Important disclaimer: I am not a Flash Sentry fan. I don't have a dog in this fight at all. That said:

I wish people would stop auto-hitting the red thumb only because they see the Flash Sentry tag.

When I see a new fic pop up, I glance over the short description and the thumbs, as everyone does. If the short description reads "Bunzy goes to school gym class and wakes up as Alicron Princes what will he d" , then I know what I'd be getting into. If it's almost any kind of fic and I see more downvotes than up, it's probably not good. If, on the other hand, I see a sort of generic description and the Flash Sentry tag, and I see a giant red streak, I have no way of knowing if I'd be missing out on an awesome fic just because people are auto-downrating it.

Then usually I start thinking, "what if this fic is by a new author? What if he or she doesn't know how upset everyone still is about Flash Sentry? What if this author has promise and needs some feedback? What if he or she becomes discouraged and never writes anything again? What if this could be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, but we will never know? WHAT IF I COULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS LITERARY TRAGEDY?"

So I go racing in, ready to offer some kind of support or encouragement. I almost feel obligated to.

And really, it's pretty awful, and there's not much more to say than "you desperately need an editor." Maybe it's worse than that, and there just isn't anything nice to say about it at all. But the red thumbs didn't do their job--all they did was say "yo, we still hate Flash Sentry."

And this is why I really wish people wouldn't do it.

I realize that I am creating my own problem here, and that I could accomplish the same thing by acquiring much more enlightened self-interest, but it's something to think about.

3290120

People have been downvoting for invalid reasons since long before Flash Sentry came around. It's nothing new.

Also, Flash Sentry isn't a fight. The only valid complaint against him is that he wasn't explored. Otherwise, whatever anyone says, their true reason for hating him is that he throws a wrench in their cookie cutter, uninspired TwiDash fluff. Or, worse, he steals their waifu.

Don't give them the benefit of the doubt. Don't treat them as people. They aren't.

3290193

People have been downvoting for invalid reasons since long before Flash Sentry came around. It's nothing new.

Well, that's true. It's more a question of scale. A lot of red on a Flash Sentry-tagged fic just doesn't mean anything at all. Still, point well taken.

3290211

Yeah, we can reason that it doesn't mean anything, but downvotes still make a story appear to be of lower quality than it really is.

Downvoting something because you don't like the ship is going to accomplish one thing - turning away actual fans of that ship, y'know, the people who should actually be looking at it in the first place.

It's an everyone loses scenario.

3290247

That's the point. He's flat and bland, but the hatred a lot of people have for him goes way out of proportion.

You'd think that fanfiction would be nothing but positive for him since it provides a chance to flesh him out a little. Hence, like I said, the reason people "hate" him (as opposed to just shrug him off for being boring) is because they can't accept that Twilight might actually be straight (or bi). It ruins their recycled TwiDash obsession.

Even if Equestria Girls isn't canon, the writers clearly showed Twilight taking an interest in him. That is how they feel about the character they're writing, so yes, it's canon that Twilight likes stallions. I think that Flash did a world of good in establishing that.

Now we just need a hint at everyone else's orientations to really slap the incessant shippers in the face. Enough already.

(Besides, on a personal note, girl/girl is boring.)

3290120
I think Flash is misunderstood. Brad was annoying but to be honest, he's not Flash. Flash is a guard who really does nothing. He is underdeveloped, and acted shyly around Twilight, but beyond that nothing happened.

But yeah, Flash is an auto 20% down vote. It's really rare to do better.

3290120

I'm really starting to think that every dislike (heck, you can even throw likes in there) should come with a required anonymous comment. I say anonymous, because otherwise, we'd have an epidemic of retaliation.

It's not something that could be done with all fics, but these comments could be monitored for validity.

After so many invalid dislikes are overturned, then the offending user is banned.

3290253

Even if Equestria Girls isn't canon, the writers clearly showed Twilight taking an interest in him. That is how they feel about the character they're writing, so yes, it's canon that Twilight likes stallions. I think that Flash did a world of good in establishing that.

