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Ghouls Archive

Just wanted to share a link to this amazing website!! It has and is continuing to collect all the monster high media over all 3 generations! Has links to the books, the movies, The diaries, Everything you could want!😁

Since this is all being done by 1 person, If you have any pieces of media that you notice a missing from the collection, I'm sure it'll be more than appreciated if you can contribute😊

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My god my girlies

MY GIRLIES. I am still crying, I am still crying about this. Every day I cry about this.

You bitched so hard about being forced to read 1984 in school when it’s so problematic (tm)

Maybe you should have actually paid attention when you read it

Because all these AI fics

You are LITERALLY MAKING THE GARBAGE NOVELS FROM 1984 that are written by machines

You have literally recreated the worthless soulless machine-made books

Literally,

Literally. Every once in a while it hits me in a fresh wave of disbelief and anger. You have literally created the dystopian book from the dystopian story about why dystopia is bad, and you are passing it around like it’s this amazing thing. I’m crying, I’m crying.

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It makes me happy when they listen

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Poll: if your mom remarries when you’re 26 years old is that guy still your stepdad or is he just your mom’s husband.

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College friendship is sending one of your friends who's graduating soon a giant list of monster theory and gothic horror academic reading recs so they can download as many PDFs as possible before they lose their university database access

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As of the latest chapter of HnK, every criticism I’ve made about the series is just as valid if not more valid than when I first made it.

I’m not sure what the narrative point of this series was except to be torture porn for rocks.

And if that’s all we were trying to accomplish, we’ll, good job, I guess.

What weirdly pisses me off the most is this panel:

Like, no you freaking weren’t????

Phos had a community. Nobody respected him at the beginning of the story but 1. Would you? and 2. He still had people who cared about him. Sensei cared about him. Diamond cared about him. It took him almost no time at all to befriend Cinnabar, and it took even less time to befriend Ventricosus. In what was he alone, or at least more alone than the other gems? More alone than Yellow Diamond, who had 3,000 years of trauma at the start of the story? More alone than Antarcticite, who never saw anyone but Sensei and only has a solid, functional body for a fourth of the year? More alone than Padparadscha, who spent most of his life stashed in a drawer?

Incredible. Even after supposedly achieving enlightenment and ascending to godlike, nigh omnipotent power, Phos is still as stupid and self-obsessed as he always was.

I see people saying that Phos’s transformation is indicative of character development, but he didn’t develop at all! He’s just been replaced with another character. A character who, apparently, couldn’t be bothered to read Houseki no Kuni.

Lucky him.

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raws for Life and Culture of Y-3579203181277

here u go

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Some people may get mad at my criticisms of Houseki no Kuni, but it still doesn't sit right with me that Ichikawa calls the gems a "less advanced culture" in comparison to the lunarians. No culture is "less advanced" than another you might want to compare it to. Though, I get the feeling that Ichikawa's idea of "bettering" a culture through (forced) assimilation and cultural genocide while also heavily romanticizing a once "misunderstood" lunarian culture wouldn't been seen as ethical by anybody with sense

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Depending on how you ask, I'm either a huge fan of Houseki or a huge hater of it. I love literally everything up until when Phos goes to the moon and then I'm Houseki's biggest hater. I hate that Aechmea is portrayed as a misunderstood villain with good intentions even though he's the literal perpetrator of genocide within that story, and a Huge groomer to top it off. I hate that the worst character actually gets a resolution, and we still have to see the main character suffer even without him, when he is ALSO the reason why the main character suffers. His big secret reveal to the character he groomed was that he's the reason behind every single time that Phos has suffered, and he was able to get exactly what he wanted because he "wasn't actually the bad guy" in the end (sacrificing the few for the betterment of the many). The story took a huge nosedive when it started humanizing the colonizers, and it never got better afterwards.

So in short I pretend Houseki just ended at some point between Volume 7 and Volume 8

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Literally insane that the two big pieces of media that include alien gem races/cultures (Houseki no Kuni/Land of the Lustrous and Steven Universe) are also really bad at addressing certain issues or themes they've incorporated into their stories. Houseki no Kuni said "hey we're romanticizing violent cultural genocide 👍" and Steven Universe said "cool we're humanizing close-to-fascist dictators 👍"

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My only theory as to why people aren't making as big of a stink as they should about the combined Ethnocide and Genocide of both the Gems and Admirabilis by the Lunarians is because its still a manga and alot of people won't keep up with a series if hasn't been adapted into an anime. Because I really think people should talk more about how Ichikawa just casually did that and framed it as the best possible course of action as if it isn't just a romanticized violent colonizer moment?

