The Game the Princesses Play
a My Little Pony koan
“I’ll buy two hedgehogs, and then I’ll spin for two-fifty.”
There was a game the princesses played.
“You can’t do that! It’s Tuesday! We get to interrupt your turn and spin for four-fifty now!”
Every morning, just before Luna retired, they’d meet in the Entirely Unnecessary Hall[1] and play, with every possible sign of enjoyment.
“It’s ‘I get to interrupt,’ Luna. And if you spin four-fifty I invoke my Lettuce/Snail card and ask for an extra half-round, but since it’s an alternate Tuesday, I get an eight of a round over that. Point to me I think.”
[1] If you should happen to have a princess, and if she happens to have a...robust sense of humor, don't ask her to name things. An architect, long dead, didn't heed that piece of advice, sadly, and as a result his very finest work was forever called the Salon of Suspiciously Smug Statues.
The thing was…
“Nuh-uh! Vegetable exception! Half a point!”
The thing was, nopony in all of Equestria seemed to have the faintest idea what they were playing.
“Are you sticking your tongue out at me? Really. Anyway. I’ll begin. Remember, no northern approach. My first move is Finchley Central.”
Nopony in Equestria, or, indeed, outside of Equestria. Inquires were made—discrete ones, of course—with the ambassadorial staff of many proud nations of Epona. The Zebras were puzzled, Griffons confused, Qilin taken aback, and the Diamond Dog Imperial Remnant delegation may have entirely failed to grasp the question in the first place.
“We can stick our—my tongue at whomever I wish. ‘Tis a perfectly fine tongue. And you always play the same. Burnt Oak.”
Oh, there were theories. Protocol demanded that the princesses be always attended, and quickly the word spread and game had its first connoisseurs, every one of which was certain they had the firmest grasp of the rules. Many a learned debate was had over the advisability of playing with green cards[2], or just how many ‘clumps’ there were in a ‘boot.’
“It is a fine tongue, but it’s a bit foalish, isn’t it? Embarkment.”
[2] Apparently that was bad unless it was a Wednesday with an 'r' in the name, whatever that meant.
Some—and there were quite a few, for the game had built up quite the audience—claimed it wasn’t a game at all. There was a strong school of belief which maintained that it was a religious ceremony, meant to avert the end of the world. Though as to how, the details varied wildly.
“Foalish? We? Foalish? We aren’t the ones who balance buckets on doors! Chalk Farm!”
One particularly innovative theology claimed it was to calm a chaos spirit, parent to Discord, and keep him—or possibly her, hard to know with chaos spirits—from destroying the world. The game, this theology said, didn’t have rules, just pure chaos that fed the spirit and kept it safely sleeping.
“That one’s a classic prank, Luna. Classic. Morningto—”
Another theory claimed that this was the way the secretive, covert activities of the realm were discussed: in a code so intricate, so ingenious, so devious, that entire lifetimes went into its devising. This school of thought had little traction, however, mostly because its proponents were fidgety ponies, with intent expressions, and the unnerving habit of looking just up and to the left of the person they were talking to.
“—ah-hah! You can’t! The Euston Exception is in play, with the Brent Cross modifier. Foul! We get to draw two cards!”
On one celebrated occasion, one of these conspiracy-minded ponies heard Luna confidently state that the green cat was in play on the board of becoming. He went very pale and very, very still, pausing his frantic scribbling in a notebook. Then, after a moment, he rushed out, never to be seen again.
“Fine. Fine. You don’t have to gloat over it.”
It was later rumored that he started enlarging the basement of his house and stockpiling water, canned goods, musical instruments, and twine. Nopony knew why, though, of course, a great many ventured a guess.
“We aren’t gloating. We never gloat. A prince and a deuce! Fizzbin! Huzzah! In your forehead!”
Yet a third group of ponies thought that it was all a devious test. Whoever understood the rules well enough to sit down with the princesses one day and play with competence, they said, would be granted some sort of grand prize. Current favorites were ascension to royalty, immortality, and immorality[3], in that order.
[3] This last one said with a lot of eyebrow-waggling and suggestive elbows to the barrel.
“Face, Luna. In your face. And I’m so glad you never gloat. You can’t imagine. Okay. Fizzbin it is. Let’s rotate the board.”
Two big problems for everypony’s theories were the board and the pieces, of course.
“Shall I get the time-fracture wickets?”
There were so many. Most of them were in the Royal Museum where they’d been variously classified as farming equipment, early examples of abstract art, marital aids, and votive objects[4]. They made a staggering mess, arrayed across the main table and the many side-tables either randomly or through a system too intricate for even the most dedicated furtive notebook-scribbler to grasp. Some were fairly ordinary, like the cards from half-a-dozen mutually incompatible decks; some less so like the dice with an entirely unreasonable number of sides; and some made no sense whatsoever, like the magnetized spoon half-filled with salt, and the yarrow sticks.
