Firesight's Butthurt

by kalash93

Rating: everyone
Tags:
Length: 10915

Topkek

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2017-05-22 03:09:04 UTC

The Review

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. :eeyup:

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. :rainbowlaugh: 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. :twilightsmile:

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. :facehoof: 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. :facehoof: 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. :ajbemused:

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? :ajsmug: 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.  :twilightsmile:

My Personal Review

Hi there, personal review time!

I really like this story, but you're somehow under the impression that I hate it. My sweet summer child, you want to see me get salty? You haven't and you don't want to, but your shenanigans are pushing me. You may be bitchy, but I'm mean. And if you have a problem with my official review, we do have a complaint officer you can reach out to instead of trying to guilt me into revising my review via PM. I have the courtesy to conduct my business with you out in the open, and I'd appreciate if you did the same. And if your staff has issues with what I wrote, they can post their replies to me rather than you giving me their soundbytes. So if you'll act like the mature man of the world you claim to be for the next fifteen minutes, that would be appreciated! You are the first person i have ever met who has been a sore winner about being accepted to a group that only accepts 20% on average of all the stories that get submitted to it. Your story is famous. It's sitting in multiple places of honor. It has a great like-dislike ratio, a very loyal fanbase, and it has my personal seal of approval. And because this is me writing personally and not for the group, I'd like to tell you to shut the fuck up and be a man. Yes, we've all been watching how you've been acting and we are thoroughly unimpressed. While I will be still professional in my future reviews for you, I am going to keep your conduct here in the back of my mind. It's not many stories that get a big review from me unless they're either genuinely terrible or I absolutely adore them --this one is firmly in the latter category. After a week and then some of wondering how to properly assess such a big fic, I've decided to suck it up and just get on with it. I've decided to alternate pros and cons precisely so you can see that my praises are indeed numerous and effluent. Now that I've wasted a solid 200 words on a preamble that I should not have even needed to write, let's get down to business to defeat the Huns.

What this story does best is character development. It's a character piece, and a really good one at that. We get to watch Five Stars age and change from a naive, virginal character to a mature, wise one. Very few stories do that and even fewer do it so competently. The Five Stars at the beginning of the story feels like a vastly different character than the one we have at the end of the story, which is the entire point of character development, taking someone who is one way and then ultimately making them be a different one. Because the original miss Five Stars is so radically different than the one who first appears in Gentlemen For Mares that the reader naturally wants to know how she became that new character. If there is one thing your story does well, it's build her character. Very few fics cover a character going through both the ups and down of life, and Five Stars, when he hits downs, she hits them hard. After her first herd, she understandably is quite shaken and takes a while to open up to intimacy again. This struggle leads to my personal favorite arc in the entire stories, Las Pegasus, where we get to see terrific character development alongside a fun backdrop and an interesting supporting cast. Rising Star is a favorite character of mine, and I definitely enjoyed your usage of canon characters like Braeburn and Colgate, as well as numerous canon events in the story. The chapter where the Changelings invaded Canterlot reminded me quite well of being 8 when 9/11 happened, down to that uneasy feeling of nameless dread. You touched here on an interesting theme of ironic bigotry in a supposedly harmonious society, and being Muslim, I very much say that you get how I feel when people come blaming us all after every terror attack, wanting us out of the country and accusing us all of being sympathizers and implicit in whatever it is or was that time. I'll be addressing your depiction of Equestrian society later. And yes, that'll be another positive.

As a counterpoint to this, upon a rereading of the story, I realized that Five Stars is at her most interesting while growing and struggling. She's like a Guts from Berserk -- a struggler who is as much defined by the fight as anything else they are involved with. Unfortunately, this means that when Five Stars hits her stride and comes into her own, she becomes less interesting. You see, as much development as she gets, we don't actually know the mare all that well apart from a relatively broad strokes personality and temperament. We don't really know her quirks like her favorite color, verbal ticks, pet peeves, and so on. She hits her stride around chapter 22 or so, and from there on out, the story feels finished; the premise is how she became who she is today, and once that's answered, the story loses some direction. You even had to inject Platinum Corona out of the blue just to get to the final arc. It's a shame, because part of the sell is on her development as a trainer of gentlemen, and we only get to see one. This sadly means that all the foreshadowing about that goes to pot, and we don't get to see her improve at her ultimate craft. That was what I meant by the humans got involved too late in the game. We never did get to see her advertised fifth herd, or the one where she got kicked out for being a bad lay, either.

