Kara Wild

Kara Wild has been an active member of Daria fandom since February 1999. She is best known for being the current administrator of the Paperpusher Message Board, the author of the fanfic series, the Driven Wild Universe, and the keeper/blogger of DVDaria. Wild has also contributed other works of fanfiction, some artwork, numerous essays, and interviews with the creators of the show. Until recently, she also kept a Daria fansite, the Contrarian's Corner, but time constraints led her to announce in early 2007 that she would only be updating once more before closing the site to contributions.

Biographical Information
Wild attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating with a B.A. in English and History. She has since moved to Los Angeles to pursue a professional writing career.

Early Fandom History
Wild was aware of a Daria fandom as early as spring of 1998 when, as a student abroad at the University of Kent at Canterbury, she searched fan sites eagerly for descriptions of new episodes. She came across Planet Daria, one of the original sites, but quickly disregarded it because it did not have in-depth episode descriptions. Once back in the United States, Wild was finally able to watch all of the Season Two episodes. She was so impressed by the character development in "Gifted" (the first Season Two episode she watched), and the other Season Two episodes that she crossed over from casual fan to major fan. She looked forward to the next season of the show and began haunting Daria fan sites for new information, which led her to discover Daria fanfiction. At first skeptical that fan efforts could come close to the show, Wild finally let curiosity get the better of her. She started reading Peter Guerin's fanfiction, before getting hooked on John Berry's work, then C.E. Forman's. Forman's painstakingly canon-like scripts, in particular, inspired Wild to develop script ideas of her own.

Soon after Season Three began, Wild discovered the Lawndale Commons message board and quickly became an active member. Meanwhile, her dissatisfaction with the first half of Season Three, including "Through a Lens Darkly" (which, she felt, should have shown Quinn's reaction to Daria in contacts), fueled numerous "what if" scenarios that she was itching to write down. Finally she did, and "Rose-Colored Lenses," the first Driven Wild Universe installment, was posted on Outpost Daria in April 1999. It was accompanied by the ficlet "A Desperately Needed Ending (to Depth Takes a Holiday)."

Both stories marked the first time Wild had written scripted dialogue. Expecting to have her work picked apart, she was thrilled when her feedback (via e-mail) was positive. Wild received encouraging reviews from John Berry and C.E. Forman, then two of the biggest names in Daria fandom. This spurred her to continue writing more scripted fics. She considered making her next endeavor a lighter story, such as a two-parter called "English Impatient," in which Mr. O'Neill's classes took a trip to England, or an untitled story in which Helen and Quinn both get sick with the flu. However, a scene in "Through a Lens Darkly" made Wild come up with a story about Helen and her sister, Amy, trying and failing to bond. Concerned that someone else would beat her to the punch, Wild chose that story, and "The Tie That Chokes" followed RCL in May 1999. The events of TTTC inspired Wild to write "That Thing You Say," which caused a profound reaction from Daria fans. TTYS was one of the few Daria fanfics to have Daria struggling with showing love for a member of her family in a realistic manner. In addition to general positive feedback, Wild's fanfics were added to the Lawndale Commons fanfiction page, run by the notoriously selective Michelle Klein-Haas. Wild was also made a Featured Author at Martin J. Pollard's Outpost Daria, joining John Berry, C.E. Forman, Katherine Goodman, Michelle Klein-Haas, Martin, and the Paperpusher.

Wild continued to explore dynamics that the show and fanfiction had not considered. Tired of the relentless Daria/Trent 'shipperism amongst some members of fandom, her follow up to TTYS was "'Shipped Out," a Daria/Trent anti-'shipper that she rushed to get out before "Lane Miserables" aired in the United States. Screen shots of the episode, which had accidentally first aired in England, showed Daria and Trent sitting together in Daria's room, leading Wild to conclude that their relationship was going to heat up. She wanted to get her perspective on the relationship in beforehand. When "Lane Miserables" wound up going in the same direction (right down to the future fantasy), many people half-jokingly claimed that Wild was clairvoyant.

