#ask daria morgendorffer

[ask-daria-morgendorffer]

LUTUALVERSE WRAP-UP: After the Dance

@askoverlordvox can't sue me for this because this interaction technically doesn't even exist. Looks like The Powers That Be got bored and decided to load more busywork onto me (again) which is why I've been tasked with delivering the all-encompassing Lutualverse Wrap-Up. Come join me on this recap of sad gays and what they're doing on your dashboard. 'Tis the season for Flashbacks, because we have backstories in spades. @ask-sera has been taking @ask-emily-em-emmy on a traumatic trip through Heaven which totally doesn't foreshadow anything going on in the current timeline.

And we can't forget about the love-at-first-bite saga between @exorcist-ava and @exorcist-canine, something that all started when a young, smoke-free Ava rearranges Canine's nose with her teeth for tormenting @seraphim-adina, and then continued when they met again later and vandalized some property in the name of romance and artistic expression. This hectic little love story continues with some second date pole-dancing and ends with Canine accepting Ava's aromanticism by breaking up with her. Young love. Never works out.

@your-favorite-therapist has been busy in the past with helping our resident cousin of the cobra chicken @seraphim-sarai find her mentor and with helping Ava, still (mostly) smoke-free, embrace her inner New Yorker, bringing Ava one step closer to the bushy-browed street rat we all know and (somehow) love.

Another blast from the past to keep an eye on is the first meeting between @sinner-peyton and @ask-sadie-morgan during their living years. Peyton before her character development era? Gee, we all know how that will end.

And now in the current timeline, we have @the-cozy-shark opening for business after a conversation between @zestialmorde and @helluvahotelfan. And because this is a Lutualverse event, we can't have peace for five minutes.

Like any sane person, @ask-kori decides to kidnap and torture Ava, all while Canine and Sarai get kidnapped by the newly appointed Goetia @prince-pruflas as they try to get to the Envy Ring. On that note, I should probably mention that @ask-king-paimon decided to remember that @official-stolas was his son just so he could disown him after the whole trial ordeal. @your-favorite-spyho died but got better, and ends up returning to Hell to commit an act of public indecency with Adina after she comes to take him back. @sinner-obie is hard at work turning Peyton into a decent person through the power of love and sweatpants. On the NRWE-verse side of things, @joyer-is-joy has been hard work trying to build a harem from canon and non-canon entities alike. Why? Hell if I know. I just work here. So that's it for today's fascinating wrap-up. @ask-jane-lane, if you're reading this...

-🤓

[ask-daria-morgendorffer]

How meta. I’m a huge fan. -🤓

[whispersofjupiter]

me thinking daria is a fun and silly show that’s won’t get too serious then watching 4x13 dye! dye! my darling!

[the-badger-mole]

Who is a character you grew to love?

You didn't specify a fandom, so I'm going to pick the characters that jumped to mind first.

Rei Hino from Sailor Moon. When I was a kid, I could. not. STAND her. But then I rewatched it as an adult (and the non-dubbed version), and I found a new appreciation for her. Yeah, she was kind of mean to Usagi on occasion, but Usagi could be annoying on occasion 😏. She was also a fiercely loyal and protective friend. Rei is good people.

Also, Quinn Morgendorffer from Daria. Quinn had more depth than I think the audience was willing to give her. We-or at least I will admit to taking Daria's view of her without really thinking about why, but I love this show, so I do a re-watch roughly once a year. It turns out Daria is a really smart show. I'd realized the depth of Quinn a while ago, but I saw it as her maturing in the later seasons. On my latest rewatch, though, I realized that even in season 1, there was more to her than just a fashion obsession. Yeah, she's kind of a brat, but she's also doing her best to mask some deep insecurities. Quinn is good people, too.

Send me more asks from the list!