You seem to have as much hatred for the very existence of non-canon ship-fics, as some hate the existence of Flash Sentry.

I like shipping Twilight with her friends, and just about any character that I'm fond of. Nothing is going to change that. I'd rather not write my stories as AU, but I will if I have to. The canon writers intentions don't factor into my own fics at all. I have no delusions of adding to MLP canon.

I'm not interested in guessing at what canon writers are truly thinking, so much as selling my own idea as plausible. Sometimes I'll take background details and use them to concoct something that I know damn well wasn't the intention of any of the writers.

With the fic that I've been working on for the past few months, I'm writing Luna a bit darker than anyone probably ever intended.

In any case, a set-in-stone, undeniable, unquestionable orientation would disappoint me, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. It would just mean that I couldn't get away with not slapping an 'AU' tag on there. Besides that, it's actually pretty difficult to argue that certain ponies couldn't be bi.

Pinkie is the one character out of the Mane Six that I'd have a hard time believing was bi, if she were to show interest in a string of stallions, and not one mare. I just don't see her questioning her emotions, or worrying about societal pressure. Where too much thinking might confuse other ponies, I don't think Pinkie would have that problem.

While I'm not a fan of Equestria Girls, I'm more or less apathetic towards Flash as a character. As it stands, he's a blank slate, as far as I'm concerned. I don't find him interesting enough to go looking for the pairing, but I could say the same thing about OC pairings, and I've ran into some good ones.

To end this far-too-long post, what the fuck is a waifu? Do I even want to know? I'm getting the feeling that we're back to that thing where some people don't quit realize that they're horses.

3290291

Oh, I know it won't stop them. But it'd be nice to see something concrete, because then we have another angle to poke fun at it.

3290298

I don't "hate" shipping per se. I'm just sick of seeing it in the popular and featured boxes, I guess. It might also have something to do with the fact that love and companionship are beyond me.

3290306

Wait, like all forms of love and companionship?! Mother? Father? Friend? I couldn't grasp that.

If anyone asks, I'm asocial, but i truth, I'm always around my twin brother. Without him, I wouldn't have a drinking buddy during the mornings and weekdays.

I can understand the frustration of an over-saturation of a genre. I just so happen to be lucky enough that romance has become my favorite genre over the last few years. I never really check the featured box however. I'm not interested in wading through unfinished fics that may or may not be decent. I filter for completed fics, genre, and popularity . . . which isn't an exact indicator of quality, but it reaps better results than just reading at random.

3290318

Arguably I have some kind of love in my mother and grandfather, but other than that, not really. I don't have friends; there's nothing about me that someone would consider a friend-worthy trait. I have "associates."

3290253

Well, the thing is that it cuts both ways. A story can expand and improve upon Flash Sentry, but since there's not really a whole lot there to start with, what tends to happen is that Flash Sentry gets used more as a device. Unless the author is specifically paying attention to fleshing Flash out, it's much more common for Flash to get the job of filling a role. Usually as Twilight's husbando, or otherwise as the sperm donor for the children.

...There've been an awful lot of stories that do the latter.

It's kind of a garbage-in, garbage-out phenomenon. Flash just wasn't really an interesting character, and didn't provide a lot that could use exploring. So people tend to use him as he was presented: as a bland guy who can fill the role the narrative has for him. Whether it's as a safe choice for Twilight's lover in-story, as a named guard character, or so on.

Which is part of why stories involving him in a central fashion are at issue. Because while some of them undoubtedly seek to build on Flash, a lot of them are content mostly to focus on the fact that he's a guy, a guard, and someone Twilight could feasibly be attracted to. When you need to deal with Twilight's children but don't want to focus too much on who the dad was, Flash Sentry is typically a safe bet. Which kind of speaks to how you deal with your characters as an author: as fulfilling a function, rather than being solid, standalone characters in their own right.

It doesn't entirely explain the hatred for him, but there's at least some solid grounding for it, writingwise.

