Do Nothing Day

The Apple Family seems to have a strange tradition. On the same day every year, they do the unthinkable. Absolutely nothing! Napping in the orchards, rather than tending to the trees. It's like they're completely different ponies!

Now, three fillies want to know why. How did this holiday start, and what exactly is somepony allowed to do, on a Do Nothing Day?

My contest entry for the Fourth TwiDash Group Contest

Coverart made with vectors from the MLP Vector Club on deviant art.

Chapters (1)

Comments ( 14 )

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Julia

Julia #1 · Feb 22nd, 2015 · 3 · ·

Alara Daeth

Alara Daeth #2 · Feb 23rd, 2015 · 5 · ·

this needs to be a thing in real life

Kalizecora

Kalizecora #3 · Feb 23rd, 2015 · 1 · ·

This is a rather cute story.

Peachy Moon

Peachy Moon #4 · Feb 23rd, 2015 · 1 · ·

Just to clarify, Twi's immortal in this?

Valiant Charge

Valiant Charge #5 · Feb 23rd, 2015 · · ·

reminds me of this song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToYESwPgwNY

Cryosite

Cryosite #6 · Mar 5th, 2015 · 3 · 5 ·

Review (3rd Place)

So the point of the contest is to invent a holiday, and and work it into some sort of TwiDash story. For this story, the holiday that was invented is "Do Nothing Day," which finds its origins from Twilight Sparkle working herself to death ~~bucking apples~~studying. Princess Celestia uses her apparent authority as head-princess to order her to take a day off, with Rainbow Dash as her overseer. Since taking one day off a year is pretty relaxing, the custom sticks each year for the couple, and spreads slowly over the years to their friends.

I'm...honestly not sure how to assess the originality of this holiday. It is fairly blatantly a rip from the plot of Applebuck Season, and even makes use of the friendship letter of that episode as a means by which Rainbow Dash convinces Twilight to take a break. It's also somewhat reminiscent of the thinking behind the Sabbath, Ramadan, and so on. That all said, it certainly does feel unique, somehow.

In terms of creativity, it's a pretty straight-forward and simple holiday. Take the day off, and don't work. You're also apparently supposed to drink rainbow-water(Spicy!) tea, which takes some special preparation to make correctly, but tastes really good. (Sort of like zap apple jam?).

As for believability, it is very believable that ponies would have a holiday for simply relaxing. Indeed, that is sort of the underlying point of all holidays, and "the weekend." It seems unbelievable, however, that a holiday would exist because ponies in general work too hard, or that it would be created simply because Twilight Sparkle works too hard. It isn't believable that anypony, including Twilight Sparkle or Applejack, would spend the entire year working and only take the one day off out of the year.

On to the story.

We're introduced to the story by what quickly becomes apparent is a future CMC-analogue. I've already forgotten their names and descriptions by the time I finished reading the story and written these few paragraphs of review, and they're really not that important to the story. Their decision to go meet up with "Granny Bloom" (the great great aunt of future-Apple Bloom) further cements the future-setting of the story. A wizened old Apple Bloom obliges and tells the little fillies about the origin of this holiday, which ends up being a rather detailed and personal dialogue and interaction between Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, including a fair amount of Twilight's private thoughts, none of which Apple Bloom was witness to to be telling these little fillies.

The story starts with a descendant of the Apple Family we know, at Sweet Apple Acres, with a family tradition that is confusing to her two friends. We get the explanation for the tradition from Apple Bloom... which is all a very weird design choice to tell a TwiDash story through.

Buy some apples?

At the point where we escape Apple-land to get to the story itself, it too is in the future beyond what we know from S4 of canon, in that Rainbow Dash is in the Wonderbolts Reserves, and Twilight has settled further into her job as a princess in a much expanded and growing Ponyville-city. The two are already a couple, despite the time their jobs take out of them, and the distance they have to deal with. While this sounds like the setup for potentially a rather engaging story, nothing is really done with it, and the choice to set the story in this point in time is entirely done to make Twilight "super busy" so we have a reason to stage an intervention and spawn a holiday.

Setting aside the ridiculousness of the setup, and the weirdness of the Apple-based introduction/supposed telling, the actual interaction back and forth between Twilight and Rainbow Dash is decently good. While the degree of exaggeration of Twilight is too high to really be believable, the general feel of her being focused on something and forgoing her health is at least in the ballpark of stuff Twilight might do. Rainbow Dash taking special leave to come help her friend/girlfriend out is believable. The method she convinces Twilight (using one of her old friend reports) is solid and cute, and Twilight falling asleep in Rainbow's arms is pretty adorable, if not particularly lengthy or detailed in execution.

Grumpy Twilight putting up with being ordered to relax, and sniping about the details of it all work to be pretty solid characterization for her, and Rainbow Dash's decision to take them to some secluded and pre-setup clouds to hang out, relax, and cuddle on all fit pretty well. The detail of the rainbow-water tea is sort of just thrown in there, but at this point I'm not really too worried about things making a lot of sense or having much meaning.

We snap back to the... more future-present, and the fillies predictably find the story too mushy, and decide to scamper off and crusade or something.

Overall, the only thing this story had going for it was some solid characterization. The setup, the plot, and most of the setting was either bad or mediocre. There wasn't really any conflict to the story, and the holiday itself is incredibly weak. This was honestly a waste of time to read.

ssjgokillo

ssjgokillo #7 · Mar 5th, 2015 · · ·

5699286
I couldn't find a cool enough knockout gif to put here, but you should know that I did look for one!

Thank you for the critique Cryosite. I'm upset that the story didn't meet your standards, but I will try to take everything you said to heart as I continue to write. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go eat a couple gallons of ice cream. Which I do have a gif for!

fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/117/f/1/eating_ice_cream_never_looked_cuter_gif_by_dnftt2011-d7g76mt.gif

Phil Srobeighn