[ask-daria-morgendorffer]

Being a non-canon reality warping entity not cool enough for you, @ask-jane-lane ? -🤓

[quinnmorgendorffer]

https://at.tumblr.com/meangirlsshowdown/mean-girls-showdown-round-2/nu6vo7ya9hhq

wondering how u feel about this one

Haha unlike Cher Horowitz, Quinn is legitimately a mean girl. It takes until season five before she'll publicly admit Daria's her sister ("Lucky Strike"). Until then, she says she's her cousin or her "cabana girl's adopted cousin". A particularly funny one is in the s2 episode "I Don't", where they're both bridesmaids in their cousin Erin's wedding and they're asked if they're Erin's cousins and Quinn says, "Actually, I'm her cousin but Daria's, um, her cousin…"

She also has a passive-aggressive mean girls style friendship with Sandi (which is mostly caused by Sandi herself, who's the meanest of the Fashion Club, but, still, Quinn's vicious). Sandi's the real mean girl of the show but I doubt she's on the poll nor should she be as she's not a main character. And if we're going with like the movie Mean Girls/just a queen bitch character, Quinn is obviously the queen. She even ultimately wins at the end of their fight in "Daria Dance Party".

She also is a total girlboss gaslight gatekeep QUEEN when it comes to guys, not really liking any guy for real but uses them to get concert tickets, meals, access to lakehouses/ski cabins, carry her stuff, get her sodas at parties, teach her to drive...she manipulates every guy around her. And when she thinks her mom is implying she's immature because she doesn't have a boyfriend, she literally just cycles through Jamie, Joey, and Jeffy with no regard for their feelings (but is egged on by Daria) ("One J at a Time").

And there are a ton of little moments, like her trying to raise money to get plastic surgery - which results in a monologue where she basically says if she's not the most beautiful she has no idea who she'd be - and tries to get Andrea (the goth chick, as she tends to be called) to give her money by saying she's doing it in solidarity for women everywhere ("Too Cute").

So while she's a mean girl, I obviously find it hard to say, "oh she's a mean girl" because I'm very emotionally attached to her and, god, just thinking of her little monologue in "Monster" about how she thinks being popular is like the only thing she's good at, but she clearly thinks it's not important in the end of things...She's a lot more than just the usual stereotypical mean girl.

But I obviously voted for her and hope she gets far. But I'm not sure enough people on tumblr know her to help her get there.

[ask-daria-morgendorffer]

Salutations, good to be back on the air. -🤓

[skiplo-wave]

Is Daria autistic?

It's never said nor dicussed since it was show in 90s-00s

She's neurodivergent for sure. If, god forbid, they HAD to reboot Daria I can see them doing deep dive on why she's way she is. Seriously don't reboot daria

[ask-daria-morgendorffer]

Do I even have to explain why this is on my dash anymore? -🤓

[humbug-demartino]

[theunmarkedtombstone]

Typing Teenage Dirtbag aesthetic on pinterest is a disgrace, don't ask me why I was at the Devil's Sacrament, I get it, but my God no one actually understands that being a teenage dirtbag is supposed to be abt being a loser and not being a functioning teenager.

People who are NOT teenage dirtbags:

- Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You (hot, and people were afraid of him, which made him popular, even if for the wrong reasons. He scored the most beautiful girl in the world not by luck, but by actually putting in effort even if he was doing it for money. She literally wrote a poem for him. Clearly fucks).

- Effy Stonem from Skins (hot, knows it, has an actual sex life).

- Avril Lavigne (pop punk star who was almost a teenage dirtbag, but was also the consumer version of what a teenage dirtbag is) (I'm With You still fucks severely though).

- Chad Michael Murray in Freaky Friday (I genuinely don't remember his character that much but he fell in love with both Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan in Jamie Lee Curtis' body and attempted to pull HER, so idk that to me involves a level of confidence a teenage dirtbag shouldn't really possess. Also he's hot).

- Daria Morgendorffer from Daria (absolutely clinically depressed and it's difficult for me to say this, but she manages to out talk everyone too well for her to be an actual loser. She's just absolutely too intelligent to be there and an extremely uptight presence, but not really a dirtbag. She stole her only friend's boyfriend, which is toxic loser behavior, but then she managed to keep said friend and said boyfriend, before breaking up herself. She delivered a speech at the end of the show, and managed to be totally herself and reaffirm her own beliefs in front of her entire class. Her behavior was not a reaction to her surroundings it was who she was. Not a dirtbag).

People who ARE teenage dirtbags:

- Rodrick Heffley (thinks he's hot shit because he has a band, but his entire career came down to playing at the school talent show and his mom was the one who went viral. Also he canonically doesn't know how to spell. Iconic teenage dirtbag behavior).

