Big promise. I’m getting suspicious of divination.
Skimming three books on a topic puts me ahead of modern experts by three books. Yet whenever I read the future, all I see is water and bullets. Pretty vague. I need idiot-proof visions. In my genre, subtlety is three acts of monologues called “The Emperor that Breathed Shit Instead of Air.”
One sec.
Pure money.
Today, I’m returning to the root of my education: gaming cash-ins. While the Player’s Handbook still has a whole divination subchapter, I’m not rebuying 5e with a new font. Luckily, my new friend Polina has my back.
Diluted money.
Which still spends. Snakes & Arrows have made money for some time. Fans of history might recall Gyan Chaupar, the ancient game of cruel, whimsical fate. Former children might recall Chutes and Ladders, the defanged game of cruel, whimsical fate. Hold both thoughts. Polina’s aiming for their intellectual overlap.
The quote above opens her rules for Snakes and Arrows, to set the stakes. The quote below precedes them, for reasons beyond my attainment. Let’s grow together.
An update of the ancients. Or rather, an update of an update of the ancients, for our era. Polina connects an age of baffled, illiterate darkness and the Bronze Age. I’ll trust that. I’ll trust anything. I crawled back to Silver Ravenwood four times, begging for a crumb of magick.
For some, accessibility and authenticity conflict. Sorry. Polina’s ramming them together and seeing who survives. It’s the end of a stirring spiritual journey:
She thought about death, and it made her sad. That’s almost enough to prove that Polina isn’t a replicant. To be fair, a page and a half later, her high school boyfriend bites it. He must have lacked charm: the incident’s buried behind her recess daydream and shorter. From there, per lead Polina Rud scholar Polina Rud, she launched an expansive program of interfaith skimming. Buddhism. Jainism. A third faith impressive to New Age holdouts. What’s the go-to again?
The logic sounds loose, but I’ve read cape comics for some time. It doesn’t matter which retelling of Steve Rogers’s origin you go by: he isn’t real. Though that’s not the point. Whatever retelling you go by, Captain America’s ashamed of us. We let him down in new, inventive ways every day. That’s not the point either. Whatever retelling you go by, Polina built her life around a game for babysitters too high for checkers.
Correction: Polina built her life around a flick for babysitters too dumb for Captain Underpants. Just like Inside Out built two hours around “What if happy were sad?”
There’s more about gyan chaupar, Target-friendly interpretations, and the healing insight of Inside Out. Now that you know Master Polina, I’d rather show you.
The die’s from Blood Bowl. You know me.
Welcome to a real play of The Cosmic Game of Snakes and Arrows: Includes Gameboard. We’ll probably learn something about our souls or whatever, and definitely learn how to finally read the fucking future.
At least, that’s my goal. You pick your own:
Your own yes-man goal. Bring negativity to the dice, and you’ll come back as a barnacle. Negativity includes doubts about a board game curing mumps. That said, feel free to ask about your credit score or audition calendar:
Gotta to spend mana to make money.
I’d mock thinking really hard about cash as a life strategy, if it weren’t the S&P 500’s lifeblood. The market’s Tinkerbell at the end of Peter Pan. Or Ed Wood’s masterpiece. If manifesting wealth lacks long-term oomph, then I should move my savings from Remington shares to Remington products. For now, I trust our mentor’s vision. She met two bored guys from India once.
Picking a goal can be hard, if you’re not possessed by ambition. I’m told that happens. That some people don’t spend every breath clutching the ring, watching that traitor Samwise for the first hint of betrayal. Weird. Here are some suggestions:
Can we take two? Fat racks can only improve my grasp of the future.
Balls. Hope you don’t have two problems.
A fun personal touch, followed by ten pages of rules, rules, and proscriptions. Slightly more involved than Chutes and Ladders. I’ll deal with the details/rerolls/meditation on my end. You focus on climbing the psychic ranks. Or tumbling down the psychic ranks. If you hear hissing, brace.
Here’s my amulet.
