La La La La La, My Darling

"Dye! Dye! My Darling" appeared on the air for the first time 10 years ago today. By far the most controversial episode ever aired in the Daria series (even more so than "Daria!" or "Depth Takes a Holiday"), DDMD has never lost its ability to drive the fandom nuts.

A year ago this day I uploaded a bunch of links through the WayBack Machine to old MTV website pages of Daria goodness. There's the link to them. Go and have fun.

Happy August Long Weekend to everyone in Canada. Enjoy the day!

PPMB

• Grove Hell 2: All the Lawndale People, by Charles RB (Part 5): Daria and Jane walked up to the Morgendorffer house, deep in philosophical discussion. “No, you’ve not thought this through. Alien bleeds acid blood, Species is just a woman who can’t remember how to put clothes on. She’d never survive. Alien all the way.” “Ah, but if she borrows Predator’s blasters, she’s got long-range!” “Touche. It’s not like he’ll want them after the Krites have eaten them.” Daria opened the door, took a brief listen, and winced. “You better take a hike. My mom’s talking to my Aunt Rita. This isn’t gonna be pretty.” (FF.net)
  
• Inner Universe, by Malakite (Part 6): "I've said it before, I'll say it again: you have the coolest room." This comment rose above the somewhat muted sound of twangy guitar and piano accompaniment coming from Jane's television. As she painted (the palette for today was heavy on greys with a touch of green) and intermittently sketched she decided, "It's got pros and cons. You can't hurt yourself in here, but you can't hurt anybody else in here, either." Jane smiled at this as she rapped her hand lightly against the nearest wall. "I wish there'd been a schizophrenic shut-in living in our house before we moved in. Of course, we've got Trent there now. That's almost the same thing."
  
• The Lane That Wasn't, by LadieT (Part 12): Jane continued to look at the screen in front of her. The old man studied her expressions. He noticed how a look of pain came over Jane when she watched the scene the where she had told Daria about moving. He saw jealousy flash in her eyes when she saw the drawing Daria did of Melody Powers. She tried to stay expressionless but couldn't. She turned to him. His eyes had changed colors again. This time they were matching Daria's dark brown eyes. She looked down at the road that stretched ahead of her. She looked at him with a curious face. "I have a question," Jane stated. "Ask away." The old man shifted his gaze to the sky.
• Raft College: The First Year, by rglovejoy (Part 20): Daria left Professor Federova's office feeling a bit shell-shocked. It was clear that she had made a lot of mistakes in writing her first paper, to impress her teacher with her thoroughness. It was pretty easy to snow someone like DeMartino or O'Neill, simply because they were not used to any sort of academic rigor from their students. DeMartino would have been happy if someone merely knew that Robert E. Lee's wife was not Sara Lee.
  
• Unnamed story (Iron Chef: Real Esteem), by Kristen Bealer (COMPLETE!): "Students with low self-esteem will be exterminated!" (Daria/Doctor Who)

One Small Step for Jodie, One Long Run for Jane Lane

As Jodie Landon reminds us, 41 years ago the Eagle landed on the Moon. As Daria and Jane remind us, "See Jane Run" premiered on MTV 12 years ago. An important day in history, indeed. Today turns out to be critically important in one fanfic, as you will see. Yesterday will be an important day 17 years in the future according to another fanfic, as you will see.

The best part of "See Jane Run" was, of course, seeing Jane. Our Heroine (Jane) was magnificent, but her sidekick Daria was a wet blanket with her constant whining and acting sorry for herself and complaining about Jane doing something great. What heights could Jane have achieved had Daria not been such a pain in the butt? Alas, we will never know.

However, to commemorate the anniversary of "See Jane Run," you can download a PC screensaver that shows Jane running, saved from an MTV website by the WayBack Machine at Archive.org. Click on the link (an .exe file), save it, run it, be amazed. I adore this. The file (called "Run, Jane, Run" as a screensaver) was posted online about 10 years ago and works perfectly, with sun and moon and stars and everything! Jane sure can run a long time.

Moar l8r.

"I knew you guys would screw this up."

Wanna see what MTV's Daria website looked like exactly twelve years ago? Click the link.

