"Rose-Colored Lenses," my very first Daria fic, premiered April 18, 1999. I've already listed my reasons for writing it in the postscript, except for one, which I alluded to in my essay, "On the Subject of Quinn and Rape." I wanted to write a fanfic (which became a series of fanfics) that gave Quinn depth without causing her to go through a traumatic event. Since I figured the actual show would never have Quinn get raped or be threatened by violence, I wondered what other catalyst might spark a change within her. Then I recalled "Through a Lens Darkly" and my desire for Quinn to have a vanity crisis similar to the one that Daria had had. Not only would such a crisis prompt Quinn to look inside herself a bit more, but it could also address something which hadn't been addressed in fanfic before: Quinn's intelligence. It struck me as interesting that there were several fics that had Quinn uncovering a sensitive side ("Mazel Tov," "My Quinn's Delayed Reaction"), but none that suggested she was really intelligent. Anyway, I wrote the fic, and was thrilled when my very first feedback came from John Berry. Back then, he was one of the Fanfic Gods to me (of course, I also believed that all of the fanfic authors were in their thirties), and his response meant a lot. Still does.
"Rose-Colored Lenses" embodies the style of fics from my "early" period, most of which people have never seen. The "early" fanfics that I've posted are that and my shorty fic, "A Desperately Needed Ending." They are characterized by a general lightness in tone and an emphasis on wisecracks. Before I wrote RCL, I had penned a draft for Daria Day: 2000, where Daria and Jane announced that they were trying to sell the show to the all-important teenage male viewer by featuring a season-opening appearance by Beavis and Butt-head. The material included Daria and Jane suffering as they told lame jokes designed to win over the horny (Daria, about the Fashion Club: "They dress hot, and underneath, they're even hotter.") and a clip taken from "Beavis and Butt-head" that featured the old Quinn (hint: she bore little resemblance to the Quinn we see now -- and no, she didn't actually appear on B&B; I made it up). I ended up scrapping DD 2000 because I felt that my jokes were lame and that my characterizations were off. Damn, I really wish I had kept it. I'd've published it posthumously, or whatever. ; >
After I wrote RCL, I had two fics in the plans that never got written. One featured Jane, Helen, and Quinn getting felled by a terrible flu bug, forcing Daria to have to deal with school on her own, minus her Partner in Crime. Meanwhile, Helen and Quinn would have had to confront their compulsive behavior towards work and popularity. And Jake would have gotten so spooked by all of the illness in his house, he'd have pulled a Howard Hughes. Along with this, I was also planning to write a two-part fic called "English Impatient," where O'Neill and his students travel to England to see a Shakespeare play in the actual Globe theatre, and chaos ensues. It would have drawn heavily upon my experiences as a student abroad in England. The problem was, I came up with several good subplots, but no decent main plot for Daria and Jane. Plus, I thought it wouldn't hold people's interests. Silly me, it probably would have. ; > "The Tie That Chokes" was originally going to be my fourth or fifth fic, but I got so scared that someone else would beat me to the idea, I decided to make it my second. And thus, my tilt toward character development and dramedy began...
This was the easiest full-length fanfic I ever wrote or have ever written. The emotion was all right there in my mind, waiting to burst out in a script. I remember writing feverishly in the middle of the night or during one of my seminars, blind and deaf to everything else. This fic began with a simple question: why don't fanfics ever portray a sisterly relationship between Helen and Aunt Amy? There had to be layers of history beneath their strained rapport, and I was extremely interested to explore it. In particular, I wondered why Amy and Helen both such stand-offish characters, reluctant to share their pain and vulnerability. (All right, so I don't have much to go on with Amy, other than her comments to Daria in "I Don't." But the fact that she is very similar to Daria made me believe that she, too, has a natural tendency to bury her feelings deep inside.)
Questions begat more questions. Didn't Helen ever resent the way Daria so often brushed off her attempts to give advice? What kind of life might Amy lead when she wasn't talking to Daria? What problems could she have? What was her relationship with Quinn (whom she never spoke to directly in "I Don't") and Jake?
