On unpopular characters · 11:28pm Aug 16th, 2016
Gonna flat out and state my honest opinion on this.
Everyone who hates Flash Sentry is at best being disingenius and at worst, your powerlevel is showing, and not in a good way
Now that that is out of the way, let me reassure you of this:
No, Flash is not a major character in Bad Mondays, at all, and no there is no planned romance between him and Twilight Sparkle, so calm your metaphorical and literal tits. But because of certain design choices of the worldbuilding I made very early on in the story's writing, butterfly effects have happened so I had to give serious thought to the character. So far the only character in BM from the show I havent given at least some thought to was Gilda (and even she now has a purpose that I've incorporated Griffonstone into the canon, thanks for that episode Hasbro, didn't have to use a crowbar or anything, nooo).
So now that I have reassured you that Flash is not important to the story, let me explain to you why exactly you are being silly and why this blogpost is not actually about him:
The only difference between this dude:
And this dude:
Is screen time.
Or more accurately, the difference is screen time with effective interaction with a main character. Quibble Pants has nothing going for him asides from his voice actor being famous, which in my opinion does nothing for the character himself although I know for some people that means everything, some people like Discord solely for the fact he was voiced by Q from Star Trek. He's a fan boy, and his talent is nitpicking, and he's clever when it comes to puzzle solving. That's it.
And remember, I like this character. I liked him a lot, but as of yet there is nothing much to him. Yet the only reason Quibble-rage hasn't reach Flash levels of hatred, is because enough people liked the interaction between him and Dash to ship the two despite him being a textbook shallow character.
Contrast with Flash who we actually have the benefit of having two versions of said character, whose only difference is their respective circumstances and the world around them. (also while Equestria Girls is non-canon with BM, I did use it to help determine respective age-ranges in order to determine how old everyone in BM is, given it takes place a few years after season four (and thankfully, after 5 and 6 and hopefully 7 if there is one), despite the fact the guy has had little proper or meaningful character interaction with a main character outside of bumping into them, we can infer a lot about his character.
For starters, they are both young men if not still teenagers, if we assume equivalency between the characters through the portals (not counting immortals like the Princesses). Pony Flash is in the military and a Royal Guard at this age, human Flash is still in High School and evidently comes from a well off family if we judge him by the car he drives, so its likely Flash does too. Which in a medieval/Renaissance setting makes sense given his potential rank.
Pony Flash is the only Equestrian Royal Guard we ever see in the Crystal Empire. Also judging by his age he is the same age as Twilight or thereabouts. Seeming to indicate ponies in the show get out of school and enter the workforce/start businesses WAY earlier than modern humans of similar age do. At the oldest, he is around 18-19 years of age, If he was that age when he just joined the guard he would most certainly not be where he is right now. Why?
Because the only reason he would be in the Crystal Empire is as a military Liaison. But not for Equestria, but for Shining Armor, the former Captain of the Royal Guard. So Flash likely joined the military at least 2-3 years before that, which is not uncommon in previous ages. You were considered a man around the age you could swing an axe or fully draw back a bow.
Why is this a big deal? Well without going into the specifics of modern military ranking, Captains are a big deal when it comes to commanding military forces. Especially in the respective time period where they often commanded regiments and sections, if not the entirety of an army in the name of a given Lord or General. Shining Armor's rank matters even if he is no longer the Royal Guard for Equestria, (also he is relatively young himself, somewhere in his twenties when he marries Cadence I reckon but its hard to be sure, might be Thirties.) He was evidently competent enough to get to that position, and if he joined the military as young as Flash did (Teens), thats not a bad career record. I am unaware of a given age). Either that, or he is a Liaison for Cadence who is the new ruler of the Empire and needs someone to help familiarize her with the culture of her new military, but I doubt this, unless she feels like she's capable of making the military decisions for the Empire instead of Shining, which I doubt. And I doubt he is as close as a personal guard for her either otherwise he'd be a lot closer to the throne, instead we often see him with the other guards or at least once, patrolling the palace.
