Cover art by Zutcha.
May 23rd, 2015. The End of the World as We Know It. Billions have disappeared overnight. Humanity as we know it is dead.
Only a select few remain, their humanity completely stripped. Literally.
Now they need to find anypony who remains and attempt to recreate the world to the best of their ability. When some of them could be a continent and ocean away, and when some of them are something else entirely, this is harder than it sounds.
Thus is the premise of the "Ponies After People" universe. The first story, entitled The Last Pony on Earth, was created by Starscribe and can be found here
. The group that archives these stories can be found here.
So far the series includes:
Main Stories
- The Last Pony on Earth: A former human being living in Los Angeles, California, wakes up to a world where the entire human race seems to have vanished overnight and he/she is turned into a pony. Going simply by A, he/she writes in their journal about their struggles, as they try desperately to stay alive, find other survivors, figure out what has happened, and rebuild civilization.
- Founders of Alexandria: Four months into life after humanity disappeared, the remainder of the population has been transformed completely into ponies. Adapted to survive in a world now saturated with magic, the ponies of Alexandria settle in and try to survive the hurdles to come.
- The Eternal Lonely Day: When every human on earth either vanished or was transformed into an Equestrian pony, human civilization ended. That did not mean, however, that the survivors were content to let mankind's legacy rot and be forgotten. In every corner of the globe, ponies and other stranger creatures joined together and did what humanity has always done: survive. But after such a dramatic transformation, could anything of their original human character survive? There is one pony whose survival depends on making sure it does: Lonely Day. Transformed into the avatar of her near-extinct species.
- Earth Without Us: On May 23, 2015, the world ended. It wasn't violent, it wasn't bloody, and it wasn't even very dramatic. The entire population of the planet vanished. But they didn't stay gone; almost at once refugees started trickling back. Unfortunately for them, they didn't come back with their humanity intact. Instead of a single species, the earth is now populated with ponies, griffons, dragons, minotaurs, and even stranger creatures. What will the remnants of humanity make with their world? Will they remember human achievements, or slip back into primitive ignorance? Learn from our mistakes, or repeat them over and over?
- PaP: Bedtime Stories: [...] Demons lurk beneath the sea, while strange spirits whisper promises in dreams. Empires rise, dictators control, and ponies have nowhere to turn for help. Nowhere except themselves, and old-fashioned hard work.
- Little Problems: The Event changed all of humanity. Many were lucky, and ended up as creatures more or less the right size to live in their world. Ordinary ponies might be small compared to old human ruins, but they can make due. It's a lot harder when you're a few inches tall, and the entire world is rotting away around you. Beset by dangers on every side, a few refugees are determined to survive no matter the price. Come god, demon, or locked door, they will triumph no matter what!
Tropes within this verse include:
- The All-Concealing "I": "A", or Lonely Day, does not reveal their gender in the story until Princess Luna blurts out their full name. She was turned into a mare, but was a man before.
- Apocalypse How: Call it Planetary/Species Extinction. Homo sapiens is gone, and what few former humans remain have a very steep uphill battle to keep society and civilization the way it was.
- Broken Angel: One of the main characters, Moira, is a unicorn with a broken horn.
- But What About the Astronauts?: One of the side stories is about finding a way to rescue the people trapped on the ISS.
- Emergency Transformation: It turns out that everyone had to be turned into a pony because Earth was becoming flooded with magic, which is toxic to humans.
- Gender Bender: It is possible for someone to change gender when they become a pony.
- Intrigued by Humanity: The princesses are so interested in the humans' intelligence and ability to create magic that they interfere through dimensions.They were originally drawn by the fact that they are intelligent life in the absence of all magic.
- Magical Species Transformation: All humans are irreversibly transformed into ponies and other magical creatures.
- Million to One Chance: The number of people left behind is between 1/250,000 and 1/1,000,000 depending on the area. However, it is possible for small towns to have multiple ponies, or big cities to have none at all.
- Missing Steps Plan: Chapter 10 of The Last Pony on Earth has the protagonist make one of these, and this is when one of his priorities (apart from finding other survivors) is to regain his human body—therefore, the final step is "Human again!". He then adds that "hopefully whoever's reading this already knows what we did for six, because this crisis is over and everything's back to normal."
- Older Than They Look: It is possible for someone to become younger when they become a pony.
- Early in the story, an angry unicorn with a damaged horn de-ages Lonely Day to be sixteen years of age.
- It is revealed that Lonely Day, due to a deal with the princesses, can no longer age. This is a bit of a problem because she's only 16 and is stuck that age.
- Painting the Frost on Windows: Zig-zagged, if not outright averted. Weather remains as it originally was unless magic interferes with it, and it will reassert itself unless that magic is maintained. The magic to permanently take control of the weather does not currently exist in all of Earth's pegasi and unicorns combined; much greater numbers and training would be required for this to happen. Changing the weather locally, even in an area as wide as a small town, might still be possible for a determined team of pegasi, but worldwide things are going the way they always have been.
- Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title: The series is most likely named after Life After People.
- Post-Apocalyptic Dog: Before "A" finds any other former humans, they befriend their neighbours' dog.
- Uplifted Animal: Lonely Day and Cloudy Skies notice that the cows they end up raising seem more intelligent than usual; according to the setting bible, magic causes Earth ungulates to become slightly more sapient.
