Why You Shouldn't Flash Sentry · 10:20pm Feb 6th, 2014
So I've been thinking a bit about the idea of Flash Sentry, and considering his recent cameo and that he appears decently often in Fimfic stories (one of which happens to be featured right now, apparently), I feel like now's as good a time as any for all sit down and have a talk about everyone's favorite waifu-thief:
I'm in your base...
So, lemme be up front with you guys. Full disclosure. I am wary, by default, of any story that fits two basic criteria:
1. Flash Sentry plays a prominent role.
2. The story is not about Flash Sentry.
Why is this? Well, let's ask ourselves who this Flash Sentry guy is. What is he like? What's there to him? What does he do?
The answer to all of these questions can be summed up pretty easily as: "Well... Uh..."
We know a few things about Flash Sentry. He plays guitar, so I guess he must have something approximating musical talent. He's got... a car, it looks like. He's not actively annoying, but there's nothing you could really say about his personality beyond "He's a nice guy, I guess?"
Maybe?
We might argue that there are other characters that are approximately as deep as Flash Sentry is. Shining Armor, maybe, since they're both big corndog fans. But there's plenty to explore for Shining Armor, because he's got a lot of interesting relations as a character. He's got a fairly detailed relationship with his sister, he's married to Cadance, and he was a victim to Chrysalis' takeover plot. And this isn't even counting the rich source of characterization for him in the MLP comics.
I'll Twily the Twily until there's no Twily left to Twily against me.
There's a lot to look at for Shining Armor, beyond what we see of his surfer-dude personality. There's nothing really to explore with Flash... except maybe wondering if he's sexually interested in his car.
Or you could mess around with his relationship with Sunset Shimmer, I guess, but it's not a whole lot to work with between Flash's own blandness and the lack of background understanding for EqG's world.
So... Flash Sentry is just impressively cardboard as a character, and I mean it sincerely when I say it's impressive. Guy was in an entire movie and he still managed to come out of it with all the depth of kid's swimming pool. Seriously, that takes work. It is an accomplishment when a fandom that has built entire narratives around characters with no speaking lines has literally nothing to say for you but "Resident Waifu Stealer."
Where does this tie back into my wariness of stories involving him? Well, it's pretty simple:
Flash Sentry, as a character, is a trap.
He is not merely a blank slate character. He is a blank space character. He exists to fill roles: "Potential love-interest to Twilight," "Named Crystal Empire Guard," "Sperm donor for Twilight's future children." There's nothing really exceptional or interesting about Flash Sentry, and unless the author tries hard to will him into being a character that is exceptional or interesting, he's there to do his job in the story. Rarely anything more than that.
The reason I'm so wary of any story that makes use of him is because of what it implies about the author's use of their characters. Using Flash Sentry because Twilight needs to be in love with somebody, or because you couldn't find anyone else to father Twilight's children, is... worrying. It suggests that the author is prepared to use the sort of character that Flash Sentry is. And that makes me wary.
Because Flash Sentry isn't a character, really. He's a device. An ideal. Flash Sentry could be any male pony with potential for a romantic relationship with Twilight, and using him implies you're trying to attach a canon name and face to what he represents, rather than an attempt to use a genuine, developed character, who has their own quirks, interests, and desires. Maybe you're trying for the latter while using him. Maybe. But when I see him in your story, it's not going to be the first thing I expect, just because he's so actively bland as a jumping-off point.
Pictured: the average Flash Sentry
I give leeway to stories that focus on him in particular because it's certainly possible to build something out of him. Difficult, perhaps, but if the author is trying I can feasibly imagine that something might be done. And certainly it's not impossible to make Flash Sentry both interesting and a major-but-not-central character... but if you're going to all that effort to make Flash Sentry work, and he's not the focus of your story, I'd suggest you could have a much better character by just starting from scratch. It'd mean giving up a canon name and face, but at least it wouldn't require you to fight against Flash Sentry's cardboard-character foundation.
So, tl;dr: Flash Sentry is very dangerously bland as a character, and if an author uses him, I'm generally concerned. If you don't recognize that Flash Sentry isn't interesting, or make any effort to fix that, then you've more or less fallen into a characterization trap, and listing Flash Sentry as a character is a sign you might've fallen into it. Maybe you haven't, but it will require some work to convince me that you haven't. So, y'know, be careful if you're going to use Flash Sentry, and ask yourself some deep questions about why you're using him, if you intend to.
Else... well. You'll be using Flash Sentry as a major character, with all the cardboard that implies.
That's all I've gotta say. Have a nice day, folks.
You made a lot of good points and I'm with you at almost everything.
fimfiction-static.net/images/story_images/125769.jpg?1376883123
I like his colors.
Hey, I've got something else to say about Flash Sentry "Has a human form that made think they were going for the old accidental incest twist ala Luke and Leia".
Seriously, look at that picture of him in human form you posted, look at the picture of Shining Armor underneath and tell me that they don't look like alternate versions of the same character, especially with the white shield-bearing t-shirt.