Your story makes excellent uses of literary devices and the prose is all around excellent. You have mastery of something reminiscent of the gonzo journalism style. I can't believe you didn't make any Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas jokes -- you're clearly a clever, well-read guy. Foreshadowing is the one you use best. All throughout the story, you add little quips and lines which make the reader want to read more and make them excited for what lies ahead, right up to the very end. It's a fantastic thing if a story can be a solid quarter million words long, including author notes, and the reader at the end still wants to see more and wants to know what happens next; I am extremely pleased to know that you're cooking up a sequel and I can hardly wait. Your prose is very well done and the sheer dedication you put into it absolutely shows.  You write well, varying the lengths and types of sentences so they never get bored. You give us a variety of constructions and even layouts. You vary the lengths of your paragraphs and avoid walls of text. At no point did I feel like I was trying to climb the great wall of Times New Roman. Your mechanics are fantastic. I can normally spot spades of grammatical errors due to my background in editing and years of writing, but I found at most something like only 3 in your entire story, Only THREE -- I've probably made more in just this one paragraph than you have in a solid quarter million words! Be damn proud of that. If you ever meet your editing staff in person, buy them a round of drinks. I certainly will if I get the chance. I really enjoyed the style of this fic and i will likely try it in something of my own at some point.

Near the end of the story, however, your style did degrade a bit. This may be a subjective point, but I really do not like seeing tons of links and embeds in a story. They distract from the core text. Also, if your audience contains readers who have been on fimfic long enough, odds are they've had past experiences with link-heavy text, and it is very likely that much of these have been negative. You handled them well enough with all the Sabaton embeds in the human party chapter, something which i didn't know was possible, However, it was jarring to see OBJECTION! graphics pasted into the climactic argument between Five Stars and Phoenix Wright- I mean Nick. That doesn't look impressive or smart, it looks silly. You also started semi randomly inserting pink text from Platinum Corona into the chapters, changing the style from that of a journalistic piece into that of something more like a blog post for no discernible reason. It felt like conversational back and forth of the Q&A chapters was leaking into the regular story.

I like the way you structure the plot. The story breaks down neatly into arcs which all tie into one another. Each arc features a beginning state or issue which is ultimately resolved by the end of it. And what shows up in one arc will often impact future ones. For example, Five Stars had only ever once had sex face to face prior to her first time with human, and it was with Aces Up and Double Down, who gave her a fantastic experience before nearly killing her with too much horse wizard viagra. Naturally, she's hesitant about having sex again face to face. I bring up this particular example, because it has the longest time between the initial setup and the final resolution, demonstrating a great deal of patience as well as deliberate planning, not to mention a meticulous attention to detail and faithfulness to the character of Five Stars, Any other could have simply had her not care or just get over her well-earned hangup, but instead you made that a part of the character which became relevant again later. Another great nod to continuity is that characters from previous arcs sometimes send in letters about what's happened to them in the meantime and how Five Stars has impacted their lives. One I was very pleasantly surprised by was when Harvest Moon sent in a letter detailing how things had gone for her after expelling Five Stars from the herd. More impressively, she actually turned out to be a basically decent person who had instead been highly immature, selfish, and in the wrong rather than an inherently evil, toxic piece of work. Anyhow, the usage of arcs for your story does two additional things. The first is that it gives the story a sense of immediacy which is never lost, because there's always some goal or hope right in front of the reader; to do otherwise would have rendered the story unreadable, because it would have entailed crawling through something perhaps even longer than Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in order to see any payoff. The second thing that the arc structure does is give a sense of identity to each part of your protagonist's life. There was her Manehattan phase, her Las Pegasus phase, her time back at home, her time with the griffons, her time in Canterlot, and so on. This makes things stand out better in memory as well as uses the environment to amplify the sense of change and progress.

If there is one downside to the arc structure, however, it is that it can make the whole story feel slightly disjointed. For example, we had slice of life, up until she went to the griffons, at which point we had a bit of adventure. And then the final arc could arguably qualify as a crossover. It does complicate finding a core identity for the story, making it harder to analyze and review, yet organizing it into arcs definitely benefits the reading more than enough to offset these minor issues inherent to that particular structural choice. I much do prefer than you more or less split the story up into arcs with key characters and events rather than try to have the whole thing unfold undifferentiated, which would have proved messy and perhaps borderline unreadable.