“No, let’s play the counter-epistemological variant today.”
[4] Archeologist for 'we have no idea what this is for.' Other synonyms include 'probably ritual,' and 'of religious significance.' Many a scientist has remarked in the past about the curious fact that archeology had so many ways of saying 'no idea,' though it's prudent to make this sort of remark outside the earshots of archeologists, to better avoid a fusillade of exquisite antique potsherds.
And the board? Up until six months ago, it was proudly displayed in the Royal Gallery. Six doctoral theses, two books, and countless papers discussed its swirling, almost fractal patterns, and their significance: artistic, philosophical, and sociological. Pony academia was still reeling at the realization that it was not, in fact, a metaphor for the Pegasi struggle for identity in the post-reconstruction period, nor a study in oppressive social dynamics.
“Very well! I shall play as the solipsist premise.”
Though some outré academics were starting to suggest that using the picture as a games-board was actually an act of deconstruction and subversion that added fresh layers of meaning to an already meaning-laden artwork.
“Oh come now, Luna, you always pick—never mind, never mind, have it your way. I’ll play as the empiricist premise.”
Even stranger, were the instruments that surrounded the board. They weren’t anything out of the ordinary in and of themselves—
“Double sixes! Offensive, with plus two on sophistry. Credo.”
—but what was the compass for? Or the spirit level? Apparently consulting them cost a half-clump except when the turnbull was crosswise, when it cost six. This was well understood among the ponies studying the game.
“Defensive, plus four with esse est percipi aut percipere. Credo denied. Point to me?”
What was less understood was what a turnbull was in the first place, or what it could possibly mean for one to be crosswise. It was known that a certain number of clumps made up a boot, but theories as regarding to the actual number ranged from ‘three’ all the way to ‘forty-seven and a bit.’
“Point-and-game. W—I agree. Well played, sister.”
And then the game would be over, just like that. The sisters, who at that point seemed just about ready to re-fight the more stirring bits of the War of the Two Sisters would smile at each other, cross necks, spend a few minutes tidying up, and walk off, one to bed, the other to a full day of dealing with the permanent state of emergency that was Equestria. Behind them, they’d leave an entire hall of confused ponies who’d wait respectfully, until both the princesses were safely away and then get down to some serious arguing.
“And you too, Luna. Sleep well.”
Not today, though. Today one of the ponies followed Celestia with a purposeful trot, struggling to match the princess’ long stride with his own stubby legs. He finally caught up to her in the gently sloping corridor leading down to the Hallway of Easterly Radiance. It was a cozy, plush place—quite small by palace standards—and lit with thin shafts of sunlight admitted through embrasures as ornate as they were tactically unsound.
“Excuse me, Your Majesty, may I ask for a moment of your time,” he asked, huffing slightly.
“Mr. Secretary! Of course. I didn’t know you watched us play,” Celestia replied.
“Not frequently. But I do drop by from time to time, as errands take me past the hall,” Dotted Line replied, looking almost bashful to admit interest in anything not related to paperwork.
“How can I help you, then?”
“Well, Your Majesty, I was curious and, uh, I was meaning to… for some time now, ah,” Dotted trailed off a bit, but then managed to catch himself, “My apologies. What I meant to say is I was curious about the game you and princess Luna play. I—I mean if it isn’t personal, of course.”
“No, no, not at all. It’s perfectly fine, but—you mean ponies don’t know?”
“No, Your Majesty. Nopony does.”
“But…surely it’s mentioned somewhere in the chronicles.”
“There are references to ‘The Game the Princesses Play,’ yes, but that’s generally assumed to be chess. Hence the white and black pieces.”
Celestia laughed, and Dotted could swear that the shafts of light grew brighter and wavered.
“Me? Play chess with Luna? Oh, that wouldn’t end well. She’d beat me in five minutes looking insufferably bored while she did so, and then where’d we be? No, no, we haven’t played chess in…well, a very long time. So…nopony knew what we were doing all this while?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“Why didn’t they ask?”
“Well the nobles were afraid of seeming ignorant before both you, your sister, and their peers, of course.”
“I see.”
“And the scholars were enjoying the arguments altogether too much. Asking you or princess Luna would quite spoil them, and would, as far as I can tell, be considered cheating.”
“But you did ask.”
“I did, Your Majesty. I argue quite enough in my day-to-day job, and if I were afraid of seeming ignorant before you, I’d never open my mouth.”
Celestia looked… It was hard to say. Pained? Worried? Sad? Dotted wasn’t sure. He always had trouble reading her face. The light kept getting in his eyes. Still, she was clearly distressed, so he hurried to cover over any offense he had caused.