Actually, I wonder if you could write a story about Twilight realizing her reaction to him was some kind of brother complex transference and that he's really not that interesting beyond that.
I hate to say it dude, but you pretty much just described Shining Armor to a Tee as much as you claim to have described Flash Sentry. Yet I don't really see you railing against him. Let's face it, Shining exists solely to be someone for Cadence to get hitched to. He served NO purpose beyond that and even the only story we've seen him feature in during the IDW comics is about how madly in love he is with Cadence. We get NOTHING about him as a character. Not why he wanted to be a guard. Not how he managed to get in. Not if he had a hard time during training. He literally exists just for the sake of having Cadence getting hitched. Notice how he continually plays less and less of a role in any appearance he has, while Cadence continually becomes more prominent. Hell, in the recent episode with Discord, it was about Twilight spending time with Cadence instead of wanting to reconnect with her own brother! In fact, they made him pretty much a charity case in the comics. Which is why I'm thankful the comics aren't considered part of the direct show canon. Because Shining Armor as a character is already duller than dishwater. The comics just made it worse.
Flash Sentry at this point was intended to be a character we didn't learn much about because he's pretty much a movie exclusive character. It's like with Kamen Rider flicks. Toei has a habit of creating movie exclusive Riders who rarely have any effect at all on the primary canon of the show. Sure, his pony counterpart might have a habit of popping up now and again, but he's never going to have any kind of effect on the show other than as a mild aside to the fans that the character exists. At least in that regard he's superior to Shining Armor since we know he's SUPPOSED to just be some random pony, one whom Twilight probably doesn't even know in the series since he's part of a one-off movie exclusive continuity. Twilight doesn't know him at all in the actual SHOW continuity, which actually puts him ahead of a number of movie exclusive characters since we know he'll never play any role other than a cameo. By comparison, Shining Armor is related to the primary protagonist of the show and he does NOTHING and has no purpose! Seriously, the Canterlot wedding could have been done with just Twilight suspecting something of being wrong with her old foalsitter and practically nothing would have changed if she was just getting married to some random schmuck. The only reason Shining Armor was made into Twilight's brother was so that Twilight could just have even more of a reason to seemingly go nuts before discovering she was right about the imposter. We're supposed to believe Shining Armor is important, at least to Twilight. And yet the guy has no real personality, and his role is marginalized more and more. Twilight doesn't really seem to even care that he exists now and is more interested in spending time with Cadence. How exactly is he in any way better off as a character who is designed to have just been a one-off and who might crop up once in awhile as a wink to the audience?
Seriously. If I had to pick between writing a story with Flash Sentry who is a blank slate is used for something or using Shining Armor in a story, nine times out of ten, my first reaction would be to use Flash Sentry simply because he's pretty much designed to be a blank slate, while Shining Armor was designed to be WORTHLESS from the get go and never improved.
Sorry for the rant, but this just bugged the hell out of me. Flash is meant to be used as a blank slate people can do something with. Shining Armor's character was pretty much screwed up from the word go. And he just got worse as time went on. It'd take a helluva lot more work to fix Shining Armor than it would to just use a personal take on a near perfect tabula rasa like Flash.
I agree with you to an extent on a lot of what you said, but lordy do I have to disagree with this bit. Found out tons about who he is, what he likes, how he acts with his friends, etc.
As someone who uses Flash, I have an opinion on this matter. You are quite right in many ways. As he exists in the show, he is extremely bland, and I personally have little interest in human Flash, as I see him as different and lacking in potential. But pony Flash. The guard. I have always seen a lot of potential in him. He has even less to his name than human Flash, but there are some things you can easily imply.
First, he was obviously brought over from Canterlot to work under Shining and Cadance. This implies a strong familiarity and repetoir with at least Prince Shining Armor. Since he's a guard and given what his mark is, he must feel strongly about protecting and helping others. From there, there is a whole sea of possibilities for what one can decide on for quirks and other traits, and the way he grew up to become that sort of pony.
To me, he is the best kind of blank slate.
You do realize that you could insert any male... or hell, any female background pony's name in place of "Flash Sentry" and you blog would still apply?
My take on explaining why Flash Sentry is a trap is that he falls into the same trap as most golden age superheroes fell, as far as his personality goes: a lot of qualities, no flaws. During the movie he doesn't get angry, grumpy, scared, sad, nothing; he is like a The Sims character with every cheat meant to make it feel happy turned on.
Which means that using him as he is makes for the kid's swimming pool depth character described in the post, but adding flaws to make him interesting will likely make him act out of character when seeing his actions in light of the movie.
On the other hoof, I believe this affects the human Flash Sentry worse than the Pony one, at least if one assumes their personalities can be different. The human is that bland character, but the pony one is just somepony who was bumped by Twilight a couple times and was courteous both times, and that smiled to her (perhaps in an inappropriate way) when he saw her again some time later. If the personalities for human and pony can be thought as different, then I believe Pony Flash Sentry is still for the most part a blank slate.