So that means whoever and whatever Pony Flash is, he was hoofpicked by either Cadence or Shining Armor himself to be that Liaison. The fact that we dont know the reason why opens up a shitton of speculation. Is it a favor to someone related to Flash (if you want to be cynical) Is Flash simply a competent soldier? (If you want to be reasonable) Is Flash actually an amiable guy and a good choice to pick as a Liaison for a foreign Prince moving into the realm in order to familiarise himself with soldiers and military structure of a completely different culture? (If you want to be optimistic) These are three basic options but can actually give the man a fuckton of character just on their own.
Also if you want to be nitpicky its actually completely reasonable that Twilight wouldn't have met Flash before she did in Equestria Girls. Unlike Twilight, after all, Flash was likely doing work and odd jobs until he eventually ended up in the military in his teenage years, whereas Twilight, as we see from the show was very bookish, kept to herself, even blowing off her old friends in order to study stuff despite being invited to a birthday party and Stayed probably mostly either in the Palace or the campus of the school for gifted Unicorns. Flash was likely going through Training at this time and doing shitwork postings after his training, even assuming he has a wealthy family and jumped being a boot and went straight for officerhood (which is possible if you want to go with that interpretation) working his way up to be noticed as Shining Armor's picked man.
Additionally, apparently Twilight had been so uninvolved in her Brother's life for at least a few years considering she didn't even know he was dating her old babysitter, much less going steady and then marrying her until she got the invitation. I sincerely doubt she so much as ever went near the military installations of the Royal Guard willingly. Despite the man presumably all but living in the Palace where the Royal Guard's foremost duty (protecting the Princesses) takes place. So there's that, Twilight may be intelligent as fuck, but she is not that observant evidently.
Furthermore, all these implications aside, we do know one thing about Flash's personality, and we get this from Human flash: The guy either has enormous self discipline, or enough drive to in the human world, become a great guitarist which in ponyland translated into being so dedicated to his military career he got noticed by the top brass and hoofpicked for a special position, despite neither potentially being his special talent. (Your interpretation of that cutie mark is as good as mine). But the one unique thing we get from Human Flash is probably the one thing most bronies hate about him and the most likely in story reason we have for the girls supposedly thinking he's hot (considering he has Sunset as an ex and she was supposedly a stereotypical high school 'Queen Bee' while she was there and determined having Flash as a boyfriend furthered her sociopathic goals, nevermind Twilight) the man is confident. The only sign of nervousness we get out of him is when Twilight is around and all we can infer to that is apparently human Twilight is hot shit in freaky 'long-legs, big head' land, otherwise the guy is chill and apparently popular. Which explains why a lot of insecure bronies who had Twilight as a Waifu saw him as instant threat and way overblew their hatred of the character, when at worst he is a 'meh'. (a lot of Dash fans feel the same way about Quibble notably, but given this is no longer 2012, the outcry is way lower) Given he is an ex of Sunset we can infer either he dumped her or she dumped him. I think the basic belief is she dumped him based solely on the logic of her being the more developed character, but I actually think the inverse is far more likely, given Sunset evidently never moved on to another guy in that time (unless the dumping pre-movie was very recent) but given her behaviour and attitude and manipulation (Snips and Snails) its actually fairly likely Flash told her to eat a bag of dicks with salad dressing. Otherwise she'd still be trying to manipulate the guy given his apparent social standing in the school.
Like I said, at worst, Flash is a meh, because at first he was a basic, shallow character who was not handled well, he does not deserve to be hated. Like at all. Because even if you discount all of the post-Equestria Girls stuff, the guy is not a bad character, he's just your typical shallow character who was not handled well.
Want to know what a shallow character who is handled well looks like?
That's right, everybody's favourite villainess is, in fact, a shallow character whom we know nothing about, (at least in the show, I know she has more in the comics if you want to go and take them into account, but I am not counting them here because this is about her first introduction) beyond her main motivation, (feeding the hive). We know nothing about the girl. But we love her. Why? Because of how she interacted with the other characters even while disguised. Before her second appearence in the finale of the last season and before her appearance int he comics, everything else about her was purely fanon material. Like every other background character in the show got, from Lyra, to Octavia to Derpy. All of it was fanon. That is the power of a shallow character done well, they show up, they do a thing and you want to know more about them.
