Do I Shoot with My Leftie or My Rightie?

Space Brittany (at left) reminds us that sharpshooter Annie Oakley was born 149 years ago today. Reverse Space Brittany (at right) reminds us that today is International Lefthanders Day. Wasn't that a cool image trick? I amaze even myself sometimes.

Let's see if I remember to add anything else to this post before it appears tonight. Hmmm.... oh!


FF.net

• Omega Omega, by Smileyfax (Part 7): "The last time I opened that door, I had to kill my sister and myself. Call me superstitious, but I'd say that's bad luck."

PPMB

• Rainbow Disconnection, by Disco316 (Part 2): “I’m going to regret this,” said Jane as she opened the door for Quinn. “Never mind, I already do.”
  
• Regifted, by Ajar (Part 12): Jodie was in a sort of delirium as she approached the room where the debate was about to begin. The lack of sleep was definitely taking its toll. The previous night was another all-nighter. The “caffeine pill” she had taken recently did not completely negate the effects of the sleep deprivation.

Oh, Say, Can You See...?

Happy Fourth of July! Last year I posted a list of Daria fanfics that take place on this day, and you may click over that-a-way to check it out. Does anyone know of any new ones to add to the list? One fan-created character has an interesting connection to Independence Day.

Ms. Li here sings the U.S. national anthem, though I think the image is based on something else, maybe an MTV video. Not sure. Anyone know?

Even though it looks like we'll get Daria on DVD a little over a year from now, I'll leave the links section at left on "Daria-on-DVD activism" intact. You never know...

Enjoy the day.

WE HAVE A WINNER! Disco316 appears to have correctly identified Ms. Li's outfit as similar to that worn by Ginger Spice (Geri Halliwell) of the Spice Girls. The image is more precise than that, however. (Remember what I said a while back about MTV artists often being very particular about the images they imitate?) I believe this alter ego pokes fun at Ginger Spice's appearance on the cover of Playboy Magazine for the May 1998 issue (see below, click on pic to enlarge). Ms. Li merely wears the American version of the Union Jack one-piece Ginger wore. Same shoes and microphone, though. What do you think?

Quinn as a Varga Girl

Finding the origin of the alter ego at left was difficult. Imagine the stress I went through, hunting for a similar image among literally thousands of cheesecake photos and paintings through the 1940s and 1950s. I nearly wore out my Google. The hairstyle reminded me of the pompadour worn by some actresses around the time of World War II (particularly Rita Hayworth), but no pin-up girl matched this one.

Until I got to the Varga Girls.

Alberto Vargas was a Peruvian artist who became world famous for his Varga Girls, pin-ups painted for Esquire Magazine during the 1940s, especially during the war when they served as "morale boosters" for the American troops. Vargas later painted Vargas Girls (the name was changed because of a lawsuit, I kid you not) for Playboy Magazine. Wikipedia has a good article on him. I could links to some galleries of his works, but all of them would toe the line for being NSFW. Just put "Varga Girl" into any search engine and you will, ahem, get the picture.

The specific picture that I believe this image is modeled on is on a website about an American WW2 searchlight battalion. The website was started in 1996. (The date is important.) See this link, about pin-up girls often seen during WW2 (the link is safe), then scroll down to the bottom of that article, before the one about Fort Carson. See her?



"The quintessential Varga girl," reads the caption. (This, too, is important.) Now, we take that image and flop it, reverse it left to right, and we have:




Now, we put the Quinn alter ego next to it, and compare.




Here's what I think happened: A staff artist at MTV got the idea to draw Quinn as a Varga Girl (or perhaps one of the Daria characters, but the Varga Girl idea was there at the start). The artist gets on the Internet in 1997 or 1998 (1-2 years after the WW2 website above started) and did a search for "Varga Girl." The "quintessential Varga girl" appeared, and the artist immediately linked quintessential with Quinn. Thus the picture was born.

However, the artist wanted to be clever and not look like he/she had copied the pic exactly. The pic was flopped (click on "flopping" below in Labels for other discussions of this technique) and a few things were added, like the frilly bed and the phone (to keep Quinn from pulling off her one-piece outfit).

