Previously on Femslash Friday, we’ve cut abusive tools loose and given fictional women the keys to direct their own lives. Today I want to talk about a board game character and a pretend lady from a game show for kids that prominently featured a capella music who stole stuff like “the history of medicine” and the leaning tower of Pisa, because it’s important to me that Miss Scarlet from Clue and Carmen Sandiego from Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego (oh, here’s a link to the damn song, go listen to it; I know you won’t be able to pay attention until you do) steal some diamonds and run off together into the sunset. A sexy board game piece and the evil female Indiana Jones? Yeah, I’m on board. It’s like two Catwomans (Catwomen?) getting married: awesome.
This is definitely the purest “Because I run this website” entry in the Femslash series. They’re not literary or even cinematic characters. Carmen Sandiego barely talks; Miss Scarlet is from a children’s board game. I can’t even claim the 1985 movie as part of this because I played the game all the time when I was a kid before I saw it so I never picture White Miss Scarlet when I think of her, just Regular Asian Miss Scarlet. I just feel like putting the two of them together, even though they don’t exist in the same game continuity, and I still own 1/3rd of this website so there’s nothing you can do about it; sorry.
There was a Clue-themed series of children’s mystery books, and they were terrible, and I loved them. The premise was always the same: for some reason Mr. Boddy was this very cheerful, fabulously wealthy naïf who was only best friends with murderous jewel thieves. He was like the Bertie Wooster of getting murdered. And I can’t find any quotes from the series online, but the setup would always be something like…oh, they’re all over watching a movie in Mr. Boddy’s screening room and everyone gets popcorn, but Miss Scarlet has popcorn with no butter and no salt and Mrs. Peacock has popcorn with salt and no butter and Mr. Green has popcorn with salt and butter (and so on), which becomes important later in identifying the killer, somehow, in a way I can’t quite remember. And then Mr. Boddy would show them all his latest treasure, and they’d all make punning asides to themselves about killing him and stealing it. So, say he had a new ruby-encrusted peacock statue, he’d show it to them and they’d all go into their killer inner monologues:
Birds of a feather flock together, thought Miss Scarlet, and I’ll have the finest feathers of them all once I’ve got that bird.
Mr. Boddy’s as dead as a dodo, thought Mr. Green.
Getting that peacock from Mr. Boddy will be as easy as duck soup, thought Mrs. White, and afterwards I’ll be free as a bird.
I’ll be mad as a wet hen if I don’t get my hands on that statue, thought Colonel Mustard.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, thought Professor Plum, and Mr. Boddy’s a real bird-brain if he thinks he’s going to keep it away from me.
I shouldn’t count my chickens before they’re hatched, thought Mrs. Peacock. Better keep an eagle eye on that statue the rest of the night.
That sort of thing. I just ate that shit up, I don’t know why. Oh, but by the end of every book you’d find out that Mr. Boddy wasn’t really dead, and you’d find out who tried to steal the artifact, and they’d begrudgingly give it back, and then for some horrible reason he’d invite them back to his mansion the next week. If Bruce Wayne wasn’t also Batman and suffered from weekly amnesia, he’d be Mr. Boddy, and Miss Scarlet would be his Catwoman.
Anyhow, Miss Scarlet was clearly the best of all of them because she was the only young hottie in a group of withered old chefs and ex-army dudes and non-tenured professors. She should have had a flock of Young Hottie friends. Look, if you’re a certain type of girl who grows up preferring a particular set of activities your only role models/avatars are Princess Peach and Miss Scarlet. You don’t want to be Princess Peach, necessarily, but you owe it to yourself and to women in general to select her instead of the toadstool guy when you’re playing Mario Kart, you know? Anyhow, Miss Scarlet meant a lot to me as a kid.
You know what else meant a lot to me as a kid? Youth-oriented game shows that required an appreciation for a capella vocal work and a hell of a lot of geography knowledge. You see where I’m going with this, obviously. Carmen Sandiego is, luckily, of the same exact moral alignment as Miss Scarlet — she loves to steal and she loves to blow shit up, but nobody ever gets hurt and she never gets in any real trouble. She’s as stern as Batman but not even 1/25th as serious, which is an important distinction. She just wears giant hats and gets to live wherever she wants and never has to, like, walk home and then pay a bill and then fall asleep watching The Simpsons on her laptop. Her life’s aces. And what’s more aces than two brilliant, talented jewel thieves of color falling in love and taking on the world together? Nothing, that’s what.
Do you need more convincing? Let me present you with a meet-cute for the damn ages:
“You’re never going to get the diamond out that way.”
“Excuse me? I’ve been stealing diamonds since — oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize who it was. Were you…?”
“I was, but you seem to have beat me to it.” Pause for rich and disarming laughter. A puzzling drink over an inquisitive table. Questions in both of their eyes. Then the two of them make a getaway — together. They’re both used to taking off alone.
It takes a little getting used to, going somewhere with someone when you’re used to going it alone, but once you make a few adjustments, you find that two can travel just as easily as one.
