The Unicorn: On Liminality, Transmisogyny, and Numinous Synthesis

 

Two wandering poets undergo a pilgrimage to the highest mountain in the world, where they find a unicorn, beautiful and powerful. The experience was numinous-- that is, it referenced and amplified the presence of something spiritual, even more beautiful and powerful than itself-- and it changed both poets' lives irrevocably.

One poet says to the other: "That was unlike any other experience. I am now convinced that this unicorn was created by a different god than the rest of the animals." The second responds: "I feel the opposite! I have an expanded appreciation for the gods who created this earth, now that I know they created this unicorn too."

Both poets bristle. How could the other poet deny their experience, seeing this beautiful and powerful object? Aren't they listening?

--

Words like jazz, pain, and capitalism are also beautiful and powerful. We have numinous experiences with them when we classify music as jazz, generalize about what is painful, or become oppressed under capitalism. When we discuss them, we embody these poets, and in my experience our conversations become difficult, but generative. This is because, in embodying these poets, we step into the limen between generation and reclamation, between expanding categories like "god" or "jazz" and creating new, exciting ones.

Is fusion jazz? Is pain pleasure? Are all taxonomies capitalist? This limen is powerful and comfortable because when presented with a beautiful powerful word, we are not forced to collapse the ambiguity that gives it power. Outside the limen we lack this privilege.

Is Duchamp's "The Fountain" art?

Poet 1: "Denying that 'The Fountain' is art undersells the expansiveness and power of art."

Poet 2: "No, saying that 'The Fountain' is art co-opts the word art, turning it into an empty signifier that means little more than 'good'."

While I don't find both arguments equally compelling, it's important to recognize that both poets in this case are arguing that the other is not respecting the numinous power present in the word art. And no compromise can be made if either party feels the power of the numinous word has been diminished-- it would feel like a total denial of one's own experiences. Thus, the understandable reactions of "meeting in the middle", "making our positions more nuanced", or "taking things to the marketplace of ideas" are not enough. Neither is simply concluding "the more expansive definition captures more nuance", "we need words to mean something", or "two things can be true, you know" on principle. We are after bigger game.

No, in situations like this, where we're squabbling over numinous encounters we've had with ambiguous words, we must realize that neither poet makes sense without the other, in order to affirm a greater spiritual connection with the force from which they both stem. This isn't a claim about correctness, but a claim about comprehensibility-- after all, "0=0" and "0=1" need each other to make sense, but only one is true in any functional mathematical system.

I'll say it again-- Our goal is not greater nuance, but understanding how neither poet makes sense without the other, in order to affirm our spiritual connection with the numinous.

--

So in the same way I ask "Is pain pleasure?", I also ask:

Who is affected by transmisogyny?

One popular belief is that only a subset of trans people are affected, creating a group of "transmisogyny exempt" people that require a host of language like "TME" to describe them. It's natural for people bluntly hurt by transmisogyny to want language to discuss it. However, I strongly believe that the language of "TME" and "TMA" is harmful nonsense. My instinct is to just say so, and leave it at that-- but this would be destructive.

The issue is that both of us poets have had a numinous encounter with the word "transmisogyny". This word arrived, like an angel, to help us make sense of our lives, relate to one another, and ultimately love one another. Surprising as it may seem, the word "transmisogyny" is beautiful and powerful like the unicorn.

Thus when we argue, we embody the poets, and I am embodying the second. The issue is that "How dare you disrespect the gods who created the unicorn?" very easily spills into shutting out any new conceptions of the gods. Even worse, I have coerced myself into underselling the word transmisogyny's beauty and power in order to relate it more easily to familiar conceptions of the word "god"-- and if I do that, anyone would be right to be mad at me.

So what should I, as the second poet do? I might talk about experiences I've had where "TME" language enshrines a false logic of "women are more oppressed than men; therefore trans women are more oppressed than trans men". I might talk about how deciding whether a person is "TME" co-opts people who seemingly have authority over such things (transfemmes, for example) into a degendering, all-reducing force. And I might talk about how I've seen the same tools and seeds of transmisogyny weaponized against the supposedly-exempt-- even against cis people! In summary, I would talk about the beautiful powerful word "transmisogyny" and my experiences with it.

--

And now, remember our goal-- we don't politely compromise, we don't argue about whether the numinous word is important, and we most certainly do not talk in circles for an hour, self-congratulating about how reasonable and nuanced we can be. We have faith that neither poet makes sense without the other; how is that true here? Of course now it's obvious-- the numinous word. When we ponder this, we poets come to understand why we hold our beliefs so intensely, and why we would be upset at one another over them.