3290120 Here is what two others have said about him.

I mostly view that scene as an attempt to get one step closer to a piece of ass. The only reason he did that was because he had a thing for Twilight (AKA: for sex). He really just seemed to be the kind of character who only sot after Twilight, because she was the "clueless new girl" (AKA: for sex) and she seemed easy (AKA: for sex).

because people who dislike flashlight and flash sentry are generally people who at least have a clue about how love works and they actually analyze characters when talking about them.

These two really need to get their mind on other things. I don't downvote a story because of Flash Sentry. If it's good, upvote and fav. If it's not good, still upvote and fav, as well as, give the write some help on fixing.

3290366 I remember those comments. They really stood out as fairly extreme for a character who hardly has much of a personality at all.

3290366
3290448

My original point was about people downvoting solely because they see the Flash Sentry tag. It's the same as when they see an "alicorn OC" (which is a vague term to begin with).

Whether or not Flash is properly developed in a fic doesn't matter - I'm talking about people leaving their "opinion" without even basing it on anything. Without even reading the fic. That's what I take issue with.

3290120 Finally, someone actually tackles this matter.

I for one had never seen EQ (nor I intend, for I don't like the designs of the human), and I had only seen about one whole season and half of the second, so I might not be as liable in a sense.

But I support Twilight and Flash. They're the one that got me into this fandom in the first place.

I have a friend who supports Twilight and Flash, and had written a few stories on them, and they got quite a bit of dislikes. The stories are not like 'Past Sins', I admit, but they were pretty good.

The thing that baffles me most is that King Sombra had the same problem as Flash.

I mean, I remember how people said King Sombra was never went into as a character (he didn't really get much lines in either).

I love King Sombra, but honestly, not much is known about him except that he is evil and that he taken over the Crystal Empire. The same thing can be said of Flash: we don't know much about him except for a few things.

They're both blank slates. Yet King Sombra does not get the flak that Flash gets.

Needless to say, it is apparent that Flash is hated because he threatens all the ships people made with Twilight.

Look, I am not good when it comes to defending and arguing, but this is where I stand.

3290518

No, you're right. There are plenty of blank characters. Lyra is one. But she doesn't get hate because she didn't get close to a character everyone wants as their waifu loves to ship in some boring girl/girl dynamic. The hate is nonsense, pure and simple.

3290363

It's kind of a garbage-in, garbage-out phenomenon. Flash just wasn't really an interesting character, and didn't provide a lot that could use exploring. So people tend to use him as he was presented: as a bland guy who can fill the role the narrative has for him. Whether it's as a safe choice for Twilight's lover in-story, as a named guard character, or so on.

Coming from a fandom that has been assigning personalities to background scenery, such as with Octavia.

I have a hard time believing that the hatred doesn't mostly stem from a general dislike of EQG, and possibly even the 'threat' of a canon love-interest/orientation. Then again, I may be self-projecting here. While I hate to admit it, these are illogical emotions that I'm trying to suppress, myself.

The idea of Flash as a sperm donor unnerves me. If having a child is necessary for the story, then I don't see the real need for it to be genetically similar to Twilight, save for any story focusing on the kid's magical potential. I'm not particularly impressed with the urge to have a mini-me, and I find adoption to be the much more endearing, 'daaw'-inducing option. I'm much more comfortable with him as a love interest, and I'm not even interested in the pairing. Yet.

3290366

because people who dislike flashlight and flash sentry are generally people who at least have a clue about how love works and they actually analyze characters when talking about them.

I'm not sure that the person who wrote that, knows how love work. Unless an author is making it out like it's love at first sight, or love because of sex, I fail to see how Flash is an automatic love-fail.

It's perfectly normal for such things to begin with infatuation. I may be misinterpreting this person's words.

If it's not good, still upvote and fav, as well as, give the write some help on fixing.

I despise downvotes for superficial reasons that have nothing to do with the writing, but I don't like unwarranted upvotes either. That doesn't make sense to me. That may be kind to that particular author, but it's not kind to authors who actually deserve the upvotes, or readers who use the ratios to weigh in on their reading decisions.

