We've Got Pizza Prince and Pizza King...Why Not Pizza Pope?

The Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, opened on this day in 1962. This led to a lot of changes in the Catholic Church, including allowing churches to use the vernacular language in their mass. It also allows me to use the woefully-underused "Jake as Pope" alter ego shown on the left. Everybody wins!

Today is also National Sausage Pizza Day, a holiday that Daria and Jane probably observe regularly and with great zeal. Except when they celebrate National Pizza with Everything (except Anchovies) Day or National Cheese Pizza Day, of course.

Fanfic Update!

• The Author as a Lesbian, Season 2, by DeacBlue (part 8): "Helen turned to Quinn. 'Stacy is allowed over, but no parties. If we find everything the way we left it, your privileges will be expanded. But if you abuse our trust in you...' her voice trailed off. 'I'll be like Rapunzel, only able to get in or out using my hair, and I'll have time enough to grow it that long, too.' Helen smiled. 'I'm so glad that I have two very intelligent daughters.'"


• The Beginning of Our History , by ST91 (part 4): "'Your name is Jane right? I do not want to sound like a bitch to you and I don’t like to behave in this way, but listen carefully : Darius is a serious and intelligent guy, but he's very clumsy with the girls. He has already suffered a lot in the past due to a whore who betrayed him without thinking about it twice. Now I don’t know you and don’t know what your intentions are, but make him suffer and I will make your life a living hell ... have I been clear?'"


• A Fistful of Scarletts, by Aloysius (part 2): "'Some of these women are telepaths, sir!' Lewis said. 'And I don't even know what a Ringbearer is!' A chuckle could be heard from the intercom. 'I do know what they are, Kevin,' he said. 'I know how to handle them. That's all that is important. As far as the telepaths are concerned, keep your thoughts polite and neutral. Step back and let my workers get their jobs done.' Then the intercom clicked off."


• In Any Other World, by Charles RB: "'Helen, it's Eric. We're having problems with the McConchie case. A "friend" of ours has warned us that the tax inspectors have found new evidence-' Damn it, Eric, don't admit to having inside sources over the phone! 'What is it?' 'There's a new witness: ex-employee, made redundant, you know the drill. With the case on Monday, I'm betting they were going to let us know as late as they could to keep us off-balance. We need to adapt the case now-'"


• LLH Mini - Timely Circumstances, by RLobinske (part 2): "The Doctor pressed a lever and the same, rhythmic sound that heralded the arrival of the TARDIS filled the room. Michael said, 'So, where are we going?' 'To an orphanage to hopefully rescue a little girl.'"


• A Tale of Three Tired Tropes (IC: The Tropes Have Risen From Beyond The Grave), by Aloysius (COMPLETE!): "She squinted to see who was inside the car, but the windows were tinted too darkly to tell. Just then, Daria stepped out of the driver's side door and waved. 'Lane!' she yelled. 'Get your skinny butt in a coat and let's go!' 'Daria?' Jane asked, confused. 'Where did you get a Jag?'"


• Unnamed story (IC : Legion of Lawndale Super Villains), by Roentgen (COMPLETE!): "'So,' Daria said to Brittany and Sandi. 'Did you find this rat bastard Assmaster?' 'Yeah,' Brittany said, 'we found him.'"

Teen Angels

Daria's only flirtation with religion appeared on MTV just 11 years ago today with the episode "Groped by an Angel." The episode sparks a lot of fanfiction ideas, but a big one it fires on is this: could there be guardian angels in Daria? Given all the disasters that the characters experience in the series, the answer leans toward "yes." Seriously, how else could Daria have survived the collapse of the school library roof, her near accident in the family SUV, the sinking of the Princess Fairy, the hurricane, and everything else?

Does Quinn have a guardian angel? Fanfiction says yes. Does Daria have a guardian angel? Fanfiction says yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Does Jane? Apparently not, dammit, but as she says in "Speedtrapped," she's a survivor and probably doesn't need one. So, maybe "Groped by an Angel" was on to something. (I know the images with this blog post come from "Daria! The Musical," "Lucky Strike," and "Sarcastathon 3000," but they fit so I am using them.)

The Morgendorffers appear to be some liberal flavor of Christian, most likely Protestant, because they have a Christmas tree and are at (very rare) times shown in church. Plus, the outdoor wedding in "I Don't" looked very Protestant to me. Religion doesn't seem to enter much into their lives, except for cursing and weddings. And minor religious bits in certain Sick, Sad World episodes. Oh, right, there's the big Cupid in "Depth Takes a Holiday," but he's a Greek demigod and not really an angel. Upchuck is shown as Cupid in an alter-ego, but he's no angel, either.