Snicker all you want, but I found it surprisingly easy to write a strong fic that didn't center around Daria. When I finished it, I immediately thought: "This is ten times better than "Rose-Colored Lenses." (Other people seem willing to give RCL more credit than I have.) And though "The Tie That Chokes"'s value in my collection has slowly declined over time, the fact remains that it set up not just the conflict in the Barksdale family, but also the beginning of Helen's self-examination, which we see in later fics like "Breaking the Mold" and "An Uneasy Marriage." It is a crucial fic in my story arc.
Given the amount of acclaim this fanfic received upon its debut in late May of 1999, I'm a little surprised it isn't considered to be one of my classics. (That honor is shared by "Rose-Colored Lenses," "'Shipped Out," and "Andrea Speaks!" amongst others.) At the time, it received rave reviews from some of the premiere fanfic authors and webkeepers, and propelled me to the Featured Authors page at Outpost Daria. The main reason I wrote "That Thing You Say" was to offer a take on Daria the character that was -- surprise, surprise -- contrary to the one that I saw in many popular fanfics. The Daria of fanfiction was typically aloof to everyone in her family, save the mythical Aunt Amy. While that characterization seemed appropriate for Season One, it did not gel with the direction in which I felt Daria and the show were moving. Throughout Season Two, Daria's walls were crumbling, and I aimed to show that.
Nonetheless, a few things did catch me by surprise as I wrote "That Thing You Say," particularly the scene where Helen first accuses Daria of not loving her. I had originally planned for it to be longer and lighter, with Daria joking that their conversation was like something out of Party of Five. But the scene I wrote on first try (a rarity in my case) got its point across in a tight, emotional, and highly effective manner... so I kept it.
"That Thing You Say" also confirmed my growing fascination with Helen as a character. From that fanfic on, I knew that I would be developing her more. What I find interesting is that her characterization grows more and more subtle with each DWU fic in which she plays a lead role; thus, in "That Thing You Say," she seems a bit crude to me. Very loud, very angry (but then again, she was nursing anger over her fall-out with Amy). Many will note that Helen on the show has never acted resentful toward her family the way she does in this fic. That's true, but that Helen has also never had a catalyst to stir up bitter, angry feelings the way she did when Amy entered the picture in "The Tie That Chokes." Had Amy never shown up, Helen would likely have never given Daria's chilly attitude toward her a second thought. Also, Daria on the show has displayed a classiness that fanfiction often fails to capture. In those Season Four episodes where she confided in Helen, Daria told her mom, without using The Words, that she cared about her.
Newbies to Daria fandom might read this fic and think that it is an alternate version of "Lane Miserables," which aired that same year. In fact, "'Shipped Out" actually came out a month beforehand, before we had an idea what the episode would be like. Several people freaked when they saw the similarities, and that led to the quasi-mythology that my fanfics could predict the future. (The last fic that could make that claim was "Charge of the Math Brigade," since after that I began slowing down and the show has ended, obviously, before this continuum could.)
At the time I wrote it, I was a major Daria/Trent anti-'shipper. Trent was a nice guy. Cute. But clearly not right for Daria. How was it that so many people felt otherwise? More annoyingly, how was it that so many people made it the entire basis for viewing the show??? I was dreading the mega 'shipper ep. that would have Daria and Trent sharing a house to avoid the Lane siblings. We had received screen captures from England (where the ep. had been aired first, mistakenly) that showed Trent sitting with Daria on her bed, sharing an (it seemed) amorous look. I wanted to put my two cents in about their "relationship" before the episode fanned the flames. I'm actually surprised no one beat me to it, although C.E. Forman's "Driven Wild" had latent anti-'shipper tendencies.
If "The Tie That Chokes" was the easiest to write, "'Shipped Out" took the least amount of time -- one-and-a-half weeks. During that time, I had great laugh-out-loud fun writing bits like Trent's song "You're a Liar, I'm on Fire," the Jane/Jesse future sequence, and the encounter with Barry Bukowski, which I came up with on impulse.
