Well, I read it all, and now I have to give feedback.

Well, that's fair, since I feel like I need to give feedback on your review now.

Okay, I'll admit, I adore this story. If I'd reviewed it at any point during the first 150K words, I probably would have admitted it with a full 10/10 and gushing praise. I'll get to the praise, but there are two things I have to say here, and I'll talk more about when I write up a personal review for it soon enough.

1: The politics got preachy. With two large editor's notes per chapter at points, the political drama surrounding the fictional releases of this article series ate up way too many words. And for all you did to have a go at fudds and snowflakes, it ate up way too much screentime and ultimately got boring and preachy.

Except if you look at the comments, a lot of people said they loved the editors notes and were at least as curious about the behind-the-scenes story they described as the main story, so I'm not apologizing for that. Over time it did get larger, but that was in response to the fact that the two magazines were increasingly becoming part of the story. Something, by the way, that would definitely happen if this happened in real life. So though you may consider it preachy, I consider it realism.

The second Q&A felt like outright propaganda at times, and a fair amount of what you were saying didn't feel like in-universe commentary, but instead like personal rants.

Slight problem with that: only half of the second Q&A chapter was written by me. A lot of the questions and responses you see came from other G4M authors, including DEL himself, and it was very well received. What makes me so proud of that chapter is I brought the entire verse together in a single work. That remains one of my all-time favorite chapters of any story I've written for it. So if you're going after me for that, you have to go after a good portion of the G4Mverse authors as well, since they all saw it (or wrote it!) and didn't object.

I'm not objecting to the politics, but to the fact that they spread across the story like an ugly rash. I've inserted personal politics into stories of mine before, and the result was just as unappetizing. The repetition of the same tracts and talking points does not strengthen the argument, but instead makes it annoying and tedious. I could have riffed this with #NotAllMares and #YesAllStallions and it would have fit in perfectly.

Actually, it was already done in the comments. The politics snuck in over time, starting with asking one very simple question: what would the reaction to a major magazine publishing these articles be? And the answer, in my opinion, is undeniable:  they'd take heavy fire from both ideological extremes, represented here by the HERD/conservative religious crowd and SJWs, the former upset over the frank depictions of interspecies sex and the suggestion there's nothing wrong with it, the latter by Five Stars saying that men are mistreated by women and undermining various sacred feminist/social justice tenets. It's the latter that's been far more nasty lately, and so it was here. A simple look around the country right now should tell you that's true.

Now in fairness, it's worth noting that I did get a couple complaints about it, but only after the target shifted from the ultra-conservative HERD crowd to the SJW crowd (apparently meaning that targeting one was okay but not the other?) I lost one reader because he said by being anti-feminist I'm being anti-woman (bullshit), but many others said they really liked this part of the story. In any event, I always confined it to the front of the chapters, with the author's notes and Five Stars opening remarks. My bottom line is, the politics became part of the story. An ugly rash? That's exactly how I look upon the two extremes, spewing their bile everywhere and trying to shout down/shut down anyone who doesn't adhere to them, and thus G4M or Five Stars would have to deal with them. So no apologies.

2: The story suffered in its final chapters. The pacing, prose, and style changed for the worse. Two times when it really came close to making me either fail this fic or seeking a second opinion were when you kept on posting the OBJECTION meme into dialogue, and the second time was when Five Stars seduced Nick. You're better than that. You can bet you'll be hearing from me big time on those when I give you my personal review. Additionally, pacing went to crap, with chapters paradoxically shortened and lengthening, so the number of events per chapter increased, meaning that the pacing became far quicker than in the rest of the story, save for the whole debacle with Miral.

And you can bet you're about to hear from me big time on all that below, because you are WAY off base on a lot of this, sir.

Alright, now let's really review.

Alright, now let's review the review.

