Stranded

by Samthelegoman

Day-2 Insanity

The insanity is starting earlier than expected. Well the sick ones are. We have been on this island for just a day, and half of us are already sick and miserable, especially Dash. Her sickness is worse than we thought, she could barely move, let alone breath. Rarity and Pinkie are really weak right now, but are doing much better than Dash. I could've sworn I saw lights on the other island, its probably about a mile or two, possibly further, away. I recommended we go to that island, but we don't have a boat, and only two of us have flight abilities. Well for now Fluttershy, Dash is so sick, she can't even stand up for more than three seconds. Applejack has been the cook of the group, today it was corn and bananas again, the bananas greeted me with their usual revolting sour taste. We then fed Dash, Rarity, and Pinkie. Dash struggled to eat and swallow, even though she said she was really hungry and thirsty. I realized something was different today though.

The chest with the supplies and notes was empty when we fell asleep. It was full when I approached it. It had more food and water in it and another note, which I put in a satchel which was in the chest, it had a note that said: Thought you needed this. The food was the same as last time, corn, peaches, and now, some nuts. Peanuts and almonds to be precise. I went back to the rest of the group, Fluttershy was staring at the horizon and the neighboring island, Applejack was spear fishing, and the sick ones were sleeping in one of the huts. I put the satchel in my hut, and joined Fluttershy. "Beautiful, this place is. Even though we are all stuck here. this place is really beautiful." I said back to her, "Yes Fluttershy, it is." Fluttershy then went on to say she believed me about the other island, that there was someone there.

I left Fluttershy to continue admiring the landscape and went to Applejack, who gave up spear fishing, and went to the hut, and tried to help Dash. She was still sleeping, but shivering more and more, and now, was sweating. We woke her up and she violently woke up, yelled, then vomited. We asked what was wrong, and then she fainted. Rarity and Pinkie started to show signs of recovery. Then all of a sudden Fluttershy screamed and told us to get here to her position. She was looking at the ground, I looked with her, and in the sand, were footprints, no ordinary foot prints, hoof prints. We weren't alone.

Twilight Sparkle

Day 2

Author's note, sorry for a terribly short and possibly rushed part, it was late and I had to go to bed, critique is always appreciated!

Comments

[FlutterDash]

This has an interesting concept, yes, but... it's much too rushed and choppy. The first day, they were apparently starting to go insane, which suddenly is completely nulled in Chapter 2?... Twilight Sparkle was being a greedy flankhole with that note, Rainbow Dash was sick with some unknown Jungle Fever, and Pinkie and Rarity were under the weather; there is no suspense, no build-up, no... character. There is nothing that preludes a possible ailment. It simply happened. Just like the huts in Chapter 2: where did they come from? How long did it take? Were there any precautions taken, or was there damages and setbacks?

Another thing is the characterization and usage of the ponies as a whole. Ponies are herbivores, why would they eat fish, an obviously carnivorous food source? Fluttershy so far has done absolutely nothing but say one line and stare out at a secondary background island. Applejack is simply cooking what seemed to be random bananas and peaches that appeared out of nowhere. Rainbow Dash is simply being a sick, lonesome pony. This isn't like her at all. She, if anything, would be attempting to fight against the help of the rest and saying she's fine despite her condition. Rarity has yet to do anything at all but be under the weather, same with Pinkie from what I've observed. Twilight Sparkle isn't doing anything notable (punny!) except write in a... note? diary? Not sure what it is at this point.

All in all I don't think you thought too long about this at all, it looks like something you wrote down in 3 minutes during a school day out of boredom. I don't mean to be mean, but it's true. There is... no backstory, no detail, no description... we cannot envision anything because it is too fast-paced and jittery. Sorry, but I have to give this a 1-star out of account of it being way too underdeveloped and rushed. If I were you I'd redo the entire thing to save time and trouble.

Just being a critic.

[MrMusicalPony]

FlutterDash did more criticism than I can provide, but here I go anyways!
As far as literary elements, I don't see a lot wrong, except for the obvious lack of pressing enter when a new character speaks! Plus a few other small things which I'll pick out.
'its probably about a mile or two' Watch out! You forgot to make 'Its' a contraction! 'Its' is a possessive pronoun. This suggest some weird whatever possess miles; now what actually POSSES miles? 'It's' will fix that right up!
'The food was the same as last time, corn, peaches, and now, some nuts. Peanuts and almonds to be precise.' Sentences as independent, and therefore if you look at the sentence alone it makes sense. 'Peanuts and almonds to be precise.' doesn't make sense on it's own. Let's just word it a bit differently! 'The food was the same as last time: corn, peaches, and now some nuts. The nuts were peanuts and almonds to be precise.' Or alternatively add a semicolon after nuts instead of a period. Be careful with semi-colons though, I may not even been using it right. They're to connect two sentences that are closely related to each other, but at the same time both sentences are supposed to be independent. It's subjective, but they're just suggestions.
If you follow some of the suggestions you can kink out other errors in the next paragraph. I don't do all the editing for you, unfortunately.
Time for the story review!
A lot of what I had to say was already said by FlutterDash, but I can offer some suggestions. You can hit two birds with one stone here. You can slow down a bit and explain how their insanity affected the characters to the point where they act as they do now. Maybe Fluttershy just lost it enough to believing that if she turned to face the others she'd burst into flames or some crap like that. Get creative, but at the same time you need to justify it, and have the characters act as they should. If Fluttershy was insane, she wouldn't act all fine around Twilight. SHE'D STAB HER WITH A KNIFE AND EAT OUT HER LIVER. If you want insanity, go read Cupcakes. (It bothers a lot of people, but I was like 'meh')
Why would they ask what was wrong with RD if it was obvious she was sick and throwing up? It's sort of like this. 'Doctor, what's wrong with the patient?' 'He seems fine to me!' -giant hole in stomach-
And obviously there's dinosaurs on the island that have hoofs. I mean, come on, who DIDN'T see that one coming? Well, actually, now that i think about it, if this is a day by day journal, then Twilight is still in the situation where they're not alone, therefore we can safely put that sentence in present tense to 'We aren't alone'.
3 this time, sorry mate.