🦇 🎀 DRAC'S DOLL CHAT 🎀 🦇

Boo to you, Fang Gang! ( special shout out to my beastie, Omen or @/44_maggots for suggesting I use the direct reference to G3, since I do love Draculaura <333 ) 

welcome to another doll chat, as you can see, the flash games doll chat is still in the works, i don't know if i'll ever get around to it at this point, its a matter of getting over a irrational fear i have of seeing a tardigrade push because on every site i went to that thing was advertise to me, and numuki browser which has the officially licensed games i want to play for that blog post has a lot of ads that i feel can be so invasive to me personally it makes using it feel impossible, if there is a paid version to go ad free i'd so take it, it literally fills me with anxiety how crowded it is with ads. 

that being said, lets get down to the gritty stuff! 

 ••.•´¯`•.••   🎀  𝒹♡𝓁𝓁 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓉  🎀   ••.•`¯´•.•• 

  𝑔𝑒𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝓇𝑒𝑒 𝓂𝒽 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝑜𝓌 𝓌𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝓉 𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒  

｡✴  🎀  𝐿𝐸𝒯𝒮 𝒯𝒜𝐿𝒦  🎀  ✴｡

What is Monster High Generation Three?

Simply put, G3 is the Third Generation of Monster High. 

This is probably going to be my most serious Doll Chat yet. 

And I know, you're like, Ula D, how can you get more serious than defending G2 of all things? 

I'm going to be digging into the nitty-gritty of Monster High and what makes Monster High well, Monster High.

So let's start with the beginning. . . 

The year is 2010, you're a little kid and suddenly you're greeted with a commercial that says; SOMETHING IS LURKING THE HALLS OF MONSTER HIGH . . . .

And you're met with the most fashionable ghouls around, unlike any doll released at this time, they're leaning into the more alternative subcultures of fashion. that happened to be not as mainstream at the time as they are now. 

As all of this is somewhat basic information, I'm going to keep things as sweet and short as possible for each character, for their motivations and such, I'll probably have to go into each line individually and review their diaries which I'm so totally up for!

This is how we meet our Boo Crew!

Frankie Stein, notably Stitched Together with Style wearing a Preppy Punk look. 

They are the boy-crazy, clothes-loving, most-likely-sweetest-ghoul-in-school child of Frankenstein, they act as the protagonist in this iteration of the franchise.

Draculaura is the daughter of Dracula, she's bubbly, excitable, talks a lot, and is probably everything a vampire shouldn't be, including Vegan.

Her style was very Vampire Goth Pink, so again, kinda hard to find equivalents that weren't one off Halloween releases.

Next in the Boo Crew, is Clawdeen Wolf, the fashionable daughter of the werewolf! She's a fashionista and a good friend. 

She and Draculaura are beast friends despite being opposites! 

Her fashion is what I would consider the closest to something like Bratz, something you could find in another Doll Line.

Lagoona is the sporty ghoul from Down Under! She's also shown to be something of an animal rights activist! 

Lagoona's fashion consisted of a lot of clothing you could compare to athleisure? 

Cleo and as an extension, Deuce! 

Cleo and Deuce were the power couple of Monster High. 

Cleo was a royal princess who knew exactly how she deserved to be treated, and Deuce was just some guy, essentially, their romance was one that dealt with subjects revolving around classism. 

Cleo's fashion was the equivalent of a girl who wears halter tops, in my opinion, she was very fashionable and trendy, and Deuce. . . . This is where Generation One failed in my opinion, the boys didn't get much variety, Deuce being literally the only one to not being wearing a varsity jacket all the time apart from Manny and Jackson / Holt, not that his fashion is particularly bad, it's just very of it's time.

Over the years Monster High had many Lines and introduced many characters. . . 

Generation One was Monster High finding its feet and then really getting creative, constantly pushing themselves. . . Until they couldn't, and we get weaker lines like the ones seen towards the very end before Generation Two.

Generation Two came at a time where Mattel was starting to financially struggle, we're in the later years of Barbara Millicent Roberts starting to decline, Mattel had just lost the rights to making Disney Dolls, and they decided to refresh Monster High, they needed the money that the brand name generated, but instead went for a softer cuter look, clearly trying to get that Disney Princess market.

G2 is to G1 as G3.5 is to G3 My Little Pony. 

In that, I believe it to be more of a G1.5 than a real G2, being that it was a hard reboot but it hadn't even been a full generation since it's launch, being 2016 and their demographic was still mostly the same. 

