A Few Anniversaries of Fandom Note

Lots of Daria-related birthdays today (with the connections & links in parentheses). Christina Aguilera is 29 (Stacy Rowe alter ego at right); Brad Pitt turns 46 (many mentions); Steven Spielberg is 63 (Jaws, E.T.); Michael Moorcock is 70 (see here); Piltdown Man (at left) would be 97; Joseph Stalin would have been 131 (Stalin jokes); Saki would have been 139 (Clovis); and the Holiday Island High student named International Migrants Day turns nine but looks 17.

Eleven years ago today, the webmistress of one of the early major supersites, Michelle Klein-Häss of Lawndale Commons, wrote an essay about the demise of supersite Planet Daria. A year later, someone else wrote about the demise of Lawndale Commons. LC continued in a reduced capacity until 2003. The fandom's been through a lot of collapses and regrowth.

Fanfiction updates are on the way for the weekend. Stay tooned.

It's Tango Day! Hooray!

Yes, Daria fans, today is Tango Day! Today we celebrate the tango by watching other people dance, because we are Daria fans and you've got to be kidding that we can actually dance, like no way. Well, okay, maybe some of us can dance, but the exceptions prove the rule.

The tango was invented in Buenos Aires, which was destroyed by jealous aliens who had too many legs to tango properly. We mourn the loss of a great city, but we still have the tango to fill our Daria fanfics (such as here and over here).

Lawndale Commons, one of the great early supersites for this fandom, is said to have shut down on December 11, 1999. A story by Kara Wild was dedicated to it that same month. Lawndale Commons did close its message board about that time (and perhaps changed its address), but it was given its final update in 2003.

Not As "Lost" As You'd Think

It is supposed to be an axiom of the Internet that (almost) nothing is every truly lost. The vanished supersite Lawndale Commons was mentioned in an earlier post. Let's see what we can dig up about that site and what was on it.

The site, operated by the justly famous Michelle Klein-Häss (who appeared as a camper on "Camp Fear"), was a real supersite. It had its own IRC chat and message boards and everything. Tonight I discovered that it is possible to get a complete list of everything that the WayBack Machine stored about the site (not everything, but a lot anyway). Among other things, I discovered:

• ...something borrowed from the legendary, long-gone website Planet Daria.
• ...the origin of that idea that two seasons of Daria equal one year of "real time" in Lawndale.
• ...a map of Daria's Bomb Shelter.
• ...and Daria and Jane spinning around in 3-D CGI, rendered by John Markus. (LINKS ARE FIXED!) Now, is that totally cool or what?

Anybody remember all this? Wish I'd known about it when I got into the fandom in 2002. Missed it. Dang!

Oh, and you can get all of the fanfics ever stored in Lawndale Commons in the WayBack Machine, too, using the above method. Click through about 46 pages of stored images, web pages, fanfics, etc. No more missing fanfics. Nice.

Anything missing that I wish I could get now? The large image of the Lawndale crest, shown small-size in the logo above. Rats. Anyone remember this? Anyone remember to SAVE this?

Richard Lobinske has again updated the list of 2008 Visual Fanworks for PPMB and SFMB. I, on the other hand, have not updated the fanfic list yet. Sue me.

(Just kidding.)