Mecha Ensign Daria

Mecha Ensign Daria was a Round Robin Iron Chef in 2018, involving Charles RB, Shiva, Roentgen, WellTemperedClavier, and JPAGC creating episodes, with Vukodlak and 45Ranger contributing mecha ideas.

The premise was that due to an MTV executive getting drunk, Daria becomes a parody of thr growing anime shows like Robotech, Evangelion etc; "by the time anyone notices, Mecha Ensign Daria is too far into production to be halted and MTV just hopes it lasts." Thus Daria and Quinn arrive in Lawndale as in "Esteemsters", but the tests they run are to see if they should be part of Lawndale's L.I.O.N. (Lawndale Integrated Offensive Nature) Mecha Force that defend the town from giant monsters. The series merges high school comedy plots with mecha anime tropes and black humour, starting with Daria and her new friend Jane only being reserves for the popular kids.

The fanfic has an increasingly elaborate episode guide for Mecha Ensign Daria, complete with not just the plot of each story but a trivia section which broadens the world-within-a-world. "Trivia" talks about the bits that were cut on The N reairings, the impact of the toyline and how it changed the show, animation errors, behind-the-scenes activites, the DVD's changes to the music, and the views of fandom at the time. The latter even leads to mention of alternate universe versions of real-world Daria fanfiction!