I don't have to think that it's the greatest thing that I've ever read (I've got two levels of favs for that) but I do have to have enjoyed the fic beyond apathy.

3290540

Coming from a fandom that has been assigning personalities to background scenery, such as with Octavia.

The difference between Flash Sentry and a background character with no predetermined personality is like...

Say you have a blank sheet of paper and one that's been scribbled on in white crayon. They're both sorta featureless at first glance, but you can color whatever you want onto the former. Let your imagination run wild.

On the latter, whatever you try to color in sort of has to deal with the fact that it's already been scribbled on in white crayon. You can work with it, if you really want to, but anything you plan to draw needs to address that it's already been drawn on before you do anything else with it.

So it goes with background characters and Flash Sentry. While the fandom likes to characterize Octavia as stuffy, sophisticated, and obsessed with classical music (which isn't a bad characterization, even, in and of itself), she has effectively no canon personality. You can do pretty much whatever with her that your heart desires, and so long as you do it well, it'll be good. There's no pre-existing bias regarding how she'll turn out, because how she turns out is always going to be your choice.

Flash Sentry is the paper with white crayon scribbled over it. Guy got an entire movie and he still came out of it without much to him. He's kind of a high-school nice guy. Bit jockish, maybe musical. Otherwise fairly bland. "He seems... nice."

He does have a canon personality. It's just that it's dull. Some authors fall into the pit trap of assuming it's enough to just keep his canon personality, which is where stories where Flash Sentry merely fills whatever part the story has for him to play come from. It's not always understood that Flash is white-bread enough in canon to need fleshing out, which is why he's a bit of a trap as a character.

The idea of Flash as a sperm donor unnerves me. If having a child is necessary for the story, then I don't see the real need for it to be genetically similar to Twilight, save for any story focusing on the kid's magical potential. I'm not particularly impressed with the urge to have a mini-me, and I find adoption to be the much more endearing, 'daaw'-inducing option. I'm much more comfortable with him as a love interest, and I'm not even interested in the pairing. Yet.

Well... That's pretty much what happens. "The child of Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry" is a decently common device, and in most stories of the type that I've seen, Flash himself doesn't play a very big role, save that he happened to be the one who impregnated Twilight.

3290363

3290598

He said fanfiction provided the opportunity to flesh Flash Sentry out a bit. I don't disagree, but it's relevant to the discussion to note that many stories involving Flash simply fail to do so, or don't see the need, which makes it less than a total positive. If my post wasn't directed at his point overall, it was directed at one of his sub-arguments, which remain important to the overlying discussion.

Y'know?

3290605 Except you missed the larger point, that the ability of random downvoting is impacting the ability of readers to find stories applicable to their interests. Instead of engaging that issue, you just went: "No, the stories you like aren't actually good."

3290611

Some of them aren't. It falls under similar issues as "This is my OC" fics and Human in Equestria. Undoubtedly some of them can be good, but there are big issues with how such stories are commonly handled that make it easy to hate them as a whole. Which, incidentally, would make Flash Sentry stories that incur lots of downvotes a reasonable occurrence, because a lot of stories making use of Flash Sentry also do tend to be bad (at least, insofar as they deal with Flash Sentry), for the reasons I've pointed out.

Sure, some of it's most likely just hatred for Flash himself. But the predominance of fanfics including him that don't aspire to do better with him probably isn't helping.

3290540 The one that said that they don't know about love would be Overkill

3290620 I know about the human thing. Mine down right suck unless I've done a major over haul. Some don't even read if it has Flash Sentry.

I do agree that there are some issues, but those can be fixed if people will give others a chance.

3290298

Pinkie is the one character out of the Mane Six that I'd have a hard time believing was bi, if she were to show interest in a string of stallions, and not one mare.

