UNWINNABLEWEEKLY

Volume 2, Issue 11

MATT MARRONE • KAITLIN TREMBLAY • JANE RILEY • GUS MASTRAPA

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Editor in ChiefStu Horvath

Managing EditorJames Fudge

EditorHarry Rabinowitz

DesignStu Horvath

ISSUE SIXTY-THREE

UNWINNABLEWEEKLY

From the Desk of the EIC

Jesus Stalksby Matt Marrone

The Horror of Being Humanby Kaitlin Tremblay

Salt Plays Itselfby Jane Riley

Dungeon Crawler, Part Twenty-Sevenby Gus Mastrapa

Biographies and Illustrations

CONTENTS

From the Desk of the Editor in Chief

Hi there,

I am going to keep this one brief. I am getting married this weekend and it feels like

there are a million things that have to be done between now and then. The rational

portions of my brain dispute that. They are certain we are in good shape, that there

isn’t a lot left to take care of, that everything is proceeding at a good pace.

That’s weddings in a nutshell, I think. Rational thought being drowned out by

instinctual panic and chaos.

I’m not talking about the state of marriage. I am excited to marry Daisy. Never been

so sure of a decision in my life. I love that girl.

No, I am talking about the circus that is the wedding celebration and its outlying

events, like rehearsal dinners and bridal brunches. Compared to many weddings I’ve

been privy to, I think Daisy and I have done a good job of keeping things small, low key

and reasonable.

Yet, every few hours I find myself compelled to pace, to run through details I know

are already sorted out. To make sure nothing is falling through the cracks.

Then there’s the creeping tide of madness that is slowly infecting everyone around

us. This is a real thing. You unmarried people will scoff, but I feel like MacReady in John

Carpenter’s The Thing. People I’ve known for years have started acting strangely. The

cadence of their speech has changed. I suspect they may eat me before this is all over.

Take, for instance, one friend, who asked me this afternoon, “Is there going to be

food and booze at the reception?”

Take a second, let that one sink in for a minute.

Now granted, I’ve been to some weird wedding receptions but while I’ve heard of some that didn’t have alcohol, like my dear friend Richard Clark’s, I have never heard of one that didn’t involve some kind of food.

Speaking of food, let us pivot to dessert. Have you ever heard of a groom’s cake? Because I fucking haven’t. Neither has Daisy. The both of us have racked our brains trying to recall a wedding we’ve been to – collectively numbering in the dozens – that had this mythological delicacy present and come up empty. My mom, who has probably been to more weddings that Daisy and I combined, thinks it is a fruit cake but can’t recall ever encountering one.

Over the summer, a certain segment of the internet convinced itself that it had slipped into a parallel dimension because they remember the Berenstain Bears as being the Berenstein Bears. I think there is some kind of extra-dimensional shenanigans going on here, but it has nothing to do with cartoon bears. It has everything to do with goddammed groom’s cakes.

If I’ve been to your wedding and you tell me you had a groom’s cake, I’ll tell you right now, I refuse to believe you.

Daisy and I are getting married. Everyone keeps telling us that it is our special day. If that’s the case, maybe we can collectively rip a hole in the time/space continuum and get us back to the dimension we came from.

One blissfully free of groom’s cakes.

* * *

Seriously, though, this weekend is going to be great. If you’re reading this and will be there, I can’t wait to see you. If you won’t be there, that’s a bummer – we’ll do the high five thing the next time we meet.

We’ve got some fun stuff for you in this issue. Matt Marrone goes to church...to stalk one of his favorite musicians. Kaitlin Tremblay discusses how Silent Hill and Resident Evil work together to show the horror of being human. Jane Riley returns to the madness and ecstasy of Salty Bet after two years to find out what its continued existence means. Finally, Daisy (the adventurer, no relation to my bride-to-be) deals with her new foe (or does she?) in the latest installment of Gus Mastrapa’s Dungeon Crawler.

Have a great weekend!

Stu Horvath,

Jersey City, New Jersey

September 29, 2015

Rookie of the Year:

Jesus StalksBy Matt Marrone

The Wife of the Year and I are so virulently anti-religion that once, when I called

myself an agnostic, and not an atheist like her, we had a knock-down, drag-out

fight about how we’d be raising our son in a two-faith household.