Your pacing is generally pretty good. Most of your chapters in this story are between 6000 words and 8000 words, which makes for brisk reading. This means that most chapters end up feeling weighty and meaningful to the reader while at the same time not being too heavy and long for the average reader to get through in even a shortish reading session, like say a half an hour at a diner while taking a break from rideshare driving. This is one area where your choice of an epistolary format for your story positively shines, because it means you don't have to detail day after day of the story. And for a fic that unfolds over I believe five years, that saves a lot of time. I went through your comment section, which took a solid three hours and then some change, and I saw that you purposefully decided to focus on the highlights of Five Star's story. To this I absolutely have got to say very well done. It certainly confirmed my suspicions that you took a pragmatic approach to writing like JK Rowling does instead of the TELL EVERYTHING NO MATTER HOW MINOR approach that someone like Tolstoy would employ. I have got to say that this works out very strongly in your favor., not only because it stops the story from dragging like so many other long time slice of life stories, but also because it underscores both the theme and the style. The theme is reinforced on account of it being a story which is ultimately all about change over time, and the style is reinforced, because it's a monthly series of articles instead of a daily diary, which I doubt even Kudzuhaiku could produce enough content to do, if fimfic could even handle the sheer number of chapters it would take.

I say your pacing is generally quite good, because there are a couple of instances wherein it hits some rough patches, and they are all in the latter half of the fic. The first rough patch is that between Miral and the party with the humans, almost nothing happens. Okay, it's not that you spend thousands of words doing nothing, but your character instead does not do much of anything to contribute to her character development or the final outcome of the story.  She doesn't really grow or change. She doesn't even have too many detailed interactions with other characters. Firesight, a huge chunk of, if not all of, the Las Pegasus arc or the Third Herd arc could have unfolded in that space between those two meaningful events. You had previous breaks and downtimes, but never ones which lasted for quite so long. About 20K words pass in the post-Miral funk until she's finally back on her feet, developing and acting. That's almost a full 10% of the entire story. The second time you have issues with pacing is during the final arc, where you have consecutive enormous 12K  word chapters back to back. This is actually harmful to pacing, because by this point, having  a chapter ends delineates a meaningful interaction or moment in time having passed, but instead you cram 4-5 chapters worth  of content into two. This goes against your arc structure, because normally the first chapter or two of your arc is the setup. The next chapter is the climax. After that comes the resolution and the fallout. And so, while you may have put quite a number of words into the final parts of the stories, due to how the readers are conditioned to read what you post, the whole thing feels a lot more hurried that it actually is, thereby making it feel less ripe and reducing its impact. It also does not help that chapters with word counts over nine thousand have a  tendency to drag somewhat, taking longer to read and being more fatiguing on reader. So instead of the brisk series of chapters leading from introduction to escalation to climax to resolution, the whole thing felt like introduction and then resolution delivered immediately after each other. A middle chapter taking the last 3K words from the first chapter and the first 3K words from  the second chapter would have eased this and made it fit better with the rest of the story. Also, your last three chapters contain 36K words all told together. That's 15% of the entire story in just 3 chapters. Combine them with the post-Miral stuff and that's nearly 60K words, or about an entire quarter of your story centered around just two plot points which didn't have too much to do with what you do best, which is evolving and progressing Five Stars through her interactions with others.

Your prose is simply superb. Not only is it mechanically flawless, but it is also engaging and appealing. Your words have a steady, even flow. You also make a point of varying sentence lengths and constructions. I noticed that your average sentence in this fic was a little bit on the longish side, and I attribute that to you wanting to create a story which feels leisurely but not verbose. Needless to say, this stylistic trend suits your story perfectly. Your paragraphs are also nicely varied without too much of a dependence on dialogue to get us from paragraph to paragraph, showing that you know how to organize, order, and arrange your thoughts.

If there was any issue with your prose, it was that it is of such a high quality that any deviation therein is immediately and sharply noticeable. This unfortunately did lead to problems with the Q&A chapters due to multiple people contributing words to them as well as trying to ape different styles to give the impression of different people contributing to them. As proud of your Q&A's as you are, they were arguable among the least impressive chapters of this fic.