I'm confused. Do you mean that Pinkie just absolutely has to be a lesbian, or did I misunderstand? To me, Pinkie is the hardest to read in terms of romantic and sexual interest, because she's so generally friendly and physically affectionate. I wish more Pinkie shipfics were POV other character and dealt with this: "yeah, but she's like that with everypony," and it didn't mean "I'll sleep with anypony! Whoo-hoo!" Seriously, does anyone know of a fic in which Dash just assumes that Pinkie is into her, and she called it wrong? But back to Flash.

3290572 I don't know that this is precisely true. Lyra, Octavia, Bon Bon, and Vinyl aren't blank slates at all. Try to write them differently from the fanon version, and you'll get aggressive pushback. The fanon interpretation actually restricts writing their personalities, let alone different ships. But the anger and disappointment usually comes later, after the reader has at least skimmed a paragraph or two.

I think most writers understand that Flash doesn't have much of a personality, and they are working to build up the character in the same way. That many do it poorly or lazily is pretty much the same thing as one of the dozens and dozens of Vinyl/Octavia writers who piggyback onto previous fanon. There are plenty of bad fics there, too. It's still a circular argument: Flash fics are bad and that's why I don't read them, and I don't read them because Flash fics are bad. If a good one came along, one where the writer tried to make him interesting and actually succeeded, most people would never know.

No one has to toss in an unearned uprate or fave--maybe that's going too far. For me, the problem is that the rating system is completely busted where Flash is concerned.

And yes: it is harder than heck to make Flash interesting. I speak from experience. That was one of the toughest things I've ever tried, and I'm not eager to do it again. I felt like Victor Frankenstein, to be honest, and I didn't even try to ship him. I'm still glad I tried, though, if only because of the challenge involved.
3290540

I despise downvotes for superficial reasons that have nothing to do with the writing, but I don't like unwarranted upvotes either. That doesn't make sense to me. That may be kind to that particular author, but it's not kind to authors who actually deserve the upvotes, or readers who use the ratios to weigh in on their reading decisions.

YES. Exactly! Busted system is completely busted. I try applying this as a teacher, too. Tempting as it is to assign a pity grade, it is very unfair to the students who have excelled. That is grade inflation in a nutshell.

3290784

Oh no. What I'm saying, is that with most of the Mane Six, I could argue bisexuality if they showed canon interest in males. To some, the fact that Rarity has show a interest in two stallions, but no mare yet, is telling. I, however, can easily see how this could be explained away as self-denial, or a lack of comfort in that sort of attraction.

With Pinkie, it's harder to do this with, because I can't see her as possibly having such reservations. If canon depicted her as having romantic interest in multiple males, without so much as glancing at a single female, then I would have to accept Pinkie as canonically straight.

Even if Equestria had every bit of a problem with homophobia as our own world, I wouldn't expect Pinkie to pay attention to societal anxieties. I would expect her to be the one to tell a confused friend, "Well, duh! You're sweet on her, you silly filly!" I see Pinkie as having her own brand of wisdom, one that ignores things that others would stress and strain over, one that fails to grasp what the 'big deal' is.

If Pinkie has more than one male love-interest, then she's probably straight, as opposed to being bi.

I say more than one, because when determining whether or a not a character could, hypothetically speaking, be attracted to both sexes, then looking at whatever person they just happen to be interested in at the time, wouldn't be a very telling.

3290120 Flash sentry sucks bru, like he's so shitty, even the great mighty poo hates him

3290919 Oh, yes. Absolutely. Thanks for explaining, especially this:

I see Pinkie as having her own brand of wisdom, one that ignores things that others would stress and strain over, one that fails to grasp what the 'big deal' is.

Ee-yup. I remember the thread on "homophobic Pinkie," and just thinking, "uh, no."

3290120

THIS is why I am nervous of mentioning him. Its not a big part to 'Equestria's Mirage 2' just a small mention in the 'dream of perfection' where Twilight has a perfect world in her dream. I am just nervous that mentioning him by name or description might curse me.