It’s funny now. It wasn’t funny then.

I have secular reasons for loving religion – mostly Christmas presents and stained

glass windows – but I abhor it for the destruction it can cause and for the ignorance and

bigotry it inspires in far too many. When I go to church, it’s not to worship.

It’s to stalk musicians.

There is a band I love that doesn’t tour anymore. They record their albums in their

modest living room and release new material once or twice a decade. They are religious

folk, whose Catholicism informs their music but doesn’t overwhelm or define it.

And they just so happen to run the music program at their local church.

Why am I telling you this? To be honest, I’m not sure. Their first record in five years

is coming out this month and I just can’t wait to hear it. I’m sure it’s going to be great.

If only there were fewer Kim Davises and more of these guys (and gal) in the world...

and so forth.

Anyway, back to my stalking – and a question for you: If, say, [INSERT YOUR IDOL,

MUSICAL OR OTHERWISE, HERE] stopped performing but would occasionally show up

to play at a homeless shelter across town, would you not consider, um, dressing down

for an afternoon? Or maybe he or she or they are stumping for a politician or a political

cause you oppose. Would you not grab a button and some literature to blend in with the

rabble and rock out? In other words, would you be willing to shamelessly pretend to be

someone you’re not just to hear the voice of an angel? I’d argue you would.

At any rate, I gave it a shot. The Wife of the Year and I showed up at the band’s church,

a beautiful, historic building in the center of a small city. It was welcoming to strangers,

with plenty of space to handle walk-ins. By no means, mind you, are we talking about

a tiny room in the basement of a rec center, lest you are already judging us far too

harshly.

The priest, in his flowing white robes, said hello as we entered. I nodded and smiled,

awkward, but so far steering clear of any lightning bolts (if there’s no God, I needn’t

have worried; if there is, there is no chance He or She or It would have cared about this).

The Wife of the Year made a beeline for the ladies room.

As I waited for her, mustering my courage, I peered through a window in the vestibule

door, my view straight down the aisle between the center and stage-left pews

I saw him: the band’s lead guitarist, walking right toward me.

My first reaction was to look away, embarrassed, and likely I turned a shade red,

but by the time The Wife of the Year returned a few moments later, I was beaming as

I breathlessly told her about it. She rolled her eyes and we stepped through the door,

taking a seat in the back row. Within a couple minutes, the lead guitarist – whose

solo records I also own, because clearly I’m not messing around here – returned to

take his place, standing directly behind us, where he would remain throughout the

service. As the mass droned on, I peeked back a few times to watch him mingle with the

congregation, but he didn’t seem to notice me looking.

The band’s lead singer, his wife, unfortunately never showed. We didn’t get to hear

the voice of that particular angel. But the bass player did; I saw him perched high in the

choir box, playing piano and leading the chorus, and again I excitedly pointed him out

to The Wife of the Year, so we did get a little music out of it after all.

When the service ended, we hung out for a bit outside the church – hoping, I don’t

know, for a hootenanny to break out? – but there were no major developments on that

front. There was, indeed, a post-mass bagel breakfast in the rectory, but even we have

our limits. With that, our concert experience was over.

All told, we didn’t hurt anyone. We didn’t bother anyone. Unlike my homeless shelter

or political rally analogies, we didn’t wear any costumes. We did nothing more than

blend in with the crowd. We stood up and sat down when we were supposed to, put

some shekels in the collection box and even sang a few hymns, too, made all the more

beautiful by the guy we could just barely see playing piano above our heads.

Outside on a gorgeous Sunday, we snapped a few final photos, descended the stairs

onto the sidewalk and followed it further into town, resuming our run-of-the-mill,

totally un-creepy sightseeing. There was an art walk and some museums and a bunch

of places within driving distance that we had planned to visit.

This was several months – and the birth of a child – ago. Now the band’s new record

is due. It probably won’t come with a tour, or even a one-off show, and certainly will

lack fanfare or significant promotion. After such a long hiatus, I’ve given up all hope of

that sort of thing.

Which is to say, the new record – sweet and fair as always, I’m sure – will need to last

us a long time.