Characters. Very well done, with one human exception very late in the story... Five Stars feels wonderfully vivid and alive. You made a point of establishing her personality early on and then growing her from there. You made her neither a saint nor a sinner. She felt like a real person and I would absolutely love to hear more of her stories. Your characters all get some depth and development, even ones who ought to have been just pure villains and been set in their ways. I was extremely pleased by your inclusion of letters from former lovers and figures in the story as if to have them checking in. I did notice that former lovers of Five Stars seemed to ultimately face issues stemming from their association with her, almost as if her vaginal secretions moonlight as Roosh V supporters and draw hate down like rain. I love the supporting cast and was actually sad to see some of them go, especially Rising Star and Delta. One thing that lets you do the great character study and development you did was to make the story take place over years with plenty of time to reflect on things as well as allow your protagonist to change and undergo both successes and failures. Because we spend so long with her, we commiserate on her misfortunes and cheer with her successes.

Thank you! Character development is my stock in trade with any story I write. You're going to see them learn and grow; it's a prerequisite for any story I do. I'm very gratified you acknowledge that!

(seriously, though. vaginal secretion moonlight as Roosh V supporters? That doesn't strike me as a good thing.)

There were some parts that really struck me as confusing. One was her reaction to doing it with Miral. Really, THAT messed her up? I really didn't think it would -- it seemed like a good experience she wanted and relished, but somehow it freaked her out?

This just made me chuckle and laugh, because it tells me you've never crossed a boundary like that yourself. This is EXACTLY what typically happens when you, say, have your first gay experience. Trust me, I've been on both sides of this, so I know. It's the dreaded morning after effect. It happens when you sleep with someone you weren't ready to or shouldn't have, and tends to hit especially hard when you do something for the first time. You're going to weird out over it or worse, doubly so if you were drunk and did something that goes completely against the grain in the process like fighting a male. So sorry, but you're dead wrong here--her reaction makes perfect sense.

Secondly, her seduction of that human whom will not be named was a complete fail. She's been far better at seduction than that, as you've shown more than once. The scene actually felt a little like rape, given how she pretty much just suddenly leapt on him against his protests. And then their fight afterwards... I must ask why was he even there, given that he felt like an emo Sue martyr from some teenager's EQG/HIE wish fulfillment fic.

You know, this was the one part of your review that really made me curl my lip and got me mad. Being dinged on politics doesn't bother me that much, but this does. A complete fail? That's your opinion, sir, not shared even remotely by my four prereaders--which include three fellow G4Mverse authors--or the general readership given the overwhelmingly positive comments I got on the chapter. I'm guessing that you simply didn't like the pairing and then took it out on the scene. That's your perogative, of course, and I'm used to it given the downvote count on my other story that shall not be named, but... with apologies for being blunt, this entire paragraph is full of it.

Why? Let's start with the supposed 'rape' overtones. I mean, really? She gave him every possible out. She didn't make a move on him for over a month. She only did so in response to a plea from his daughter and the encouragement of the others. There'd been tension between them for weeks. When it happened, she left the door open and made it clear he was free to leave, not just her office but Equestria itself if he desired. She even left his payment cheque on the table beside the door to make clear she wasn't extorting him either; he could just pick up his pay and go. In the end, she gave him a choice between the door and her, and he chose her.

Let me say that again: He. Chose. Her. That is NOT rape by any definition of the word.

Emo sue martyr, you say? Uh, no. I think his reaction makes perfect sense given what he's been through, having his heart badly broken followed by losing basically everything that defined him--his friends, his career, his way to help people--and wallowing in self-pity for years for it. And even aside from that, what do you think the average man's response to suddenly finding himself in bed with a pony with the first time would be? I can just about promise you it'd be on the order of what happened with her and Miral. He suffered an emotional hangover and lashed out afterwards, which is hardly an unusual story even IRL. Again, you don't seem to comprehend this is actually a fairly normal reaction, one even Five Stars noted she'd had with Miral before. Shaun didn't have that problem to be sure, but he, in the words of Demon Eyes Laharl himself, was 'something of a perv' to start.

