#I’m looking for my pony christmas mini fic as I was last year too

[ladywaterfall]

I am once again fruitlessly looking for my own old post

[shippingfangirl013]

Ty for the tag friend!

Nickname: Um… for family it’s bug or Kaylabug and it’s just kinda stuck. And sometimes it’s KK, but only my siblings get that nickname privilege. I don’t really have one on here.

Height: y’all are gonna bully me. I’m 5 ft 1” 💀

Last thing I googled: “Was the word Fuck around in the 1940s? Was it used during WWII?” I’m a history graduate. Sue me. And I’m writing a WWII Byler fic where Will probably dies 🤪🥲

Song currently stuck in my head: I don’t know why but it’s that “you’re so vain” song that I keep hearing on TikTok and never looking up. That, and High Infidelity by Taylor Swift. And Girl at Home. Basically T Swift on repeat.

Followers: let’s just say, I have more on my Wattpad, Pinterest, and Instagram than I do on tumblr. I think I have 30? Idek. I don’t check, but I love all of you all the same! ❤️ thanks for following my lil gremlin self.

Wearing: black leggings, and my trashed white painting t-shirt, because I’m finishing Christmas gift paintings last minute. (This was a week ago at 4 am ok?)

Book/Movie that summarizes me:

Um… that’s a tough one. I don’t know that much summarizes me in all honesty.

Book: Published. . . Uhh Percy Jackson for the ADHD. And unpublished, probably Throne of a Thief (it’s my own unpublished book that I sort of horcruxed myself and friends of mine into the characters… and it’s been useful in delving into my personal trauma.)

Not sure on movies, so, I’ll go with both movies and TV shows?

Movie: Back to The Future trilogy

TV show: Stranger Things. I literally live in Middle of Nowhere - scenery is cornfields and woods- Indiana. My house? Is in the middle of the woods like the Byer’s Indiana home is. I just have horses too. It’s bad enough that I forget that the show is set in my state, I keep finding demogorgon hunter bumper stickers because Indiana peeps have really gotten into it. I have also… really gotten into it. And I like that the Duffers found Indiana so boring that we got the Upside Down after having to adjust for the show background. . . I’ve had too much supernatural shit happen in my life to not assume ghosts and stuff exist.

OH and Reign. The episode in S2 with Mary - where the song “Take Control of Who You Are” plays, that one helped me a lot when I went through a similar situation. (I don’t want to go in depth for fear of triggering someone else, but that really helped me find myself again.)

Favorite Song: I have too many. I’m gonna go with Girl at Home by Taylor Swift, because it’s been on repeat in my head. (I’m also writing a very sad Byler fic to that one. Basically it’s literal chaos and I like to cause my readers pain.) If we’re talking 80s, then it’s Twist of Fate because my pony is registered as “Twist of Fate” and I used that song for my last freestyle competition after 10 years of 4H.

Aesthetic: What’s that? No, but seriously, anything comfy? Like those cute twinkly string lights? And vibey led lights? That’s my bedroom. I have a mini couch and a reading nook by my window. If we’re talking Tumblr blog aesthetic, I don’t have one.

If we’re talking like- my aesthetic as a person? Dark Green pictures of trees when it rains. Toss some yeehaw cowgirl shit in- the cool y’alternative kind, mixed in with a lot of colors? Paint all over my hands half the time. Or charcoal. Add a splash of Nancy Wheeler’s wardrobe, pitch in my sister calling me a grandma, add in Adventurer extraordinaire bc I love hiking, gold earrings and necklaces- I like playing with them when I’m nervous. Idk pitch in some dark and light academia with tons of dusty but good smelling old history books, notebooks with love letters to friends and sketchbooks with doodles all the time - if it isn’t real paper I don’t feel like I’m writing, lab coats and chemistry and STEM, pitch in a rogue chaotic neutral half-elf 5 ft dnd character, and ‘oh you’re the horse girl from middle school’, toss a bunch of stray animals that I’ve adopted in, add a dash of hopeless romantic and that’s my aesthetic. It’s a hot mess is what it is.

Fav. author(s): This says a lot about a person. But also, I don’t know that I have one. There’s so many books on my To Read list, it’s crazy.

Rick Riordan- I grew up with Percy and it made me feel seen as someone with ADHD.

C.S. Lewis- I was hooked on Narnia, and I have my mom’s copies from when she was a kid. The covers are falling off, but now they just live in the series sleeve in my bookshelf.