“Then what is the, uh, name…?”
The princess seemed torn for a moment, as if she wanted to say something else, but then gave up and spoke, brightly.
“We never gave it a name. We called it ‘our game’ ever since we were foals. Oh, we had such arguments trying to give it a proper name, but in the end we never managed it, and ‘our game’ stuck.”
“Then what are the rules? Are there any?”
“Oh, a great many rules, but only one really important one.”
“Which is?”
“The rules may never be the same twice.”
“What?” Dotted barked, surprised, and then caught himself. “Sorry, Your Majesty, I meant to say could you, uh, explain that?”
“Every time we play, we change the rules, at least a little bit. We are never quite the same from one game to another, why should the rules be?”
“That—I guess it makes sense. And you’ve been playing for…?”
“Hundreds of years. It’s gotten quite complicated over time.”
“I can imagine. So you—um… what’s the score?”
They had started down the corridor by this point, Celestia walking more slowly this time, so that Dotted could keep up. As he asked the question, she stopped suddenly with a surprised expression. She fluffed her wings and tapped her hoof absently. At length she turned back to Dotted with an unreadable smile on her muzzle and spoke.
“Do you know, Mr. Secretary, I’ve completely forgotten.”
And Dotted Line was enlightened.
Well, Mornington Crescent, Fizzbin, and Calvinball I got, but if the philosophical concepts game was a reference, it's one I don't know.
Now I want to see newly-bewinged Twilight trying to come to grips with this. Very entertaining, in any case!
This sounds like a game of Nomic that's had over a thousand years to mature.
Also some Philospher's Chess from Alan Dean Foster' Flinx stories?
Clearly none of the ponies in this world have heard of Calvinball.
That was my first thought, upon reading the first line of this maze of references. All doubt was immediately erased from my mind upon the introduction of the time-fracture wickets.
I can't say I'm enlightened, but perhaps Dotted is. Then again, he always was.
I love a good game of Calvinball, but damn, Luna fights dirty in the Philosophical Quarter.
I have only one thing to say here.
Hee Hee.
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Sounds like a Twi-snit waiting to happen.
I'm sick.
It's past 2:00 AM
I have a headache.
But for the life of me, I could not stop childishly grinning and giggling out loud.
This is only after having read the first story.
Thank you so much for writing this. I'm really looking forward to the next chapters but *HAD* to comment.
"Fizzbin" is a totally fictitious game made up by a notorious fictional scoundrel named James Tiberius Kirk. The fact that the Princesses knew that name and also mentioned stations on the London underground railway network suggests that they have visited our Earth some time in the previous 25 years from our current objective present.
Most importantly, it is a board game version of CalvinBall - A game that is more about relieving boredom with excursions of the most pure and exquisite imagination. I suspect that the winner of any given game sessions is she who has come up with the most ludicrously over-elaborate and specific rule to throw at the other. I also suspect that Celestia has guessed that her Little Ponies are trying to work out what is happening and is enough of a prankster to let the mystery deepen over a few millennia.
Naturally, she knows that Dotted Line will never break the secret. After all, he's smart enough to know that nopony would ever believe him.
Another chapter that suggests that there is at least one pony who truly loves and worships Celestia as a goddess and that is Dotted Line.
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Yeah, let's see a chapter where Cadance or Twilight are introduced to this marvelous game.
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Sounds like a fic where the Alicorn Snit Squad would need to be waiting in the wings
I feel that it is beyond obviousness that there must be forty two clumps in a boot.
I checked this conclusion with my good friend Piewackett. His reply was as follows.
Not knowing I would be unable to state with any due amount of accuracy, therefor paragorically speaking from an imperative point of view it must be erratically so.
I believe this proves my point.
This so much. I love scenes of Luna and Celestia together, and it's sad that we get so few in the show.
For the uninitiated, you cannot merely explain. They must see.
And why do I have this running in my head?
Across the room, one of the guards (who had long given up trying to figure out the game, deciding to leave it to the intellectuals (which to his mind meant ponies that didn't have a real job, unlike himself)) startled a little bit at a comment of "Hunh. Would have thought Luna would go for a Campbell Journey play with that hand, considering that it's fourteen and a half days to the equinox."
He stared bemused as the purple unicorn walked by, carrying a few books.
3701229 Because Twilight really is obsessive enough to keep track of all the rules as they started, and how they changed?
bet she would have seen "the Game the Princesses Play" in a book and gotten celestia to explain it to her...
Does this fic bug the favorites counter for anyone else? Invisible Unread Chapters are spooky.
So, there I am, reading these things, thinking 'oh, my, that is amusing'.
And then I read Celestia and Luna playing (among other things) Mornington Crescent.
And I fell in love with this story.
