Present Perfect vs. The Last Pony on Earth · 5:40pm Sep 20th, 2018
This Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! in the Octagon, two ponies will enter
Yeah, I've done that joke before. :B I can't help it if these blog titles lend themselves to running gags!
So, Starscribe's The Last Pony on Earth, a big-name humans-turned-ponies story that has spawned a fairly extensive universe, if past featured box darlings are anything to go by. It's one of those where you see a fic that sounds interesting, only to find out, oh, it's a sequel to a sequel to Last Pony on Earth.
Well, now I can finally get into those extended stories! But first, what's to be said about the original? Nothing that can't be discussed without spoilers; if you're spoiler-averse, know this story is worth reading, and you should experience it yourself before checking out my thoughts. Okay? Okay.
The Last Pony on Earth begins with the would-be titular character (spoilers, not actually the last pony on earth) waking up to a Los Angeles devoid of human life, including his own, because he's a pony now, go figure. Slowly, we learn bits and pieces of who he is as he scavenges for supplies, tries to figure out how his new body works, and dodges packs of wild dogs. This is all told to us via journal entries, written via text-to-speech on a laptop computer. Our protagonist signs these entries "-A", and we don't find out that stands for Alex rather a long time.
My first point of praise is that Last Pony is some damn fine journal writing. The only time conversations are quoted in full are when Alex has made an effort to commit the words to memory, and even then, summation is used to fill in gaps. Highly realistic, absolutely what I demand from journalfic.
But the good writing choices don't stop there. Later one, we get transcripts of interviews, journal entries from a second character with a very different voice, and some really clever bits with a memory crystal that amount to maybe the single best use of (or at least reason for using) second-person point of view in a story I have ever seen. Seriously, it's incredible, not to mention a very good way to tell the story at that point.
As for the writing itself, it is perfectly fine, deeply entrenched in Alex's character. The pacing, granted, is a tad slow, as we're given day-by-day entries even when nothing of note occurs. This is good for survival fiction, especially in the way we get to see events snowball from living hand (hoof?) to mouth, to building relationships and eventually a community. You can look back across the course of the story's breadth and see that, yeah, this is about how things would go. But if you're not immediately taken in by either the "figuring out life in a new body" angle or the "where did everyone go?" mystery, you may find the first third or so of the story a little dry. This is not the story of an exceptional person so much as a normal person placed into exceptional circumstances.
So let's talk about Alex's character a bit. I realized sometime around the one-third mark that I was having a hard time identifying with him, but that that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. As a person, I don't like him; I wouldn't spend time hanging out with him, and likely wouldn't spend time conversing with him on a regular basis if I could help it. He has zero imagination, grounded instead in an earth pragmatism that serves him quite well in surviving an apocalypse, but absolutely fails to guide him when it comes to figuring out the whole "magical talking horse" bit. He doesn't even know the word "pony", for fuck's sake! He's a real square, to use some outdated lingo, a normie who can't come up with an original idea he can't glue together from bits of scrap.
I'd like to mention, too, that I call him uncreative despite the fact that part of his journal entries (which I believe he prints and then glues into a book? I was never quite clear on this) include shaky pictures that improve over time (another great metatextual touch, courtesy of Zutcha). Sure, he can draw, and slowly gets better at using his mouth to do so, but you wouldn't call him necessarily artistic, because he only ever draws things he can see: himself, his friends, cutie marks, landscapes. Never anything imagined or supposed. And that just further supports my analysis of what kind of person he is.
And what's great is, for all that he's kind of a crappy person, this makes him a great character. Because I never once found myself thinking about the writing as the author's choices — well, aside from one notable exception that I will get to later — but as Alex being a dip. I got tired of him whining about being a pony, but I could understand why he spent so much time doing so. I was rather irked by how he treats and reacts to other characters who aren't quite as capable survivors as him. But it all comes down to him being a normal guy in a weird situation that his upbringing has done jack squat to prepare him for, and that's the filter through which we see the proceedings unfold.
Well, that's our main character: what about the others? I'll admit, though there's a strong supporting cast, everything coming to us through Alex's POV means we never quite get to ride along with them the way we do with him, the one exception being Cloudy Skies.
Yes, there are pony names in this story! (Alex's is "Lonely Day"; Sky named him.) Cloudy Skies is an enigma, a depressed loner who slowly unfolds as the story progresses and she gets closer with the other ponies around her. In the early going, before I knew the full story, I often wondered if she wasn't an Equestrian pony displaced to Earth somehow, and it took me rather a long time to come to any conclusion on that. Granted, it's apparent from the outset that, whoever she was before, she didn't like that person, which is why she's dived whole-hog into the "pegasus pony now" thing.
