My Favorite Video Game Music

This is not a Best Of list, or even a ’17 of the Most Underrated Video Game Music Tracks (You Won’t Believe Number Four!)’ type list for one very good reason: I am in no way qualified to make that sort of judgment. I played saxophone for eight years in the school band and can noodle around on the ukulele, you think I know anything about music theory? I know a few key words. ‘Octave.’ B flat. Uh…shit, I’m blanking. Anyway, here’s some of my favorite video game music.

Retro Vibes

My first console was a SNES but I don’t have a lot of memories with it. Like, I know I tried to play Super Mario All-Stars, and I remember a lot of button mashing in Mortal Kombat, but I think the only core memory that came out of that console was being absolutely humiliated by The Lion King. I mean completely destroyed. I actually attribute repeated play session of that game to my terrible self-esteem.

Besides getting repeatedly spanked by a movie tie-in, the SNES wasn’t the real memory maker for me. That would be the Nintendo 64. To all the kids out there: the rumors are true. These consoles could survive getting tossed out of an airplane into an active volcano. I still have mine, and it still works fine after an amount of decades I’m currently unwilling to quantify. Sure, some of the cartridges have gotten a little finicky, but just a couple strips of scotch tape to keep it leaning forward and I can play Banjo and Kazooie in all its pixelated glory.

Speaking of Banjo and Kazooie, my first pick comes from the 2000 sequel Banjo-Tooie, a cartridge that still works well without any jerry-rigging. There was a later-game land called Cloud Cuckooland. I actually wasn’t in love with this theme. It was a little…much. Like, I get it, we’re in a crazy place, let’s make the theme crazy! Lots of whistles! Fast pace! It’s like the purest auditory migraine trigger I can think of. But the thing I really liked about Banjo-Tooie was that in the base world, Isle O’Hags, when you got close to the entrance of one of the lands the music switched to a twisted version of that land’s music. And the Isle O’Hags version of Cloud Cuckooland went like this:

That slide whistle sinking down to a minor key (I think? Again, I don’t know a of theory) was basically the first moment of my life where I was completely hooked by video game music. Absolutely loved it. Wanted to just hang out right here in the main world, doing fuck-all but listen to this on a loop. Compared to the actual theme, this version is so much grungier. The low strings in the main theme is replaced with this disgusting horn farting out the slow tempo and it is glorious. It’s bizarrely dark and sullen for a game about a bear with a bird in a backpack fighting against a rhyming witch and her sisters.

I Fucking Love Jazz

Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve figured this out about me, but I love jazz. Couldn’t tell you a thing about it, except that I like it. It’s great. There’s piano, and a double bass, and people playing those horns dirty. And I love all kinds, too! Except for that kind that’s made up entirely of someone randomly pressing saxophone buttons while the drummer looks on in muted shock. Could never get into that.

You know who else loves jazz? Whoever is making music over at Nintendo. And I mean all of them. Even the original Super Mario theme is jazzy as fuck once you get past the fact that all the sounds are made by…I want to say electronic versions of those recorders they made us all play in kindergarten? Listen to that syncopation and whatever the Holy Christ the baseline is doing. You listen to that shit while sipping on straight gin and afterwards you run from the cops breaking up your speakeasy.

But if I had to pick my favorite jazzy Nintendo theme, it’s a no brainer:

Okay, first off: I love me some saxophone. This number is a sweet little pick-me up, the theme song for my cat Louis (Well if it isn’t Louis-cat! She’s gray and white and kind of fat! She’s FLUFFY, and CUDDLY, and also a massive bitch!), and also the first Super Mario theme that sounds like its played with the actual instruments instead of using the ‘horn’ setting on a Casio.

Runner-up definitely goes to “Jump Up, Super Star!” which I very much want to karaoke someday.

Maybe you like your jazz quieter. Sadder. The soundtrack to your sultry mental breakdown where you drink red wine by the window while you watch the rain come down and you’re wearing formal clothes for some reason. Only one go-to for that mood:

The music for down days, for lonely nights, for mornings when you don’t know what’s going to happen and maybe don’t particularly care. Persona 5 (Royal) doesn’t miss a single time when it comes to music, I seriously can’t think of a track I don’t like, but there’s just something about “Beneath the Mask” the other tracks can’t beat. The moodiness, probably.

But let’s say you’re looking for something even darker. Downright…noir.

Yeah, I wasn’t going to beat around the bush after that one.

This is easily my favorite video game music from a video game I haven’t played. I found this track because I was working on a noir jazz playlist to listen to while doing nightshifts at the hospital and Pandora supplied it. I can’t think of a single song that better exemplifies what I’m looking for in noir jazz than this one. Saxophones may be my favorite, but a close second are trumpets, and when the sax comes in to echo the theme around the 1:30 mark I lose my got-danged mind. It’s dark. It’s sexy. It’s carrying a pistol in an ankle holster and watching the dame who just walked into its office with hungry yet suspicious eyes. I’m afraid to play the game because I can’t imagine a single thing ever living up to these three minutes.

Background Music

I can’t make the words go when someone else is singing their words. It’s a clash of words and I never win. I listen to a lot of chillhop, vaporwave, outrun, all those genres that seemed to spring up overnight around 2010 between some unholy combination of eighties nostalgia, video games, and YouTube. I also listen to soundtracks.

While it’s no secret I like jazz, I think if you’ve been around my site it’s even less of a secret that Horizon Zero Dawn is one of my favorite video games. I mentioned some of the soundtrack in a previous article, but this is my website so I’ll repeat myself whenever I want.

I was this close to giving it to “A Wanderer’s Work” which has those amazing synthetic voices around the 3:30 mark, but ultimately I had to go with “Trails in the Darkness” for the violin. I can’t get over the way this music would make me feel wandering around the world of Horizon, especially when it played at night and I was all by myself in the middle of the desert. Both pieces are perfect embodiments of the game: old world instruments mixed with electronic synth sounds and they fucking touch my soul. Look at my soul. Look at how touched it is. I should call the cops with how much it’s been touched. Just…fuck.

My husband likes to remind me that I got into gaming at the exact right moment. The first Final Fantasy I ever played was XV (which has it’s problems but also features a villain humming the Chocobo theme nefariously so it all balances out), the first Rockstar game I played was GTA V followed quickly by Red Dead Redemption 2, and the first Zelda game I played was Breath of the Wild.

Okay, we did have Ocarina of Time for the N64, but do you remember how long the opening to the game is? Especially compared to Super Mario 64? I played it for a grand total of forty minutes, got frustrated, and bailed.

