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.