As for me, personally, I don't hate him anymore than I hate Matt from W.I.T.C.H

3291744 If he's just a quick mention, and not an important character, then I don't think you should have to tag him. Heck, I've got a passing reference or two to Flash in one of mine, but since he's barely more than a walk-on, and hasn't even walked on yet, I haven't placed the tag on. Mane Six, Pinkie, Cheese Sandwich, Trixie, and Sunset Shimmer are taking up all the tag slots anyway. Unfortunately, there's no way to inoculate yourself to someone else's overreaction.

Here the problem is that people downrate simply because of the presence of the tag.

3290120

As I see it, the solution to this problem is fairly straightforward: What we need is a lot of good fanfics with Flash Sentry contributing in a meaningful way. Because at the end of the day, haters can downvote all they want, but they're still in a minority compared to people who don't give a damn and just want to read stories about cartoon horses. A well-written and enjoyable fanfic will in my experience always get far more upvotes than downvotes.

So what we need is to get the idea of Flash Sentry as a viable character out there so that A) he gains more actual fans and B) causal readers don't shy away from him. The more accepted he becomes, the more us reasonable people will drown out the trolls.

3291839 One character I'm not a real big fan of is Cheese Sandwich. Don't get me wrong, I think he's a good character, but he's just not someone I like fully.

3292498 . . . well, there goes my only OTP.

3292505 You can write about him, I'm just not a really big fan. There are others that are.

3292249

I've noticed highly-rated fics that you wouldn't think would get more than a passing glance, particularly OC fics, and fics centering around Blueblood, but there''s probably quite a few good fics with OCs/unpopular characters, that haven't seen the light of day.

Quite a few good Flash Sentry fics probably would, and probably do get shot down before they had a chance to shine. I'm pretty sure that you need only a few dislikes to kill the heat and prevent a fic from reaching the feature box. However, if writers of that ship/Flash Sentry in general, are persistent enough, eventually there's going to be a few well-exposed examples of what such a fic could be.

3292249 Got one fic planned with Flash Sentry, but having major writers block.

3292669

Quite a few good Flash Sentry fics probably would, and probably would get shot down before they had a chance to shine. I'm pretty sure that you need only a few dislikes to kill the heat and prevent a fic from reaching the feature box.

I think you are rather overestimating the downvotes here. I simply don't believe a handful of spite votes make that much of a differance. More likely, fics with these characters just don't get enough attention because the characters don't have much in the way of a solid fanbase, large and dedicated groups, etc. It also depends a lot on how established the writer in question is and what promotion tactics he or she uses.

But either way, my point is that more good Flash Sentry stories means a greater chance of a few making it big which means more people will like Flash Sentry stories.

3292835

I might be. I'm not even sure I have a handle on how the system works, exactly.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the moment that I posted a story here, I became a little obsessive about where it 'ranked' in popularity. I wasn't expecting a whole lot, but I was still curious. What I saw, was that it was normal for fics with a thousand likes, and a hundred likes to be on the same page, but it was also normal for fics with the same level of likes to be several pages apart, only having a few dislikes between them.

Granted, that really doesn't have to mean much when it comes to heat, and getting into the feature box. I know that there are more factors at play . . . and it's a complete mystery to me.

Then again, I don't actually check the feature box. For all I know, there could have been quite a few Flash-Sentry fics get noticed, and everything I've said could be completely invalid.

3292835
3293083
Admittedly, I know very little about the metrics, but I think even one or two downvotes makes a difference. It certainly does for ratings. The highest rated fic I've got (in the category it's in) isn't the one with the most likes, but the only one with no dislikes. The only Flash Sentry fics I have ever seen in the feature box are The Order (I think), Twilight Punches Flash Sentry In The Face, and Twilight Sparkle Gets Divorced.

This could be overcome, I think, if an author with a big following took it on as a project. And some stuff develops legs of its own: either a ship or an author or both. I actually hope a number of people keep trying, and meanwhile, I do check out a fair number of Flash fics, just in case.

3292568 Oh, I do write about Cheese! But there, I think there are relatively few readers who loathe that character enough to hit the downrate button for the sheer heck of it. He may not be on everybody's short list, but I don't think he's on many people's hate list. And the people who do hit the downrate button are much likelier to hit it because they don't like the shipping than Cheese on his own. It's not fair, but there it is.

