A History of Violence, Part 1

It has been mentioned before that LHS head cheerleader Brittany Taylor has serious anger-management issues, but it is helpful to have visual evidence of this rather disturbing trait. As it happens, there's quite a lot of said evidence. Seriously, what is up with this chick? Everyone remembers her performance in "The Daria Hunter," but do you remember these special moments? (By the way, a special "thank you" goes out to the magnificent UU and Pinhead for some of these superb shots, which had to be shrunk down to fit on the page. The images that don't look as nice are my own. So sue me.)

Brittany can do major damage without half trying (mainly to Kevin, but any male who insults her is fair game). She elbows and foot-stomps Kevin in "Malled," smacks the hell out of the much bigger Tommy Sherman in "The Misery Chick," and (may as well show it) goes Buffy-ballistic in "The Daria Hunter." Plus, she knows squad-level military tactics. By heart. And she's supposed to be a moron. How can she do this? What happened to turn her into the teen-girl version of Nick Fury? She doesn't appear to be afraid of anything or anyone, to my knowledge.

I recall reading one of Nemo Blank's epic tales, "Ring Toss," and thinking that his view of Brittany as violence prone was taking things too far. A typical quote from that story (quoting from Kevin's thoughts):

Brittany would kill him if she found out about it. Really kill him. She was a black belt and liked to break bricks in her backyard. She was getting physical with him in more ways than one, these days.

...and...

Brittany's fists clenched and her features hardened into an all too familiar mask of rage. "You big jerk!" It came out as a scream of pure hatred. Kevin backpedaled, eyes widening... She moved so fast that he never even glimpsed the blow that felled him.

This is as good a time as any to announce that I was wrong. My bad! Nemo apparently got it right, although Brittany doesn't appear to know karate. She's more of a gymnastic but undisciplined (thankfully) dirty fighter. Nemo even explained that Kevin wears his football pads all day long to absorb some of the blows Brittany deals out, which makes sense. Then he gave Brittany a massive multi-drug addiction originally meant to contain her rage. Wow.

Okay, to be sure, the above examples (plus her spontaneous rodeo pile-driving of a striker who hit Kevin in "Monster") come from the first two seasons of Daria. Maybe she mellowed out later on.

As we will see in Part II, the answer is painfully plain.