Plot: Great. It by and large feels natural and feels like both a continuous story while also dividing neatly into arcs. Personally, the Las Pegasus chapters are my absolute favorite. The story has its ups and downs, never going the cheap route of deciding that Five Stars had lost enough in her life to start winning just because she deserved to, unlike truly enormous numbers of other fics. In the hands of almost anyone else, Five Stars would have acquired a harem of the hottest stallions, become a billionaire, and been made a member of the nobility after curing horse Ebola with a teabag and a bit of string, but not in this story, where she has to work for every bit of success, and even that isn't always guaranteed, nor are her failures always her fault.

She's human, so to speak. Or to go to the Colortura route, she's just a pony. With faults and foibles; she's not a Mary Sue in any sense of the word, even when it comes to seduction. She's just very experienced at it and doing what she loves. Nothing was given her; she had to earn everything she got, often through very hard lessons.

I have to mark you down for the story ultimately not featuring humans until almost the very end, and only having a couple of scenes of steamy manmeat on horesplot action.

*blinks* Sir, forgive me, but that is about as ugly and insulting a reason to ding me as you could come up with. That is NOT what this story or even the overall verse is about, and you should NOT be judging a story like this based on such shallow merit. I write sex scenes when it serves the story, not vice-versa.

I also did not like that Gentlemen For Mares came up only pretty much at the very end and that we really did not get to see Five Stars come to grow and develop as a recruiter and trainer as we had been promised, only receiving a quick recruitment of someone who shall not be named, and then that being it. By the way, when were Miral's death and funeral? It's written about at one point, but then we don't know what's happened to him, the there's the war after the humans show up, and then he's listed as MIA. What's his status and what really happened?

Well, I have to mark you down for this entire passage, sorry, as it's just one headscratcher after another.

1) The entire point of the story and Five Stars' stated reason for writing it was to explain why G4M was necessary in the context of her own life; all her unhappy herds. All of that preceded the coming of humanity. You mark that down, you're marking down the whole story premise, so I don't consider that a valid critique. You wanted more man/mare scenes, well, you got two major ones towards the end after a great deal of setup, each of which presented its own unique flavor and I tried to make special in its own way. Each taught her different things as well; the first was what a man could offer a mare and the second, what it took to turn a man into a Gentleman/coltfriend and all the arguments against it she'd encounter along the way. Could I have done more? Sure. But they wouldn't have been as meaningful as her first two, and after a point I'm just doing them for the sake of figurative plot instead of the literal one, meaning I've gotten away from what the story is supposed to be about and just extending it for no real reason.

2) You got to see Five Stars develop and grow as a person (so to speak), which I think is far more relevant. By the time she became a trainer, she'd already grown more or less into the pony she needed to be for the job. Showing further recruitments would be anticlimactic after recruiting her first Gentleman, IMO, because that first Gentleman is what taught her the most.

3) 'Quick recruitment'? Try again. It took well over a month and about 15,000 words before she finally bedded him. In fact, I challenge you to show me where in this story I took longer to have her bed someone she was interested in? This was in fact the longest time she or the story ever took.

4) As to Miral, the entire point is that she doesn't know what happened to him. That she will NEVER know what happened to him, where and how he died, or whether staying with him might have saved him. It's far more poignant and powerful that way, if you ask me.

Writing: Mostly really good. Your grammar is excellent to the point where I found only a handful of cockups throughout the entire thing, which you graciously fixed. Unlike a lot of people who claim to have editing teams but post unpolished stuff, this felt edited and labored over. I enjoyed reading roughly the first two thirds so much I was actually pretty bummed when I had to stop to go to work. Congratulations, your fic was so good I was willing to give up on some money to read a little bit more. Your pacing was great, until the final chapters, where your chapters got on average both shorter and denser in terms of events, meaning that the nicely meandering pace of previous chapters was suddenly forced to spring, causing a shift about as jarring as being suddenly interrupted by winged hussars.

As I think about it, you're partly right. It did get denser, but the chapters certainly didn't get shorter! The last three were all over 12,000 words, putting them in the top 5 for chapter length, so forgive me, but I really don't know where you're getting that from. The founding of G4M was secondary to the telling of her life and how she'd gotten to that place, but now that she did, things move quickly. I would argue that it would have needlessly drawn out the story if I went at the same pace as before. G4M is the culmination of her life experiences, the product of an emotionally matured Five Stars.