"'Shipped Out" was rather notorious when it first came out. Anti-'shippers cheered and 'shippers nervously said that they disagreed. There was no flammage, mostly because the way I had Daria get over Trent was so true to the show, it wasn't in-your-face nasty. That's all I meant for it to be: realistic. I got tired of seeing teen shows where the smart girl and the rebel-with-whom-she-has-great-chemistry-but-nothing-else-in-common hook up, and we're supposed to believe they could magically gel. I applauded, and still applaud, Glenn Eichler's courageous stand against these teen show cliches, which is why I was filled with such disappointment when he and the other writers came up with the love triangle.
As with my "Quinn is really smart theory," once the show took the stand that Daria and Trent did not belong together, this fic and my continuum lost some of its edge. Ironically, now that Trent has been removed as Daria's object of affection, I've grown to like him better. It would have been nice if they'd focused on an ep. showing Trent trying to grow up and improve his life, but I suspect the writer's were afraid that any improvement to his character would just refuel the "Daria and Trent will reunite!" fire. Which is a shame.
This fanfic basically showcases Season Two Quinn with the gloves off. I posted "Cheered Down" the afternoon before "It Happened One Nut," the premiere ep of Season Three's second half, aired, and thus my take on Quinn reflects the influence of Daria's first two seasons more than it does the next two.
Now what do I mean by "gloves off"? Well, I've always seen Quinn as a survivor, someone who would fight tooth and nail for her popularity if she felt that without it, she would be doomed. She showed that kind of potential in select Season One and Two episodes, like "Cafe Disaffecto," "The Daria Hunter," and "Pierce Me." "Cheered Down" was the chance for Quinn to let that fiestiness flow unchecked. Yet frustratingly enough, the fiesty Quinn gave way to the more wishy-washy Quinn of Seasons 3 and 4, causing me to wonder whether I had acted wisely in making her so strong-willed. Well I'd still like to think that Quinn under fire would act the way she did in "Cheered Down." And I still think that of all my Quinn fics, this one provides the best character study.
Grrrr... if MTV had aired the episodes in order (IHON was #306), I would not have committed a couple of errors that I now have to live with. Both of these errors have to do with Tiffany. The first took place during "Andrea Speaks!" (see above), where Tiffany reads the index cards at a normal speed. The second had to do with my assumption that Tiffany was not really stupid, but a shrewd manipulator who played both sides in hopes of gaining more power in the F.C. Only when she got that power (ex: when Sandi makes her vice-president in "Cheered Down") would she become more assertive and self-confident. Think Heather Duke after Heather Chandler bit the dust. In actuality, I don't think it's such a bad thing that these deviations from the show exist in my fanfics, as I wish the writers still made Tiffany ambiguous enough that she could go either way, toward idiot or toward manipulative wizard. But because they haven't, I'll excuse Tiffany's erosion by claiming that she became as braindead as she now is through taking drugs.
This was the first fic where I really had to struggle to make it turn out half-decently. After the "None in the Family" two-parter, I thought this would be mostly a fun episode, with bits like Trent's song already etched in my mind. Instead, I immediately ran into the problem of Jane and Sandi's characters... or rather, their lack of them. At that point, after Season Three, we really hadn't seen much of Jane's thought-processes outside of "See Jane Run" and "Jane's Addition," a fact which drove me to write my essay "The Unflappable Jane Lane" as a way of venting. I started to worry whether I'd written Jane correctly, whether SJR was really enough to show us that she had yearnings to be part of the mainstream. Happily, my decision to make Jane run for student body president paid off in "The 'F' Word."
Jane was hard, but Sandi... oh boy. After three seasons, she was still little more than Quinn's bitchy nemesis. I started off wanting to make her seem less evil, more multilayered than previous fanfics had portrayed her, but sadly I think I made her even worse. Making Jane out to be a potential murderer (a la Columbine) because she's an outcast was truly low. What I didn't put across as well as I could have was that Sandi's desperation to save face in the election was very similar to Quinn's desperation to hold on to her popularity in "Cheered Down." As a result, Quinn did an incredibly nasty thing to Brittany, and Sandi was even crueler to Jane because she had less respect for her. To Sandi in "Outvoted," unpopular people were already used to being maligned, so Jane wouldn't suffer if she were picked on a little more. Second, Sandi didn't resort to true nastiness until her mother implied that she didn't have the guts to hold onto power. I made Linda a little over the top in this fic, I'll admit, but it got the job done. And once Sandi learned that her mother was trying to fix the election's outcome, she really, really wanted to show she could win on her own.