3290298 Oh, yes! And because no one answered your question: "waifu" is a Japanization (is that the word?) of the word "wife." Male equivalent: "husbando." It means, as far as I can tell, the character, if any, that a person regards as though she were a girlfriend or a wife. When a person is talking about themselves, it's usually a joke. If an outsider is talking about other people, it's usually derogatory. If someone regards Twilight as his "waifu," he's going to resent any other character taking his place, especially a canon pairing.

But perhaps others can explain better.

3293250 don't worry about me. I don't hit either button.

Though I am not exactly fond of Flash Sentry himself due to a movie that will not be named, I do not automatically downrate fanfiction that makes uses of him, even if it is in a romantic vein. To me, that is just silly. If you can somehow justify him as a lead in a fanfic, then you are fine in my book. Granted, I still carry some resentment for the character for reasons in relating to being a forced waifu stealer. Petty I know.

I find it odd that the fandom hasn't done much with him yet. Luna had only two lines of dialogue back in Season 1, yet look at how many fanfiction made her the main character. Then again, I suppose if people are wishing to play it safe due to canon having a tendency to disrupt epileptic trees, then perhaps that might be the reason why he isn't used as often. Nothing like a canon whack to the face to smash that block castle made of fanon that one has so delicately put time and effort into.

But I digress. Flash Sentry isn't a bad character if used correctly. Just for the love of God, do not force a romance "just because" a movie made him the lead romantic interest for the sole purpose of selling toys and appealing to a high school girl fantasy.

3293250

The only Flash Sentry fics I have ever seen in the feature box are The Order (I think), Twilight Punches Flash Sentry In The Face, and Twilight Sparkle Gets Divorced.

There's also Teatime on Hearts And Hooves Day, which is actually in the Feature Box right now. And the sequel for the Order also got in, I believe.

3293697 True! I saw the Teatime one show up some time after I wrote that. And yes, I remember that The Order has done well. I haven't read all of it, but what I've read, I've liked.

3290120
Looking at the first few pages of stories which have Flash Sentry tagged, honestly, they don't seem to get that heavily thumbbombed; they seem to all have ten or fewer thumbs, and at least one had zero and several only one.

I strongly suspect the actual reason for the downvotes is that these stories are almost all terrible, as they have basically no views at all and only one in the first two pages has more than a dozen or so upvotes (and it clocks in at a meager 32 - and only 4 downvotes).

3290540

I have a hard time believing that the hatred doesn't mostly stem from a general dislike of EQG, and possibly even the 'threat' of a canon love-interest/orientation. Then again, I may be self-projecting here. While I hate to admit it, these are illogical emotions that I'm trying to suppress, myself.

The problem with Flash Sentry is that the character of Flash Sentry, the pegasus is... he ran into Twilight a couple times and smiled at her.

We can make some inferences about him from his human counterpart, but it is hard to be certain of any of them.

Honestly, he's a pretty blank slate. But the problem is that he doesn't really have anything GOING for him. Like all background ponies, he may as well be an OC - Bonbon and Lyra have a handful of lines between them. Vinyl Scratch and Octavia have no personality at all.

All we really have for him is that he's a guard and he is probably a fairly nice, decent guy. But we have no real reason to care about him at all, and he provides no really interesting thing of his own. I liked a story which was about him going down with Cadance just to smile at Twilight, and it was a cute story... but if you actually want to use him as a character, you need to make him interesting.

Cadance and Shining Armor suffer from the same problem; they're bland characters. They don't have really outstanding personalities. Shining Armor's fairly generic personality gives you the excuse to use him for some things, at least, but Cadance... really didn't get much until season 4, and even then, she's still fairly bland and you have to work to make her interesting.

Flash Sentry is all of that, but with even less going for him.