Flash was badly handled because the entirety of the Equestria Girls movie was in my opinion, very badly handled. Flash had a motivation, his infatuation with the new girl and he had a conflict, his previous relationship with that movie's antagonist. That is more than enough to turn a shallow character into at the very least, someone like Quibble has become and at very best, someone like Chrysalis has become. The only reason Flash hatred burned as bright as it did was three reasons: 1)Some fans genuinely hating the character because of the tired old tropes shittily applied, this is the most understandable reason, Quibble gets almost none of this because that episode was handled much better 2)raging faggots screaming Waifu Thief, Quibble gets a lot of this too but it is drowned out because 3)The OVERWHELMING majority of people went 'Meh' at Flash, the ones who actually enjoyed the relationship implications were int he minority compared to the people who just weren't interested because the dynamics that were LYING RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE WRITERS weren't utilised well, they were not engaged. Most people were engaged with Quibble because the dynamics were utilised well, the overwhelming majority of fans were engaged with Chrysalis because the dynamics were utilised VERY WELL even despite those two episodes being a complete mess and the plot being full of holes.
And as the series went on and the few other times we see Flash the implications added up, there's actually a lot people can work with him. But they never will because they either weren't initially engaged and thus not attached to him as much as other background characters, or the still rabid flash haters put them off. And we can't have further building up of his character, even in an episode dedicated to the background characters in their entirety, because the hatemob can't let shit go and this is why we cant have nice things. You can simply not care about the character or even find him annoying, perfectly justifiable, but hate? Save that for the Mary Sues.
Honestly I wanted to harp on this because Flash Sentry is the new Blueblood, and the majority of the reasons people hate him is the same as the majority of the reasons people hated Blueblood, and those reasons can be aptly summed up in the singular word of Faggotry. Blueblood was hated for being an arrogant prick who treated Rarity badly, even though the woman was acting like a complete golddigger and Blueblood has likely seen that shit so many times he could probably buy half of the real estate in Equestria. A shallow character, hated for shallow reasons. Flash is in the same boat, both just lack the chance of character interaction and will never get it again because of idiotic hatemobs, even if they do get cameos. Hatemobs ruin stories.
So why does this matter?
It matters because Equestria Girls didn't happen in Bad Mondays, because I didn't want the knowledge of humans or human like beings being common knowledge for the main characters. At least not in that way, and I wanted that for reasons that avid readers have most likely sussed out by now (and I am shocked I still have fans who read my shit after so long without updating, I am sorry guys but I got fucked over this year and broke down, hard).
This means there is no significant interaction between Flash and the main characters, unless Twilight ran across the dude in the Crystal Empire the times she visited, and given that only ever happened once and then only in said movie whose events never transpired, that's unlikely. Perhaps they may have seen eachother, but likely never have met.
It also means something very, very, very significant.
It means despite everything else, up to and including Starlight Glimmer's experiment with the communist manifesto (with minor details different for storytelling and world building purposes) a certain someone is still out there, still at large, and still hasn't forgiven what she sees as wrongs done to her.
Somebody in particular is still a complete bitch. Oh and an archmage.
Not like an evil pony archmage educated by Princess Celestia herself is ever going to be a problem for anyone, right?
Anyway, I need to go to sleep, I gotta pull a Tom Sawyer and paint a fence in the morning for £50.
Have fun with my midnight ramblings.
Flash Sentry is in Bad Mondays?
When?
Did a new chapter go up without notifying me?
4153680 No he isn't as of yet.
Neither are a lot of characters I've given way too much thought to. This blog is actually partly a rant at the fandom, and actually about stating Sunset Shimmer is running around in the Bad Mondays verse.
I never really hopped on the WAIFU THIEF train. I thought the guy was a nice dude, if a bit bland.
oops
---
Thank God some people can say it well. I never understood the hate for FS.
4153695 I was going to fix that, but fuck it, let it stand.
Sleepy Handyman is sleepy.
