Flash Sentry's Hawtness and You, Part 1: Coping with Hawtness · 8:29pm Jan 26th, 2014
Hawtness (right of center).
It's not easy being hawt. When you're hawt, a lot of insecure males accuse you of stealing their waifus. When you're hawt, jealous men claim you've ruined everything forever when you politely ask a girl to dance. When you're hawt, you can show up for five seconds in a silent cameo and people will scream and moan and claim they've been betrayed.
Calm down, Bronies. Breathe into a paper bag or something. I think you can survive Flash Sentry.
If you spite hawtness, hawtness spites you right back.
As I will explain in a future post, contrary to popular belief, we know a lot about Flash Sentry. Indeed, people were calling him flat, uninteresting, and underdeveloped before the movie came out, so I think there is probably nothing Meghan McCarthy or the rest of the team could have done to satisfy Bronies that he was a "developed" or "well-rounded" character. Equestria Girls could have been War and Peace and fans still would have said that Flash Sentry was underdeveloped.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Right now, I want to point out that I predicted Flash would have a cameo in Season 4. Also, I am now predicting that his human version will play an at least moderately important role in the upcoming Equestria Girls 2: Rainbow Rocks, which looks as if it's definitely going to be a thing, since there's a legitimate-looking "rumor" of its development and since the novelization is already available for pre-order on Amazon.
In preparation for these new presentations of unparalleled hawtness, which already have me drooling just a little bit, I think it good to sit back and reflect on the vital role that Flash Sentry has played in the My Little Pony franchise thus far.
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Flash Sentry steals Joe's waifu.
I will reserve discussion of the human Flash Sentry, the hawt boyfriend Twilight Sparkle conveniently keeps in an alternate universe where none of the other mares can get their mitts on him, for another time. Suffice to say that she has rigged a magical device that allows her to visit him whenever she wants, and which will also enable her to participate in a battle of the bands with her HFFs (human friends forever).
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Twilight visiting Flash (file photo). Note hawtness.
Meanwhile, pony Flash doesn't have it so good. While human Flash is taking his pony princess on dates, pony Flash is only running into her.
Princess Cadance in Equestria Girls describes Flash Sentry as a "new" member of the Royal Guard, which brings up some questions: why is he in the Crystal Empire when he is not a crystal pony? Why is he the only guardspony in Equestria Girls who is not crystal? Poking around the franchise, we can tease out some facts about Flash and determine what he's doing in Cadance's domain.
Readers may be aware that in "To My Princess, on the Day of My Departure," I dealt with Flash's anticipated absence from Season 4 by putting him on a bus. As I will briefly explain, that story is now thoroughly jossed, not only by the latest episode in which Flash makes his triumphal reappearance, but also by details from elsewhere in the franchise.
In my story, I worked on the assumption that Flash was only in the Crystal Empire for the princess summit, and that he had been a part of Princess Celestia's retinue. However, the novelization of the film, Equestria Girls: Through the Mirror by G. M. Berrow, indicates that this is not the case. This book, even though it is a rehashing of the movie, stands as Flash Sentry's second canonical appearance:
"Ooof!" Twilight grunted as she braced herself on the chest of a handsome Crystal Royal Guard with a bright blue mane. He leaned forward to help her regain her balance with a small smile on his face. Then he remembered his duty and immediately snapped back to attention in time to announce her arrival.
"Her Highness, Princess Twilight Sparkle!" he projected his voice into the echoey Crystal corridor. Twilight blushed a little more than usual at the attention, though she didn't know why. It's not like she even knew this particular royal guard pony.
"That guy was kinda hawt."
Here, as you see, Flash is said specifically to be a "Crystal Royal Guard." So he is not merely visiting. This is his home. This is reiterated toward the novel's end:
"Oooof!" Twilight suddenly felt her body smack straight into something solid. "We've got to stop bumping into each other like this," the blue-haired royal guard pony said. He grinned at Twilight like he was laughing at some private joke. She watched with fascination as he trotted off.
"Who was that?"
"He's a new member of the Crystal Castle Royal Guard," Princess Cadance said. "Why? Do you know him?"
"We've got to stop using cheesy pick-up lines like this."
This expands the dialogue from the film. Flash is not merely a new member of the Royal Guard, but a new member of the Crystal Castle Royal Guard. Note that Flash is "solid," which means muscular, and thus Berrow emphasizes his hawtness. Note also that Twilight Sparkle smacks into him with "her body," as opposed to some other part of herself. Thus Berrow displays her great attention to detail.
However, Flash's third canonical appearance, which is in the IDW Princess Luna micro-comic, places him in Canterlot and also makes him startled by opossums:
The opossum was merely drawn to his hawtness.
This is not the contradiction it appears to be at first. The micro-series appears to take place somewhere near the end of Season 3, but before Twilight's coronation. Thus, the comic mentions the upcoming Equestria Games in the Crystal Empire, which means the story takes place after "Games Ponies Play" but probably before "Magical Mystery Cure." Flash Sentry is "new" to Princess Cadance's own Royal Guard, but apparently not so new to the Royal Guard as such. We should assume, then, that he was previously a guard in Canterlot who transferred to the Crystal Empire sometime shortly before Equestria Girls.