Breath of the Wild is my Zen game. I play it like others play Animal Crossing. I’ve put in over two hundred hours spread out over three years. I beat Ganon once. I maxed out the amount of apples you can carry. I don’t know if I can even pick out a favorite. All of the themes are as quiet and melancholy as the game itself. I said I’d make a list of favorites, though, so I’ll stick to it, and go with the Tarrey Town Theme:

Understand it barely edges out literally everything else. Fun fact: when I was a nurse in the GI lab I used to play the Hyrule Field theme for patients as they waited for everything to get started. Always hoped someone would recognize it, but it turns out anxious fifty year olds waiting to get a flexible camera shoved up their bungholes aren’t really the demographic for video games. Who knew?

Brief shout out to the music of Red Dead Redemption 2 because for whatever reason I can put on these videos for literal hours while I work and never get tired of it.

Music for Fighting God

I’ll kick anyone’s ass. I’ll kick your ass. I’ll kick your dog’s ass. I’ll kick my own ass.

The Other Night

I had a dream.

I was sitting in bar. It was off, the way dreams are. I kept thinking it was the Blue Door even though it looked nothing like the Blue Door. In fact, after I had woken up, I realized it looked exactly like another bar across town, Paladium, down to the cracked leather on the bar stools to the cigarette smoke wafting out from the back. But in my dream, I thought it was the Blue Door.

Which bar it was doesn’t matter, actually. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have dwelled. I was in a bar, that was all that matters. I was sitting in the middle with some sort of drink in front of me. The sort of bright blue, fruity drink you could order at the Blue Door, but if you ordered one at Paladium the only thing you’d get is a glare. There was an umbrella. It was not pink, or blue, or green, but black and decorated with white skulls.

I was alone in the bar. There wasn’t even a bartender, despite the blended drink sitting in front of me. I didn’t question it. You don’t question things in dreams, do you? Unless you’re one of those people who can lucid dream. Never could pull it off, myself.

I was alone. There was soft music playing, too soft. I couldn’t identify it. Sometimes it sounded like a piano, sometimes someone humming. It was nice.

After a few sips of my drink, someone sat down a couple of seats away from me. Still, there was no bartender. But this person who sat had a drink in front of them, all the same. The music stopped. There was a television above the bar, now. Or maybe it had always been there. In the dream, I accepted it either way. It was tuned to the news. Some war, somewhere. I’d vaguely heard of it. I couldn’t tell you which one it was, now. It’s become…hazy. Probably because it didn’t matter. It could have been any of them.

The person who had sat down with me watch for a while, occasionally picking up their drink. Rolling the ice around and taking a sip. After a while of this, during which I sipped at my blue drink and never changed the amount in the glass, this person made a big sigh. The theatrical kind. The sort that invites conversation.

In real life I would have, of course, ignored this. In fact, had it come to being alone in a bar with a complete stranger I would have removed myself from the situation as soon as I could and avoided the whole thing to begin with. But we’re different in dreams, aren’t we? Things feel different. This stranger sat near me and I did not feel awkward. This person sighed, and I did not feel the usual pangs and twists of social anxiety. There was no fear of saying the right thing. I understood it didn’t matter.

So, this person sighs. Before I can say anything, they look at me and say, “Damn shame.”

And I say, “I thought you would have liked to see it.”

Because this person was Death.

I knew it the way I knew the bar was actually the Blue Door even though it looked like Paladium. An obvious fact. How did I come by this knowledge? I didn’t ask. You never do, in dreams. Like a child, you accept everything.

This person did not look like Death, in the way we imagine. No black cloak with the hood over a skull head, no scythe parked next to the door or in the umbrella stand. They were a person. I cannot recall their details just like I cannot recall what music was playing, but I do know they looked entirely human. I distinctly remember a round face, and an impression that youth was a lie.

Death shook their head rather sadly. They were not upset by my assumption, nor surprised. They sounded tired.

“Everyone thinks so. Humanity has painted me looming over conflict since they learned to stain berries onto stone.”

“Oh, is it one of those things where you don’t actually like your job, you just do it because you have to?”

Death made a face at me. “What? Fuck no! I love my job. I love collecting everything. Someday, I’ll have the complete set, and only then will I be happy to stop. But there’s something you forget. Not you you. The royal you. All of you.”

I thought about it for a while, and Death let me. They sipped at whatever they were drinking – it looked like some sort of whiskey drink, I don’t know – and I sipped at my never ending blue drink with the little black umbrella. The news went on and on. Different conflicts. Death, I believe, cried a bit, but I was too busy thinking to say anything.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” I finally said. “I seem to be in a forgetful mood.”

“ ‘A forgetful mood,’” Death mused. “A nice way to describe dreams. Yes.”

They said I was in a dream, but in the way of dreams, I didn’t believe it. Or maybe didn’t even really hear it. I was waiting for Death to tell me what I forgot.

“What you forgot,” they said. “Is that life produces death. Do you see? Everything dies. Everything, everything, everything. There’s no escape.”

They paused, like I should understand now. I still didn’t. Maybe I would have if I had been awake, but the brain asleep is far more soupy and meandering.

“You get them sooner,” I said, gesturing to the television. “Younger.”

Death shook their head. “Don’t care about age. Or if I do, older is better. Because do you know what an eighty year old man has that a twenty year old doesn’t?”

I stared at them blankly. Maybe I had too much blue drink in me.

“Kids. Grand kids. Great-grand kids, maybe. Do you see? Do you understand? I want you all to be healthy. Safe. Long-lived. I’m not War, I hate the way you spill each other’s blood. I’m not Famine, I hate to see the swollen bellies and sunken cheeks of the starving. I’m not Pestilence, I hate the diseases that eat you up from the inside. I want humans to live, for as long as they can. Because then they’ll make more humans. Then I can take them all. See?”

“I do.” And I wasn’t lying. It had finally sunk in. Made sense, and not just dream sense. It still makes sense to me now, when I think of it.

“Is that why I’m here?” I asked. “So you could tell me this?”

Death shrugged then. “No, I can just never stop myself from going off on that tangent. I wanted someone to have a quiet drink with.”

We finished our drinks then in comfortable silence, the sort of silence I usually only share with three other people. I woke up the next morning feeling very depersonalized and ended up calling off from work. Truth be told, it hasn’t really ended.

Because I can see it now. I can’t stop. And every time I see more senseless death, I wonder if Death is there. Reaping the young and crying over the lives they’ll never have.

The Internet Can’t Keep It’s Fat Mouth Shut: Spider-Man Edition

One of the worst things about being chronically online…

Eh, you know what? Never mind. There’s no way to quantify all the terrible things that come along with the near-constant barrage of partially-correct information and stream of consciousness opinions.

One of the things about being chronically online is that the internet can’t keep its damn mouth shut.