Thing is, originally Sandi was meant to have an accomplice. In the first draft of "Outvoted," I had her running to Tori Jericho, aka "The Popular Girl in 'The Invitation,'" for advice. Together, they would plot to seize advantage in the election with whatever tactics would work, no matter how ruthless. Because The Popular Girl is an amusing character, her presence would probably have diffused some of the nastiness of their behavior, and Sandi would not have been completely to blame. I wound up cutting The Popular Girl, though, because she took up too much space and required too much of a background explanation (How did she know Sandi? Where had she gone since "The Invitation"?). This allowed me to focus more on Sandi. Unfortunately, a lot of Sandi wasn't pretty, although to her credit, she felt terrible in the end when she learned that her mother had pulled strings to make her vice-president.
What I like about this fic: One, the politics between Sandi and Quinn. Even though Quinn is "on top" now, she recognizes the vulnerability of her position and works to degrade Sandi and enthusiastically support Jane. Two, the nice Daria/Jane tension. Daria struggles with her friend's mainstream leanings while Jane realizes that Daria does have a point about her needing to have a plan for running the school before she gets elected. Three, a good role for Jodie, who was underused in Season Three. She was pragmatic, yet idealistic. Four, there was some good humor in this fic -- Trent's song and the students' reaction, Ms. Li and Linda Griffin's mutual delight in tearing down Helen, Jane's Hillary-esque "listening tour," et cetera. Many people also thought Jane's quip about the outdated textbooks was appropriate.
Also, it showed that being unpopular doesn't necessarily make you a great person. While Jane was not as ruthless as Sandi, she still ran for president due to mostly selfish reasons, and at first was not even interested in what students had to say.
What I disliked: I wish I had toned down Sandi's behavior a little more or been clearer about what was driving it. Also, the third act started to drag a bit toward the end, around the time of Daria and Jane's phone conversation. In the future, I might do a bit of pruning. Thirdly, the memories of this fic being a horrible, hateful pain are still fresh in my mind. I really did not like it when I first released it, and was sure everyone else would think it sucked. I don't think I would suffer over a fic quite as much until "In Her Own Words."
Of all my DWUs, I would say this is the weakest one in terms of structure. Unlike "Cheered Down," "None in the Family," and "Outvoted," there were no surprise twists or complex relationship patterns. It's pretty simple and straight-forward: Quinn isn't doing well in math, Jake helps her, Quinn betrays him, Quinn feels bad, Quinn and Jake make up, The End. There isn't even much of a B-plot. Tiffany's pathetic display of leadership with regards to the Fashion Expo could have been more of a subplot, but wasn't. You get some idea that Helen is jealous of Quinn and Jake's bond over math, feels like she has been displaced as the go-to person in the family, and is getting sick of her work... but it really isn't played up. Same with Daria's suspicion of Mr. Phelps. In short, lots of things that will become an issue in the future are just kernels in this fic. The most noteworthy subplot is Quinn's attempt to fill Sandi's shoes as Fashion Club president, and the way she subtly shows Sandi-like behavior as a result.
I think the best things about this fic are that it gave Jake something to do other than be an idiot, and it set up the intense relationship between Quinn and Mr. Phelps. Not to mention the fact that it is the true beginning of Quinn the Brain. Before, we saw that she could do math but wasn't truly committed. Now she's at least focused on doing well to please Jake.
A funny note: I had a "Sick, Sad World" promo that poked fun at Jennifer Love-Hewitt on the "Daria Movie Rumors" website, not realizing that the very next week, the Adelman brothers would put out the actual movie fanfic (which eventually inspired me to write "Abruptly Amy"). So one of the more amusing bits in OAV turned out to be a little psychic.
