Fic burials 2 of 2 · 4:29am Dec 18th, 2015
It took me this long to realize it, but it's time to lay some of these stories to rest. I try to hold onto these ideas because I believe there are no bad ideas, only bad execution. However, as I become a much better writer and see my limits and style, I know that some of the ideas I want to do, I can't pull off their full potential. That is a crime no writer worth their salt should make.
Dearly beloved readers, we are gathered here today to remember the story 'It's Time for a Field Trip!'. This was a fic that was to be a combination of a modern show and a childhood show. It was a fic that explored new grounds in the field of crossovers, one that broke new ground. Needless to say, it didn't get very far and now I see why.
With my expanding abilities as a writer, I see a lot more of my mistakes from previous works. In this fic, I see the critical plot point that rendered me unable to continue no matter what I did. The chapters themselves would be nothing more than just the episodes but with characters swapped out and few minor tweaks to the story to add some suspense. Nothing more was to be gained and this method of recycling is not a very effective story. I had high hopes for it, but that may have been the nostalgia talking.
You were a good fic. I only wish I could have found a way. You shall be missed.
This is the full work I had before coming to this decision.
In almost no time at all, every foal had clambered up into the seats of the ‘bus’ which were clearly not designed with ponies in mind. As is the universal rule of bus seats, the foals all tried to sit with their friends if they could. Diamond and Silver, the spoiled brats they are, automatically claimed the first seat by the door so that if things went to Tartarus they could be the first ones off. The Crusaders took the one across the aisle to counter this ploy and stop them from bailing. The others just took whatever seat they could get.
While the foals were trying to figure out what the weird straps did, the strange substitute sat at the very front fiddling around with the buttons and levers. “Hmm, what to choose?” Ms. Frizzle mused. Her finger hovered over a panel of buttons with strange symbols on it. “Ah, here we are.” She said, before pulling a random lever, “Buckle up, class!” Sparks flew and to the casual observer they would see the bus shudder before stretching and spinning and shrinking down to the size of a kite. The end product looked like a toy version of a helicopter.
Inside, the foals were slightly dizzy from the spin cycle. “I don’t think I wanna be on this field trip anymore!” Apple Bloom said, her face tinged with green. Several other foals groaned in agreement, including Diamond and Silver, though they tried not to look like they were.
The only one who wasn’t sick was bouncing in her seat with joy. “That was awesome!” Scootaloo cheered, oblivious to her classmates’ wellbeings, “I wanna do that again!” During one bounce, she peeked outside and just stared for a second before shouting, “HEY! Everything is bigger!”
“Isn’t everything big to you?” Diamond said, unhappy that Scootaloo wasn’t sick like the rest of them.
Scootaloo was too much in awe to notice the tone and who said it. “No, I mean the school is like twenty times bigger!” Glancing around, she also noticed the new changes to the bus. “Is it just me or did this bus thing just change?” she said to no one in particular. The other foals started to look around too, amazed by the change in their surroundings.
“Oh ho ho, Right you are, dear.” Ms. Frizzle said, turning in her seat to face her, “This is my magic school bus. Great for every field trip a young class needs.”
“But what about the road?” Featherweight asked. “I don’t think we can ride there if we’re shrunk like this.”
Ms. Frizzle smirked. “As my cousin, Doctor Brown, always says, ‘Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads’.” She turned back to the wheel and pulled another lever. Suddenly, the entire bus jerked as it lifted off the ground and soared into the air.
“We’re flying!” Pipsqueak cried out in amazement. The other foals gathered to their respective windows and stared out at passing ground below.
“I can thee my housth from here!” Twist shouted, pointing out in the distance.
“Hey, there’s our sisters!” Sweetie Belle said as she pulled Apple Bloom to the window.
“Oh, Celestia.” Button Mash said in growing horror, “My mom is getting broccoli!”
These comments continued as the tiny helicopter bus flew over everypony’s head, completely ignored by them. Soon enough, they reached their destination though the foals didn’t know that at the time. “Why are we going to Miss Cheerilee’s house?” Silver Spoon asked, “Shouldn’t we go to, like, the museum or something?”
“Because this is where our field trip begins, class.” Ms. Frizzle said as if it was completely normal.
“It is?” The foals asked in unison, completely confused.