We Finally Saw Spider-Man: No Way Home

It’s the first Marvel movie I haven’t seen in theaters. Actually, it’s the second. It’s possible I’ve never actually seen Iron Man 2 the entire way through.

This was the first Marvel movie I wanted to see that I didn’t catch in theaters. I’m not blaming the virus. I’m not even blaming the tons of people who have let their fear of needles cause this virus to continue to reign over us like some demented, in-bred royal. No, I’m, as always, blaming capitalism. Who cares that an even more contagious variant just showed up. There’s money to be made!

And look at my statement all the way up there. I’ve seen basically every one of these two hour color and punch fests in theaters. Some multiple times. I have a Disney+ subscription. I’m not claiming to be some modern-day Thoreau, subsisting on berries and pond-water and scowling at the families passing by with McDonald’s bags. I’ve given a ridiculous amount of money to both Disney and various movie theaters, and they are seriously going to have to start fucking these up to get me to stop. It’s just…when it became apparent it still might not be entirely safe couldn’t we have kept up the simultaneous VOD releases? For a few months? You still make gobs of money, for Christ’s sake.

I still paid for VOD this last weekend because God only knows when it’ll pop up for free or even reduced cost on one of the services I’m already paying for. Potentially never, given the way Sony and Disney are still at each other’s throats about all this (and again, don’t misjudge me – I think it’s hilarious and definitely want the two of them to continue fighting until the sun burns out). The only difference is that instead of seeing it opening weekend, I’m seeing it three months after opening weekend. Which, in internet time, is roughly an epoch.

Tossing up the Spoiler Chocobo, serious spoilers for No Way Home from here on out.

KWEH

‘Spoilers’ not ‘Super Happy Fun Shareable Secrets’

Yeah, I knew everything before it happened. Everything. I had already guessed some of it, but I still would have liked to be proven right by the movie and not by some dumbass article on the internet. The thing that pisses me off the most was Aunt May’s death, because I only got spoiled on that a week and a half ago. I was so close!

You’ll notice I said ‘dumbass article’ and not ‘dumbass reddit user.’ The Aunt May spoiler is the only one I caught from reddit. Every single other spoiler came from the dumbest places. Article headlines in my Google News Feed. YouTube thumbnails. Off-hands mentions in articles that not only didn’t have anything to do with Spider-Man or Marvel, they didn’t have anything to do with movies. Just some asshole writing about why gas prices are skyrocketing and somehow tying in Electro into that shit. The memes. Everywhere the memes!

This is what I mean about the internet not being able to keep its fucking mouth shut. I don’t mean trolls who create the username ‘mattisbackBAYBEE’ and then comments ‘Goblin kills May’ in random conversations until they get banned, and then they make another username ‘daredevilcatchesabrick’ and keep doing it. These idiots have always existed, they will always exist, and a lot of other people have come together as an impromptu community to shut that shit down before it gets out of hand.

No, it’s the people who simply assume everyone has already seen everything they have seen. Or they forget, and then, because it’s the fucking internet, they don’t go back and edit the mention out of their blog or vlog or whatever, they leave it hanging, forever spoiling randoms who only wanted to know how the sports went the previous day. I’m not afraid of the troll because some random internet citizen is going to punch that troll in the mouth before he can bother me, but then that random internet citizen is going to turn around and be all, ‘Oh, man! That was totally like in the movie when Blank-Man kept repeatedly blanking Green Blank in the face!’

Great. Thanks.

On the Other Hand, It Also Works in My Favor

I haven’t seen any Game of Thrones past the first season, but I still know all the plot beats. I knew everything about the Red Wedding within hours of it happening, and I knew about the Starbucks cup even faster. Once I heard what a medieval shitshow the last season was, it completely erased what little desire I had to catch up and watch the whole thing, and now, thanks to the internet blabbing about every detail, I can safely ignore all the dragons and soft-core porn.

The True Lesson is Get Off the Internet

But that’s not happening any time soon, you can’t make me, you’re not my supervisor.

The actual lesson is everyone should be more like Andrew Garfield, who some say is still out there somewhere, denying he’s in No Way Home to a Hollywood reporter to this very day.

Time To Go

Jimmy stared out the window at the city. Or, what was left of it. There was a sinkhole in the street below him. The building a couple blocks over was knocked down, leaning on the one next to it. Even six stories up and through heavy glass he could hear the screams of the people running down the street. Above it all, the ship sat in the air. Parked. Obviously huge. Immense. Heavy. And unmoving, sitting in the middle of the sky as though it were pressed into land. Occasional lasers blast from it, destroying something else. So far, it hadn’t been pointed at Jimmy’s building. Given he lived on the top floor of an apartment building that already looked like it had been attacked at some point, he had an idea he was probably safe.

“Jimmy!” his roommate Ralph called from behind him. “Less staring, more packing, buddy! AIS in twenty minutes and we are blowing this hellscape.”

Their other roommate, Lizzy, had a family cabin upstate in the middle of the woods. The aliens were attacking major cities. It would at least give them time to figure out what the hell was happening, and what on earth they should do next.

He already grabbed his most important stuff shoved into a duffle. Underpants. Clothes. The Switch and his gaming laptop. Ralph had carefully packaged up the PS4 Pro  back into its box and it was ready to go. Food. Should they bring food?

A couple minutes later he was standing in the pantry, pushing all the non-perishables into a backpack and wondering about grabbing a cooler for the Coors Banquets in the fridge when his ass started vibrating.

EMS message, probably.

But the vibrating didn’t stop, and he realized it wasn’t an alert. It was a call.

Mom…

His veins froze and a twitch developed over his eye. The display on his phone didn’t show a picture of his mom. It showed a picture of a donkey’s ass.

Don’t answer it, he thought. But the niggling doubt wouldn’t stop. What if he’s in trouble?

“Yeah?” He put the phone to his ear and held it there with his shoulder as he pulled the half-full bags of Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch out of their boxes and shoved them on top of the soup cans.

“Don’t ‘yeah’ me,” Paul said from the other end of the line. “Where the hell are you?”

Jimmy glanced out the kitchen window to make sure he hadn’t been hallucinating the whole thing. The ship fired at some point in the city, and new smoke rose up.

“Uh…is this a trick question?”

“Your shift started half an hour ago!” Paul screamed loud enough to make Jimmy wince.

“I…um…have you looked outside lately?”

“I know what’s going on,” Paul said in such a way that Jimmy could see the handwave. “I’m looking at it right now. So what?”

“So…are you kidding me? We’re evacuating the city, man. We’re not sticking around.”

“Oh, no, you’re not. You are scheduled for an eight shift today and you are working it. Do you know how swamped we are right now?”