And he has apparently remained there in Cadance's service.
First successful member of the Equestrian Royal Guard Hawtness Exchange Program™.
This shouldn't necessarily surprise us: the Crystal Empire is apparently a sort of Equestrian vassal state, and Cadance is of course on good terms with Canterlot, so such transfers within the Guard probably happen with relative ease. At least as yet, however, we haven't seen any other Royal Guards getting moved around like this. Why Flash Sentry?
The answer, I believe, lies here:
You never know what your little sister is up to behind your back.
What exactly does it mean for Princess Cadance to be the princess of love? Aside from getting married, putting the whammy on Wild Fire and Lucky, and spreading love in a vague way, we have received no clear exploration of this question in the show—but the comic offers a disturbing answer.
In Equestria, romantic love is apparently something that can be determined with calculations. Cadance decides she's in love with Shining Armor after she has run some kind of statistical analysis with Twilight Sparkle. Likewise, G. M. Berrow's novel Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell tells us that Cadance can "help ponies fall in love," which probably means that she can use her magic to make them fall in love with whomever her calculations say they should be in love with.
Since matching ponies with their proper mates is a big job, Cadance no doubt trains others to do it. And thus we have Lovestruck, who is apparently Ponyville's official matchmaker, and who in the Gameloff App . . . lication . . . sets up a date between Crescent Pony and Apple Fritter.
Get your own damn small romantic vases.
Flash Sentry no doubt moved up to the Crystal Empire because he's a particularly difficult case whom Cadance's trained matchmakers can't handle. His excessive hawtness renders their calculations useless: like Axe Cop, he is a perfect match for every female in the entire universe.
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And look how suave he is with the love talk.
Thus, Princess Cadance is handling Flash Sentry's case personally, and it's clear that Cadance has at last figured out exactly how to solve this little problem.
That's right, Brony. Princess Cadance has designs on your waifu.
Deal with it.
I'm actually predicting that Rainbow Dash will get her own guy to crush on in Rainbow Rocks. I'm curious, would you write a sorta-sequel to Mixed up Life of Brad about him and Dash if this happens?
So... Flash is going to marry Water Princess? Is that what I should be getting from this? Has King Leo been notified?
Or maybe there's some horrendous flaw with him that makes him an inadequate match for anyone.
For example, his well-established infertility, his in-general flightiness and his extreme nearsightedness (How in the blue marshmallow hell does one fail to see seven mares walking down a corridor, two of which are _royalty_?).
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Why did you share this with me? I like Flash! My headcanon is that he's a young, slightly-green Lieutenant, but is motivated, competent, and ready to work. I think he'd be a perfect match for Twilight!
In short, Shee-yut, I ship it like FedEx!
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Ah, as Flash Sentry's number one fan, it's nice to know I have readers interested in helping me spread the hawtness.
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Well, in the human world, yeah, he was bland, but that I firmly believe was just because of the time constraints. We saw hints of his real personality, and I liked what I saw, but on the whole, he was filler, a placeholder because they felt the need to shoehorn in some romantic drama. If the movie had an extra half hour to play with, I think he could have been great.
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I agree he could have used at least one more scene; particularly, I think they should have stretched out the subplot in which Twilight is accused of destroying the gym, which could have been an opportunity for more Flash time.
On the whole, however, I thought he served the purpose he was meant to (the "bad boy" yet parent-friendly love interest for the tween target audience) and was a likable and admirable character. I hope he gets further development in Rainbow Rocks. If the next movie is about a battle of the bands, it would be a shame to waste the canon guitar player.
And as I'll explain in my next post in this series, I think Bronies are correct to identify him as a sort of counterpart to Shining Armor: he serves more-or-less the same purpose in the tween-targeted movie that Shining serves in the children-targeted television show.
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We don't know precisely how she deceived him, as we only saw the tail end of it, after she had him thoroughly in her power, but let's say instead that he was retconned from a jock to a geek.
My next post in this series will explain why I think they did this.
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I thought he sounded like Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted.
Goddamnit DGD, you're making me more inclined to ship FlashLight with every blog post you make (you already convinced me of his super uber hawtness long ago).
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To cater to what they perceive to be our demographic?
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That will be my argument, yes. The show is aimed primarily at girls about five to ten years of age. Equestria Girls is aimed primarily at girls in their early teens, as Hasbro explained to its shareholders. The comic, though billed as a children's title to pull in the widest possible demographic and avoid alienating parents, appears to have mainly the Bronies in mind.
This is quite savvy of Hasbro. They've done a remarkable job of juggling the unexpectedly wide fanbase for this new version of their old franchise.
My argument will be that the main male (I mean aside from comical sidekick Spike) in each of these three is designed for maximum appeal to the primary target demographic.
That was the funniest thing I've read since the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Also, Flashlight OTP!
And I totally think he should be Scootaloo's brother.Hawtness duly noted!
Now this was the blog post I was waiting for. Mind if I link to it just a few dozen times in future debates?
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It's public on the internet, so link away. Not sure how my joking around could help in a debate, though.
I hope if they do build on his romance they have a scene like in TGAH chapter 16 when Flash explains to Twilight that he doesn't keep lists.
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