This one’s a guilty pleasure. Having grown up with a father who adored fiction’s two greatest detectives, it was only natural that, once Batman: the Animated Series hit the air, our family could not go by a week without its viewing. Any offshoot, such as Batman Beyond, was equally welcome.

Now, in my previous “Writer’s Music” posts, I’ve dwelled on some of the more subtle sorts of music, for anticipation, unease, thoughts of the future, and so on. But sometimes, you just need a moment of badass-ness. This is your moment.

Kristopher Carter wrote a good deal of music for the animated Batman shows, but the mix of orchestra and hard rock is positively brilliant, especially when one considers the Batman of Batman Beyond is a teenager who works for an aged Bruce Wayne. It is, I admit, hard not to separate the music from the show, so much so that I have yet to apply the music to a story I’ve written. Considering the wealth of authors I have met online, however, I know there are plenty of writers who have heroes with battles to face—not just the inward ones, but ones requiring swords, guns, and any weapon I have yet to imagine.

The metal and the orchestra balance each other throughout the score, but in this theme youth dominates. Don’t let that fool you—the orchestra swells in the last third of the track to add not only power, but an authority as well. This is the music of transformation: perhaps your hero knows who—or what—s/he is, but has yet to fully become that which your story world needs to be saved. The resolve, the power suit, whatever your hero needs, must come sometime, and there’s no reason for it to come quietly. If your hero must prepare to face the darkness, let him prepare to this.

Click here for more on Kristopher Carter.

Click here for more on BATMAN BEYOND: RETURN OF THE JOKER.