Your portrayal of Equestrian society is superb. It feels fully realized and fleshed out. It has its good people, bad people, okay people, crazy people, conservative people, liberal people, horny people, and so on, and you make a point of showcasing that. One thing I don't get is why Applejack has such a negative take on Gentlemen -- I know this is a point from the original Gentlemen For Mares, but you take that point and link to it; given her busy schedule and lack of dating opportunities, she and Gentlemen would seemingly be a natural fit. I've noticed that Applejack being a prude also shows up in other adult fics, but that's for later. I appreciate the effort you put into explaining what idealized Equestrian family values are and how they are meant to be achieved through the prevailing social norms. This story works as an anthropological treatise in terms of how it tackles a foreign culture. One thing you do unusually well is make Equestria be a realistically flawed world. It isn't the awesomesauce paradise many clopfics, especially HIE ones, want to portray it as, where everything is great and loving and there's no problem than can't be fixed by a good round of boning, especially by named male we're supposed to like. Equestria in some ways would seem wonderful to us, from largely tolerant sexual morality, to the general lack of human style racism, at least between ponies, but it also has its real problems, like issues with miscegenation outside of the species, and the blame placed on females who do not fit within the proscribed family structure. Again, the treatment of Changelings honestly reminded me of the treatment I sometimes receive as a Muslim. Any society will have its hangups and monsters. You worked within real life equine psychology to bring them up. One is that strict monogamy would be an anomaly. Another is that, due to being a prey species, ponies are skittish sorts generally and would find things like fighting to be highly unnatural. Nice job on exploiting that predator-prey dynamic that one time for clop.

Another great bit of work you did was on your depiction of sexuality. It's frank, realistic, and not always flattering or fun. The clop is all hot enough, but you wisely make a point of having it not carry the story. This story could even be told entirely without explicit sec scenes. And with the exception of one scene I will deal with later, you did a fantastic job of handling adult content maturely. You didn't just make sex happen for hotness, but instead to serve story and character. Have you ever read Disoknight's An Escort's Journal? If not, go do that, NOW! It's the only other fic I've ever seen do what you've done with depiction of mature sexuality as a major theme and plot element of a story, and it may just be my favorite story ever written. You showed that sex and sexual love can lead to our greatest highs and worst lows. While I've never had a moment as severe as Five Stars's morning after with Miral, I know the feeling of "I shouldn't've done that/them". Bang enough people and you'll start to develop an intuition that warns you ahead of time of potential bad sexytimes choices. Too bad, as Five Stars discovers, it's not something anyone is lucky enough to be born with. I also appreciate your choice of a female character, and while I'm not certain exactly how sexuality plays out in the female brain or body for obvious reasons, I do applaud your work at it, as well as you resisting the impulse to include sexytimes with anyone felt like including, which is a real problem in a far too big number of lesser clopfics. A lot of the themes and ideas you bring up with regard to this actually ring quite trueand it is clear that a lot of experience and passion has gone into this project.

Now I'm going to write the section containing my three biggest criticisms of the story. Given that I just wrote up more than two thousand words praising almost every single positive aspect of your story, now comes the time for me to take you to task for the few things you did fuck up. And since this is a personal review not for the group, I have all the time in the world to do so. I am also going to tell you right now that due to complexities of stories, such as yours, I normally avoid assigning numerical rankings, only giving an accept/reject verdict. This has been my object lesson in why I should not take up numerical ratings again. I'm not improving your score. I stand by my original decision to recommend this fic, and If you want another review, you're more than welcome to take up the matter with our Complaint Officer and ask that your story be reassessed by someone else. Do keep in mind that any subsequent review(er)s are not obligated to reach the same conclusion(s) as m(in)e, and that it would only be for the official review I posted, not this one. I actually ran this by some of my fellows in the group just to be safe. I also won't be cowed by someone trying to bully me in PM and I find such behavior extremely distasteful, not to mention laughable. I do my reviewing work in public because I take pride in my work and I believe in standing by what I post. You see, the Reviewers' Cafe does things publically so we can NOT  be like Equestria Daily, Seattle’s Angels, and other such outfits. We actually want to be accessible and accountable. This is the business end of that in a manner. It is also my personal philosophy.

To put it simply, here are my three biggest issues with the story, and the absolute worst ones are all to do with the final story arc. The first issue comes from the rampant politics. The second issue is Nick. The third and final issue is the "seduction" scene between Five Stars and Nick. I'm going to be extremely blunt and unapologetic here. I did reread your entire story prior to writing up this review, and I even bothered to read your entire comment section. You're welcome.