To wit, we never learn her 'real' name, and she's the one who gives everyone their pony names. She's a farmer's daughter, I think? She's the one who does a lot of the gardening early on, along with cooking, and eventually finds her place taking care of the cows and chickens they're able to rescue from a nearby farm. Alongside that, she's often Alex's shoulder to cry on (for all that he rarely admits to crying), and they become fast friends, even if it's suggested Alex would like something more. Oh boy, there's a lot of soap opera relationship struggles in this fic. :V
Strangely, I realize I have little else to say about the others. Joseph Kimball, aka Mystic Rune, is a unicorn who's quite obviously an autistic software engineer. He often irritates Alex, who just can't deal with his autism, while trying his best to save the Internet, something not even pragmatic Alex can fault him on. He flips back and forth between "friend" and "gadfly" in Alex's estimation, rather a lot.
The fourth pony is named Moriah, and I forget her pony name. She enters the story in about the most dramatic fashion you could ask for, and shows herself to be something of a spoiled brat, as well as a conspiracy theorist. She makes some of the later discussions interesting, let's say. Lastly is Oliver, an earth pony doctor that Alex and Joe find in Sacramento, who takes over the gardening duties and spends most of his time trying to preserve a large stock of refrigerated medicines he salvaged from a hospital in the aforementioned city.
Together, the five of them weather the trials of trying to subsistence farm in a dry part of the country, build up their supplies and fortify their home, and just work through the tribulations of being five people living in close proximity in a situation that's put stresses on all of them. They're something of a cozy little family by the end, and it always made me feel good to hear Alex refer to them as "my friends".
Of course, interpersonal drama and survivalist stories aren't all Last Pony has going for it. Things take a turn for the tense and scary during the Sacramento arc, as, after making Oliver's acquaintance, the three ponies are subject to being hunted by a slew of ominous military vehicles. This was an amazing moment, because it brings with it both elation — These might be actual humans! — and terror — Just what do they want with the ponies? Before this point, a number of codes have been scattered through the pages, repeating on radio numbers stations, and decodable into messages suggestion someone, or something, is looking for survivors.
(I have to hand it to Starscribe for those codes. Looking at the comments for solutions, they were not easy to crack, and they give the story a minimalist ARG feeling that only helps with the immersion.)
Eventually, we find out these are the hand of the HPI, the last remnant of actual humanity. Their role in the story I won't go into too deeply, save to paraphrase someone who pointed out they are equal parts threat and resource. The meetings between them and Alex — who has to stand a certain distance away, lest the ambient magical radiation that suffuses the pony form incapacitate the humans — are equal parts tense, illuminating, and surprisingly emotional.
Equally surprising is a late-story event that comes out of nowhere: Los Angeles burns to the ground. Our heroes are barely able to escape, and with enough supplies to let them relocate, but only just. They had, at that point, been planning to stick around LA for another year, build up supplies, and then relocate to somewhere in the Midwest with better farmland, for a permanent settlement. Instead, they're forced to abandon the home they'd worked so hard on, leaving behind a large amount of their gathered supplies (minus what had already been stowed in an RV for use on the road), not to mention the supplies still available in LA, from canned food to diesel fuel.
And can I just say, I learned a whole hell of a lot about cars, fuel and apocalypse survival from reading this? <.< Like, assuming it's all true, of course, but Alex talks about gasoline having a lifespan of a few months, while diesel is a good bit more stable. He uses handicap-accessible devices to retrofit cars, vans and semis for pony use. (An early scene features him using the steering wheel and Sky working the pedals of a truck as they head out to find the cattle, and it is freaking adorable, you guys.) He often praises California's green revolution for providing them with so many solar panels. A lot of hash is made about being able to use what resources they have in the moment, while doing their best to invest in systems that will outlive things like the power grid going down (on day 2) and let them survive long-term. Details like that are what really make this story, if you ask me, but then again, I love me some survival fiction. :D
Let's get to my favorite part of the story: Alex goes to Equestria. Because, yes, the reasons behind what's happened do have something to do with MLP, otherwise this fic wouldn't be on this site. After the meeting with the HPI, Alex and friends are tasked with finding the source of those codes, because it's linked to a large source of magical radiation, which is coming their way. Who that source is, I won't say, save that she was not who I was expecting would be the first show character to appear in the story. She tells Alex some stuff — including how she met Cloudy Skies early on, gave her her pony name, and swore her to secrecy about the encounter — and then brings him to Equestria to meet the Princess.