And with some thought, hopefully we come to graft one another's experiences into our own understandings of transmisogyny. And while we may continue to discuss specific things like whether "TME" is a helpful term (I still think it isn't!), we've entered a safer space to talk about the harms we've experienced. We no longer risk offhandedly saying (or pressuring ourselves into believing) that the numinous word is not as powerful as the other poet says it is. We're no longer signaling that our values aren't just butting heads, but forever incompatible due to the strength of our beliefs. And over time, our bodies might come to recognize that there's no need to spend their energy worrying about whether they will be excluded talking to the other poet.

And if in the end we poets really disagree about jazz or "TME", we actually know what we've disagreed about. If we hadn't, we would be fuming over something that didn't happen-- the nerve of the other poet for not listening to you.

And maybe now, with this spiritual experience further amplified, we can start writing the poetry we wandered all the way up this mountain to write.

5 Ways You Can Get Better In Babble Royale Right Now

I've been playing Babble Royale a lot the past few days, because I was engineered in a lab to love this game. I'm not the best player in the world by any means, but I have cracked the MMR and Total Wins leaderboards a few times, and I'm currently rocking a 38% first place rate (that's 6 times the expected 1-in-16). What's more, while I'm a casual Scrabble player, I haven't sat around memorizing dictionaries-- most of my wins come from what I think are good, solid fundamentals. What I'm getting at is that this "strategy guide" doesn't come from thin air.

Probably the best way to improve at the game would be to play it a bunch, memorize which two-letter words it allows, learn common "hooks" that allow you to latch onto words, and so on. I can't write much about that, though. I can write about the next-best thing, though: Here are five ways you can get better in Babble Royale, right now.

(The obvious disclaimer applies: I'm just a girl on the internet; these tips will only make you behave more like me, because that's what I know how to write; they might conflict with the advice of other good players or even better players, et cetera.)

1. Pre-place your kill words before bombing

This is an easy one. You know when you're in this position:

Since you're a super genius you see you have a kill if you use a bomb, then play ADOBE / WE.. Well, you don't have to bomb, then type the letters OBE like a doofus. In a situation like this, you can pre-place the letters OBE, then quickly press 1 (or whatever number your bomb is in) plus SPACE.

This is such a small thing, but it's a huge advantage. Babble Royale is a game where, for the most part, if you can eliminate your opponent, they can eliminate you (more on that later). Giving them no time to counterattack is a way of breaking this symmetry.

2. Value multipliers highly

Look, most of this game is not about the points. My focus in this game is about what area I'm controlling, and if the Q I'm treating as a shield wall lines up on a point multiplier, it's not my doing. That being said, I've noticed that I prioritize dropping near big multipliers more than other people. I do this because doing so gets you money, which can be exchanged for goods and services, as the meme goes. An early AX or ZA on a high multiplier, or even an early HA or PA, can get you money right away, and you basically paid no opportunity cost.

 

You should still value early S and bomb powerups-- S tiles and bombs win games. Just consider whether you need that S now or could manage with it later.

3. Have a plan for the more meddlesome letters

Babble Royale gives you a lot of credit for frequently emptying your hand. Especially in the beginning of the game, my goal is to throw my tiles on the board as quickly as I can in a mad rush for powerups and money. J, X, and Q are obstacles to this-- if left unchecked, they threaten to reduce your virtual maximum hand size AND turn off your ability to refresh your rack by hitting zero tiles. That's why I actively think about how to get rid of my big-girl letters when I draw them. Poor Q, for example, only has a handful of realistic ways to get rid of it: QI, QUA, SUQ, or some other Scrabbly endeavor, so I'm not going to lay down my I willy-nilly.

 

This goes double for C and V, the antagonists of Babble Royale. In the current dictionary, there are no valid two-letter words that contain a C or V. As a result, when you draw a C or V, Babble Royale becomes an RPG, and they are your first side quest. If your last two letters are V and E, instead of impulsively dropping your last E wherever you can, maybe save it. You might be able to make VIE, VEE, EVE, or AVE-- and if not, you weren't going anywhere. Conserve your ability to make plays until you have more information-- to put it more bluntly, wait and give yourself the opportunity to draw out of your situation.

Other valid plans include "recycle" and "overload". Often if I have two big-girl letters that don't mesh nicely with each other, like C and J, I'll plan on overloading. (Free bonus tip: Try to overload right before you're about to get a new tile-- it makes you a juicy target for less time.)

4. Readjust your vowel priorities

Not all vowels are created equal.

 

E is god-tier. Silent E in particular does so much work in this game. You can kill people from a surprising distance by tacking an E on their word; you can tack an E your word and get out of a clumped area without bombing; you can play JA on your HAT and then extend your HAT to HATE, getting rid of that J while making your escape. Non-silent Es are nuts, too-- it's just a common letter. Additionally, EE is basically everywhere, and a word on its own in the current dictionary. What I'm getting at is that it's very difficult to have too many E's.