The Beavis and Butt-head episode "Sprout" first aired on MTV fourteen years ago today. Daria gets a cameo role. B&B have to grow corn in their backyard (they're hoping for nachos) but they simply throw the packet of seeds on the ground and wait for something to happen. Daria shows up and utters the line in this posting title. She tells the boys to talk to their plant and says it works, but it is hard to tell if she's pulling their leg or if she believes it. I'll go for the former. She apparently just wanted to see how messed up the boys' project was, then insult them and leave. And a fine job she did, too. They still took her advice.

One of the better images of "early Daria" appears in the episode (see at left). Daria grows a flower for her own plant-growing project. Very feminine. I sort of expected a carnivorous plant, you know, but whatever.

Interestingly, the names of some of Daria's classmates are written on the Dixie cups used for the project. I notice these names in order, left to right: Kimson, Mike, Kate, Bill, Joe, Gina, Ben, Daria, Carl, J.P., Beavis and Butthead (used same cup), Dean, and Martin.

Where's Cassandra? Earl the gun-toting kid? Kimberly? The punk girl later called Kimberly? Dang.

GeoCities Was Vaporized

As we've heard in the latest news releases, Yahoo! has shut down GeoCities, and thus a fair number of the older Daria fan sites have vanished, possibly for good. In the next few weeks I will be searching for dead links at left, and if Archive.org has them copied down I will post the (dead) links in the "Blast from the Past" section near the bottom of the column. Alas, I think we lost some good ones. If you know of some sites in particular that are no more, please name them (with link if possible) in the Comments section, to aid my searching.

To start off, I've just confirmed that the Daria Fan Fiction Website is no more. Can only imagine how many others bit the dust, too.

The Internet is such a terribly temporary place.

Go Back in Time With Just a Click

Wanna know what MTV's Daria website looked like on exactly this day, twelve years ago? Now you can find out! The link goes to the archived site at Archive.org. Thanks, WayBack Machine! (Image at right is the actual scene.)

On this very day, October 15th, Scene 8 of Galen "Lawndale Stalker" Hardesty's "Blood Oath of Patriots II: By Any Other Name" takes place. I'm just thankful this blog was able to let you know that.

Let's see, it's Nietzsche's birthday, it's Global Handwashing Day, I guess that's about it. Enjoy.

PPMB

• Finn Morgendorffer 7: History on Skates, by HolyGrail2007 (COMPLETE!): “Mister D told me I’m not Daria, Finn thought. Unlike when other people, like his mother, said that he wasn’t Daria, there wasn’t anything else to the statement. There was no subtext, no disappointment in not joining academic clubs. Mr. D did chastise him for his grades, and said he could do better, but there was no reason for him to do that.
  
• Finn Morgendorffer 8: Family Ties, by HolyGrail2007 (Part 1): Why the hell did I get suckered into this? Finn thought. He knew the answer to it, of course, but that didn’t make it any less believable. “What do you think?” The woman’s voice called from the dressing room. The door opened a second later, and out stepped Helen Morgendorffer, wearing a pink business dress.
• John Lane 43: We're On A Mission, by Richard Lobinske (part 1): "Hi, Tom. It's John Lane." "Uh, hi," Tom said, curious about the call. "What's going on?" "I was hoping to catch a ride from you this Saturday." "I guess, but don't you have a car?" "I don't trust it to go to very far."
  
• Lawndale's Finest, Detective Stories 5: Belfry, by Lorenzo Sauchelli (Part 1): Amelia caressed Quinn's head, "There's no fever, so it's safe to say the dose wasn't lethal. That's good news, it allows me to have time to work. And to know how much her mind was affected I would need all the time I can get to talk with her."
  