I like this blog.
1803807 This, pretty much. In terms of the point that this blog is making, there is no logical difference between him and almost every other non-frontline character in the show.
1803768
I concede that Shining Armor's personality isn't substantially deeper than Flash's, but I think there's a lot more to work with regarding him because--as noted--he's connected to so many other interesting characters. There's a lot you can build on regarding his relationship with Cadance, or his past with Twilight, or even his antagonism regarding Chrysalis. He's not necessarily the most nuanced of MLP's cast, but he's got his own place in it, and this can be fairly easily leveraged to make him interesting. He even gets a little more in the comics, where sure we don't see his motivations or whatnot, but we do get to see that he's actually a bit of a well-meaning dork, and not just a generic Dude.
Flash Sentry... doesn't even get that much. The most we know of his connections to anyone else is that he might have a crush on Twilight, and had a vaguely-understood relationship with Sunset Shimmer before they broke up. He's a guard in the Crystal Empire, and... That's about it. There's not really any basis for his relationships with the world/cast beyond this. Which, on top of his blank characterization, makes it difficult to do more with him beyond our understanding that he and Twilight might potentially have a thing for each other.
I mean, yeah, MLP has more than a few characters that aren't exciting on their face, but have interesting implied backgrounds and relationships you can work with. Flash Sentry loses because he doesn't even have that, and thus tends to serve better as a device, or a symbolic representation of any potential male pony Twilight could fall in love with.
I generally don't like F.S fics, particularly for these reasons, but there was one that caught my eye and made me crawl back for more.
I believe it's called The Order. It and its sequel drive a soul into that cardboard flimsy that take and fill him with actual equine believability! they're perhaps the only real Flash fics that I've read.
It is possible. Just, not very likely. At all.
>There's nothing really to explore with Flash... except maybe wondering if he's sexually interested in his car.
And now someone probably going to write this just like with the Peaches thing.
1803807
1803820
I disagree with this sentiment, depending on which background ponies you mean.
There's a difference between a blank-slate and blank-space. Background ponies like Vinyl Scratch are blank-slates: they have no given personality, but do have certain defining traits, so you're free to imagine in a personality for them. The fandom seems to like the idea of Vinyl as a loud, rude, party-pony who enjoys dubstep, but you can buck that trend if you want and go for your own interpretation of her. But we have a general idea of what she does. She DJs, she does parties. There are traits and interests here with which you can work. You can do things with this.
Flash Sentry is a blank-space character. We've seen what he's like, what he does when he's with other characters, and we've seen that he just... doesn't do much. He's not merely a slate onto which you can imagine a personality. He just doesn't have much of a personality. Trying to fight this understanding of him is either to just kind of ignore how he was in EqG to blaze your own path with him (which... I guess makes me wonder why you're using Flash Sentry), or you have to fight to go "But he isn't really as boring as he seems!"
So, y'know, if we see a background pony and they're like, as actively bland as Flash Sentry's been with his screentime, I think the same could apply. But if they're just there as a blank canvas onto which you can put a unique and interesting personality, instead of having a personality that just happens to be cardboard, I think they're clear of the issue with Flash Sentry.
1803824 Just to be clear, Flash Sentry could be erased from the show entirely and such would have no visible effect whatsoever because he's more or less a 'ghost' character?
BTW That last picture is awesome.
1803828 I'll second the upvote on 'The Order' being a story that makes Flash into flesh and blood.
There are parallels between Shining and Flash; they're both Protectors as ponies, they're both side-characters, and they both really rock a set of armor, but Shining Armor was setup as a protector extrodinare, a larger than life guard who can project a shield across an entire city and therefore able to protect a larger than life princess, while Flash? He plays the guitar.
I completely agree with the Aperture Science announcement voice.
Just for kicks, I'll be writing a humorous piece on Flash Sentry fighting against all the hate this fandom has against him... with the expected results.
This all does make sense, though I must say, I think much of the hate against him may be (some of) the lesmarian shippers of Twilight with all the other mares, simply because they can't stand the possibility of Twilight being heterosexual. Hell, they even list gender ratios as being "proof" of this.
I could care less. It's a fucking cartoon for little girls: there's nothing really deeper than what us fans make it, and trust me, we can make it pretty deep.
1803824
The thing is, the pony version of Flash Sentry, as far as we know, had NOTHING to do with Shimmer. That's the human version you're thinking of, for starters.