Dream Job: Uh… I’ve wanted to be a veterinarian since I was six… but I’m starting to think that being a historian with an equine focus could be much cooler. I just applied to Vet School this past summer… I still don’t know if it’s a commitment I’m ready to make and I don’t even know if it truly want to go. And my parents keep pushing me towards it, lest I make a mistake and not go and regret it for 20 plus years… but what if I regret it now and can’t live my life because I go? I want to help people, and animals, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted, but I also need to have time for myself.

Random Fact: Stranger Things made me realize that I was bisexual. Okay… I had been questioning it for a very long time, somewhere in the back of my mind, but realized after I fell in love with Robin’s character.

And then found that I might have a crush(read: possibly in love with) on my college bestie/roommate and I am too chicken shit to ruin a 5 year friendship with the one person I can trust with my life and will take care of me when I puke from doing a stupid and combining my liquors (wine and vodka) and then offer to drive me, in my car, to McDonald’s nasty drive thru when I can’t even eat apple sauce without puking. She would fight a 6 foot man and win for me and everyone deserves to have an Amber. Correction: she has almost fought a 6ft man for me and would have won had he not been 2 hours away. Everyone also deserves to have a Mikayla, who will threaten to beat someone’s ass and then you two have adhd chaos hours together.

Sorry, that’s on oversharing. Mike Wheeler must’ve possessed me there because you totally say that about your platonic friends.

Anyways.

No pressure to do this, and I’m sorry if you’ve been tagged already! Also I really don’t think I know 15 people but we’ll try it out.

@lilitblaukatz @3ddiemun5on @wheelerstrange @wrenisflying @strangerartist @rebellius @parkitaco @sapphosgaytrashcorner @strawberry-slushy @captain-daryn @willbylrs @justeliiijah @shutuperce

15 questions 15 tags

ty @cornishpixiez and @lilyflxwers for the tag<333

-Nickname: dont have one

-Height: 5'6

-Last thing i googled: hemlock (this is surprisingly normal tbh im a writer my google history is chaotic)

-Song stuck in head: evermore by taylor swift

-# of followers: who knows

-Amount of sleep: today?? 5hours (this is improvement i dont usually sleep that much on mondays)

-Dream job: something in the history department

-Wearing: a shirt with an orange print, jeans, my fluffy jacket

-Movie/book that summarizes you: idk this is hard and i dont think ive consumed enough media for this

-Mav song: would Not be able to choose even if i was held at gunpoint

-Aesthetic: indie rock/folk singer meets depressed greek astronomer

-Fav authors: no idea, although ive been on this Chris Carter high due to my friend making me read all his books

-Random fact: i play four instruments

tagging: @starchiving @arakhnee @significant-ace-nnoyance @jegulusofwesper @forever-augustine @siriusbaby (this isnt 15 tags but okay whos counting??) and anyone else who wants to :)

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Animorphs/Wicked

@miraculoussparrow requested more information about an Animorphs and Wicked fic I speculated about a while ago.  My idle thoughts turned into a whole mini-fusion, so here’s part one of two—I divided it in half for the sake of sanity.  [You do not have to be familiar with Wicked to follow, although I do recommend the soundtrack strongly.] 

No One Mourns the Wicked Some small part of Cassie is perversely grateful when she steps up to the podium at Rachel’s funeral and never gets the chance to utter a single word.  She’s already choking on fear, desperate to get this right and devastated by the knowledge she won’t be able to—and then she’s drowned out by the sudden and devastating poppoppoppopBANG of fireworks that rattles the graveyard with a horror of sound.  

Someone, somewhere across town is having a parade.  Because of course.  Because the war’s over, and this is a happy occasion.  She can hear them singing, in the silence left between explosions.  The graveyard itself is silent, the mourners shellshocked into stillness.  

Later she’ll stumble away into the city, tear-blind, inadequate eulogy a crumpled wad of paper in her pocket, and a total stranger will pull her into a hug so suddenly she starts morphing in surprise.  After she registers what the woman is saying—it’s a babbled string of gratitude and joy, nearly incoherent—she pulls away more gently.  Later that night someone will thrust a bottle of wine into her hands; someone else will gently place a pileus on her head.  Five more total strangers will shake her hand; sixteen will recognize her long enough to shout thanks or praise.  It’s the single largest celebration their small city has ever seen.  