4153693 Then you are in the overwhelming majority of the fandom, those who simply didn't care for him.
4153691 What, she's not evil in BM? =D
Kidding, she's not outright stupidly evil in BM, but I keep her strictly on the darker side of the morality street.
Yep, sounds about right. I can't comment on Quibble because the writers fuck up too consistently for it to be worth watching the show any more so I didn't see the episode, but I have definitely seen the same with Flash and Blueblood (who apparently made up with Rarity shortly after the fact since they appear together in season 2). The characters are mostly bland with some interesting hints and implications, you can build off of, but they get so much stupid, irrational hate that I rarely see anything done with them. Hell, most people will use an OC when they need a background guard name rather than Flash which is really pitiful since he is one of only two named guards in the entire show.
As for Sunset, that should be fun since Handy will not even remotely care that she hates Celestia and might even give her some useful advice purely out of spite. Also, she will be in for a serious surprise if she tangles with Crimson since I doubt Sunset has any way to deal with Old Magic. It would also be funny to see her get added to the party just to piss the princesses off, although I feel like that is unlikely for a number of reasons.
Starlight Glimmer on the other hand will be completely screwed if Handy ever stumbles into her crappy little village since he is not even remotely going to take her shit and will probably crush her skull the instant he realizes what is going on.
4153705 Honestly I wasn't afraid of having him in the story, after all I am confident I could change how people felt about him given time and minor interactions (like I did with Blueblood) without the need for a blog like this, I trust my fans not to chimp out and ragequit because I used a less than popular character. I just wanted to vent these frustrations out not on my fans for the story, but on the fanfiction community itself in its entirety and its approach to Flash.
The guy does not deserve what he gets and has far more potential than anyone is willing to give him, and that annoys me.
4153712 Glimmer is actually reformed, the Equestria Girls butterfly effect doesn't affect her storyline at all.
Hell she shows up in the Interlude which is out on Monday.
4153727 Oh, well that's disappointing. I was hoping to see Handy solve that situation in a much more logical manner than what happened in canon, but oh well.
Please say you have something entertaining planned for Sunset because there is honestly a lot more potential there anyways.
4153732 Eh, I am a lot less confident about my abilities these days, so I'll promise nothing other than I'll try my best.
Calling it.
Sunset Shimmer is the Mistress.
She was under the tutelage of Celestia and therefore should have an extensive knowledge of magics, right? We have yet to learn of her whereabouts in BM and none of the characters Handy knows, know anything about the Mistress. Crimson whom was given the old magic knows nothing about the Mistress except that she is powerful. Her name, The Mistress, points us in a good direction. Do we know of any male characters possessing great innate magical powers both in the show's canon and in BM's? Unless Starswirl is secretly still around, none come to mind. So the character has to be a powerful female magic user with knowledge of old magic, given Crimson received the old magic from the Mistress.
Unless, of course, you're gonna pull a rabbit out of your ass, Handy, and say it's actually Luna.
Never had a problem with Flash. He can pork Twilight all day and I won't care.
*squees at implication*
*imagines showdown between her and Crimson*
*squees harder*
4153743
4153712 In fairness to both of you.
The storytelling of the last few seasons has been very lackluster, that plus fandom decay has led to shit like famous fandom members just dropping out altogether, losing interest or becoming cynical with Bronies, so it is understandable why some fans, Like D48 here have lost interest in the show and who lost interest in their own pony projects despite having fantastic ideas.
At the same time, I do recommend this season, its not fantastic but it has been genuinely good this year. Even the CMC episodes which I usually customarily skip.
