Hell-blazers: Doom Eternal Speedrunning Q&A, Interview Compendium!

April 17th, 2020

This compendium contains the interviews for "Hell-blazers," my Doom Eternal Speedrunning Q&A Project, and any salient links.

Update, 1/4/2025: My focus has shifted to Metroidvania, which I've written multiple books on, since this post. To it, I've decided to release the entirety of my work on Metroidvania in one single place: "From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania" (2025). This includes my master's thesis and early postgraduate work (re: "Mazes and Labyrinths"), my PhD (released in 2023), further essays released after my postgraduate work in my larger book series, Sex Positivity. You can also ask me questions about Metroidvania on the r/Metroidvania subreddit: "From Master's to PhD (and Beyond): My Entire Work on Metroidvania" (2025).

Foreword

Aimed largely at the Twitch crowd, but also speedrunners, Doom Eternal can be speedrun like any videogame. I've followed Doom Eternal closely to see how speedrunners feel about it. In time, can it rank alongside classics like Super Metroid (1994) or Goldeneye (1997)? / My name is Nicholas van der Waard, and I'm independent researcher/post-grad whose work is focused on Metroidvania, but also horror-theme FPS. For more information about my work, as well as the Q&A and what it covers, please refer to this extensive post.

The Compendium

The Players

These are the persons who have kindly agreed to be interviewed for this project. While all of them are gamers, each person represents a different aspect of gamer/speedrunning culture.

DraQu: A Twitch streamer and FPS speedrunner, and one of the first players to complete the game on Ultra-Nightmare. He also likes 90s pop music.Click here to read DraQu's full interview.

Under the Mayo: A YouTuber. His channel normally covers games like Mortal Kombat 9, but has expanded to include Doom Eternal.

Click here to read Under the Mayo's interview.

Byte Me: The current world
record-holder for Doom 2016's UN 100% Classic and several other categories, Byte Me is moving his unique approach to speedrunning onward, to Doom Eternal.

Click here to read Byte Me's full interview.

The Spud Hunter: An arena combat specialist, the Spud Hunter enjoys Doom Eternal for Ultra-Nightmare, and the game's exclusive multiplayer battle mode. His Slayer helmet gives him power.

Click here to read Spud's full interview.

King Dime: A classic-Doom speedrunner who regularly appears on AGDQ.

Click here to read King Dime's full interview.

Your Mate Devo: An Aussie speedrunner and software engineer.

Click here to read Your Mate Devo interview.

Click here to read a second interview with Your Mate Devo, which covers the game's patches and how they affect speedrunning overall.

FrostyXen: The current WR Holder for UN 100%.

Click here to read FrostyXen's interview.

Click here to read my second interview with Frosty Xen, which covers the game's patches and how they affect speedrunning overall.

**My Doom-exclusive Posts**

"Spectating FPS Speedruns: Potential Pitfalls Exemplified by Doom Eternal": An examination of FPS speedruns from a spectator's perspective, and why I think Doom Eternal isn't the best example of an entertaining speedrun to watch.

"Visual Clutter in Brutal Doom / Project Brutality": An article I wrote covering these two popular mods for Doom, and some of the issues I have with them."

Doom Eternal: Made for Speed... but Speedrunning?": The article whose title question launched this Speedrunning Q&A Project."Doom Eternal (2020) Review": My personal review for Doom Eternal.

"Post-colonialism in Doom*": An essay where I analyze the Doom franchise, including Doom Eternal, through a post-colonial lens.

*This link to "Postcolonialism in Doom" (2020) is now dead (Marilyn took it down). Rather than reupload said piece elsewhere, I had inserted it into "Those Who Walk Away from Speedrunning" (2025). —Perse, 5/13/2026

Other Links

"7 real life items that inspired Doom Eternal": An interesting interview with Hugo Martin about Doom Eternal's palimpsests.

Summoning Salt: Perhaps my all-time favorite source for well-documented speedrunning history.

Karl Jobst: Another excellent source for YouTube videos about speedrunning history [actually he's a fucking Nazi; fuck that guy].

Pop-culture Weapons Analysed: A video by historical weapons expert, Shadiversity*, analyzing the Crucible from Doom Eternal

*Sike, he's a crazy Mormon crypto fascist (Fredda's "YouTube 'Medievalists' Are Weird: Metatron, Lindybeige, Shadiversity," 2025).

My name's Persephone van der Waard; I have my MA in Gothic English literature and independent PhD in Gothic poetics and ludo-Gothic BDSM (focusing partially on Metroidvania), and I am the author of the multi-volume, non-profit book series, Sex Positivity vs Sex Coercion, or Gothic Communism—its art director, sole invigilator, illustrator and primary editor (the other co-writer/co-editor being Bay Ryan). A rape survivor/granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor and Dutch Resistance member—and someone anti-war (as a business), anti-Zionist and anti-racist/anti-white-supremacist who specializes in tokenism (e.g., TERFs, SWERFs, and fascist feminism)—I'm a MtF trans woman, Tolkien and Amazon enthusiast, former YouTuber, anti-fascist, loud critic of Marxist-Leninism/state vampirism, atheist and Satanist, poly/pan kinkster with multiple partners, erotic artist/pornographer and anarcho-Communist; i.e., under my brand of Gothic (gay-anarcho) Communism as a holistic, intersectional discipline: one devised in 2022-2023, and which my friends and I currently achieve together. / Originally this blog explored my love of movies when I was cis-het; now I use it to write about the Gothic—horror, but also sex, heavy metal, and videogames in a queer way (especially Metroidvania).

I take donations for my work (which goes towards helping sex workers, trans people and other minorities). I currently take payment on PayPal, Patreon, and CashApp, etc; all links are available on my Linktr.ee. Every bit helps!

Regarding Formatting Issues for Blogposts (Older than October 2025): Recently Josey Howarth helped transfer my old blog from Blogger to WordPress, which—while vital for security reasons—altered their formatting. On a phone screen, the posts are mostly readable, but look slightly "jank" on computer screens. Many also contain outdated "About the Author" sections—meaning inside the posts-in-question, alongside the blog website "footer" (as added by Josey after the transfer). Such things are temporary. Eventually we plan to overhaul their visual design, remodeling my blog and website (thus fixing the issues in the question)!