Between June and November 1999, Wild turned out a new fanfic every 2 to 3 weeks. Each one, written in the same quasi-script format, took the story a little bit further and a little bit more off canon. The real break from canon came when Wild decided to make Quinn vice-president of the Fashion Club and continue to wear glasses on a regular basis (DWU #6 "Cheered Down"). Wild wrote her first eight fanfics in a notebook, then typed them on the computer. She felt that the dialogue came to her faster that way, but as a result, got tendinitis in her wrist and had to settle for writing on the computer. By the time she wrote her ninth full fanfic, September 1999, her series finally had a name: the Driven Wild Universe. The name came from C.E. Forman, who had written the fanfic Driven Wild for his continuum and jokingly called Wild "Kara 'Driven' Wild." About that time, Wild decided that her continuum would be 22 fanfics long for a "full" season of Daria. Yet as she prepared to write her senior theses at U.C. Berkeley, Wild's writing slowed down, with DWU #12 "Surreal World" and #13 "Erin the Head" coming out in December and January, respectively.

During the time Wild wrote, her feedback increased steadily, until many fans put her in the same group as other popular authors like Forman, Berry, Klein-Haas, and Austin Covello. In 1999-2000, most of these writers were winding down, with Forman producing his last fic, "Fireworks" in late 1999, Klein-Haas ending her series with "Best Served Cold," and John Berry producing just two more fanfics. Meanwhile, other popular and notable writers were fast emerging, such as Diane Long, Canadibrit, Jon Kilner, John Takis, Milo Minderbender, Renfield, and more. Many of these authors preferred to write in prose rather than script, launching many "prose vs. script" debates.

While fanfic authors could write year-round, the premium times were during the drought between Seasons and the mini-drought during each season. By fall, Martin J. Pollard had established a fanfiction message board at Outpost Daria and authors and their fans interacted on an unprecedented level. Rather than wait until the Outpost Daria update, authors could announce when their stories were finished and use the thread to solicit feedback.

Wild became disenchanted with this new system. She liked getting feedback via e-mail, both because e-mails were generally more thought out and because Wild disliked the feeling of competing with her fellow fanfic authors for readers' often fickle attention. She started to wonder how much longer she could continue to write Daria fanfiction.

Message Board Moderating
Even as Wild continued to write fanfiction, she was becoming increasingly burnt out. By the time she wrote DWU #14 "Primarily Color" in February 2000, Wild had grown tired of writing deeply serious, more canon-than-not, multi-layered fanfics. Meanwhile, other developments were shaking up fandom. In late 1999/early 2000, Michelle Klein-Haas abruptly closed down the premiere message board, Lawndale Commons. Shortly beforehand, C.E. Forman had quit, citing burnout and a desire to focus on other passions. His second season of the Lost Seasons was left incomplete. As Forman was still a popular and influential author, his departure and the LCMB shutdown came as a double blow. Fans moaned that Daria fandom was "dying," and while these cries were largely premature, most seemed unsure of what would happen next.

In response, Martin Pollard turned the Daria Fanfiction Message Board into a full message board, while the Paperpusher offered his new message board as another resting place. In spite of her bitter feelings, Wild was anxious to help with the transition, and volunteered to be a moderator for the PPMB along with Diane Long. As the ODMB population swelled, it became apparent that a moderator was needed there as well, and Wild offered her time. She saw moderation as an exciting new challenge and a welcome departure from the fanfiction grind. While the slower-moving PPMB usually needed no moderator, ODMB proved to be more of a challenge. Wild did not encounter trouble too often, but some users' suspicion of the moderator was such that, in April 2000, Wild penned the response essay, "The Moderator Is In."

Abruptly Amy
Although Wild wanted to finish her continuum, another story was burning in her mind. She had long been amused and exasperated by the "Saint Amy Barksdale" image perpetuated by fanfiction (most notably in C.E. Forman's "Quinntet" and "Alienation Legacy"), in which Amy was the only person who understood Daria. In her fanfiction, Wild sought to portray a more human, fallible Amy, but considered going a step further, completely subverting the image. Inspiration came in the form of Aaron and Barry Adelman's "Daria the Movie" fanfic, which was preceded by such an authentic "rumors" website, many fans thought it was real. The fanfic consisted of a film script for a live-action movie, emulating the poor movie scripts of then-current teen flicks. (Several movie "images," for example, came from the Jennifer Love-Hewitt movie "Can't Hardly Wait.")

