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monster high rant under cut because i have feelings and wanna rant lol

its my blog i do what i want

ugh now im thinking about how the new show like ... sort of removed clawdeen's blackness. like i'm glad she's still not white, oh my god i would have lost my mind. but at the same time it feels like a weird choice to change her as dramatically as they did. like draculaura is still miss perfect while being an absolute sweetheart; and frankie is still a newbie who's prone to mess ups. but clawdeen is....not clawdeen??? She's not miss fashionista with a bite who's a protective big sister anymore. it just feels ... weird. idk. (also the whole thing where in reboots the black characters suddenly become biracial feels weird in a way i don't know how to explain.) i'm not black so like, idk if this is just me comparing new clawdeen to old clawdeen & therefore i am only noticing the lack of 'blackcent'; but then there's also the fact that her g3 doll is lighter skinned than g1, g1 cgi animation is darker than g3 cgi animation; and box art g1 is darker than g3 box art, and her hair is lighter color. Also if they end up making her and deuce a thing then they're actively ignoring that the creator basically said she's a lesbian; and that's....something.

also, the way that draculaura is biracial is sort of weird if only because it constantly feels forced. Dracula was romanian. and original draculaura was romanian. and now she's asian. it just feels like a strange choice? Espically when there are plenty of other characters with unspecified backgrounds / uncertain backgrounds (twyla, Ghoulia, Toralei, spectra, Purrsephone and Meowlody, etc). but espically removing any hint of an accent from draculaura & making her dracula's bio daughter feel like the weirdest choices. It's like, completely removing the entire point of her character. She was prosecuted, a plague survivor, and they got rid of that. I hope they at least like, say she's half-romanian and half-asian. That would honestly satisfy me that way; but it doesn't look like they will.

I like the choice to change lagoona from austrailian into latina as a nod to the creature from the black lagoon which was in the amazon rainforest. It's a neat nod. I do wish we had another austrailian character though just to fill that hole. maybe they'll do it with gil? idk i miss gil lol

anyway, my tl;dr is that some choices make sense. other parts just feel....weirdly forced. and im tired lol

anyway frankie being nonbinary was an A+ choice okay bye

Inwardly, I keep comparing the growing pains in the transition between MH generations to how weird to me G4 of MLP felt at first. Like, G4 Rainbow Dash is an insanely huge departure in personality from G3 Rainbow Dash, yet she ended up being one of my favorite characters. So I dislike arguments that are like "this character has a completely different personality and that's bad." Like it can be weird, but bad? Unless it's something that's uncomfortable levels of weird like "Toralei is fantasy racist now," idk if change is necessarily bad.

THAT SAID, MLP G4 came out the gate establishing exactly who the Mane Six are and what their deal is. Like, I mean substantial personality information that bleeds through their designs. I was in full tweenage rage mode the first time I opened the MLP website to find out it'd been completely rebooted, but a quick look around the at-the-time sparse website left me dying to know how to watch the show because it did a great job intriguing me to the characters and world (even if the "Meet the Ponies" videos had some funny innacuracies like "Celestia is the only unicorn with wings" bruh the first scene of the show proves that false).

Like I said, at this point the only two characters I can get something of a good read on are Frankie (my beloved) and Draculaura (she's neat). Idk enough actual character stuff about anyone else, so to me the character changes we are getting feel less like "oh this'll be an interesting take on this character" and more "I feel like you've scrubbed this character clean of personality and replaced it with a few blurbs that I feel like aren't telling me much," which I think is why it feels like a downgrade as opposed to the "boo hoo the nostalgic MH fans don't understand how toy line generations work" I've seen some complaints about (I mean, I'm sure there are people acting like that but I don't think it's everyone; maybe I'm in an echo chamber).

For example, Lagoona has been rubbing me the wrong way. They seem to have replaced her whole personality (not a bad thing itself; recall Rainbow Dash) but instead of me seeing anything substantial in its stead she mostly just seems like a quick "tee hee isn't it funny that she's sweet but now she wants to eat you" like. Blah, does she have anything else going on? That's kinda weird tbh, especially because this means the only version of Lagoona with these violent impulses is also the only one who's depicted as Latina. Yikes.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, I mean the show hasn't properly premiered yet. The first couple episodes of the show seem promising, I really hope we get good character stuff outta them. I wanna get attached to these characters, the whole point of tie-in toy media is to get you invested and make you want the dolls of these characters you love!!!