Surrounded on all sides by singing and clapping, wearing a crown of yellow flowers she doesn’t remember receiving, Cassie thinks back to the last sight she saw before leaving the graveyard.  Jake was silhouetted against the last light of dusk, shoulders hunched and shaking as he stood over the far headstone two rows down from Rachel’s, smaller and unadorned but part of the Berenson family plot all the same.  They both deserve better than this gaudy horrorshow.  All of them do.  

One Short Day The first time Cassie suspected that girl Rachel she knew from camp was going to be her best friend, they were on the playground in third grade.  Rachel had marched over to where a fifth-grade boy was making fun of Cassie’s shoes to shove her face up against the older boy’s.  “Yeah, Cassie’s got old sneakers,” she said brazenly. “So what?”  

Amazing the power of those words, so what, to shut down anyone who criticized their clothes or their voices or anything about them.  Cassie never learned to say them with the confidence that Rachel used, but she learned to hold her head up high all the same.  

Rachel was the one who taught Cassie about the sheer power that came with not caring—or at least appearing not to care—what other people thought.  They were both weird, both not quite perfectly aligned with what the other girls in their class thought they should be.  Rachel kicked all the boys’ butts at soccer in gym class and shouted out correct answers without bothering to raise her hand, even though girls were supposed to scorn sports and wait their turn before speaking.  Cassie wore jeans with bird poop and cared more about equestrian health standards than My Little Pony dolls, even though she was supposed to wear pink dresses and fantasize about horses without actually owning any.  The thing was, Rachel could get away with being the wrong kind of girl, because she was joyous and unapologetic in her rebellion, able to laugh in the face of anyone who had a problem with the way she acted.  Cassie could get away with it too, because when you were friends with Rachel there was pride rather than shame in standing out from the crowd.

What is This Feeling? Dearest Daddy and Mom, Rachel wrote in her best penmanship.  (Given that she was seven years old, the best that can be said is that it was legible.)  Sleepaway camp has a lot of fun things.  Today I made a friendship bracelet and learned how to tie a knot.  The only thing is my bunkmate.  Here, Rachel chewed on her pen in thought, trying to come up with a way to describe the weird girl with the overalls and the boyishly short hair without being mean.  It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with Cassie, after all.  She just didn’t know anything about Limited Too or Boys 2 Men or Nintendo.  And she had the weirdest stories.  She’s weird, and her clothes are awful, but she’s the best in camp at woodcrafts which is dumb, Rachel wrote at last.  I miss you guys.  Please write back.

Hi Dad, Cassie scribbled on camp stationary.  I hope you and Cinnamon and Misty and Star and Blaze and all the other horses and the sick crow and the baby foxes and also Mom are all good.  I am not good.  Camp is stupid.  Our cabin leader is super old, like 15 or 16, but she STILL doesn’t know the difference between ash leaves and elm leaves.  My bunkmate is the stupidest part.  She thinks ponies are a type of horse and paints her nails before we go pick up bugs in the woods and wears dresses on the jungle gym.  She brought 5 pairs of sandals to camp and wears more hair clips than anyone I ever saw.  Just because she’s the best in camp at gymnastics doesn’t mean I like her.  Please please please please please please please come pick me up.

Walter didn’t come to pick Cassie up, and good thing too: later that week she and Rachel beat every single other pair of bunkmates at the Nature Fun Time Obstacle Course, working together to rush through the activities (and across the rope bridge, and underneath the zip line, and all over the Fun Facts Path) in record time.  They won tickets to free ice cream at a shop downtown for the entire summer.  But it meant far more to Cassie when Rachel ran up on their last day, friendship bracelet in hand, and tied it around Cassie’s wrist.  

For Good Cassie always knew that Crayak would find a way to get revenge against Rachel and Jake for the way they’d hurt him.  She just never imagined it would come like this: the sharp whistle of a rock in the air followed by a hideous wet crunch of gristle and bone.  She never knew the fallout could be this bad, Rachel’s skin so pale it has gone a dull grey color except for the places on her hands where David’s blood seeped between her fingers.  Rachel came out of the warehouse silent and shaking, and Cassie couldn’t find it in herself to say anything.  

Not until, a hundred yards down the sidewalk, Rachel drew a sharp breath and started crying in near-silence.

“You’re right about me,” Cassie blurted, for something to say.  “I’m not strong enough.  I can’t do it.  I can’t be like you.  I’m sorry.”