Because we fucking hate going to church. U

The Horror of Being Human

By Kaitlin Tremblay

Our definitions of what it means to be human tend toward the problematic and

exclusionary at best. Yet, when confronted with something fearsome, something

we cannot possibly comprehend, we cling to these notions.

Michael Myers appears human, but is monstrous. He cannot be killed like a human

and his lack of humanity is signified in his mask, a stoic visage that hides his human face

and consequently signifies he is different than us – he is not human. Same with Jason

and his hockey mask or Freddy and his transformed fingers and scarred skin. Some

of the most memorable monsters in horror films are humans robbed of something

unspecified that makes them human, and their iconic appearance represents a subtle

shift from a normative, human body to a non-normative, monstrous one.

In Resident Evil, particularly Resident Evil: Code Veronica, there is a visible

transformation from human to monster via appearance – particularly with Alexia

Ashford. Through old family films, we are introduced to Alexia as the mainstream

ideal: blonde, charming, well-bred. Yet the Alexia the player meets is far from this: she

is a mutated, fearsome monster, a representation of both the loss of humanity and how

this loss is a human-made construct. Alexia becomes monstrous through the T-Virus, a

product of scientific progress, the same virus that created the hordes of zombies.

Alexia marks an important part of what makes Resident Evil such a good horror

franchise: she is no longer fully human and it is somehow humanity’s fault. This basic

fear is the overriding horror in Resident Evil (and arguably the best horror films, books

and games). What the zombies in Resident Evil show is this dehumanization through the

loss of one’s body.

But to only look at the horror behind a physical dehumanization is missing the full

picture. Resident Evil’s domain is a physical fear: what do we become when our physical

bodies are transformed beyond that which is “normal?” This is where a franchise

like Silent Hill comes in. While the monsters in Silent Hill are essentially just extreme

modifications or adaptations of human bodies, the true fear in Silent Hill comes from

what can happen when someone loses control of their mind.

That’s why, rather than pit Silent Hill and Resident Evil against each other in a debate

over which is the greater horror franchise, we should discuss them in tandem, as two

sides of the same coin. Both represent the ultimate fear of losing whatever it is that

makes us human. Resident Evil shows us what can happen when we lose control over

our bodies and, conversely, Silent Hill shows us what happens when we lose control

over our minds. Instead of being rivals, Resident Evil and Silent Hill pick up where the

other leaves off in terms of conveying the ultimate fear possible: what happens when

we no longer are classified as “human?”

Because it’s my favorite, let’s go back to Resident Evil: Code Veronica. In Code Veronica,

when certain characters, after being injected with the T-Virus, mutate, they cross the

line from human to monster, despite retaining their humanoid form. It is arguably

Alexia’s descent down the Ashford Manor stairs that most visually represents this. She

begins as a conventionally beautiful, intelligent woman, but as she descends toward

you, her body aflame, her monstrosity takes over and she switches rhetorical spaces

from a human to a monster. Despite the fact that Alexia’s position as an enemy has

always been solidified in the game, she is not considered a credible threat until her

outward appearance switches visual codes. It is when she loses her traditional body

that she becomes truly monstrous.

While the enemies in Resident Evil are literal monsters, the events of Silent Hill take

place less in a hard-boiled reality and more in imagination made real. The world and

monsters of Silent Hill are projections of Alessa Gillespie’s tortured and unwell mind.

The grey children in the first Silent Hill are grotesque representations of the children

Alessa attended school with, highlighting the bullying she received from her former

schoolmates. Perhaps one of the strongest indications of an unwell mind in Silent Hill

are the lying figures in Silent Hill 2, humanoid monsters encased in straightjackets made

out of their own flesh. Here, there is an immediate linkage between mind and body: the

body functions as the straightjacket, a visual marker of a violent loss of control over

their own mind.

As the grey children serve as a symbol of the bullying Alessa received, it raises an

interesting question: what is the role of trauma in these games and their depictions of

health and normative bodies?

The abuse Alessa suffered categorically repositions her from a place of humanity

to a place of monstrosity. With Silent Hill, the dehumanization Alessa undergoes is

inextricably linked to the abuse she suffered: she is imprisoned in a basement after

being burned at the stake as part of a sacrifice performed by her mother in order to

birth an evil god.