Roxanne Palmer (alias Roxy Drew) is a cartoonist and science journalist. You can see her stuff at roxydrew.com and roxydrew.tumblr.com.
Tags: carmen sandiego, clue, femslash friday, miss scarlet, roxanne palmer
“You don’t want to be Princess Peach, necessarily, but you owe it to yourself and to women in general to select her instead of the toadstool guy when you’re playing Mario Kart, you know?”
I DO. I was over the moon when Daisy got introduced to the Mario Kart games, because she was a brunette and her yellow dress was awesome.
Yes! And now there’s that new 3D Mario game (the one where you get to become cats), and you get to be Peach, or (uh, spoiler alert?) some other princess that does spin attacks and has brown hair, and they’re both objectively better than Mario, Luigi and Toad. Like, my husband always fights to be Peach because she’s the best at everything. And this is overwhelmingly exciting for me.
wait you can become cats?
Seriously: cats!
I PLAYED THIS AT PAX AND IT WAS MAGICAL.
I want to get it.
AND Daisy’s the fastest middleweight, so she’s the one to pick once you get good and start doing time trials.
I always pick Boo. SORRY. Ghosts 4eva
My husband is always Daisy and I’m Toad or Luigi, I don’t know what this says about our relationship.
I KNOW THIS SO WELL
This is in every way fantastic and I am fully on board, but wtf is up with that profile drawing of Carmen? It looks like Rob Liefeld had a hand in it, except she’s almost entirely covered in clothing.
She looks so Batman-y!
HOLY SHIT THAT LAST PICTURE
I’M GRINNING SO HARD
THIS IS THE BEST FEMSLASH FRIDAY EVER
There was a Clue-themed series of children’s mystery books, and they were terrible, and I loved them.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
I COMPLETELY forgot about these an now I want to read ALL OF THEM.
Yes!! I had Midnight Phone Calls.
I had alllll of them (thanks Half Price Books). Between those and You Be The Jury I thought I was a hot shit child detective. So cheesy, but so much fun. Glorified logic puzzles really.
To keep you reading, they had one ingenious recurring hook: every volume ended with Boddy’s murder. And there could be no question that he was dead–he’d been bludgeoned/blown up/poisoned/incinerated/stabbed/suffocated, etc., in plain sight, on the page. And the solution in the back pages even abandoned the prevailing zaniness for a somber disclosure of the killer’s identity, as if to say, “Jokes? You want jokes at a time like this? A man is dead. A man is dead this day.”
Yet this was Book Six you’d just finished. Six, out of a series of eighteen. So, it was off to the library for Book Seven to find out how the authors extricated Boddy this time. And the extrication, dispensed of in the opening narration, was always incredibly, wonderfully lame:
“And I might have died quite horribly!–had it not been Thursday, the day of the week when I always swap out the canisters of poison gas for tanks of eau de cologne. As it was, I came out smelling like a rose, a state of affairs which lasted for some months. I was so pleased with the effect that I couldn’t stay mad at Mrs. White for knocking open the release valve with a silver candlestick. Besides, she claimed she was only trying to save time on her chores by polishing the candlestick on the valve, and the valve on the candlestick, and I’m very ready to believe her.”
I remember the popcorn mystery that Mallory alluded to. It exists! And as a kid I remember having no idea how to solve that one. I was really frustrated because I didn’t even make the connection between the paragraphs of description about popcorn and somebody’s greasy fingers or whatever.
What I’m saying is that I was a pretty stupid child.
I’m just here to say that at a dinner party I once met the head writer of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego and I fangirled at him like crazy. He has gone one to write for many more, impressive shows, but that is the show that made my childhood and he seemed really happy about it!
There was a Clue game for the Sega Genesis that my parents rented a few times for us. I kid you not, Miss Scarlet was guilty a good 90% of the time. When you finally accused her, she would laugh and toss her hair.
Also, everyone should go to the library right now and read all the Clue books (you can probably do it, too; they’re pretty light reading for anyone over the age of ten) because they don’t take themselves seriously at all and they taught me the word “quipped.”
I’m feeling grumpy today, and I was fully prepared to get my back up, all “They are NOT even in the same CONTINUITY what is this NONSENSE.” But this has won me over completely and utterly and I love it, and I am now in a happy femslashy mood, which is the best kind of happy mood.
“He was like the Bertie Wooster of getting murdered.” Ha! I shall now incorporate “He was like the Bertie Wooster of [x]” into my daily conversation.
She was like the Bertie Wooster of faking orgams.
He was like the Bertie Wooster of competitive fashion reality shows.
He was like the Bertie Wooster of framing his aunt for murder.
It’s so versatile!
Femslash Friday is baaack! Yay!
And this is utterly delightful.
raise your hand if the carmen sandiego PC game where she’d randomly show up and intone you’ll never catch me before abandoning you in paris to talk to a bunch of badly animated dumbasses was a formative gay experience
Wasn’t there also the one where she traveled through time, and stole fairly obscure historical artifacts like The Doom Book?