Secondly, yes, Shining has a bunch of connections to primary characters in the show, but they never do anything with it. he IS as much of a generic 'dude' as you claim Flash is. And again, the comics are— thank God— NOT part of FiM canon, because the little we get on him there doesn't even match up with what little we know about him in the show. It's a very glaring plot hole that Twilight is in on the fact that Cadence has a thing for her brother in the comics when there's no indication in the show that she was aware that they even knew each other very well, if at all, since the first time we see any interaction between the two in flashback, Twilight is apparently living in the damn castle with Cadence. Yet in the comics she somehow gets involved in their romance. Big freaking plot hole there. Turning Armor into a gamer dork makes no sense at all, to boot. It read more like...well, like a fanfic you might see here. The nerd who became captain of the guard. And seriously, that's another big thing we never get any answer to. How did he work his way up the ranks? What did he do to deserve that promotion? There's so much we COULD be told about this guy and they just shove him to the side because like any other male character in a show aimed at girls, he's basically just there for the girl to be in love with and never to have an actual personality or history of his own. Flash is, admittedly, in the same boat. But he was intended to just be a brief crush for Twilight when she went to the mirror world, and so his pony counterpart, who we admittedly know even less about than his human counterpart, has even more freedom to be filled in by the writers because he's not even meant to be that. He's just a random guard she runs into a few times. He isn't designed to have been someone who COULD have been interesting on his own but was tossed aside for the sake of just being the one toy in the toy box for a wedding set that never gets used unless the owner of the toy wants to reenact the Canterlot wedding. Like I said before, Shining actually takes MORE work to make interesting than Flash because he COULD have been interesting already, but the writers just threw him back in the box the same as any girl who buys the wedding playset. After the wedding, he was superfluous. Flash Sentry isn't even meant to be part of a wedding set or anything. He's just there for people to play with so he can be ANYTHING. Shining doesn't have that advantage.
Why do people make such a big deal over this dude? He is literally just one step above a background pony and that's about it. The only notable thing about Flash is him being Twilight's love interest. If he wasn't that, yet still filled in a role somehow in the movie with the same blank personality, no one would care at all. We've had characters in the past that have fit this blank personality role yet have gotten no attention because they weren't love interests to Twilight. If you write him interesting, that's about all I need to read about him in someone's story, just like any other character, really. Heck, you can use an OC too for all I care and still make it an interesting character. Flash has the same potential as well. There's nothing to fight with his cardboard-character foundation because if his character is really so bland or boring you can only improve upon it (unless you manage to screw it up more so). You can use Flash in any number of ways because his lack of a personality (or a really undeveloped one) gives the author any number of possibilities to make the character better.
Thing is really, anyone outside of the main characters has little personality. There are the main ten characters (the mane 6, Spike, the CMC), the princesses (Luna, Celestia - and Luna has more personality, despite having had less screen time), the primary supporting cast (the Cakes, Granny Smith, Big Mac (who really only got anything even resembling a personality in season 4 - and even still we know little of him), Cadance, Shining Armor, Diamond Tiara, and Silver Spoon), and a few one-off characters who got some personality. Even Cadance and Shining Armor have little - Shining Armor, at least, has a personality (even if it is kind of generic), but Cadance, much like Flash Sentry, has almost no personality at all.
The problem is that Flash Sentry and Cadance are, ironically, too normal. You have to exaggerate to really get characterization and personality to stick. Both of them are just kind of... there. They're generic figures who don't really have much to them. Sure, Shining Armor is as well, but he's an archetype - the cool big brother who joined the military. There is some personality there, and he does have a unique speaking voice. Cadance and Flash Sentry are just... dull.
They don't have to be. You can give Flash Sentry a personality! You can give Cadance one, for that matter. Its just that you have to actually give them personality, rather than using a pre-existing personality.
Is this a problem? Nah. People use OCs for similar reasons. Lyra and Bonbon have little defined personality from the show, and characters like Octavia and Vinyl Scratch have none - and yet look at how common they are in fanfiction.
You can use Flash Sentry just fine. He's actually potentially handy. But if you want to make him interesting, you have to breathe life into him in a way that the show has not.
Heck, that's true even of characters like Big Mac and even Princess Celestia. How do Princess Celestia and Princess Luna act in private, when the world isn't on the line? We have no real idea. We've seen some tenderness from Celestia on a few occasions... but we really don't know a whole lot about her. Big Mac, as I noted, only really got a personality in season 4, when we found out he was stubborn and has a temper like Applejack's. He's stoic, taciturn, and laconic, and he apparently likes dolls. That's... all we know. That's not a whole lot! Especially given how much screentime he has gotten. We know more about Granny Smith than we do about poor Big Mac.
There's one critical error in your analysis: our information is focused on human Flash. All we know about pony Flash is as follows:
1. He's an orange pegasus.
2. He's the token non-crystal pony in the Crystal Guard.
3. He keeps walking into Twilight.
That is literally it. Three data. One more than the average background pony. Heck, for all we know, walking into ponies is actually his special talent. It works with the thunderbolt-shield motif: suddenly, pegasus in your way!
In any case, so long as the story isn't in the bald pastel monkey universe, I don't see why Flash Sentry can't work. He can serve many more roles than just Twilight's baby daddy: Shining Armor's right hoof, Cadance's confidante, stranger in a strange land, Scootaloo's estranged father, the list goes on.