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I got attached to houseki no kuni after following the whole manga, but I admit sometimes I catch myself wondering "what is the point?" The messages of the story, of the lunarians, every character that isn't phos - who seem like they're just there as props to Phos's narrative.

I don't know, man. I think it might just be a bad story, in the end.

REAL AND TRUE and I feel about the same way. I originally read it because my bf was into it and no matter how he tried to explain it, I didn't get it. I started reading it to get a better understanding of it, and I got so deeply attached to it (see icon, url, etc...) that it's been a huge hyperfixation for me for like. I dunno, a couple years LMAOO

At this point, it's just sunk cost. I've spent too much time being interested in it to at least see how this ends, but it's definitely one of those stories that makes me so angry and very rarely do stories make me so angry because of how badly written they are. No matter how many Buddhist themes Ichikawa wants to write in her story, no matter how many metaphors for change Ichikawa wants to agonizingly draw out for several chapters at a time, no matter how many times she can make one character suffer, it's just painfully obvious: Houseki no Kuni is a poorly written story with colonialism apologia as the main ending and doomerism sprinkled throughout the rest of the story. Ichikawa doesn't know how to write about other cultures (fictional or real) without putting one down and giving her readers the impression that One culture "surpasses" the rest. She can't write deep enough characters because she just ends up shafting them later on after giving them surface level personalities and motivations (i.e. Cinnabar, Lapis Lazuli, Cairngorm, Peridot, Alexandrite, etc) since, as you did mention, they're just props. I know it's a story about Phosphophyllite, and the side characters are just that: side characters, but if that were truly the case, why would she spent a whole series dedicated to Phosphophyllite fulfilling their promise to Cinnabar, trying to bring back their lost partners like Ghost Quartz and Antarcticite, AND HAVING US READ AT LEAST TWO VOLUMES WORTH OF A CHARACTER GETTING SO THOROUGHLY GROOMED IT'D BE UP THERE WITH LOLITA?

Her stance on humanity is clear as she uses the Lunarians, Aechmea, Phos and Kongo's Brother (per the newest chapter as of today) as her mouthpieces to say that Humanity and Humankind is shit and there's nothing good about it. Which is...the bleakest and blandest stance you can have on humankind! And I'll probably get into that later since this answer is getting long enough anyway.

Came for the pretty rocks, stayed because I enjoy suffering I suppose. 2/10 don't read past Volume 8 if you enjoy maintaining your own sanity.

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Hnk is one of my favorite mangas but I agree with everything you said. It always bothered me how easily the gems (specially the ones that stayed on earth at first) accepted becoming lunarians and living with them. You'd think they would be even a little hesitant to literally spend the rest of their life with their oppressors who constantly abducted them causing them a shit ton of trauma but nah. That outcome wouldn't even bother me that much if it didn't feel so rushed and forced :/

IT WAS LITERALLY SOOO RUSHED AND FORCED its so mind-numbingly infuriating to see people be so happy for the Lunarian Gems when THAT itself was the most colonist moment ever.

The fact that none of the gems really have a say and put it on Euclase's shoulders...y'know, the gem that wasn't good at problem solving to begin with? They're all treated like a hivemind and not like they're individuals who may oppose becoming a lunarian (was never written because everybody was just assumed to be happy with everything) and its just rancid. I don't even know what Ichikawa's intention was, bc whatever she wrote definitely did not fucking work. It works if you're into the idea that you can "fix" another culture because your culture is "better" than all the rest, and that if the people of the "lesser" culture are just like you then all their problems will go away because their lives would be "better".

Makes me wonder if she ever took any kind of anthropology classes before writing Houseki.

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I don’t agree with everything you say, but I’m so glad there’s a person that doesn’t hate Cairngorm and sees the problematic things in their relationship.

from what I’m seeing most of the fandom is like this:

-knows they got groomed, but still hates them

-victim blaming

-“the relationship is healthy and Cairn is a trans allegory!”

I’m completely fine with trans ppl but cairn is not the character to headcanon as trans.

