Review: The Last Pony on Earth Chapters 1-2

Okay guys, I know its been a while since I actually did one of these. I'm going to try and get back into it, but to start things off I'm going to do a review of a sub-fandom I haven't reviewed before, Ponies After People.

Ponies After People is a post-apocalyptic fanfic series started by Starscribe, but is a bit less traditional than your typical Post-Apocalyptic Story. When you picture an apocalypse, you usually imagine large natural disasters, viral outbreaks, or even a nuclear war if you're into Fallout. This is not an apocalypse like that however, this time, people simply... vanish. And those who are left become ponies or other species from Equestria.

The question of course will inevitably come up as to what happened. I'm not going to tell you everything here, this is a good series and sub-fandom and I want you to learn about it yourselves. There will always be mysteries after all, but I will do what I can to inform you of this brave new world.

So, shall we begin?

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Song belongs to the Spiritual Machines

Chapter 1, May 23rd.

Dear Journal,

I think I better get these details down before I forget them (or else go completely insane). If you (probably just me) notice that I’ve switched from pen-written entries to typed ones glued awkwardly into the book, know that I have a very good reason for that decision.

Actually, I’m using the text-to-speech on my laptop, this entry won’t be typed. Why? That’s an excellent question! Because I can’t. Can’t, you ask? Why could that be? Well, now you’ve asked the right question. Not that there’s much point… but no. Write. Write or go crazy in the silence. I read once that most people who go into solitary come out worse than if they’d been tortured.

And we start out with something interesting that I've never actually reviewed before as you don't see it that often in fanfiction, this story is told in journal format. It's a day to day record, more or less (some days are skipped but we'll get to that later), of life after the apocalypse, or the Event as it comes to be known as.

It's a good opening line as well, the fact that the main character, Alex, has to use text-to-speech instead of typing or writing it raises a lot of questions. Now, if you look at the cover image or the description, there's not much of a surprise as to exactly what happened to her. But that's not the point, you get a sort of question of how this happened and what's going on.

There's some details that I'm going to go ahead and say, the main character's name is Alex and she's an Earth Pony mare, or she is now at least. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to her as such now.

So, obviously Alex wakes up and things are not easy for her. Her first thought is that she has to go catch the bus to go to her job at the garage, a good way to establish her job before the Event. But at the same time, she finds that she can't stand upright and smacked her face on the carpet. She's obviously confused, thinking that her legs or her back aren't working right and her fingers are numb. She tries to stand back up, but only winds up flopping around.

She also notices that her arm has become blue, but she's still waking up at this point. She struggles to get up and turn on the lights, and that's when she realizes just what happened to her:

I knew now why I hadn’t been able to stand; there was nothing even remotely human about the way I looked. I dunno if I fainted or not. Must have spent hours just laying there on my back, staring up at where my hands used to be.

I don’t know what’s caused it, and I still don’t. Beyond any doubt, I changed into some sort of animal. As best I can tell, I’m some sort of small horse. Small is a bit of an understatement here. Standing, I’m not as tall as most little kids, maybe three or four feet. I don’t look like anything earth has ever seen, pretty damn sure about that. At least, not unless there’s some sort of aquamarine horse from some remote corner of the world I’ve never heard of.

All my other proportions look wrong too. Head’s too big for my body, though I’m grateful it’s big enough for my brain (such as it is). These eyes are ridiculous, some stupid reddish brown color and way bigger than they ought to be. I’ve got a tail now, which is just fantastic, and it’s the same color as my hair. Both are sea-foam green, like I’m impersonating the Statue of Liberty or something.

Yeah, she's found out that she's a pony now. Again, we were kind of spoiled on this already, but it's still worth mentioning. This initial shock to the transformation is natural, you don't expect to wake up as a magical talking pony.

Next we also find out where this pic is set, Los Angeles when Alex comments that she'd look like something out of a little girl's daydreams riding public transport. She gets her priorities in order quickly, realizing that she needs to try and get in contact with anyone, and it takes some doing since phones aren't made for hooves, but she manages to make several phone calls.

Only to find that no one is answering. Not her job, not her friends, not her family, and not even 911. The implication here, being that everyone is gone.

Video belongs to Nickelodeon.

Usually, in post-apocalyptic storytelling the character that we are focused on knows what already happened or they learn about it from other survivors. The Last Pony on Earth takes a very unique approach to the genre, instead focusing on a world that is nearly empty, so the heroes have to try and figure it out on their own. This is the apocalypse as Ponies After People presents it, some might compare it to the Rapture, but this is completely different.

This is only further explored by the fact that Alex cannot hear anything outside.

There was nothing to pretend not to hear this morning. There was no sign of life at all from outside, but I’d been so distracted with my own disaster I hadn’t noticed until right then. What was going on? I made my way to the window, afraid maybe I’d see some sort of warzone, or bodies clogging up the street. There weren’t any. There was nobody.