So, with all due respect, I think I will Flash Sentry. At the very least, the option remains on the table.
I can understand your wariness, but I think you are crossing "trait" with "tendency."
As background ponies go, Flash is about average: we only know a little bit about him, and have to make up the rest. Consider how many fanworks (here or on dA) about Minuette/Colgate place her as a dentist or dental hygienist, based only on her mane. Are toothbrushes even canon? And yet many people have written perfectly good stories about her.
With Flash, we know very little: job, hobby, and that he's nice to attractive girls. Not really much, but there's no reason someone can't expand that into a highly interesting character. This is about as much as we know about Big Mac (job, sisters, taciturn) or Vinyl, as you pointed out in a previous comment. There's no reason he can't be turned into an interesting character by a decent writer.
Or not, if the story requires a placeholder character. If one were to write a story about Twilight's relationship with her OC daughter, and the theme is mother/daughter, and you needed to plug somepony into the "father" role, Flash is basically the ideal choice. He's a guy, and he's known to have some sort of connection to Twilight. A sentence or two, and paternity is established, and if he isn't needed for the rest of the plot, he exits the stage. You could use another OC, but doing that would require extra development (who the hell is this guy?) that Flash does not; if you want to write a tight story with Twilly SO as a side character, Flash is the go-to guy.
What I feel like you are reacting to is not that Flash is a bad character, but that people have a tendency to write him badly. This is similar to the reason many people avoid HiE: it's not that you can't find a good HiE story, it's that the crap-to-worthwhile ratio is not good. I've read a lot of poorly-written Flash, but not because Flash cannot be well-written. He's about as hard to write as, say, Octavia or Lyra, really.
I used him in a story once. He had two lines and was promptly forgotten. He was basically like they use him in the show: a cameo meant to ask the audience "Hey, remember that guy? Do you? Remember that movie? Ah, good times, right?"
And then everyone moves on.
And that's how I think he should be used: A cameo. That's what he was designed to be as a pony; just a reference to his own human form.
1803861 Ehh, I think that calling him blank-space is a bit of a stretch. It's not like EQG defined him as some guy who goes home every night and stares at the walls. He has likes, he has interests, he was interested enough in doing the right thing that he cleared Twilight's name to Principal Celestia, and he even had enough empathy for Twilight to dance like this:
static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130725235342/mlp/images/thumb/e/e0/Twilight_pony_dancing_with_Flash_Sentry_EG.png/640px-Twilight_pony_dancing_with_Flash_Sentry_EG.png
Despite everything that is wrong with dancing like that.
You can only say that he is blank if you intentionally ignore what we know about him.
1804003 There's also this. There are plenty of background ponies with both more screentime and less personality than pony Flash.
1803926
I think you may've put your finger on the issue, actually. Shining Armor is potentially interesting. They don't do as much as they could with him, sure, but this is the general goal of Fanfiction: to go down the avenues that the show does not itself explore. Shining Armor's workable as a character because his existence asks a lot of leading questions that don't get answered: "How'd he become captain?" "Why did he want to be a guard?" "What was his childhood with Twilight really like?" These are open avenues that can be explored.
The pony Flash is, like you've said, sort of a random guard who bumps into Twilight on occasion. Since it's established that the human counterparts are roughly analogous to their pony forms, we also know he's sort of generically bland as a personality. There's... nothing really else to work with or explore for him beyond the implication of a crush between him and Twilight.
Canon doesn't really ask or leave many questions regarding Flash Sentry, so he primarily exists in the form of "Potential Twilight Love Interest," and since there isn't much more to build off of, this tends to be why people utilize Flash Sentry as little more than a device, to the effect of "Well, Twilight needs a potential love interest..."
This doesn't mean that there aren't avenues to explore with Flash, but it's a very restricted avenue between his blandness as a character and his overall lack of a background. With Shining Armor you can ask "Okay, how'd he go from sort-of-a-dork in the comics to Captain of the Royal Guard?" or various other questions about how he interacts with all these characters he's related to.
With Flash Sentry, the first question you have to ask is pretty much "Well... okay, who even is this guy?"
1803948
I think the issue with Flash Sentry in stories is that he fits a fairly rare confluence of problems:
1. He's plot-relevant to EqG and Twilight's implied to maybe have a crush on him, so he's not as easily overlookable as various other one-off characters who might otherwise be problematic.
2. He doesn't merely have a blank-slate personality you can imagine something more interesting onto. He has something resembling a personality--he's just sort of actively boring, as part of a Cool Dude personality model.
3. His background goes more or less totally unexplained, so there's no real idea or interesting lead as to where he comes from or what he did before he showed up in EqG.
So, combining points 1, 2, and 3, it's very easy to simply utilize him as a device to fulfill a role in your story ("Well, Twilight's baby needs to have a father...") rather than actually build him into a working character with a history, motives, or whatever else. And this makes him dangerous to utilize in stories unless you're very well aware of the sort of trap that Flash's character represents.