A and O also get an A-grade. They're common vowels, and they're good outlets for your trickier consonants (AX, OX, JA, JO, ZA, and ZO, to name a few). Again, it's hard to have too many of them-- OOs are all over the three- and four-letter words, and you can always chain AAs or OOs if you find yourself flush with them.

I is a good letter, too-- better Scrabble pros might recognize it from the famous ripe-for-bingos rack AEINRST. That being said, it's easy to amass three or four I's and not have space to get rid of them. I basically always want one, and I usually value the first I over the first O. But if I have multiple O and I tiles, all else being equal, I'm wont to play DIN over DON, for example. In fact, I often find myself aggressively getting rid of Is and still having enough.

U gets the short end of the stick. It's usable, but it does not have the broad appeal of E. I want between zero and one most of the time, and will play my tiles accordingly. I will almost always play DUN over DIN or DON or DEN.

 

TLDR: In a vacuum, try to have multiple Es, As, and Os, in about that order; try to have one I; try to ditch U.

5. Ask who has the bomb privilege

Bombs are good. One of the ways to win in Babble Royale is to exploit the bomb's range to make your bombs good against your opponent, and bad against you.

Let me show you what I mean. Remember this situation?

Let's say both of you have OBE and a bomb in hand. Which one of you can get the kill? Well, the bomb's radius is a 5x5 square with the corners cut off:

, so in this case you can both bomb to destroy the V, then play OBE (pre-placing your letters, of course). So the kill goes to whoever notices faster.

Now let's say you're blue in this situation, and both of you have RIS for ARISE or ARISES. Who gets the kill?

In this case, red can't blow up the T blocking ARISE, but blue can bomb the T and play ARISES. This means that red has to either draw another word (they can bomb to play ATONE or ATHLETE) or skeedaddle.

As people get better at the game, identifying who has the privilege of bombing productively will only get more important. When you and your opponents both know the three-letter words, if you’ve both played to develop good racks, the only difference between you is your position in space. Being able to identify whether your position in space is defensible is really important.

The Best-Designed Pokemon Card

The best-designed Pokemon card of all time is named "batman!!". It has 1000 HP, the PokeBody "batcave" that means it can't be killed, and the PokePower "batereng" that reads "kills any pokemon on the other team".

Its medium is marker on construction paper. It was not sold or bought or copyrighted or kept hidden. It advances no claims about art or about Pokemon cards on purpose.

Great art creates a critical response. The card batman!! can be stopped by "me" who has HP infinity, the attack "gun" that does infinity damage, and "when this is killed by a pokepower return it to the bench and you can put that card on the bottom of your enemys deck". Reportedly, Emma (the artist behind batman!!) cried when she realized that batman!! was not immune to being put on the bottom of the deck.

Emma made card games of her own as she grew older. The first expansion of Fight Cards had ten cards, each on an index card. You got one energy per turn, because she didn't want to write "energy" on a bunch of index cards. Her second expansion had seven cards, and was widely considered by her contemporary and younger brother Taric to be "overpowered because you just made my cards but stronger". It was the best card game of all time because whenever she and her brother agreed it was solved, they added new cards.

When Emma was growing up, strong basic Pokemon had 100 HP. Years later, they have up to 300. How quaint compared to batman!! and me! The ends of the artistic institution of Pokemon cards are stripped bare. They grow stronger over time, making each other obsolete, and if you are naive this is their end. This cannot be so, though, because Emma's batman!! can beat even her friend Jessica's unfair Magmortar deck built from sanctioned booster packs.

Jessica would go on to author a number of critical responses, such as ANTIBATMAN RAY and FIRESTAR. This, if anything, is the desired effect of the normative force exerted by Emma's art. This is the secret to why batman!! is a better Pokemon card than even Roseanne's Research, the best Pokemon card you can play in a tournament. batman!! begets critical responses; Roseanne's shoos them away if they are not made by The Pokemon Company.

It's not wrong, exactly, to say that "real" Pokemon cards are made in pursuit of capital-- actually, it's perfectly right to say so. But that undersells the force that makes them. Years ago, artists sorted time by real numbers to organize the card artists, sorted space by longitude and latitude to ease the movement of booster packs, sorted an incommensurable amassment of players by which kinds of cards were made for them, sorted stories by trope to further the development of resonant loglines. And from this blood sacrifice art, of a certain definition, was born.

A Pokemon card, like Bulbasaur, is a temple to this worldless timespace. Its true purpose is to sway us into believing that those artists were right to sort time and space and people and stories. Emma's batman!! was made between dinner and bedtime, in her room, for Taric and Jessica, about Batman, and she hasn't even read Marx yet. Nine-year-olds often have such adept critical responses.