Maybe I’m reading this years and years later; maybe I’ve been alone so long that I’ve forgotten the way cities used to be. Millions and millions of people live in LA, and even early in the morning the streets of downtown should have been clogged with cars and people. There were none. No busses on the road, no trains moving down the distant Metrolink tracks, and no pedestrians on the street. Not just nearby, but nowhere my eyes could see. Every vehicle was stationary, parked where they had been left.

Alex's one hope at this point is that this is local. That, there are still humans out there somewhere and they're not all just ponies. She tries to make more calls out as far as she can, but she still has no luck. There aren't even busy signals, as it seems that everyone really is gone.

You’d think walking on four legs would be the same as walking on your hands and knees, or at least I did. This thought, however plausible it might seem, is incorrect. I won’t go into detail, except to say that I feel immensely proud to be moving at some small fraction of my previous speed. Were it not for my significant decrease in size, I would’ve expected to get much faster going to four legs. Otherwise, what the hell kind of good would four legs have in the first place? Jury’s still out on whether I’ll be faster one day, but I’m certainly not faster now. I still fall over when I try to stop sometimes, or when I try to make tight turns. Working on that.

You're in post-apocalyptic LA, I think you're going to need to work on that pretty quickly.

She goes through about 52 names in her contacts with no luck, the only one that she didn't get the answering machine on was a relative in Canada. She goes through news sites, but she doesn't find any news on what's going on. This just adds to the mystery of the Event, and makes the reader wonder how widespread this really is.

Alex at this point is starting to come to terms with the fact that this is her new reality. It's not an easy prospect, when your entire body and species has been changed this much, you don't really know what to do. She's got a lot to get used to, and a lot of challenges ahead of her if she wants to make it.

Challenge #1: Ponies have a hard time wearing human clothing. No, seriously:

Of course, clothing was an absolute disaster. It took what felt like an hour to find a pair of gym shorts I could tighten enough to not fall off when I moved, with my greenish tail spilling out over the band. My tightest tank-top still slips down my body periodically, though I feel like I might be able to do better with children’s clothing. Unfortunately I never had any kids, so there was nothing that small to be found in my apartment. I did find a little bag I could sling over my neck, big enough for wallet and cellphone, and made my way to the stairs and eventually to street level.

You know, I'm starting to see why Equestria is actually just one big nudist colony, its much simpler.

As she heads out into the street she learns something also pretty important, dogs are still around. The dog gives her a good scare, but she keeps moving as best she can. In addition to clothing, we have the problem of walking the streets in bare hooves. Obviously, normal shoes aren't going to work and she's not going to put on horseshoes. So, yeah she's currently barefoot... barehoof rather, that's something for later though.

She heads to the deli and finds that her mouth is stronger than she expected and gets what she can while leaving some money on the counter. There is no evidence that there is any more human life in LA, at least for now. Which of course, brings us to the big question of this first story:

What sort of awful catastrophe could’ve possibly caused something like this? More importantly, why didn’t I end up dragged off with everybody else? I don’t know exactly what the bible says about the rapture, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t say ‘The righteous will go to heaven and the wicked stay on earth as blue horses.’

Yes, its admittedly been a while since I read the Bible, or any fiction involving the Rapture... but I'm pretty sure that's not in there. Kinda wish it was, I can think of worse fates.

Alex makes her way through the empty city streets, continuing the post-apocalyptic feel of the story. You can almost imagine this being a movie of the hero making their way through the abandoned city. There's always this fear of something jumping out at them, but that's not here, here it is totally empty, and silent.

And perhaps, that is the scariest thing of all. Fear and horror can come in different forms, and there are few things scarier than being totally alone.

She realizes that power isn't going to last forever if no one is around and that she is going to have to learn how to survive. The journal is there to help her maintain her sanity as well to keep a record.

All chapters end on pictures drawn by Zutcha. I might as well include them here, they start out rough, but they're supposed to be drawn by Alex so it makes sense for her to get better as the story progresses. We start with a picture of Alex herself:

Chapter 2: May 24.

I survived another day, despite what you may’ve expected.

Darn it, I lost the office betting pool.

Anyway, this chapter starts out with Alex still alive the next day, obviously. The power is still on for the moment, meaning the automated systems are still working. That is likely not to last forever though, and Alex knows it. Reality is not returning to normal, so she is still a pony as she goes into a neighbor's house to try a TV.

Great, our hero is breaking and entering now.

Anyway, the only thing that's playing on TV is stuff that's automated. Nothing live or recently recorded are playing such as the news, there are still no signs of life. At this point, Alex realizes that her first priority needs to be to find someone who is still alive in the city, even if they might think she's a freak for being a pony.

Now, this may actually be the pony herd mentality setting in, or this could simply be the nature of humanity. Being alone is not going to be easy for anyone of either species, as we are both ultimately social animals. Alex is faced with the sheer horror of being totally and utterly alone, and she is doing the only thing she can do to try and fix that.

