Why I don't hate Flash Sentry · 6:25am Jul 21st, 2015
They say that Top Gun was a two-hour advertisement for itself; Equestria Girls was a one-hour highlights reel of itself. If it had been three hours long, the fandom would have hailed it as a classic of its genre; two hours, and it would have been brisk and engaging, if a little cursory in spots; with the one-hour runtime we actually got, it was a sort of corporate faceplant. You have to take the movie's word for it on a lot of things, and you have to watch the subtext like a hawk; this affected Sunset Shimmer the most, but Flash Sentry was a close second.
Flash likes excitement, but he doesn't really know how to get it for himself; in 2013, you don't get much more white-bread than playing electric guitar in a band. He has principles, but he doesn't really know how to get chances to use them; he has heroic instincts, but they seldom come into play. He's certainly not the kind to go off and do something exciting and irresponsible.
But that's just as well; Humania doesn't really have room for people who do that sort of thing. The world is fully explored; war and law enforcement are the domain of small groups of highly regulated specialists; science and engineering are prisoners of their own success, requiring extreme specialization to advance the state of the art. Left to his own devices, in a world that doesn't really have much of a place for him, Flash gets bored.
On some unconscious level, Flash Sentry wants to be a little girl. Perhaps he likes horses, fittingly enough. Maybe he have always wanted to be a pretty princess. Doubtless he wouldn't mind being allowed to fall in love. (I still have fond memories of this; Flash is fine with the idea that sometimes, everyone around him is just randomly ponies.) And he'd almost certainly like to be able to express and talk about his emotions, without anyone regarding him as strange or freakish.
But he has a pretty big competitive streak. If Flash was a little girl, he'd be Rainbow Dash (and he and Human Rainbow Dash are probably non-romantic friends). He was living vicariously through Sunset Shimmer in more ways than one; when she terrorized the school, it pained him to see what she got up to, but he probably helped when she asked him to, and he definitely thought it was pretty cool that she was on the absolute top. (She probably shared her long-term plans with him, painting a distorted picture of Princess Celestia remarkably similar to the New Lunar Republic's.) Eventually she went too far, and he broke up with her; but the parting wasn't easy for either of them.
In this tinderbox of dangerous emotions, consider dating. If there's any one socially acceptable thing to do that can give Flash adventure and emotional expression and a sense of purpose, it's finding the right girlfriend -- which, of course, means the wrong girlfriend.
Flash wants a relationship that will take over his life; it's not like he was using it for anything. He wants someone who he can pamper, soothe, and flatter, someone who can surprise him just because of who she is, someone perhaps prone to the occasional emotional outburst. If he dated a girl who would never kick down doors and pull a switchblade over the course of getting a pizza delivered, or tearfully confess in his arms that they can never be together because she's secretly a rainbow unicorn princess from the magical land of ponies, he just wouldn't feel a spark.
You could fairly say that he's looking for someone through whom he can live vicariously. Put that starkly, this sounds horrifying; it's like he's looking for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. But the average man wishing for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl would probably not be satisfied if Sunset Shimmer suddenly came into his life; if anything, Flash was Sunset's Manic Pixie Dream Guy.
If Flash settled into a stable relationship, his girlfriend's personality would stabilize as she learned that she could count on him. Would this cause him to lose interest? I doubt it. He has a lot of capacity for affection, love, and loyalty; by the time that his girlfriend had really learned that she could count on him, he would know that he wouldn't want to lose her. Flash can be counted on to be supportive, good with children, loyal, and reliable, although he doesn't have that much initiative when left to his own devices...
What does all this say about Flash's relationships? The more I write, the less sure I am, but he really does seem to have better chemistry with Sunset than with Twilight. It makes me wince to say that we should just automatically ship the two newcomers, but it turns out that this makes a certain amount of sense...
Flash and Twilight have a lot of physical attraction, and that's not something to completely ignore. Flash would be just the guy to keep Twilight from worrying herself into a temporal paradox again; but Twilight doesn't really have big dreams, and isn't particularly competitive. She would have been happiest as a research professor or thereabouts: a position that gives her some responsibility, some social contact, and some interpersonal relationships, but not so much of any of these that they became unworkable, while leaving her free to do what she loves. When she pulled Twilight out into the world and pushed her into princesshood, Princess Celestia misjudged her -- although this was the sort of mistake that Princess Celestia would make, and it's certainly interesting to watch. If she and Flash settle down, I would expect Flash to eventually start feeling stifled, and maybe curious about what Sunset's up to.
Sunset Shimmer has ambition enough for two, and an awe-inspiring level of self-discipline, but she's insecure and short on introspection. She needs someone who can see the big picture a bit better than she can, and who can stand up for her, or to her, as circumstances dictate. Flash wasn't as good at that as he could have been; but I think he could learn, especially now, with Sunset having learned that even she can be wrong.
Since I commented on Twilight's suitability as an alicorn, I should also mention that Sunset will be an extremely good ruler in a few years. She likes to feel wanted, important, and powerful; she could handle petitioners all day and adjourn court feeling happy and satisfied, and would naturally have the patience of Job with her subordinates. She probably shouldn't try her hoof at commanding armies, though; I could see that ending in ambushes and heartbreak. But all this is material for subsequent posts...
I'm still quietly hoping that he sees more development in the next film.
Also, I think you might be overlooking some of his more negative qualities, specifically what got encouraged by the Sirens in Rainbow Rocks - his competitive streak. He can clearly keep it under control most of the time, but if he gets really focused on a goal, he can lash out, even towards those closest to him.
Very well thought out. It's a shame this side of Flash isn't given time to shine, or even glimmer. Here's hoping he gets something resembling development in Friendship Games.
Thanks, everyone!
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Excellent point; I forgot about his competitive streak, the other side of his seeking excitement. I need to watch the movies again, watching for that and taking notes. Rainbow Rocks is probably the more important starting point here; being sirened brings out the worst of your personality in the same way as wearing the Alicorn Amulet, and the worst sides that Flash showed were 'I want to win' and 'what I want, I should get, because I want it!' His inner Calvin is not very well buried...
One expression of his competitive streak could be his tendency to steal waifus. He had the guts to date Pony Dracula, after all. Another of his requirements for starting to date someone would probably be that everyone else sees her as inapproachable, or as too risky to approach.
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I kind of thought I was the only one too! There's so much subtext in the first movie... And there's only so much time in any of the movies for them to get the subtext out into text. Friendship Games is going to be Sci-Twi's movie; maybe EqG 4 or 5 will be Flash's.
Reading subtext is a difficult activity; I may have gotten quite a bit of it wrong. (I misread Sunset Shimmer relatively significantly, taking her repentance less seriously than she herself took it; I may have done something similar in the opposite direction with Flash.) If you care to post any of your alternate readings, please do so; I'll do my best not to take offense.
I really like your phrasing of "taking aliens on casual dates." You might also be amused by Why Do I Like Horse Women?, if you haven't seen it yet; but it doesn't put the matter quite as starkly.
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Mark my words, one of these days Flash Sentry is going to get meaningful screentime, and then everyone's going to discover that they actually love him. It'll be Sunset Shimmer all over again.
Updated, adding a certain amount about his competitive streak and rewriting the end accordingly. I tend to see certain things in characters and miss other things; hopefully this has everything, though.
One thing I can definitely say about Flash Sentry: he would enjoy learning that he's a memetic waifu thief.