Wild decided that instead of a movie, she would create a pilot for a "spinoff" starring Amy, with the twist being that the pilot was written by someone ("Alan Smithee") with no understanding of the show, Daria. Using themes of then-current shows like "Providence," Wild came up with a storyline in which Amy was a glamorous FBI agent forced to take refuge in her home town to escape the mob. While Amy's abilities were inflated to ludicrous proportions, in keeping with her "Saint Amy" image, her personality was flighty and emotional. Wild created several new characters for the pilot and a "making of" special, "In Search of Amy," that delved into the behind-the-scenes tensions. Most notably, Wild enlisted several fanfic artists to do "screen captures" for the pilot. To preserve the mystery, she only e-mailed select scenes to the various artists who had volunteered. The result was an ecclectic mix of images from artists as far-ranging as John Berry to SBBED.D. Finally, Mike Quinn agreed to read the pilot and do a "Delayed Reaction Review" as though he had watched the episode live.

Wild put all the parts together into one big fanfic called "Abruptly Amy (The Spinoff That Never Was)," which she premiered in spring of 2000. While some fans appreciated the joke, the primary response of people not involved with the project was shock. Many could not believe that Wild, who was known for her good characterization, would deliberately "dumb down" her writing in such a way. Michelle Klein-Haas was particularly critical, and to this date has not read any of the "Abruptly Amy" fanfics. Aaron Adelman, on the other hand, saw "Abruptly Amy" as a "Jane" fanfic to his "Daria" fanfic. While his "Daria the Movie," like Daria, conformed to certain stupid rules and mocked them, "Abruptly Amy" was free-flowing, going off in all sorts of crazy directions.

Wild was concerned that her credibility might be hurt as a result of this project, but she felt liberated nonetheless. Wild would later credit "Abruptly Amy" with her passion alive long enough to keep writing the Driven Wild Universe. Over the months, the project would draw enough fans that Wild and other fanfic authors/artists would take it to the next level. (For more information, see Abruptly Amy, the series.) Meanwhile, the project had taught Wild how to code and upload web pages, which would soon come in handy.

Contrarian's Corner
As Season Four premiered and the number of fanfics continued to surge, Martin Pollard grew busy and updated Outpost Daria less frequently. This created a need for other websites to post material in the meantime. The websites that filled the void included Daria's Rubber Room, by Crazy Nutso, Glitterberries, by Kemical Reaxion, I Am Not Daria, by Canadibrit, and Wild's own the Contrarian's Corner.

Begun as early as September 2000, the Contrarian's Corner was originally intended to be a specialty website. Wild had toyed with creating a fan site in the past, particularly a pro-Helen website, and found willing co-conspirators in Mike Quinn and the Paperpusher. However, the project never went beyond its early stages and was eventually abandoned. Instead, Wild chose to create a small, simple website that catered to ecclectic fanfiction interests, such as the Helen-Centric Fanfic Collection, the Underexposed Characters collection (which included such characters as Sandi's cat, "Fluffy"), and Steven Galloway's Fanfic Author Spotlights. Beyond fanfiction, Wild planned to put more emphasis on essays, a form of expression that she felt lacked respect, and fiction writing workshops. The Contrarian's Corner was never a strictly Daria website; Wild created sections devoted to artwork and opinions that were independent of the show. She also created sections like "Why the Contrarian Chose Her Name" and "The Contrarian's Eight Commandments" (the latter of which Wild regarded as rules to follow, but was less than convinced that she or anyone else could follow them all the time). With regard to Daria fanworks, Wild intended to implement a system similar to Michelle Klein-Haas's, in which she asked permission to post only the works she liked best, rather than open up her website to anyone who submitted.

