Shaggy the Handler is a trilogy of Scooby-Doo (more specifically, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!) fics by Rorschach's Blot. They're a series of oneshots about Shaggy's experience as a war veteran.
Vietnam
is a simple fic, just shy of 1000 words, about Shaggy being a Vietnam veteran. While out with his friends, Shaggy gets a call from the wife of one of his army buddies. His friend has died and his wife wants Shaggy to come to the funeral.
Scars is the longest at 4000 words. Shaggy has a panic attack after hearing a train whistle. This leads to him meeting a police officer who is also a veteran. Eventually, Shaggy reunites with his friends and they solve a mystery at a war cemetery.
Let Sleeping Dogs revolves around Shaggy rescuing a lost girl. While away, Daphne and Velma uncover his past after getting curious about it.
Three idea snippets (incomplete and Word of God is that they are "unofficial" at the moment): Blood, Ghosts and Handling Hawaii.
The premise sounds silly, but the fanfics cover it seriously. The writer was inspired by a trip to a video store, where one television had some Scooby-Doo clips on and the other had a war film. The original cartoon took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so the idea of one of Mystery Inc. being a Vietnam veteran came to mind.
The Shaggy the Handler trilogy provides examples of:
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Shaggy's cowardice and Big Eater tendencies aren't just for humour's sake. It's because of his PTSD.
- Awful Truth: Shaggy didn't tell Mystery Inc. that he's a Shell-Shocked Veteran from the Vietnam War because he didn't want to shatter their idealistic world-view with stories of his experiences.Lisa: You never told them?
Shaggy: They'd never understand. Fred still lives in a world where people never die and the girls... well I guess that they're the same. - Big Eater: Deconstructed. Shaggy has such a big appetite because when he went back to find his first war dog, he forgot to tell someone to wait for him, so by the time he came back, all the choppers left without him. He spent the next week and a half trying to find the nearest fire support base, while experiencing near-starvation during that period. When he finally got there, he ate an entire box of C-Rations.
- Close to Home: Being a war veteran, Shaggy really doesn't like people vandalizing the graves of war veterans who died in action. In Scars, after Scooby tracks down the culprit (a crooked developer wanting to bulldoze a veterans cemetery and build a housing development over it), Shaggy gives the vandal a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown for doing such a thing, before calling the police to retrieve him.
- Composite Character: One of the snippets in Blood reveals that the Dracula from Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School is the same one from Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf.
- Covered with Scars: His clothes cover it up, but Shaggy has a lot of scars from the war.
- Crossover: In the unofficial snippets: Blood has Shaggy being recruited to help with the manhunt of fugitive Special Forces veteran John Rambo and Handling Hawaii has Thomas Magnum discovering (because of hilarious shenanigans involving Higgins, his dogs and a bet) that Shaggy is a Living Legend in the police/military dog-trainer and black ops circles.
- Dad the Veteran: Fred, Daphne, and Velma's fathers are all war veterans, though their dads dislike talking about their pasts as soldiers.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Shaggy volunteered in the Vietnam War as a war dog handler. Not even his friends know of this until the third fic. It's implied that, amongst other things, Shaggy was tortured in the war.
- Dark Fic: It's a non-Crack Fic trilogy about Shaggy being a Vietnam War veteran.
- Deconstruction Fic: The entire trilogy (and its unofficial snippets) deconstructs Shaggy's character and the 1960s/1970s setting of the original cartoon. Shaggy is a Vietnam veteran who won't reveal his past to even his best friends. His cowardice is due to him being a Shell-Shocked Veteran, his baggy clothes hide numerous scars, and his notorious appetite has roots in a time where he almost starved to death.
- Disabled in the Adaptation: Shaggy has PTSD from his time in Vietnam.
- Karmic Jackpot: In Scars, Shaggy saving a woman's purse from a thug by knocking him out with a single punch impresses a policeman enough to net Shaggy a ride back to Mystery Inc. after he misses the bus.
- Missing Child: In Let Sleeping Dogs, Shaggy looks for a little girl that went missing while out with her family. It turns out that she went to the bathroom, got lost, and hid in a log until she was rescued.
- Mercy Kill: Shaggy had to put-down his first war dog because he was injured by a bomb.
- Never Be Hurt Again: Shaggy is a Big Eater because he spent several days in near-starvation trying to get to safety after he was left behind by the military. The experience haunted him even after the war ended, and he never wanted to go through it again.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Vietnam, Shaggy, normally a Big Eater, leaves his food behind after receiving a call from the wife of one of his deceased army buddies. Fred thinks Shaggy found a new mystery and decided to stay out of it, but Daphne and Velma are worried.Daphne: I've never seen Shaggy leave food behind. What do you suppose it's wrong?
Fred: You know Shaggy. It's probably someone with a new mystery for us to solve.
Velma: And you think Shaggy would rush off to solve it by himself?
Fred: No. I think Shaggy would find a place to hide for a few days.
Daphne: I don't know, Fred. I don't know.- In Let Sleeping Dogs Daphne sees Fred more disheveled than she's ever seen him; this is because there's currently a little girl missing and every second counts when it comes to missing cases, prompting Daphne and Velma to similarly rush out the door.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Shaggy's cowardliness stems from his trauma over the Vietnam War. He still suffers from trauma and flashbacks surrounding the war.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: In the unofficial snippet Blood, Shaggy is able to pull one of these off on John freaking Rambo.
- Tank Goodness: Scars has a policeman Shaggy meets recount his days driving a tank during the Vietnam War with fondness.Policeman: I drove a tank, still miss it sometimes. Would have stayed in the army forever if not for the people telling me what to do and the others shooting at me. [Laughs] Shame I can't just by an M46 and a thousand acres to drive it in.
- Trauma Button: In Scars, Shaggy has a panic attack when he hears a train whistle, causing him to hide under a bench thinking he's in the battlefield again. Thankfully, a cop (who's also a fellow war veteran) finds Shaggy and calms him down.
