Call me the one friend who's too woke. But to say "YAYYYY Doomguy is FINALLY made into an actual character now they retconned his backstory to give him wife and kids" Is heteronormativity and amatonormativity talking.
Is he not " a real character™ " just because he was NOT in a canon romantic relationship? Is his story simply incomplete, and will only be completed once he got laid and had kids, and became another one of the champion of the undefeated heterosexual union and the traditional nuclear family value? Is that the one criteria for a "well-written" character and therefore HE is somehow lacking?
People say things like "You know he wasn't doing it JUST for Daisy" which would be correct, if they weren't ONLY pointing at the family photo AND NOTHING ELSE.
He lost all his marine friends who went to Mars alongside him who did just punched their CO. In Doom I, his biggest motivation was to go home, but when he finally did he came back to a ruin that was once his hometown. Imagine the civilian death if even a rabbit ended up a mounted head. Are those not good enough motivation for someone to want revenge against entire Hell? Only the death of romantic partner and offspring count as valid, or heavy enough life-altering tragic events? Is a story important only if it's about romantic relationships, and any other kind of love, be it platonic, familial, philia; they simply, naturally, had LESS emotional weight than The True Romance?
(The photo, by the way, didn't exist in classic doom at ALL. In Eternal is left near a Garbage Can as another easter egg, that was more likely a nod to Quake Ranger's family photo than anything that holds real emotional value to the story. Even "Daisy's hind leg" did the "memory token" better than this. The only confirmation of "It's his wife and kid" came from Hugo Martin casually commented about it ONCE during one of his streams. Certain people here are weaponizing it as a confirmation that Doomguy must be their straightest patriarchal romantasy daddy dom husband woobified perfect masculinity warrior and attacking fans who headcanon him queer aroace. Except the latter is A LOT MORE IN CHARACTER and compliant to the overall subtext DOOM has been exploring, than the former. sorry.)
Even if we don't quote Carmack, and I mean this quote:
His sexuality is left intentionally vague and it's good they did that. Sex or romantic love interest subplot is not (NEVER!) where a DOOM story is going to explore because 1. it's not important to a story about killing demons in Hell 2. it's not important to the development of the main character 3. it's SO NOT important Doomguy simply doesn't care to know what sex is AND that's a GOOD thing.
Before anyone jump in to say "He can still be non-cishet or aroace and married to a woman or have children" you do realize the point is queer people are oppressed because they do not follow that norm and it's important when we have someone like Doomguy to NOT being part of THAT and still be considered an iconic, self-realized and extremely cool character by the majority of the fans.
There was so many things to explore in Fortress of Doom that can tell us Doomguy's personality as well as his human side, but SOME OF YOU ONLY NOW wants to recognize him as a real character because they finally decided to double down on making another video game "dead wife avenger" guy and add it to the list. Don't joke with me now.
Doomguy was never "NOT an actual character" when the first thing we knew about him was that he punched his CO for ordering them to shoot civilians, thus broke the stereotype of 80s American patriot GI Joe protagonist. He may be a marine but he's one of the most obvious anti-authority "fuck the system and whoever thinks themselves more important than the rest of us" guy, actually.
The next thing was he watches "restrictive flicks" when he was on Mars, so he isn't one of those repressed model citizens either. Then, despite being the toughest, survivalist one-man army who gets angry and aggressive easily and probably had daddy issues (if we consider the part where he sees Commander Keen, likely his father or grandfather's hanging body), he has a RABBIT as pet or family and HE personally named her Daisy.
"Maybe Daisy is his kid's rabbit" NO DAISY IS. HIS. RABBIT. It's part of his characterization if not one of the most important part. When you want a character to be more human, or have more depth, you give them something that contradicts his archetype. Combining it with the fact he doesn't need a relationship or sex, and felt happy living alone with his pet rabbit, Daisy then holds a broader, bigger significance to Him. Maybe he wanted to improve his temper and bought Daisy, maybe he sees Daisy as a reminder to always protect the most vulnerable. Maybe he sees himself in Daisy because they're both mute. But now Daisy is just a representation of his family or kid.
Is that really a good thing?
