When the Equestrian budget can't support the costs of providing repairs to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, Luna takes it upon herself to try and find a solution. Her idea? To invent the concept of "the lottery" and use the money from that to provide the finances.
Read it here
.
Tropes found in this story include:
- A Simple Plan: One that goes horribly awry when ponies become so fixated on the idea of "easy money" that the country almost ends up bankrupting itself out of sheer stupidity.
- Baths Are Fun: Luna really enjoys baths.Luna enjoyed long soaks in her private indoor pond, the one large enough to house some of the smaller castles owned by those of the Houses — and 'long' often wound up translating into "Yes, I'm perfectly aware the Sun is up now and I'm certainly sleepy, but the water is so wonderfully hot... maybe I'll just drift off right here..."
- Card Sharp: Fluttershy: every time Luna manages to attend the Bearers' seasonal poker game, she loses bits to the pegasus. Turns out having an inherent tendency towards concealment combined a mane which obscures half your face can make you really hard to read.
- Gone Horribly Right: The lottery certainly does raise quite a number of bits for the school...
- History Repeats: Celestia admits that she'd tried the idea before — long enough for the horrible results to be carefully obscured from history — but hoped that Luna had come up with some way to make it work.
- Lame Pun Reaction: Implied."I have decided that this shall be called a lottery, for ideally, there will be a lot of bits in it..."
Celestia closed her eyes. That didn't help either. - Mundane Solution: Luna needs to rig a lottery draw using equipment which is going to be repeatedly checked for magic? Just have somepony draw the winning balls by mouth — after flavoring a select few.
- Never Win the Lottery: Inverted: everypony wins — but they win 80-something% of what they spent: their original ticket investment 100% minus the school's cut, which is some number less than 20%:Luna: I have already said what the government will take: twenty percent of the tally until and unless that cut should somehow reach three million bits. Then a mere ten percent thereafter, which will be put into a fund dedicated towards future repairs and improvements to the School For Gifted Unicorns."
- Poor Communication Kills: Celestia tells Luna, who's been aching to do something of her own since abeyance, to come up with an idea and not worry bothering her with the details. The next thing she knows, Luna's held a press conference, and things spiral from there.
- Power-Strain Blackout: A spell which requires no detectable effort if cast on a sheet of paper will require considerably more effort if it has to cover a continent. Luna just barely manages to stay conscious until she gets out of sight, and her tail and mane begin to revert while she's still on her way off the stage.
- Shout-Out: Celestia having trouble buying ice cream.
- Too Dumb to Live: The reason why things go astray. Pony herd instincts lead to untold hundreds, maybe thousands, of ponies doing things like spending a week not working and/or investing their entire life savings in buying tickets, all on the hope that they will be the one pony walking away with the prize. The lottery isn't creating new wealth, it's redistributing existant wealth, and so many ponies refuse to see that until it almost winds up ruining Equestria's economy.
- Win-Win Ending: Because Luna enchanted the ink which went into the hidden portion of the tickets, she was able to change the numbers underneath, making every single pony into a lottery winner and, after removing the school's portion, splitting the pot among all of the players.
