#scooby meta

- All 4 of them are young children imprisoned on the Maw. All four of them want to leave. No one else around them bothers trying so they band together. In game, each of them would have their own unique ability to assist them;

Shaggy has the farthest jumping distance and a double jump to reach for things. He’s the one being chased the most (he chooses to and is fed extra for his courage) because he’s the only one who can make the getaway after the distraction. Speed: the fastest runner of the group - 5.5-6

Daphne has the greatest strength/can drag/push heavier objects. She’s the most consistent at getting a successful hit at the Janitor anytime he corners them, be it she threw a piece of furniture or she actually got close enough to punch him. (She is the second most reliable distraction-causer.) Speed: 4

Velma can read the signs and letters scattered around the Maw (hello lore, you are defeated by a gang of toddlers* who just so happen to have one less illiterate member than the average group) and can squeeze into tighter/smaller spaces. She is also the lightest, meaning if Shaggy or Fred can’t reach something, she is usually tossed up to it. As a result, she has a very strong grip. Speed: 3.5

Fred has a sneak advantage/is stealthier than the rest of the group and has the best climbing ability of anyone in the gang. He is also the one who takes the most hits due to his protective streak - standing in front to shield them from danger with his own tiny body - (in game he would have the most HP/health but this would be balanced out with him being the slowest, speed wise)

Speed: 2.5-3.5

Scooby: is actually an entity born on the Maw but was rejected/abused due to his lack of bloodlust so he is abandoned and doomed to wander the Maw; he finds four very tiny children and is instantly loyal to them (it helps that Shaggy fed him part of his meal, in a moment of almost reckless disregard for his wellbeing.) The gang would meet him halfway through the game. Speed: 5

1+ minute of Daph being a boss 😎 in the New Scooby Doo Mysteries (ep. Sherlock Doo Part II)

I just love how she plays the dumb bimbo she (seemingly) was in "Where Are You" in order to trick the guard.

And then she owns Fred's part of splitting up the gang. 😆

》Well at least -- I -- didn't tell ya!《

Hi Anon, here are my thoughts that i will share with you.

The Shelma hate, i believe, is mostly due to their portrait in SDMI where, for some reason, they decided to write Velma being THE ABSOLUTE WORSE to Shaggy doing things like, quoting directly from @frick-it-all-to-hecc​ og “Canon Lesbian Velma is good. Canon Lesbian Velma abusing her male partner is Bad” post (i will talk more about it later):

Belittling shaggy

Physically harming him

Isolating him from his best friend (in this case Scooby-Doo who has all the same importance and weight as human characters in the show)

Forcing him to be uncomfortable to fit her needs

Using her anger to manipulate him into doing what she wanted

Later they tried to retcon it being saying "it was supposed to feel wrong because Velma is a closeted lesbian" after the series ended but that shit doesn't fly for a number of reasons, one of them being that kind of narrative feeds into the predatory/evil gays trope (i already have a reblog of @frick-it-all-to-hecc​ post where i add to the discussion if you want to see it HERE)

Before Mystery Incorporated shat the bed, the Shelma shippers had good content to make their base.

In “Scooby Doo, Where are You?” Shaggy is the one that has Velma’s spare glasses with him. Velma knows when he is sick and has his medicine in her pockets. 

In “Shaggy and Scooby Doo, Get a Clue” after spending a long period of time away from the gang, when they are reunited, Shaggy asks her to repeat “Jinkies” because he misses her saying it.

In the second live action movie “Scooby Doo 2, Monsters Unleashed” they have a beautiful heart to heart about how Velma views Shaggy and Scooby not as the screw ups they believe themselves to be but as free people that are not afraid of being who they truly are.

In “Be Cool Scooby Doo” they engage in each others interests (Shaggy engaging with a book about the history of the pretzel while Velma eats said pretzel)

The are other moments and interactions through out the 50 years that Scooby doo has been on the air (I recommend watching all of it to really get a grasp on the dynamics and free yourself from the pop culture understanding of things like, fun fact, on “Scooby Doo, Where are you?” the ones that were kidnapped the most where Shaggy and Scooby, not Daphne.)

The only thing stoping you from shipping Shelma are the following:

You don’t vibe with it.

You only watched SDMI and nothing else and assume you have a perfect grasp on 50 years on the franchise and the inner dynamics... somehow

and that’s it.

For me, with my poly gang, the dynamics grown and change the more i work with them but Shaggy and Velma are working with a mutual supporting relationship built over years together (some of that is build upon the canon, others are my own additions).

Sharing interests (Velma is deeply intrigued with magic and its properties and Shaggy, as a young wizard, loves sharing his researches with her), bonding over their experiences as older siblings, gardening together, doing sports together (Velma lifts weights aka Shaggy + some heavy books because the boy weights the same as a feather for her, while Shaggy does gymnastics over Velma’s strong shoulders Maybe i should draw this someday) and many little other things that are just theirs and many little other things that are theirs and Daphne’s and Fred’s.

That’s the thing I love the most about poly gang. 

It’s a merry-go-round of love that spins and spins around its own axis, never faltering. Sometimes the spinning changes, going either way too fast or way too slow or sometimes it goes backwards or stops abruptly, sometimes it spins in a comfortable familiar rhythm and stays like that for a long time with only the songs changing to show that indeed time is passing around them. 