The important thing here is to know why Flash is potentially dangerous to use as a character--not that he's inherently cancerous and CANNOT be made workable.
1804028
This. We've seen that he:
1. is a Royal Guard, one who is squared-away enough to be in a position of importance in the Crystal Empire.
2. He has a strong moral center, as he stood up for Twilight.
3. He plays guitar, meaning an interest in music
4. He's empathetic, as DJ said above.
So, no, is is not a "blank space." I would argue he as as much characterization as Vinyl, Octavia, Lyra, or anyone else in the back ground.
1804006
Well, sure, I'm reacting to the tendency, which is why I make sure to point out that it's not impossible to make him work. It's just that it's very easy to make Flash into a boring character, because there's not much to him and little reason to imagine anything more. There's never really investigation into his background or who he actually is, so you either have to invent more straight onto him (which is rare if Flash isn't the focus of the story) or accept that you're just going to have to use what you're given -- he's a guard, he's kinda nice, and Twilight might have a crush on him.
It's really easy to fall into using Flash to fulfill a role in the story based on what little we do know about him (i.e. "Who should be Twilight's love interest?" or "Who should be the guard character in this scene?") and having him carry this role with the fairly bland "Cool Dude" personality we saw from EqG. We already have an idea of how he acts and works, even if it's fairly bland, so using him in this regard doesn't take much effort.
This can be a dangerous pitfall, if Flash is playing a prominent role in the story, and the blog here was to emphasize that, and how people tend to fall into such a trap when using him. Not that Flash cannot work well.
While I have as much apathy towards Flash Sentry as the next person, I have to say that I disagree with the fundamental premise of this blog. A lot of my thought process mirrors 1803768 's.
Derpy Hooves, Vinyl Scratch, Octavia, Lyra, Bon Bon, and Time Turner are all rather popular characters who have no real canon personality to speak of, yet have been explored and developed by the fandom. Some of those examples have nothing going for them other than "shows up in the background of Ponyville regularly" while others (Octavia and Vinyl) are in only two or three episodes each tops.
If someone becomes inspired by a character, they'll write something. If they're skilled, they'll write something enjoyable to read. Sadly, most people on this site lack one or both of those elements. You could argue perhaps that the main cast offer more ready inspiration, but that pretty much means they have more of both the good and the bad fics written about them.
I would say that it is easier for someone like myself, who has limited skill, to write about a main cast member. My reasoning is that by using someone with a well-established canon personality, I can have a ready standard for others to grade my efforts at characterization upon. This makes for better quality feedback to me. Once I grow as a writer, delving into my own OC's and/or original fiction becomes easier due to having more experience.
Attempting to take on the full weight of character development without understanding how they work isn't necessarily a bad thing, or the wrong way to do it, but it seems harder in my opinion. I suspect that the bulk of authors writing about Flash Sentry fall in this category, and it is their lack of talent/skill/experience that is making for a bad characterization rather than anything directly at fault with Flash Sentry himself.
What I get from this blog is that Flash Sentry, like a lot of other non-mains, is an OC. Some of the decisions are made for the author ahead of time, such as color scheme, tribe, cutie mark, and name. The same is technically true of Derpy. But the character is sufficiently close enough to 100% original that I don't feel it wrong to label them as such, regardless of the technicalities.
The real message behind this blog is one of audience understanding. I and many others on this site want to read about MLP. For the most part that means the M6. Sure, any story even loosely related to MLP is allowed on the site, and sure a lot of really tenuous stories are written and even popular to some degree, but the bulk of "interest" is due to the strength of character of the m6. By writing an OC, you're cutting yourself off from that interest. Pairing an OC with an M6 carries with it the stereotype of all the terribly done fics of that nature. Writing some adventure about your group of D&D buddies ponified cuts yourself off from that interest. Writing some massive and convoluted crossover with some popular game cuts yourself off from a lot of that interest.
Write what you want to write. Recognize though that by publishing your story and making it public, you're attempting to reach some kind of audience. If you want that audience to be large and widespread, you'll write something they want to read about and will be attracted to. Will you have an audience if you write about the adventures of Flash Sentry? Sure. I doubt it will ever be as widespread as a fluffy story about Fluttershy holding a picnic for her animal friends though.
In the end, I think what Obs is really saying is that, like many of us, he has very little interest in being part of the limited audience of a Flash Sentry story. You're going to have to work a lot harder and be a lot more skilled at writing to do so successfully than you would if you wrote about a pony that he likes based on the show. Since the show gives him very little to like, the character tag of Flash Sentry on a story is a big red flag that says "move along, nothing to see here."
1804056
...Don't you think it's at least a little strange that the guy spotlighted in an entire movie and there's not much more to say about him than this?
