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scoobysfriend · 4 months

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This is my ideal scooby gang. Explanation and scooby doo character analysis under the cut

I think Scooby Doo is a character driven show actually. Every time there is a mystery, and everytime we aren't always interested in what the mystery is but how the characters investigate it. Most scooby doo episodes and movies aren't about the mysteries themselves but are about the character shenanigans the gang get up to while solving that mystery.

The best way to possibly ever write fred is make him laios but with an ascot and for traps instead of food. You don't even have to change the monster part! A heart of gold and a specialized skill set. Can fred make a phone call? no. Can fred turn all the wheels on the mystery machine into suction cups so it can go up a wall to chase a tentacled bird demon? yes. He must also be kind, all the scooby characters must be, but fred most especially. Plus trap making is such a niche hobby, and mystery incorporated explored this a little bit, but doing that even more is great. Funny enough I also really loved mystery incorporated's stance on fred's family life. Being raised by someone who doesn't understand who you are fundamentally and wants you to change, poetic cinema. I also want Red Herring to be Fred's childhood friend turned nemesis turned weird I know you better than I know myself thing, my password is your birthday and yet we don't talk there's this distance. Like when kids are young and they bring their friends over to their house, and that friend never really leaves cause they aren't getting parented at home? That's red herring bringing fred to his house, and make his mom a mechanic and suddenly so much stuff fits. It also explains his mechanic skill. Traps and cars are different things. Fred is a crazy inventor who emotionally bonded to the mystery machine and learned mechanics from someone who was the closest thing he ever got to a parent. Fred is a crazy smart inventor. He makes traps and contraptions and rube goldberg machines for the thrill of it. We call a man boring who probably has twelve bear traps in his bedroom and he's so confused on why people don't want to live this way so more for him he guesses, but that also means he always wants to share it with his friends!!!!!!! He's a huge gentle soul that loves his people and his mysteries and his traps. In that order.

i think daphne should get to have a character arc actually?? There's been enough iterations of all the scooby doo characters that if you just mix and match them you have character development. She should start as danger prone daphne always getting in trouble. Then she should decide she doesn't want to be the one getting saved all the time. She starts learning skills to get her out of danger first lockpicking cause whats new scooby doo was my scooby growing up, then learning martial skills to the point where instead of getting rescued she is the one running into danger to rescue others. Someone who protects and never shies away from trouble. I also think it would be cute to make it so she's really into fashion from the 1960s, so that you could modernize the world but keep the old designs cause the gang wants to go matchy matchy with daphne. She does love fashion and knows about it, but just saying "loves fashion" is very 2 dimensional. Saying Daphne loves vintage clothes and using those clothes in the modern era especially clothes from the 60s opens a lot of opportunities to explain why the whole gang is going to this super duper spooky estate sale, Daphne heard this woman had an extensive collection. It also lets the gang have cool outfits and character models. On top of that by having the gang match Daphne, shows that she loves them enough tom share this part of herself with them and that they love her enough to be a part of it with her. Daphne also is almost always the backbone of the gang. Fred, shaggy, and scooby would give a stranger the shirt off their backs, velma and fred don't always recognize what is socially expected so can take advantage of because they are trying to fit in an uncomfortable social situation, but Daphne? Daphne is a fiery redhead who loves her friends more than breathing, no you can't have fred fix that for you, no you can't say that to shaggy and no velma won't do your homework. We are also bringing scooby in with us, if you don't like it that sucks. This combination of traits is stuff she already had, in one iteration or another, and gives a solid character. Also making her the youngest daughter of like twelve in a wealthy family slaps.

