"Howdy, pardner! You from Texas?"

Okay, here's a weird one. Since I obviously have no life, it seemed like a good idea to track down some of the Daria westerns that have been written and put them on a page in the DariaWiki, simply because no one has done that before. All right, stop laughing. I'm serious. It's a genre, right? It's been done before in fanfic, right? Yeah, whatever. Anyway, here we go.

Canon Daria has only a few references to the western lifestyle, none very deep. Quinn has a clear attraction to cowboys, per her daydream in "College Bored" and her thing with Travis in "Speedtrapped." Daria has no such attraction, but she did develop a slight taste for country & western music in "Speedtrapped," unless that was only to irritate Quinn. The Morgendorffers went to the Grand Canyon when the girls were young (per The Daria Diaries), so they've been to Arizona. Heck, they lived in TEXAS for years, so the siblings would have to know something about the Old West. Oh, and we can't forget Daria dressed up as McCloud in her dream in "Murder, She Snored," riding a horse through downtown Manhattan.

As for fanfic . . . huh, how could you do it? Well, there's movie/novel crossovers, dream worlds, reinventions & uberfics, alternate universes, and post-canon tales, all sorts of possibilities. For examples, we've got to start off with "The Cynic, the Fashionista, and the Jackass," by Doggieboy, which is a brilliant and hilarious western crossover. That's got to be the archetype for this subgenre right there. Decelaraptor did some marvelous western tales, two coming to mind in particular: "Tales of the Missouri Cheyenne" and "Daria: 1830" (scroll down), both hugely comic and true to character. "Daria 2007: The Girl from Hope" flirted with a western scene at the end, when Daria was living in Montana and rode horses (and shot rifles). And Daria lived in Montana in "Darkness," but there wasn't much of a western-theme story in that, so skip that one.

Anyone else remember any Daria westerns? It's an offbeat theme, but it does work. Sort of.

Meet Travis the Singing Cowboy

As long as we're talking about "Speedtrapped"...

Travis is your basic nice guy. He's handsome, clean cut, charismatic, cheerful, friendly, flirtatious, and funny. He tells amusing tales, plays classic country music on guitar, hitchhikes around, and doesn't curse or act mean. He claims he's going to a music audition.

What good would he be in fanfic? Well, it's possible that he:

1. Discovers he's someone's long-lost son and goes in search of his parent(s) (Jake Morgendorffer? Vincent Lane? Amy Barksdale? Angela Li? Mrs. Johanssen?).
2. Meets and starts dating a twenty- or thirty-something character from the series. (He could be gay and date Wind or Trent Lane and move into the Lane home. He could be straight and date Summer or Amy or Rita. He could be bi and date all of the above.)
3. Writes a song about Quinn that becomes a hit and causes Quinn such embarassment that she runs away from home.
4. Survives a world-spanning atomic war and meets Daria and Jane on the road in West Virginia, where they kill and eat him, not necessarily in that order.
5. Turns out to be a werewolf/ time-traveler/ wizard/ alien/ doppleganger/ robot/ clone/ DELPHI operative/ ex-boyfriend of Helen Morgendorffer/ ex-boyfriend of Kyle Armalin/ reincarnation of Travis the dead canary from "It Happened One Nut."
6. Tries to sue Daria for attempted murder and gets her convicted on Quinn's testimony, putting Daria in prison for 3-5 years, where she plots the ultimate revenge.
7. Is pleasantly delusional, with grandiose ideas that he is a famous country-music star, and wanders into Lawndale where he makes a major nuisance of himself.
8. Is actually a psychopathic murderer who puts up a nice facade when he needs to disguise himself and flee the police, but he's now looking for Daria. And maybe Quinn, too.
9. (REVISED TO BE MORE INTERESTING) Is a super-wealthy singer from Nashville with car-wreck-induced amnesia, who travels the country at random while his family searches for him, and Daria and/or Quinn recognize his picture and go looking for him.
10. Your turn. Go for it.