4153741 Actually...
4153736 Fair enough. I don't see her being a central character since her motivations and goals don't really align with his, but they might wind up running into each other one way or another at some point in the future with all the traveling he does. That could at the very least lead to an amusing conversation since she has probably heard about his history of conflicts with the princesses and the guards so she would probably at least go talk to him if they crossed paths. I'm not sure what her status is with Celestia and the guards at the moment (I can see Celestia leaving her alone due to her personal feelings and desire to talk/hug things out), but if she is wanted then associating with him could very easily get him into yet another fight with the guards, especially if it is guards that have a history with him. You might want to take advantage of this to create yet another mess for him, especially if you can drag Spike along for the ride for laughs, although I'm not sure if you have any need to do that at any point in the near future. It might also be funny to do that and end with the whole mob captured so we can watch Twilight scold Spike for resisting arrest, Celestia smother Sunset with affection and apologies, Jacques trying to protect Thorax, and Handy alternating between bitching at the Equestrians and telling Crimson not to murder everyone.
4153741 I highly doubt it. I'm fairly sure there was something somewhere about the Mistress being stupid-old so Sunset couldn't fill that role due to age.
4153743 Honestly, 4153766 basically covered it, although I want to mention that I have occasionally seen (and heard of) it happening in other fandoms when the creators get stupid and alienate fans. It's also important to remember that people like me don't usually stick around all that long after something gets stupid since dealing with the rabid idiot fans is extremely frustrating and there are always other things to move on to. MLP is just sort of in that throwing off phase now, and the process is slowed some by the relatively large number of stories like this one that are divergent enough from the main canon to be mostly unaffected by the stupidity.
As for this season, I have been tracking critical reviews and it sounds like it is still a disaster so I have no intention of watching it. I'm not entirely sure if you think it is up to the quality of seasons 1 and 2 or just less awful than the last season or two, but nothing I have heard from trusted sources makes it sound like its back up to the old quality standards and thus worth watching. Also, no offense, but I frankly have no idea how good a handle you have on the core cast since we basically never see them in BM and the time skip means they are all more mature than in the show, especially Twilight who has to have done a lot of learning about politics due to her position.
4153828 That's fair, I do best when I have characters from the show interact 1v1 for an extended period of time, everyone seemed to, if not love, at least liked or tolerate my first bout with Twilight (I was considerably less certain about my representation of Twilight in recent chapters) or at my best, Chrysalis.
To be honest I always found it hard to write the mane 6 and I couldnt begin to tell you why, so its probably best I didn't linger too long on them. But as for the current season, its not bad in comparison to the last two seasons, certain a step up from last season.. its just that thats not a very high bar, I am enjoying it for the subtle movement away from strictly being friendship lesson focused, though its still that. I am kind of disappointed they havent done more with what the show and world gives them to work with, but then thats part of the reason why I wrote Bad Mondays to fuck right off and go off the reservation. Its not up to snuff with the first season, but then again looking back I am not sure how much the critical reception of the first and second season isnt just nostalgia on the part of critics. Certainly there were good episodes, but there were plenty that were stupid slice-of-lifey with the occasional song, they just had less to fuck up.
Stop.
Hammer time.
Probably not, but I feel that is about the appropriate reaction Handy would have to Sunset.
Honestly though I ignore anything EG related on general principles. I kind of like the Sunset portrayed in the handful of fic's I've read, but just no, that is not a thing that happened.
This coming from a guy who doesn't watch the show/read the comics/anything other than fanfiction... still EG was such a bad concept it bothers me despite all that.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with defending your waifu's purity.
If you don't, then you simply don't deserve her.
So... TL;DR people hate those characters cause they're stealing their waifus
Get in the hug box you shit. >:[
Damn. I am seriously looking forward to the future of Bad Mondays even more now if you're going to handle Sunset like I think you're going to.
Also, I have to agree with you on the " bad" character thing. Flash just hasn't had much screen time, and to be frank, at this point it's just too fucking easy to insult him in anyone's story. Anymore, I've found it distasteful and stupid, and wish the time taken writing that was spent on literally anything els.e
4153741 Son, you are way far off. The answer is closer than you think.
>inb4 shocks is the mistress
*wink wink nudge nudge*
4153965
I've heard people talking about all this hate for Flash sentry but I've yet to actually see it. All I've really seen is satirical parodies of it.
4153828
Prepare yourself for a weak counter-argument!
She lied.
