13. Twenty-one (Pinkie, Twilight)
On the way back from Fluttershy's cottage, Twilight almost didn't register the familiar voice coming from a dead-end street on the outskirts of Ponyville. "Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one...."
She had a familiar sense of foreboding. She knew that she should continue walking and not stop to find out what Pinkie Pie was doing. Also, that she would stop anyway.
Twilight walked down the street towards the sound, until she saw a familiar pink pony, still chanting, jumping high up into the air and then landing on a ponyhole cover in the middle of the street, over and over again. A crowbar was slotted into place just under the lip of the cover, as if she had been about to remove it and then gotten distracted by a sudden fit of jumping.
"Pinkie Pie?" Twilight asked. "What are you doing?"
Pinkie landed on the ponyhole cover. She cocked her head at Twilight. She looked down at the iron cover. She looked back at Twilight.
"Is this a trick question?" she asked.
Twilight shook her head violently, trying to clear it of the impression that Pinkie was making more sense than she was. "Okay," she said, "I can see that you're jumping up and down on a ponyhole cover and shouting 'twenty-one!'"
Pinky nodded eagerly and gave Twilight a wide, congratulatory smile. "You got it!" She began jumping again. "Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one—"
"But why are you jumping up and down on a ponyhole cover and shouting 'twenty-one!'?" Twilight shoulded up at her.
Pinky came to a stop again. She raised one hoof to her chin, perplexed. "I don't think I understand the question."
"What's not to understand? Why—"
"Stop! That's it. That word. It confuses me."
"Why—"
"Yes! That's the one."
"No, I mean—" Twilight scrunched up her nose in thought. "Why does it rain?"
"That's easy!" Pinkie said. "Because pegasus ponies make it rain! Didn't you know that, Twilight? Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one—"
"Of course I knew that! My point was that you understood the question. The use of the word 'why' indicates I am asking what caused some event."
"Yes," Pinky said, between jumps, "I. Know. That." She came to a stop again and leaned forward to come nose-to-nose with Twilight. "But since I am a sentient and purposeful agent, my will constitutes the final cause of all my actions, and your asking me for a cause of my jumping up and down when you can clearly see its final cause constitutes a violation of the Gricean conversational maxims, silly!" She began jumping again. "Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one—"
"Gaaaaah!" Twilight said. "How do you even know about Aristrotle and Grice?"
"Who? Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one—"
"Gaaah-aah-aah!" Twilight said, hoping to drive the point home this time.
She began pacing back and forth, while Pinkie kept jumping and shouting "twenty-one" at the pinnacle of each leap. Phrasing her question, Twilight realized, was a semantic problem. Pinkie literally did not know why she did what she did. But Twilight was still curious; and that proved that "why," at least in the sense of intentions, wasn't what she really wanted to know.
"Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one...."
Pinkie Pie's lack of conscious insight into her motivation wasn't mere cluelessness, Twilight realized. Most people in fact had no conscious insight into any of their motivations; they merely invented them after the fact, as demonstrated by experiments in which people were asked to justify decisions that were the opposite of the ones they had actually made. Pinkie was actually more self-aware than most in apprehending her lack of self-awareness.
"Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one...."
Perhaps, Twilight thought, she should take a behaviorist approach. She was interested in the operational effects of this activity, not Pinkie Pie's motivations. And yet, she could not treat Pinkie Pie as a black box, as B.F. Skinhorse would have advocated, since the primary effects were probably some subjective emotional payoff.
But, if she focused on the action's conscious effects, rather than its conscious causes....
"Pinkie!" Twilight finally said.
Pinkie stopped. "Yes?"
"How do you feel when you jump up in the air on a ponyhole cover and shout 'twenty-one'?"
"I feel great!"
"Hmm," Twilight said. "Not really helpful. Wait—hold on, give me a moment." She smiled slyly. "I've got it. Pinkie, how would I feel if I jumped up and down on a ponyhole cover and shouted 'twenty-one'?"
"Well, that's a silly question!" Pinkie said with a laugh.
"GAA—Why is it any sillier than jumping up and down and shouting 'twenty-one'?"
"Because," Pinkie anwered, "the only way to answer it is to do it!"
"You're ... right," Twilight said. "You're actually right." Twilight shook her head again, even more violently.
"Course I am! Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one—"
"Pinkie ... Pinkie!"
Pinkie came to a stop yet again, smiling as excitedly as if she were just seeing Twilight for the first time. "Yes, Twilight?"
"Pinkie, may I jump on your ... um ... can I try that?"
"Okie-dokie-lokie!" Pinkie stepped aside, and Twilight stepped on to the heavy iron cover. She looked up and down the street to make sure no ponies were in sight.
"Well," she said, "here goes."
Twilight began hopping up and down.
"You've got to count!" Pinkie said.
"Twenty-one.... twenty-one.... "
"Louder!"
"Twenty-one.... twenty-one...."
"Faster!"
"Twenty-one, twenty-one, twenty-one—"
"Higher!"
Twilight grunted as she jumped as high as she could, and shouted, "Twenty-ONE! Twenty-ONE—"
At the top of Twilight's jump, Pinkie stomped on the crowbar with all four hooves. The ponyhole cover flipped off like a tiddlywink, and Pinkie watched as Twilight dropped into the hole with barely enough time to register a look of surprise before she disappeared from sight. A loud and disturbing thud came out of the hole.
Pinkie walked over to the cover, and kicked it until it slid back into place over the hole. Then she walked onto it, and began jumping up and down again.
"Twenty-two, twenty-two, twenty-two...."
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Twilight, Twilight, Twilight...
...you really should've seen that one coming.
Technical question. The story is written in third-person limited, Twilight's POV. Then Twilight disappears, but the story continues, now necessarily in third-person objective.
Is that kosher? Did it bother you?