What I didn't like: because the storyline was so simple, it also felt a little flat. I blame it on burn-out. After wrestling with the last four fics, especially the headache that was "Outvoted," I didn't have the energy to put many elaborate twists into my story. By the time I wrote it in October, I was back in school for my final semester, working to earn my degree, and just wanted to move the plot along with the fewest complications possible. Also, some of the humor and bonding felt forced. As you well know, Jake isn't my favorite character, so writing funny antics for him didn't come as naturally to me as it did to some other authors. Even so, I did like his interaction with the no-nonsense Phelps and his scene with Helen in Act Three.
Overall, I think this fic has a lot more meat than it would appear, but it still feels like something is missing.
This is not among the most brilliant of the DWU fics, but in its own way, it is very important. Like "Of Absolute Value," it is a bridge fic, setting up events to come. "Breaking the Mold" is the first fic after the "None in the Family" two-parter to suggest that things are not all right between Helen and Jake, and that their problems are deeper than one weekend fight can suggest. It also introduces Greg Valmont as Helen's friend and a future threat to her marriage with Jake.
More to the point, it gives us the essence of Helen -- her need for acceptance, her belief that the only way she can achieve it is by not making any mistakes, and her gradual realization that she can mess up, and that it can even help her learn more about herself. Of course, Helen was preaching to Daria the need to accept flaws in other people since Season Two; but it's one thing to say that to another person, another to accept it within yourself. Helen's lament to the Lanes in Act Three that "everyone's always expected [her] to be perfect," including her mother and father, brings more resonance to the scenes in "None in the Family, Part 2" where Helen describes what it felt like to grow up with a cold, perfectionistic father. These feelings get more exploration in "An Uneasy Marriage" and especially in the "All But Forgotten"/"Memory Road" two-parter.
On another level, this fic presented an opportunity to have some fun with Helen and to make her a little more relatable. Helen in a splattered smock, her hair messed up, seething with frustration over a sculpture that won't do what she wants, seems like more of a real person than Helen the power-suited lawyer. If you can relate to her more, it becomes easier to sympathize with what she is thinking and feeling. I particularly enjoyed setting up her friendship with Amanda Lane, whose nonchalance contrasts so sharply with Helen's personality, and whose comforting presence makes it painfully clear how few friends Helen has.
There is, of course, a subplot with Daria on the high school newspaper, but let's face it: This is Helen's fic. The Daria subplot was put in to 1) give Helen a viable excuse to join an activity that she otherwise wouldn't, 2) make the fic parallel with the Quinn/Jake-centric "Of Absolute Value," and 3) set up tensions that later get played out in "In Her Own Words." It was also meant to update the reader on where Daria and Helen's relationship has gone since "That Thing You Say." If there is one DWU plotline that I felt was never as well developed as it could have been, it's the evolution of their relationship since the third fic. In part it's because their relationship was already being developed quite well in the actual series. Secondly, I have been intending to carry it to its logical conclusion in DWU #21 and #22, including a return to the whole "I love you" controversy. But a third reason is that in "Breaking the Mold," Helen realizes for the first time that her anger with Daria was not entirely about Daria's behavior, but about Helen feeling like her enormous investment in parenting was not being returned. In this fic, she realizes how, in trying to be a "perfect working wife and mother," she has not given herself enough room to merely be a person. Once she realizes this, she is never able to forget it.
On another note, this is the only Daria fic I've ever converted into a teleplay. I had to cut out quite a bit that wasn't in the show (like Greg, obviously) and even more than that, yet the teleplay was still a good eight pages longer than it should have been. Still, if you want to see what a DWU fic looks like as a teleplay, go to my main page, click on The Contrarian's Artistic Side Revealed!, find the link to "Breaking the Mold," and enjoy!
