I want to say that I’m also not a fan of how g3 has handled Bloodgood’s character.
To add on — g3 Bloodgood’s backstory and reasoning for being headmistress falls flat for me. In the Monster Ball webisodes, she says that she defeated the Formal Phantom when they cursed her high school dance, which made her decide that she wanted to be “the school’s protector”, and so eventually became headmistress. The story itself is fine, but there technically is no motive to her decision. Why does she want to protect the school from threats like the Formal Phantom? What does she protect (people, ideas, or values) by protecting the school? What’s at stake if she doesn’t? If she wants to protect her school, why does she have prejudices against some of the students she’s protecting?
Versus g1 Bloodgood started Monster High/became headmistress because she wanted a place where everyone, monster or human, could belong. She faced a lot of adversity when founding the school, and it’s implied she even faced the “monster equivalent” of discrimination (being perceived as absent-minded and clueless by others - She’s a headless monster.) Yet despite the ostracism she faced, she did it anyway, because she believed it would work, and it did! To add to the stakes, MH is the only school of its kind in the g1 universe, and not all monsters believe it will last long. If MH were to ever fail, that’s one less space where everyone can be included. That’s why g1 Bloodgood always focused on balancing her students needs and always advocated that students do their best academically, because it not only ensured that the school performs well, but the school’s success ensures that this safe space/environment will stay open for her students - who she believes deserve a place where they can be themselves.
I think I read somewhere that the writers’ reasoning for the changes made in g3 were to make the show a form of escapism. Yet, they made the main setting of the narrative to be such an exclusionary and tense place. And because the g3 school is exclusionary, then the person leading it, the headmistress, would uphold/reflect those rules too (unless they decided to challenge the status quo). G1’s school advocated for inclusion, so their headmistress reflected those values.
Another odd decision to me was just how strict and obsessive with detention/expulsion g3 Bloodgood is. So many times when trouble brews she warns students with detention, and once even made a joking remark along the lines of that she’ll expel the perpetrator, then re-enroll them to expel them again. G1 Bloodgood also handed out a few detentions, but it was not done so gratuitously. The only times I can think of her actually giving out detention was in Ghoul’s Rule, the webisode with Johnny Spirit, and maybe the webisode where Abbey and Frankie meet. Even in Ghoul’s Rule, she only did it because the ghouls would not stop going out to the normie town and risking increasing the tensions between the monster and human sides of town. She only did it because she wants them to be safe and not put the rest of the school in danger. And with Abbey and Frankie, they never ended up in the study howl of eternal homework anyway, and the time they spent together wearing the magical bracelets helped them initiate their friendship.
G1 Bloodgood’s character not only acted as an authority/mentor figure for the students to look up to, but she was also their greatest supporter. G1’s character also served to challenge and break the strict teacher/principal stereotype — from the outside she appears cold, but once the students get to know her they realize how caring and thoughtful she is. She does her best to make sure each student is accommodated for, and does all she can to build a sense of community by encouraging her students to embrace their individuality and differences, but also recognizing their commonalities. The students even call her the “best headmistress ever!” Instead of continuing and building this idea, g3 just reduces Bloodgood’s character down to strict school principal who gives a lot of detention.
Bloodgood is not the only one of my favorite characters from g1 that I think g3 did not do the best at adapting, or at least did not adapt my favorite aspects of their characters into their new versions (the others including Cleo, Nefera, Skelita, Mouscedes, and Robecca). I mostly enjoy g3, but how they handled my favorite characters (along with another handful of critiques I have) has hindered me from enjoying g3 to the fullest. And it doesn’t help there isn’t much media to develop them with. The main reason I’m attached to these new versions is because I’m attached to the original characters.
To end more positively, I do like the dolls, and I do hope we get a g3 Bloodgood soon. And I hope like some of the other characters, we get a bit of a design change between the show and her doll. I actually like better the outfit they gave her for the Monster Ball than her core design, so maybe they’ll do something similar?
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