• Monster Madness, by Trscroggs (Part 1): In the early 1990s, humanity had its first contact with aliens. They weren’t friendly. A giant monster descended on Mexico City and all but destroyed it before vanishing. A short time later, the monster appeared again and leveled another large city. The third attack began like the first two, but...
• Unnamed story (Scenes No Daria Fanfic Should Have: Hump Day), by Brother Grimace (COMPLETE!): The captain of the Polk High debate team turned white with shock as the crowd in the auditorium, equally stunned, all set their gazes towards Daria. "But-but-but you aren't serious?" the boy gasped. "You can't actually believe shooting people will help make a better world?!"
• Unnamed story (Second Coming of the New Ideas Thread), by Dark Kuno (COMPLETE!): “What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss?” she asked as she finished off the last chip from the snack sized bag. The gas station attendant raised an eyebrow at the unusual question and said, “Ma’am?”

The Other Bad Todd

In Daria lore, there are Two Bad Todds. One is well known from Beavis and Butt-head : Todd Ianuzzi, a brutal thug and gang leader. You may remember him beating up B&B a few times. Daria was never around him, smart kid. Great for fanfiction if you need muscle to get shot or stomped on.

And then there was Todd K. Feichmann.

You are very unlikely to have heard of this Todd (though I did mention him in this blog a long while ago). He was described only on old MTV Daria websites, and only the WayBack Machine can bring his tale to the present day. Here's what I've learned about him. Long-time fans might remember some of this.

This Todd is primarily known for creating the Lawndale High School website in 1994, for having been picked on a lot by high-school jocks, and for the revenge he took later on. About him, Jodie and Mack wrote:

The Lawndale High School Web site was established in 1994 by Todd K. Feichmann. At that time it consisted of his resume and a 3000-word essay on mutant battle psychology as encountered in the first six levels of DOOM. The scepter was passed to a small cadre of initiates after his graduation, but his spirit and love of nanotechnology still inspires the site today. We hope he is staying on his medication and feeling better about the fact that the simple elegance of UNIX is lost on the vast majority of today's computer users.

What we know about Todd comes from these webpages, some of which are difficult to access. If you click on a link and the webpage vanishes and is replaced by a modern MTV 404 page, try hitting ESCAPE as soon as the old page appears, to freeze it.

As this page shows, Todd created a special website called "Cleatopia.com" for guys he intensely disliked, so they could play fantasy football (Todd's idea of fantasy football, that is). On the webpage is written:

Hello, Kevin! Welcome to the first fantasy football site devoted to local high school jocks like yourself, who have tortured me mercilessly for years, rattling my will and shattering my fragile psyche until all that's left is a resentful, hypersensitive outcast who harbors vengeful visions of triumphant payback. Now I can finally suck your wallets dry and prove my intellectual superiority at the same time.

We also have real time stats, destructive viruses, and annoying clone bots for you to download. Have fun!

Founder and Visionary Todd K. Feichmann

To get to this page, you read Kevin's webpage first, where he dimly writes:

The first time I told Brittany I was spending a lot of time playing Fantasy Football she slapped me. So I explained all I meant was I like to make up imaginary teams for make believe football leagues, and it has nothing to do with daydreaming about naked cheerleaders doing pyramid formations. But then I started to think about naked cheerleaders doing pyramid formations and I guess I got a funny look on my face and she slapped me again.

Now I'll have plenty of time this weekend to check out player stats and injury reports and make trades and rethink my roster and order an apology bouquet from 1-800-GROVEL.

My fantasy football team is kind of like the imaginary friend I had when I was little (his name was Sporty and he was always sticking lima beans up my nose) except there are more of them and they don't hate my Dad. I miss Sporty.

I wonder where he is now?

When I first got into fantasy sports I used to play in leagues based on the NFL, or NCAA conferences. But now there's a new fantasy league that's about what I know best: Carter County High School Football! Did I mention that I'm the QB?

See, this kid named Todd K. Feichmann who helped me with my web page last year decided to put his smartness to non-nerdy use to start the league. And he only charges $29.99 to join: he says he needs the money for something called a particle decelebrator. Some kind of fancy vacuum cleaner, I guess.

Anyway, I'd really be kicking butt in the league if only I hadn't picked myself in the first round of the draft. I would trade myself now but no one wants me. I throw too many interceptions, sometime I get confused and call out phone numbers instead of plays, and I keep tripping over my laces (can't I remember to doubleknot?) I suck, I suck, I suck!