The substitute nodded, “Mmhmm. Today, we’re going to look at how the body fights against diseases when you get sick, just like your teacher.”
“How are we gonna do that?” Diamond asked.
Ms. Frizzle turned to face her and gave an enigmatic smile, “Well, where else are we going to find the germs? Inside her body, of course!” She pressed another button and the bus shrunk down and turned into a fly. “Hold on, everyone.” She flew the bus through one of the open windows and navigated through the house to their target.
Meanwhile, the foals were enraptured by their new surroundings. “Whoa, so this is what Miss Cheerilee’s house is like inside.” Snips said, “There’s not as much chalkboards as I thought there would be.”
“Why does she have a picture of my brother?” Applebloom asked, making a note to mention it to her brother later.
Buzzing through the house, the foals found themselves staring at a very sick Cheerilee as she gave a loud sneeze into a now ragged tissue. “Wow, Miss Cheerilee looks really bad.” Sweetie Belle said.
“Yeah,” Snips added, “Lookit all that snot coming out of her nose. It’s like a slime factory.” Several other foals chorused their disgust at both the description and sight. It didn’t help that the last sneeze made a snot bridge between nose and tissue.
“Of course, Snips.” Ms. Frizzle said, “When you get sick, your nose knows it should try to help defend against diseases and works overtime producing mucus to catch and remove dust and bacteria that get in there.”
“Does it really work?” Snails asked, “I mean, if she’s sick, then why does it keep running so much?”
“Because mucus is only one of the few defenses your body has to protect itself.” She turned her head with a twinkle in her eye, “The real work happens inside the body.”
It wasn’t long before they flew into the kitchen area where they found Berry Punch cooking some soup. Pinchy hopped in her seat as she waved to the outside, “Hi, Ma!” They buzzed around and settled down on the soup ladle. “Hey, Ma is making her special hay noodle soup!” The delicious scent of the boiling vegetables wafted in through the windows, making all of the foals feel hungry.
“That smells like the soup Granny makes when my family is sick.” Applebloom said.
“Are the ingredients apples, apples and more apples?” Diamond Tiara asked with a sneer.
Applebloom rolled her eyes, “Pfft, No.” She conveniently forgot the time she tried to make soup for her family by boiling the apples whole to get a care-for-the-sick or cooking cutie mark. Somehow she still ended up covered in tree sap.
“Why do we need soup anyways?” Silver Spoon asked, “Doesn’t the medicine get rid of the disease?”
“Not quite, Silver.” Ms. Frizzle said as she fiddled with the buttons on the panel, “The medicine helps fight the disease, but the soup gives the body energy to fight back.”
Button Mash, who was curious about anything electronic and covered in buttons, peered at the teacher as her hands flew across the dashboard. If today taught him anything so far, it’s that those buttons plus a crazy teacher did not mean anything good. “Um, Ms. Frizzle? What are you doing?” he asked tentatively.
“Just getting ready for the next part of the lesson. Now buckle up, class. It’s time to go for a swim!” She flipped lever and the bus transformed again into a submarine, sliding straight down the spoon shaft and into the boiling depths of the soup.
“Does this mean we’re invited to lunch?” Snails asked no one in particular.
Snips gave him a flat look. “Snails, we are lunch.” It wasn’t long until the bus started to shake as they were tossed about in the delicious currents. At one point they found themselves falling again, but into a porcelain bowl. Outside the windows, a massive Berry Punch hummed as she ladled soup into the bowl.
“At my old school, we never fed teachers with students.” Pipsqueak said as the bowl passed into Cheerilee’s hooves.
Several of the foal’s eyes went wide as the bowl began to slowly tip towards the monstrous maw that was Cheerilee’s mouth. “I don’t wanna be food!” Diamond Tiara shrieked just before the sub dropped into the mare’s gullet.
Guided by the master hand of the Friz, the bus rode the soup and muscle contractions into the back of the mouth and down the esophagus, foals screaming out of fear and thrill all the way. Once in the stomach, Ms. Frizzle stood up and gestured around herself, “Here we are, class! Our first stop on this trip is the stomach. As you can see, this is where the food you eat gets broken down into itty bitty pieces before heading through the intestines where most of the nutrients get absorbed.”