Fitting a stock Likable-High-School-Guy personality doesn't really make for a well-developed or workable character--at least, not on its own--and arguably it actually hampers Flash against background characters who don't have even have lines like Vinyl Scratch or Lyra, because the audience is free to invent personalities for them wholesale, while Flash is already established as a fairly vanilla "Cool Dude."
1804184
And... that isn't a personality? Some people are just... well, plain. Not everyone can access hammerspace/break the sound barrier/talk to animals/be Pony Jesus.
Look, I agree that he has the same level of characterization after an entire movie as other BG ponies do with no lines, but still. The movie had all-around poor decisions made all the time, so you can't really hold it against him.
1804203
No, but the vanilla "Cool Dude" stock personality lends itself well to the unfortunate role Flash Sentry has in a lot of fics: He's there to do a job for the story, and not much else. The personality he has helps carry him through to that end, but it's not really noteworthy in any other respect. He doesn't really have much in the way of goals or explained/implied background, so when people write him, they tend to use what they've got:
-He's a guy.
-He's a guard.
-Twilight might have a crush on him.
Which is why he's dangerous to employ as a character. There isn't NOTHING to him, which might force you to invent goals, motivations, or history for him like with Vinyl Scratch or Lyra. There's just enough there to encourage using him as a device ("Father to Twilight's children") and failing to characterize him further.
Again, he's not inherently cancerous, but he represents a pitfall, because he's just present enough to be a stock-cardboard character, and the author has to be well aware of that. Else they just use Flash Sentry as given, without realizing they need to do more, and end up with... a stock-cardboard character who's there to a job in the story.
I'd be interested to see what you think of my stories featuring him, then.
I agree that he is basically a blank slate, but so was Babs Seed (beyond the little we get in her two episodes), and I made an entire trilogy around her, which was far more successful than I expected. I also wrote a successful story around Thunderlane and Rumble, who have almost no canon characterization.
My point is that one can take characters that have little to no actual lines in the show and make them living, breathing beings... and I hope to do that with Flash Sentry as I have done with others. I'm sure I won't be the only one to do so. I think his (pony) character honestly gets a lot of undeserved hate in the fandom.
1804248
Yeah, no, I think it's definitely possible to work with Flash if you're putting the focus of your story on him, like I said in the post. He's not unsalvageable, or unbuildable--even if his background is more or less completely unexplained. It just requires a fair amount of effort to move him past what we've been given, and a realization that this effort needs to be put in (which is fairly rare if an author's using him but the story isn't about him).
It's just the danger of Flash's character that he seems like he can be used as-is, either as a named Guard character or someone with whom Twilight can be romantically paired, and not realizing that he is, at base, pretty flat.
Since Bronies were calling Flash a bland and uninteresting character even before the movie came out, I admit I'm a little skeptical of all the negativity surrounding him. I just suspect the fans are a little biased, you know?
Considering how short the movie is and that the romantic part is only a minor subplot, I think Flash has a great deal of development. We know what sort of fellow he is: besides playing guitar, driving a hot rod, and wearing T-shirts that should already be in the rag bin, we know he's the kind of guy who helps a girl off the floor, doesn't get exasperated when she spills coffee on him, stands up for her when she's wrongfully accused, asks her politely to a dance, and has the boldness to ask her again, though without being annoying or pushy, after she's turned him down.
That is, we know he's a gentleman. He's the sort of guy who, if I liked the feel of his hand and he looked me in the eye, I would allow to date my daughter. Or my pony.
You are right to bring up Shining Armor, because Flash Sentry fills the same role in Equestria Girls, which is aimed primarily at girls in the eleven to thirteen range, that Shining Armor fills in Friendship Is Magic, which is aimed primarily at girls in the five to seven range. He's the guy to look up to and admire. Shining Armor does double duty as the cool big brother and as one of the most important props at the little girl dream wedding. Flash Sentry is the love interest with some added "bad boy" elements to appeal to the target audience, but without the actual bad, so he's still mom-approved.
He is not the deepest character ever, granted. But My Little Pony isn't exactly War and Peace, either. None of the characters, not one, not even after three and a half seasons, is deep or sophisticated. And they're not trying to be, because My Little Pony is not a character study.
Flash fills his role, and he fills it admirably.
I have made a modest reputation for writing stories about Flash Sentry, and all of them have received positive responses. My first one I even began based simply on the first Equestria Girls trailer. It's called The Mixed-Up Life of Brad, got featured on EqD just before the movie premiere, and has gotten positive feedback. I think it was even in the feature box for a few seconds once. I have found him to be a character of great potential.
1803926
Oh, that's easy. He's reasonably smart, he's brave and loyal, he has a really major magical talent, and he's from an old family. I know that the last part of that description grates on our American-egalitarian nerves, but Equestria is an aristocratic theocracy, as has been repeatedly demonstrated.
