So I was thinking about bringing Flash Sentry into the 'verse · 1:44pm Apr 17th, 2016
...please put the knives away.
And the guns.
Those fists. Unball 'em. Now.
Are we ready to hold off all attacks until the end of the blog post?
Thank you.
I've had the idea for a couple of months now. There are times when I'm curious to do something with characters who aren't necessarily treated well in the fandom, although this is the first occasion where I've gone for the waifu-stealer. And with Flash, part of that is because he is looked upon with, if not universal scorn, then at least twenty to three hundred automatic downvotes, edging towards the high end. He's a one-Guard base breaker, if not an outright Scrappy (where he actually shows up on the page) and it makes him... intriguing, at least in that it begs a question: could I write him in such a way where the only downvotes would be the automatic ones? Is it possible to make him sympathetic? Endearing? A pony you'd want to buy a drink, or all-night access to the communal trough because Celestia's mane, does he ever need it?
Challenge... well, maybe not accepted, but still intriguing.
The concept, such as it is, requires one major thing to happen: Post Negative Comments Only has to finish. (Insert hollow-but-vaguely-hopeful laugh.) After that story wraps up, the local Empire will have a few extra points of distinction from the canon timeline, and they're necessary to create the proper environment for introducing Flash.
This means:
* He's part of that cast. He has nothing to do with Ponyville. There's a faint chance of having him meet the Mane Cast should they make another trip -- remember: in the 'verse, there's no mirror -- but they have no current reason to seek each other out.
* Any potential romantic entanglements would be strictly local.
* He would be a Guard. A rookie Guard. Or, to be really direct about it, a ROOKIE Guard whom Shining Armor is one more mistake away from shipping out to Equestria, preferably via tying his tail to a balloon and letting him float home, just to see what kind of icicle would ultimately drift across the border -- because he is a trotting disaster zone. A traveling critical fumble whose armor allows him to just survive whatever he's accidentally (he swears it was an accident) unleashed. A potential legacy hire, and the legacy in question is Discord's. He personally disproves Applejack's theory about the mark for disasters being an invisible one because the icon he's visibly sporting? Just might be it. He is A Screw-Up Of Epic Proportions, who starts every shift with an internal chant of I'll get fired today and, if he's lucky, ends the workday on I'll get fired tomorrow. Either way, he's probably right.
I think I could do something with that. I can't glue the base back together or take the Scrappy collar away from the central model. But I might just be able to make him regionally acceptable.
Besides, I've never had three hundred downvotes on a single story before. I'm curious as to what that would look like.
Okay.
Open fire.
Well, you brought this on yourself, so...I won't have to feel any guilt! :-P
This is nonsense. Consider this: in a lot of cases, the Mark and the pony's name are serendipitycally linked; Rainbow Dash's mark has a rainbow (rainbolt?) in it, Luna's is explicitly her name, Rarity's mark is of rare things, and so on.
But what could Flash Sentry's name possibly mean?
Why, he's the essence of HURRY UP AND WAIT.
The pointless busywork C.O. foist on the grunts for no reason? He does it, and asks for second.
Getting to the requisition line thirty minutes in advance (multiplied by the number of people who relayed the order, meaning one has to get there a day before (and stay in line for all that time))? No problem with it.
Snipe hunts? Already got one in the bag, sir.
He's that guy. You know the one.
I don't know if you're amenable to research, but I strongly suggest skimming Terminal Lance, which is an excellent military webcomic; here are some choice strips:
a marine on duty has no friends
a marine on duty REALLY doesn't have any friends
Flash Sentry demonstrating his people skills
I'm pretty much used to Flash being 'the other named guard' by now. He has almost as much personality as the standard background character, so authors are free to do whatever they like with him. That leaves plenty of room for interesting interpretations. That being said, I dont have a problem with EQG in principle, at least not anymore, I just prefer to keep it generally separate from the show canon. To me its something like the comics or the books, useful if you want extra sources of inspiration, ignorable otherwise.
