2019 Geek-A-Long: Scooby-Doo

Never heard of Scooby-Doo? Learn more here, and do some Doo stuff here. I’m not going to waste precious post-lines telling you about the show. We have more important things to discuss…..

It always comes back to Buffy.

One of my favorite Buffy villains was The Trio. They were well written, and don’t get their due. Anyhow, in season six, they summon a demon to fight Buffy that infects her with a poison that causes her to hallucinate. She loses touch with reality and begins to believe she is in a mental institution. At the end of the episode, Buffy bravely chooses reality, fights the demon, saves her friends, and drinks the antidote that Willow made.

Or did she?

I propose that Buffy did not drink the antidote. Succumbing to the severe and untreated PTSD Buffy has suffered with throughout the series, she did not embrace reality. Instead, the demon kills Dawn, Xander, Willow, Tara, and Spike. Grief and guilt mixing with the poison in her system, Buffy suffers a complete dissociative fugue and imagines a different, happier world where her friends didn’t die. Upon her death, Willow released an intense burst of magic, and Buffy’s delusion becomes reality. And so, the Scooby Gang becomes manifest.

Buffy, of course, makes herself into Daphne. Daphne is the girl that Buffy could have been; the girl she might have become if she had never come to Sunnydale and fulfilled her destiny as the Slayer. In an effort to reconcile her feelings for Spike, despite his history of abusing her, he becomes Fred. Fred is the clean cut all-American — and certainly-not-a-souless-vampire –quarterback archetype. Of course, even in Buffy’s fantasy, she can’t quite separate her idealized version of him from the real version, and so Fred is never fully invested in the relationship. He keeps her at arm’s length, and frequently speaks down to her, making her question her own self-worth and capability.

Xander and Tara become Shaggy and Scooby respectively. Scooby has no real voice. The dog can’t actually communicate with the group in a meaningful way. Buffy was a bystander while Willow took Tara’s voice away, and uses this opportunity to start working through her guilt over not stepping in with Willow sooner. Willow, of course, becomes Velma. Adult Willow is a lot for Buffy to handle. She would never admit to this in the real world, but Buffy misses the high school version of Willow. The fluffy, sweater-clad brainiac that was never a threat to Buffy’s sense of superiority.

As for Dawn? She’s doesn’t have a role in Buffy’s fantasy world, which may be the darkest thing I say all week.

Whether you’re knitting, crocheting, or cross stitching this square, you can download the Scooby-Doo pattern here. Instructions and charts for both knit and crochet are listed in the pattern. When you’re finished making it, don’t forget to Instagram your squares at us @lattesandllamasyarn with the hashtag #geekalong! Want to hang out with other people making the blanket? You can find moral support in the Geek-A-Long group on Ravelry here.

~Megan-Anne

To address the obvious question of how they could be the actual Scooby Gang if they reference the Scoobies from season one:

Scooby-Doo exists in Buffy’s reality. The reality where Buffy invents the Scooby-Doo gang is fully manifested from the energy of Willow’s dark magic. So even though Buffy brings it to be at a specific point in time, once it exists it will have always existed. These realities are tangled together and bleed onto one another like freshly dyed yarns in a hot water wash. In the “real-reality” of Buffy’s existence, the fabric of reality has to find a way to resolve the bleeding, and does so by creating the Hanna-Barbera corporation to give a safe outlet that avoids paradox. Don’t even get me started on Yogi Bear.

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