This ring captures much of my spirit. Weeaboo. Honorary wytch. Overgrown metalhead. Weeaboo. Expelled wytch. Weird date. Metal detector target. Legend of the Galactic Heroes re-watcher. I’m into lists this week.
Per instructions, we start on Cosmic Consciousness. Which we’ll spend the rest of the game returning to. Our whole eternity is an extended cock-up.
The gap in my thoughts is bored. Next.
Are those like possessions? If so, this won’t take long. The rules say we come back here if we overshoot Cosmic Consciousness, so hopefully it’s not too elaborate.
I should full-ass the first square. Here goes.
Now we say thirty supporting arguments out loud! I’m doing that. Are you? You want enlightenment, right?
Saying this in the reboot zone is dire cruelty. Before this journey ends, I’ll say something unforgivable. For your education. Bit crude of you, really. You should apologize for making me do that.
Rolling on.
While quoting Frost looks shallow, Polina digs with her targets. For example, under square 8, “Avidity,” she cites a modern martyr:
Out of 72 personality traits and spiritual buzzwords, there’s no square for “Humility.” But Desires come with some homework.
Sick, turns out I’ve been divining since middle school. Polina’s film theory’s come a long way since Sadness Crying, or its sequel Sadness Cries: Rondo of Blood.
Next turn:
I can use this. When I don’t know what to say, vague nonsense like this gets people to walk away.
Polina doesn’t fear becoming a student again. She never stopped being one.
That’s one Sadhguru quote. Another is “Mercury is de-lish.”
You know, the old Qin prank. Vitamin M comes up more in my work than exclamation points. Two possibilities emerge. Either A) all cranks in the world are merging into one ur-crank, and mercury is their Breakfast of Champions. Or B) mercury really makes you immortal, and these are all direct descendants of Qin Shi Huang. He’s refined quicksilver cocktails and harem recruitment across 3000 years of partying. I recommend “Mercury Bombs,” but I became immortal in undergrad.
Anyway, which cable rerun teaches us about karma?
There you go. To connect with karma, watch Julia Roberts. While Polina’s picks seem normal to me, I should underscore that I’m a spiritual newt. Think scoliosis, but for the soul. I’d believe her if she told me Oprah held the car keys to enlightenment.
Quality advice! To prosper, avoid pretentious, negative jerks that tap-dance on others’ beliefs. Those guys suck.
“Hey Dwayne, how’s the job hunt? My board game says you suck, we can’t hang anymore. Know anyone playing to win?”
Don’t fret if you haven’t heard of sadness. For students with a different Inside Out mascot, Polina includes a definition.
Backwards, into the present? Doesn’t she mean…screw it, sweating linear time won’t get me enlightened. Ideally, we’ll leave it behind. Polina’s typos are in the present.
If this works, we might not need the rest of the game.
I did a little digging: therapists call this trick a “gold mine.” It keeps the couch full for months, if not years. While it’s not the best for patients, it makes your kid’s tuition a breeze.
This one should switch places with Sadness. It drives memorable romantic fuckups. Let’s do it.
Worth it. Love can’t beat becoming a sandworm.
Jeez, fate takes a while. If I keep rolling like this, I’ll still be typing when I realize 29 was a bad idea.
Polina’s full intake of Nietzsche’s themes and implications rings true. If we chose it, it must be right. Color commentating every turn of Advanced Chutes and Ladders makes sense, and deepens my word count. I’m becoming who I am.
Much of Polina’s wisdom comes from Oprah’s Book Club.
Chasing pain for vague growth? Tasting agony for agony’s sake? There’s no need to court me, I’m a dozen turns in. The first snake might kill me. Imagine one square wiping all the text so far. Or don’t! It’ll happen, and soon. I chose it. I pursued it.
The game might end, but the cursing never will. Naraka Loka feels like home.
I’ll take this one on credit. My style of suffering needs eyes.
Polina’s running out of homework! Our spirit’s growing too strong for mortal filler. We’ve also hit an arrow/ladder, which feels great. This bubble’s holding strong forever.
Potterposting was inevitable; while lower levels of consciousness cling to adult thought, bliss frees us from such attachments. Unfettered, I can enjoy Robert Galbraith capers like The Deviant Who Stayed Home and The Goddess-Spurning Child.