The role of abuse in both franchises is significant. In the book, Unraveling

Resident Evil, James Stone looks at how Alice, the heroine of the Resident Evil films,

metaphorically undergoes healing from an implied abuse. Stone writes, “Her injuries

are often sustained while unconscious. She is terrified, not by the prospect of an attack,

or even by its execution, but by its aftermath. The horror she experiences comes from

the knowledge that some terrible act has been visited upon her while she was unable

to resist.” Like Alessa projecting her trauma and pain onto the Otherworld, Alice is a

physical representation of this abuse: she is constantly fighting against those who have

inflicted this trauma on her.

The mental and physical abuse Alessa suffered – and her consequent projection

of monstrous bodies as enemies – represents an essential fear of being a human and

possessing a body: that we can be so thoroughly hurt and traumatized to the point of

incoherence and a loss of identity. It’s why Alice’s refrain of “My name is Alice” in the

films is an important rhetorical trick to centering her identity in her humanity. When

we give a name to something, we are bestowing upon it humanity; conversely, to rob

someone of their name is to dehumanize, to make them less than.

Alice is able to retain her humanity through a refrain and declaration of self: “I

am Alice.” Alessa, on the other hand, is not able to assert her identity, and rather, her

mental projections of her trauma become monstrous, rather than cathartic and a part

of normalized healing. It’s worth noting, too, that people have drawn the connection

between the Alice of the Resident Evil films and Alice from Lewis Carroll’s Through The

Looking Glass.

Alessa, a name visibly and sonically similar to Alice, occupies a place of madness as a

defense – similar to that of Carroll’s Alice. Yet Alessa’s madness can be viewed as more

offensive than defensive. Rather than retreating inwards, Alessa projects her trauma

outwards, vengeance against the harms enacted upon her personhood. Whereas one

can read Carroll’s Alice as an imaginative defense against the world, Alessa becomes

the active, and therefore cruel, counterpart to this childhood fantasy of escapism. This

association is made all the more apparent in the details of Alessa’s childhood as well:

one of her favorite books growing up was Alice’s Adventure’s in Wonderland. Whereas

Resident Evil’s Alice conforms to a prototypical healing pattern that is accepted as

healthy, Alessa’s coping deviates from this and positions her as dangerous, as the enemy.

Trauma is just one way of damaging both a person’s mind and body, and it’s worth

noting how Alessa, Alice, and other characters in both franchises work through

different patterns of trauma and healing. Trauma is, at times, a core part of horror: how

do we survive an unthinkable assault on both our physical and mental self? How do we

survive the moment, and then how do we survive the healing afterwards?

And what happens if we don’t follow the prototypical pattern of healing, like Alice,

and instead become Alessa?

In these games, classifying these humanoid bodies as inhuman monsters justifies

them as a vehicle for enacting out a societal violence and fear. This is what makes

the slaughter of zombies in Resident Evil

horrifying to think of: we are trained to

not even consider zombies as humans

anymore, despite having been at one

point. There is rarely a thought to

saving or evading them.

The terror of the enemies in

both franchises, particularly

zombies, is what we are

capable of becoming –

mentally and physically –

and how we can lose what we

perceive as our humanity.

And with this comes the

fear of our seemingly lost

humanity being weaponized

against us. U

Salt Plays ItselfBy Jane Riley

The lights are still on and they all seem to have gotten rich.

It can prove difficult to pick away a status quo from the drone of light and noise,

but there is a difference between a streak of good luck and a lived-in fortune. Most of

the bunch gathered here and humming tonight seem used to the inevitability of losing

and gaining their money in huge strides both ways.

When Mr. Boo leads the charge of losing bets with over four hundred thousand dollars

from his own pockets, it is no great ordeal. There is consolation and commiserating, but

no hand wringing over bankruptcy or a system gone foul. It comes and it goes, the old

money of Salty Bet all know, and no one expected Homer Simpson to drop a match to

this sword-wielding He-Man type.

* * *

All the old platitudes are

still here. You bet on DBZ.

You yell at your waifu. You

praise and bemoan with

all the other “salties.” You

leave the Caps Lock on.