Pay attention to the posture of the model, the turn of the head, the position of the right hand, the position of the legs, the high heels and where they are. Bingo.

And there you have it: Quinn the Varga Girl. The MTV artist's little trick has been uncovered. Nice one.

The Nameless Girl Is Named

Those of you interested in mining Daria's Highland years for new fanfic characters can add Kimberly to the list. It turns out there are two girls named Kimberly in David Van Driessen's classes with Daria (per Beavis and Butt-head). One is a redhead who was being bothered by B&B in "Sexual Harassment." The other is the punk girl to the left of Daria in this picture (sitting next to Cassandra).

I had thought for ages that the punk girl had no name, but it turns out that alert fan Napalm Kracken knew the girl's name from having played the computer game Beavis and Butt-head Do U, in which the punk girl appears and in the instruction book is named Kimberly. An image of her is available online, but note that her image is flopped left-to-right. (Someone in the computer graphics department wasn't paying attention.) Multiple sources online also name her (see here and here, for instance). Thank you, Napalm Kracken!

There is one teensy problem, which is that I strongly suspect that the redhead from "Sexual Harassment" really was, initially, the only girl named Kimberly in Daria's class, and whoever did Beavis and Butt-head Do U grafted the name onto the punk girl. It has been reported that the punk girl makes a smart remark to B&B in the computer game, and the remark appears to have been lifted whole from something the redhead says to B&B in another B&B episode No matter now if it was all in error: the punk girl is now officially named Kimberly.

There you have it. Enjoy your Saturday.

P.S. The episode "Sexual Harassment" is available for viewing online here (after the episode "Spanish Fly").

FF.net

• Is It Graduation Yet? by MandeeMistress (Part 4): She still felt her arms tremble when she had felt Trent’s touch, and she could still taste his kiss on her lip.

PPMB

• The Cynic and The Defender, by Doggieboy (Part 9): “Omigod, Robert! They’re shooting at us!”
• John Lane 36: Promises, by Richard Lobinske (COMPLETE!): John woke in the morning feeling Daria's soft skin pressed against his back and her arm around his chest.
• Tales of the Ringbearers: Last Man, by legendeld (COMPLETE!): He could still remember when the bombs fell. That was when the sun disappeared.
• Turnabout Confusion Part II: All the King's Horses, by Dennis (continued): "Sometimes, when you take on power, you lose. And sometimes," Helen continued, looking away, "even when you win, you become the thing you fought."

Prepare for a Knockout

A mere 105 years ago today, Ward Moore (no relation) was born. He became among other things a science-fiction writer, and is renown today for producing one of the greatest alternate-history stories ever: Bring the Jubilee, a tale of what happened after a Confederate victory at Gettysburg. Given some of the AU stories in Daria fandom about the Confederacy, fans might wish to find this book, considered a cornerstone of SF writing, and give it a good read. I loved it.

SFMB is getting spambot posts all over the place. If anyone knows how to delete those posts, please do. Other message boards should take notice. The sad news is, the recent spambot posts outnumber the recent legitimate posts. A sign of the times, I guess.


FF.net

• The Young Switcheroo, by Smileyfax (Part 5): Rather than give a synopsis of this chapter, let me say instead that we have a winner here, and it is a hell of a winner. A brilliant AU in progress, a must-read from the very beginning. Smileyfax has an update on all of his unfinished stories at his FF.net profile.

PPMB

• Avenging, by Lorenzo Sauchelli (Part 16): "When was the last time you executed a Tom?" (I love this line. It's classic. Wild story, too.)
• Death Takes a Holliday, by TAG (COMPLETE!)
• A Monster in the Unmaking, by Kristen Bealer (Part 1): Damn, right in the bull's-eye. Read this story. We finally get a look into the lives of the Taylors, and it will blow you away.
• New Life, by legendeld (Part 12): “Now that you know, I’m dropping out of college and running off with Stacy," Daria told Quinn. "Trent’s going to drive us to our new life in paradise but I promise we’ll send him back as soon as we get bored with him.” Ouch!
  
