A Cynical Light in the Wilderness Returns...

For you fans of the MTV animated program Daria, which ran from 1997 to 2002 and provided absolute proof of the Snipes Conjecture (named after the actor Wesley Snipes and his line from the film White Men Can't Jump, where he stated, after the good fortune of another character in the film, 'that the sun shines on even a dog's ass sometimes')... in this case, that even a spewing dimensional rift in realiy such as MTV can occasionally have something wonderful or even beneficial issue forth amongst all of the hellish crap.

(P.S. - how many seasons of The Real World have there been now, in place of Headbanger's Ball, or MTV Unplugged? I'm still pissed that they killed off Dead at 21 before it hit its stride - and it was getting there - and bitch-slapped a decent parody like 2Gether into oblivion by making the saddest half-hour comedy imaginable out of an interesting telefilm.)

Anyway - there's always been a small, scrappy and resiliant group of fans dedicated to the adventures of OH (Our Heroine, as Daria is known by her fans), and her journey through high school, adolescence and the general crap that comes with being a young woman who recognizes the BS for what it is, and yet, still has to paddle through it all the way to graduation. (Lucky she's had an amiga like Jane Lane to watch her back.) These Daria fans have been responsible for ten years of amazing fan fiction, artwork, essays and just general discussion on the world of Lawndale and its denizens - as well as forming several Internet sites and message boards dedicated to OH and her friends.

However, there's always a point where things seem to get a bit off-track in any fandom. Why? Does it matter - they just do. In this case, however, it led to what's known as 'the Great Daria Fandom Implosion of 2007'. A number of prominent Daria fan sites either shut down operations or (just as bad) stopped accepting fandom contributions, and several prominent members of the fandom either left altogether or distanced themselves. In the wake of this, there was wondering if this meant the end of Daria fandom (as one person famously referenced in an essay on the subject, with the ending of the show in 2002 and no new episodes forthcoming, the fandom has taken on the attributes of a 'cargo cult').

Maybe, however, this was just what the fandom needed.

In the roughly six months since the Implosion, there's been a resurgence of activity in the Daria fandom; a number of new authors have begun to pour new works of fan fiction into the fandom for members to enjoy. (Two new names of note to this effort are Doggieboy, with his 'OH and BFF meets Damnnation Alley - without the mutant bugs' serial fic Apocalyptic Daria, and Legendeld, a writer who's already noted for his prolific writings and his unique manner of writing the majority of his fics in three-parts.) Also, there's the launch of Lawndale Online, a new mega-site dedicated to the fandom. (I really need to set up a small site with my fics and send them a link for fans who want to read my fics. I'm not exactly loving the formatting they're using for fics there. Oh, well. You can't have everything.) Finally, Dariacon Orlando 2008 is fast approaching, and for the Daria fans who attend, either in person or virtually, it should be interesting.

However, in the ashes and out on the cold frontier, deep within dormant, idle machinery... something stirred.

It seems that Outpost Daria - long considered THE site for all things Daria-related, and the body blow that could have signaled the beginning of the end when its owner decided to shut down in May 2007 - may be returning to full operation soon.

Why? How? Doesn't matter. If OD goes back on line, it's a good thing. As the 'first stop for new Daria fans' and the second listed site for the show on the Daria Wikipedia entry, OD was always THE place to find almost anything you wanted on the Internet, including loads and loads of fanfiction you simply couldn't find anywhere else. (The only exception for this was fan works of an adult nature - works listed as 'R' rated or above. No problem. The Sheep's Fluff has a section for such works - Mistress Daria's Dungeon - so those works can be represented as well.)

Let's see if it happens. Outpost Daria was a good thing for the fandom. It can be a good thing again.

Maybe it could add a couple of new things when it returns... I'm liking that 'review of stories' idea of Lawndale Online... maybe adding a co-administrator to take the load off the site owner when RL starts acting like a bitch and starts shoveling on grief or just a need to step back and take a good, long nap - that could be good, too. Another good section to add could be an 'in memoriam' section, with screenshots or mentions of inactive sites (such as Planet Daria, which went down before I came into the fandom), and with the mass amounts of fandom works out thre, maybe a Fandom Database showing charecters created in fanfiction and have sort-of come to life in Lawndale through that fashion.

Whatever the owner feels he can handle.


Now... if we can just get Viacom and MTV off the stick and making Daria webisodes... Daria minis... if someone with the power to say so in the front office would say that even though they can't see the company making any new Daria materials in the forseeable future, but wouldn't be adverse to the idea of fans who wish to show their affection for the program by making new episodes... I'd love to see Apocalyptic Daria in webisode form online somewhere, or The Last Summer, or even a one-shot episode that covers something that SHOULD have been covered in the series itself. Promise in Green would be the perfect one-shot episode for an online Daria fan-made episode.

For right now, though, the news of a possible return of OD is good enough. Let's hope it happens.