All right, I'll admit it: Alan Smithee is my father. This is my first gig as a writer, and I used nepotism to get it.

I've never watched an episode of Daria, believe it or not. But before I started writing this script, I decided I'd better bone up on the show. There weren't any episodes airing on MTV, I ended up reading the Daria Diaries and the Database. That's where I got the idea that Amy's sister Helen was a complete bitch who was totally obsessed with time and with staying young. I thought: "Wow, it'd totally suck to have her as a mom." Anyway, I tried to be as accurate with the details as possible. I might've misspelled or mispronounced a couple of names from Daria, but it doesn't really matter since that's a totally different show.

Thank/blame John Berry for the choice of alias: it came from the first "Behind the Glasses," which he wrote. In it, Brittany referred to me as "Carried Wildly." As for why I (and everyone else) chose to have aliases, the reason is laid out in the Abruptly Amy FAQ.

This fanfic was more or less a "When Bad Movies of the Week Collide." First you had Rita and her oh-so-serious drinking problem, requiring immediate intervention. Then you had Amy's overly-emotional custody battle with Andrea's mother. In a half-hour period, one was destined to get absorbed by the other, and since Amy is the alpha daughter of the family when Helen isn't around, it's only natural that her problems would get more attention... even if they were of her own making. Anyway, I tried to put several twists on the usual Movie of the Week cliches...

• Regarding the Parent Comes to Reclaim Child from Her Loving Adopted Home, it could work two ways. One cliché (the most typical) has the evil mother ignore the best interests of her child and, through lying and scheming, make "the system" believe that she is the one wronged, not the adopted family. Usually the "good" family ends up thwarting her schemes seconds before the evil mother wins it all, and five minutes before the end of the episode. Naturally I twisted this cliché by having Andrea's mother seem less-than-threatening. Indeed, one might argue that if it weren't for Amy's paranoia, everything would have been... a.o.k. ; >
• The other PCTRCFHLAO cliché has the adopted mother feeling threatened by the birth mother, but having a change of heart in the end when she realizes that the birth mother is harmless. She offers to let the birth mother keep her child, but the birth mother selflessly refuses, noting how happy her child is with the adopted family. This cliché also works in situations with step-mother vs. real mother. My twist on that is that Mrs. Hecuba never even has the chance to give up Andrea, as Amy's paranoia has led Kristovo to dig up incriminating dirt on her.
• In both cases, the selfless ones always win in the end. However, in this fanfic, Amy's selfishness is the cause of her victory. Heck, in this episode, she was almost as nasty as Helen.

Otherwise, I relied on a few more clichés, including the Your Enemy is the Last Person You'd Suspect and the hokey voices-in-your-head acting as your conscience.

Now on to the references...

• Yes, as I'm sure many of you will gather, the too-short-skirt, the fantasy of Amy strangling Helen, and the fight in the unisex bathroom were all nods to Ally McBeal. Compared to that show, the characters in Abruptly Amy are positively mellow.
• I swiped the following lines from "I Don't":

  RITA: You've been so busy fighting for custody of Andrea, I've barely even registered on your radar!

  A variation of the line Amy spoke to Daria: "Haven't you noticed? My sisters are so busy competing with each other that I don't even register on their radar."

  RUTH: (sighing) Oh Rita, why must you say such things?

  RITA: (bitter) Out loud?

  A variation of the exchange between Helen and Amy when Amy first arrived at the resort.

  AMY: (to Helen) Nothing but the best for Mom's favorite daughter's darling offspring.

  A variation of the line Helen spoke after learning that her mother would be paying for Rita's daughter's wedding.

  It certainly tosses into doubt Carrie D. Wildly's statement that she'd never watched an episode of Daria. But then again, she could have easily used the lines without knowing that they'd been taken. ; >

• The Windsor Hills Resort that Helen alluded to in her conversation with "Aaron" was, of course, the resort where Cousin Erin got married in "I Don't."
• During Helen's rant to Danziger at the beginning of Act Three, she made references to A Few Good Men, her letter to Mr. O'Neill in the Daria Diaries, and the O.J. Simpson trial.
• It really is true that a tax-exempt institution, like a church organization, is supposed to remain politically neutral. That's why the Christian Coalition got in hot water for not-so-subtly urging people to vote for the Republican Party, and why C.C. head Ralph Reed resigned and became George W. Bush's campaign advisor.

On to "evil" Helen...

First, a couple of points:

• The reference to Helen having had facelifts (in Act One) just had to do with my belief that she looks awfully young for a 47-48 year old woman. That doesn't mean I actually think she had cosmetic work done; more likely, when the Daria artists first conceived of her, they didn't have a particular age in mind. Thus, she could easily pass for thirty-seven as well as forty-seven.
• Helen's "wig" was just a joke based on my query on the PPMB about why that woman's hair never got mussed up. During the fire scene in "Fire!", when even Quinn looked less than perfect, Helen's hair remained immaculate. The only times I can recall her hair getting messed were in "The Teachings of Don Jake," "Pierce Me" (I think), and "Just Add Water" -- and two of those times, her hair was in a different style anyway. I joked that it must be because Helen's hair is actually made of Teflon.