4154005 Shh, no tears now, just lucky charms.
I wonder if I should even try to claim that. If not in a 'I'm a complete idiot' way, then at least in a 'oh, yeah, I'm definitely a raging faggot' way.
4154014 And Rainbo- IMAGINATION.
The actual difference is that Flash Sentry got to bang Twilight Sparkle and oh no, not mai waifu
4153712
Where? I'd love to get to throw this in people's face. Screenshot would be ideal.
4153858 Fair enough, and while I obviously have no way to say anything for sure, I suspect that your tolerance of the latest season and trouble writing the mane 6 might both stem from a lack of clarity on who they are as characters. Not having a good feel for who they are could easily make you overlook what would be a glaring flaw to me, and it is obviously very hard for you to write for characters you don't really understand. You would have to give this some deep thought to really come to a solid answer since there is no way I can do more than propose a hypothesis and it really isn't that big a deal since the girls aren't really present in this story, but it might still be worth some introspection to help yourself improve both as an author and viewer/reader.
For Twilight in particular I didn't notice anything too off that I recall in the last chapter, but as I mentioned earlier you have quite a bit of leeway with her due to the time jump and the fact that she can be assumed to be making a concerted effort to become more of a politician which allows for significant change in those few years.
As for the old episodes, while there were undeniably some stinkers (*cough*Mare Do Well*cough*), what generally held them together was the quality of the writing and the complexity of the characters, not the plots and definitely not the world building which has always been haphazard at best. Because of this, my explanation for why I like the show has always been based on the writing rather than the vague crap others give about friendship and lessons and the like. My description of the show is basically "proof that excellent writing and characterization can make up for serious failures everywhere else" because the plots were usually fairly unimpressive and the world building is best described as a pile of random shit that got thrown at the wall to see what stuck. On a related note, if you do decide you don't have a great feel for the characters, the best way to fix that is re-watching seasons 1 and 2 while paying close attention to the characters to figure out why they act the way they do or ask someone if you can't figure it out yourself.
4153876 Sweet, and followed.
4154250 It's in this video. He smiles at her at about 1:10, and you can see the two of them standing together on a special platform with no one else at about 1:18 as she christens the airship.
I thought that pony Flash and Twi looked cute together, and I would welcome some light romance. I can kinda see why people disliked the human Flash, since most high school love stories are blegh, so I think the setting was what ruined him the most. Pony Flash is a working military/policeman, and that's a big difference.
I don't think RD or Twi should be the ones to get a love interest first in the show, since they've already accomplished so much, and the same goes for Rarity. The one who needs one the most is Fluttershy, since she hasn't gotten any long-term story progression, and she has that whole "lonely hearts book club", but now I'm off topic.
I kinda imagined Crimson as Sunset Shimmer.
Fun fact: both Prince Blueblood and Flash Sentry are voiced by the same voice actor (Vincent Tong)
side note: I've met Vincent before and he's a pretty awesome dude.
carry on with your comments
Oddly enough, the reason I hate Flash is exactly what you posted here. He was so grossly misused by the writers, it kind of poisoned any future use of his character.
Like several others, I've lost interest in the show, so I never saw the Quibble episode you speak of, but the reasoning here sounds about right. Not sure if I agree with the conclusion, which as I understand it is to not hate the characters for being poorly written / utilized. The characters are the creation of the writers. How is disliking how they are written different from disliking the character?
4153741
Uh, wait... I thought it was made kind of obvious who the Mistress is? I mean, what with the clover-shaped badge that was found?
Is... is it not who I think it is?
Is it not GODZILLA?
4154345
I must have missed that.
Oh well.
4154345 Tyrannical, please don't outright spoil it for those who didn't figure it out on their own yet.
4154292
Much appreciated.
Real talk now Handy, isn't hating Flash just a meme? Because all I ever really seen was parodies about hating him rather than actual hate. He's a minor character in non canon spin-off movies, there is not really that much of him to hate in the first place.
The only character I ever hated that I can think right now is Kiritsugu Emiya from Fate/Zero, but that's because everything that makes him him disgusts me on primal level, the very fact that he's the "hero" of the story and thus portrayed as a "good guy" actually raises my blood pressure, the pair that goes around mutilating and murdering children in that show are more pleasant characters than he is.
