Talk:Flash Sentry/@comment-24207759-20141002132201/@comment-7345250-20141005001427

Well, only now did I learn that I was mentioned here, and I must say that I'm not impressed by your argument. We're selfish and immoral because we haven't wiled away hours upon hours creating a personality for a character which we never liked anyway. Newsflash, mate: that's an even greater waste of time than explaining what Hasbro did wrong.

Derpy is one matter: she has no personality, but she's likable. She's a background pony. She has no role in the series, and she doesn't interact with other characters. Derpy is a blank slate. She can be whatever the writer wishes.

Flash Sentry is another matter: he as no personality, but he is unlikable. He was meant to be a main character in a film which many of us disapproved of. He has a lousy role, and his interactions with other characters are lamentably boring at best. Flash Sentry is bad material. He is something nasty, and unlike Derpy, we have to stay rooted in the canon of EG to write his character.

Do you understand this now? Writing about background characters and OCs is enjoyable. Their personalities are malleable, and they have room to develop. Furthermore, the writer can expand upon that character freely. Writing about Flash Sentry is not enjoyable. His personality is fairly set in stone, thanks to Hasbro's use of high school clichés and Twilight's own hair-brained lunacy in EG. He really can't be much more than a rocker and a love interest. [On that note, it's hard for Shining Armor can't be much more than a brother, a guard captain, and a husband, which makes him hard to write for too. That is why the best depiction of Shining Armor thus far actually came from the IDW comics.]

So, please continue to tell me how "selfish and immoral" I am for choosing not to write about a character which I found extremely disagreeable from the very start. Equestria Girls was terrible, and I want as little to do with the matter as is responsibly possible.

"Do I complain about Flash?" - Absolutely.

"Do I want to fix that?" - Absolutely not. I'm part of the audience, not the entertainment.

"Do I want the entertainers to fix that?" - Well...

Here's where the matter gets somewhat wacky. I don't want them to fix it. I want them to move on. Here is what you need to realize: some folks do not want Flash Sentry in the series at all, let alone in their fanmade works. The writers of Equestria Girls made a gargantuan mistake by giving the pony Twilight Sparkle a human love interest. Therefore, none of us want to encourage the continuation of this mistake. We do not write about Flash because we do not like the very concept of Flash.

Certainly, entertainment is a job for the audience too. The audience has to be imaginative. It must invent certain elements of a character which the work itself cannot present. Haven't you ever skimmed through a book, looking for some small detail, only to realize that it was never explicitly stated in the text itself? Probably. Now there are some fans out there (like you, perhaps) that see gold in Flash's character. I myself know how that feels. I'm one of Gilda's foremost advocates on this site, even though many bronies either dislike or ignore her. However, that gold is not always there. I think Gilda has potential. Others do not.

So the question is this: Can you accept that we do not see the same potential that you see?