This next roll matters. If we overshoot 68, we have to—
Roll up the rest of the chain, then go back down to 51. So the game board is one big snake, punishing victory with labor. And failure with labor.
It’s a cosmic horror story for tools. And I’m the biggest tool in magick.
And I’m the second biggest tool in magick. Rolling on.
More good news! Above 68, you have to reroll anything that overshoots heaven’s attic. It takes a Land Raider’s worth of dice to escape paradise. Earning the right to roll your way back, and rewatch Inside Out. Or as Polina puts it:
Edging from God. What a hot, horrifying fate.
Rolling on.
This square, Raja Guna, represents ludo-narrative dissonance. I’d be more engaged if EA vibe-coded it. Polina’s added homework to a Bronze Age skinner box.
Piss.
Enlightened piss.
I wonder why I choose Naraka Loka, every time. Maybe my prior self got bored with ease and comfort, and I’m on a high heat run. I’ll probably keep Naraka Loka on next game, and turn off the rising ocean. Timers stress me out.
Polina comes from the Pangloss school of Buddhism. As any monk can tell you, all life is play. Let’s keep playing.
Which podcast is silence? Or is it a lecture? My voice makes its own choices, and leaves me to deal with the fallout. Yesterday—and this is real—my voice told fifty Mississippi Civil War enthusiasts that I think slavery happened. One gave me a look I’ve only seen from the NYPD.
This one’s less of an exercise, and more of a job interview question. So I’ll say that I’m a self-starting team player with a passion for shareholder value. Can I ascend now?
Ki detection for yoga instructors. The enlightened can detect the splits from across the room. While Polina casts her spiritual net wide, Toriyama’s a surprise.
In my first journey to square 68, I’d have called this nice. My spirit grows weak. This square taps the two dullest strains of non-thought: appeal to authority and appeal to playgrounds. The strongest proof of Guru Rud’s powers is that it’s physically impossible to be this basic.
Polina definitely writes linearly. For the first half of the book, exercises say to juggle in Lotus Pose while reciting exes in pig latin. As she loses steam, they drift into open-ended questions and therapy ProTips.
Still, I should answer. I glow when I hear the joy of a loud child. The weird laugh of this month’s true love. The squawks of those winged things in the forest.
Yeah.
Okay, fine. I have the tryhard darksign. I reach happiness with attainment. Glorious, sweet achievement formally recognized by the weak. I want to be buried in meaningless trophies like King Tut. Can I ascend now? Or sleep?
Fascinating shit, really. Sadly, if I roll a one, I have to stop reading these insights. That’d be a shame, to beat this stupid fucking game. To be free. To end this.
After a lifetime of web comedy, this is the most annoyed I’ve been at 69.
Imagine, for example, a universe where I give a fuck. Here’s a timeline:
What a lovely dream.
All life is play.
Polina sees one movie a year, and needs you to know all of them.
Polina reads one book a year, and thinks you don’t know all of them.
Another fucking loop. The square says unconsciousness, yet my mind is on fire. I need to lock in. Reincarnation works on Dark Tower rules: I’ll keep looping around until I stop being an asshole. When I return to Earth, I’m done judging people.
A generous soul. She knew suffering was God’s gift, and made every day Christmas. Though the name’s a mouthful. How many kids can you kill before you’re just “Theresa?”
“YouTube University can teach you to hum, I have deadlines. I have to come up with some bullshit for 59, and I’m all out of classical elements.”
An elegant confession of fraud. Our mentor thinks this game is worthless, along with every word she’s written. That’s what someone judgy would say, before another cycle of pain.
Back to happiness! Isn’t that great? It feels a lot like Purgatory, but that’s happiness. Breathe in the happiness.
I love it.
It sounds like I’m lying so that I can stop. But I get it now. Naraka Loka is meaningless, self-imposed agony. I’m done with it, and wanting things, including escape. Because of my happiness. There’s no word for the lightness in my soul.