Maybe I shouldn't have drafted me. I guess football is kind of like dating: sometimes you choose the most obvious person under pressure and then you're stuck with them. At least that's what I heard Brittany telling the other cheerleaders. Then they all looked at me and shook their heads.

So Todd had his revenge on jocks, and Kevin never knew it. Sometimes that's for the best.


Wonder what Todd's doing now...


Let's check out the new fanfiction while we think.

PPMB

• NEW! Anti-trope, by Pinkminx (Part 1): Forgive me, I think I may need to backtrack a little, let me introduce myself. My name is Dean Morgendorffer, I'm a seventeen year old high school student and proud Lawndalian, okay I lied; I'm not proud to live in Lawndale, but it sure as hell beat the alternative.
• NEW! Fat Man's Grave, by TAG and Brother Grimace (Parts 1 and 2): Charles Ruttheimer the Third, man of mystery and adventure, as thoroughly and completely disguised from view as The Shadow, clouding the minds of men. Too long have my talents been wasted on childish trivia, too long have the world’s enigmas gone unsolved. It is time for my deeds to be writ large on the world, time for...
  
• Finn Morgendorffer 7: History on Skates, by HolyGrail2007 (Part 2): Mr. DeMartino seemed to be devoting his attention to cardio exercises, Finn noticed once he brought himself up to the weight room. Finn wondered briefly why Mr. D simply wouldn’t join a gym and get a trainer for such conditioning, but Finn reasoned that it would require payment, and he certainly wouldn’t do that.
• NEW! Legion of Lawndale Heroes Mini: Network Connections, by Brother Grimace (COMPLETE!): “Mister Mackenzie!” Mack Mackenzie instinctively tensed for a moment as a very familiar voice rang out from behind. “Uh, hello, Ms. Li!” he said.
• NEW! Regifted, by Ajar (Part 19): “Daria goes to Grove Hills now,” said Jane. “Remember?” “Right,” said Kevin. “It's a cooking school and someone poached her eggs, or something.” Jane humored Kevin: “Yeah, next week she's learning coq au vin.” “So they have sex ed in cooking school, too?” said Kevin.
  
• Sinspiration, by Vlora (Part 23): She laughed inwardly for a second before managing to get her legs over the edge of the bed. Her escape was almost complete until Trent pulled her back, keeping her firmly in place within his arms. Perhaps he thought she was someone better looking, older, maybe he thought she was Monique. "Morning Daria," he muttered through closed eyes and a pleased grin.

PPMB turns 10 years old today! Hooray!

As I Want You to Be

I'd much rather stay
home and listen to my
brother practice
the opening to
"Come as You Are."
—Jane Lane, in "The Invitation"

Nirvana's Nevermind was released this day eighteen years ago. Still smells like teen spirit.

A few interesting links for fun:

• Jane's art gallery from an Italian fansite (the art doctored up in an amusing way)
• That 3D image of Daria I posted once, from Lawndale Commons
• That 3D image of Jane (same source)

PPMB

• Finn Morgendorffer, by HolyGrail2007 (Part 2): Football tryouts were actually two hours after school, so Finn had time to head home first. Not to his surprise, Daria was not at home. She would not be around to make herself a target for a while, and Finn could only seethe with fury at her performance today.
  
• Love Is a Series of Burning Sensations, by Undefinedlust (Part 12 COMPLETE!): Daria smiled in amusement as she walked from the video store to her mom's Suburban, here she was about to have bad movie night with her sister and Stacy Rowe. If she had ever been in a more absurd situation, she couldn't remember it. The fact she had been busted staring at Stacy's ass made the situation even more amusing.
• Unnamed story, by Teeki (Part 1): "What?" Helen Morgendorffer screeched, "The teleconference is back on?! But Fred, you assured me it wasn't going to happen tonight. I'm supposed to take my daughters shopping." Quinn scowled as her mother listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. "But of course, Fred. Listen, I'll be a little late. Let me get back to the house, get the girls a snack and I'll call in from there. Bye, Fred."
  

One Last Blast from the Past

It's funny to think about it now, but when I began this blog two years ago, I was afraid I would run out of images very quickly. How naïve.

