The Great Frozen North, The Wild Wild West

Alaska became a state 51 years ago, about a century after being purchased from Russia. A number of alternate histories have supposed that the sale hinged on the Union winning the American Civil War. What if the Confederacy had won independence? Would "Seward's Folly" have still been acquired? If gold had been discovered in large quantities by Russian prospectors before the sale, would a Russian Gold Rush have kept the territory in the Empire? Would Great Britain have invaded Alaska from Canada to seize it for themselves? Most importantly, would any of this have made any difference to the background of Daria? For storytelling, I mean. Probably not. Oh, well, just tossed that out there for the fanfic writers. Can't say I didn't try.

NEWER! Three Daria fanfics that feature Alaska up close: "North to Alaska, South to Lawndale," by Robert Nowall (in which Trent gets involved in a gold rush); "White Out," by Wouter (in which runaway Jane and her canine pal Zippo check into Fairbanks; and "Baked Alaska," by Brother Grimace, a Daylight story in which the Legion of Lawndale Heroes and the Alliance have their hands full saving a part of the world. Good times. (Why is it the Lanes who usually go to Alaska, and no one else?)

J.R.R. Tolkien was born 118 years ago today. Did Daria ever read The Lord of the Rings? Officially we don't know, but Tolkien is named in a number of Daria fanfics. Daria's Sick, Sad Life Planner does mention the event, however. (See below, and ignore the grammatical errors.) At least Mr. O'Neill appears to have read Tolkien's works. One very good Daria/LotR crossover in progress is "Shadows of a Timeless Song," by Dennis.

And Sergio Leone, King of the Spaghetti Westerns, was born 81 years ago. He is most famed for his crossover movies "Once Upon a Time in Lawndale" and "The Cynic, The Fashionista, and The Jackass." Excellent work, both of them. (And thanks to UU and Pinhead for both images!)

I plan to begin the 2010 fanfiction listing before the end of January, but for now I am taking a break from worrying about it. Updates will be posted here until then.

Cool discussion threads on PPMB worth reading:

• The Three Types of Arguments in Fandom (by Roentgen)
• Looking Back at 2009 in Fanart: What Happened? (by Kristen Bealer)
• Looking Back at 2009 in Fanfiction: What Happened?

Lot of posts on Facebook's Daria site, but... eh, they're the ones who'll buy the DVDs, so I have nothing to add. More power to them, all 260,000 of 'em. Buy! Buy! My Darlings!

"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.