Never the Final Word (Vol. 2)

by FanOfMostEverything

Skywriter's Forty Spaces (Cynewulf's "Five Colors")

Author's Note:

[Comedy][Human][Alternate Universe]

This is a riff on Cynewulf's Five Colors (3,552 words, [Slice of Life][Human][AU])

ONE SPOILER: A good Samaritan is driving a dimensionally displaced and disempowered Twilight to a time-space confluence that will get her back to Equestria... but they have to sleep eventually. While getting supplies at a local Walmart, the perspective character buys some Magic: the Gathering starter decks on a lark. A game in their hotel room prompts a discussion on the philosophy of red mana, the concept of passion, and other deep thoughts.

Now, suppose he hadn't bought MtG...

"Four, five, six," I said, a dull mixture of dread and relief gathering in my gut. "Well, that's game."

Twilight blinked at me. "Why?"

"Park Place," I said. "Hotel. That's fifteen hundred." I rubbed the two little goldenrod rectangles together between my fingers. "One thousand left. That's game over." I shove my remaining bills across the board to her.

Twilight's mouth formed a hard line. "No," she said. "I'm giving your seamstress—"

"It's a thimble, not a seamstress."

"Well, excuse me for expending a scrap of brain effort on hippomorphizing them. It makes the game a lot easier to understand. Anyway. When it comes time for your seamstress to make rent, and she can't pay it, my laundress recognizes her financial plight and gives her an extension."

"That isn't how this works," I said. "You can't voluntarily choose not to charge rent when someone lands on your space."

"I absolutely can and am," said Twilight, shoving the money back across the board with her hoof. "We come from similar backgrounds, after all."

"Twilight," I said, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice, "This game already goes on for an eternity. Do you seriously want to risk missing the leyline confluence over a game of Monopoly?"

"I want to end my time here on a positive note, Jeff. I finally think I found a tiny little piece of your world I can actually understand, and I don't want it to be over yet."

I yawned. "Okay. You get one exception to the rules, and in return, it is officially your fault if we oversleep on this thing."

"Deal," she said. "Thank you for indulging me."

"You're close to winning anyway," I said. "Shouldn't take too much longer."

"That's kind of you to say, Jeff. I personally feel like there's a long way to go, but maybe it'll turn around." She smiled, flushing bashfully. "It's just...I really don't want to lose this one."

A moment of silence passed as I frowned at her.

"Um," I said, eventually. "If that was your major concern, why didn't you choose to win?"

"Pardon me?"

"You could have won. Right there. Victory was within your grasp. But you just gave me this money back."

"Well, yes, of course," she said. "If you'd been reduced to zero money, we would have lost."

I felt a tic in my left lower eyelid. My jaw clenched. I spasmodically stood up from the board and stalked over to the mirror by the sink, nearly tripping over the luggage rack.

"Jeff?"

"No wonder this game's been taking forever!" I exclaimed. "You're not even trying to win!"

"Yes I am!" Twilight protested. "And we're close! I can feel it!"

"Close to what, exactly?"

"To setting up a mutually-amicable harmonic economic rhythm where the random dice rolls average out into perfect cash flow back and forth between my laundress and your seamstress," she said. "And we were really close there for a while, before your string of bad luck."

"That's not the point of the game! The point of the game is to acquire all your opponent's money!"

Twilight frowned. "But...how will she afford the upkeep on all these houses she's built?"

"She won't!" I exclaimed, throwing my arms wide. "She's broke!"

"So how exactly is that winning?" Twilight said, her voice raising to match mine. "You won't be able to afford to stay at any of my hotels ever again!"

"Yes!"

She shook her head. "But...you're my best customer!"

I sank to the bed.

"Damn it," I said. "I knew I should've bought Pandemic."

Comments

[Georg]

Or Diplomacy. The war would start the next day.

[Kris Overstreet]

YES.

YES, YES, YES, YES.

Twilight gets what the game was originally intended to teach.

[Canary In The Coal Mine]

9682961

Twilight gets what the game was originally intended to teach.

I've never heard this before. Can you elaborate?

[notgreat]

9683000
Monopoly was literally designed to show the snowball nature of capitalism, where a small advantage (often from randomness) can lead to eveeryone else being broke. See here or here.

So, y'know, kinda the exact opposite of what was just claimed.

[Kris Overstreet]

9683000 The prototype of Monopoly was a homebrewed thing with many names, mostly along the lines of "The Capitalist Game". The game first came up about the time the US Socialist Party was at its peak (c. 1900-1908). It was drawn on tablecloths or even bare tabletops- no boxes, no fancy pieces. It was copied by hand with minor changes from one family to another. Its goal was to demonstrate that, even if you start everyone off equal, the very system of laissez-faire capitalism will inevitably result in one very rich person and everyone else totally broke, at which point the system breaks.

Then, in the 1930s, a certain person encountered the game, made a few minor changes, and started marketing it around the mainstream game companies. Parker Brothers bought it and rewrote the history to erase anything before the guy who sold the game to them. And that's where we get Monopoly.

Twilight is approaching the game like the mythical person with "rational enlightened self-interest", i. e. seeking an end state in which everyone prospers equally. The game recognizes no such end state, and its original creators argued that unregulated capitalism is the same.

[Darkstarling]

9683068
Darnit I came here to say this and I'm ninja'd!

[FredMSloniker]

9683068

Its goal was to demonstrate that, even if you start everyone off equal, the very system of laissez-faire capitalism will inevitably result in one very rich person and everyone else totally broke, at which point the system breaks.

And then people nodded at the demonstration and said, "Yes, and?"

[Cander]

[Darkstarling]

9683861
Sort of like how my social studies teacher described "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclaire.

"And now you see the inhumanity inherent in the capitalist system."
"Ew! He fell in the meat grinder!"
"Yes yes, but what does it say about a society where this could happen to a man?"
"EW!!! He fell in the MEAT GRINDER!!!!!"

[garfan]

9684301
"I aimed for the public's heart," Sinclair later wrote, "and by accident hit it in the stomach.".