Here's what I am pondering: what would a guardian angel from Daria properly look like? Creatively speaking, I mean. I have a mental image of Sandi Griffin's alleged guardian angel as having the form of a heraldic griffon (eagle's head and wings and foreclaws, with a lion's body, rear feet, and tail). A griffon for a Griffin. Works for me.

Any other ideas? Might a guardian angel look at all like a spirit animal from "The Teachings of Don Jake," or like a small animal like the bulldog in "Through a Lens, Darkly," or like a cat? Could Jeffy, Joey, and Jamie actually be Quinn's guardian angels? Why would she have three? Toss out some ideas here. Spread them around like manure and let's see what grows in it.

Angels. Why do they all have harps in Daria? I don't think any of the characters depicted with them know how to play them. Oh, and here are some fan artworks of Daria cast angels:

• "Fallen Angels" (SRA)
• "The Archangel Daria" (Geoffrey Roberts)
• "Quinn as Claire Danes' Juliet, from the movie Romeo+Juliet" (Liliane Grenier)

Meanwhile... hmmm, don't have any fanfiction lists ready. Moar later then. Talk amongst yourselves about angels in animated series. Especially this one.

Christmas Afternoon, Egg-Nogginized

You've opened all your presents and you didn't get anything you wanted, which you had expected, but you did get a lot of stuff you didn't want, which you also had expected. It's time to kick back with your best friend and have some spiked flavored eggnog and offer your final Christmas thoughts.

Interesting old thread about the supposed religious backgrounds of the Morgendorffers and other folks. Worth a read in this particular season. Any new thoughts?

Did you know Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, was born on Christmas Day? Read all about it here, including the many fanfic links between Daria and that scariest of places.

Fanfic update this weekend, I hope.

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.

Teen Angel Angst

Brittany's crystal bullhorn explodes into a thousand shards, miraculously without injuring Brittany, in the climax of "Groped by an Angel." That episode premiered nine years ago today. Maybe Brittany had a guardian angel of her own. For more on the episode, click here.

If you are for some reason curious about what was being said in this blog a year ago, click here and enjoy.

More soon. Okay, it's soon now.

Because the text tends to overlap left-mounted images using this blog format, I am adding all new fanfiction from today to the blog post from yesterday. Yes, I know this smacks of treason, but it just looks so much nicer and neater that way. Plus it forces readers to see all the goodness that popped out the day before. It's for your own good, trust me.

Okay, forget that reason because I'm going to use bullet points anyway. Let's take a look at what "Groped by an Angel" gave us to play with in the field of fanfiction topics and general discussion.

• The man who rescued Donna that snowy Christmas Eve, the one who was no ordinary roadside mechanic. What was up with this? Of course it was a regular guy, but... what if it wasn't? Think of something in the category of mechanically inclined aliens, supervillains, etc.
  
• "Angels are everywhere. They can hear you." If Quinn was correct, how could the Daria series be reinterpreted with angelic interference?
• "Some people just won't listen to logic." One of the best Quinn quotes ever. Makes you wonder what she would be like if she became highly religious in an AU or as a high-school senior. The new Sarah Palin?
• Trent and "subzero": Since when was Trent this smart? Is Max really this stupid? Speaking of Max, we need more bald-headed whiny poser Max fanfiction in which he gets killed.
• Undead deadbeat dads: anyone we know in particular? Must be a way to work this into a fanfic.
• Brian Taylor and his father: Well, now we know why the original Mrs. Taylor ran away after his birth. Brian's father clearly doesn't like him and just as clearly spoils Brittany. Given the uncomfortable similarities between Brittany and her stepmother... no, let's don't go there. That's been done to death at SFMB.
• Ball game: So, there's a baseball stadium near Lawndale? Baltimore Orioles? Philadelphia?
• "You know, I wanted a cat when I was little, but my father never let me have one. 'Dogs are for boys. Cats are for girls.' Well, you know what, Dad? I didn't want a dog, okay?" Did Jake have a dog as a kid? Why hasn't Jake gotten a cat (or cats) for the family? Would life be any different if he had, and the cat enslaved them all forever? It's happened in other fanfics, why not in near-canon?
  
• Quinn: "I think I'm very spiritual." Helen: "Yes, you take after your mother in that." Say what? How does this work? Why does Helen think she's spiritual? Because she can see spirit animals when she's on drugs, like in "The Teachings of Don Jake"?
  