Specifically, Luna. Here is where we get the full story of what happened to Earth. I won't spoil too much here, but I want to talk about the scene where Alex learns about humanity's fate. This is when we're in the second-person POV, fomented in-text via three memory crystals, given to Alex by the Princess, that allow anyone to experience their conversation from his point of view, emotions and all.
It's intense.
It certainly helps that you're right there beside Alex, feeling what he feels as it happens. But I absolutely adored this scene, because I got really fucking angry at Princess Luna, and I have never been more pleased to be angry at a story.
Because, don't get me wrong: I wasn't angry at the story. This wasn't, Oh, author, how could you? This wasn't, It was going so well, why did that have to happen? This was, Holy shit, the ponies did their best to save humanity, and in doing so, doomed us to cultural extinction, to say nothing of the change to their physical bodies.
At its core, Last Pony is a story about the worthiness of humanity. Alex believes in humanity as a concept, that whatever our faults, our history of art, innovation, and… well, humanity has earned us the right to persevere, to exist, to persist so that we may right our own wrongs in the coming years. That, whatever ills or evils we have perpetrated on ourselves, we have a right to fix them ourselves.
And the ponies didn't take that away from us, but they did set us back, waaay back, to the point where human society has to be rebooted. No matter that, without their interference, Earth would have been obliterated. No matter that they give Alex three thousand books detailing how they can start a society as ponies and adjust to their changed forms. They saved us by screwing us over, and I was furious.
I really want to impress on you guys just how goddamn effective this scene was. I've been angry at stories plenty of time; I've never been so angry with a story. And I think the best way to get the distinction out is to talk about the one way in which I am angry at this story.
Early on, Alex doesn't talk about himself too much. We learn that he worked at an auto shop as a mechanic. He wears clothing because he can't reconcile with public nudity (reasonable). There's a bit about the time his grandmother had a stroke that gave him some surprising characterization early on. Later, we see him struggle with his humanity, avoiding things like Oliver's urging to eat more plants. But overall, even though we're reading his diary, he's a pretty impersonal guy. And though you get the feeling there's a lot he's not telling us, that he's letting us in on things by not admitting to them, well, he never admits to them. There's only so much you can read into his writing.
Around the time the second code showed up, I realized, oh, duh, if I look at the comments, I can probably find people who've solved them! (And again, kudos, it took a lot of people working together to crack them.) What I also found was an ongoing discussion about something I hadn't considered until then: Alex's gender. Realize, this was before we discovered his admittedly unisex name. He hadn't mentioned anything about "whoa, I have a horse dick now!" or "oh my god, my dick is missing!" so I figured, well, probably nothing to read into that. By the time Moriah shows up, Alex overhears a conversation between Sky and Joe where Sky refers to him as "he". I thought the matter was solved.
I was wrong. And this is where I admit I've been using "he" this whole time because I'm lazy and just a little bit stubborn about this whole thing.
When Alex goes to Equestria, a comment is made that many ponies ask if he's "[character]'s little sister". (An earlier magical mishap with the broken-horned Moriah has de-aged Alex to around 16, something that could be criticized as having zero effect on the story.) I was gobsmacked.
Like I said, I thought the debate was over! Alex was a guy! He reads like a guy! Absolutely nothing about the way he comports, describes or reacts to himself suggests that he is anything but a random dude who is now a random pony dude. But no, in the Event, Alex was transformed into a mare, and all this time, there has been zero clue about this.
Well, not zero. FanOfMostEverything, I believe, specifically points out that he has a hard time being alone around other stallions. That there are monthly cycles where he's extra emotional. Small things, things it's easy to overlook when you aren't looking for them. I was a little put out by this.
Here's where I try and work through it.
The confounding factor here is Moriah. There's a brief suggestion of it in the text, corroborated in the comments, that she is, in fact, a transwoman. As in, she was biologically male before the Event, now she's a mare; she totally lucked out. Commenters used this fact as evidence behind a theory that, whatever caused the Event, it was intelligent. They were about half right. The transformation of humans into ponies was directed, though not in on a one-by-one basis. Instead, the spell caused people to assume Equestrian forms best associated with them. It's suggested that there may be people who have been turned into griffons or zebras, you name it. One could argue all day about why someone like Cloudy Skies becomes a pegasus while Joe is a unicorn and Alex an earth pony, without ever coming to a conclusion. Point is, Moriah is female now, as is good and right, all's well by her.
