.

--Cheesecrimp

Spread

Although the piece was written in 2002, searches for Peter Chimaera’s work didn’t produce a visible trend until October of 2007. While some derivatives had been produced, searches didn’t come until late in 2007, a few months after the first Dramatica entry was created on July 7th, 2007^[5]. It is likely that it was this occurrence that boosted the meme’s popularity.
An Uncyclopedia article followed the trend in November 2007^[6] as well as a Lurkmore article in December 2007^[7]. A Tvtropes article even showed up in August 2010.^[8]

Derivatives

YTMND

The first YTMND occurance concerning this meme was uploaded on April 19th 2006^[9]. Made as a Dramatic Reading version of the initial work, it has gathered, so far, about 58,000 views.

A handful of YTMND creations can be found as well, from 2006 to 2009^[10]

Youtube

The Dramatic reading version became popular enough to be featured in Youtube videos, as well as having a dedicated comic strip.

The band Dungeons of Dorks even wrote a tribute song, available on their Audio Street webpage.^[11]

Newground user Geoff Galt (AKA Phobotech) did his own animation inspired by the Know Your Meme article and Peter Chimaera’s work, called “Repercussions of Evil”.^[12]

Aftermath

Following his fame, Peter made his own official website where he’s exposing his “best” works.^[13]

External References