Flashing Led/Akita-Ken

By akita-ken

• May 12, 2013




Age: 20

Gender: Male

Species: Earth Pony

Appearance: Flashing LED is a young stallion who has recently come of age, carrying a youthful appearance. His coat is deep dark shade of midnight blue (#1c4463). His mane is comprised of 3 analogous colours with respect to his coat. Namely, they are a deep sky blue (#00beea), azure blue (#009ad6), and a silver-blue (#2a4a5b). Flash's mane is straight and is not styled. <br /><br />He is of average build for a stallion, but is slightly shorter than most. As far as pony fitness goes, he fluctuates from being slightly above average to being slightly below average, depending on the amount of exercise he gets, coupled with his diet. <br /><br />Flash is short-sighted and wears corrective lenses for them.

Cutie Mark: Flash's cutie mark consists of a stylized circuit diagram notation for a red, green and blue light emitting diode (LED). This has often confused him as he has never been particularly good at electronics, despite having a deep hobbyist interest in it. <br /><br />However, it is supposed to represent the generalist nature of Flash's array of skills, serving as a constant reminder to him that the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts, much in the same way a red, green and blue LED can create any colour in the visible spectrum when they work together.

Personality: As a pony, Flash would be classified as an introvert. From young, he has always been very cautious with picking the ponies he would come to call his good friends, making sure to separate them in his mind from those that he considered mere acquiantances. <br /><br />Naturally, this has resulted in Flash having only a small social circle that he holds dear. Part of the reason for this is due to the way he goes about forging interponysonal relationships. Flash rarely takes anything presented to him at face value, his analytical mind always seeking to infer and deduce the intent, purpose, and motives of any action that he observes. <br /><br />This analytical nature of his extends to the way he approaches others, and he is willing to take the extra time required to ascertain that the ponies that he welcomes into his inner social circle will be sincere and willing to reciprocate his trust and loyalty, even at the expense of coming off as being cold at first. <br /><br />As a result of this, Flash prefers to let ponies approach him rather than the other way round, and he will rarely start a conversation with a new pony unless he is absolutely sure that he shares something in common with them. Despite his introverted nature, deep down inside he yearns to be accepted by his peers and one day hopes to be in the limelight. <br /><br />For the most part, Flash is an intelligent pony and is above average in many areas. Regardless, Flash makes a conscious effort to be humble whenever he interacts with others.