So what about Alex? Dude wakes up with the body of a mare… shouldn't that mean he was meant to be one all along? Well, when Moriah wakes up, one of her first thoughts is, "What does it look like back there?" Alex never does this. A transwoman writing this journal would have at least expressed generalized relief over not having to worry about her sex anymore; Alex covers up his butt region (did I just seriously write "butt region"?). His constant whingeing I took to be directed solely at his loss of humanity, loss of fingers, the fact that Joe gets magic and he doesn't, but on reflection, it's quite obvious at least some of that is "missing my dick" syndrome. He is, absolutely, one-hundred-percent not who he's supposed to be anymore.
Why?
After the "little sister" remark blew the lid off this, I figured, well, okay, so he's basically been turned into a transman now, a mare who really should be a stallion. But after returning from Equestria, he mentions a few times that the ponies "did something to [him]". It's never clear what, but given the fact he stops complaining about being a pony, starts eating grasses and whatnot without regret, and — perhaps most tellingly — begins using "anypony" and the like with regularity, ultimately leading to him accepting his status as a young mare…
They fucked with his head. I suppose it could be said that it was just something eye-opening about going to Equestria and seeing what life as a pony can be like, some kind of Jerusalem Syndrome by way of pony world. But that's not how he reports it; they did something to him. And now he's a she. And I just…
The story itself brings up gender and transgenderism as issues, then forces a character to come to terms with being assigned a sex they were not meant for. I am not equipped to deal with the ramifications of this situation.
And this isn't even a big deal, this hardly comes up in-text as an issue. It's not the kind of thing that will ruin the story for possibly anyone. But weeks later, I'm still upset about it. And that's what I'm trying to get at with being angry at Luna: that's a good angry, this is not.
Well, that was a lengthy diversion, let's wrap this up.
Last Pony, like I said earlier, spawned a big ol' 'verse for people to play in. I got a lot of mileage comparing it to other standouts in the various genres it inhabits, and we can take a moment to see why it would be appealing to a writer to jump in and start making their own stories in its setting. Like Fallout: Equestria, it gives you an opportunity to write survival stories starring ponies, but without the "landscape is barren and hazardous" situation. (Unless your characters are human…) Even though Last Pony isn't focused on interpersonal conflict, it's entirely possible to still have raiders and bloody shootouts, if that's your bag. Like The Conversion Bureau, you've got humans turned into ponies, but without all the misanthropy those stories tend to be accused of; this is a tale firmly rooted in the value of mankind. And like Project Sunflower or Through the Well of Pirene, you've got ponies in the same place as humans (not that either of those stories spawned any kind of 'verse), but with a twist: the humans are all stuck in one place, and neither the twain shall meet.
So, yeah. The Last Pony on Earth? Good story. Shows us how to do a lot of stuff right. I look forward to reading the sequel.
4/5
An exemplar of journalfic, survivalism and PoE.
For those who care about my schedule, I'm doing a mid-size fic at the moment, trying to scrape together a couple regular blogs, and then I'll head back into my audiobook list, which itself contains two longfics. So, uh, I dunno. :B
Alex has my vote for best unreliable narrator, ever. I love this story, and have read all the sequels.
I'm really glad you pointed out the at/with dichotomy regarding your anger issues with this story; that's terribly important. I think Luna's plan for saving humanity (and the subsequent little tweak of Alex's mind) is a very subtle reveal, not really of her character, but of the not-quite-21st-century-human thought-processes of the Equestrians, and it takes one hell of a storyteller to convey something like that.
As for Alex's sexual change-over and the apparent lack of hubub about it... I think it's completely within her character to dodge the issue completely. For every time she complains about the lack of fingers, just think about Sigmund Freud's cigar. Deflection, avoidance and denial that leaks through to her journal just a bit anyway.
Starscribe has become one of my favorite authors here and I'm now reading the My Little Apprentice series, which is excellent so far and has blown my mind at least twice now.
Oh hey. It's the story I drew stuff for. Neat.
I was a little surprised at how big and popular the thing became. I definitely had fun helping this story along the way.
Alex being forcibly made to accept his gender is actually among the lesser changes made to his personality. It becomes increasingly clear as the sequels continue that Alex's head was thoroughly fucked with, and he never properly realizes it. I've never been sure how I feel about it.
4941120
Oh, you're the artist for everything? :O I honestly thought Starscribe had done it all, and legitimately improved as an artist over the course of the story.