Rachel whirled around, grabbing Cassie by the arm.  “That’s a good thing.  Don’t be sorry.  People like me would be nothing without people like you.”  She shook herself off.  “No.  Worse.  Without you…”  She made a sharp gesture back to the warehouse.  “I’d be him.”  

“That’s not…”

“I know myself.”  She barked a laugh.  “You’re the only reason I’m still a halfway decent person.”  

Cassie did her best not to notice the splotch of David’s blood that had transferred to her arm.  “You realize it goes both ways, right?  Without you, I’d have quit years ago and left the rest of you to die.”  

Thank Goodness People cry during weddings, Cassie reminds herself.  It’s perfectly normal to be crying on her wedding day.  So what if she happens to be crying for entirely the wrong reason?  

It’s the dress.  It’s the long cakelike frills of the dress and it’s the fact that when she looked in the mirror after the stylist was done with her veil, all she could think of was what Rachel would say to see her so swankified.  It’s the way that Ronnie is so patient and kind and loving, so willing to wake Cassie from nightmares and hold her close every year on Christmas, on Victory-Earth Day, on the anniversary of the date Marco and the others were officially declared Missing Presumed Dead.  It’s the fact that he is so good to her, in a way no one else ever has been… and she still can’t bring herself to love him.

Ronnie has never lost patience, has never stopped being devoted and sweet.  He’s also never killed someone to save her life.  He’s never stood shoulder-to-shoulder and flank-to-flank with her as they marched into battle.  He’s never committed a terrible crime so that Cassie herself wouldn’t have to, and he’ll never know the terrible crimes Cassie herself has had to commit anyway.  

He never tore a piece of her heart out, either.  He never went and died on her because she couldn’t find the words to keep him here.  

Cassie lowers her veil to hide her tears, and she picks up her bouquet.  She’s as ready as she’ll ever be.

Not That Girl “And then,” Rachel said, “he showed me this spot downtown where they’re putting new tar down on a parking lot, and my god.”  She whistled between her teeth.  “You can just coast up and up until you’re miles off the ground, and then you dive… And he just figured this out, all on his own.  He’s, like, some kind of genius at this.”

Cassie shifted to a more comfortable position on the end of her bed, trying to look like she was enjoying this conversation.  She got it, really she did.  Tobias had those big soft eyes—well, sometimes—and that sharp sense of humor and that knack for picking up new skills on the fly… He was sweet but also practical, melancholy but willing to be sarcastic too.

It didn’t stop her from wanting to cry sometimes when Rachel talked about him.

“Anyway, how are you and Jake?” Rachel asked, flopping over in her sleeping bag to look Cassie in the eye.

Cassie laughed, looking down.  She and Jake were experimenting.  Feeling each other out.  Hoping for a spark that would probably never come.  They were friends, and she loved him as a friend, but... But she wanted what she couldn’t have.

Because if she had it her way, Jake wouldn’t be the one who held her hand and tried to work up the nerve to kiss her goodnight.  Tobias wouldn’t be the one that put that starry-eyed smile on Rachel’s face.  Rachel wouldn’t be on the floor during their sleepovers, she’d be right next to Cassie in the bed—

“Enough about boys,” Cassie said quickly, shocked by the direction of her own thoughts.  “You want to go get some of my dad’s hot chocolate with chili powder?”  

The Wizard and I During the war, sometimes, Cassie would think back to the call she got late one night in eighth grade.  Rachel had been almost laughing as she spoke, enthusiasm bubbling through in every word.  It took Cassie a while to parse what Rachel was talking about, but finally she figured it out: Melissa’s dad had given them the number of this new organization in town, and the new organization was willing to sponsor any young athletes who joined it.  

Sponsor, in this case, meant just about anything.  Mr. Chapman had assured them that student athletes who joined the Sharing could access its full resources for buying uniforms, connecting to coaches, and even meeting the big names in the field.  (���Dominique Dawes!  Amy Chow! Kerri Strug!” Rachel said, and Cassie made noises of agreement like these names meant anything at all.)  She might not have understood some of what Rachel was gushing about with competition levels and professional trainers, but she found herself grinning anyway.  It was always so cool to hear how amped Rachel got about everything from sales at Express to WNBA results, because Rachel was the kind of person who could make anything brighter or more special with the way she saw it.

They’d taken a shortcut home through the construction site the very next night.  Cassie thought of that phone call, sometimes, as the last time their future had been clear and bright and easily understood.  

Part 2 Here