This is probably the only DWU that I can say I'm slightly embarrassed by. For starters, the premise is awfully flimsy, based on a random, manic thought I had. Secondly, I wasn't able to make Cousin Erin as sympathetic a character as I would have liked, and feel that Daria's sympathy towards her wasn't entirely convincing. Then there was the damn title -- probably the most confusing one in my collection. (It's phonetic: Air-in the head. Get it?)
Its weakness was compounded by the fact that it premiered after "Surreal World," my most twisted and crowd-pleasing DWU, and before "Primarily Color," a dramatic fic which dealt with a serious, complex issue. I think one reason I decided to write it was because I knew I needed to have a break inbetween the heavy-weight fics.
Still, many people seemed to like it... although they wondered why I didn't make Erin more empowered by having her leave Brian in the end. One person likened it to pushing the "rewind" button. Well the reason I didn't was because I didn't want to twist the Daria universe around too, too much -- after having made Quinn a math brain with glasses, Helen mildly artistic, Jane a would-be Student Body president, and Sandi VP of the Student Body. Even more importantly, Erin was supposed to serve as a measuring stick for Daria and Quinn, someone whose actions they could learn from. In Daria's case, it was not to be timid about relationships, but not to place too much emphasis on them, either. In Quinn's case, it was that an obsession with boys and clothes can be... boring.
Though I was disappointed with this fic, there were several aspects that I liked. I was happy to be able to include all of Mystik Spiral without it seeming overly gratuitous. I liked showing how Quinn was growing as a person and planting the seeds for a rift in Helen and Jake's relationship. I also liked shedding some light on Rita and Erin's mother-daughter relationship, something which we barely got a sense of in "I Don't." And I really liked how, through acting as Erin and Daria's "counselor," Amy showed how she was dealing with her relationship problems brought up in "None in the Family." But most of all, I was happy with the way I had Daria approach love: cynical, cautious, curious in spite of herself. I wish the actual show had produced such an episode in between "Jane's Addition" and "I Loathe a Parade." Then maybe the idea that someone like Daria would be dating in high school wouldn't seem so difficult to swallow.
Like "Surreal World," this one seems to have become a stand-out DWU. Some of the most thoughtful comments I've received have centered around this fic, concerning racism and ambiguity and social responsibility. I'm glad it had a positive impact. I really wanted to write a story that looked at all factors of racism, instead of just the usual black vs. white. My favorite bits were when O'Neill got upset about Daria's presentation and when Tiffany showed Quinn that she knew a thing or two about Judaism. You never see that on T.V., but you see it all the time in real life. If racial and cultural identity were so easy to figure out, we'd have done it by now. .
This fic is also interesting in its portrayal of Jodie. It came out a week before "Partner's Complaint" aired, so I only had "Gifted" and various other "Jodie is helpful" bits to inform me of her character. Therefore, she seems to be much more idealistic than on the show.
I liked the way the first two acts flowed, but the third one felt clunky to me. I had too much to show at the cultural fair, and the threads were too disconnected. On top of that, I had to think of a way to get Jodie to realize Sandi might not be responsible for the racist note. I therefore came up with the scene where Jodie overhears the racist jerks. I tried to make it subtle, but each time I read it, it feels too After School Special. And I wish I could have found a better way for Jodie to run into Sandi. Overall, though, I'm pleased with this effort.
This one came out, like, a month before "Is It Fall Yet?" premiered. At the time, it was seen as controversial, because Quinn in Season Four was at her most shallow since Season One. The bonding that she and Daria did in "Lane Miserables" and "Speedtrapped" had been negated by her nastiness in "Fire!", and all hope that she would redeem herself was growing dim. Realizing that I was out on a limb, I made Quinn somewhat nastier and more shallow than she had been in previous DWU's, with the exception of the first six. Would she have been quite as repulsed by Barry, Clarence, and Squiggley had Season Four Quinn been more tolerant ? Probably not.
Even so, this fic marks a turning point for Quinn. She has come full circle from the days when popularity was so important to her, she would willingly stab people (aka Brittany) in the back. She finds that math isn't a chore forced upon her by her zealous teacher, that it's something she enjoys. Most important, she is more willing to be seen as intelligent, and thus is more sensitive toward Daria's put-downs. Obviously this is going to have an effect on the Fashion Club dynamic, and that will be seen in DWU #21.