• A Simple Makeup Kit, by Richard Lobinske (COMPLETE!): This story should have been canon. Dead, solid perfect, 11 out of 10.
• Stacy Rowe, Seeker (Part II), by jtranser (continued): Luhrman Barksdale has a short conversation with Upchuck about marketing. (Eww!)
  
• Turnabout Confusion Part II: All The King's Horses, by Dennis: "Wednesday" added. This story is creepy good. Blood on the moon, indeed.
  

Sk8 yr H3@rt owt

I was, as usual, unaware that today was Go Skateboarding Day, but it is. Hard to believe what people will celebrate, but knock yourself out. Not literally, though.

JennaUsername has drawn Jane Lane as an assassin, with more Daria characters in similar lines of work on the way, we hope.

PPMB

• But What About the Baby (Sitter)?! by Kristen Bealer (Part 2): The nightmare continues, with one of the best-ever lines in Daria fanfiction.
  
• Legion of Lawndale Heroes 13.1, by Brother Grimace (Part 2): “If I ever find the sadist who caused me to torch a sweet potato pie . . .!”

Not much here, but I will add more to this particular post as the day goes along, so stay tuned. Feel free to add your own comments, especially if you are a Cancer. Celebrate the mega-hyper-awesomeness that is we us.

Two Quickies

At left, Astro Jane with blue eyes (thank you, Brother Grimace) and a touched up appearance. This is win to the awesome power. At right, a flopped pic of Space Quinn, so she's got a cell phone in her right hand, not her left. Eh. Jane still rules.







Have fun, more later.

Give Them a Flip

Remember that post some time ago about flopping images? Here are two images previously posted on DFB2 that have been horizontally flopped. Because the characters are bilaterally symmetrical, you end up with something almost like a new picture, or (at worst) an old pic with a refreshing look. The images are big when you click on them.

Just felt like doing that.

Kinda fun. Well, for simple people like me, yeah.

Flip-Flopping on the Issues

Glance at the image at right for a second. Notice anything unusual about it?

If you said Daria's hair looks odd, you win an Internet cookie. The image is one of many on the Internet and in other media that has been "flopped," as we used to call it in the magazine business. It's been flipped over, left to right, so Daria's front bangs swing down to her left, not to her right. Andrea looks odd for the same reason.

If you pick up your copy of The Daria Diaries and look at the back cover, you'll notice (eventually) that the bottom image of Brittany, Jodie, Jane, and Daria has been flopped, too. In The Daria Database, the family portrait of the Griffins, standing on their home's staircase, has also been flopped. You can tell because the same area in its correct orientation appears in the episode "Gifted," when Quinn is over at Sandi's house.

Similar pictures have surfaced on various websites. There is an otherwise nice wallpaper for Daria on Absolute Daria Files that has been flopped so several people look a little strange.

Flopping isn't bad in itself. In fact, it's a neat way to generate more eye-catching images that look slightly familiar but still unique. I've used flopped images in this blog when the difference between the proper orientation and the flopped one was nonexistent. This image of Sandi, for example, was flopped, and I flopped an alter ego of Jake on March 1st for comic effect.

Irfanview allows you to flop images very nicely, better I think than Paint, and if you happen to like toying with images then you can give flopping a try. You can't do it with anyone whose hair style is asymmetrical, like Daria or Jane, unless the hair style has been changed (e.g., pulled back in a ponytail).

Just a random note to start off a Saturday. It's not like I'm going to watch basketball all day or anything. Seriously.

Amy Barksdale's... Face

The actual reason I started looking at pictures of Amy Barksdale was because of past complaints from Daria fans that Amy's face changes between seasons two and five. Above are screencaps taken from (left to right) "I Don't," "Through a Lens Darkly," and "Aunt Nauseam." Click on the picture to enlarge it, and judge for yourself. (Note: The "Aunt Nauseam" picture is flopped horizontally so she is facing in the same direction as the other shots.)

Discussion?