Jimmy let loose a laugh. “Swamped? How the fuck-”

“Everybody wants gas! Everybody wants food! We’ve got a line out the door and it’s all because you’re not here!”

“Oh, shit!” Jimmy put the phone down and glanced around the apartment until he found Lizzy, trying to shove both her cat and Ralph’s cat into the same carrier with unpleasant results. “Lizzy, you got gas in the tank?”

“Filled up last night, thank fuck,” she said, not looking up from the cats.

“Okay, phew.” He realized the phone in his hand was still squawking, something about leaving us in a lurch and third write-up and unacceptable.

“Yeah, man, I quit. You’re insane,” Jimmy said over the bird noises. He glanced out the window in time to see another huge green laser fire out of the ship, this time landing close to the apartment building.

The squawking on the other end of the phone stopped mid-word.

Jimmy stared at the phone for a few seconds.

“Jimmy!” Ralph called from the front door. “What the fuck, man, let’s go!”

“I think the aliens just destroyed the convenience store,” he said. “I think my boss is dead.”

Ralph shrugged. “Silver lining! Let’s go.”

Halfway down the stairs to the garage, huffing and puffing as he carried everything he owned worth a damn on his shoulders and arms, Jimmy came to an important decision:

He was happy his boss was dead, and was going to allow himself to have that. Imagining Paul vaporized in an instant while running his mouth kept him sane all the way up the freeway.

Directions

“Do you know the way to the train station?” she asked him.

“Yes. Down that way three blocks, the take a left. You’ll see it after four blocks, can’t miss it.”

She smiled at him in thanks and made her way down the street. It was a lie. That wasn’t the way to the train station. He didn’t know where the station was. He’d never been to this city before.

Why did I do that?

Perhaps it was because all men were bastards, and because he was a man, he couldn’t help himself. That didn’t seem fair to all men, though, to be judged based on his actions alone.

Perhaps, then, it was just him. He was the bastard. But that didn’t seem fair to him, to call him a bastard based off one action.

It must be her fault, then, for asking me.

Pleased, he hit the pedestrian button and walked into traffic.

The Batman Movie I’ve Been Waiting For

Spoilers for the new Batman movie.

I’m not usually one for conspiracies unless they’re completely buckwild, like the moon being hollow and filled with a creamy cheese center, but I am telling you the computers are listening. Phones, Alexas, Google whatevers, they’re all listening, all the time, and funneling that information to God knows where. How else do you explain the fact that I got the Batman movie I’ve been casually asking for for the past five or six years?

The Batman Movies We’ve Been Getting

Of the ten live-action Batman or Batman-related movies we have gotten since Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman (ten! Ten. That I can think of! Ten in thirty-three years! That’s around one every three years! I’m not even including all the animated stuff) most of them feature an already established Batman. This Batman has been Bataranging around Gotham for years before the movie starts. He’s got his gadgets, and he’s got his signature moves, and he’s certainly got the reputation. He’s jamming in and out of the Bat Cave so often he’s had to put street lights in front of the cave entrance, and everyone in Gotham knows if they hear someone free climbing the bank behind them to pretend that nothing’s going on or their local billionaire celebrity is going to be on the news the next morning with a black eye and a hangover complaining about citizens ‘putting themselves in harms way’ or whatever the fuck. Batman is a known Gotham entity with a complete rogues gallery and a frequent shopper’s card at the Blackwater Surplus Store.

Then you’ve got Christopher Nolan’s 2005 Batman Begins, the only truly origin story of the lot, and it’s…fine? It’s fine. Bruce Wayne trains in the middle of the vaguely Asian wilderness…hold on…okay, I looked it up, and apparently he’s in Bhutan. So Bruce Wayne trains in the middle of the Bhutan wilderness with the guy from Taken and then comes back to Gotham to become the Batman. You get a little awkwardness as he puts his costume together, tries to decide where to start with Chicago-I-mean-Gotham’s crime, and then he gets the beginnings of his rogues gallery with Scarecrow. It’s fine.

But it wasn’t what I wanted in a Batman origin story.

Also, before we move on: if I have to see Thomas and Martha Wayne die in that alley one more time I’m going to choke myself to death with Martha’s pearl necklace.

The Problem With Batman Begins

He’s too fucking good at his job. Like, almost immediately. Sure, he’s testing out shit, has a few problems with his costume, needs to set up the Bat Cave and get the Batmobile – excuse me, Tumbler. My God, that era of ‘superhero movies pretending to be Actually Serious Movies’ was fucking exhausting – but Christian Bale plays Bruce Wayne/Batman as already so sure of himself. He comes out of the gate with the confidence level of a swan in a tiara. He wins his fights. He seems to have a pretty firm understanding of the inner workings of Gotham’s supposedly intricate and deeply imbedded criminal underbelly, despite the fact that he’s been gone for years and prior to that the only connection he had to it was the fucking moron who killed his parents. It takes him all of a month to bully his way back to being in charge of Wayne Enterprises.

Despite being an origin story, Batman Begins isn’t really about Bruce Wayne growing into Batman. He shows back up into Gotham and he is Batman. Fully formed. Like Athena from Zeus’ head, if Athena was covered head to toe in black body armor.

The Batman Movie I’ve Wanted

An origin story about Batman, but Bruce Wayne absolutely sucks nuts at it for a while.

I don’t mean I want to see training montages. Learning how to fight is, like, the least interesting part about becoming Batman. The man can do so much more than punch dudes and scowl. He’s a great driver, that didn’t just happen. He’s got some sick parkour skills, that’s hours of training right there. And he’s supposed to be a great detective! You don’t get bit by a radioactive spider and decide to sleep it off because you’re broke with no health insurance and wake up the next morning the best detective in the world! Fuck no, you have to earn that shit.

That’s the stuff I wanted to see. Bruce Wayne earning the title of Batman. Working through the kinks. Actually learning about the criminal element in Gotham from people who know. Make mistakes. Get his ass kicked. Have one of his gadgets fuck up because it hasn’t been properly beta-tested.

Ten movies later, I finally got it.

The Batman

This latest movie plays out almost like a sequel. This first missing movie would be the actual origin story. Bruce Wayne loses his parents at a young age, gets raised by Alfred Pennyworth, decides to become a vigilante, blah blah blah, we’ve all seen it. It leads into this movie, which is so, so much more interesting.

Bruce has only been Batman for a year or two. Everyone in Gotham knows him, but they’re not really sure what he’s about (except Gordon, who is fully onboard to the point of already setting up and running the Bat Signal). The movie opens with Batman saving a man from a vicious beating at the hands of some street ruffians, but then the man begs Batman not to hurt him, too, because at this point all Batman is known for is violence.

