My Little Pony LXXXIX: Ponythread Perfect! Yaks no Smash!

[zimmerwald1915]

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Hmmm. No, not really feeling this one. It... I dunno. Is it just me or do those three seem more like... steriotypes than characters here (especially the other two)?

I mean Flash shows a little... vanity, maybe...? beyond just "Generic Nice guy" but still... I was sort of expecting we might see something of a character here, but... Well, you could have replaced them with the CMC there and it would largely went the same way. They were sort of acting like children. And it was rather... understated, at that (compared to what, say Lyra and Bonbon were at.)

I think, at the very least, Hippy-chap and Nerd-chap are far too cliched and one dimensional (and worst of all, done-before). I mean, come on, the show's arguable lead and one of the other major characters sort of cover those areas, only with some actual character.

It's not just me right?

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No, it's not just you.

The word you're looking for to describe Flash is "self-satisfaction," and I maintain that it's been there since his introduction. Flash has always had these two character traits: a genuine desire to be a good person, and a mindset that lets him believe that he is one very easily. He is capable of real moral accomplishments, but he is very proud of very small things. For example, in Equestria Girls. He is the lone human able to extricate himself from Sunset's web on his own, but what he crows about is how reporting her Photoshop job to Vice-Principal Luna makes him so much "a Canterlot Wondercolt." Or see here. Apparently being in a high school garage band makes him a great artist in his mind; this delusion was also the driver of his actions in Rainbow Rocks, and the chink in his moral armor that the Sirens exploited. He's not small-minded, exactly. That would make him petty and mean, and he's neither of those things. Trixie, for example, is much truer to that kind of small-mindedness in Rainbow Rocks than Flash is. Flash just has a high opinion of himself for all the wrong reasons, and is content to rest on his laurels because of it.

Not that you made this charge exactly, but the above is why I get up in arms when people say Flash has no character. He does. It's not a particularly likable character (Blueblood shares most of Flash's negative traits, though few of his positive ones), but it's there.

The other two, on the other hand, are completely one-note. But that's nothing new. Most of the "characters" in Slice of Life are about as well-drawn.

EDIT: now that I think about it, Flash in Equestria Girls is the only character introduced as a human. We go into the film knowing a bunch about all the Humane Six's pony counterparts, and Sunset is herself a pony, but human Flash is the original, as it were. That snippet of a scene in the Crystal Empire aside, he is introduced and characterized from the start as a human. That makes him the film's window on the human condition specifically. What is revealed tracks to some extent with your uncharitable view of humanity; that it is much too satisfied with how little it has to show for itself. Just thought I'd point that out.