However, the vacuum created by Outpost Daria's less frequent updating led several fans to send Wild fanfics that she had never read. Rather than turn them away, Wild opened up her site to general contributions. Still, the site never became known as one of the "mega" sites, and Wild never enjoyed spending hours coding new webpages and smoothing out kinks in the HTML fics sent by fans. Time spent making new fanfiction pages meant that her specialty pages went neglected. Wild most preferred to update her own Driven Wild Universe page, including HTML versions alongside the text versions that were sent to other websites.

Over time, she would create other pages, such as an SOS! Daria Overboard page that linked to fan efforts to get Daria more widely aired, the Anti-'Shipper Collection, the Abruptly Amy page, Fanfic Author Interviews, and even a page for her anti-competition, known as the CRAPPIES. The more-frequent gaps of time between Wild's DWU installments led her to create an Updates page, which she used to detail her progress. She also created a new section to house all of her non-DWU fics and various unfinished efforts. Lastly, in 2005, Wild created the Driven Wild Universe Primer, which went into detail about her continuum's characters and history.

In early 2007, Wild finally announced that she would do one last update, before closing the Contrarian's Corner to outside fanfiction for good. The date of the final update has not yet been determined.

Abruptly Amy the Series
In late summer/fall of 2000, Kara Wild showed the pilot of "Abruptly Amy" to C.E. Forman, who loved it immediately. As the pilot hinted that eight episodes had been filmed, but never aired, Wild and Forman discussed writing these episodes. Soon Wild began to recruit other well-known writers to the series. The writers of the first eight would be Kara Wild ("A.A. A.O.K" and "A Very Amy Christmas"), C.E. Forman ("Corona, Corona" and "Double in Paradise"), Crazy Nutso ("Windy City Walkabout"), Mike Quinn ("Raiding the Bar"), John Takis ("Hot Head, Cold Fetus"), and John Berry ("Disaster Strikes"). The writers sought to write all of the episodes at once so that they could be "aired" once every week for eight weeks. However, delays on John Berry's part meant that there was a few-week gap between the first four and the second four. The last of the eight, "A Very Amy Christmas," premiered December 2000.

While Wild served loosely as the head writer/show runner, the writers tended to come up with their own ideas. John Berry ran with an "Evil Tom" plotline. Crazy Nutso dragged in several random "guest" characters. C.E. Forman developed a wicked nemesis for Amy, complete with a campy secret hideaway. Otherwise, all writers tried to stay true to the show's over-the-top, cliche-ridden tone. The lengths of the finished fanfics tended to vary, with Wild's being amongst the longest and Berry's being the shortest. Milo Minderbender, meanwhile, offered to draw "screen captures" for each episode.

Each author adopted a silly pseudonym, with Wild becoming "Carrie D. Wildly" and Berry becoming "Shawn Perry." Minderbender became "Milo Mindbender," who wrote angry notes to "Alan Smithee" over each of his images.

Before "airing" the episodes, Wild created a few promotional advertisements, which she posted on the PPMB. Wild hoped that the promotional ads would stir up interest, but as the episodes appeared week after week, they met with muted interest. Wild and Forman were a little discouraged, having hoped that fan interest would spur them to finish the season. However, Milo Minderbender's interest was great enough that he offered to develop an "Abruptly Amy" fansite. The joke would be that it was created by Amy Terwilliger, an obsessed fan first mentioned in "In Search of Amy." Modeled after Outpost Daria, Outpost Amy contained the pilot, the making of special, the eight episodes, and the screen captures. It also contained character descriptions (written mainly by Wild and Minderbender) and illustrations (Minderbender). Wild created supplemental content for the site, such as a Jump the Shark page, a transcription of an actual T.V. Guide article, and "Amy on Daria." Minderbender created "Abruptly Amy" products, such as DVD sets, action figures, and play kits. The rest of the site contained Amy-centric fanfiction and artwork.

Minderbender also wrote and illustrated the ninth episode of the "Abruptly Amy," called "Crouching Lawyer, Hidden Agenda."