No, wait, wrong V word. Vengeance. He’s known for vengeance. A cop who otherwise does not interact with Batman in this movie sarcastically calls him “Mr. Vengeance,” telling us that Batman’s ‘I am vengeance’ line that he gives to the ruffians before tossing them around like so many sacks of rice is something he tells every ruffian, goon, and dweeb. Not only does he not fully understand what Batman could and should be, he can’t even think of another line.

He fucks up. A lot. He’s a good detective, but not a great one. He has to fiddle with his contact lens camera to get a good signal from Selena. The absolute best is when he escapes from the GCPD, hesitates at the roof before jumping off because he still has a healthy fear of heights, and then after a fairly-successful glide in his wing suit pulls his parachute at the exact wrong time and takes an entire overpass to the face. And then has to look around to make sure no one noticed before hobbling back to the shadows. This is immediately after he let a bomb blow up directly in front of him, which is how he ended up in the cop shop in the first place.

Bruce Wayne doesn’t fully suck as Batman in this movie. In fact, he’s pretty good. But he’s still got a lot of kinks to work out.

Bruce Wayne

In retrospect, I fully hated Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne. Again, he’s playing Bruce at the beginning of his cowled-vigilante journey, and yet he plays him with such confidence. Like becoming the night is so fucking easy. There’s barely a hint of hesitation, never a single question of whether he’ll be able to pull off what he’s doing. He’s fucking smug about it.

Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne is fully fucked up. He’s not a man, he’s several mental health issues standing on top of one another in a trench coat. When he’s out of the costume he can barely make eye contact, for fuck’s sake.

He’s so bad at playing Bruce Wayne the way he needs to. At some point in the past year he’s completely checked out. Doesn’t give a shit about Wayne Enterprises and hasn’t realized that at least pretending to will be to his benefit. He’s not there yet. For the first interpretation of Bruce Wayne that doesn’t show the death of his parents at all, he’s the most affected by it.

When he is Batman, what drives him isn’t so much confidence as it is grim fucking determination. It’s clear he’s doing this because he literally doesn’t see any other way forward, for him or the city. He’s hilariously awkward about it (fucking knocking on the front door of the Iceberg Lounge and dealing with the bouncers to be let in?? In his full Batman getup?? I’m still processing how hilarious this moment was) and while obviously better at human interaction when able to hide behind the mask he still isn’t very good at it, mostly just staring at the people trying to talk to him until they get too intimidated and give up. The only reason he’s so good with Jim Gordon is because, for whatever unfathomable reason, at some point before this movie Batman became Gordon’s ride or die.

This is My Favorite Batman Movie

Yeah, so, low bar to clear in the first place because I’m not really much of a Batman fan and most of the others are hot garbage for one reason or another. The only other really good one is The Dark Knight and while I think that movie is still a banger, The Batman is simply more fun to watch. The Tumbler may have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and been able to do flips and shit or whatever, but The Batman’s Batmobile was a fucking Dodge Charger with a jet engine mounted on the back and it fucking growled so loud my ears hurt afterward. The difference between a ‘grown up’ Batmobile, and a fun one.

I’m excited to see if they make another one of these, unless it includes the Joker. Y’all, I cannot express to you how over the Joker as a character I am, and I will be especially unhappy if he’s played by fucking Druig.

Strange Reality, 3

Alina still doesn’t know who is controlling her arm, why the authorities are after her, or where she’s going. What she does know is she’d rather run through the city than meet the cops face to face.

Alina’s left arm was acting like an arm again. Swinging next to her. Obeying her commands. Big swings. Little finger twitches. She knew she was heading in the right direction because every time she turned down the wrong street or veered in the wrong direction it started getting pissy again.

GPS in the arm. Potentially a microphone, she still couldn’t be sure if it had ever responded to her. A camera? Could there be a tiny little lens hidden somewhere? Not something she wanted to think about. Or try to find. She kept her arm at her side and walked as fast as she could without looking suspicious.

The damned arm. She’d never wanted it in the first place. Never wanted any sort of mod. She didn’t judge people who got modded. Well, not a lot. Those people who more machine than human freaked her out. How could you give up so much of yourself? So much maintenance. Updates. Different corpos owned different pieces. Limbs were generally done by Serve-Lite, insides LuxGen, and there were three different monsters who offered neurals. It was bad enough she had to go to the Serve-Lite offices once or twice a month for updates. These modders she saw in the street, with the jacks and the lenses and the mech-limbs and who knew what going on under the skin must have been in and out of update offices every day.

Assuming all their mods are legal.

Of course they weren’t. Of course not. Just because Alina lived her life in fear didn’t mean everyone did. She knew there were people out there – dangerous people – who cut their mods. ‘Broke’ them, the corpos said. ‘Freed’ them, said the modders. Those were the ones who got legal mods in the first place. Alina could think of three different backrooms in the Boiler alone where someone with the guts and the chains could get whatever they wanted. All they could see was freedom from corpo control. But what about safety? If something went wrong with one of their back-alley mods it was up to them to fix it before it killed them in some spectacular way. Just last week she’d seen a guy at the docks fall over dead, smoke and blood coming from his ears. They wouldn’t say what had been in his brain, but Alina knew where he had gotten it.

Glancing down at her arm, she wiggled the fingers. She had gotten hers from Serve-Lite, like you were supposed to. Went in for her reported updates, like you were supposed to. Even got Parsec Shipping to pay for it because the accident had happened at work. Phloxing idiot had lied about being able to drive a maglift. Whole shipping crate came down on her. She was lucky it had only crushed her arm. Sometimes, even when she looked down at her new arm, black and shiny, she still remembered her old arm. Her real arm. It still ached.

This arm she had gotten the way she was supposed. Did everything they asked. Filled out the paperwork. Got the updates. That way, when it malfunctioned, she’d be able to go into the Serve-Lite office and get it fixed. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

Except this has been the opposite of that. This has been…difficult-difficult, lemon difficult.

Alina shook her head as she crossed the street. The cracks of sky between the surrounding buildings was finally starting to lighten, and there were more people on the street. Helpful, actually. She blended in better. As long as no one noticed her bare feet.

This isn’t Serve-Lite’s fault. Someone hacked my arm. Put something in it that shouldn’t be there. This is all a misunderstanding. This is going to get cleared up. I wouldn’t have even run if they had only knocked like normal people. This would have been fixed by now if everyone would just calm down!

Yes. Yes, all of this. She only ran because she was hungover and afraid and they blew her door in (never mind she’d already tossed herself out of a window by then). And she wasn’t going back because they were chasing her with guns. If they had approached her calmly she would have done what they said. Done anything to get her arm fixed. This was not her fault. And she still trusted the system. Yes. She still trusted the system.