This is one of my favorite fics, a perfect counterpoint to "Cheered Down." Even so, it was very difficult to write. Very complicated, with about a million threads to weave together. I started it while still trying to decide whether to finish "The Age of Cynicism" first. I kept feeling this sense of urgency, like if I didn't skip TAC, which would have required much research and would not have advanced a story arc, my continuum would come to a screeching halt. It was hard putting TAC aside, but in the end it was probably for the best. I can still come back and finish it.
I wrote the draft to COTMB while vacationing in France and London for three weeks, and felt it wasn't very good. Only after I put it on computer did the pacing fall into place. And one thing that really works about this fic is the pacing. It never lags; COTMB is exciting, suspenseful, and even a little sinister. It managed to raise questions about Phelps without making the answers obvious. As for other aspects... I like that Daria cares about Quinn, but has mixed feelings towards her rising academic star. I had fun putting Jodie and Quinn together -- another thing you don't see on the show. As for the nerds, I think I could have made them less stereotypical, but they did embody the blow to Quinn's reputation if she revealed she was a mathlete. It provided a few laughs in any case. I liked being able to bring back Barry, this time to torment Quinn instead of Daria.
Once "Is It Fall Yet?" premiered, the controversy of the Quinn is Smart story arc fell away. I was relieved that my theory was correct, but a little saddened that it took the edge off of my continuum. Who would want to read about smart Quinn in fanfic when they could see her on the show? Luckily (I guess), the show's writers did not dwell upon Quinn's academic prowess in Season Five, except in "Lucky Strike." That leaves room for me to elaborate on what would happen if Quinn really did embrace her intelligence, and I will.
Too bad there won't be a Daria movie about Daria and Quinn in college.
There are several things that I'm proud of about this fic. One, that it seems to have been much better received than expected, primarily because it's a "look inside Daria's head" story, and those are always well received. Two, that I wrote a deep and probing Daria story. Three, that I did it without resorting to the many ideas that had been used before, such as suicide or a school writing assignment or a revenge plot on the Fashion Club. I don't think anyone else has written a "Daria joins an underground newspaper" fic. It also managed to explore the grey area of the show's messages, namely the "Stop being such a shut-in and give people a chance." Here, Daria by her own initiative seeks out a group that does not drink or do drugs, that arguably adds something positive to the community, yet its members would hardly be considered a good influence.
I like Daria's interaction with her family, which does not take up a lot of space, but clearly has an effect on her general behavior. Especially her scenes with Quinn. I also like the scene in which the Lawndale students read Daria's article about the tainted Pizza King; Jane reminds Daria that no one will realize it is her best work because she did not write her name on the article. Also a favorite is the Daria/Jane scene at the end of Act Two, which underscores how far both of them have come since "Esteemsters." This fic juggles several themes and plotlines well, especially the theme that living means you must face the hard stuff, not hide away.
Now the "but." This fic was truly a bitch to write, my most unpleasant fanfic experience. Every time I had to write it, I was filled with dread. I mentioned in the postscript that I had to rewrite every scene and refashion the whole story, and I can still remember that feeling whenever I read it over. It would have been so much easier if the subject matter were funny, but as I said, Daria alone, or with other serious people, does not inspire laughter. I also would like to take a virtual knife and prune Act Three, which has a very clunky feel to it, what with Daria interrogating Tom, then Vince, then Damien. I would cut out the Tom scene and have Daria learn what she needed some other way; the only reason I included it in the first place was to acknowledge that since Daria and Tom were dating on the show, there was a connection between them.
Also, there were a few more plot contrivances than I was comfortable with. How could Daria hide from Pizza King customers for a week? How was it that Andrea just happened to be sitting up on the special overhang in Damien's basement when he and Daria had their confrontation? Stuff like this irritates me because I like everything to happen as naturally as possible.
None the less, "In Her Own Words" is both a good culmination fic and a set-up fic for the emotional final events of the series.