534979 I'd assumed it had switched to third-person limited, Pinkie's perspective. Which, depending on how you interpret her, is also third-person omniscient.
In any case, no. I switch perspectives as needed.
Also, I have no idea why this story made me smile, but it did.
575963
"Be funny to see this from a Teddy Roosevelt side, where when he discovers they're sapient he's pissed....because that meant he could have challenged them to a brawl instead."
That's hilarious! And so very Teddy.
I will blame you if I ever ship Teddy Roosevelt with Fluttershy.
804668
What?
"A brief vision he had of swirling cloud, and in the midst of it towers and battlements, tall as hills, founded upon a mighty mountain-throne above immeasurable pits; great courts and dungeons, eyeless prisons sheer as cliffs, and gaping gates of steel and adamant: and then all passed. Towers fell and mountains slid; walls crumbled and melted, crashing down; vast spires of smoke and spouting steams went billowing up, up, until they toppled like an overwhelming wave, and its wild crest curled and came foaming down upon the land. And then at last over the miles between there came a rumble, rising to a deafening crash and roar; the earth shook, the plain heaved and cracked, and Orodruin reeled. Fire belched from its riven summit. The skies burst into thunder seared with lightning. Down like lashing whips fell a torrent of black rain. And into the heart of the storm, with a cry that pierced all other sounds, tearing the clouds asunder, the Nazgûl came, shooting like flaming bolts, as caught in the fiery ruin of hill and sky they crackled, withered, and went out."
Oh, right. That.
You've just ruined my own story for me - but you un-ruined Lord of the Rings, so I will spare you from my horrible death-whinny.
HOLY BUUUUCK!!!!!!!
Pinkie Pie is best troll!! Also I didn't even remotely see that coming!! :) Well played!
Not sure the thud would be all that loud; there are 21 pony shaped cushions down there, after all.
.......
i KNEW that joke!
why did i not see this coming?
myfacewhen.net/uploads/3639-brilliant.jpg
I should have seen it coming. Alas, I didn't, and my forehead is now intimate with my desk. OW.
And for this one, I'd like to take away the thumb-up I placed for the Derpy chapter. It's not worth a thumb down, but augh.
A slightly extended retold counting joke? Bonus point for the Gricean conversational maxim part, it did add to the effect, but...meh. Maybe I've just been overexposed to this joke.
...perhaps I should have read more of your other works before starting out on this collection.
534979
I dunno if it's kosher, but it certainly didn't bother me. Maybe if it happened more often, in a longer fic, in a more glaring manner. Then maybe. But certainly not here.
1261997
I think you mean dash.ponychan.net/chan/files/src/133410843347.png
I found my brain simply switched to Pinkie as the main without issue. Also I can't help but
At thinking of this joke only to have it come true.
Awesome. *philososqueee*
The better question to ask her would be "what do you expect to happen as a result of this action" or "What counterfactual universe would have rsulted in you not performing it."
My reactions in order:
I love how Lubar-esque this short story was. Creepy, surprising, and with that morbid twist-ending everybody loves.
I pretty much died laughing when it came to the punchline xD. Oh man, I friggin LOVE this joke.
Some guy tried this with me.
His repetitions became annoying so I shot him. *how real life works*
If you think about it....someone could animate this. Just putting it out there.
Come now, Pinkie. Any good serial killer knows that you don't just jump around shouting your kill count unless you know there are no onlookers aside from the target. What if you were witnessed? Advice from an expert.
That reminds me of another joke. A man is walking outside of an insane asylum, when he heard the chat of "Seventy-one, seventy-one, seventy-one!" coming from the other side of a large wall. The man, of course, tries to climb over the wall to see what is going on, but is immediately hit by a ball of mud. Seconds later, the chant resumed. "Seventy-two, seventy-two, seventy-two."
The way I heard this joke was that during WWII in occupied France, a Gestapo agent was driving through the French countryside when he saw a farmer jumping up and down by the side of the road yelling "Twenty-one!! Twenty-one!!" Twenty-one!!" while pointing into the nearby ditch, overgrown with tall grass. The agent stopped and walked over to the farmer and asked him "Why are you jumping up and down like a fool?!" The farmer only smiled and kept jumping up and down and pointing into the ditch. His curiosity piqued, the Gestapo agent bent over and looked over into the ditch. As he did so, the farmer picked up a shovel hidden in the grass beside him and slammed the shovel over the back of the agent's head. Without a sound the Gestapo agent fell over into the ditch. The farmer hid the shovel back in the tall grass and then began jumping up and down, yelling "Twenty-Two!! Twenty-Two!! Twenty-Two!!"
laughed my ass off at the punch line, never saw it coming
oh pinky pie
534979 Would it bother you if I was jumping rope saying 'twenty-one' while being next to a shed?
I read the first line and was like, "I KNOW where this is going... but lets read it anyway!"
Oh... Oh god...
I swear there's a coming of this. Instead of Pinkie, it's Discord though.
Classic joke I saw coming but was still amused by.
Am I the only one who hasn't heard this joke before?
Must have something to do with the higher sophistication from you guys..
And then Twilight teleported back to Pinkie, smacked her upside the head, and forced her to help get the other twenty-one ponies out of the ponyhole.
534979 532711
The moment I read the part with Pinkie yelling the same number over and over I know what about to happen because of this.:
img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110117022831/smurfs/images/f/f1/Jokey_prank.jpg
I did not see that coming
That's one fancy way of saying "won't tell ya!"
Or she just doesn't care what would other ponies think about her. Which on the one hand sounds exactly like Pinkie, but on the other hand --- very much not like Pinkie (but maybe ponies are far less obsessed with conforming to the norm than humans).
I had a thought that Pinkie may be up to something nefarious, but I dismissed it because she's Pinkie