Making up an OC with more of a personality is probably actually preferable to using Flash. If you look at the characters we really care about, they have exaggerated personalities. Flash lacks that, as do Cadance and Shining Armor, as does Princess Celestia, though at least SHE shows some signs of mischief underneath it all, so we can at least pretend like she has a real personality she keeps hidden (though mostly, she really is just the mentor who is above it all and far away, which is why Luna is a more interesting character - or was, in Luna Eclipsed anyway, she seems to have lost her personality since then).

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I don't think downvotes have much, if any, impact on heat; stories with nor of 100 dislikes hit the FB on a fairly regular basis.

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The rating system isn't particularly good at sorting good fics from bad ones; there are tons of highly rated fics which are outright bad.

That being said, a big part of that is simply that all stories are rated by users, which means that you're not getting a system better than your users, really.

I will note that the only thing which actually determines your story's RATING (not heat, but rating) is your upvote:downvote ratio; no other factors are involved.

From what I have derived about the system (though I cannot be certain of it), it seems that upvotes are actually significantly more heavily weighted than downvotes - that is to say, a story with 1000 upvotes and 40 downvotes is way higher rated than something with 100 upvotes and 4 downvotes.

So why do downvotes seem so significant?

Part of the answer is mainly that downvotes are very rare relative to upvotes. Overall on the site, I'd estimate somewhere in the realm of 90% of votes are upvotes.

The other reason is that whatever function is being used, this fact exaggerates their value. The behavior seems to approximate being either a divisor (probably under a square root) or possibly being a log subtracted from another log. There is some number which is probably being added to downvotes to prevent it from being 0 (and thus leading to shenanigans) but it is something relatively close to that, though it is hard to say for certain.

I can tell you that a 190:2 is better than 268:4 which is in turn better than 189:2, and that 480:11 is better than 93:0 which is better than 319:6. So obviously downvotes DO matter (and can matter a great deal) but the ratios are all over the place - at one point, the top 10 stories on the site had upvote:downvote ratios of everywhere from 75:1 to 128:1, and one of them had zero downvotes and 212 upvotes (and I can tell you that going from 0 to 1 downvote makes a huge difference - probably the single largest difference of anything).

The rating system probably could be tweaked a little bit to weigh downvotes a little bit less (it would prevent that 212:0 story from being in the top 10, for instance) but I'm not sure that knighty cares.

That being said, the more downvotes a story has, the less those downvotes matter - that is to say, a story with 10 and a story with 11 downvotes are not nearly as far apart, ratings wise, as a story with 5 downvotes and a story with 6 downvotes, which is a lot less than the difference between 0 and 1.

3295301 When you say "the first few pages," are you sorting by rating, approval date, or heat?

3295465

I can tell you that going from 0 to 1 downvote makes a huge difference - probably the single largest difference of anything.

Oh, yes. I've definitely noticed that. And I'm not saying it needs to be changed or complaining, but it sometimes makes for some rather odd things sitting on top. Not necessarily the best; just the ones that didn't happen to piss anybody off during their brief sojourn on the front page.

As for Flash--if you're writing anything in the EG verse, you're kinda stuck with Flash/Brad. Otherwise, I'd rather write about Trenderhoof, and I'm not kidding.

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Re: Flash fics
Approval date.

As far as otherwise: the closest thing they have to viable male romantic interests are Braeburn, Soarin, and Big Mac (Shining Armor is busy with his wife).

And of those, none of them do we know very well. I suppose one could ship Cheese Sandwich with Pinkie, but shipping Weird Al with anyone is kind of creepy.

Trenderhoof is amusing but not really as a romantic interest. He is a potentially useful character for some stories, but... I dunno.

3295765 I can't use them with Twilight. Already have Big Mac, Soarin, and Braeburn with my own picks.
Only one left for me to use Twilight with is Flash Sentry. Not putting her with an OC. I like FlashLight anyhow, and not just because of the movie.

Tenderhoof, no idea about.
Cheese Sandwhich- same.

3295788
*shrugs* I don't have OTPs; I've written shipfics with contradicting characters because none of my stories are in a single continuity.

3295828 I can understand that.
I have OTP's, but I will on occasion read something that does not have some of them.