“Huh, so this is what lunch looks like?” Applebloom said to herself, “I think I like it better before it’s eaten.” She watched as some of the carrots crumbled apart into mush.
“For once, I agree with the hayseed.” Diamond said.
“Wait, doesn’t the stomach have some super strong acid to break down the food?” Sweetie asked the teacher.
Ms. Frizzle nodded. “Right you are, Sweetie. This acid is designed to be strong enough to dissolve almost any food we eat. It can even dissolve some metals and other chemicals too.”
Silver frowned in thought. “So, if this acid can dissolve metal…” Her eyes widened in fright, “Are we gonna be digested?!” Some of the other students heard and spoke worriedly amongst themselves. Though it was cut short short by the tinkling laughter of the substitute teacher.
"Not to worry, class! We won't be staying here too long. We only have to wait a few more seconds." Ms. Frizzle gripped the wheel and pulled a few levers.
"Wait for what?" Rumble asked. Suddenly, the bus began to shake as the stomach fluids tossed them about, causing the foals to shout and scramble for safety.
"The walls are moving! We're gonna get crushed!" Snips shouted above the others.
“Don’t worry, it’
[enter through soup, maybe try nose first?]
[show how soup helps health a bit]
[enter blood through small intestine]
[show how body fights disease, white blood cell device]
[AB saves DT from WBC?]
[exit via huge sneeze]
A pity you couldn't go further with this. It looks like it could have been a lot of fun.
However, doing lessons straight out of the cartoon might not have been the best idea. I would have loved, however, to see a 'Magic School Bus explains magic' chapter.
3625832 I was a naive writer at the time. I didn't think I was allowed to do that sort of stuff because of nostalgia. Also, I had no way of explaining how the Frizz would know magic and why Twi couldn't be a better teacher. There really wasn't much i could do without copying the show itself. Took me forever to see it.
3625832 Funny how many writers on the site seem to take their OCs and simply have them go through the motions of Friendship is Magic established episodes and people seem to enjoy it o.O
3625841 Funny how people write the same stories, make the same movies, and create the same art over and over and over and people still enjoy it.
We don't know much else to do in this fandom of ours.
3625849 It's so true XD
A sad day
But, I respect your decision. 
This was a good story back then.
EDIT: It would've been funny for Sweetie Belle or Twist to be all "According to my research..."
I dunno, having them explore a high-fantasy setting's physics and Magic system, especially since you can show a lot of that system through the 'episodes' format. Just plan out the things they'd be learning about (pony prehistory, arcane cosmology, and mythological zoology come readily to mind) all being things that are great to explore in fanfiction.
I just think you may have thought too narrowly in this case.
I am both surprised and not surprised - I'm not surprised you gave up on it, rehashing the original episodes would have been lame, and making new material that stays in the spirit of the magic schoolbus (IE, being genuinely educational, well-researched, but still entertaining and fun) would have been a tremendous undertaking. That's latter is just not the kind of thing you can spin off in your head, it would have taken a huge amount of work before you could even start writing a single word and that's before you have to start worrying about the usual places execution can scuttle everything.
I'm surprised you actually put it to rest in the fic itself, though, and I respect you for doing so. It's a bit of a shame you didn't try for an original plot in the magic schoolbus tradition as that would have been really, really amazing if you pulled it off, but it's totally understandable that you backed off from it. Educational writing is hard.
Wait a tick-tock, Miss Frizzle, is the cousin of Doctor Brown from Back To the Future, and knows Discord, that, makes a lot of sense considering this involves Mister "What fun is there in making sense?"
3625841 I often find myself reading any of those types of stories I stumble across.
Allot of them seem to be author perspective 'fix fics' more than anything else. I like seeing other peoples interpretations of the episodes.
3626043 They also both have fantastical vehicles too.
3625980 THAT. That is exactly what i was trying to say but I didn't have the words for it.
And yeah, if i could pull an original plot respecting the MSB tradition, it would be awesome, but that would require massive amounts of knowledge/world building that i don't have and that the show writers keeps changing. Like you said, education writing is hard.
3626230
That's also true.
3626189 They can be fun, but occasionally, it comes off as a sort of way for the author to self insert their thoughts and ruin what was generally a good episode anyway.