- Janis Ian (manipulated her own friend to go after her enemy because her enemy destroyed her reputation in front of the whole school so much, she essentially got loserfied. She wears a tux to prom. Her only friend is an openly gay guy in 2004, who btw IS NOT a teenage dirtbag himself cause he's confident and he knows he's the shit).

- Sid from Skins (spends his entire time lusting over his best friend's girlfriend and, from what I remember, fucks her after his friend gets ran over by a bus or right before. Doesn't pull, only by accident and looking like that).

- Jane Lane from Daria (artist, loser, has a smart mouth, but not smart enough. Brother is a stoner who has a band that's gonna 'make it someday, man.' Entire family is a fucked up conglomerate of artists who are 'free thinkers'. Goes to school to see her best friend only. This best friend then fucks up her hair and steals her boyfriend, and she stays friends with her. Almost too cool to be a teenage dirtbag, but she has such an overwhelming vibe of it that looms over her that it makes it impossible for her to outlive it).

- Richie Tozier from It (smoker, trash mouth, constantly chased by bullies, doesn't pull, doesn't give, socially anxious, thinks his dick is bigger than yours (it is not)).

- Needy Lesnicki (I don't even need to explain why she's here, but here we go: Dated a drummer. Wore that to prom. Friends with the weirdo goth kids. Has a "punk rock" outfit to go to a bar. In love with her abusive best friend she can't quit. Constantly called a lesbian by the only girl who's weirder than her in her year).

- Juno MacDuff (talks like she's a constant stand up comedy routine. Pregnant from her best friend who's a bigger loser than her, and whom she loves dearly, at the age of 16. Into weird horror movies and comics. Knows how to play guitar. Threw up in her stepmother's urn and blamed her kid sister. Her only other best friend is a beautiful girl who's in love with her teacher and he is NOT hot. At all. So deprived she was almost sadly groomed. Sits on her car and contemplates the stars).

- Those two girls who are always hanging out in the bathroom in Drop Dead Gorgeous (look at them. Just look. One of them is pregnant and they are the only ones who have the guts to say that it's the popular girl and her mom who are murdering everyone because they know that no one gives a shit about what they have to say. Don't go to the school beauty pageant parade cause one of their waters broke. Still heavy smokers through it all).

Unclear:

- Colin Gray from Jennifer’s Body (Looks like that, but then he tried to pull the literal most beautiful girl in school now that she was socially irrelevant enough to go out with him and that still takes confidence. Also he looks like a MySpace wet dream in 2009, when looking like that was cool. Like I said, unclear).

- Kat Stratford (She is in between. She's a teenage dirtbag that knows she is one and embodies that with confidence, which by default makes her NOT a teenage dirtbag, you know? Difficult).

- Bill Denbrough (stutters, sure, but he also ends up with the only girl in their group, who's canonically chased by all the other loser boys. He's king of the losers, but if he lost the stutter, would he really still be a loser?)

That's it. Please stop sharing pictures of "teenagers" with vodka bottles and huge groups of friends, having fun. Those were the people you wanted to be in high school, therefore not teenage dirtbags. Being a teenage dirtbag is about pain and being a loser. Understand the essence. Thank you.

[ask-daria-morgendorffer]

Never going to happen. -🤓

daria and brittany. scandalous

[kinetic-elaboration]

May 16: Daria/Jane, Kiss

Daria/Jane, ~900 words, ~35 minutes

In the same 'verse as this fic, but it also takes place before so like, post-canon, basically. This was inspired by a comment from/conversation with @riotsquirrrl on that fic about how D and J might have gotten together. I really liked it, so I decided to play around with it.

How can it be that Daria thinks it's cold enough for snow and yet Jane's not wearing anything as heavy as a real jacket? It's because Daria is from the South and doesn't understand what cold is or what almost-snow feels like either. So.

*

The forecast says snow flurries but the air feels like incipient heavy snow, as bitter-cold as it is when Daria opens the door and steps outside. These are the last flickering days of the year, the in-between time, the neighborhood dark by 5pm and illuminated only by streetlights. She stands in the cone of light from the Morgendorffer's front-door light and shrugs her shoulders up toward her ears, crosses her arms against her chest, and Jane pulls the sleeves of her red BFAC sweatshirt all the way over her hands.

She'd volunteered to walk Jane out but not all the way home, so there's no reason now to linger out here in the cold, breathing out faint misting gray breaths, thinking about how it won't really snow, not in Lawndale in December. It never has.