[fire]Flash Sentry!!! Grumble, mumble. Harrumph![/fire]
There ya go!
Because Post Negative Comments Only didn't get enough hate to satisfy you the first time around?
More seriously though, I'm all for this if only because I really really want to see more PNCO.
Y'know, if I wanted to be really cruel about it...
New Patreon Reward:
$100 Pledge
I will not write Flash Sentry into the 'verse.
(Minimum of ten pledges required.)
ETA: I put it in.
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I like it. I would say, though, that your idea and Estee's idea re not mutually exclusive. Yes, Flash Sentry as the equinification of hurry-up-and-wait, but through no fault of his own he is also the eye-of-the-storm, the epicenter of disasters, mayhem, and painful happenings. This, I feel, has some real potential.
Oh, and for anyone who's here, this is the opening line to Goosed!
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Weirdly, Firefox wouldn't let me visit that last link: it claimed the page didn't have enough security to allow a safe connection.
As I'm considering him, part of Flash's problem is that he's trying too hard. Deep down, he truly doesn't believe he should be in the Crystal Guard at all, and that means he has to prove he's earned his position to everypony around him, his commanding officer and, if at all possible, himself. So he's the recruit who makes his bed sixteen times prior to morning inspection because he's convinced the sheets aren't tucked tight enough yet, then finally bounces a Crysttake off it in front of his superior -- only to have the coin rebound into the ceiling, where it hits the exact fracture point required to send a network of cracks zooming across the roof, which should give everypony just enough time to evacuate before the falling chunks also go rebounding off the sheets.
Oh, and another (potential) piece from Goosed!. I'm not committed to this bit yet, but I'm considering it.
Well, if it gets Post Negative Comments Only finished...
(Seriously, I have absolutely no problem with Flash Sentry, except when Twilight's in love with him despite his having no more characterization than a background pony.)
I love me some Flash Sentry and want him to do well and be happy.
That is all.
Hmm. I haven't done anything with the pegasus instance, though I have had fun with his humanoid analogue. It should be very interesting to see what you make of him, especially given the details you've provided.
Also, I always figured Flash's special talent was getting in the way of things. A desirable property in a guard, at least on paper. Try to get somewhere you're not supposed to be, and suddenly you've walked facefirst into a pegasus you'd swear wasn't there a second ago. Of course, a tendency to walk into things wouldn't endear him to anyone, especially not in a castle full of ancient, irreplaceable antiques.
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The beautiful thing about that idea? It represents one of the rare cases where a pony could have genuinely gone through their entire post-manifest life still having no idea what their talent is.
When Flash feels his mark trying to guide him, he gets really nervous.
It sounds like you're about to do Flash Sentry the same way that I'm going to write him.
He's the nightmare second lieutenant everywhere. Smart, knowledgeable, capable, hard-working, willing to do his job and more...
...and a bit dim.
Well, not dim, just that there's the occasional little bit that he misses due to a lack of experience, and that just sort of cascades into a mess of disasters. Captain Shining Armor does like him (Flash sort of reminds him of himself as a green behind the ears lieutenant), even when he's being exasperated by the latest incident. But, for some reason, Princess Cadence wants him around, and some domestic harmony must be preserved...
HA! Jokes on you, I have a sword! VIOLENCE...
Wait, I don't hate Flash Sentry. Crap. Not taking advantage of a loophole feels weird...
And yet he still sucks less than Shining Armor. Well, Cannon!Armor at least. Has he accomplished anything at all in cannon without having most of it doesn't for him?
Anyway, I like this idea, ad I'm very much on board with more stories about the Crystal Empire.
I can honestly say that I don't understand the hate Flash Sentry gets. Yeah, I know all the reasons, I just look at them and think "there's no many other bad things that we just collectively ignore entirely" *coughspikeepisodescough*
It's a character that appeared in the canon-ignorable EQG movies, and then two or three times as an incidental background guard. And honestly, FlashLight is a brilliant name for a ship.
