@Background Pony #6A45  
MLP:FiM will go on for another five seasons! They can definitely give him all the screentime in the world for all i care, cause whiny kids and manchildren are gonna bitch and throw a tantrum about anything that happened in the show anyway.

All these upvotes for edge.

@YenaMuffin  
And he can’t wipe the oil off from his face either!

For some reason, I want to fill that bowl/bucket in front of him with fries and tell him that for his “crimes” he has to eat ALL of it- without ketchup or fry sauce.

@kyle dm  

 
I’d rather not. I don’t think they can develop his character without dedicating big part of a screen time, and keeping to much attention around him is not the best idea. Just my opinion.

@rylasasin  
Let me start by saying that I agree with you and that Flash Sentry is a horribly handled character and i completely understand the hate that he receives because of it. That said i also agree with Starswirl that reflexably downvoting anything that has to do with him, regardless of quality is kind of petty and stupid.
 
While Flash may be one of the writers biggest misteps he is not the only one. Celestial is more of a walking plot device rather than an actual character, Chrysalis was an idiot who’s plan only succeeded on the virtue that everyone else was also an idiot, Sombra might as well be a speaker box that keeps repeating the words “crystals” and “slaves”, every single background pony (not actually a misstep but still counts), Luna; outside of her three episodes might as well not exist. Point is that a lot of characters in the show are mishandled or underutilized and yet through the wonders of fandom creativity great artwork and stories of them exist.
 
Flash Sentry is the same, with members of the fandom salvaging and making him a into worthwhile character. Don’t get me wrong, it’s more than a little hokie that it is up to to the fans to “save” Flash but that is all on the writers head’s. For better or worse Flash Sentry is now part of MLP canon; should the writers do more with him? Absolutely, will they? Probably not; but all that this kneejerk hatred is accomplishing is punishing authors and artists for the writers sins, which is rather unfair if you ask me.

@rylasasin  
I doubt the writers can do anything that will make him palatable to the folks who have decided on hating him, no matter what.
 
If they put him up, he’s a “Gary Stu perfect dreamy cutebottom walking cliché”, who takes away from Twilight’s awesomeness.
 
If they put him down, he’s going to be a “useless superfluous perhaps even insulting waste of space”.
 
They can’t win. Not against that kind of hiveminding. The best thing to do is to decide on one of the above or a bigger cameo and ignore the outcry by what I honestly think is a particularly loud minority. No offence, present company excluded.

Im normally a fan of death and grimdark, but this guy gets too much hate from the fandom for it to be really satisfying, I just kinda feel bad for him

Poor horsie. He doesn’t deserve this.

@Starswirl  
Because no amount of fandom characterization is going to change things for flash.
 
It has to come from the writers, or not at all.

He looks so cute all chained up like this. Can we just leave him restrained here without hurting him? That’d be nice c:

@Antonyourknee  
I don’t think fandom characterization will do much here, IMO flash is a lost cause.

Flash just needs some good old fandom characterization. That’s sure to turn his appeal around and I know we can do it.After all we already got gold with some of the stuff.

@rylasasin  
Okay then.
 
Well, I can’t prove it, but seeing as how almost every story I’ve seen posted anywhere featuring Flash Sentry struggles with massive downvotes, I’m not all that sold on your explanation. These stories are doing what you decry with the original source: They try to flesh him out. But every attempt is met with massive scorn. Wouldn’t they be lauded if it was indeed the laziness pissing people off, as you noted?

@Starswirl
 
That’s entirely different.

@rylasasin  
Isn’t 5-second cameos basically Derpy’s whole reason for existing?

No, pls! _{He’s mai husbando!}
 
@Trapper
 
Aww yiss!

rip it’s liver out !!!

@Background Pony #6A45
 
“NEXT, THE PONY IN THE RAGS!”

@The Twelfth Doctor Whoof
 
Actually, that’s kinda sorta the problem.
 
What do I mean by this? Well let me explain something. That something being that all of Flash Sentry’s problems (with both his role as a character, and his problems with the fandom) boil down to one single word. What is that word, you might ask?
 
“Gary Stu?” No. This is a problem for him yes, but this is only a side effect of a much larger issue.
 
“Money?” No, but you’re getting there.
 
“Waifu?” … Get out of here, and take your strawman with you.
 
No. The actual word is… Laziness. That’s right. Laziness.
 
Flash’s huge problem is pretty much everything about him is outright lazy. It’s this laziness that reflects into hatred in the fanbase. What do I mean by this? Let’s have a look at just how Flash Sentry is Lazy:
 
First of all, he was introduced in a movie that was, graphics aside, pretty lazily made (EQG), with Lazy plotholes, cliches, etc. Thrown all over the place. While this in of itself is not really enough to damn him, he’s not exactly off to a good start.
 
Secondly, his role. A Satellite love interest. Why is this here? Because high school movie. In other words: A cliche for the sake of cliche. An example of taking the easy way out. In other words Lazy.
 