HHHHHH OKAY SO SCOOBY DOO

I CAN TALK ABT SCOOBY DOO FOR HOURS ON END BUT I WANT TO KEEP THIS ALL SOLIDLY CONTAINED TO A REASONABLY SIZED ASK SO I WILL TELL YOU ALL ABT INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS OF THE SCOOBY GANG

a quick note before we start: I am not like a professional consultant of hanna-barbera and I am not like a scooby doo historian or anything I am just absolutely completely fixated on this goofy little television show that started with Scooby-Doo Where Are You? in 1969 and grew into the wild franchise as we know it today. I've done a LOT of research on this stuff and a fair amount of it is also my own observation of things as I have watched every piece of Scooby Media other than Stay Cool, Scooby-Doo! and Scooby-Doo and the Phantasaur. anyways please buckle up and enjoy the ride!

okay so I'd like to start off with the original concept for scooby doo in which the gang was actually in a band and scooby doo was a bongo-playing dog called Too Much! (yes with an exclamation point and yes the vibes ARE immaculate I love it so much) and also in that sort of original idea Velma and Shaggy were actually siblings (although they weren’t called Velma or Shaggy at the time - all the gang had different names in the original draft before they were changed to be more conventional and memorable to appeal to tv audiences but I digress) and I feel like that really sets the tone for their relationship?? I also feel like that’s part of why when movies or tv shows or even people who aren’t making canon scooby doo content but are just making fanart n stuff make Velma and Shaggy a couple it feels so weird. it doesn’t work, especially when they try to force it in canon, because their relationship is so much of a sibling dynamic (and Velma’s also literally lesbian in original canon - where she was purposefully lesbian coded - as well as other pieces of scooby media where it was censored, including in Scooby-Doo the 2002 live action film and associated franchise, and Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated) so anyways I don’t get the deal with trying to match those two together it doesn’t fit. 

If you’re going to make a relationship that fits in with most canon Scooby Media it’s better to a) have Daphne be one part of the pairing (don’t ask me why, it’s just a pattern that I've noticed makes sense without taking away from the main plot. the only noticeable exceptions to this are the shaggy/crystal incident in Alien Invaders - THEY WERE CUTE OKAY - and the velma/marcy incident in Mystery Incorporated); b) someone from outside of the gang cannot generally be involved in the relationship (again, shaggy/crystal and velma/marcy are exempt from this); and c) the relationship cannot overpower the main plot formula of the scooby gang solving mysteries (this is part of the reason that scooby-doo 2: monsters unleashed was considered so bad by both critics and fans, in my opinion - the studio attempted to pair velma with some outside guy we’d never heard of before for no discernible reason, and then maid it so big a subplot it was practically inseparable from the main plot. of course, this did give us some ‘Velma deals with comphet’ type scenarios which were interesting to watch as a lesbian, but I digress). 

So basically some good in-gang ships are Daphne/Fred (which is first canonized by Scooby-Doo 2002), Daphne/Velma (which was supposed to be canonized by Scooby-Doo 2002 but I digress) and Daphne/Shaggy (which became popular with many die hard fans after the release of The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, in which the rest of the gang is absent but Scooby, Shaggy, and Daphne are still vibing together). Another popular ship is Shaggy/Fred, although since this has no canon source material to back it up, I don’t talk abt it as much (also I am a dyke and not really big on mlm ships... but if you’re a mlm who enjoys this ship I am rooting for you dude) but I do think it’s cute!

Some exceptions to this rule that only gang member/gang member ships can work out are Crystal/Shaggy (canon via Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders) and Velma/Marcy | Hot-Dog Water (canon via Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated; lots of canon subtext, everything short of a kiss or an ‘I love you’, later confirmed by creators who said they were working to get stuff past censors). I can’t really explain why these canon pairings are so good. they just are. (also on a somewhat related note, @HANNA BARBERA GIVE SHAGGY HIS ALIEN GIRLFRIEND BACK I WILL FISTFIGHT YOU BRING HER BACK BRING HER BACK)

similarly, a piece of Scooby Media will lose its appeal if the writers take ‘Let’s Split Up, Gang!’ too seriously and completely break the scooby gang apart for more than the looking for clues piece of the episode. this is why Scoob!, Daphne & Velma, The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, and other pieces of scooby media in which only a part of the gang appears for the majority of the film or television series are generally pretty bad and also prone to getting cancelled or panned by critics. In Scoob!’s case, this movie shows that if you focus too much on even the sweet and simple Shaggy-Scooby friendship, leaving out the rest of the gang causes an imbalance that leaves audiences feeling unsatisfied with their lack of gang-shenanigan-related content, especially if the movie itself was advertised as being a more traditionally formatted piece of scooby media (something else that Scoob! did).

adding Scrappy Doo to your piece of scooby media is yet another way to fuck up the gang’s dynamic. because scrappy doo is a walking scrap of puppy-sized arsenic. the only time that its permissible to have scrappy doo be a part of your piece of scooby media is if he is the antagonist that the gang must fight (which is actually part of why Scooby-Doo 2002 was so successful). Scrappy doo has a tendency to do poorly with general audiences because a) he’s an asshole b) he’s annoying as shit and c) I really fucking hate scrappy doo. but also there was this big marketing campaign when he was first released onto our unknowing world and he was so annoying and over workshopped and over marketed that literally everyone who knows scooby-doo fucking. hates him. I hate him you hate him and if you don’t hate him well: 

SCRAPPY DOO FANS STANS AND APOLOGISTS DO NOT INTERACT /hj

and I think that finishes up my psa for the most part on scooby doo and the gang’s interpersonal relationships?? sorry if this makes no sense I will simply Talk About Scooby Doo for a solid hour and not realize that what I'm saying is the most incoherent thing ever, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, Scooby snacks are at the door to your left, please only one per person. Mangy Mutts with Great-Dane-esq appearances may take two. Scrappy Doo Stans get out of my house.