Welcome to the Jungle - Author's Notes

tl;dr: Look, I like have ponies bash their heads into things, alright? It’s a thing for me. It’s gonna keep happening. Just . . . just deal with it.

---

Many thanks for reading Chapter 2 of Daring Do and the Lost Tome of Shadows. If you're enjoying it, why not hit that thumbs-up button and leave a comment? In case you couldn't tell, us writers are basically addicts that need the approval from others.

---

Nothing says fun and games like laser light shows. Kinda like a rock concert! My goal is for much of this story to be somewhere between Rock & Roll and Metal AF:

* Fireworks
* Magic
* Fisticuffs (Hooficuffs?)
* Taking a beating and coming out swinging

It's gonna be epic. Twilight, Dash, and AJ are hard AF, which is why I picked them.

---

A good friend of mine pointed out how casually Twilight would create life just to have a supply of actors. She threw around big, complicated words like “creepy,” “immoral,” and “really out of character.” I personally think Twilight would have a carousel of generic pony bodies ready for just such an occasion, yunno?

I would.

- from Rick and Morty

---

No, Cairo. The scariest thing about jungle cats (tigers, at least) is that they can imitate the calls of other prey, to lure their prey into ambushes.

What have you done to these particular specimens? Why do they each have the same eye color as you do?

---

Dear DiaryNotebook: Solving puzzles is hard, but I think I've figured out a way to get Rose to carry all the heavy shit!

---

Coming up with names for characters in My Little Pony is an art, and I’m no artist. Long after digging myself into a particular pit I came up with many other names for Cairo, including Disco, Dutch, Golden Idol, Masquerade, Rough Cut, Diamondback, Monte Carlo, Buccaneer, Bombay, and Dirigible Jones (my favorite). But Cairo has since grown on me, and I wouldn’t rename him for the world.

I also considered renaming Rock Gambit to Long Shot, and regret not doing so. Rose Gambit is too similar to Roseluck, an actual pony who is terrible.

Some authors I think are genuinely good at naming characters. The example that always comes to mind is The Tyrant Filly (Twilight the Terrible, by RK_Striker_JK_5). And, of course, the show itself is full of shittily-named ponies (Flash Sentry? Really? FFS.) I guess Rose isn't so bad.

---

I’ve come to the conclusion that these Author’s Notes are really just a convenient way for me to lampshade shoddy craftsmanship. Speaking of shoddy craftsmanship, why’d these Mesoequestrians decide to hide the mechanism for bunkering down in the night behind a bunch of hard-to-find randomly placed stones, and subsequently decide to require light to open said bunker? Kinda pointless if you’re out after dark.

---

The next chapter, titled either Lost or Dealing with Magic Users, will be released in two weeks. (I already know the title, but you can try and guess which it will be!)

Preread by Daetrin. Cover art by Foxinshadow. Alternate cover art by Diremuffin.

-wr