4154544 No it is not a meme, it was very very real for most of the fandom's history since EQG was released and it was irritating.
Applejack being worst pony or a Background Pony is a meme, hating Flash Sentry enough to have several anti Flash Sentry groups is actual hatred. And its just that stupid.
I have not seen Fate/Zero in its entirety so I cant comment.
4154592 Am I that naive then? Did I see actual hate and then automatically decided that it is way to silly to be real and thus it's a joke? An actual increase in male cast of the show is a plus in my book, but then again I do not really subscribe to the waifu bullshit despite being a dweeb on a level that I am a disgrace to my bloodline.
And Fate/Zero is good, a good story paired with amazing animation, yet the first hour is almost literally a hour of exposition while two older dudes are walking in a room around a younger dude
Flash is fine, I don't give a shit about him.
Fuck the main six though, those dipsticks can go get a lead suppository for all I care.
you do know that MLP is little unrealistic in age, because it only takes 5 years (or less) in real life for horse to be fully mature. So that's why you really shouldn't think too much about mlp age stuff
4154668 have to agree with that, they really can go fuck themselves. it's season 6 and it feels like they haven't learned anything, since they became elements of harmony.
4154769 It's called bad writing in the later seasons, and it is most obvious with Rainbow Dash. She was growing and maturing quite a bit through the first few seasons culminating in her walking out on the Wonderbolts for being dicks in Wonderbolt Academy, but since then the idiot writers have thrown out all her character development, complexity, and maturity for stupid jokes and pitiful plots. The other characters all get similar, if less blatantly obvious, abuse as well, and not even the world is safe from their incompetence with continuity errors and nonsensical declarations at every turn.
4154794 Also, for advertising that 'friendship is magic' they sure are xenophobic and distrusting of anyone (i am not going to say anypony. It's anyone for gods sake) who even looks slightly different or doesn't fit their fantasy (mental) world perfectly.
4153742 All the sexings!
4153752 Well that would indeed be a sight to see.
4153898 I almost didn't watch it myself because of the high schooler premise, the actual Pone on Earth concept wasn't a turn off however as it was for some people in the early fandom who simply hated humans.
4153911 Heresy.
Though in fairness, I never got the whole waifu thing, even as a joke, seemed to be one of those things that developed a few years back, metastasised while I wasn't looking and then became an accepted facet of daily internet life and I just had to work around it.
4153931 Basically.
4153955 No, I won't get into the hugbox and you can't make me!
4153962 I can't blame you, though to be fair, there are a number of fics that don't Flashbash, but that hardly makes up for it.
4153965 I still remember your username popping up in the comments EXACTLY around the time I created a pirate character in the Blackport arc called Shocks. Stop harassing my story, woman >=[
4154009 Very rarely does anyone spend the time writing a story specifically about a character they hate, very often its simply the jabs, usually out of place, and the bitching. So much bitching. I'll grant there's a lot less of it these days, but it was rife at the time and is basically fandom orthodoxy by this point. Same way Blueblood was in the earlier seasons for the fans.
4154069 I don't mean to offend anyone in particular with this, but there was a lot of raging faggotry to be had over waifu thievery and general shenanigans. Plenty of people just dont like him because he's bland, uninteresting and was handled about as well a unicycle on the Himalayas and that's fine. The problem is actually devoting hate towards him is stupid given he's not actually done anything to justify the hate he does have.
4154247 Pfft.
4154292 Actually, I am fairly certain I have a solid grasp on the characters themselves, that's not why I find them difficult to write (and I started watching in Season 2, and I am still fairly certain a lot of the critique is kind of nostalgia, the storytelling since Lauren left and the Marketing department took over has always been going steadily downhill) and the reason why I like some of the episodes this season much more than the last two is because there is a noticeable attempt at making the stories of each episode make sense enough so that the moral of the day gets across, even if they utterly fail sometimes at canonicity or consistency with previous seasons.