It feels like nothing at

all has changed. For all I

know, the matches haven’t

stopped in two years, the

stream hasn’t bucked and

some improbable salt miner has never lost a bet. But to watch it all go again — the call

of a fight and its odds, the responses begot by winning or losing large — is to notice the

rounded corners of how this one-of-a-kind site does its business, the cleanness and

responsiveness of its key machinery and the lengths it has gone to keep the salt flowing

among whoever will show up.

The vintage Salty Bet had all the lawlessness and trample danger of a gold rush.

Anyone could join the throngs and watch their complimentary dollars melt away with

a few you-had-to-be-there fights — and a lot did. The site and the stream and the mile-

a-minute chat all hung themselves, just over the edge of being irredeemably broken,

and seemed happy to do so. It was a spectacular thing to be told about and to see, but

not look straight into for yourself.

The thing that Salty Bet is now that it was not, or did not have the breathing room

to be before, is complex. Not complicated, because very little about the act of picking a

side for your money needs tooling with, and Salty Bet has kept its big inviting betting

buttons. Complex. Wander into Salty Bet now and you will be able to do the very

thing you came for — bet, saltily — but in the background of all the purely superficial

speculation, there is new depth. The system moves regularly through tournaments,

user-requested exhibition matches and the old random matchmaking. It lets players

know how many matches remain until it downshifts into the next phase. Tournament

money is a separate allowance, with winnings added to a user’s total at the end.

Most interestingly, though, the MUGEN cast of fighters is now stabled into discrete

tiers, and earns promotions (or demotions) based on their performance. Each tier (P, B,

A, S, and X) holds dozens and dozens of fighters.

P is Potato Tier, someone

in the chat explains, where

the absolute worst characters

are banished to languish in

obscurity. X Tier is where

characters too ridiculously

overpowered to be handled

elsewhere are sent.

The tier system also

incorporates benefits given

only to the Illuminati

of Salty Bet (its monthly and yearly subscribers), who can see each character’s tier,

statistics and fighting history. These worthies have the option of paying Salty Bucks

out of pocket to unlock and make marginal increases and decreases to a character’s

overall health and meter.

Given the density of its roster and the comfortable wealth of its patrons, this stripe

of gamification, which Salty Bet has anticipated since its appearance, seems endlessly

engaging.

However, I see a lot of complaining in the chat, from people who frequent Salty Bet

enough to be bitter when they feel their Illuminati subscription dollars are going to

a perpetually broken site whose maintenance is no longer the primary concern of its

creator.

there are people planning on making another one, someone posts, though in the past

Salty has run smear campaigns against the new ones because he’s paranoid about losing

business.

It may be that, what was fun to watch flashing and exclaiming in the periphery

has turned out to be serious business. Or serious enough that Salty has kept the site

churning and changing for the last two years. It’s hard to guess at the pseudo-lucrative

aspects of it all: the MUGEN bet-taking industry is a chimeric space unto itself, and

one that may already be monopolized. In early September, Salty debuted a project for

mobile devices, a bullet hell-style shooter with planned integration to the economics of

Salty Bet proper. The game, currently in beta on Android, is called Waifu Wars.

In the chat, cooler heads steer the conversation away from more inflammatory talk.

are we really taking what is essentially a means to idly kill boredom this seriously, one

asks.

* * *

The concern with taking

things seriously in Salty

Bet is that it’s at odds with

the frivolity of the site’s

project. In the span of

two years seems to have

cultivated itself out of mass

commotion and the bliss

and insanity of anonymous

wagering, to a slightly

more leashed chaos and

misanthropy. There are certainly fewer giddy intimations of rape, fewer racial epithets

and fewer threats to skin the losing female fighters, thought it may simply be that the

numbers to surface those notions are no longer present.

The version of Salty Bet that plays out now, and that has not broadened nor quit, is so

familiar as to be unnerving.

I see a pelican tussle against a wide-eyed chibi girl at the Abbey Road crossing. I see

the chat chuckle over whether Poison from Final Fight has a dick.

I can’t judge people in real life so I come to judge AIs instead, someone says.

* * *

“This is the city: Los Angeles, California. They make movies here. I live here. Sometimes

I think that gives me the right to criticize the way movies depict my city.”