This is actually pretty impressive, then. :D
4941174
After posting the review, I had the thought of, "Oh yeah, sequels might deal with it," but, well, I haven't read them yet. :B
4941189
I think I might have a little bit. Look at the publish dates for each chapter. I drew a thing a day while Starscribe wrote a chapter a day
Super interesting experience I had reading this fic. I really liked it going in and thought it was really well-told for most of it, though I was much more into the characters and their interactions rather than wondering about the mystery, and I actually found the Equestria bits the most underwhelming, once it started diving into the lore. But I still enjoyed it to the end - I binged it - and then I dove immediately into the second fic. I could barely through the first chapter.
Why? The tone was different, and the perspective is different. It wasn't the journals anymore, and something about it felt... off. So I stopped, and to this day that's all I've read.
One of my favorite stories on this site for sure.
About the Equestrians messing with Alex's head... I didn't see it that way, or at least to that degree. Sure she changed her mind, but, taking into account everything she was told, I wouldn't see it as strange to have a change in perspective. Those "things they did to her" that she refers to were mostly the "other" changes.. Though it's been some years since I read it, and I might have missed some clues.
Sounds like one to add to the pile. I need more time with unreliable narrators.
The artwork . . . I’m not usually a fan of putting artwork in stories, but this one nailed it.
camo.derpicdn.net/f930d8d6a86ebe9461fce293c31666437f162170?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdl.dropboxusercontent.com%2Fs%2Fvwzx5i03uh6lbf0%2F03ba953fcc2cf46ed7abff5b535910e1de5999d8.png
It’s been on my RiL basically forever, and you sold me on it with the using two ponies to drive a truck.
I also wanted to smack Alex more than once, which came across as good character writing IMHO.
I didn’t particularly like the part in Equestria, myself. I liked it better when they were all trying to figure out what was going on and really had no idea.
Also, can verify the parts about gasoline and diesel. Especially gasoline blended with ethanol, that hasn’t got a great shelf-life. It’s not as dismal as a few months (usually), but it does go bad. Avgas might be a decent alternate to diesel, too, as long as you spike it with some oil and use it in older engines (not sure how a common-rail diesel would like it). Fungus can grow in diesel, which is one thing you’ve got to watch out for, and it can also accumulate water.
I'd say that's fair criticism right there. I think I could've handled the TG elements better. In seeing the many comments when it ended, and the large number (i'd guess about a third of readers, but that's just from those who spoke up in the comments. Some serious self-selection bias could be at work) who were blindsided by the revelation. That's waaaaay too many people for it not to be my fault.
I think it's partially because gender and identity are such sensitive issues for so many people, that I was afraid to tilt my hand. I also think I may've been encouraged by the raging debates in the comments, where every new chapter was "proof" that Alex was really a girl or really a guy. I really should've seen that as a sign that I had failed to communicate some critical character information and come down way harder from then on.
Ah, well, the benefit of hindsight. At least it won't be a problem with any of the sequels, now that all that information is known.
4944351
I feel good. :D I've never been able to pull off that kind of personalized recommendation before, so I'm glad it worked.
4944398
I really want to stress, that was a small issue in an otherwise good story. If anything, I'd say you should have kept Alex gender-ambiguous throughout, but that's pretty tough to pull off, especially if you never intended it from the beginning.
I am looking forward to the sequels. :)
Okay, so, I absolutely hated the scene with Luna, and the person I was angry at was Alex. I honestly don't for the life of me see any argument where the Equestrians come out badly here.
They tried to communicate, were rebuffed. They pulled the entire resources of their nation together to create a solution to save the people who lived there with the best method they could have with no expectation of reward other than knowing that they saved lives that would be dead. There is zero indication that they could have done anything else to save them.
If they hadn't, the cities would have been filled with rotting corpses and 10 billion souls sent screaming to the shining abyss. That was the consequence of doing nothing, your stupid culture would have died anyway.
What the hell else were they supposed to do? Who could give consent for that? Who could deny it?
When someone rescues your life, you may resent them for having to cut a limb off in the process, but getting angry at them for years for doing it? Blaming them for killing your culture when it was going to die anyway?!
It makes zero sense, and I'm extremely mad no one ever calls Alex out for her bullshit.
I would like to understand why you were mad at Luna for what happened, PresentPerfect.
4941174
I'm not convinced they forced Alex to change her gender identity. There's no strong evidence. I think it's more likely that she was just somewhat indifferent and the spell recognized that she was a trans woman deep down and that's why she wound up a mare. The diet thing was gradually adapted as well.
It's not uncommon to have denial early on before you're confronted.
5381433
I would too, as it's been two years and I don't even remember who Alex is. :B If I didn't explain it in the review, mea culpa.
5381506
Hahaha fair enough.
I just finished it, myself.
Hope you enjoy my new story!