After decades of fan speculation and producer hints, the beloved Scooby-Doo character Velma Dinkley was portrayed as a lesbian in the franchise's latest film, Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo. After the animated film's debut Tuesday was Google, which has been showering the glasses-wearing sleuth with a sea of lesbian and progressive Pride flags on its search engine since at least Wednesday evening.
The way it works is like this: If you go to Google's search engine and type in Velma or Velma Dinkley, your screen will be sprinkled with the flags, which are just two of the many celebratory Pride flags in existence.
Anthony Irwin, who worked on the project alongside Google software engineer Emma Freeman said that we saw a long-anticipated moment for a character that we loved and had a good feeling it would be an identity-affirming surprise for fans around the world. We didn't expect it to be so well received, resonating across so many different cultures and age groups, but people need things to be happy about, and when we can help everyone celebrate together, that's pretty great. The hashtag lesbians was catapulted by the Twitter reaction to both the character's sapphic revelation and Google's response. The United States trends list has a 3 spot on the social media platform.
One Twitter user wrote, Everyone should Google Velma Dinkley right now. The payoff is huge, just that, just her name. The Lesbian Pride flag has had multiple iterations over the years, with the first being created in 1999, according to a breakdown of 17 LGBTQ Pride flags by Today.com. The current pink, white and orange flag was created by Emily Gwen in 2018. Each shade of those colors has a different meaning, including femininity, serenity and peace.
In the new Scooby-Doo film, which was released Tuesday, and will debut on Cartoon Network on October 14, Velma crushes another female character, a costume designer named Coco Diablo. Throughout the movie, an infatuated Velma flirts with Coco. One scene shows Velma's first interaction with Coco, where her glasses fog up, her cheeks redden, and she says Jinkies - her classic tag line.