This is the biggest bridge from how we got from G1 to G3, and I am sick of it constantly being cut out of the narrative.

I personally believe G2 has some charms to it, even dolls that I actually like that I want / actually own presently. 

In this generation, Draculaura takes the role of protagonist, and I cover all of this in my G2 Isn't That Bad post you can find here. So I'm going to be brief;

Lore Overhaul that resulted in Frankie and Draculaura founding the school, wanting to create a safe space for monsters and the series revolved around the ghouls finding monsters all around the world and bringing them to this safe space.

Cheaper Dolls, this is very obvious.

Films that I feel are Overlooked, this is self explanatory, I go more into the films in my Electrified and G2 posts.

Now the stuff I feel really impacted G3's lore, primarily for Clawdeen. 

See that necklace? 

The very idea of this necklace was it would allow Clawdeen to turn into a full wolf, it was referred to as an amulet. 

Well in Generation 3, Main Character / Protagonist Clawdeen wears something similiar.

Clawdeen wears the Moonclaw, it is a talisman we're still actively learning about as at the time of writing this, we are waiting on Episode 14 of Season One, Spell The Beans. 

This talisman gives Clawdeen werestrength, werespeed, and heightens her weresenses. 

It basically turns her into a Super Werewolf, and on top of that, it allows her to switch between Monster and Human. 

It seems like an evolved idea of the amulet, no? 

Other evolved ideas from Generation Three include the concept of making Clawdeen more "monstrous" giving her molded on her in the dolls, ad it has to be one of my favourite changes since as a child who grew up primarily on G1, I always thought she just had human skin and then ears and I'd always be confused on if they were hairy or human skin texture.

The idea of Frankie being more focused on science was also introduced, they liked science in G1, to some extent, but in G2, Frankie was more of a mad scientist type character, and we see this evolve into G3. 

If we go directly from G1 to G3, of course we will be confused, but from G1 to G2 to G3, it all makes sense. 

They have "cuter" faces in G3 because in a way, G3 married the styles of G1 and G2, opting for the more cartoonish and expressive faces of G2 ( G2 have Moanica D'Kay for example, who was made smirking ), but also they look more mature and have more model-esque pouty lips in G3 in comparison to G2. Of course they're like made smiling slightly, but their lip shape is more pouty than G2. 

And now we finally come back to . . .

What is Generation Three of Monster High?

At it's core, G3 of Monster High is Monster High at it's most Monster High. 

You'll notice I didn't touch a lot on Monster High's diversity here and that's because I wanted to save it for this part. 

G1 attempted diversity with characters of different backgrounds, all to many degrees of failing from the infamous Isi Dawndancer to ghouls I really like, like Marisol Coxi. 

But G1 diversity wasn't perfect, Jinafire is often criticized for not being proper representation of a Chinese dragon and for her modified traditional clothing which is a sentiment I agree with, Isi Dawndancer not being able to pick a culture to represent instead turning Indigenous American culture into a monolith, every latina character being voiced by the same actress, the erasure of Howleen's afro, and many other faults like how the Wolf family apart from Clawd were all voiced by white people. 

G1 Monster High is not exempt from critcism, which is a fact many people know.

G2 didn't make many other attempts to diversify, instead being somewhat similar to G1 in this aspect, however they did add more monstrous monsters which we see repeat itself in G3.

And now G3. . . 

G3 is great, its perfectly modern on the diversity level.

The Wolf family is voiced by black people, my only criticism is that only Clawd seems to be Afrolatino irl, and I feel we could've done a little better on that front but I'm so happy for Clawdeen to actually be voiced by a black girl for once!

In G3 we have Clawdeen who is Afrolatina and from many sources is said to have her Latina heritage be of Mexican descent so y'know welcome to the family, Clawdeen/lh 

Clawdeen has our "default" body type, thinner and about average height.

Frankie Stein who is nonbinary and sapphic, I like to imagine they are a lesbian. They're very thin and tall, and I love it for them.

Cleo De Nile who is now actually a girl with a darker skintone which is something people have been wanting for years, she sports a curvy body type with a tiny waist, giving her a more hour glass kind of shape. 

Draculaura is now actually shorter than the rest of the cast, and has a chubby pear shape body type, I don't care if you don't think she's big enough to be considered chubby, I'm still fat and am not as big as some of my friends or people I know, I'm still fat, it doesn't just erase me being fat. She is notably bigger than her friends, and if you undress the dolls, she actually does has a slightly wider waist than the rest and her tummy sticks out slightly. She is also half Taiwanese, which is great <3 

Lagoona has a similar body type to Clawdeen, she has a pink colour with blue gradient which to me works really well, she's very cute, it took ages for her to grow on me, but I'm in love. She's beautiful.