The latest one was good, but only if you ignore that Rainbow Dash forgets Pinkie's admonishment in an earlier season not to prank Fluttershy because she's too sensitive. And that we had an entire episode devoted to pranking to begin with.
I actually find the characters difficult to write because of the time difference and the fact they have moved on with their lives in little ways (I was so worried how the readers would react, for instance, to the fact I just shipped Applejack off like a box of cheap made-in-China lead coated toy racecars. Luckily nobody seems to care about Background Ponies =D) despite her being the most likely to settle down at her age. Most of the time when people write the Mane Six years into the future they just adopt commonly held fandom assumptions and personally shipping OTPs which I am usually loathed to do, and I have been deliberately avoiding speculating on whats going on in their lives because the fandom is so finicky when it comes to them. If this was all concurrent, I'd have no problem
Though showwise, I do wish the characters had more depth and complexity, the flanderization of Twilight alone gets me sometimes.
4154312 Eh, if I was perfectly honest?
If I was running the show and both the execs and I had the balls to do it, I'd probably have Rarity be the one who actually got the romantic interest first. Because she's the one actively seeking it in previous episodes and still coming up short in that matter. It'd be easy and believable to work in a romantic angle in the show through her with the minimum of fan backlash and a good starting point for getting it to work along with the story itself, especially now after she has accomplished all that she has.
4154324 TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!
THIS WAS ALL YOUR DOING!
4154339 Characters, in my opinion, should be hated for what they do. Which is why I said to save the hate for the Mary Sues. Flash did nothing, really, which makes him about as useful a character as Princess Celestia some seasons. To dislike him and want to completely ignore his existence is perfectly justifiable, but what exactly did he do to cause people to waste emotional investment on hatred? Its not as if he was a bad character AND saved the day at the expense of the show's actual heroes like a Sue would. Then hate away, I'd be right alongside you, for that is top tier bullshit.
4154646 Its fine, I don't subscribe to waifu bullshit either, so you're in good company. Mostly, its not that you're naive, you're probably just ignoring a good portion of the fandom which in your defence, is a perfectly good thing to do. Hell I avoid the front page most days just so I don't have to see what horrors the fanbase has elected as front page material via the algorithm.
4154668 Pfft, not a fan of the main mares, eh?
4154748 Yeah, but at no point, real or imaginary, did I think of the ponies as being like real life horses.
4154832 It was more pony turned into human on earth so we can do a completely unrelated plot for the sole purpose of making more toys that turned me off, but hey.
4154832 Fair enough. As I said before I don't have the ability to know what goes on inside your head so I can't make assessments. That said, I can definitely see where you are coming from with the time skip since it is really hard to extrapolate character development like that without actually seeing it, especially when the show is busy flanderizing them like crazy and making it impossible to see how they are actually developing. You can make guesses, but it's a very hard balance to strike and someone will always take issue with it no matter what you do.
Except for Applejack because no one cares about the background pony.
As for the show stuff, what it really comes down to is that I expect more than "not a totally awful plot," so I'm not going to be watching any more unless things change drastically. Those continuity and characterization failures are not things I am willing to tolerate, so at this point I can't see myself going back without them taking drastic measures to fix this mess. Ideally they would bring Faust back and let her tear out the crap by restarting the series with a redo of the season 2 finale and declaring seasons 3+ non-canon, but I just don't see any way that could possibly happen at this point since Hasbro only sees the show as a marketing vehicle for toys so they ignore the value of maintaining the integrity of the IP. If they kept the core characters strong and built up the world and secondary cast around them into a robust, cohesive whole they could start spinning off all kinds of secondary shows, movies, games, and so on which would make them far more money than butchering the show to cash in on toys and would be basically an infinitely growing source of robust revenue once it got going, but instead they screwed it over to make a quick buck on toy sales which is incredibly frustrating. At this point I am mostly looking forward to the day they let the whole rotten mess die because that will hopefully result in the fans giving more attention to the earlier seasons, but I know better than to get my hopes up with the pack of rabid idiots that make up most of the fandom these days.
4154832
You know it's true, I know it's true. May as well admit it.