• Fourteen-hour days: If Helen's really gone this long during the week, no wonder Daria doesn't think much of her.
• What if Quinn had been struck on the head by the light fixture? Mild concussion, scalp lacerations, brain injury, angst. Why hasn't anyone done the appropriate AU for this?
• Quinn talks to her guardian angel? Out loud? What if he answers back? Will she date him?
• The Trix Rabbit's secret trysts with Daria have already been discussed.
• Jamie has a creepy old aunt who smells. Maybe his parents should die so that he leaves Lawndale.
• Wonder if Sandi did have a guardian angel, and he did tell her to try the raspberry vinaigrette dressing because he wanted to make her sick. Maybe he's not a guardian angel but another kid using ventriloquism. Maybe the salad dressing in another AU causes all three of them to die or at least go into comas. That would be awesome. I mean, that would be so sad.
• Party Planet. Must remember to use that store and the salesman in a fanfic.
• Quinn asks for money, and both she and Daria get $50? This family is whacked.
• Trent really does know algebra. Damn.
• Daria: "I mean, watch the bloodshed on the evening news, and then tell me there are guardian angels." Why doesn't Quinn see what Daria sees? Selective intellectual blindness? Why doesn't Daria want to help Quinn see life more realistically? Is Quinn's happiness more important that Quinn's grasp on reality? Oddly, this issue does reflect some current psychological thinking, that optimists do not see reality as clearly as pessimists. Optimists believe they always have a chance even when they pretty clearly don't, but that perseverance sometimes saves that day. This episode, for all its problems, highlights an important distinction between Daria and Quinn, one that should be explored in more fanfiction. What if Daria came to think Quinn might be right, that there were angels?
  
• Wonder what would happen if the stupid Three Js did beat up Mr. O'Neill. I can dream, can't I?
• Mr. Taylor "borrows" from Brian's college fund to get presents for Brittany. This just looks so wrong. Plus, Brian will have a good reason to become a serial killer later in life, like next year.
• Daria: "I think what makes sense is to believe whatever makes you feel best." That just seems like such a nice thing to say, and so unlike Daria. What if Daria had said something else, like about there being no angels because they would have helped save people but obviously haven't, so Quinn becomes more depressed and realistic and thoughtful, instead of stupid. What if Quinn saw that Daria had a point? Would she take more responsibility for her actions instead of leaving it to a guardian angel to bail her out of situations?
• Quinn goes on a cyberdate. There's a whole story there waiting to be told.
• Jane doesn't like Quinn very much, but we already knew that. And Daria pretends not to like Quinn to Jane. Weird. Does Jane know it's all a front? She should, after "Monster."
  
• Jane: "How is it that [Ashely-Amber] looks and acts exactly the same age as her own stepdaughter?" Man, this is freaking me out. Maybe SFMB was right.

Your thoughts, please?

Oh, Thee of Little Faith

Outside of the episode "Groped by an Angel", the subject of religion and faith was rarely, if ever, addressed. Secondarily, a Christmas tree could be seen in the garage on a couple occasions, such as in "Camp Fear."

Daria declares that she is an agnostic and we know that the Morgendorffers certainly do not attend any regular services. Now it's your turn to have fun with wild speculation on what you think/consider/imagine/hallucinate the religious preferences of different characters to be.

Tom at Bromwell

There is a crashing silence in the fanfic field when it comes to young Thomas Sloane's adventures in college. If anyone knows of any stories about his time at Bromwell, let me know, because except for brief mention in various serials like Richard Lobinske's Falling Into College and Ruthless Bunny's Bed and Breakfast Man, Tom drops off the face of the earth after IICY?

And I don't think that's fair. Granted I've not always been a big supporter of Tom, but he was around for a long while and did have some entertaining elements in his personality, mostly in being a genteel smartass. And he did show Jane a good time, until he cheated on her DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE D- uh, sorry, lost it there for a moment. I'm okay now.

For a while I toyed with some plots for Tom-at-Bromwell stories. One had Tom be a part of a drama society (he certainly had a gift for acting, if you get my drift), but he becomes involved in a dispute over what play the group will perform. He wants to act in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, but others want a Passion Play. Tom finds himself torn between continuing to push for his choice, which will alienate his new friends in the club (some of whom are far more religious than he is), and dropping his objections to the Passion Play, which he personally does not want to be involved in. Huge moral and religious issues must be grappled with, and a satisfactory resolution is unlikely. He is likely to be true to himself, which means everyone will hate him, but he is still the hero and does right. Funny how he turns out to be a lot like Daria there.

Anyone else who wants to use this idea is free to do so. At this point nothing more will be done with the above plot bunny. Any other plot bunnies out there about Tom at Bromwell?

NOTE: There is a cartoon DVD out there called "Bromwell High." It often appears when you do a search for Daria DVDs. Be warned that "Bromwell High" has NOTHING AT ALL to do with Daria, Tom, Bromwell University, etc., even if it is an MTV cartoon. You were warned.