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Pop Culture

Fans are rejoicing after seeing Velma meet the girl of her dreams on 'Scooby Doo'

Velma has long been a beloved LGBTQ icon.

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They have matching bracelets. I can't!

Bespectacled mystery solver and “Scooby Doo” fan favorite Velma Dinkley has a new girlfriend and the internet is here for it.

A viral clip from the new animated movie “Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!” shows the iconic nerd girl full-on swooning over costume designer and crime boss Coco Diablo (coolest name ever). Velma fawns over the other woman’s “amazing turtleneck,” “incredible glasses,” and obvious intellect and love for animals, and jinkies, is it adorable.

It might feel like a plot twist to some, but for most diehard fans and the major creatives behind “Scooby Doo,” the character’s sexuality was no mystery.

In a since deleted tweet, writer/director James Gunn revealed that he tried to make Linda Cardellini’s Velma “explicitely gay” in the live action “Scooby Doo" movies from 2002 and 2004. However, Warner Bros. slowly phased out and “watered down” any story points showcasing her homosexuality.

Tony Cervone, supervising producer on the successful fan series “Mystery Incorporated,” seconded Gunn’s opinion. According to TODAY, during Pride Month of 2020 he wrote on Instagram, “I’ve said this before, but Velma in ‘Mystery Incorporated’ is not bi. She’s gay. We always planned on Velma acting a little off and out of character when she was dating Shaggy because that relationship was wrong for her and she had unspoken difficulty with the why. There are hints about the why in that episode with the mermaid, and if you follow the entire Marcie arc it seems as clear as we could make it 10 years ago. I don’t think Marcie and Velma had time to act on their feelings during the main timeline, but post reset, they are a couple. You can not like it, but this was our intention.”

Velma’s gayness traces all the way back to the original series. As Bitch Media states, show creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera based the character on child actress Sheila Kuehl, who played a tomboy in the 1950s family series “The Stu Erwin Show.” Coincidentally—or perhaps not—Kuehl later became the first openly gay California legislator.

Velma has long been a beloved LGBTQ icon. Sure, she’s a fictional character, but it’s making a lot of people happy to see themselves represented through her in such a positive light. May we all be inspired to live authentically—even if that means sporting a pixie cut, throwing on some knee highs and figuring out which adults are supernatural creatures in disguise while falling in love with whoever we please.

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Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Joy

The best and brightest come together to tackle society’s toughest challenges

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is working to eradicate disease, improve education, and address the needs of their local community.

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Have you ever wished you could solve some of society’s toughest challenges? That’s exactly why the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) was founded.

Established in 2015 by Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, the organization’s mission is to build a better future for everyone. CZI is working to eradicate disease, improve education, and address the needs of their local community.

Since its launch, CZI has awarded around $4.8 billion in grants to organizations whose work aligns with these values.

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Astronaut shares the profound 'big lie' he realized after seeing the Earth from space

This change in perspective could change humanity.

via Rubén Moreno Montolíu/Flickr

Our home, from space.

Sixty-one years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to make it into space and probably the first to experience what scientists now call the "overview effect." This change occurs when people see the world from far above and notice that it’s a place where “borders are invisible, where racial, religious and economic strife are nowhere to be seen.”

The overview effect makes man’s squabbles with one another seem incredibly petty and presents the planet as it truly is, one interconnected organism.

In a compelling interview with Big Think, astronaut, author and humanitarian Ron Garan explains how if more of us developed this planetary perspective we could fix much of what ails humanity and the planet.

Garan has spent 178 days in space and traveled more than 71 million miles in 2,842 orbits. From high above, he realized that the planet is a lot more fragile than he thought.

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Rehearsal footage from 'We Are the World' shows how incredibly talented everyone was in the '80s

Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, man oh man.

via Wikimedia Commons and Wikimedia Commons

Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie wrote "We Are the World."

From 1983 to 1985, more than 1 million people in Ethiopia died from extreme famine. A few months after a BBC report on the famine that triggered the U.K. Band Aid charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?," the biggest stars in the American music industry came together in 1985 to record a charity single to help those suffering in Ethiopia, Sudan and other impoverished African countries.

The collection of entertainers called themselves USA for Africa, and their single, “We Are the World,” sold more than 7 million records worldwide and has generated $60 million over the past 37 years.

The song was written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and produced by Quincy Jones. The vocals were recorded after the American Music Awards in Los Angeles on January 28, 1985, in a single 8 p.m. to 8 a.m session at Hollywood's A&M Recording Studios.

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Pink shares a proud mama video of her daughter's first singing recital

'This 11 year old (11,000 year old soul) blows me away.'

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Pink's daughter is following in her mom's footsteps with her own unique voice.

One of the best things social media offers is the ability for parents to share some of their kids' big moments. Proud parents are going to proud parent, and modern technology gives us ample opportunity to publicly gush about our offspring without forcing anyone to bear witness to their burgeoning talents.

Celebrity parents are in a bit of a different boat, however. When you're a household name with millions of followers, you might think twice about sharing your proud parent videos. But iconic pop star Pink has shared a video of her daughter's first singing recital just like any other proud mama would, and it's totally sweet.

Pink posted the video to an Instagram reel with the caption "This 11 year old (11,000 year old soul) blows me away."

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How a marketing guru from 1950 instilled a fear of 'mind control' that still exists today

Are companies trying to brainwash us?

Photo by Wojtek Witkowski on Unsplash

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You might not know the name James Vicary, but odds are you know about his experiment, at least indirectly.

In 1957, the market researcher claimed to have exposed thousands of unsuspecting moviegoers in a New Jersey theater to a series of phrases like “Hungry? Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coca-Cola” that flashed across the screen in the fraction of a second as they watched a film. These images allegedly increased the sale of popcorn by 57.5% and Coca-Cola by 18.1%, despite passing far too quickly for viewers to consciously notice them.

Vicary’s findings soon became publicized and induced a widespread, decades-long dystopian fear that secret messages lurked beneath the surfaces of our favorite songs, movies and TV shows, insidiously coercing us to do things without conscious consent. Primarily, to buy things we probably don’t actually want.

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