There is one last elephant in the room to shoot before I get to these. Your comment section is not an excuse. If you have to explain something in the comment section that isn't an ambiguous ending or twist, you at some point failed. And just because something is popular doesn't mean it's automatically fantastic or above reproach. I agreed with criticisms posted by CinnamonSwirlTheBearded and Gentian because they contained real issues I saw with your fic. I have never read a perfect story, and I doubt you'll be the one to change that. Now, to be fair to you, I am tackling issues that are more quantifiable and objectively ripe for analysis so as to not come across as a subjective crank.

Now, you better not pout, you better not cry, you better not scream, I'm going in dry!

I don't mind the politics in the story. What I do mind, however, is when they crawl in egregiously to where they don't need to be. Now, there's nothing inherrently wrong with the political viewpoints you're espousing. In particular, i much agree with your political approach to sex work and believe that it's pointless and cruel to criminalize a business transaction between consenting adults who are making informed, voluntary decisions. Now stop hammering us in the head with it! Just for your information, I took inventory of all the notes about politics, as well as political asides in the entire story. Do you want to know just how much content gets put into them in total? Guess. 5K? ROFLMAO, no! 10K? LOL! 15K? Get serious. By my count, thanks to Microsoft Word, I got a count slightly in excess of 27k! That's longer than almost every story I've ever written! That's longer than your entire arc with Nick! That's more than 10% of the final length of your story! Your first two arcs combined in total are shorter than that! And then it doesn't help that it does ultimately draw away from the main story. Sure, it could have been relevant once the humans actually showed up, but no, it starts long before then. I think it weakens your narrative, because, to be honest, there is no real pressing need for Five Star Service to be presented as a series of fictional articles. I like the choice and you did it well, but in the end it's not vital to the plot to be epistolary -- t'was'n't nothing that could not have been done with a bit of narrator omniscience in a more conventional style. All the drama with the publishers and all the political rantings distracted from the core attraction of the main story, which, as I have said before, is something you have done more than once, always to your detriment. Yes, I read your comment section, the whole entire thing. No, I really don't think that despite the reactions to it that you had to let the politics overgrow everywhere. The second and third Q&A still feel a bit like propaganda, because  you only have two or three talking points for 80% of the questions that aren't about how Gentlemen For Mares operates. it's almost always either "We're not whores, we're companions!" or "Herds / women suck, get over it." And none of the opponents you have dismantled are halfway competent; they're all strawmen. Their logic is always "Gentlemen For Mares is evil because I don't like it! GRRRRR!" No further arguments or ideas? Nothing about cultural difficulties through the portal? Nothing about potential human economic impacts on Equestria? Nothing aout how Equestrian magic and impact could really screw up earth? Nothing about how xenophillic copulation could pose a threat to family lines, inheritances, and so on, especially in the wealthy countries where they are most prevalent, where there are already birthrate issues? Nothing about how the folding of individualistic predators into a culture of collectivist herbivores seriously could cause a lot of problems with social harmony? And how long until tech differences and industrial differences fuck with something, badly? And what about the rapacious human capacity for consumption and expansion? What about the inevitable pandemics due to interdimensional travel? What about enforcing law and order on citizens from another world? These are either all real world problems or have very close parallels to real world issues -- we've had a quarter million years to work these out among ourselves and I don't figure we'll have it done in a matter of weeks with a completely different species, and all of these points still lack universal answers on earth, even among highly similar countries. Another issue with how you write the politics is because you hammer so hard on it with so few points for so long is that by the time they get into the story proper, it's all so hackneyed that we already know exactly what is going to be said and how they'll say it. Given your ability in writing intelligently, this is so beneath you.