And you were putting in so many things that were jokes, memes, references, and links that it was like watching a completely different author take over the story.

In hindsight, I overdid the references--of which the objection graphics were part--because I was trying to telegraph the punch too much. That part's now rectified. But just so we're on the same page, I don't consider discussion of his past or history references. That's character backstory and always fair game.

The last quarter felt like you just trying to finish the story so you could just have it done.

You know, you're the second person I've heard say that. My rule is that when more than one person say the same thing independently, I start taking more notice of it and think seriously about their validity and if making changes is warranted. But in this case, here's the problem I have with that--I worked harder on those last three chapters than I did on most of the ones that preceded it, with the possible exception of part 20 (her first time with Shaun). Those final chapters kicked my ass hard and were a massive struggle to complete, both for the subject matter and because I was trying VERY hard to make the scenes work with his character and backstory. My prereaders will tell you I even had to walk away from it for a while and work on Firefly just because I couldn't take it any more. In the end, though, I persevered and ended up for the most part very happy with what I came up with, and so did they.

Notes: I loved the tons of character throughout. I also loved the nerdy bits you put in, and you also gave me ideas as I read this. I'll be talking more about them to you and possibly Laharal. As much as the final chapters were disappointing, I ultimately decided to approve this fic, because so much of it was so good that the relative crappiness of the final chapters did not warrant denying the brilliance of the earlier chapters. Please don't plug other things in your story so much; we're here for the gentlemen and mares.

And yet you stayed for the entire thing even though the first 3/4ths of it had no Gentleman, then you complained about her first one? Sorry, I'm not going to apologize for referencing other works, even my own. I've plugged DEL's Feathered Heart very hard and will continue to do so; I've likewise taken great pains to reference other G4Mverse events and characters belonging to my fellow authors and prereaders. I brought the Firefly references in because multiple G4M stories now reference it and in all honesty, it's much too good to have so few readers. Check it out yourself if you don't believe me.

As to the 'disappointing crappiness' of it, I can only shake my head given the marked contrast beteween your reaction and the one I saw from my prereaders/commenters with but a single exception you already found (and thus ignored all the others? Nice.). I still think you're letting personal distaste for a character or a ship taint your viewpoint (a no-no for a reviewer), but that's fine. I learned a long time ago I can't satisfy everyone all the time. In the end, you've said your piece, and now I'm saying mine. I'm sorry, I just don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with the ending. You want to suggest improvements, I'll be happy to listen, but I'm not going to accept a verdict of bad or failed when to me and most readers it's anything but.

This fic has truly earned its place on my favorites, and maybe you'll consider fixing some stuff in the later chapters? I'll be along soon enough and write a personal review to go into more detail and talk over my more specific praises and criticisms.

And I thank you for that, but if I can boil my issues with your review down to one thing, it's this: in all honesty it seemed more about what you didn't like than what you did. It didn't exactly strike me as a positive review for something that was being accepted, and I fear anyone reading that is not going to want to read the story. I showed it to a friend, and the first word he said was 'harsh'. If I read your review, I'd probably pass on the story and for that reason I don't feel like I can link it.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but parts of this review really do bother me and several of my prereaders. I'm sorry, but several parts of it are unfair or just plain wrong. I can take criticism just fine, but there's too much wrong with this for me to ignore.

The last thing I'd say to you is this, something I've said to others in the past: I don't do 'safe' stories. I ship Twilight Sparkle and Phoenix Wright, I turn a G1 pony into a badass warrior, I turn the climactic scene of Friendship Games into one of the most kinky and sordid clopfics you've ever seen. I know it costs me readers at times, but if that's the price for writing what I want to and challenging my writing chops, then you know what? So be it. I don't sell out.

Be proud, you made it!

And for that, I thank you, but I do ask for a little reflection on some of my points before you give me a 'private' review.