Doomreed

DoomReed is the slash ship between Victor von Doom and Reed Richards from the Marvel fandom.

Canon
The Backstory So Far: Reed and Victor first met at Empire State University, where they attended together as scholarship students. Reed, the more outgoing of the two from the beginning, introduced himself and tried to engage Victor, with whom he felt an immediate kinship, later describing their meeting as a "gift." He continued trying to befriend Von Doom throughout their time together at ESU even though Victor rarely seemed to respond in kind. Frequently, chess was used in an attempt to bridge the gap between them, but even that only seemed to highlight the differences instead; what Reed considered a pleasant mental exercise, Victor seemed to view as a deadly competition to be won at all costs.

Though they did not share a dorm room together as Reed initially requested, they did share lab space at Empire State and Reed often expressed his interest and curiosity in Victor's work. That only seemed to make Victor more paranoid and guarded, especially when Reed brought his friend Ben Grimm along. Friction between the three often exploded into minor acts of petty revenge and vandalism. Through it all, Reed continued to track Victor's progress and checked in on him when he could, eventually leading to the discovery of formulae relating to Victor's invention--a machine for communicating with the dead--in his dorm room.

Reed was not troubled by the machine's intended purpose, though he stated he did not believe communication with the dead was possible. His concern was with Victor's math, which contained a single, glaring error that Victor, in either haste or in hubris, had not caught.

Confronted by Victor while in the act of trespassing on his dorm room, Reed tried to warn him of the mistake, but Victor was too angry to listen. When the machine was tested, it exploded, nearly killing the student who had been his assistant and leaving Victor's face badly scarred.

Victor, for reasons never fully explained, blames Reed for it all.

The (Early) Doom Days: When Victor left school after the accident, Reed assumed that he must have died; there was no record of his old friend anywhere in the world largely because Victor had, in many ways, left it behind. Studying with a hidden monastic order in the Himalayan mountains, he shed his old identity and began building on his first suit of mystically-enhanced high-tech armor, the ultimate synthesis of his duel fields of study, finally emerging as "Doctor Doom," the man who would lead his home country of Latveria--in Eastern Europe--and his people, the Zefiro Romani of the region--to freedom. Though under Doom's rule, "freedom" always came at the price of ultimate loyalty to him.

Meanwhile, back in the States, Reed Richards, along with his fiancée Sue Storm, her younger brother Johnny, and his best friend from college, Benjamin Grimm, embarked on their own journey via a rocket of Reed's design, stolen from the US government and launched without authorization after their formal project was cancelled. In the brief trip to outer space, Reed and his companions were bombarded with cosmic radiation that altered their cells--in Reed's case, giving him tremendous physical elasticity that contrasts sharply with Victor's suits of rigid metal. Their outer aspects finally showed the ideological differences between them both: Victor, seeing authoritarian control as the only way to ensure prosperity for humankind, and Reed, whose approach focused more on sharing knowledge and resources. Their differences are almost archetypal, but they are both utopians at heart.

Shortly after Reed had formed his small family into a super-powered team known as The Fantastic Four, Victor put in an appearance to kidnap his fiancée Sue, and Reed's immediately recognized Victor's voice, even with the distortion of the metal mask, the passage of time, and Victor's injuries. The moment of Reed's recognition is an iconic one for the duo.

As for Victor, he immediately focused (some would say "fixated") on Reed himself, paying little attention to the other three team members; in his second outing as Reed's "nemesis" he kidnapped Reed himself from the office of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby--the Fantastic Four comic's early conceit was that Lee and Kirby were simply chronicling the team's exploits--and swapped bodies with Reed using a technique he had used from an alien race called "the Ovoids." In the years that followed, he alternated between menace and ally, at one point luring the Four to a gathering at the Latverian Embassy where he used a hallucinogenic cocktail to turn them against each other. Reed turned the plot around on Doom himself, using the same concoction to let Victor believe he'd successfully eradicated his old enemy.

Chris Claremont Era:

Mark Waid Era:

Hickman's Secret Wars:

Aftermath: Victor did pursue heroism, but was never able to let go of the memory of Reed Richards. When his sacrifice to save Tony Stark goes largely unnoticed, Victor retreats into the ruins of his castle in Latveria until he's coaxed out by a young patriot, Zora Vukovic, who convinced him to don the mantle of Doom and lead his people again. This returned him to the traditional role of "nemesis" against the Fantastic Four (and more specifically, Reed) as the team re-entered comic canon in 2018.

Current Canon: More recently, he proposed a marriage to unify power with Zora--describing her as the nearest thing to family he has, and desirous of cementing her status in his absence--and challenged Reed to a formal "friendly" duel at the site if their old college chess tables to win the right to ask Reed to serve as his best man.

Throughout their long history together, the Reed/Victor relationship in canon has been one of begrudging alliances, with the two helping and saving each other more often than not. They are often referred to as "frenemies" and considered to be the first one the other would call if they needed help, in most instances.