Right, bliss. That’s one. I take back all the Rowling jabs. Hatred’s worth the joy of lukewarm worldbuilding. I treasure Harry’s eight-book transformation into a normal cop. I love Polina, and Hogwarts, and everyone but deviants.
Please.
What fucking peace? I’m in a prison for spiritual C students by a general D student. Granted, Polina’s a doctoral candidate at Moscow University. This is still the cruelest, longest torture in Russian history.
It’s the serenity of publishing “idk, ask Lao Tzu.”
I’d say “kill me,” but I don’t want to go back to 6.
At midnight, I’d question my mental health. Good thing it’s 1 AM.
This is my fault? You added minigames to Earth’s most famous waste of time, and missing a roll is my fault?
How much can a game about staring at your bellybutton until it ascends blather about action? This is Cookie Clicker without the spiritual satisfaction. At least the HYBRID lunatic brought brownies to his endless fever dream. Polina just asks you to think about brownies until one falls out of your ass.
I don’t need scrying anymore. My future is chutes, followed by ladders. I will die playing this game.
A bit prescriptive, after 71 speeches about finding my path, my way, on my time. I’m one loop from a hard reset.
Leaving this suggestion, in this location, is the kind of insult that starts wars. Impressive. And the first book I suspect Polina actually read.
Hey, we’ve all got to start over sometimes. Like four, Games, careers, nation-states. Pushing the boulder is the fun part! There’s a whole Camus thing about that, but Polina doesn’t read. Anything. The only art that evokes the square is goatse.
Sounds like someone else.
We don’t do that at Princeton. In fact, lists by double Ivy copywriters cost more than Polina’s scam makes. Destiny Books can expect an invoice for the work above. It’s like I tell students when they struggle: you can’t waste my time without wasting your money.
How far does this snake go?
51 to fucking 3? Shove that snake up your ass and spin.
Holy fuck what does the fucking universe want I’ve gone three decades on this dying rock without blowing anything newsworthy up despite receiving every instruction and incentive otherwise how is that not enough for a tiny glimpse of the future so that I can brace for the next avoidable mass fuckup before it hits me in the skull/soul/bank account and an army of talking heads ask if repealing the 13th amendment could have stopped the imperial boomerang from lobotomizing its thrower leaving me trapped in the Reverse Renaissance in which every dumbfuck myth gets the same weight as nerd shit like gravity—a state I expect to persist until we stop recording history altogether in favor of a daily game of limp biscuit around a flag-shaped cookie and this stupid fucking game started on 6 meaning I’ve reached negative enlightenment and my soul is worse than when I started.
This book doesn’t matter.
Polina doesn’t matter.
My time doesn’t matter.
Only the future.
We roll on.
Hey, an arrow! Pretty lucky. What’s the challenge?
Luckier! Polina’s already given us a lot to pretend to watch. Nice of her to do us two solids in a row. She must’ve worked hard on this.
Another layup: I just see Chutes and Ladders when I close my eyes.
None! It’s quite liberating. Thanks for asking, Polina!
All that learning and growing sounds tough, but Polina might have some inspiration for us.
Right, I can fix white guilt! What could be simpler? There’s a poetry reading down the street, in that building black people used to live in. I’ll help a tormented soul heal the rift between our people.
Charity is its own reward. Only this is an arrow, so a reward is our reward.
Give me a minute.
Hold on, this one’s heavy.
Almost got it.
I’m…Polina?
Seems unpatriotic, but it can be our secret. I’d give up peace twice for an arrow.
This prison’s pretty cozy. Can you recall life outside of chutes? Or ladders? I can’t. Every thought or memory that could disrupt the cycle is gone.
I’m nothing. Simple, happy meat. I inhale, I exhale, I appropriate religion, and I die.
Thanks Polina! Now that I’m empty, I see that the mistake was trying. Time to buy a new iPhone, and gaze into it until rebirth.
Addendum: I missed a snake. Comment it to win nothing!
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: James Boyd, who snaked his way through ego death and arrowed a path to nirvana. Too bad it didn’t count because that’s TWO THINGS, BUDDY!
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