- Thom Andersen, Los Angeles Plays Itself, 2003.

I don’t want to condemn or demonize Salty Bet, because that would suggest that I

understand the whole messy spectrum of interests and personas that make it appealing

and keep it popular. Like Andersen, a filmmaker and critic who hoped that his effort to

see through the superficial depictions of a city “may seem more than wrong-headed or

mean-spirited,” I have mostly just wanted to know what the thing means, how it means

that and why it refuses to let that meaning die.

Trying to understand

Salty Bet is much different

from just watching and

engaging it, which remains

disturbingly easy. It is still

everything that it ever was,

and now also some of what

it claimed to be. A fantastic,

indescribable, post-lucid

pastiche of conscription

and promotion. I watched a

small fairy girl with a daisy hold her ground against a gaping purple flesh maw.

But it’s not about the stories anymore. There is still a sense of possibility, but the

attitude is machinelike and the novelty is worn. Whatever innocent randomness and

surprise the system generated in its heyday is lost on the diminished clientele who

stuck around or came back for the money, the economics, the statistics, the feedback

and the control. The new systems. The heady days of Salty Bet rubbernecking seemed

to end as quick as they came, indicative of the expiration point of a product that trades

almost wholly in absurdity and reappropriation, to which there is a natural limit. There

are only so many times to be blown away by broken fighters, sideways odds and a mob

mentality. You can only be so hype before feeling hollow.

Salty Bet operates against this notion. It is an interpretation and perpetuation of a

state of mind that seems to crawl ever inward from the periphery of intensely loved

and defended media. To stand inside Salty Bet now is to reenter a womb, a space that

guards against judgment, acceptance or any outside emotion by generating all of

those itself and never stopping for the amalgam of what it’s consumed to spin down

and separate into any recognizable form. Its cycle is predicated on being angry, and

some variant of enraged or faux-devastated by upsets, disappointments and its own

perpetual enthusiasm for the performance of things.

There is an inclination to think that, through taking part in this, I should understand

secret and special things about all these characters, or be able to internalize them in

an exclusive way, in which I get some great satisfaction from this extreme, bastardized

form that a primary or secondary consumer, fan, or enthusiast simply couldn’t. 

This is the philosophy that

has taken full hold of Salty

Bet, though it was always

present. It has shifted the

classification of the untold

hundreds of characters

from amusement to

commodity. In repackaging

these properties, it created

an arena for the idea that

everything is as much an

owned and abstractable product as everything else, and that the only real interaction

for them is competition.

To uphold these ideals, the site is willing to contradict itself, to be emptied and filled,

flagellated and exalted, satisfied and betrayed, amazed and proven ultimately, infallibly

prescient. To make the unique profitable and mundane.

Its playthings are subject to ridicule, to expectations of absurdity and brokenness, to

a new and alarmingly dismissive posturing and ownership that seems simultaneously

bored, confused, petulant, ecstatic, satirical, and completely emotionally devastated at

any given moment, to say nothing of the ever-present influence of novelty, cruelty,

objectification, anonymity, perpetuity, possibility, and money.

It’s hard to catalogue all its sides and not be reminded of my own alienation from the

kind of media space that Salty Bet smothers and shout-loves into submission. Suffice

to say that, in addition to whatever Salty Bet stands for, I want very much for there to

also be a nuance and a simplicity and a beauty to this broad medium and its culture that

does not stem so grotesquely and demonstrably and easily from misplaced pride and

affection, from a treading of water in things like invented competition and defensive

affirmation and juvenile exclusionism.

Take your pick. I can’t claim to have any bets on the fight. The ties I keep to gaming

and to the spaces and attitudes it fosters are so conditional and delicate as to be forever

out of touch with whatever loud and expensive statements are being regurgitated and

resold, and the voices they are drowning out in the process.

* * *

At any hour, being inside

Salty Bet wears on the

senses like a bout of day

drinking. The beginning

and end of discrete events

aren’t clear, the music

never stops and the voices

spill out in the same high-

pitched drone.