Backstory: Born to an Earth Pony father and Unicorn mother, Flash has had a relatively normal upbringing, tending to be a relatively reserved student in school most of the time, though never veering too far off from the norm. <br /><br />From an early age, he had always been intrigued at the way things worked and would often times take things apart to see what made them tick, much to his parents's vexation. Not being a very outgoing colt, Flash did not partake in the same rough sports that fellow peers of his age seemed to enjoy. These things simply did not interest him, and he'd prefer spending his time in front of a computer. <br /><br />Eventually, the cumulative time he spent working with them translated into steadily increasing competency. By the time he reached high-school, Flash's skillset was easily greater than an average pony of his age. Friends and relatives would often tell him that his cutie mark would definitely have something to do with computers. <br /><br />Despite this, Flash was one of the last colts of his age group to get his cutie mark. While he did not deny the fact that he seemed to possess a natural aptitude towards the technical aspects of computing, He was nevertheless hesitant in believing that that would definitely 'be his destiny', his cautious personality again exhibiting itself. <br /><br />At the age of 18, Flash enlisted into the army and began a two-year term of service. During this time, Flash spent most of his days undergoing training and performing duties in various camps and bases around Equestria. For the first time in his life, Flash had been released from the bounds of a computer by virtue of circumstance. The weekends he had off-duty were far too precious to waste away slogging in front of a monitor, and he quickly jumped on the opportunity to try out new hobbies. <br /><br />Flash had a natural attraction to glowing things and, as luck would have it, he had happened to watch a video of a laser show while slacking off on one of his off-days. Being awed at the myriad of colours and beautiful dancing lights was all that was needed to rekindle the interest that lay dormant for so many years. <br /><br />With it acting as a catalyst, Flash set out to see if he could somehow build an equivalent display of lights. Something that he could make from scratch, something that he could call 'his own'. Never having received any formal engineering instruction, lasers were far too advanced for his untrained mind to grasp. <br /><br />However, recent advances into the field of light emitting diodes meant that the price of individuals LEDs had fallen to levels that allowed entire matrices to be sold as packages. Flash knew that while LEDs did not have the beam projection capability of lasers, they were nevertheless bright, and no less impressive. Flash also knew that while LED packages came in a myriad of colours, with red being the cheapest, he would have to fork out a premium to procure one that combined the three primary colours of red, green and blue together in order to achieve full colour control of the matrix. <br /><br />With his meagre salary from the army, he quickly gathered the parts he required to construct a simple analog of what he had in mind, for all he needed to satiate his curiousity was a proof of concept. Having only two days every weekend to spare, Flash worked feverishly on his project. Deep in his heart, he knew he wanted this to work, despite it only being a casual side project driven by his curiousity. <br /><br />Armed with a simple multimeter and a prototyping board, Flash pored through the datasheets that he obtained for the parts that he bought, making sure every connection was properly made, every current path made sense, and every electrical parameter was within allowable tolerances. Working late into a Sunday morning, Flash had finally completed his prototype, and was only left with powering it up. <br /><br />While he had checked and rechecked his work, only by supplying it with power would he find out if the hundred odd hours he had put in were worth it. A single short would be enough to cause the failure of a critical component. With bated breath, Flash switched the power to the microcontroller on. <br /><br />Nothing. <br /><br />Nothing had happened yet, but it was too early to tell. 5 volts was definitely running through the circuits but whether the shift registers would properly trigger the transistors to open the flow of current into the LEDs remained to be seen. <br /><br />Taking a deep breath, Flash hit the button that began sending the commands to the microcontroller. After a pause that seemed like an eternity, all 64 LEDs of the 8 by 8 matrix lit up with a brilliant white glow, catching Flash straight in the face, the image of a neat square of white dots visible in the reflection off his glasses. A smile crept across his face as he experienced his first pure feeling of joy in a long time. <br /><br />It was then, he finally realized what this seemingly trivial project was trying to tell him. Every single dot appeared white, but was in actuality the unison of three separate LEDs, working together to create virtually any colour in the visible spectrum. Till now, Flash had certain discernible talents, but none that truly stood out, leading him to frequently wonder what he would be destined to do, and subsequently, what his cutie mark would be. <br /><br />The gleaming array of white lights gave him the answer he had been looking for; he didn't have to excel at one thing, all he needed was to be proficient at many, and they would all come together to form the greater whole! The initial joy of his epiphany soon gave way to a tingling sensation on his flank, and when he turned to look, there lay, arranged in a neat triangle, the symbols for a red, green and blue light emitting diode.<br /><br />Flash is the son of Miya Akita, a unicorn mare from far beyond the Everfree Forest, her name being a product of the native language spoken by her countryponies, and Stable Keyes, an earth pony stallion who worked as a banker with the Equestrian Banking Coroporation. <br /><br />Keyes hailed from the tropics of Equestria, where cities were just beginning to emerge. While nowhere near as gleaming nor glamorous as those such as Trottingham or Las Pegasus, established companies such as the EBC were already present and had a foothold there. Seeking to further expand their network and explore other sources of financial revenue, the company sent Keyes to one of it's expeditionary branches beyond the Everfree Forest. It was there that Keyes met Akita, where they quickly fell in love. <br /><br />After a few years, Keyes had finally risen through the ranks of the company and was transferred to Manehattan. The couple would spend the next five years there together before deciding to move back to Keyes's original homecity in the tropics to settle down and start a family.<br /><br />As of now, Flash has moved to Manehattan where he jointly rents a room with Key Gear, an earth pony mare. He is currently waiting for his college term to begin.<br /><br />N.B: Flash's given name by birth is Akita Ken, taking his mother's last name and a variant of his father's. Flashing LED is a pseudonym that mimics a 'normalized' Equestrian name, which he uses to avoid questions into his lineage.<br />