At left, a special image The-N once sent out to those who completed a quiz to show how much like Daria they were, and managed to score right at the top. One of the neater little things The-N had on its site, along with large-size images of Daria and Jane, and huge unique wallpapers.

Garden gnomes! Who doesn't love garden gnomes? I think the image at upper right was from Wildgoose's old site, Hell Is Other People. Was this scene at the Gupty's house? Don't remember where it showed up.

Oh, just a side note: check out the newly expanded Backgrounders webpage for The Head, the clueless nerd who seems to show up everywhere, sometimes twice at the same time. You know Ms. Li's gotta be running a Professor Xavier-type school here with all the mutant time traveling, shape changing, self-duplicating, teleporting kids around this school. My sincere and heartfelt thanks to UU and Pinhead for the images and labor that are slowly transforming the Backgrounders site into a thing of absolute wonder.

Too bad you can't click the image at right and really get Mystik Spiral to show up at your house. This was from an old MTV Daria page. I seem to have a lot of tiny Tank images from all sorts of places.

Where did the Fashion Club like to shop? Just look to the right and find out (another old MTV image for wallpapering).

At left, an excellent screen capture from Is It College Yet? showing Daria and Jane as bff's in the 1920s. They're wearing flapper outfits. Good jump-off image for a time-travel tale. This was from CyberDaria, touched up a bit. Funny, when you read the first couple of paragraphs about flappers on Wikipedia, it does remind you of Jane and Daria. Mostly Jane for me, but your mileage may vary.

At right is an alter ego that might not look familiar to you unless you've played the computer game, Daria's Inferno. In the end credits for the game, as information on the game's publisher (Simon & Schuster) is being given, this picture appears. (It is quite large. Click on it.) It is Mr. O'Neill, of course, dressed as the Simon & Schuster logo. He looks more like an older version of the S&S logo from 1961, but even more like the original source of the logo itself. The S&S logo was based upon a French artist's work from 1850: Jean-François Millet's The Sower, which surprises us nowadays as it was once considered a revolutionary work. During Daria's time, Simon & Schuster was the publishing wing of Viacom, which also owned MTV. And there you have it: an alter ego with a longer-than-expected history and meaning.

Left: A rare screen capture of Jane Lane putting on lipstick. I forgot which episode this was in and on which extinct website I found it. Oh, well. The image came from fan artist extraordinaire Pinhead, and my thanks to him for it. Love the shot. It's actually rather big. I touched it up a little.

Last, we have what I think is an image from the Mystik Spiral rock video, "Freakin' Friends," though I am not sure. Kind of evocative, the lighter and psychedelic background and everything.

Enough for tonight, moar tomorrow at some point.

LATE NOTE: I've just discovered that some of the images I posted today and credited to CyberDaria actually came from a different goldmine, the recovered files and images from the old Triste Monde Tragique website (also French). I have so many new images I'm losing track of their origins. My apologies for the mix-up.

LATE LATE NOTE: Remember the Lawndale High teachers' lounge?

The Way Out WayBack Machine

What else can we drag out of the archives... oh, this is interesting. Karine, of CyberDaria, designed some light switch covers like the one at left. Here we see Quinn, and the switch itself appears to be... ZOMG!! Okay, that is just wrong. (Need a shocked-face smiley, have to make one for times like this.) Whew! Better move along and see what else we have. ("Are you happy to see me, or did you just want the lights on?")

A little reminder at upper right that we do indeed see Daria and Jane praying in the traditional Christian manner during "Daria!" (Something to remember in those arguments about religion in cartoons.) At least no one can say Daria was satanic.

Daria and Jane in 3D? Apparently there was something on CyberDaria showing this. Difficult to recover now, except for the image at right.

Thought you might find this item on the left interesting. There was a palmtop computer game called "Dear Daria" some years ago, which you could download for free from several sources. I had a link to it in the Daria Directory, but the game seems to have vanished in the last two years. Dang. However, I did recover something that might turn out to be the game itself, saved on CyberDaria as a RAR file, so we will see. This amusing GIF shows Daria doing the advertising thing for the game.

