@Exelzior  
Dude, get over it, the school of friendship happened, it’s still happening, and it’s part of the series canon, if you don’t like it, skip the episodes that have it, otherwise stop complaining.
 
Also, don’t use meta reasons, it’s just lazy.
 
The fact of the matter is that she’s one of the few that managed to get along with others outside of her own race, which is proof that not every single dragon is objectively terrible (Mina from the comics is another example, and she debuted long before Ember).
 
Also, that little comment about there no throwaway line shows how much you actually pay attention to the series, considering the fact that Smolder actually does explain the difference between Spike’s greed growth and the molt actually progresses. Her reason for not saying anything about it earlier could possibly be because the time to talk about it never came up. As for the show adding new stuff to the dragons, you can simply see it as a fact that wasn’t brought up until recently because there was no reason to going to detail about it until that point.
 
Simple as that.

@Alphamon_Ouryuken  
Or more likely that the writers only had 2 episodes worth of time to hammer home the idea of friendships forming without the need of a school (seriously, the school of friendship is about the stupidest idea I feel they could’ve come up with, but that’s another story), and so we didn’t really get any character progression worth talking about before they had to wrap it up with them all getting along. But to get back to the heart of the issue here, it’s just that overall in the show, dragons have been incredibly poorly thought out, and they just keep gaining or losing traits on a whim, and it gets on my nerves a bit.
 
Those are 2 episodes out of over 200, and Molt Down’s only real contribution was giving Spike wings, which in itself creates a whole bunch of issues since the episode then has to pull out a bunch of McGuffins that have never previously been established, like the whole molting process, and just run with it. If there had even just been a throwaway line in any previous episode that either mentions how Spike doesn’t have his wings yet, or hasn’t molted, or really anything that can then be tied into, things would be fine. But they don’t, and it bugs me, because it makes MLP feel like one of those old shows that just keeps pulling a Deus Ex Machina every now and then to avoid having to explain how things go together. You may as well say “Celestia did it” whenever the show adds something new to the dragons.

@Exelzior  
And yet she got along with the rest of the student six rather quickly. So it was more than likely she was more social than the others, her not wanting to be there was most likely because it was a different environment than what she was used to.
 
We got episodes like Gauntlet of Fire and Molt Down, or are you just going to pretend those episodes don’t exist?

@Alphamon_Ouryuken  
And how was Smolder introduced into the show? She was exactly like all the other dragons besides Ember and Spike that we’d seen up to that point, and Ember basically had to drag her ass into the school, and they obviously had some differences between them, with Smolder not wanting to be there, and Ember seemed to have chosen her based on nothing but the fact that she seems to be the only dragon young enough to attend the shcool. Bottom line, up until this episode, Smolder was basically just another grumpy little dragon whom I bet is going to keep changing between episodes depending on what the show needs of her.
 
Also, who ever said anything about not wanting Spike to exist in the show? All we want is a decent episode focused on him that doesn’t completely go against everything we know about him, or one that doesn’t completely shit the bed when trying to establish something new about dragons.
 
Gawd.

@Daneasaur
 
First of all: Just because Ember was the first established nice Dragon, that doesn’t exactly mean that she was the only one. Smolder was chosen as a representative of the dragonlands for the specific purpose of making better relations with Equestria, so it makes sense that she would get along with others better.
 
Second: That’s not going against the lure, that’s others simply using what’s at their disposal. It’s more than likely Smolder is simply used to not having pillows since she lived in an environment that didn’t have them for so long, that or she was just a little stubborn about being “soft”, but that’s about it. Nothing that goes against “lore”, a simple statement for her, not an established back for everyone who’s same species as her.
 
Third: For all we know, laughing flames are normal for older dragons instead of younger ones.
 
So there’s your aspects being proven incorrect. It’s already annoying enough that we get a bunch of jerks whining about how Spike doesn’t deserve to exist in the show and we don’t need it happening to another dragon as well.

@Alphamon_Ouryuken  

 
Dragons as a whole are not kind creatures. First dragon (dragonshy) was a rude grump. Second dragon (owls well) was very violent and intended on killing Spike for daring to eat some of his gems. Next dragons? The teens (dragon quest) who bullied and harassed him for a while, but when he didn’t kill a baby phoenix, they turned more vicious with one intending to wage a war on equestria when he could. This paints dragons as a whole as very rough, self serving creatures who have very little in terms of any social structure beyond the strong dominating the weak. Ember was the first to show any sort of sympathy or reciprocation and was the ONLY dragon to be shown as one who’d had a family relation of any sort, that being her Father who prevented her from competing because he was worried she’d likely get injured or die (and she nearly did).
 
With the establishment of Ember as a friendly dragon, and specifically, Spike’s friend, it set the stage for Spike to interact with her, knowing Spike is sensitive and very different from other dragons. This would allow her to teach him things the dragons do, but that was instantly stomped with The School of Friendship. So instead of Ember, we get a different dragon who’ll be a student. Is it one of the dragons we saw during the gauntlet and saw how Spike was dragon lord? Of course not, it’s a new dragon made on the spot. What is her role? Well, to replace Ember as the dragon who knows about dragon stuff but is in ponyville. Except, she has no friendship with Spike and is a crass dragon. She is fine with the other students but is unrelenting to Spike when she’s acting like herself (molt down), or suddenly turns into Ember and acts like she and Spike have been well established friends since gauntlet of fire (which isn’t the case). Had the “student dragon” been a male dragon, this situation wouldn’t be quite so bad.
 

