So, here we are, waiting for the next episode to air tomorrow, unless you already watched it in Italian.

This one is called "Sweet and Smoky", and is by Kim Beyer-Johnson, a name I didn't really recognise, so I looked it up. She wrote a couple of shorts I haven't watched, and... oh dear. Non-Compete Clause. Keep in mind I'm a little behind on watching episodes, so that episode's only five episodes ago for me.

Well, maybe if we're lucky, this episode won't have Rainbow Dash or Applejack in it.

To be perfectly honest, I've got no idea what will be in it. The name isn't suggesting much. Smoky could be dragon-ish, and Sweet could be, say, Sugarcube Corner, or Sweet Apple Acres. Maybe dragons get a sweet tooth and start rampaging the town looking for pastries and things with sugar in them? Let me just sneak a peak at the synopsis...

Eh, close enough.

As usual, you can discuss your ideas on what the episode might be or what you've already seen of it here before it airs, and you can discuss the episode itself afterwards, that sort of thing. Or dragons and their snacking habits.

--Sweetie Belle

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Or it could be Sweet (Belle) and Smokey (Spike). Running from the law!

Wow, Fluttershy. Just, wow. Way to nearly break the kid friendly rating there with that comment about the eggs.

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This is reposted from my comment on /r/mylittlepony's discussion thread.

In which I'm introduced to beat poetry.

I was spoiled but only about the eggs being hatched in the end... which, well, wasn't really a spoiler to me because, with how episodes like these go, those episodes will hatch sooner or later. It's just a matter of when. Other than that, I was almost spoiled with who Smolder's brother was—Garble's name plastered on a blog post title with something like, "So, about Garble..." When I read that it contained spoilers for this episode, I immediately stopped—and for a while, I thought that perhaps Garble is still being the same old jerk as before to Spike.

So it surprised me when Garble is Smolder's brother. Caught me off guard. And since I read the synopsis beforehand, there was this tension of there being a soft side to Garble after most if not all of his prior appearances always ending up being quite... jerky.

However, thinking about all those appearances only makes Garble more sympathetic. I don't know when he started doing beat poetry (and maybe we'll never know), but if it started as a childhood thing, then he's been confiding his desire to create, through poetry, to only Smolder and shutting that part of himself from everyone else... which is a tiring thing to do. He's willing to keep an important Equstrian artifact away from those who need it, say that he would invade Equestria if he became Dragon Lord, and even smash a phoenix egg—and it's all part of this facade and personality he's been cultivating to maintain good standing in a "strong", admittedly brutish dragon society.

(As an aside: it does remind me of One Bad Apple and Babs Seed, both Babs and Garble adopting gruff personalities to hide something. The difference is there: Babs only adopted it for a few days at best, while Garble's been doing it for years, if not more than half of his life.)

The only thing that I'm not 100% on board on about this is how Garble willingly encourages others mocking him to get the eggs to hatch. Maybe it's a cultural difference, but at first, that's how I saw it... until I realized that maybe he's being pragmatic. Once he's strong enough to overcome the potential mockery, he's strong enough to deflect that mockery—maybe even utilize it for a better purpose somehow. Though that brings up something else that I want to admire in Garble: willing to show who he is, even if he never gets accepted—because he knows that he is stronger than all his mockers, and knows that his true friends will accept him for who he is.

It's obvious how the moral applies in real life. While there won't always be an Ember in power who will vouch for you, know that true friends aren't skin-deep and will stick by you no matter what you like, that they won't say, "Ew, you shouldn't like that!" just because. Especially so in this age of social media (and I feel like I'm ribbing on social media a lot in these threads lately) where it's easy to make assumptions and sling stuff at a person for doing this or that even if it's completely harmless to anyone.

Another thing this reminded me of is the topic of toxic masculinity. A lot of the teenage dragons' behavior could might as well be an analogy to just that: overasserting strength and dominance, belittling little stuff and things that are considered "pink" or girly or otherwise not manly (like writing poetry compared to wrestling—or in the dragons' case, lava surfing), and keeping others in line by threatening to take away some guy's masculinity just because they're doing something less "manly". That this was an episode shown to a lot of kids (a lot of them girls), it helpfully prepares them for more mature discussions on the topic when they finally figure out what toxic masculinity actually is by arming them with at least one answer: to just be who you are.