Velma, oh velma, JelloApocalypse put it best "A bad Velma is the worst thing that happened to Scooby-doo". Velma often suffers from being the workhorse of the narrative. Donatello of the tmnt often suffer similarly. Velma I feel like, even in character, should reflect this. Velma is the smartest person in the room, and due to her knowing this, she often feels responsible for doing something with that knowledge. The gang takes a lot of that pressure off. Velma is not a master of every single science, but she is one of the most gifted researchers alive. Yet, she is also compassionate, she feels responsible, because when seeing something go wrong and be awful, she believes that she could change it. She, maybe the most, benefits from having the scooby gang all together, because they give her permission to have fun. Velma will see a bad guy and already be twelve steps down in her thought process on how this will affect the carnival's income, while shaggy yells that they need to "Run, Man!". Velma is one of those characters where you could imagine her being very successful in dusty stacks for the rest of her life, but she gets color added to it, and first hand knowledge, by going out with the gang. She's curious to a fault, and wants to know about everything, and often thinks she can just find out from books and the internet, and is often right! But is just as often wrong! Velma will be twelve review articles deep trying to find the best place to eat and shaggy will say I know a guy and they'll be eating out of an illegal taco boat moored in the middle of the harbor. Or velma will be trying to make what is objectively the best decision in a given situation when Dpahne will come in and ask "Why are you in this situation in the first place, let's leave" or velma will be curious about the reproductive cycle of the three toed sugar cane frog and fred will show up with a cooler, night vision goggles and two plane tickets. The gang give velma the freedom to make choices without worrying about which one is the "right" one. This also extends to mysteries, because velma wants to prove that ghosts and aliens and werewolves and everything exist, she wants to prove it so so so badly, but she's been told intellectually her whole life that it's a load of hogwash, but with the gang, they all go get to prove if it's hogwash or not together and have fun doing it! Even when it's all fake, it's a puzzle, it's so much fun! And this is what makes Marcie Fleach such a good foil. Marcie is also gifted, beyond gifted, in robotics, but she doesn't have anyone to get her out of her own head. So Marcie is stuck in her own dark thoughts trying to make it work while velma is trying a sandwich that scooby made that has circus peanuts in it. There can be no knowledge without experience and that is what velma really proves. Her research skills provide such a strong base for the gang, and her observational skills are second to none, she might not always know what to do with those observations but that's what she can talk to the gang for. This responsibility she feels to the world and the people living in it and even just the ideals of the truth, all form this core facet of her personality that she gets to explore and uphold in a fun way through the solving of mysteries. She has a book for everything and a try anything thrice while documenting the results for science kind of attitude. Plus this pull between what she has been told it right, what she thinks academically is right and what she feels is right, all fighting in her head for dominance makes for great character motivation. Like in where's my mummy she dresses up as the bad guy because she thinks it's the right thing to do, and she's shown by the narrative to be right! Also velma should get to, and be required to, get up to as many goofy shenanigans as the other members of the scooby gang. They all take turns being the straight man and on particullarly goofy days, it's scooby.

SHAGGY IS A GODDAMN ANTHROPOLOGY MAJOR. And a wizard, but we have known that one. Shaggy is a nice witty guy, who likes helping people, but even more than that he likes learning about people. Like, he's the kinda guy who ten minutes after meeting him you bring him home to your family and they adopt and feed him. He's charming and snarky and a good listener. He's often a coward, but he's brave for scooby. Scooby will be scared out of his mind and so will shaggy, but shaggy will crack a joke so scooby will laugh and scooby will dance so shaggy will laugh. They are best friends. Shaggy also loves old horror flicks, the cheesier the better and video games that people don't think are very good. Shaggy as a character is like a celebration of things everyone trashes put into a lovable package. Shaggy is a coward who runs away and eats too much and loves b grade horror flicks and trashiest video games ever produced. Shaggy is the one who wants to go to the puppet museum or accordion camp or the world's most giant ball of yarn. There's this love and wonder toward everything in the world that many of the iterations of scooby doo miss. Shaggy wants to go and solve the mystery as much as any of the gang, because he loves every part of it. If shaggy is not scared, he is smiling and laughing and engaging with the locals and going dumb skits and reading comic books. Shaggy will work as a stage hand or carnival ring master or manager of a famous doll customizer's youtube channel for a summer because he likes hanging out with folks and likes the food. And people notice this trait about him and respond in kind. There's this curiosity that all the gang needs to share, that always gets surgically removed from shaggy and I don't know why. It's just that shaggy's curiosity is more about fun happy things. Like even in ghoul school, there were monsters and he was scared, but he realized they were people and immediately tried to be friend to them. Maybe it's my own bias, but if shaggy went to college he'd be an anthropology major, because wanting to know everything about people and eat their food and hang out with folks eternally, that is applied cultural anthropology lmao.

(Also i could do a whole thing on how the members of the scooby gang each represent a different branch of applied anthropology. Scooby as primatology, Fred as biological anthropology/Forensics, Velma as archeology, Daphne as linguistics, Shaggy as cultural anthropology, another day, another day.)