Someone blared their horn behind her and she bit her cheek to keep from screaming. Hustling to the next intersection, she looked up at the glowing street signs and sighed in relief.

Quinn Street. Finally

She barely got a few feet down one direction before the arm came back to life and jerked her in the other direction. The sketchy direction. Where a lot of the neon and billboards had been burned out. Of course.

It got worse and worse as she went. The building crowds of the morning rush faded away. The people she saw here were mostly in crumpled heaps on the walk next to the buildings. They either looked at her with half-pleading eyes or kept right on snoring. Alina gave them a wide berth. The Boiler wasn’t exactly the good part of town – nothing below fifteen stories could ever be – but it was safe.

Hmm. Okay, maybe safe wasn’t the right word. Safer. And she knew everyone there. Everyone knew her. There was a community. What community could be here? The people she saw weren’t speaking to each other. Most of the billboards and holograms had been broken, seemingly on purpose. It was dark, and quiet, and she didn’t like it, and she wanted to go home.

Lights flashed behind her in a familiar pattern. She didn’t have to turn around to know what she’d find. She did anyway.

Parked in the intersection she had just crossed was a police lev. As she stared, the window rolled down to reveal two men. Both looking at her.

Alina ran.

Yelling. The whirring sounds of the lev backing up, turning. Coming for her.

They’re going to run me down.

Someone grabbed her hand and pulled her off the street.

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Do You Taste Metal? Inevitability and the Emotions of HBO’s Chernobyl

Besides vaguely describing a scene in the first episode there are no spoilers present for the show. Unless you don’t actually know what happened in Chernobyl in the first place.

I got around to watching HBO’s 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, and of course I went about it like an absolute buffoon. My husband didn’t want to watch it, so I put on the first episode after he’d gone to bed. Around ten o’clock. And then immediately was supposed to go to sleep.

Yeah, that didn’t happen. I had to watch an episode of Community first. And when I did go to bed, I didn’t fall asleep for two hours. What sleep I did get was sketchy at best. I had to bring one of the cats to the vet the next morning for a check-up and the PetSmart people found me asleep on a pile of dog beds. They didn’t take it well.

I’ve done this to myself before, of course. The worst was definitely after seeing Hereditary, where even with all the lights on and reruns of Frasier on the television I still couldn’t close my eyes without freaking out. Hell, back in the early 2010s there were nights slept with the lights on from watching terrible Slender-Man YouTube channels. Scaring myself so badly I don’t sleep right is nothing new.

But the first episode of Chernobyl was different, and it’s all from the type of fear I was feeling. A type of fear I still can’t exactly pinpoint.

Terror vs Horror

Okay, anyone who writes horror, or even enjoys horror as genre, already knows what about to get into, but I’ll go over it anyway for anyone just joining in on the fun. While terror and horror can be used interchangeably, there’s actually a slight distinction between the two. First distinguished by gothic writer Anne Radcliffe and expanded upon by countless authors and writers since then, it goes like this:

Terror is the feeling of dread and anticipation that comes before something scary happening.

Horror is the feeling of revulsion that comes after something scary happened.

Let’s look at the opening scene of Scream. Even as the scene starts, when absolutely nothing out of the ordinary is really happening, you are already freaking out because you know exactly what kind of movie you walked into. The terror might not be there for Drew Barrymore’s character, but it’s there for you because you know what you signed up for. After a couple of minutes her character gets clued in and the terror only deepens. Even as she sees poor Steve out on the patio and then gutted, this is still terror. After all, it hasn’t happened to her yet.

The moment of horror isn’t until the knife enters her body. Us viewers gets a second moment of horror later, when her parents find her body.

The difference is in the related emotions. Terror is a buildup of those emotions, anticipating something to where it almost feels like excitement. Horror, in contrast, is almost a relief. Sure, something awful and life-scarring is happening, but at least now you know what it is. Terror constantly leaves you guessing, but at least with horror you have something tangible to actually react to. Even if that reaction is pissing yourself and/or uncontrolled vomiting.

Translation of Fear

Usually when some movie or show scares me enough to disrupt sleep, there’s a specific element of that could happen to me. Even with supernatural stuff. Especially with supernatural stuff, now that I think about it. I can lock my doors against a serial killer or not go with a random Swede to his middle-of-nowhere commune to save a dying and pointless relationship, but how the fuck do I keep a ghost or a demon out of my house? Like, I think I’d just have to live with it.

That’s the sort of fear that keeps me up at night after watching something like Hereditary or The Haunting of Hill House. That some supernatural entity is going to use me for target practice. That what happened to the characters on screen is going to happen to me. That’s why I use my phone flashlight to walk from my office to the bedroom in the dark. That’s why I leave lights on and jump at shadows. Because a part of my brain has decided that I will be starring in the movie’s sequel.

And Yet, Chernobyl

The first episode of the show doesn’t fit any of these emotional descriptions. Maybe my level of knowledge of the disaster at Chernobyl put me in a sort-of sweet spot, such at it was. I knew the broad strokes. Knew terms like ‘elephant’s foot’ and ‘the liquidators.’ Knew the ultimate fate of everyone involved but did not know specifics.

I couldn’t quite be terrified, because I knew what was coming.

I couldn’t quite be horrified, because I still had to see it play out.

And I never feared it would happen to me, because it was too specific and it’s not like a nuclear reactor core can materialize inside my bathroom.

But every second of the episode was still painful. Terrible and horrible all at once. Because I knew what would happen and could do nothing to stop it. I always yell at the television anyway, but this time was especially bad. “Leave, leave!” “Don’t go in there!” “Don’t fucking touch that are you out of your God damned mind?” The scene with the firefighters arriving is especially potent. The one firefighter goes to pick up a piece of debris, and even thought at this point I don’t even understand what it is I know enough that picking it up is a death sentence. I’m not terrified, because I’m not surprised when merely seconds after putting the piece down he begins shaking his hand like something is wrong, nor minutes later when he begins wailing in agony and reveals the sores all over his hand, nor a while later when he’s sitting on the ground, completely out of it. Dying. And I can’t be horrified, because it’s not over. It’s still happening. This particular firefighter will be dead within minutes, but I know all of the other firefighters will be dead within weeks.

The entire first episode of Chernobyl kept me in that space between terror and horror, always increasing the anticipation and the dread and never coming through with a release. And there’s really only one word for that.

Agony

After everything else is gone, it’s the only thing that fits. “Extreme physical or mental suffering.” The first episode of Chernobyl is an hour of agony. You know the end from the beginning. You know from the first shot of the men in the control room trying to figure out what happened that they’re all dead, but you have to watch it happen anyway. There’s no suspense, no surprise, only a trudging march through everything that must happen.

