The very first Spotlight

In a time when our little fandom is poised to grow by leaps and bounds as people are drawn in by the release of the series on DVD, it behooves the more experienced among us to guide these neophytes to treasures of old, whether they be stories, authors, artworks, artists, or memes. For the first such Spotlight it is only fitting to highlight one whose work fits, nay, surpasses each of these categories.

The first of Darea-lover’s works, found here, started a meme which can still be heard today. That first work was later illustrated, proving that Darea-lover’s talents were far more than merely literary.

However it was her written works that carried the greatest impact. In a review of her second work, esteemed author TAG wrote: “[It] is a fantastic tour de force, an exploration of the borderlands between the real and the imaginary as intense and vivid as anything that Jorge Luis Borges or J. R. R. Tolkien ever produced.…Exotic imagery fills the senses, the mind drifts from marvel to marvel in the sure and capable company of the author.” Fitting praise indeed.

Sadly, though, rather than become a sun in the Daria-fandom heavens, burning steadily and bathing us all in the glow of her genius, Darea-lover was a shooting star, burning brightly, but all too briefly. Her third and final work leaving the reader saddened at the thought of what might have been.

There you have it, the first of what I hope will be many such Spotlights, and I hereby challenge my fellow bloggers to Spotlight their own favorite artists, authors and works. The newbies aren't gonna get scarred, er informed, on their own, now are they?

An Introduction

As you may have noticed, TAG has invited a few of us other inmates, er, fans, to participate in his blog. Why, you may ask? Probably because he's lazy and tired of keeping this place up all by himself, but at the same time unwilling to let it slide. Of course, now if it slides anyway, he can just blame us newbies. Not that he'd be so devious. In any case, since I'll be contributing here, I thought I'd introduce myself, and explain how I came to be a member of this fandom.

If you participate (or lurk) on the PPMB, you know me as smk. For the purposes of this blog, I shall be hereinafter known as, 'the smk chick'. As The Kristen Bealer Guy noted, there was kind of a pattern to the names, but since I don't particularly want to be thought of as a guy, and since, unlike Kristen Bealer, smk is gender-neutral, I decided on the smk chick. And it's not capitalized because I'm pretty sure it'll bug TAG.

As for how I came to be part of this fandom, about two and a half years ago I suddenly had access to DSL. I'd never had DSL before, and wanted to compare the speed to dial up. It seemed that streaming video would be a good test, so I went to YouTube. That day they happened to be featuring a channel from nightwinggirl (I am unsure of the spelling, it's been awhile and since YouTube suspended the account [Stupid YouTube. But I'm not bitter.] it's a little hard to check). The channel had a play list with all of the Daria episodes, in order, including the unaired pilot. Over the next few weeks, I watched the whole series. Some of the comments referenced Outpost Daria, so I checked that out. I had never heard of fan fiction, but when the series was done, I still wanted more, so I started reading some of the fan fiction, on Outpost Daria and elsewhere. Then I clicked a few links, found the PPMB, discovered the Creative Writing forum, realized there was new stuff to be found there, and lurked for a little while.

I may never have decided to actively participate, if it hadn't been for one post. You see, prior to this, not only had I never heard of fan fiction, I'd never heard of message boards and had no idea that any fans other than Trekkies were active in any sense; the whole thing was unfamiliar and a little scary. When I'd been compulsively reading fan fiction, though, I did e-mail two or three authors. One was Lawndale Stalker. Once Upon a Time at College was unfinished, leaving a huge question unanswered, and I wanted to know, dammit! And he refused to answer, claiming he'd finish the story one day. (And has that happened? No! But I'm not bitter.) Then, in my lurking, I came across the following post:

http://www.thepaperpusher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12442&p=208885#p208885

(I know I should probably be able to capture an image of the screen and post it here, but I don't want to brag on my 1337 skillz, so just follow the link and pretend, 'kay?)

That was me! He was talking about me! I was compelled to respond, so I de-lurked. Once the door was open, I found that participating in an online community (this one, anyway) was much less scary than I thought, and in fact have found that this is a comfortable place to be. Even though my online experience has broadened, this is still my favorite place on the 'net.

That's quite enough about me, and I promise that future posts will strictly limit use of the word 'I' (but I promise nothing about the parentheses).

What I've learned from my journey into the Inferno

At first I was kind of disappointed. The Daria's Inferno game was fine, except for having a few glitches (it was version 1.0.0, after all), but I wanted "portable" stuff to carry away from it, like WAV files, images, etc. Fun stuff I could use elsewhere. But, tragically, the CD was full of SMK files I couldn't use (like, for example, "Daria.smk"). NOTE: SMK files do not appear to be named after smk.

So there was nothing I could do with it.

Or so I thought.

It turns out that SMK files are "Smacker" files, compressed video/cartoon files (often with sound) that are used to power computer games. Smacker was developed by RAD Game Tools and is actually, as I understand it, kind of old and out of date, like me. I wanted to find out if I could modify the SMK files, and lo! You can. All you have to do is go to this webpage and download the RAD Video Tools EXE file, then run it. The tool file is free, but RAD would of course like a donation, which I leave entirely in your hands. You can get the toolkit elsewhere, but why not from the makers? My computer has misgivings about the file, but after checking it out I downloaded it without any problem. It attached itself to my copy of Daria's Inferno, but you can put it elsewhere.

And I have had a trying though fun time learning a whole new skill.

It turns out that the SMK files in Daria's Inferno are like dozens and dozens of little cartoon bits you can stick together in all sorts of ways. I'm not very good at this yet, but I will try to load a few test files here in a few days. Once you get the RAD Video Tools thinger, you can click on and watch any sort of SMK file.

However, I have learned now to convert SMK files into BIK files with the RAD Video Tools thinger, because BIK files work much better.

I can also click on "Print Screen" during any video segment and capture a very large and perfect image.

So this could turn out VERY well after all. If you happen to have downloaded the RAD Video Tools, click on Quinn (above left) and see what happens.

Stay tuned.