Because that was an extremely formative history nerd experience.
Oh man, THIS. Never again have I gotten such odd and tingly feelings for a 24-bit animated character.
Miss Scarlet was definitely my favorite Clue character of the books, but nothing endures as clearly in my mind as Colonel Mustard’s inability to go two fake-murders without challenging someone to a duel. I don’t know why Past Me thought it was so hilarious. But it was. and is. and I was glad to see some semblance of that duel-thirsty Mustard temper in the 1985 movie.
Please tell me you’re going to turn this post into a running adventure comic series. I’m willing Kickstart it if I have to.
You may claim that you couldn’t find quotes online, but I swear that those example pun-delivery monologues are what they said in one of the books, verbatim.
This femslash is perfect and the only thing that would make it more perfect is a Storify of all the @mallelis tweets that led up to it, because that first version of them meeting over a diamond was even better.
yayyyy
Other Femslash Fridays I’d love to illustrate, off the top of my head: X-Men (Rogue/anyone), ASOIAF (Sansa/Dany), Animorphs (Cassie / Rachel)
If Femslash Friday ever did Cassie/Rachel I would probably immediately sublime into vapor. CLEARLY, IT MUST BE DONE. (I’ve been wanting to be a disembodied cloud intelligence for a while now, so really there’s no downside.)
I am 100% onboard with this. You make an excellent case.
OH GOD I READ THOSE CLUE-THEMED MYSTERY BOOKS.
They all just like, HUNG OUT at the mansion. No reason given.
“I just ate that shit up, I don’t know why.” Seems pretty clear to me. In fact, I believe it explains quite a lot about Mallory.
Also, Carmen leaning over the diamond case: UNF.
Is it strange that I’m kind of worried about Carmen not getting her hat back in the last picture? Or is she the kind of woman with a closet full of those hats?
I WAS ALSO IMMEDIATELY CONCERNED FOR THE HAT
it’s ok guys, carmen keeps a special nanoscale tracking device in the brim.
“Honor among thieves? Surely you jest. If I’m going to prison, I’m taking Carmen with me!” I’m voting for a Carmen/Miss Scarlet/Contessa love triangle.
I suppose there’s nothing that tells you that you’re at least 20 years too old than the statement that Miss Scarlet is of course Asian, when I clearly remember her as slinky, brunette, and very-not-Asian (and that was the US version of the the game, not even the UK (‘Cluedo’) version). That, and the fact that Carmen Sandiego is something my kids watched.
Regardless, I always preferred being Miss Scarlet. Or Professor Plum, because purple.
“She just wears giant hats and gets to live wherever she wants and never has to, like, walk home and then pay a bill and then fall asleep watching The Simpsons on her laptop. Her life’s aces.”
Where in the world is this life and how do I get it for myself
Yes. Yes, I did it. I killed Yvette. I hated her, so much… it-it- the f – it -flam – flames. FLAMES on the side of my face, breathing-breathl- heaving breaths. Heaving breaths..
I actually got to play a live-action version of Clue. My 6th grade teacher helped us develop the board game/movie into a role play where the students were the guests and one of us would secretly be Mr. Boddy. If you solve the puzzle and name the killer you got some tiny forgettable prize but if the killer took everybody out without getting caught they got tons of extra credit and the admiration/seething jealousy of their peers.
The dinner guests were looking for these distinctive red clues that helped get the name of our Mr. Boddy. Each clue had a different math problem on it that we needed to solve to get the letters of the name of our classmate. But they needed to keep their head on a swivel because Mr. Boddy would go around eliminating players by tapping them on the shoulder (because real murder is frowned upon prior to high school). When someone was killed they were forced to stop, sit or dramatically lay on that spot on the floor, and forfeit their solved clues to the first still living guest that found them.
We played throughout the entire k-6 school after hours. It was just this one class of 30 roaming the whole place for 2+ hours one weekday.
Oh, I was Mr. Boddy. My mother has never looked prouder than the moment I told her I “was so good at killing people” that even when the game was over a lot of people weren’t sure who the killer was.
Everything about this is perfect to me.
While you’re at it, can you also write a for-grown-ups Carmen Sandiego novelization called Where the Fuck Is Carmen Sandiego? Thanks.
I don’t even think I knew Carmen San Diego was a show, my sister and I just played the PC game a lot with a big outdated map we had. But this is great A+
I was a huge fan of Carmen Sandiego as a kid, but I went in a different direction with the femslash. I always thought that she and Nancy Drew would have great foe-yay.
Clue was strangely important to me as a kid, because it was one of the few games where I could play as someone who looked like me. I mean, sure I was like a seven-year-old Korean boy, but it was just immensely satisfying in a lot of ways that I can’t even explain.
Clue was strangely important to me as a kid, because it was one of the few games where I could play as someone who looked like me. I mean, sure I was like a seven-year-old Korean boy, but it was just immensely satisfying in a lot of ways that I can't even explain.