sultan-78 replied to your photo: “Spider-Man: The Animated Series Rewatch → Two gifsets per episode ↳...””
Flash Thompson is a coward bully who picks on people because of their size. He had this coming. Karma's a bitch, Eugene!
Since you have twice felt the need to make this comment on my post, let me just clarify a few things:
While I don't think it excuses Flash's bullying, I do think you need to take into account the fact that Flash was physically and emotionally abused by his father in fairly extreme and horrifying ways throughout his childhood. Lashing out at others was a traumatized child's way of coping and trying to regain some semblance of the power and control his father tore away from him. Hence the way he's paralyzed and terrified here once Peter starts talking to and hurting him the way his father did.
Flash was trapped in a cycle of violence and toxic masculinity that he, to his credit, did manage to break out of in the comics. Once he got into college, he began to heal from his father's abuse and improved to the point that he became one of Peter's best friends, was even best man at Peter's wedding, and, more than that, became a hero. Flash's story is one that portrays the difficulties of overcoming childhood abuse and trauma and unlearning the toxic masculinity that was drilled into him by an abusive father. This is not the way to deal with abuse survivors, even when they are replicating the kinds of violence that were visited on them. Flash needs therapy, not more abuse and violence.
So. The bullying wasn't acceptable at all, but it was an understandable reaction to the severe abuse Flash survived, and I don't think Flash is nearly as much of an asshole in comics canon as you seem to think. Without his father's abuse, I think Flash would have been a very sweet, gentle, compassionate guy, which is what he turns into in the comics. Neither do I think that this was a good or even acceptable way to handle this situation on Peter's part, nor was it presented as such by the show. It is meant to be ugly, unnecessarily aggressive and macho behavior on Peter's part, encouraged by the alien symbiote. It's a sign that there is something very wrong with him.
Basically, Felicia is right. That's not the way to deal with Flash. It'll do more harm than good. Peter’s actions here were by no means heroic — he was thinking with his macho pride rather than his heart.
Flash is a complicated person who is not easily reducible to the word "bully." You need to take "childhood abuse survivor" into account as well, for one thing.