The second biggest problem in the story is Nick. I have to say that he genuinely has no business being here. He's not interesting. He's not enjoyable. He's out of place. And then you shove him in our face for a solid 10% of the story and present him as the final love interest for Five Stars. He's what, disaffected? Soured? And what else? Not really anything other than that. He does not far with the story. Your hardon for him prevented someone more interesting and fitting from being put in arguably the most crucial moment of the entire story. It does not help that you need to have knowledge of a completely external and unrelated franchise plus fanfiction from that franchise to know and understand him. I work like crazy as a reviewer, dude, but I'm not buying and playing four plus video games plus a visual novel plus a novelization to understand this guy. He also just isn't like any other lover Five Stars takes. He isn't charming yet flawed like Cayenne. He isn't troubled yet cute like Braeburn. He isn't charmingly roguish like Aces and Diamond. He isn't a gentle bundle of nerves like Cruise Control. He's not exotic like Miral. He's not even a logical fit like her third herd. There is absolutely no chemistry between them. Maybe it's because he acts completely uninterested in her? Maybe it's because there is no benefit for them to be together other than Five Stars gets it stuck in her head that he is just the perfect hooman she needs 4 hurr cheezburger and for her business ambitions. And she wants to help him, supposedly. She ultimately is the one holding all the cards. What do they do together? Drink a bit while she incessantly tries to recruit him. Another way he doesn't fit is that he feels set up, painfully obviously, to be The One whom Five Stars simply must save and recruit. Too bad he doesn't want it. And why should he -- it's against his moral code, he's doing well enough on his own, and he's not in a good mental state to be getting intimate. Five Stars herself tried to fuck her head issues away and it endedly terribly. He also has just been beaten down so much farther than any other lover that he almost feels like a charity case. Lastly, he has NOTHING to offer Five Stars. Go ahead, tell me any four things he can offer her other than a body to fill a billet at Gentlemen For Mares. She doesn't desire him romantically. She doesn't have any particular attraction to him. He doesn't bring anything intellectual to the table. He doesn't provide any material benefits. Compared to her well reasoned attractions and relationships of the past, wherein all the lovers were generally more or less whom she needed at the time in one way or another, this one feels like a forced coupling of convenience.

Which brings me to something that actually makes me angry. Your sex scene between Five Stars and Nick is a royal epic fail. Five Stars has the place vacated, calls Nick into her office, and tells him she's going to have her way with him unless he runs away. He doesn't. She has her way with him. Firesight, what the hell!? This goes against all prior characterization of her as a kind, emphatic, seductive, intelligent character. Imagine if she'd dealt with Braeburn or Cruise Control with that same lemme smash attitude? You can't spend a quarter million words making your protagonist one way, and then have her completely do the opposite at her moment of truth. You have no excuse for this. Firesight had to have known better, y'know, considering that she did get raped by two of her fiances and should know better than to pressure people into things they aren't comfortable with, so much so that she was tears of joy happy when her first human lover was okay with her issues and hangups. She is also indisputably better at seduction; one doesn't take more than a solid dozen lovers and at least one virginity without knowing how to seduce. If Five Stars had wanted to seduce Nick, there are a solid dozen way she could have gone about it far better other than I'M GONNA FUCK YOU IF YOU DON'T OUTRUN ME. She could have gone drinking with him. She could have shown him the sensuous side of pony society. She could have talked intimate things with him. She could have romanced him with long talks and physical affection. she could have played upon his loneliness to present herself as a better alternative to his right hand and a cold bed. And she decides sexual assault is the best solution! You told me that what she did could not be rape. Go ahead, do the same thing and then say in court "well, they didn't refuse", and you'll get convicted every single time. Rape is sexual contact without mutual, informed, free consent. Nick didn't consent -- he instead froze up and just let Five Stars have her way with him. And yes, it's still rape if the other person enjoys it. The big post-Miral style emotional hangover and freakout Nick had makes perfect sense in this context, however ham-fisted your handling of that entire plot point was. As for why he let her do it? I don't know. It's been years for him since he's had sex, he does seem to at least partially like Five Stars, the whole thing really caught him off guard, it was mentioned that his daughter was hoping he would accept the offer, the pay was good, and he could have been just extremely confused. Remember, Juniper's rape of Sweet Tea was pretty similar, with someone just grabbing the other person and having their way with them. This entire plot point disgusted me and genuinely pissed me off. And this sex scene wasn't even all that sexy. Why? Because it lacked the emotional components of all the other good sex scenes. Plus, Five Stars is essentially taking Nick's first time, being his introduction to pony sex and his reintroduction to intimacy. She absolutely should have handled him gently; there's not a single situation in the rest of the story where she had learned to handle her men roughly, either. Imagine if she'd done something like that to Cruise Control or Braeburn. I bet the former would have spent the rest of his life hiding under his bed and the latter likely would have had sex again.

Now that unpleasantness is out of the way, here's my final TL;DR verdict: I love this story and I keep my verdict. It's a flawed masterpiece, but still a masterpiece.

Thank you kindly for reading.

Kalash93

Not Sure What To Think

Firesight said:

offered to do another review on the same story.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/281029/before-the-storm-the-rise-of-firefly#comment/8024532

You are the most ingracious little flea I have ever had the displeasure of working for. Not only did I read a solid half a million words in the course of the two reviews I gave your story, but I am halfway through your last one and will give it my frankest thoughts.