The guy has basically no characterization, leaving headcanon room for pretty much anything. Why most people want to fill that space with sharp pointy objects seems like a strange case of projecting.
To make a slight change of subject, does Sunset Shimmer exist in your 'verse?
I feel like it sort of makes sense for there to be a failure of a student right before Twilight, to help explain why Twilight was sent to Ponyville with almost no information to deal with Nightmare Moon. Presumably being told well in advance what her role was what caused Sunset to turn into an arrogant jerk.
I like this idea :)
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Right now, all I can say is that it'll be a very long time before anyone finds out. One thing to keep in mind, though: with no portal, she would have to be somewhere on the planet.
One pony who does exist in the 'verse and simply hasn't been glimpsed yet -- although it won't be a speaking part when it finally does happen -- is Green Grass.
So you want to see a story with 300 downvotes?
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"ranked 136,204th on Fimfiction"
Out of, according to the "Search With No Actual Search Terms" result... 96,916 stories.
Now that's talent.
Somewhere I saw the idea that I rather liked that Flash's special talent is specifically protecting VIPs from paparazzi, that kinda sorta ties into the idea that he blocks people, sometimes unintentionally.
3876480 You might even say it's my special talent.
Only superseded by your talent in attracting bad luck.
3876642 Flash Sentry is good at blocking people.
3876411 Really?
3876712 I read that. My brain hurts now.
3876642 I remember a discussion about that, although I'm not sure where. Might have been in one of the Cadance of Cloudsdale stories where she's being pursued by the pegasaratti with cameras and flashes everywhere. It boiled down to "Flash is so annoying that the only useful talent he could have would be to always be in between a photographer and an embarrassing picture of one of the princesses. That would make him invaluable to Celestia, no matter how many vases he broke."
3877032 Yeah, that seems like a likely place for it.
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*nods* I mentioned it in the very first PM exchange we ever had.
He won't be named and he won't speak: he's just going to be described. I'm hoping the description alone lets people tumble onto his identity. His moment is actually part of a crucial sequence for the 'verse as a whole. But if you want me to withdraw it (or just need to know if there are any horrors involved), I'll understand.
ETA: PM sent under separate cover.
3876460 Oh, God. I can't top that. You win. I'll have to plug this sometime.
3877091 You can actually remember back that far? Gmail just kinda looks at me funny and nods whenever I try to go back more than a month or two. Darned computers. Yeah, I'm more than willing to loan out any OC you want.
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He accidentally wrote one of the links as HTTPS instead of HTTP — normally this isn’t a problem if a site supports both the HTTP and HTTPS protocols, but…
Change the link to http:// and it works just fine.
If memory serves, I've used Flash twice, to critical acclaim.
Once he got fed through a woodchipper.
The other time he was Twilight's backup plan.
I'm not really sure why Flash Sentry is insta-hated. I'm also not really sure how making him a walking disaster area is meant to counteract that. But eh, let's see what you do with it.
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See right here: 6686994
3876324 I think my version of Flash has the worst version of his talent. Namely it's blocking things at high speed. In other words his talent is to take an arrow for the princess. I have him working under the new captain of the guard, but he meets her before that. It's my only slightly reformed version of Sunset Shimmer and he's basically her butt monkey because I decided his whole thing is he's far too nice. Like Fluttershy level. He is plenty brave, and he follows orders no matter what, but he gets overlooked for promotions because of it, and worse others often take credit for his accomplishments. Sunset starts ordering him about before she has actual rank on him and he just takes it. She isn't the first, and the only reason his career goes anywhere is Sunset pulls him along with her. Also he's deathly afraid of possoms because I'm basing his personality mostly on one comic appearance i haven't even seen all of of most likely.
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Oh, I thought you were talking about the evil Duke big bad from the Lunaverse for a minute. That's cool too.