Although "Abruptly Amy" never developed more than a cult following, it received attention from some unexpected places. One fan added it to the Daria page at Internet Movie Database, where it lasted for several days, until Wild notified them of the mistake. Minderbender saved the page, and it exists at the Outpost Amy site to the present day. C.E. Forman noted in his interview with E.A. Smith that MTV employees were rumored to have read the fanfics. Some other fans even wrote fanfiction for the series.

Essays
From the summer of 1999 through May 2000, Wild wrote several short to medium-length essays: "On the Subject of Quinn and Rape," "The Unflappable Jane Lane," "Amy: Savior or Chimera?", "The Helen-Jane-Jodie Connection," the afore-mentioned "The Moderator Is In," "The Off-Canon Approach," and "It Happened to Jane."

Some were basic chacter explorations, like "The Unflappable Jane Lane" and "The Helen-Jane-Jodie Connection," while others addressed controversial issues. "On the Subject of Quinn and Rape" took some fanfic authors to task for treating rape like a vehicle for redemption. (Though compared to later essays on the topic, Wild's was relatively mild.) "Amy: Savior or Chimera?" challenged the widespread belief that Amy only cared about or was a grown-up Daria. "The Off-Canon Approach" was a response to authors like Daniel Suni, who believed that only strictly on-canon fanfics met the standard of true Daria fanfiction. "It Happened to Jane" came about because Wild was tired of fans claiming that Jane's character or the show was ruined because of a clumsy episode plotline ("The 'F' Word"). Wild's main point was that if the writers wrote it, it couldn't be off canon or out of character.

"The Unflappable Jane Lane," "Amy: Savior or Chimera?", and "The Off-Canon Approach" became popular essays amongst the fandom. For a long time, fans used "unflappable" in association with Jane, while "The Off-Canon Approach" became a rallying cry for authors who felt beseiged by canon-loving purists. However, Wild would come to rethink some of her views. While she did not agree with Suni that fanfic had to adhere strictly to canon, she was bothered by the fact that more fanfics were spinning ever-further away from the television series. Fanfic authors whose characters bore little resemblance to their television "selves" sought to explain away the discrepency by claiming it was character "development." Wild felt that they were moving too far away from the core themes that made Daria what it was, and to this day has not shied away from voicing criticism of fanfics that she feels are too sensational. Likewise, Wild moved away from her position in "It Happened to Jane" when she saw the Season Four episodes "Fire," "Dye! Dye! My Darling," and "Is It Fall Yet?", in which Daria begins to date Tom Sloane.

Wild, and others who shared her views, would get into many heated debates with fans who liked Tom and who thought it was obvious that Daria and Tom had a "thing" for each other since "I Loathe a Parade." Wild argued that they had been thrust together too quickly and that the writers had succumbed to the sorry teen show cliche of pitting two friends against each other over a guy. In January 2003, she would finally take a closer look at the subject in "The Other Side of the Kiss." With its in-depth examination of several different episodes, the essay would be Wild's longest and most analytical. She credits Daniel Suni with setting the standard, with his analytical, controversial essays, "Cynic's Complaint" and "On Comedy, Drama, and Emotional Involvement."

Wild would follow this up with "Anatomy of a Tom Hater," written in October 2003 with the help of Alan Benard, intending it for the use of the short-lived fan magazine, The Padded Walls. Whereas "The Other Side of the Kiss" focused mainly on Daria's behavior, "Anatomy of a Tom Hater" scrutinized Tom Sloane's character and discussed why fans felt he was lacking. Both essays were generally well received.

Kara Wild would also write several lengthy postscripts after each Driven Wild Universe fanfic, filled with analysis of the characters' actions in that particular story and how it related to the characters' behavior in the television series. For instance, she used the postscript of "An Uneasy Marriage" to criticize Jake and Helen's relationship in the series and the postscript for "In Her Own Words" to challenge the "Is It Fall Yet?" mantra: "Give people a chance."

Bibliography of Major Works

 * The Driven Wild Universe
 * A Desperately Needed Ending (to "Depth Takes a Holiday")
 * Abruptly Amy
 * Revision
 * Mother's Milk
 * They Came from Planet Xulfanex
 * "I Don't" the Aftermath