Moments

 * After Victor's experiment fails and he's injured, Reed sneaks past the caution tape to investigate and finds a locket containing a photo of Victor when he was very young and Victor's mother, Cynthia. Reed kept it, and returned it to Victor later during a "Rapprochement Festival" dinner that Victor invites him to.
 * At the start of the Incursions Reed Richards built a machine to look into other universes and saw one in which a version of himself worked alongside a version of Doom. When the Mapmakers advanced on that world, the AU Reed threw himself into the line of fire to protect Victor, and when Victor saw that Reed was gone, he did the one thing Doom in most incarnations would never dream of; he closed his eyes and surrendered, allowing himself to be killed as he held Reed's body. The 616 version of Reed turned from the viewer on seeing this and others in the room exchanged glances but interpretation was left to the reader.

Quotes
"You ruined me. You made me this. Nobody will see me as anything but what you made. Nobody sees me. (Only Reed did.)"

- Victor, speaking at his mother's grave

"I feel that you and I, even though we clearly disagree, are working at the same level, and I thought: what a gift that we have found each other in this environment. Genuinely, I was looking to help you."

- Reed, to Victor

"Ever since I rejected you as a roommate, you have been following me around like a lost puppy, Richards."

- Victor, to Reed

"It's what any Reed would have done. We've always had faith. Faith that your deep intellect, your curiosity about the universe, would someday give way to a revelation that preserving life, helping others not in the service of ego, is what your place in this universe is about. I only wanted you to be a better man."

- 616 Reed, in disguise as a random version of himself from the Council of Reeds, to Victor

"He said... 'Don't give up on me.'"

- Reed to Ben, conversation about an AU Victor, who was advising about the 616 version

Behind the Scenes
"These men are so much alike in so many ways that (in spirit if not in flesh) they might be brothers. Yet in the ways that truly matter... They are as fundamentally different from one another as night from day. One has always been a dreamer, inspired by a soul-deep sense of wonder. For Reed Richards, his lifelong quest has ever been for knowledge, as an end unto itself. For Victor von Doom, knowledge is a means to an end, and that end is power."

- Chris Claremont, Fantastic Four #31, 1998

"Right, so the opera was going to be all over the place. And of course Richards was going to be in the opera but in what way? He’s the horrible, just evil, maybe he’s the disfigured one. Richards would have been the lynchpin of that thing. How does the character of Richards change over the course of that operatic version of Doom’s life. You gotta go somewhere where like the opera’s never finished or it burns or something. He’s like “And I loved him!” and he has the composer assassinated. You know? “He was my greatest love.”"

- Christopher Cantwell, Comic Watchers Show ep.112

Fanon
On AO3, DoomReed is the third most written ship for Victor von Doom and the second most written for Reed Richards. Particularly, Doomreed is the most written slash pairing for Reed Richards. It is also the third most written ship in the Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four (Comicverse) tags. As of May 2021, there are over 120 fics written under Doomreed on AO3.

Doomreed is primarily a comic-based romantic pairing, with most of its fan creations inspired by the Earth-616 version and other comic alternate universe counterparts. The tragic aspects of the two are highlighted in many of the works, as they are very different people who often seem "fated" as adversaries regardless of their deeper feelings for one another. On AO3, as of May 2021, Doomreed has over 70% of its fics belonging to a comic fandom tag, such as Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Marvel (Comics), or Marvel 616. Victor von Doom and Reed Richards have interacted in a range of other media including movies and animated series, but those incarnations are less often featured in fan work. On AO3, as of May 2021, under 15% of the existing Doomreed fics are about the 2005-2007 Fantastic Four movies and the 2015 movie versions.

College AUs are common for Doomreed. These fics may reference their first meeting at Empire State University in canon, and typically depict the two as roommates or lab partners. In addition, family tropes are also popular. In 616 canon, Victor von Doom helped deliver Valeria Richards, Reed's daughter. This relationship between Victor and Valeria inspired fan works featuring Victor and Reed co-parenting Valeria in various settings. Other fics focus on the less friendly aspects of the two rivals' relationship, exploring dark, mature themes such as emotional manipulation and physical violence.

Fans are often drawn to the "soulmate" quality of this frenemy ship. Despite their differences in alignment and beliefs, Victor von Doom and Reed Richards share striking similarities that make them a complex and dynamic pairing. Their complementary nature led to tropes of bodyswap, redeemed villain and fallen hero in both canon and fanon.

A lesser-known aspect that also appeals to a wide subset of the fanbase is the similarity between the Reed-Victor relationship and similar ones in gothic or romantic fiction of previous centuries; comparing Victor to Fitzwilliam Darcy from Jane Austen's 1813 novel, Pride and Prejudice (which would make Reed the Elizabeth Bennet corollary), for example. Combining this with the draw of their early college careers together often lends itself to stories in the vein of the "Dark Academia" subgenre of horror writing, particularly given the nature of Victor's area of study.

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Trivia

 * Kristoff Vernard, Victor's foster son, is actually Reed's half-brother. They have the same father and Kristoff is aware of this but Reed and Victor are not.