The Salty Bet chat is

tamer, if not calmer, in

comparison to that of two years ago, with its hyper-objectification and impossible

lurid speed, but the utterances it’s known for hardly number among the human-made

expressions anymore. Some continue to be (typed expletives, comments about boobs,

barbs about select physicality), but much of the topical character slander and match

commentary now comes via condensed commands made through the site’s residing

chatbot, “Waifu4u.” The sentiment of shouting OFF TO THE SALT MINES is reduced to

a lethargic “!mines.” FINAL ROUND HYPE can be expressed with a one-handed “!real.”

The chat isn’t composed of people anymore, per se, but accounts that, in posting,

fulfill quotas for the various emotions, pertinent topics of discussion, rally cries and

self-affirming, self-policing remarks. It seems to fear silence more than insolvency.

Even the pervasive, abrasive commentaries of its own participants — even these are

now pastiche, shorthand for the tirades and excitement of two years ago, registered

into the collective consciousness of those still around and triggered innocuously to

appropriate the old passions.

This ensures a kind of perpetual perturbance and momentum for whatever just

happened, is happening or may be coming down the line. It promises that chat inches

are filled, comedowns are minimized, reflection is nonexistent and that the torrent of

speculation is no longer overtly negative or belligerent, but now simply so buried in its

very own insular linguistic structures as to be expected and unending.

The chat franchising

itself into a self-sustaining

and self-replicating

body doesn’t necessarily

promote hostility, but

taking the bulk of it in

alongside the fights proper

only cheapens and reduces

the  seemingly infinite

spectrum of spectacle that

Salty Bet has access to. It

ensures that the chance of broader accessibility to its unique and fascinating field is at

or fast approaching zero.

Even in the case of no upsets, no broken betting, no scams, waifus, fakes, mistakes,

“real fights” or salt, there is always the noise of churn, of keeping the buzz alive and of

grand, paid-for expectations.

The expectations of Salty Bet play out as attempts to evoke and deserve the surprise,

the delight, the dismal outcomes, the unfairness of it all and the worth and the newness

of each fight and its contents again and again.

And over and over, it gets what it demands — the simple, sad expectation that, in the

face of feeling empty, everything proves and sustains.

The dream is either perpetually real or too good to have lasted.

everything in SB is so HYPE and CANON, someone says.

i can’t leave this fucking place U

Part Twenty-Seven

Dungeon CrawlerBy Gus Mastrapa

Previously, in Dungeon

Crawler...

Daisy’s climb to the surface is almost

complete. She braved the disgusting ascent through

the ancient sewage pipe to find a series of underground aqueducts

just beneath the city. Her escape is blocked by an enchanted skeleton who

kills all he meets.

Daisy kept her distance from the skeletal guard as it made its patrol. The creature

was good at its job. The walkway was littered with the bones of man and beast it

had slashed with its rusty sword. Where the skeleton marched, the bones were crushed

to a fine powder.

tak, tak, tak

In other places there were so many bones that they spilled over the edge of the walkway

into the slow-moving sewage and formed islands of death amid the wastewater. Daisy

did not want to add her meager bones to one of those piles. She crept in the shadows,

peering around corners, keeping one eye on the skeleton’s back while she searched the

aqueducts for a way out.

The skeleton’s methodical pace allowed Daisy plenty of time to thoroughly search

her surroundings. The first thing she noticed was that bones weren’t the only things

that the dead had left behind. Among their bones she often found tatters of clothing,

weapons and valuables. In one corner, under a thick dusting of bone dust, she found a

small leather pouch full of gold and silver coins. A good scavenger could loot a small

fortune from this dangerous place.

Daisy watched the skeleton emerge from a dead end and continue down the main

aqueduct passageway. From behind came a single, wily rat. Where the skeleton turned

right the rodent turned left. It barely paid any notice to Daisy as it skittered past her,

sniffing the dust and bone with whiskers to the floor.