Third: How he was introduced into this role and how he goes about it: He bumps into twilight, and… that’s it. No dialogue, no nothing. Twilight just gets flustered for no apparent reason (despite probably having bumped into several males of her own kind that she would find just as attractive if not more so. And no, don’t give me this “Well maybe she’s a Xenophile” or “she’s a teenager¹” excuse, because that’s trying to cover up laziness…. with laziness.) We aren’t shown or told why Twilight suddenly goes ga-ga for this boy she never met and really has no real emotional connection to, and by extension we aren’t shown or told why we should support this. Nope, just “because we need romance”.  
This does not change at all throughout the movie. It’s the same, very lazy formula: “appear on screen, bump into Twilight, Twilight blushes and goes googly-eyed, leave, back to the movie, rinse and repeat.” Yes, there’s that one scene with luna’s office (which we’ll get back to in a jiffy), but that’s as close as we get to any real chemistry between the two of them.  
In other words. LAZY WRITING.
 
Fourth: The talking role he does get: So we all have heard about this. We’ve all heard the talking points by now: How it’s completely contrary to sunset’s plan, how it’s only role was to shoehorn Flash Sentry into something. How Luna is a dunce. Blah de blah. Even here they don’t really share any real interaction: Just a thank you hug, a rejected dance invite, and back to the actual plot (or what passes for it).
 
In other words: It’s a scene cobbled together when they realized “oh shit we actually need him doing something. Quick, let’s be lazy and try to put as little effort into this as possible.”
 
Finally, his cameos. Now at this point, believe it or not, flash (or at least the pony) could have been (and still might be) redeemable, and some evidence points to the writers (or at least the animators) TRYING to do just that. But just like with everything else with him, they half-ass it. Instead of giving pony flash a real role, interests, personality. Something that might Redeem him in the eyes of a public that is, in the majority. just a 5 second cameo with a single line and a really stupid excuse for retarded pseudo-shippers to annoy us with flashlight all the further. Basically, it was like the writers/animators were saying: “OH LOOK HERES FLASH SENTRY REMEMBER HIM? PLEASE, LOVE HIM! PLEASE? PLEASE? PLEEEAAAASSSE?”  
However, here he suffers from the exact same problem as he did in EQG: He does nothing of value, and he does nothing to convince the audience as to why we should like him. Or more specifically: Why we should not hate him anymore.  
The issue with it is: They had a chance to redeem flash from the very terrible reputation he has, but yet his cameo did nothing but remind us that he exists first of all, and second of all did nothing but made a bad situation worse: By taking a lazy, easy route in a half-hearted attempt to get us to like him, they wound up making the problem actually worse by falling into the same exact trap that earned him his reputation in the first place.  
Now I hear a lot of people complain “But flash sentry didn’t do anything to warrant the hate”. But, see… that’s the whole problem: he didn’t do anything. They took the LAZY route with him. The path of least resistance. And it wound up blowing up in their faces for this exact reason, and this is why a lot of people got mad at his appearance, even if said people couldn’t consciously make the connection for this reason.
 
People do not take kindly to laziness, and are quick to hate the product of something that was very lazily made (even if they can’t really put their finger on why they hate him), especially from people that have time and time again have shown themselves to be well motivated, passionate people who are good at their jobs. People we’ve come to expect great things from, and have come to expect much better than this. People who are capable of giving us great characters. People who are capable of turning crappy ideas and cliches into something awesome.
 
Okay, so now we know the real reason he’s hated so much. So, what does this mean for Flash? Can he be redeemed? Or not?
 
My answer: Possibly. However, it would require a lot of effort, possibly even retconning to make it work.
 
When it comes to Flash Sentry, the writers basically need to do one of two things to him: Put him up, or put him down. Either do something awesome with him, give him some more interaction, an actual personality beyond lazy cliches and tropes, give him interests, give him a reason why twilight should be the least bit interested in him as a character. In other words: give him some more appearances, and PUT SOME FRIGGIN EFFORT INTO IT AND STOP HALF ASSING IT WITH 5 SECOND CAMEOS AND ONE LINERS.  
Or if they can’t be arsed to put in the effort into trying to redeem him in the eyes of the audience: put him down. If he can’t be saved, They need to (metaphorically speaking) take him behind the shed and put him out of his (and our) misery. Reassign him somewhere and never have him come back, and as for the human version: Stick him on a bus (foreign exchange might be an option) Don’t ever bring him back ever again, please. Let him fade into obscurity and stop trying to convince us to like him while doing absolutely nothing to convince us to like him.

This is the “couch you sleep on for the nigth “ when you’re dating royalty.

OFF WITH HIS HEAD.

Chop Drop Roll!  
Woop Woop Woop

@The Twelfth Doctor Whoof
 
Perhaps he has been accused of “seducing the Princess”, “attempting to kill her”, “sleeping or not being present on his post”, and so forth.
 
Being a Royal Guard sure is really tough, since Shining Armor became the authoritarian Captain. Any who disobey him may share Flash’s fate.