And we get to this realization:

So I considered for a long time: if there were other survivors, scattered so that, say, one in a million had survived the strange culling, what were the chances I would wander into them by sheer chance? Very, very small. With such low numbers, low enough that I had seen no evidence at all they existed, it was possible we could all live together in the wreckage of LA without ever meeting each other, or spread to the vastness of the country where the chances of encountering each other shrunk even further.

Without inhabitants, modern civilization is going to start falling apart. Infrastructure needs to be maintained, and now there's nothing left to actually keep it running. This likely will doom them to an agrarian life. But still, there's not a lot of options right now.

She gets her computer to accept voice commands, which is where we actually get these journal entries. Power is still running so she can at least keep all her gear running. But that's not going to last forever as I said. In an effort to try and get the word out she posts messages on message boards to try and get people to know that she's out there.

Great, first attempt to contact anyone outside of phone calls is the internet. I'm sure even after the apocalypse there will still be trolls.

She keeps trying to call her family with no luck, leaving them messages. She hits upon the idea that she might still be here because of her blood, but also realizes that it may have nothing to do with that, and may have even just been random. We also learn that she's good with her hands, or she used to be at least, being the only one at the garage with experience in fixing certain vehicles. And that's when she hits on an idea:

This unique knowledge gave me an insight I might’ve otherwise ignored. If anyone remained with any knowledge of how radios worked, it was quite possible I could get in contact with a CB radio. I know of (marginally illegal) systems with the power to easily reach out through the entire city and much of the county beyond. How hard could it be to turn something like that into a signal beacon? There are survivors. I know it in my bones. I don’t know if they’re like me… for their sakes, I hope they aren’t.

Still doing illegal things I see... you are so lucky that the police aren't here to arrest you Alex.

But yeah, we get this hope that she's going to be able to reach others with this signal beacon if she can set it up. She's also considering the possibility that she may actually be insane. However, if this is a delusion, it is holding up very well against scrutiny. She doesn't want to spend the rest of her tiny pony life alone, and sets out to try and attract attention as best as she can.

In this kind of story, that's not always necessarily a good thing.

So from there she heads back to the garage, her body is still feeling alien to her. There's this definite feeling of her not being able to adjust to her new form, but she does find a truck that she can use. However, she's not able to drive the truck given she's a pony now, that may change later, you never know. However, she does manage to disconnect the radio and rigged it to broadcast a message on a loop saying to come to the Garage.

The good news is that she's able to get adjusted to her hooves fairly quickly. She still can't do everything she used to be able to do, but she is getting used to them. There is one other thing of course, after all she is now a pony:

I tried to microwave myself a hearty beef stew for lunch, and found the smell almost set me to heaving. Meat. Apparently tiny horses don’t do the meat thing. Too bad. Maybe when I’m through struggling I can fight through the instinct. Bet it still tastes damn good.

Technically, horses can eat meat, but they very rarely do. Maybe this is a side effect of the transformation process, but that's not important.

She sets up camp in the garage, hoping that someone will hear her message. But if there's anyone that's hostile out there, at least they would have a hard time getting to her. She also wonders that maybe she should have stayed hidden in case whatever force did this tries to take her away too.

Maybe they’ll take me away to wherever they took everybody else. I suppose that wouldn’t be so bad. At least I’d have company.

Yeah... that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

She decides to focus on getting used to her new body the next day as well as looking for more survivors. And we're left on this line:

Please, if there’s anything like a God out there, at least let me find somebody. I don’t care if they’re the most awful jackass in the world. Anything would be better than this awful silence.

Yeah... when you're all alone in this world, you can only hope that the silence is broken somehow. Loneliness is after all a horrible thing to experience. Sometimes though, you have to wonder if there are worse things than loneliness.

And once more we are left off on another picture:

Final Thoughts:

Okay, this is a fun one to be honest. It's a different take on the post-apocalyptic genre, as Starscribe actually said in the foreword to the recently done printing of the story, "I always wanted to know if a traditional post-apocalyptic story could be turned on its head -- not so much about the destruction and death, but about what came after." And we see that here in The Last Pony on Earth, this story doesn't start with telling you what happened like Fallout or whatever, but instead creates the mystery.

These first two chapters are fairly simple, but they set up the world and premise of the story, and the sub-fandom to come. You get a feeling of total loneliness surrounding Alex as she tries to figure out what happened. In my experience, there are two types of post-apocalyptic stories such as Fallout or Ponies After People. There is the war stories, and there is the wasteland stories. This is a Wasteland story, about survival and making your place in the new world.

The journal format is unique and can be difficult to follow, but it works very well for this story.

There are many things to come in The Last Pony on Earth. But this is an excellent story and I highly recommend it. I will leave you with the words of William Shakespeare, "Oh what goodly creatures are these. Oh how beauteous mankind is. Oh brave new world that has such people in it.

Ratings:
Chapter 1: 5/5.
Chapter 2: 5/5.

Story Link

Hopefully, this will be the first of many reviews to come. I don't know what I'll do next, but here we are, I'm hopefully back at it.