The Tiffany's World Fanfics --- A Subgenre of the Daria Fanfic Universe

During the last two seasons of the Daria show, many fans whom I knew through the Internet expressed the opinion that the Fashion Club girls, as characters, had a lot of unrealized comic and dramatic potential. Fan fiction has been a productive outlet for speculation on what else might happen to Quinn, Stacy, and Sandi. The gap in all this is the fourth Fashion Clubbie, the odd girl out, so to speak: Tiffany Blum-Deckler. The writers of the show never did much with her character. To my knowledge, fanfic authors haven't contributed much more, although I've seen some good stories by Brandon League and Crusading Saint (one story each) which do some interesting things with her. This fanfic page is another attempt to do what League and the Saint have suggested with their two stories. For the most part, however, the fanfic writers seem handicapped by what we call the "canon:" the body of knowledge we have about the Daria fictional universe from five seasons of Daria.

What does the canon tell us? We only know that she’s obsessed with her weight and complexion, completely passive in her relations with others, and not very bright. In other words, she's about as smart as Brittany Taylor, the dimwit cheerleader, except that Brittany is more assertive than Tiffany. We are expected to laugh at Tiffany’s occasional air-head remarks, as we do at Brittany’s. However, there’s also a limit to how much humor and drama one can squeeze out of such a complete moron as Tiffany. Since Brittany already had the air-head girl slot, Tiffany is left with very little interesting or comical to do. Consequently, we know practically nothing about Tiffany’s home life and family, nor anything about her past history. We don’t even know for sure that Tiffany is adopted, although the very un-Asiatic hyphenated name of Blum-Deckler implies it. Her last name, in fact, sounds Jewish to me, but that’s another story.

It occurred to me some time ago that Tiffany would be a lot more interesting if she weren’t such a dunce. So I have begun to write a series of fanfics with the collective name Tiffany’s World. In the first episode, we discover why Tiffany acts like such a dunce, and it will occur to the reader (but not yet to Tiffany) how she can cease to be one. In the second episode, a new Tiffany will begin to emerge. I won’t make her a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon.

Surgery? Ewwww!

Tiffany, please! I can’t write this with you looking over my shoulder. Now please go back to your trailer and study your script.

Sorry, Steve.

However, I will make her more likeable, a character you’ll sympathize with instead of laughing at. I will reduce her ditzy index from 100 percent to 25 percent. And she will be funnier as well. After all, Tiffany’s World is supposed to be a comedy, like the original Daria show was. I will also give her a colorful set of (adoptive) parents, and her birth mother will show up at some point.

I am going to do some things with Sandi as well, redirecting her aggressive personality traits away from her standard bitch attitude and into a more constructive direction. That’s right. I’m going to create a likeable Sandi Griffin.

Stacy started showing more independence and assertiveness in the last season of Daria, and that beginning will be extended.

Several of the characters will have serious boyfriends for the first time. Some of them will be guys we already knew. Some will be new characters I have created.

And on the subject of new characters, I will give minor characters from the Daria show more to do. Specifically, I will resurrect these three: (1) Andrea the Goth Chick, who had lines in perhaps two or three episodes, and was revealed to be a cartoonist under the name of Queen Hecuba by somebody or other, maybe MTV’s official Daria web page. (2) Corey, a boy who dated or tried to date Quinn in at least two episodes (Quinn the Brain and Daria’s Dance Party.) He dressed like a prep. After the second season he seemed to disappear, but I’m bringing him back, with some changes. (3) Burnout Girl, also known as Burn-Out Chick Jennifer, the long-haired blonde punk girl who could often been seen walking across the background (and once in a while the foreground) at school scenes in Daria.

Jennifer was sitting with the graduates in Is It College Yet? so she was a classmate of Daria’s. I think Andrea graduated too, although I may be wrong. In my fanfics, she graduated with Jennifer, but both of these non-conformist girls will still be in town. We know from Is It College Yet? that Lawndale is a college town, with its own Lawndale State College. (Or maybe University, but we can’t tell because it’s never called anything but Lawndale State.) At any event, Lawndale State University will loom in the future for some of the Fashion Clubbies.

Since so many people loved to hate Sandi, there will have to be a new set of villains. So I have made up a couple.

Fans of the Lanes, never fear! I have found a way to keep Jane and Trent in the show. I have at least one gig booked for Mystik Spiral, and some of the action will take place at the Zen. Daria, now at Raft University, will come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. She will also run into somebody from Lawndale High at a student conference. I will also have Jane go to Boston in January to start at Boston School of Fine Arts, so she can link up with Daria. They will then collaborate on an art project together.

The episodes will be set during Tiffany’s Senior Year at Lawndale High, the year after Daria graduated. Since all four of the Fashion Club girls are classmates, they will all graduate together. What they do with themselves after high school is an issue they will have to face. I haven’t come up with any fan fiction ideas for the girls in college, so the graduation episode will probably be the last one. I probably wouldn’t have all four of them going to the same school anyway. It would be more realistic to have the Fashion Clubbies go to at least three different schools, or maybe one of them might not go to college after all.

Stuh-eeve! We disbanded the Fashion Club at the end of "Is It College Yet?"

I know that, Quinn, but the four of you will still hang out together.

Thank God for that!

Steve, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but you misspelled my name. There's no E in it. It's S-T-A-C-Y. No E.

Thanks for pointing that out, Stacy. However, I've already done a find-and-replace to get rid of the E.

Gee, Steve, about this crush you have on Tiffany? You're only like thirty-five years older than her. You're such a perv!

Go away, Sandi, or I might cancel my plans to make you nicer.

All four of them are at my mercy. The fanfic writer always has the last word.