I don’t mean that in a bad way. If you haven’t seen Chernobyl, there’s a reason why it won so many awards. The agony is not because something in the show isn’t working (well, besides the reactor), but because everything is working. You’re supposed to be in agony. It’s on purpose. You’re watching the invisible deaths of men by something none of them understand enough and most of them don’t understand at all. Not exactly popcorn-worthy.

This isn’t really a review of the show or the episode, just me trying to figure out what the hell it made me feel for an hour. Whatever it was, it sucked, and I’ve already finished the series and rewatched the first episode twice.

Strange Reality, 2

Last time, Alina was woken up in the middle of the night by her arm smacking her across the face and ordering her to jump out the window. Turns out the arm may have been right.

This wasn’t the night Alina expected. Obviously. If she thought she was going to get smacked awake in the middle of the night by a malfunctioning arm and then told to escape out a window before a bunch of darkhats blew down her door she wouldn’t have had been drinking so hard on her way home. Or at least put on pants.

She had gotten halfway down the alley and dropped behind a collection of reeking, sticky garbage cans. When she dared to peek around, her apartment was easy to find. The only one with the window shield up. Lights pouring out, flashing like there was a party.

Someone leaned out the window. She fell back and immediately regretted it. The smell overwhelmed her.

“What the phlox,” Alina muttered.

Her left arm moved again, waving around so high above her head she had to pull it back down.

“They’ll see!” she hissed.

Can this thing even hear me?

Whoever had been leaning out of her window was gone, and Alina made a run for it. She didn’t know where she was going, but anywhere had to be better than sitting next to gross garbage cans that her runaway arm could swing into and knock over any minute.

It must have been closer to morning than she thought. The alley dumped onto Kazm and already some of the stalls had interior lights on and banging sounds coming from inside as someone set up their dreg. She kept behind the stalls, trying to find the small pools of darkness, the blank spots where the lights from the ads and boards and holograms didn’t reach. They were small, and if anyone else had been on the street at that moment they would have seen her shuffling around in her thin shirt and short-shorts, arm waving around like some sort of bizarre, slutty crab.

She crossed the Kazm and went down the next alley. Leaning against the wall, hands on her knees, she listened. The constant droning of the city from above and below, almost like breathing. The bips and squeaks and boops and cutesy talk from the billboards and holograms. Nothing out of the ordinary, there. What she didn’t hear was the sound of boots. Of shouting. Of energy weapons charging. They either weren’t coming for her, or were so silent running didn’t matter.

The arm shook again. It was this stupid thing’s fault she was out here on the street in her underwear, her tiny apartment being tossed. It had to be. What had she done? She went to work. She drank on the train. Got her updates when they came out. She went out with friends. Used to do that, anyway. They could search every inch of that room and not find a single piece of contraband. Her life was quiet. Her life was nothing. There was no way they were there for here.

Something had happened to her arm.

It hit the wall a few times and she finally guided it so it was holding the eyeliner against the glass wall.

“Why are they after you?”

WALLFLOWER BAR

“Wall…what, you want a drink?”

18475 QUINN STREET WALLFLOWER BAR

“Who are you? How are you controlling my arm? What did you do to it? Why are they after it?”

WALLFLOWER BAR ERASE THIS

Maybe I should just go back. Explain this to whoever is in there. Probably the police, right? Yeah, they’ll understand. I don’t know what’s going on, I can tell them that and they’ll leave me alone. Maybe take my arm. I can get a new one, I’ve got the chains for at least a dreggy one until I can save up. Yeah, they’ll believe me. This is all a misunderstanding.

Echoes of stomping boots came to her from the alleyways. They didn’t sound like they belonged to reasonable people. People who would understand she was nothing more than a dock worker with a malfunctioning (hacked?) arm. No, those boots had the distinct tread of the type of person who would shoot first and never ask questions unless instructed to. Alina didn’t know what any of this was, but she knew the cops weren’t the answer.

She smudged the words written on the glass and started to run.

Wallflower Bar. Quinn Street. Where the fuck is Quinn street? No, wait, I’ve seen it before. Where, though? Was I…or maybe…ooh, pants.

The alley had taken her out to Reyo. One of the stalls getting ready to open was selling racks of clothes, already in a line next to their little glowing hut. No one seemed to be around. Whoever was opening the stall was inside, or gone off to get food, maybe. Barely pausing, she pulled the first things she could off a couple of racks – a pair of black pants and a pink shirt with a purple teddy bear in sunglasses on the front.

“Hey!”

The stall owner must have come out at the exact right moment to see her.

“You can’t take that!”

Alina took off, wincing as her feet slapped the pavement.

“Stop. Hey, officers, over here! Thief! Running!”

Officers?

The ones from her apartment. Must be. Police didn’t free-roam the Boiler. They only came here when they had a reason to. Someone to snatch. Someone to beat. Someone to kill.

What are they going to do to you?

Alina could hear them behind her. Boots. If they yelled at her, or said anything at all, she didn’t hear it.

I’m too hungover for this.

Her soupy brain told her she shouldn’t be running in a straight line. Two seconds after she jerked left into the street an energy pulse whizzed through the space her head had previously been. If there was a later, she’d be very proud she hadn’t screamed. Her running became like a rat down at the dock. Here, there, one direction, then other, behind a stall, around a parked motor, halfway up the stairs to the elevo before jumping over the railing. The alley in front of her had a foodstuffs place on one side and a porn shop on the other. The boots were close behind her. They were yelling. The pulses were singeing her hair.

Alina had a chance.

A little more than halfway down the alley, next to the back door of the noodle place, was an ancient towncar. Mrs. Tanaka’s son Romeo worked on it in what little free time he had. After two years it didn’t even have maglev. It didn’t even have tires. It did have a ‘blitzing’ stereo.

Alina didn’t need tires. The car was such a piece of shit and going nowhere everyone knew Romeo didn’t lock it. The truck opened easily and she flung herself in, slamming it behind her.

Tucked in the fetal position, clutching the clothes she had stolen like the teddy on the shirt was real, Alina tried desperately to slow her breathing. And her heart. And her mind.

What if they’ve got the tacmets on? They’ll have heat vision, yeah? Infrared. Dreg. Phlox. Dregging phlox. What is happening? Why is happening? I swear to God if this arms moves.

The arm, for once, was quiet. She squeezed the fist to test control. At least there was that.

Boots.

Boots coming.

Boots going.

No yelling. No fanfare. They probably didn’t even register the car. Just ran right past it, silent, the only sound those infernal boots.