1803852
It's already a thing
My problem with Flash Sentry is that he got a lot of screen time and no real characterization beyond "nice guy." What's more, there's no real reason why Twilight likes him other than that she's alone in a strange universe and he saves her from the trouble. There's literally more reason to see (for example) Pinkie Pie falling in love with Cheese Sandwich and bearing him 16 silly children, because at least there a commonality of interests and values has been established. If Twilight falls in love with every single stallion who is nice to her, she's going to wind up with a dance card longer than the Winning version of Cloud Kicker.
I'd agree with this, though I don't think his cardboard nature itself of why he should be avoided. If he were the deepest character ever, and people still hated him, you'd still face the same problems writing him. If he were a bad character than everybody liked, then you'd have no problem writing him. So I think the most important thing in all this is the opinions of the reader. Flash Sentry should be avoided because people don't like him, and unlike other hated characters - Gilda comes to mind - Flash has nothing unique to offer. Gilda is a griffon, so she's got something going for her.
I would, however, be impressed if I saw a truly good story about Flash Sentry. Very impressed.
1804295
What he said.
1804266
Given that, I think you're still looking at it wrong. The danger of Flash's character, from the way you describe him is that he CAN'T be anything other than what you described. Which I feel is fallacious reasoning. if he couldn't be anything other than what you described, nobody would bother writing about him at all.
Again, he's a Movie continuity character, and even then, the movie doesn't, as you claim, focus on him. Or rather his human counterpart. He wanders in and out of scenes. His pony counterpart shows up all of...what, twice? In the case of both versions, he's more of a satellite to the actual cast, which in this case are the girls, Spike, and Shimmer. He's got no bearing on actual show continuity, and neither does the movie itself, as there is no reference to the film at all in the show to the best of my knowledge. Ergo, it's like building a Movie exclusive Kamen Rider in a Kamen Rider fic. You have a character who's...well, he's THERE. But you the fan have to build up the character in the fic. You don't even necessarily have to put them in the same slot as they are in their canon, after all, since we're talking about fanfic. Flash is the same way. Sure, you can make him a guard. You could even make him a romantic interest for Twilight. Does that necessarily mean Pony Flash feels the same way for her? No, not really. He can if you want him to, but again, he's basically a toy who has no real background stats that you can build stuff around. Same as what Faust did with her toys when she was designing the characters who would eventually become the girls we know and love in G4 MLP. The same as anyone who picks up some random toy that has no background at all to them. Flash has a little bit of info (to the point of being negligible), but the rest of him is a blank slate for the writer to build on. The danger in his character is assuming he HAS to be human Flash Sentry, who is still someone who can basically be filled in with whatever you want. It's not dangerous to think he can be used as is. The danger is in thinking that that's all he can ever be.
Huh. In one of my serious stories, I use him, but that's only because I refuse to use OCs, and I needed a named pegasus that was a prominent member of the royal guard. Flash Sentry is the only named royal guard, so I figured eh, why not? Surprisingly, none of my readers seemed to mind he was in the story, which means I must have done something right.
In another story, a one-shot comedy, I had Flash Sentry be the object of rage of Shining Armor, who beat him within an inch of his life for daring to even look at Twilight Sparkle. It was a nice little parody of over-protective big brothers who feel like they have to approve of every guy their sisters date, and a parody of the fandom's reaction to him as a waifu-stealer, and their seemingly blind hatred of the guy.
1804266
True. Personally, I think it's more interesting to use background or side-characters and develop them because you have so much room to work with.
1804331
This is pretty much my point. The danger of Flash Sentry is the assumption that what we see of him is Good Enough (which, given his cardboard construction in EQG, it is not), and this tends to be how a lot of people employ him: a basic Cool Dude personality, his potentially-romantic involvement with Twilight... et voila. You now have a decent stallion with whom Twilight can be safely paired for intents and purposes.
Stories that focus on Flash Sentry in particular dodge this issue because they recognize a need to expand on him. Investigate him. Invent backstory where there is none, or any indication of one. There's a need to make Flash Sentry into more than what he is in canon, and recognizing this need helps out a lot when people intend to use him as a character.
Stories that use Flash Sentry tangentially -- as relevant to plot but not the specific focus of the story -- are at the greatest risk of falling into the trap of employing Flash Sentry as a device and not a living, breathing character, which is why I'm wary of them.
1804350
Ahh. But that's a whole different discussion and not the one it seemed like you were trying to have. My bad then.
1804318
Gilda's also obnoxious, sarcastic, deliberately aggressive, and has an obsession with Rainbow Dash and contempt for most other ponies. There's more to work with there.
I feel we had a discussion about this guy on skype already, but I can say I agree with pretty much everything you said, Obs.
1804392
I know. I was just simplifying to try and be concise. Though to be fair, half of that is speculation. For all we know, she could've been pissed off that day. She doesn't explain her own actions in the show, so all we really know is that she doesn't care about the rules.
There are two awesome stories that I believe have actually been able to build Flash Sentry as a decent character. They are The Order, followed by What Hath Joined Together. Both brought life to the character in my opinion and I really enjoy them