 
“Dragons don’t use pillows.” This came AFTER the first two episodes she’s in where… she’s using pillows. And in that very episode she said that line? Sludge is using pillows. Smolder is incredibly incorrect OR is being deliberately rude to Spike by pulling a BS excuse out of her pocket so that she doesn’t have to accept his gift of friendship. Which will you choose?  
As for the laugh fire, I elaborated on this:  
Spike is the one who says “Laughing flames are dangerous!” So where is the instance Spike had uncontrollable bouts of laughter and burned something of value down? Or laughed and singed a friend? Or had to keep himself stoic because if he laughed he’d endanger someone he was around? Or, you know, anything that would have taught Spike that laughing = flames that turn rock into lava?
 

 
I never argued this.
 

 
I’m making statements from aspects shown in the show. I cannot be lying, but there is the possibility of being incorrect.
 
I suggest you study how he two are different.

@Daneasaur  
Pretty much everywhere.
 
So no Dragon aside from Ember is allowed to be remotely friendly? It seems kind of like your painting the entire race one color. Like I said before, considering the fact that she’s more than willing to associate with others outside of her species, that pretty much removes most of her “bad Dragon traits”. She doesn’t really act that different when hanging out with Spike aside from clearing him in on some of the ins-and-outs of certain parts of their dragon culture.
 
There’s never any part where she goes against the established “lore” considering the fact that only one of the dragons seemed to be obsessed with pillows, laughing fire can just be something that she has better control over.
 
She acts like a tomboy no matter who she’s with, and it’s just as willing to show her softer side when the situation calls for it.
 
So yes, you are lying.

@GargantuanBass  
Being into poetry might turn him into a completely different kind of douchebag…

@Alphamon_Ouryuken  
She’s a straight replacement for Ember as the token “friendly dragon” and I knew she would be, but she lacks the kindness and friendship that was shared between Spike and Ember. No, instead, her interactions with Spike highlight the negative aspects of the dragons (“Congrats, spike! Your family will hate you and your life is over!”) or are severely iconic in going against the lore and consistency in storytelling (pillows, fire laughter).
 
Her character changes completely when interacting with the others of the student 6 and only comes off as “slightly rough” and “tomboy”.
 
So where is the part where I was lying?

@Exelzior  
Well admittedly there’s always Flim and Flam for that that.

@Background Pony #A999  
Or, you know, they could just be allowed to stay the way they are. Could be a good lesson for the kids that watch the show, that sometimes people are the way they are, and you don’t necessarilly get to do anything about that.

Uh, no? You don’t get a pass for being a douchebag just cause you like poetry lol.

@Exelzior
 
The thing is that when it comes to what to do with antagonists, the only approaches are reform or die, and the writers didn’t want to kill Garble…
 
@Exelzior  

 
They probably didn’t let her compete.

@Daneasaur  
Smolder is in no way as bad as the other dragons, if anything she’s one of them more social ones since she’s willing to get along with several different outside of her species.
 
Sure she’s a bit abrasive at times, but she’s nowhere near as terrible as the Garble, who wanted to smash a phoenix egg for fun.
 
I recommend that you not lie about characters like that, it doesn’t make your reason for for hating them any less petty.

@Exelzior  
Yet another reason I dislike Smolder as just about any of the other dragons seen in GOF would have made sense and been better received. Smolder only served to rake the place of Ember, the actual dragon friend of Spike, despite the fact that spike has nothing in common with smolder and smolder has all the bad traits of dragons and none of the good ones (when around spike anyway).

Stop humanizing characters I hate.

@Klondork  
I agree with a lot of your points, but it still feels like the episode was intended to help us sympathize with him. Trouble is, it had to retcon and downplay so much about Garble to try to do it, while only revealing a couple of things remotely sympathetic about him. And thus, it all ended up feeling rather hollow and unearned, especially when Ember calls him a hero (as if he was the only one able to make dragons laugh).
 
And by retcon and downplay, Garble has always been shown as arrogantly confident and the boss of his little gang. Now in this episode all he can do when teased by them is weakly make excuses? And I think the things he’s done to Spike over the years qualify as a bit more than “bullying” (sure, maybe dragons have different standards, but that’s not clarified), as a number of times he seemed outright prepared to maim or even kill Spike.

Like as much as I defend Garble calling him reformed is still a stretch.

You guys do realize Garble WASN’T reformed don’t you? Nothing about him has changed. His character didn’t make a 360. He doesn’t finally believe in the concept of friendship. He’s just been coerced into showing off his hobby at the proper time.
 
Any other case, opening up about his hobby would have turned him into a joke and he and Smolder both knew this. Fluttershy and Smolder pushed him, sure, but there wasn’t anything shown that he didn’t already have. His own friends started making fun of him immediately for his hobby but only stopped because Ember pointed out he helped saved the eggs. An order. He wasn’t accepted because of friendship. He was accepted because the dragon lord literally ordered them to accept him. That’s not reformation. If anything the episode was about impressing the right people to become validated.

lets refrome everyone……even if said character is a fucking dick

MLP: FIM Season 9, let’s redeem everyone…seriously, Spike and Ember are way too forgiving of this guy, Smolder at least has the excuse of not knowing what kind of a douchenozzle Garble was when he interacted with Spike in the past.
 
Also, where the hell was Smolder during Gauntlet of Fire? I just got to thinking about that the other day, and now I can’t get it out of my head.

@genervt  
Considering the fact that he never apologized for bullying Spike, nearly assaulting him, and trying to smash phoenix eggs, reformed is the last word I would use to describe him.
 
“Less of a jackass” on the other hand…

Reformed.  
And I hope it was not the last redemption.

I wouldn’t say reformed, more like “less of a jackass than he usually is”.

He at least got to open up. And he’s got one less reason to pick on Spike.