Finally last and certainly not least. Scooby Dooby Doo. The dog, the myth, the legend. It's really interesting to talk about scooby and the way he evolved, originally scooby didn't have that many words. He was like a parrot, had a certain number of set phrases but had to pantomime the rest. I like scooby talking, I like knowing his thoughts, but that pantomime. I'm so irrationally obsessed with it. I really think we need to bring it back. So much of his slapstick comedy and personality is removed when you removed that. Scooby isn't making quips, scooby is dressing as a cancan dancer while shaggy's thar barman and making the evil chicken ghost blush so much it bends over backward to buy them a drink that he throws in it's face so they can run again. Scooby has so much emotional intelligence and cares so deeply for the gang, to reduce him to a shaggy clone is a crime. Scooby has that classic dog mentality, Shaggy is his boy. His best friend and his everything, if scooby could go everywhere with shaggy he would and wait he does! Scooby wants to go on adventures, and go with his people, and for scooby an adventure could be a trip to the dog park or bowling alley or solving a why ghost pirates are attacking their cruise ship. And of course scooby's scared! He's a scaredy cat! He'll jump and yipe and be afraid, but he'll stick by his people even if he is afraid. He provides such tension relief and emotional solace, he is an emotional support animal. Anytime the gang is stressed or worried or sad or anything there is scooby doo! Either feeling it right along side you or comforting you through it, like that one scene in little miss sunshine when the kid has a breakdown cause he's colorblind and won't be able to fly and then gets comforted by that little girl. Scooby is that little girl. I really cannot emphasize enough how loyal scooby is, and there is no better illustration of that than scrappy. Scrappy was just a puppy but he thought his uncle scooby was the bravest dog in the whole world, and that's the thing scrappy never saw any different!! Scrappy would picka fight with a monster or someone bigger than him and everytime, without fail, there scooby would be to pull him out of it. Scooby is a loyal beyond all other things, even beyond his fear, and has an emotional breadth that can only come from not only being the heart of the show but the heart of his little family too! And shaggy is his best friend!!!!!!!! They do everything together and he loves him so much!!!! And sure he's clumsy, but so is daphne, and sure he can get jealous, but so can velma, and sure he's a coward but so is shaggy! Scooby does this thing where whenever he is there, everything is a little better, the sun a little brighter, the avocado toast a little more scrumptious, and he's smiling and cheering and so then is everyone else. I also thought of a hilarious bit, where since scooby is a dog and they like eating all the time they keep running into stuff that is poison for dogs so shaggy can't share it with scooby and he begs with the biggest possible eyes, and rests his head on shaggy's lap and shaggy feels so bad that he gets three scooby snacks and the bacon from fred's plate.

Really though. These are all goofball young folks who like solving mysteries together and traveling together and bonding over random activities. They love each other, they are all best friends, and it would be relatively easy to give them all character arcs based upon things that previously happened to them.

Fred as this guy, getting recognized for his achievements and hobbies even if they aren't what is considered normal. All his friends hyping up his most complicated trap or cheering when he makes the mystery machine a boat or being willing to tell his automatic breakfast machine. That transition from hiding everything about yourself to showing a little bit and then a little more and the relief each time from being accepted fully!

Daphne as the spoiled youngest daughter of a wealthy family to damsel in distress to danger prone Daphne to being the emotional backbone of the time to as many skills as a bard to having enough skills to protect herself to throwing herself into danger with these skills she's acquired to help other people.

Velma as this cloistered researcher always trying to make the 'right' decision and having her open up about her desires and fears, and what she wants to research and investigate, where she starts investigating and having fun and experiencing all these things till she is this well of knowledge and uses that well of knowledge to have fun and help people

Shaggy who drifts from group of people to group of people, finally having a group to call his own. Getting to stay with people, and have them really learn him and really express himself. Building up confidence, and if you believe the wizard shaggy theory like I do, using magic as a metaphor for that and having him come into his own as a powerful wizard. Or even just having him come into his own as a masterful people person or as an excellent chef or as a world class detective or all of the above. Letting shaggy acknowledge his skills and his growth in them and letting him be proud.

Scooby would also reflect shaggy. Scooby with his trust issues, opening up to someone who wasn't just shaggy. Being supported by others and supporting them in turn. Being understood and listened to. Having someone tell the hotel front desk, no scooby is coming inside, no you do not get an opinion and if you do we can take our business elsewhere. This relationship with other people making him braver, and happier, and bouncier, and sillier. Having fun with everyone you love always!

You fools! The whole time Scooby doo was about love and hanging out with your friends!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And how no matter how evil or weird or scary everything is, you can figure it out together!!!!!!!!!

#character analysis #scooby doo #my stuff #shaggy rogers #daphne blake #fred jones #velma dinkley #scrappy doo #red herring #marcie fleach

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