I ended up deleting the post from the other day, but I got some nice messages and had a long talk with a few people about Slice, and you know what fuck it, it’s been four years. it’s not as raw anymore, and I’m sick of feeling bad about it. (the rest is under a cut because it got super long, feel free to skip if you don’t want to read me being tl;dr about a dumb pony blog.) _{Or not, because there are no cuts here…}

first off: it’s staying down. I don’t want people thinking it’s going to continue, and honestly it’s better for it to have a limited audience at this point. I don’t mind it staying up on image-indexing sites – well, site, I think Derpibooru’s the only one that has it now – but it’s not going to be up actively, if that makes sense.

if you were hoping for the “real” reason it ended, sorry, the answer is the same as always. there was some personal stuff that I’m still not going to go into – except to say it wasn’t, as some people apparently decided, that I was lying about being the writer and the actual writer died, or whatever that bizarre conspiracy theory was – anyway, like I’ve said over and over again, ultimately it was that I just came to hate doing it. it wasn’t because of people being rude, or that I had bad time management, or that the CMC got their cutie marks (which is another thing people were weirdly insistent on even though that happened well after I locked the tumblr, never mind that Slice went officially AU during season 4). it would go on long hiatuses after every update because I would be so upset that I didn’t want to think about it at all and would only get back to it after it’d been long enough that I’d forgotten how miserable making it was. and that’s all I’m going to say on it. (a lot of you have already made it more than clear that you don’t believe me – that’s fine, you don’t have to. just please leave me be about it this time.)

despite all the negativity I ended up with, there were still things I liked about Slice, and I want to try to remember the good and stop hyperfocusing on the bad. which I guess just means I’m going to stop pretending it never existed, and try not to get upset whenever it gets mentioned! …we’ll see how well that works out in practice. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

anyway I drew these last summer, which was the last time I made this decision (before someone dredged up some old drama that made me nope right back out). I still love this family, even after everything. 💖 writing their interactions was always my favorite part; they don’t understand each other a lot of the time – both from being different tribes and having such different personalities, and also who understands Pinkie half the time anyway – but there’s still so much love there, and they’re all trying their best. sometimes they don’t do so well (the twins are both lil shits, Pound just hides it better) but they try!

the second This one is based off of concept doodles I had for the ending. my plan for the end had always been another timeskip, showing the kids all grown-up and an older Mr. and Mrs. Cake (and Pinkie!) reminiscing over old memories. Pound ended up taking over the bakery, while Pumpkin’s talent isn’t singular so much as she has her hooves in a dozen different pies (perhaps somewhat literally). everypony else turned out pretty much how you’d expect!

on that note, my second-favorite thing was redesigning G1s and the occasional later-gen into the supporting characters. (fun fact: there are only three actual ocs in Slice, and one of them I only half-count because he was designed as basically a boy Minty.) it was a lot of fun coming up with personalities for them and incorporating them into the G4 world while trying to stay true to their original designs and theming! building families and relationships out of them was kinda like a grown-up version of playing with the toys. :U I always tried to keep the focus on the Cakes, but it was also wonderful to see people enjoy what I’d done with the older pons, and it was an awesome feeling whenever someone would get one of my design jokes (like Powder having a Takara Pinky doll). MLP has been a great love of mine since G1 and there was something really special to me about being able to bring my old favorites into my new one. 💕

so there’s some positivity!! I’m gonna try to hold on to that and hope that this doesn’t go bad again. which it might, but I’m gonna do my best this time. (ง’̀-‘́)ง

#just…gonna post this before i lose my nerve again