Essay

An essay is a short nonfiction prose work in which the author offers information or a perspective on a particular topic. The essay style can be informal, reflective, and personal, or it can be formal, objective, and filled with documented facts. The author has great freedom within an essay to expound on virtually any subject, but is expected to make a convincing presentation regardless of topic or essay style.

Essays in Daria Fandom
Fan essays about Daria were more commonly seen while the series was still on the air. These essays often consisted solely of the fans' personal reflections on or reactions to particular seasons, episodes, plot developments, or characters. After Daria ended in January 2002, a number of essays appeared offering detailed evaluations of the series as a whole, various plot arcs within the series, and character histories and analyses.

In recent years the number of essays produced in this fandom has greatly declined to the point that it has become difficult, if not impossible, to find candidates for Best Essay in the annual Daria Fanworks Awards. Essays appear to have been replaced by encyclopedic DariaWiki entries that often double as essays, and by long discussions on message boards like PPMB. Some of the essayists from the fandom are named here.

Essays by Daria Characters
MTV has published online a number of essays purportedly written by Daria Morgendorffer, offering her personal views on many topical events that occurred during the show's run. These essays have been collected under the title "The World According to Daria" and offer the reader some very Daria-ish sarcasm and humor, mixed with a few interesting points of canon (e.g., Daria's blood type is O+, and the Morgendorffer home at 1111 Glen Oaks has a basement). The last of the essays includes mention of the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the U.S., dating its creation to shortly after that time.

Several episodes in the series, as well as one of the Daria books, presented essays allegedly written by various characters on the show. Daria's riot-inducing essay "Where the Future Takes Us," which included part of a Melody Powers espionage story, was read aloud on "Cafe Disaffecto." Quinn Morgendorffer's adorably lame-brained essay from "Quinn the Brain," "Academic Imprisonment," is presented in full in The Daria Database.