Also I barely see any talk about cairn now soooo, thanks! (sorry for the long text)

Omg no you're totally fine! But I notice that too, where people just hate Cairngorm entirely and thinks they're a bitch for no reason or think what happened to them is a positive transgender story and don't even realize the implications of their statements matched with that specific character. I HAVE seen some people just straight up Hate Cairngorm entirely when...like, I can understand why you may hate them, but their reasons just kind of start to sound like they blame Cairngorm and not Cairngorm's oppressor.

And honestly I hate people that wanna paste Cairngorm with the transgender girlboss wifegirl label because holy shit that is far from a transgender allegory story. It's insane to see a story about somebody who struggled with their image get actively groomed and brainwashed into become a "wife" of all things, with extremely revealing outfits, a shiro to "help" them "practice" with being a "mother" (iirc), and even being completely isolated from everybody else (done so by their oppressor, Aechmea) and then see people say it was a "transgender awakening" for them. This is supposedly the "good ending" for them (afaik), so the way they were groomed is seen as Good and Fine and Endgame by EVERYONE...except Phos? And Phos was just painted as the "jealous ex" even though they technically lost a partner...and losing a partner as a gem can be extremely traumatic. And it was extremely traumatic for Phos, as it was for them to lose Antartc, its just that now people can just say "well Cairngorm is happy why can't Phos be happy for them" when there's a REASON why Phos wasn't happy for Cairngorm.

I don't hate Cairngorm at all, but I DO hate what became of them as a result. It genuinely got extremely uncomfortable for me to read a story about a character get so deeply groomed that they're no longer the same character they started out as, and not even for any good reason. I really wish more people would warn for that bit, since it seems to be a huge oversight when people recommend this story to others.

I also just miss what Houseki was before the Moon Arc. I think that part is still relatively enjoyable...Cairngorm was extremely interesting and moments we got with them and the other gems that weren't Phos were very nice little breaks from them being simply a narrative tool. We got to see them for how they were and not just for the relationship they have with Phos, and that should have been explored more honestly. Imo.

Sorry this got really long! I'm extremely autistic for this series and its characters.

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Sry if this ask is annoying to you but I saw another ask on your blog about Cairn and had to chime in because I'm also terribly autistic about them. But the people celebrating them as this big transgender w are annoying to me because it's super strange in the context of the universe? Like if the characters exist in this society independent of our own gender binary... why is it a good thing that it's being reinvented? Also their relationship with aechmea could've been interesting in the context of the story if it wasn't presented as this like ideal dynamic and all the side characters hadn't been shafted for basically nothing at this point. SORRY for dumping this in your inbox but you're one of like 4 remaining blogs with a normal opinion on Cairn I feel like I'm going to explode if I see another person say they had reason to choose Aechmea over literally everyone they loved before that other than fucking manipulation😭

YOU'RE NOT ANNOYING DW!!! (HEARTS HEARTS HEARTS) But I agree with what you're saying. The Gems not having any labels for genders or anything, and then having their oppressors designate certain characters/gems with labels is very...colonialist! There's a difference between introducing a concept to a society versus forcing these concepts to the individuals in the society without their own opinions. The Lunarians never give the Gems any kind of voice, since they believe the Gems are "less advanced" than them...which is super ethnocentric and even Ichikawa believes so (makes me raise my eyebrow a bit...)

Honestly, I feel like I would be able to stomach what happened with Cairngorm if it wasn't for the fact that Aechmea never faces any repercussions for all of the atrocities he has committed not JUST to Cairngorm but to literally every single other character in Houseki. He is prayed for and forgiven for everything he has done, and it's SO...so unpleasant. And yeah you could say that horrible people do horrible things and they never face repercussions but it's not like Ichikawa doesn't know what she's writing...I just think she didn't know what to do with her characters at that point that she just tried to get rid of them however she could to bring the focus back onto Phos? That is, until you get to Party at the End which is fucking GROSS!! And I'm not reading that shit!! Because it's literally celebrating the entire genocide AND ethnocide of TWO societies that were forced to become their oppressors. And people are saying the art is "so pretty"...like y'all are not immune to pro-colonialist messages.

SORRY THIS HAD LITTLE TO DO WITH CAIRNGORM I promise I do still love them though I am very autistic for them and uh. Yeah this story makes me want to rip my face off

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having collaborative ocs with friends will have you saying shit like "what if scimble was bumpus wouldnt that be funny" and then like two weeks later its one of the most important pieces of lore you have