Inquires were made — discrete
discreet
So, Mornington Crescent (with a nod to Finchley Central), Fizzbin, perhaps a little Brockian Ultra-Cricket... no Dragon Poker? And a reference which is either to a combination of quantum superposition, spintronics, and topology, or a Sega mascot. Possibly both. Oh my goodness, there's that odd feeling of long-dormant neurons having bolts forcibly screwed into their necks and being sent lurching down to the village.
(Not to mention, if I'm reading between the lines correctly, that when it comes to having a defined *point*, the game simply cannot be, ahem, hedgehogged.)
esse est percipi aut percipere
This was metacontextual enough that I actually got backchannelled. How the hell...?
Oh, fizzbin.
Such goodness.
>>>This school of thought had little traction, however, mostly because its proponents were fidgety ponies, with intent expressions, and the unnerving habit of looking just up and to the left of the person they were talking to. >>>
Hmm, are these ponies lying... or are they observing the the little devils that sit upon the left shoulder.
3704459 *Alondro sliiiiiiiiides in sideways* I move Hubert Cumberdale pi spaces to the repeated meme of redundance and swap marmalade for quince jam during April's solstice in Upsilson Andromeda c.
It's the Princesses' version of philosophical Calvinball!
The score is now Q to 12!
So, Wednesdays in March but not Wednesdays in May?
Another wonderful story, though it's a shame they must have had a thousand year break in the game.
Thats was awesome, brought a smile and a laugh.
3702654 It's a general bug that's been around for ages. Nigh on unfixable. When it happens, click favourites and set all unread to read (unless you actually have unread real chapters waiting).
"the magnetized spoon half-filled with salt, and the yarrow sticks." - The Lodestone Spoon, and the traditional I-Ching. The salt escapes me though, unless it's for luck.
--Roger Zelazny, "The Game of Blood and Dust."
Where this game is headed no one can say. However you can buy the T-shirt:
shirtoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/calvinball-2.jpg
See, I was expecting Mornington Crescent, until I read the part about the time-fracture wickets. Then all bets were off.
That's just perfect.
Now I gotta see if this story's been added to the TVT page for Calvinball, but I have a headache, so meh.
Oh goodness, I was linked this chapter out of context but enjoyed it immensely! Reminds me of the first time I tried to play... I forget the name, but you're not allowed to speak. Even to ask about the rules. It went poorly
One minor note: "Inquires were made—discrete ones, of course". As a student of discrete maths, I'm assuming you meant "discreet", and not to emphasize that a separate inquiry was made to each nation!
Love this story. I didn't notice the Numberwang reference the first time I read it. Brilliant!
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It's there now.
Exceptionally amusing. I've never done so many web searches when reading a mere 2K words in my whole life, and it was worth every one of them
whoa
When I read the part about empirical premises, my first thought was, "Yes! Someone finally makes a Dungeons and Discourse reference!" And that last line is a treat, too.
I think I almost died laughing when I got to that line. I had flashes of that scene from Trek going through my head the whole tale up to that point and when that line hit the proverbial dam burst.
I'm getting Calvinball flashbacks... (For those of you who don't know what Calvinball is, here's a dramatic reenactment by a sponge and a starfish:)
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I was thinking the same exact thing from about 30 seconds in. Damn I love Calvin and Hobbes.
We played this at BuckCon. It was fun!
(And of course Princess Celestia won... )
She'd have won if she flooped the pig.
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No no, that's when you floo the pig. When you floop the pig, you loose seven points, but gain a reducio token -- except on Friday the 13th of an even-numbered year...
...this might be why I haven't seen many games played with those rules. huh.
*cackles* I was right. It is a version of Calvinball! That's great. I love it.
Never mind them in Finchley! I live in Hackney and the drains PONG!
Neigh, sister, we do not stick out our tongue at thee, but we do stick out our tongue, sister.
So, a cross between Mronington Crescent, Fizzbin, and Calvinball.
I, don't follow.
It doesn't really strike me as a koan, but it was enjoyable start to finish, so I don't really care. :)
TMI in this short story, but I don't regret it xD
>>Toafan Don't you forget that if it's third month of the year, then you will only lose three points and also choose the number of times you'll be switching the table next time it happens.
Despite all the other references, the last line makes it clear that what this truly is, is a Discordian Zen koan.
This line never fails to make me smirk.
Dagnabbit Calvin!
Still one of my very favorite chapters out of all ponyfics I've ever read.
I come back to read it every few months or so, and it never fails to bring a smile.
So when I started reading this chapter, I was going to mention that this game seems like a blend of CalvinBall and Fizzbin, but you beat me to it! LOL!!
For a moment there it sounded like Dungeons and Dragons mixed with Calvinball while snorting Walter White's Meth.
I win!
*Gets a pie to the face*