Lagoona is Honduran, making her also apart of the Latina group! 

Other characters include Abbey Bominable who is now from Nepali, Skelita Calaveras who is confirmed for a future Season One episode who will of course be Mexican, and Toralei for the British people although she is not actually voiced by a British Person.

Deuce has two moms, so that is also something.

I will say though I still hold issue with Monster High's casting mostly in that like Clawdeen not being voiced by an Afrolatina, Lagoona is voiced by Valeria Rodriguez who is Mexican descent not Honduran, same with Clawd's voice actor not being Mexican descent either, but these are nitpicks because as a Latine person at this point, I should just come to expect that they won't be looking that carefully into matching up cultures. 

Another mention I will say because I mentioned Draculaura's body type. . . 

In the series, we have Iris Clops, who is also a chubby ghoul! 

Now she is obviously bigger / heavier than Draculaura, but I am here to say, just because someone is bigger / heavier than you, does not mean you are not Plus Size.

Draculaura has been heavily marketed as a Body Positive Chubby Girl, her music video featuring lyrics such as Gonna love myself and all I've got and Look in the mirror and I like what I see, but there's no reflection staring back at me! and In Vamp Pink Goth, I flaunt what I got so I do not wish to argue the "Is Draculaura even plus size / chubby" she is, end of discussion, it was what was intended, no other character has lyrics focusing so heavily on appearance for the music video, it was clearly trying to convey body positivity. 

Another important subject of discussion is Twyla, as Twyla is canonically autistic!

Twyla is canonically autistic and makes it clear in the episode Creepover Party, in Creepover Party, Twyla says "I'm autistic and loudness bothers me." she tells the ghouls exactly what she needs, and I like that for her, I wish I was more like that with my needs in real life. 

So what about the series?

I will likely have to cover this in a separate post, but essentially the series of G3 so far follows Clawdeen as she tries to find her mother who disappeared when she was a 5 year old girl, it's been 10 years and now with the Moonclaw, she can. 

But let's get into my final thoughts. . . . 

Monster High as a franchise is of course first and foremost about selling dolls, and G3 offers higher quality dolls than before, clothing tending to be on par with G1, while shoes may be lacking in painted details sometimes, the rest of the clothes are usually really good, and the details are there but sculpted in, you can bring them out with paint on your own, and the key feature of G3 that sets it apart from G1 is the fact that they all apart from the boys have an additional point of articulaton; a chest joint allowing for more poses and play! 

Do I like G3 more than G1? Yes and No. I think I like them equally for different things, G3 is more creative with having this elaborate story and world building, all leading up to a good pay off soon, I am sure, along with having characters who feel more developed and fleshed out, and good diversity. With G1, you had fleshed out characters but you often had to consume multiple pieces of media that wasn't available to every child, biggest example being the diaries since not every kid who watches the films and webseries could get their hands on the dolls. 

And the webseries and films tended to flanderize characters later on, especially the films with characters like Clawd and Draculaura being some of the biggest examples. 

But G1 is still so much fun to me, and will always hold a special place in my heart! While G1 has some of my favourite clothing design, G3 really does have some of my favourite character designs and personality <3

This current generation of Monster High is true to its slogan, more than G1 ever was and it was a phrase originated in G1; "Be yourself. Be Unique. Be a Monster." these were words Frankie Stein was practically infamous for saying a lot of the time, they became a staple of the films, many of them included this line somewhere! 

With G3 being the most inclusive of Monster High's generations so far, yeah, it really is about Being Yourself here at Monster High, which G1 tried to also carry that same theme, it just doesn't do so as well in comparison to G3.

G3 says you can be Be Yourself to queer people, neurodivergent people, people with disabilities, poc . . . . everyone is welcome at Monster High, they say it right in the show. 

And that is what Monster High is all about. 

With that Ghouls and Goyles, I leave you.

Stay freaky, stay faboulous. 

 🦇 🎀 𝓑𝓔 𝓨𝓞𝓤𝓡𝓢𝓔𝓛𝓕 𝓑𝓔 𝓤𝓝𝓘𝓠𝓤𝓔 𝓑𝓔 𝓐 𝓜𝓞𝓝𝓢𝓣𝓔𝓡 🎀 🦇