Another insult.

I have gone above and beyond the call of duty thrice just for this one story of yours. I am not required to read all of a long fic. I did yours, twice. I then wrote it an enormous second review longer tha most stories on this site and indeed longer than many individual chapters of your story. You showed your thanks by complaining and deleting.

Because, once again, you a) opened with a threat and a personal attack, implying I wasn't allowed to question you, and b) invited your friends in to upvote me and downvote my story. Both are unprofessional and unacceptable. Please stop pretending otherwise.

I have my regrets as a reviewer. Accepting yours is one of those. Perhaps I should have just rejected it and not supplied a longer review. Perhaps it is not too late to inquire about changing its status.

Another threat.

If you don't like my work, either for this, or the one that's coming within these next few days, feel free to reach out to our complaint officer, Shadow. He's a little lonely and could do with a bit of excitement. https://www.fimfiction.net/user/ShadowblazeCR

I did. I submitted an abuse report to the mods the morning after you posted your personal review regarding your first paragraph. I waited a week and got no response. That's when I deleted the comment, deciding I simply couldn't let it stand. I also submitted a complaint to Shadowblaze, but likewise got no response. So in the end, I took the action I deemed appropriate and I can't apologize for it.

5h, 18m ago

Firesight said:

*sigh* I accidentally sent you half a response. But at this point, I'm not going to spam you with the rest. So let me conclude with a peace offering:

Feel free to repost your long review without the offending first paragraph. No personal attacks or insults. Do that, and it will stay up, and I will even publicize it without any rancor.

I sincerely apologize for my tone and defensiveness in places. My private critique was unhelpful and overdone. I will even apologize publicly if you meet me halfway and likewise apologize for your personal attack. So a mutual apology, and you get your review back sans first paragraph. I think that's more than reasonable, don't you?

A PM

Firesight said:

I said I was going wait to send you this, but I feel I can no longer. As you just picked out the one negative comment on the ending arc, you're going to get my response to your review immediately, and I will ask that you give it a very careful and contemplative read. Too much of your review was off-base and unfair. You've had your say, this is mine. I'm keeping it private for now, as an unpublished Five Stars chapter. You can find it at the link below using the password given.

https://www.fimfiction.net/chapter/1077970

Password: F1v3St@rs

Don't worry, it's polite, but I'm going to ask that you think about what I say carefully before you send a 'private' review. In all honesty, I'm not that happy with you right now, and I'd like to you to make an effort, at least, to understand why. It's not the criticisms. It's the blatantly unfair ones. Read and you'll understand why I'm calling them that.

The Butthurt Strikes Back

After mulling it over for a week, I have done something I very rarely do and made the decision to delete your 'personal review' from my story comments. You may call me petty, but that's the proper response to personal attacks and inviting your friends in to downvote me, as I received two in quick succession after you posted it.

Since you complained about the manner in which I contacted you, I point you to this item in the Reviewer's Cafe group FAQ:

I Disagreed With a Review. How Do I Dispute My Story?

Generally, you'll want to take that up with the reviewer who looked at your story. We do allow users to contact a reviewer and try to dispute a review if they wish, although whether or not the review gets changed is entirely up to the reviewer. That does not mean that every reviewer will be willing to change their review, but they are the ones to contact if you disagreed with a review.

The underlined is exactly what I did. In other words, I acted properly in contacting you privately to challenge parts of your review. In your response, YOU did not.

You claim you loved this story? You hurt it. I addressed you privately, not wanting to cause a scene, and you turned it into a public one, attacking me in your opening paragraph. There is nothing even remotely polite or professional about that. Looking back, I apologize for my tone in places, and there are a couple things I would take back, but I'm sorry... as written, neither of your reviews help me. The first one was a 6/10 review for an 8/10 story, and the second... nobody new would read past the first paragraph.

If you want to want to help the story, then feel free to repost the extended review without the first paragraph. No personal attacks or snark. It will stay up then, and I will be happy to publicize it even despite the fact there's still a lot I disagree with. Beyond that, if I see further abuse or downvotes I will file a complaint with the Reviewer's Cafe Group and the mods beyond than the ones I already have.

I don't want to do that, but there are some things I simply can't let pass. This was one of them. A little reflection on your tone and actions would be appreciated.