I also like to think that this is closure for Garble throughout the whole show, even if his entire "arc"'s conflict was brought up and then solved in a single episode. Seeing this consistent dragon bully finally opening up and being a better self felt great after knowing who he is all this time. (Reminds me of another former bully in Diamond Tiara... maybe this season will bring her up too!)

As for the beat poetry: Honestly, I was uncomfortable with the beat poetry part because it was all unexpected. But then I realized... I didn't know what beat poetry was. So I couldn't tell if this was good beat poetry or bad beat poetry, though I got more used to it as the climax progressed.
Worldbuilding-wise, it's good to see the Dragon Lands and dragons in general fleshed out more. Eggs are usually hatched in bunches and over lava (or at least heated to ridiculous degrees), there's an underground lava system that the dragons have utilized for at least the eggs if not other things, and the Dragon Lands really prides itself in being barren and rocky. Also lava rivers and lavafalls.

Overall, it's an awesome episode!

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As of this episode..... Smolder is now My 2nd Favorite Dragon for me :3

This one was fun. The new characterizations work.

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First, they establish Garble as Smolder's brother, even though there was no prior indication of such, Then, they try and establish he's the "sensitive" type, again with no prior indication. I think the writers were really reaching with this one, and are simply padding out the episodes until we reach the culmination of the show.

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So I have... issues with this episode. I guessed the brother was Garble as soon as they arrived at the Dragon Lands. It was like a tingling at the base of my spine and in a shuddering voice, I whimpered out, "We're gonna forgive him, aren't we?"

Seriously, Garble never needed to be more than he is. Sometimes a bully is just a bully, and that's what Garble has always come across as. This is the guy who, back in Season 2, Episode 21, was basically trying to abort baby phoenixes by smashing their eggs. In mythology at least, a phoenix is only vulnerable within it's egg, before it hatches and is born anew. Garble was trying to kill a baby. But he's a closet poet who is afraid to reveal it to others, so that's all okay. All the bullying, violence, few attempted murders, probably countless smashed phoenix eggs, and that one time he almost declared war on Equestria (if that wasn't all just bluster,) that's all forgiven because he is troubled at being judged for being a creative.

Pardon my french, but FK that noise!

And then there's the episode plot... So has no dragon ever removed the boulders connected to the underground lake? In all the time the hatching area has existed? Has this seriously never been a problem before? And also, do underground volcanic lakes actually work that way? I'm no expert, but it seems kinda unlikely that moving some boulders would drain a literal volcanic lake. Aren't they connected to deeper molten cores, most of the time? And did neither Fluttershy nor Ember touch an egg and go, "Huh... that doesn't feel quite right..." I can't really believe that Fluttershy didn't check to see if the eggs were warm enough. It's kinda a trait all eggs have.

Also, I love how one or two impassioned lines about being proud of who you are immediately sways every dragon. I mean, I would normally say "it's because Ember is the Dragon Lord," but since when have Dragons ever obeyed the Dragon Lord when anger wasn't involved? I mean, it just seemed contrived to me. Like most of this episode. Like Whispers said, it stretches really far to give Garble a redemption that he didn't need.

Garble was a bully. He should've been left as just a bully; much like Chrysalis refuses to be redeemed and Cozy wasn't given a chance, Garble could've very easily stayed a unrepentant bully, without ruining his character. I've always disliked Garble, but that's because I dislike bullies. As a character, I can respect the foil, and Garble most certainly was Spike's perfect foil. And that was okay.

I will admit, Fluttershy salvaged a good portion of this episode for me. Between her adorable, diabetes-inducing faces in the beginning, her comment to Ember that had me dying, and her interactions with Garble and the other dragons, I think Fluttershy was the crowning peak of this episode. And that's a real shame, because as much as I love Fluttershy, I was hoping for something interesting in the Dragonlands. We haven't seen anything really neat happen there since Gauntlet of Fire, and some interesting building would've been appreciated. Not some... BS about a bully who isn't really a bully.

tl;dr: Fluttershy is cute, Garble is a fkboi, and Babs did this whole plot better.