Okay, I really like this one at right. Not sure if Karine did this, or MTV, or what. Seems to be a combination of two different images from MTV, maybe someone else can set me straight on that. Great 'shipper artwork! Dead solid perfect.

Ever wonder what Helen's American Access Gold Card looked like, the one she always used to bribe Quinn? This image came from an old MTV Daria site, along with a bunch of other iconic Quinn possessions like her gum machine and T-shirt design. They were meant to be tiled together to form a desktop background. The card seems to be an American Express parody. Anyone remember what other kinds of credit cards Helen and Jake used as bribes? Hard to image that. Did the girls just sign their parents' names, or what?

And now that I've mentioned Quinn's T-shirt design, here it is at left. Imagine having a background all tiled up with this image. Hurts my head to think about it, but women like pink, so who knows.

And Quinn's stuffed Triceratops is at right. (Quinn with a stuffed Triceratops? I always thought that was excellent! If I was six years old, I would SO want one.) And that will close this post out. Amazing what you can find when you just look.

Daria in Any Language Is "Cool"

Let's see what else we can drag out of the archived parts of CyberDaria, the French supersite that went into the Internet's black hole half a decade ago. Lots of interesting flotsam to see while surfing the cyberspace ocean....

First off, who is the guy at left? We have his illustration but I don't recall him. Does anyone here know this guy? (Click on him for a larger image.) He was posted to a flipbook on the MTV Daria site long ago, but the flipbook vanished.

A scene from "Scientific Stuff" (B&B episode with Daria) appears on the upper right, evidently a button you clicked on CyberDaria to show a film clip from that episode.

Here is "Andreax" on the right, an image I don't recall seeing before, though in a funny way it seems familiar. Anyone recall where this pic of Andrea came from, originally?

Some kind of PacMan-like videogame pic with Daria.... huh. Not sure if it was an illo or part of something that worked.

Ah, this was interesting. Karine, the webmistress of CyberDaria, designed some useful items for everyone to use. One of these was a CD case cover, at lower right. Nicely done. Part of the artwork was Karine's. Wherever she is now, we can only wish her the best for what she gave us.

More stuff later. I'm in a mood to share unusual things for a while. Not sure how many people are into this, but Internet archaeology is its own reward for the thrill of discovery it provides.

ARRRRR!!! Another Internet Treasure Horde!

While it's doubtful that many Daria fans get into the collecting of computerized images and such for the fandom, those who do have a treat coming now. It was mentioned here a few days ago that I had found the remnants of an old Daria supersite in French, CyberDaria.com, using the WayBack Machine. The WayBack Machine breaks down almost everything ever published on the Intervet by each item's old web address and by various updates when new material was collected from websites.

I discovered a different way to reword my request for archived information and wound up with lists of stuff from CyberDaria totaling 3,000+ webpages, images, and more. The amount of material that CyberDaria's talented webmistress Karine had stashed away on that site is breathtaking. It is a tragedy that the site was discontinued in 2005. New arrivals to the fandom have no idea of the scope of some of these vanished supersites, and CyberDaria was one of the greatest. Karine had a lot of photos of friends on the site, most of which have been archived, too.

So, let's take a few minutes to see what can be recovered. I was barely able to scratch the surface. Huge numbers of screen captures are available, plus episode scripts, essays on characters, fan art, fanfiction, and a few big surprises. Remember, this is all in French, but don't let that stop you. It's pirate plunder, maties! (Sorry.)

• Splendora, the all-woman rock band that did the Daria theme
• Recipes for food eaten on Daria
• Transcrit chat Daria du 27 août 2000
• Quinn Morgendorffer's room
• NEW! Helen and Jake's Bedroom!
  
• NEW! Dress up Helen and Jake in different outfits from their episodes! This is great!
  
