This first-season tale begins immediately after the conclusion of “The Lab Brat,” covering the period through “Pinch Sitter” and “Too Cute” and concluding with events in “The Big House.” (“Road Worrier” and “The Teachings of Don Jake” are here assumed to take place in the summer between Scarlett and Daria’s sophomore and junior high-school years.) The timeframe is in the late 1990s, Lawndale being a suburb of an east-coast mid-Atlantic city, probably Baltimore.
The original story was begun in late August 2004. It was then interrupted by a computer crash only a week or two later, and was further interrupted when the original plot was tossed out while the story was in progress and a new plot was sought. (I discovered that many of the elements of what I had planned for the tale had already appeared in a Marvel Comics graphic novel called 1602—Virginia Dare and all that. Damn!) After two years of research, a new plot was located and the story was able to continue on to the end. The story is posted in HTML with different typefaces and modified screen captures from the show. Because the story is occasionally updated and corrected, it helps to refresh the screen each time a webpage for this tale is accessed.
The idea of doing an illustrated fanfic was very appealing. I actually got the idea from reading the illustrated versions of Diane Long’s famous Daria fanfics, “The Last Stupor” and “Undone.” When I began writing “Scarlett,” however, I did not have an illustrated fanfic in mind. The story was going to be purely text-based. Then I decided to teach myself HTML, bought a book on it, and began constructing the “Scarlett” webpages as an experiment. The problems in using screen captures are obvious: unclear shots, the need to modify certain shots, trouble with over-modifying JPG shots, a lack of pictures on certain things the story calls for, an excess of pictures on things having nothing at all to do with the story, the tendency to let certain interesting pictures dominate sections of the storytelling, etc. Plus, I had to offer the option of reading the story in chapters or all at once, there were issues with my tinkering with different type fonts and layouts to get different effects, etc. By the way, all the pictures in this story will reveal their origins if you place the cursor over them in IE7.
Despite the story’s use of the screen names of certain members of Daria fandom’s Infamous Unserious Five (Scarlett, Tananda, Angelinhel, Taryn, Beth Ann, Mahna Mahna, Woot, etc.), and the names of other Daria fanfic writers and fans (e.g., Guy, E. A. Smith, etc.), real-life IUF members and other fans are not meant to be the subjects of this story. Their screen names simply seemed right for the characters featured herein who had no given names in the TV series. Anyone who knows nothing about the glorious heyday of the IUF in Daria fandom should consult their collected legends in “The Cave” at Thea Zara’s Sh33p’s Fluff. This explains little and leaves the investigator more confused than before, but thus it serves its purpose.
Last updated 2/6/07