But Jane just shifts her weight from one foot to the other, glances out in the direction of the sidewalk and then back. "Hey--so." She mimics Daria's posture, crossed arms to hold in body heat. "Thanks for letting me hang out all night and avoid my house."

"Thank you for distracting me from having to spend time alone with my family." A half-joke, and Jane half-smiles at it. They're not so bad, really. She's just not so used to being home, as if she'd traveled back from Boston in a time machine and now she's in high school again, Quinn telling stories about the same teachers, the same gossip, the same football team. As if Daria's four months at Raft never happened. As if time had shifted in some jarring, abrupt way, but only for her. Only somewhere in her body, in her consciousness.

"Could be worse," Jane answers. Could be her place. Wind's moved back in, half-taken over. Trent won't last the year with him, though he hasn't admitted it yet. And Jane's mom has been away for six months now, the sort of absence that must make even Jane wonder if she'll ever come back, and as far as Daria has ever been tell, Mr. Lane has never really lived there at all.

Maybe familiarity is better. At least she has somewhere to come home to.

"What are you doing tomorrow?" she asks. She means it as a lifeline but selfishly, too.

Jane shrugs. "Sleeping. Painting."

"Busy schedule. Do you think you can find time for pizza?"

"I might be able to pencil that in." The corner of one side of her mouth lifts up again, a smirk but, because it's just them alone, there's softness to it. "I should go."

"Yeah."

For a while now, maybe a couple of months, Jane's been in the habit of kissing Daria on the cheek when they part ways. The reason why has never been obvious, and Daria has stopped trying to remember quite when it started, or what she thought of it then. Maybe Jane does it because separating always feels so much more weighty now, when they won't see each other for days or possibly weeks, instead of hours. Maybe the gesture comes from how much more often they touch, now: jostled together on the subway; falling asleep in each other's dorms; leaning on each other sometimes, when they study side by side in the same bed. Or maybe it's an art school thing, or just part of Jane changing and growing, in some more abrupt or sudden or meaningful way than she did in high school--some change in her that somehow Daria can't see in its entirety or fully understand.

She likes it, though, this new sort of ritual. Never knows how to respond, never initiates, but likes it. When Jane doesn't do it, she always thinks, well that's over now, and then is pleasantly surprised when the habit picks itself up again. Last time, she reached out after and squeezed Jane's arm, just before they parted at the train station in Boston, which was her attempt at speaking the same language back.

But this is Lawndale and it's different here. They're nineteen; they're fifteen; the world is very small, the neighborhood familiar even in the darkness. Flakes of snow too light to even count as flurries are getting caught in Jane's hair.

Somewhere in the direction of the neighbor's lawn, some sound like the movements of an aggressive squirrel rattles through the stillness. "I'll see you tomorrow," Jane says, and Daria turns away from the noise just as Jane leans in to kiss her cheek, and the kiss lands on the side of Daria's mouth instead.

She turns very slightly to her left, like a correction, but doesn't otherwise move. Doesn't pull back, doesn't press forward.

Interesting.

Jane steps back again, blinks a few times; her eyes are unusually wide. "Sorry about that," she says.

Daria shakes her head. "Don't be."

And then Jane's shoulders fall back down, and she laughs like she's letting out some coiled-up nerves. "All right. Tomorrow, then."

"I'll stop by."

Maybe she should be doing something else now, saying something else. Jane leans in one more time and this time kisses her cheek, like she'd meant to, and then she sticks her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie and starts off down the front walk. Daria stays outside and watches her, moving in and out of the brightest lights, until she disappears at last down the street.

[ask-daria-morgendorffer]

Taking on this job has given me permanent brain damage. I’m pretty sure I can sue for this.

[askoverlordvox]

Who’s worse?

@ask-daria-morgendorffer or @joyer-is-joy

Ugh. That's like asking which is better, being dipped in acid or being chokeslammed by a hungry grizzly bear. I'm sure someone in this pit is into it, but I'd rather not with either of them. If I had to pick, Daria hands down. When she does do her job, she's at least reasonable.

But if you're saying I only have one bullet, I'm manifesting a second fucking gun.

[ask-daria-morgendorffer]

Not another NRWE I hope. I’m still recovering from the fact that one of the Powers That Be runs four of them. -🤓