You want to know about Mystery Skulls???
You have come to the right the wrong a place! I will be the first to admit that I’m not the most knowledgeable about this fandom, but I can definitely give you a rough overview, based on what I’ve seen
(Pic above is by the absolutely fabulous @gabbygerbsdoodles, who graciously allowed me to use it, because it seemed perfect for the scenario. THANK YOU!)
So Mystery Skulls means one of two things. Mystery Skulls is actually the name of a band who have some very catchy songs, one of which is called “Ghost”. Back in 2014, @mysterybensmysteryblog created an animated music video for Ghost that was sort of an affectionate parody of Scooby Doo with characters based off of them. The characters’ team in the video is called Mystery Skulls as well, so to avoid confusion people often differentiate by referring to the band as “Mystery Skulls” and the animated characters as “Mystery Skulls Animated.” But some people just use Mystery Skulls for both, hence it meaning two things. (I, for example, don’t really post a lot of band-specific stuff, so I just use Mystery Skulls for both. It kind of depends on each person’s preference).
But what’s it all about? I mean, yes, the song “Ghost” is really really catchy, but fandoms don’t usually spring up around songs. Well, it comes down to that animated music video with the Scooby Doo parody. You’d think, based on the beginning of the video, that it’s just a well animated and cute, but ultimately plain parody, and that’s it, right? Wrong.
The story in the video was actually really deep and kind of a mystery itself, with lots of clues and hints peppered throughout that you didn’t really notice unless you re-watched it or were going through it frame-by-frame. It was a really interesting and compelling story, with awesome characters and beautiful animation, and a friggin catchy as hell song to back it all up, so obviously it garnered a lot of attention. People loved it, and a fandom kind of exploded around it as a result. We wanted to know more about the characters, we wanted the full story. And you know what happens in a fandom when we want answers. If we can’t find them, we make them up ourselves. And thus fanart and fic happened. So much.
I’m not 100% sure about this next part, but I think originally “Ghost” was supposed to be the only video Mysteryben planned on making? But it became so popular that 5 more videos were planned to flesh out the story. The second video, for the Mystery Skulls (band) song “Freaking Out” just came out last month, so you might have seen a resurgence in the fandom because of that. Especially because the latest video only gave us MORE questions, rather than less.
So, if you’re interested, I’d definitely suggest checking out the videos for “Ghost” and “Freaking Out” so you can get all caught up. And you can check out @mysterybensmysteryblog for lots of behind-the-scenes stuff like character profiles and production snippets and little tidbits of worldbuilding that haven’t made it into the videos yet. It’s a fun fandom with really interesting characters, especially if you’re a fan of crack or angst, because things tend to swing to those extremes :P
Hope that answers your questions! And I really hope you check it out!