Daisy searched the dead end passageway and found that at the far end there was a

small metal grating in the wall near the floor. The distance between the bars was more

than enough for a rat to squeeze through. Peering into the darkness, Daisy could see

that a tunnel extended through the pitch black. At the far end, the rat had built a nest

out of scraps of hair and cloth it had foraged from the skeleton’s killings.

tak, tak, tak

Daisy followed the echoes of the skeleton’s footsteps, thinking about the rat. She

wondered how it survived down here while so many others had died. If Daisy wanted

out of this place and back to the daylight she’d have to learn the rat’s secret.

tak, tak, tak

Daisy let no detail escape her notice. Every hundred yards or so she noticed a massive

iron gate protruding from the ceiling. The span of the gate extended from wall to wall

of the aqueduct. When lowered, the gate would block both walkways. In the middle

of the gate there were longer, iron bars with fearsome rusty spikes on the end. When

lowered, these bars descended into the muck, making passage impossible for anything

but a fish, eel...or rat.

On the wall next to the gate was a massive wooden lever. The mechanism was covered

with cobweb and dusted with bone power.

Daisy could barely reach the lever, but with a leap she was able to grab onto it with

both hands and hang on it until a great device buried deep in the wall gave way.

The gate came crashing down with an earsplitting clang, sending bones clattering

across the stone and raising a thick cloud of bonedust.

When racket subsided Daisy heard an urgent rhythm echo in the distance.

tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, tak

The skeleton’s pace had quickened and was getting louder by the moment.

TAK, TAK, TAK, TAK, TAK, TAK, TAK

And then it stopped. Behind the iron bars Daisy saw the skeleton’s eyes glowering in

the dark. It stood and glared at her through the bars.

Daisy relaxed a little. She felt a little of the boldness that the rat must feel when

it scurried into its little nest. She edged away from the wall, stood up straight and

cautiously approached the gate.

The skeleton did not react to her. It just stared at her with the same dull malevolence.

And then the magic holding the skeleton together gave way and its bones clattered to

the floor. Its sword and helmet rung out when they hit the stone.

“Ha!” Daisy cheered. “I beat you.”

The bones were not done with Daisy, though. The pile of bones on the floor quivered

in their place, vibrating with strange energy. A leg bone vibrated in the dust as if the

entire aqueduct was shook by an earthquake. But the earth did not move. U

Cover: Salt photo by CzechR, used via Creative Commons license; salt shaker engraving by Lestyan CsabaLetter: Wedding photo of unknown provenance, circa 1880?Jesus Stalks: Church photo by Lane Erickson The Horror of Being Human: Alessa Gillespie painting and Silent Hill 3 still courtesy of Konami; Resident Evil: Code Veronica stills courtesy of Capcom; Resident Evil film still courtesy of Columbia Pictures; Alice in Wonderland illustration by John Tenniel, 1865Salt Plays Itself: Salt shaker photo by Jeremy Brooks, used via Creative Commons license; Salty Bet fight stills courtesy of Salty Bet or whoever owns their respective copyrights Dungeon Crawler, Part Twenty-Seven: Chris Martinez

Stu Horvath is the editor in chief of Unwinnable. He reads a lot, drinks whiskey and spends his free time calling up demons. Sometimes, he plays with toys and calls it “photography.” Follow him on Twitter @StuHorvath.

Matt Marrone is a senior MLB editor at ESPN.com. He has been Unwinnable’s reigning Rookie of the Year since 2011, which seems paradoxical until you learn he would rather celebrate the return of geoDefense than find a new favorite game, has a nickname derived from wearing an orange traffic cone on his head and still doesn’t undestand why the @$@$&@@ you need two goddamn directional pads just to walk down an effing hallway. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.

Kaitlin Tremblay is a writer, editor and gamemaker, whose work has mostly focused on horror, feminism and mental health. She writes about videogames for Playboy and Dorkshelf. You can find her writing, books, and games on her website, That Monster Games, and follow her on Twitter at @kait_zilla.

Jane Riley is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in Paste, Polygon, Medium Difficulty, Nightmare Mode and Nintendo World Report. She posts at powertrash.org and tweets at @janeriley.

Gus Mastrapa is a hesher who lives in the desert with his wife, son and far too many animals to mention. Dungeon Crawler is a serialized work-in-progress – a YA roguelike “To Build a Fire.” He has left Twitter but, like King Arthur, will return when we need him most.

Chris Martinez is a freelance artist who loves drawing cute things, surprisingly. He can be reached at @DrakeLake if you want to tell him to get a real job, that bum.

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