• A fascinating page that describes the unusual changes that Jane Lane's bedroom went through in the series. Some of the images are missing, but the text, if translated, would be extremely curious. Did Jane Lane's room change from season to season as much as the Morgendorffers' home did? Did Jane live in a tesseract, too? Or did she rebuild her room once a year?
• Jane Lane's art gallery. Click on a pic. Smaller version here.
• A webpage on Brittany, interactive style.
• Two cute flash animations of Daria, one having a tropical drink and one freezing her buns off in the snow. What's that? The images are too small? Try this one and this one, then. (Move your cursor over the latter and see what happens.)
• And here's an EXE file I think creates Daria characters for Sims. Not sure yet, I don't play the game. Experiment with this with caution, as the file might be corrupted.
• Pardon me, do you have the time? Here it is. Smaller version here. I must add this feature to the blog!
• The last item created a sensation years ago when it came out. It's a movie about Daria, but no one ever pulled this one off like Karine and CyberDaria did. Click and watch. This reduced some viewers to awe and tears.

Delve into this treasure trove yourself and see what you find. I was stunned. You will be, too.

Oh, and clicking on the images here gives you the BIG version of them. Enjoy.

Where the Word "Blog" Came From

Last year at this time was posted a short editorial about 9/11 and how Daria fanfic writers have dealt with it. Nothing new has occurred to me to add to that, so we will remember the moment and move on.

I was intrigued to learn, upon reading A Key to the Terminology of Science-Fiction Fandom, by Donald Franson (1962), that "blog" was originally an SF fan term for the "[m]ythical drink of fans; any potable consisting of an incredible mismatch of ingredients." That sounds about right, doesn't it? That's pretty much what this blog is. Thanks for your help, Graham.

BRKNG NUZ: Medea42 discovered a great article about designer perfumes with great relevance to our fandom. Thank you!

Ranger Thorne has new art out: Quinn the Mage Queen, on PPMB.

OverlordMikey wants to try out a fanfic idea on everyone. See what you think of it. It's got promise!

MOAR AULDE IMAGES: Using the WayBack Machine, I've uncorked another motherload of ancient images and other things. This one is for the French site CyberDaria, so there's a lot of French in it. Plus great images, like a very clear one of Daria's driver's license! Have fun with it, there's a ton of stuff here like screen captures and things taken from the old MTV sites. Cool.

PPMB

• Cheap Babysitter, by Roentgen (COMPLETE!): The babysitter smiled. "The older girl likes TV. I just bring a bunch of movies and pop 'em in the VCR... girl will watch anything... yeah, her parents won't let her watch this stuff but I stick a tape in and it shuts her up... no, no problem, she just sits and watches... oh yeah, I don't care. Like I said, she'll watch anything... Violent? Maybe.... Oh, the other girl? The redhead? Lend me your purse and I'll tell you how to solve that problem.... Benadryl! She's been out like a light since 7 pm!"
  
• Phoenix, by Glittershrooms (Parts 1 and 2): As its rays crept into the bedroom of Daria Morgendorffer, the sun was pleased to announce the start of another normal day in the city of Lawndale… or as normal that was physically possibly in this town. Still, the sun was left unacknowledged as Daria peacefully slept. Without notice, Daria’s alarm started to scream the lyrics of a Beatles song. "Penny Lane is in my ears and in my ears...."
• Reaped Out 2: Sickle Sad World, by Pinkminx (Part 5): "Quinn..." Helen began cautiously. "What?" Quinn said insolently as she folded her arms protectively across her chest. “Honey I know this has been tough on you, but your father and I...” “Is there something you wanted? I’m not in the mood for any heart to hearts right at this moment.”
• Regifted, by Ajar (Chapter 16): Jodie stirred out of her slumber after just ten hours that morning. She groggily stretched and rolled over to find herself face to face with Marina. “Morning. I got tired and decided to lie down here for a second.” Jodie felt the breath of every word Marina said tickle her face. “I guess I must've fallen asleep. Hope you don't mind.”
• What Happens in Lawndale..., by thatLONERchick (COMPLETE!): It was going on two a.m., and he was tired. The coffee in his cup was bitter and over-brewed, and a migraine thumped away at his temples. Once again he reviewed the file, particularly the Polaroids of the murder weapons marked EVIDENCE in red sharpie.

Unearthed from the Internet Archives IV

Clothing. Guess which images are of: Jake's underwear, Jane's socks, Quinn's scarf from "Antisocial Climbers."