May the muffins be forever in your favour."Sweet and Smoky" Review: Garble and the Parallels to Earth's Worst Dictator · 6:03pm May 26th, 2019
This episode almost made me spill my drink on the screen. The reveal that Garble is Smolder's brother came quick, efficiently and merciless. Even after missing the first few minutes of the episode, and therefore all that talk about how Smolder's brother is a softie like Spike, this plot twist still blew my mind. Smolder isn't anything like Garble, how can two dragons who are so different be siblings? One of these apples definitely fell far from the tree. And knowing Garble and looking at his personality and issues, I bet it is him.
This episode could make you think that Garble isn't as bad as previously thought. But after thinking it over, I realized that having this hobby does nothing to make Garble less potentially dangerous. Despite his claim, he was still picking on Spike when his friends weren't around and when only Smolder, who would never ridicule him, was here, because he thinks of Spike as "weakling". And even dangerous people and tyrants have hobbies and passions, yet their minds are still ticking bombs that explode if dropped. In fact, after watching the episode, I can see that one can draw a lot of parallels between Garble and Earth's worst dictator:
Adolf Hitler
Garble has the mind of a tyrant. It was him who announced to enact revenge on ponies if he should become Dragon Lord. He was quick with committing himself to abuse his power. Adolf Hitler, after rising to power, quickly established a totalitarian regime, oppressed his citizens, annexed another country by force and plunged the world into a war with the goal of total world domination.
Garble himself said that he will take whatever he wants from Equestria and that he will burn the rest after becoming Dragon Lord. He hates ponies, because he thinks they're weak, and his first action as Dragon Lord would be to burn them all to death and to execute a genocide that way. Adolf Hitler hated jews in the same way and, like Garble, thought of them as weak, a lower race of humans that deserved nothing but eradication for the weakness he perceived in them.
This episode now revealed that Garble is an artist, a poet. He comes up with rhymes and poems and says of himself that he has to be creative. Adolf Hitler was an artist, as well, he is known for having painted landscapes and buildings. And, just like Garble, he had issues related to his artistic passion. While Garble was afraid of others finding out about his poetry and kept it a secret, Adolf Hitler always failed with his attempts to study art at Vienna's art academy. One of the reasons why Adolf Hitler went down on this dark path is said to be his failure as artist, a contributing factor in what he turned into.
There is a disturbing amount of parallels between Garble and Adolf Hitler; in their personalities, their ambitions, their passions and their issues with their respective artistic careers.
It brings Garble to an interesting crossroads. How will his future look like? He hasn't become Dragon Lord (yet?) and he hasn't attacked Equestria and its population, so far. With more positive encouragement of his passion for being a poet, Garble could become distracted from his sinister plans and being admired for the poems he writes could suppress his tyrannic and hateful self.
But what if the lesson we've seen in this episode does not stick with most dragons? If Garble is getting openly ridiculed for his passion in the future, he could easily go down the same dark path that Adolf Hitler did and bring war, destruction, slavery and, eventually, mass murder to Equestria.
Garble hid his passion to look tough in front of his dragon friends. A little bit of mockery for his poetry could be the last drop for Garble and motivate him to prove just how tough he is.
Other than finding out that Garble is a very deep character, this episode delivered us with intriguing aspects about dragon physiology. We know since Season 2 that a bath in lava is neither lethal nor any kind of dangerous for a dragon. But how about the insides of their bodies? Letting lava into their mouths is still fine, but as soon as they get it into their noses or swallow it, problems occur. It already irritated Spike's nose when lava entered it, but when he accidentally swallowed lava and it got into his esophagus, perhaps even stomach, he almost drowned and had to be brought back to the surface by Smolder. This weakened him enough that he couldn't resurface alone anymore, so swallowing lava has a substantial impact on dragons.
I wonder what would happen if the stomach of a dragon attempted to digest lava. Would it kill them? And how long could a dragon leave lava in their stomach before negative health effects occur? There is a very interesting discrepancy here, with their bodies being extremely resilient on the outside, but vulnerable on the inside. Biologists from earth would have a field day with examining the bodies of dragons.
A little less interesting, but something that still caught my attention, is how willingly Twilight agreed to let Smolder skip a class. I guess that's one of the perks of running a private school, you can allow your students whatever you want without the government or royalty interfering. But I am wondering about Twilight's reasons for that decision. Is Smolder such a good student that Twilight knows she can easily catch up with what she missed on the next day, did she allow it because she knows Smolder can afford missing class here and there? Or is Twilight perhaps a little challenged with running a school, in which case Chancellor Neighsay had a point with his initial scepticism of the concept of Twilight's school, and made an unreasonable decision?
The reasoning here could go into each of these directions and it does make me wonder what that means for Twilight.
This episode has shaped itself up to be one of Season 9's most interesting episodes very quickly. Not only did we get to see the Dragon Lands and Ember again, yet another reference to Season 6 as we saw Ember and the Dragon Lands in Season 6 for the first time (and it wasn't even the only one, there was a S2 reference too, have you noticed Spike talking about Pinkie Pie's Smile Song?), but it also gave Garble a lot of unexpected development in the show.
I've seen bronies shrugging this episode off as "Yet another episode about being true to yourself." already, but it's a very deep and thought-provoking episode if you look at the big picture and take previous appearances of Garble into account.
Well, given Smolder is in the friendship shook and ready to help, it kinda suits with being sister to him.
Thought that references, let's hope it won't backfire for Hasbro
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The similarities between Adolf Hitler and Garble? Nah. For one, it's likely not even an intentional reference, just a coincidence. And, for second, even if it were intentional, what would happen? Nothing in the episode glorifies Adolf Hitler's crimes. It just gives hints for how someone can reach the dark side and invites you to think about that.
Sane people who watch this episode will praise it for that portrayal. And if insane people watch it? Well, who cares about the ramblings of insane people anyway? No one should.
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Of course, I just remembered, there was a case where people got angry about that "Satanic' imagery in that one episode where Twilight wonders about Starlight's future, or where parents got furious when they saw this body pillows on the Daring Do episode where Quible Pants first appeared.
So, it could be likely that somebody gets the "connection"