Alina knew she couldn’t wait. She had to get out of the Boiler. Toward…Quill? Quentin? No, Quinn, Quinn. The Wallflower Bar. She didn’t know what was waiting for her there, but it had to be better than this.

Right?

The arm didn’t answer her. Alina popped the trunk a couple of inches. When she was sure it was clear she got out. Threw on her stolen clothes. Like an eddy in the water she floated to the street.

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15 MUST HAVES While Traveling!

Hey there, travelistas! I don’t know about you guys, but I’m traveling all the time! I live my life in motion, always in airports, on boats, living the dream on beautiful beaches or in exotic cities! I can’t stop, because if I slow down for even a few seconds I won’t have anything to distract me from myself. It’s like the old saying goes, ‘Better to be broke in Berlin than accepting your own inevitable mortality in your living room!’

Anywhatsis, today we’re breaking down the most important things to pack for your never-ending sojourn around this planet we call Earth! Let’s get started!

1. Passport

This one is a no-brainer – you’d think! If I had a dollar for every time I overheard someone at the airport realize that there was something wrong with their passport minutes before they were supposed to get on the plane, I’d have enough money for those stem-cell injections I’ve had my eye on. Check your passport’s expiration date six months before your travel date to give you time for any necessary appointments, and consider buying a passport book to keep it handy!

2. Portable Battery

If you’re like me, you never ever want to be offline. Never. Ever. It’s like the old saying goes, ‘If your phone dies, you have also died.’ What happens if you can’t make emergency calls, or reach your thousands of Instagram followers for that life-giving attention and praise? Nothing good, I can tell you with authority! Pack at least one portable battery. I’m always on the go with seven!

3. Charging Wires

These go hand in hand with the portable battery. YOU MUST STAY CONNECTED AT ALL TIMES.

4. Sleep Masks, Neck Pillow, and Ear Plugs

When you’re constantly on the go like me, you need to get sleep in wherever you can. Airplanes, busses, the beds of pickup trucks filled with chickens. You need to grab sleep whenever you can, so be ready! I generally sleep in 30-45 minute chunks throughout the day, and it’s all thanks to my sleep mask, neck pillow, and ear plugs combo!

5. Local Currency

You may have read that it’s important to get traveler’s checks from the bank before you leave, and while these are good for security, there’s a lot of small town merchants and penyihir who aren’t going to take anything but cold hard cash! It’s best to get local currency in small bills and hide them around your person. Shoes, underwear, key chains, and of course some dummy money in your wallet in case you get held up. Speaking of getting held up…

6. Old-Fashioned Corkscrew

Security is going to find your knife eventually. You can’t keep spending precious money or gems on new ones. Buy a simple corkscrew and keep it close. I generally keep it in my front jacket pocket, and if anyone asks I mime drinking a huge bottle of wine. That gets laughs! And time to sprint away. Corkscrews will do major damage in any self-defense situation.

7. WiFi Hotspot

Never again be desperately searching for WiFi while watching the clock slowly tick toward midnight. If you have your own hotspot, you can put up those life-saving posts from anywhere! You could be in the middle of nowhere in Peru and still find the newest music, talk to your so-called ‘friends’ like Rebecca (I know you’re reading this, Rebecca. I know you know. I know you are looking. You better stay away, because if we ever cross paths, only one of us will walk away from it. You think I only carry this corkscrew? You think I don’t know how to pluck an eye? Watch your fucking back, Rebecca), and post updates to your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or wherever else you get that life-lengthening essence!

8. Toiletry Pack

Keep it small, but keep it filled! Plan for being away from civilization for at least three days. Believe me, it only takes a single day of no toothpaste before your mouth starts to taste like death. And you need to have at least a basic amount of makeup for those pictures you’re going to put online! And to hide those wrinkles around your eyes and mouth that developed even though you’ve tried so hard to keep a neutral face. But you have to smile for your pictures. It’s a catch-22. Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t. Damned. Damned. Damned.

9. Compact Mirror

To go along with the toiletry pack, but also a quick, subtle way to find out if someone is following you down that alley or not.

10. Pocket Translator

Make sure you download whatever language you’ll need before leaving the big cities. You don’t want to use up valuable bandwidth on your hotspot to get simple phrases when you could be putting up pictures of how cute you are in the local fashion.

11. Journal

Of course most of your travels are going to go online, but there will be personal stuff…secret stuff…that needs to stay between you and the gods. Put it all in this journal, and refer back to it frequently to make sure you aren’t crossing your paths on your journey! There’s no time to waste, the end is coming, the end is always coming, and every minute not spent fighting is a minute closer and you’re not ready for that.

12. Obsidian

The perfect crystal for protection away from home, this crystal not only absorbs bad energies sent your way, but reflects right back at your attacker! It’s the most comprehensive protection you can give yourself for not a lot of money or weigh in your pack.

13. Vials of Virgin Blood

Fun fact! The ‘virgin’ in virgin blood does not refer to sexual status, but whether the blood has been used in a previous ritual. This means you can have all the fun out there you want (stay protected, though!), but that after you use your blood for one spell you’ll have to outsource. Pro-tip: many sex workers will not refuse you a vial of blood if you pay them right!

14. Condoms

Seriously, stay protected. Nobody wants to figure out they got the clap when they’re in the middle of the Outback looking for the ‘water man’ who has apparently lived for six centuries and can share the secret with you if you only follow his instructions for forty-eight hours (and what’s two days compared to eternity?) and it turns out some of those instructions include sex (they always include sex) but he can tell you have an STD when even you didn’t know yet and he calls the whole thing off and then that’s another shot at immortality destroyed all because you hooked up with fucking Tad in that hostel in Sydney after drinking absinthe all night and he swore he was wearing a condom but you knew better and still didn’t say anything, and after you’re done killing the water man and drinking his blood on the off chance that does something to stave off the mortality that you are still creeping toward, every day, no matter what you do, you tell yourself you’re going back to Sydney to find Tad and kill him to because why not? At this point human life means nothing to you. You don’t even want your own human life anymore. You want something more. Something permanent. You’ll do anything to get it. And Tad ruined your chance. Fucking Tad will pay. You bet his blood hasn’t been used in a ritual yet. You know a place to get good money for his organs, too.

15. Reusable Water Bottle

Good for your health, and the planet’s!

All of these things should fit inside your standard traveler’s backpack, minus the things you should be hiding on your person, and give you plenty of space for all the books and souvenirs and…you know…other things…you might collect on your journey! That’s all for today, and as always, if you ever stop hearing from me, it’s because I finally found a way to cheat death and I will not be sharing that. Do you hear me, Rebecca? I will be as a god and you shall crawl like a worm beneath me.

Happy travels!

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