Does the fact that I portrayed her as a bitchy schemer mean that she's no longer my favorite character on Daria? Not at all. I will always have sympathy for Helen, but sometimes I think it's fun to look at a character from other people's perspectives. And I know that some fans out there view Helen as The Enemy: a controlling, tightly-wound social climber who doesn't really value individualism. They see her as someone whom Daria should set herself against rather than heed her advice. And I suspect that many blame her for Daria's character shift in Season Four, since it's she who suggested Daria be more tolerant of people, leading her to tolerate Jodie's hypocritical behavior in "Partner's Complaint."

My over-the-top portrayal of Helen in "A.A. A.O.K." was meant to show that the most negative of the negative opinions of her are a bit silly. At the same time, it helped express something that has troubled me about Helen's character. While I'm happy with the way she's been portrayed these past couple of seasons, I wonder whether she truly has become more accepting of Daria's nonconformity (while Daria has at the same time softened her stance toward social interaction), or whether she has just learned to be more stealthy in her attempts to urge Daria out of her shell. I.e: instead of outright demanding that Daria smile more so that she can be more socially acceptable (as she did in "The Misery Chick"), has Helen learned to play on Daria's turf, give arguments for social conformity in a way that Daria can understand, and thus have more trouble refuting? Isn't that the gift of a crafty lawyer?

The truth most likely lies somewhere in between. For instance, I doubt that Helen is so cynical she would pretend to support Daria's individualism (the way she did in "Partner's Complaint") while charting her course toward conformity. At the same time, you can't say that Helen has let go of the agenda she's been peddling since Season One. Only one thing is certain: Helen believes that she is always working in other people's best interests. She never puts her needs first, the way "evil" Helen does in "A.A. A.O.K." Still, I would like to get a bit more insight into the forces that dictate the way she interacts with Daria. In the Driven Wild Universe, I argue that Helen's pushiness is based on unconscious feelings of inadequacy. Part of my agenda in that continuum is to get her to recognize those feelings.

I think it's rather funny that in "A.A. A.O.K.," Helen and Amy are arch-enemies, while in the Driven Wild Universe, they're about to become closer than ever before. What's even more ironic is that in spite of the wide differences between the two continuums, Rita is basically the same character: whiny, spineless, and resentful, like a grown-up, embittered Stacy.

Oh, and Rutherford is the name of Amy/Helen/Rita's hometown in both the A.A. episodes and the Driven Wild Universe.

"A.A. A.O.K." as a satire...

This fic was almost more difficult to write than "Abruptly Amy: A New Beginning." The original A.A., while not without flaws, was able to maintain its wacko, satirical tone throughout its six acts. But soon after I began this fanfic, I realized that relentless satire would not work in the context of eight episodes. No one will want to sit through episodes full of characters they don't give a damn about, and in a pure satire, character development is pushed into the background in favor of social commentary. So in "A.A. A.O.K." (and soon in A.A. #8 as well), I walked the tightrope between satire and character development, and between a series that only serves to mock social/TV/fanfic clichés and one that has a few original developments.

In some cases, this balance produced some awkwardness, like the first Rita-is-drunk scene. I didn't know whether to play it as a mockery of similar scenes in bad Movies of the Week, or whether to respect Rita as an individual and take her problems seriously.

Also, figuring out the extent of character development was a challenge. I didn't want Amy, Rita, Andrea, etc. to be empty shells, but at the same time, gain character development, lose satire. It's true even in the case of Daria. Oddly enough, I feel as though Amy -- with her widely vacillating thoughts and feelings, is my best-drawn character of the series.

Acknowledgements

Let me take a moment to thank my co-conspirators: C.E. Forman, Mike Quinn, John Berry, Crazy Nutso, and John Takis. There willingness and enthusiasm to tackle a project such as this has truly astonished me. It tells me that 1) they understood, and appreciated, the joke that underlies "Abruptly Amy (The Spinoff That Never Was)," and 2) they liked the thought of being a writer "team" as much as I did. ; >

Our group coalesced sometime in July, when I went in search of fanfic authors who I believed could carry on the spirit of A.A. (In doing so, I passed by several other worthy authors who were consumed by their own writing projects, whom I'd still like to work with.) We agreed to each write an episode, and from there, our project could have easily fallen apart. (Heh, a few of you out there probably wish it had.) But my co-conspirators are an honorable and hard-working group, and they have been good about getting on to writing the episodes. Because of them, this may be the first and last multi-fanfic author project to appear on such a grand scale. There have been Round Robin fanfics (where each author writes a scene or scenes in one fic) and collaborations, but never something that imitates the feel of a writing team.

Special, special thanks to: Mike Quinn for speculating in his mock DRR for "Abruptly Amy: A New Beginning" that the show might have legs after the pilot episode; to C.E. Forman for being so enthusiastic about doing not one, but two follow-up episodes to the pilot, thus inspiring me to go ahead and put together a writing team; to Crazy Nutso for showcasing the Abruptly Amy fics at Daria's Rubber Room; to John Berry for his TV Guide "cover" and for his willingness to possibly put A.A. in animated form; and to John Takis, for his perpetual enthusiasm for the project (heck, he drew four "screen captures" for the pilot) and for his willingness to come in semi-late in the game to write an episode.

Also thank yous should be extended to the many other people who have expressed enthusiasm about the project, particularly Chad Page, Canadibrit, and Milo Minderbender.

If you're still with me... thanks for reading!

This fanfic is the property of Kara Wild, copyright October 2000. All rights reserved.