Edit: I did forget to toss in; I loved Smolder in this episode. It did a wonderful job displaying her personality in an entirely new environment, and I love that. She's #4 dragon for me, though. Spike is 1st, followed by Ember, and Crackle. Because who could resist Crackle's adorable face?

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Um, why did you tag everyone?

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Bad habit, mostly. But I also aim to start a discussion, so by tagging everyone, I invite them to respond to my views with their own.

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I actually did't watched it yet so I have nothing to add, sorry. Glad you found things that you liked.

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Ah crap! I'm sorry; I didn't know. I really hope I didn't spoil it for you...

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Aw no no no I don't mind spoilers at all. Besides how would you even expect that I didn't see episode if I posted here. Though I did post when thread was posted which usually happens before episodes.Anyway no harm done.

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Alright. I personally hate spoilers, so I'm glad you don't mind, at least.

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My feelings are somewhat similar. I could tell (by various hints) who the brother was going to be, and I didn't think that I could believe it. I still don't know if I have, yet. I wonder if it might have been better to use one of Garble's "posse" instead - I suppose it's stronger if it's a character we already know and dislike, though.

There were a few oddities here with dragons, too - "Laughfire"? Mass seemingly parentless hatchings and sibling relationships? I do like the idea that the Dragon Lord position basically started out as an eggkeeper.

And Fluttershy was pretty decent here too - having her in the show's last dragon story is fitting, since she was center stage for the first. (It would have been nice for her to bump into that dragon again - but then it might have been nice if she had listed off some of the ways Spike had beaten Garble before too when she was lecturing him. I'll take what continuity I can get from new writers.)

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Another issue I had was, when the Dragon Lord called all dragons to the hatching grounds, no large dragons showed up at all. Now, call me crazy, but it's been shown in episodes like Dragon Quest that dragons of all sizes hang out in the Dragon Lands... and I'd imagine those large dragons would have a vested interest in the eggs hatching... and those dragons were probably big and powerful enough to heat all the eggs themselves.

They simply weren't present for no reason other than plot convince. That kind of shoddy writing is something the MLP crew hasn't really suffered from all that often. Yes, sometimes character will act incompetent, but that's usually to get a message across. In this case, it was just a plot hole with no relevance to the message at large. To me, that makes it much worse.

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Well there is the matter of haste - we don't know if the large ones were nearby. Or their fire might have been too strong to safely use on the eggs.(Though as mentioned, it would have been nice to see all the old dragon faces - Torch, Crackle, the red and the green from S1) all joining in.

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I wonder if dragon eggs can even get too hot. Dragons themselves dive into lava on a regular basis, so I wonder if heat can even have any negative effect on them. But regardless, I don't know if I'd buy the haste argument. It's been shown, through the dragon migration, that there are hundreds if not thousands of dragons this size... and not a single one was near the hatching eggs? It's just not really believable.

Honestly, that was one of my (admittedly few) complaints about Gauntlet of Fire too. Where were all the fully-grown dragons? Is the Gauntlet only open to the young dragons? Why weren't fully-grown dragons vying for their chance to rule? And the gauntlet itself could be deemed unfair if they aren't exempt, since the halls and passages are too small for a fully-grown dragon. In that case, it was a understandable work-around, since Spike wouldn't stand a chance against an adult dragon. Still, all they had to do to get around that was state that only the younger dragons could participate, since they would be Dragon Lord well into their adulthood, and an adult dragon would be too old to claim the role.

Ultimately, we know too little about dragons.

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The Guantlet is definitely a tradition thing - and now that we see it come with duties as well as powers, perhaps elder dragons really wouldn't be interested. After all, if none came than the title and Scepter mustn't mean much to them, so the only power they'd be getting would be bossing around a bunch of runts, which they could probably already do.

And as you said, we know very little about dragons - so it's easy enough to resolve the unknowns into a shape which fits the story rather than rejects it ,no?

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Agreed. I imagine many of the adult dragons are content with their hoards...