Trent Lane

Trent Lane is a fictional character created for the MTV animated series Daria. He is the older brother of Jane Lane and former crush of Daria Morgendorffer. He plays lead guitars, vocals and clapping for Mystik Spiral and owns the Trentmobile. At the beginning of the show he is 21 years old.

Character Overview
Appearance-wise Trent is tall and spindly with wild black hair and a goatee. Between Season 1 and 2, the appearance of his goatee changed from 3 stripes of hair to a small triangular "soul patch", and would remain that way for the remainder of the series. He has three ear rings in each ear like Jane and sports a tribal tattoo he got out of a magazine. His speech is laid back and he often coughs when he tries to laugh.

Trent is a narcoleptic slacker who spends most of his time oblivious to the world. Still living at home affords him a carefree life style that allows him to pursue his twin passions of music and sleep. Why he sleeps so much has never been elaborated upon, whether it be a literal case of narcolepsy or purely the side effect of a rock and roll lifestyle. He can nod off any time or anywhere, which Jane has said is an annoying habit while he’s driving (and in one episode this actually happened). This complete slacker lifestyle also involves the inability to keep a schedule, and he will keep missing the start of rehearsals or gigs; he claims that watches depress him because he's always late, and that's why he never wears them.

Despite his zoned-out nature, he's proven to be quite capable of identifying when something's wrong with Jane or Daria, and taking action to sort it out. Notably in "The Misery Chick", after Jane had been avoiding Daria and everyone else, Trent "forgot" that he'd been asked to tell people she was out and said he "thought" Jane might be upstairs.

Music


During his non-waking hours he likes to practice. He's been known to practice the opening to "Come As You Are" for hours, and when rehearsing his own songs the volume is cranked to maximum. He can also get distracted by random things, such as the novelty settings and tunes on a keyboard or comparing vinyl to CD (without realising he's listening to the radio instead). He even sleeps with his guitar, which he and Jane joke is counted as practice.

He also spends his time trying to invent lyrics. He can be inspired to start talking in lyrics or writing them, at any time or place. This too is another bad habit he has while driving, and in conversation (he once started doing a song about betrayal right after he'd tried to reassure Daria that she hadn't betrayed Jane).

While he can play the guitar well enough and nobody has ever commented negatively on his ability to play, his lyrics are usually quite inane. Songs have included lines like "you're cutting off my nose to spite my face/OW! My nose!/OW! My face!". Every song is designed to have simplistic rhymes. Jane has made snarky comments about Mystic Spiral's abilities and chances, and even Trent himself ("Jane's Addition") once said that the songs in the band's second set were "just the ones that weren't good enough for the first set" and that he'd leave if he wasn't in the band.

Despite this, Mystic Spiral keeps getting gigs at The Zon and other places, and grunge fans seem to like it. (This is likely a piss-take on the grunge scene at the time)

Daria and Trent


Despite knowing that he was flaky, Daria had a crush on Trent for a few years in high school (first three seasons of the show). In their first encounters, she could barely talk when around him and spent half of "Road Worrier" deliberately holding back on her sarcastic remarks for fear of offending Trent. (It turned out Trent found them amusing) The idea of embarrassing herself in front of Trent was a great fear of hers, and Jane would several times deliberately leave them together.

Trent appeared oblivious to her crush for most of its duration, but according to Anne Bernstein, Trent had noticed the crush around the time of "That Was Then, This is Dumb" "but he would never lead her on too much". . In "Pierce Me" and "Through a Lens Darkly", he made complimentary comments about Daria's appearance for her benefit, and he would also make complimentary comments about her as a person, telling someone in front of her that she was "the coolest high schooler I know". In "It Happened One Nut", he also deliberately avoided a nut stand because Daria was working there and would clearly be embarrassed if he saw her.

In the end, it became clear to Daria in "Jane's Addition" that it wouldn't work out, after Trent utterly failed to assist her and Jane like he'd promised. They realised they had differing views on things, and Trent implicitly brought up their chances of a relationship while talking about the assignment: "I guess it wasn't such a great idea for us to get together... on this." He did express regret as he'd always thought she'd understood how he felt. After the conversation, he gave her a peck on the cheek.

Glenn Eichler has bluntly said that Trent and Daria would never have gotten together or were intended to ever work as a couple, and that "any viewer who really thought that Daria and Trent could make a go of a relationship was just not watching the show we were making". 

Personal History
His parents Vincent and Amanda allowed Trent, like all their children, to do as he pleased in his youth. A few quirks of his childhood were living in a tent for six months, and having gone through an ‘orange skin phase’. Amanda and Trent remember the tent affair differently: Amanda thinks Trent was just playing around and later lost interest, while Trent was actually waiting for someone to invite him back into the house and sounds upset that nobody ever did.

He's been to Lane family reunions before, and like Jane he is horrified by the prospect of any more of them.

At some point, he and Jane shared a room.

When he was twelve Trent met Jesse Moreno around the corner from summer school. The two would become best friends, or ‘musical soulmates’. Initially they played angst-driven power pop and “Weird Al” Yankovic covers on acoustic guitars given to them by Trent’s father, a former musician in his younger days. They later changed over to electric when they realized it would be louder.

The band Mystik Spiral became complete in high school with the addition of Max Tyler & Nicholas Campbell. During his time Lawndale High School Trent was scheduled for some classes alongside Tommy Sherman, though like the football player he "may of missed a few classes". According to Is It College Yet?, he even missed his own graduation.

After high school Trent has continued fronting the Spiral and writing lyrics. With the Spiral he mainly plays brew pubs and grunge clubs though they have been known to play high school house parties for the right price and even a child’s birthday party to get out of a ticket. He’s never known to have been formally employed in a conventional job but once wrote a jingle for Happy Herb's used cars in exchange for twenty bucks, an hour of studio time and a set of new tires; this was a deep, dark secret he didn't want anybody knowing.

He has a girlfriend called Monique, who is also in a band; the two break up and get back together on a regular basis. He is also friends with Axl, who runs the local tattoo parlour.

When Jane was applying for colleges, Trent took a hostile attitude and said she was selling out. He later apologised and admitted he didn't think that really: he was upset that she was leaving home and worried he might lose her. Jane reassured him that she wouldn't let him "slack off" being her brother.

He accepts that he’ll probably end up a townie playing Doors covers but at least he’s doing what he loves now and that’s all that matters.

Trent and Fanfiction
Despite what Glenn Eichler and the others writers intended, Trent/Daria shipper fanfiction abounds in fandom. The production rate of shipper fics used to be quite intensive during the first few years of the show, but have gone down since then; new Trent/Daria fics are still a frequent sight, however.

The main depiction of Trent in fanfiction is either a similar role to canon - a helpful, decent (but lazy) ally of Daria and Jane - or a Trent who has become far more successful: often, Mystic Spiral (or Trent on his own) have become a successful band. A minority of fanfics take a deliberately negative view of Trent and play up his worse attributes, such as The Angst Guy's "Darkness" where an older Trent is an unemployed waster and an abusive man.

Trent-centric Fanfiction

 * "Always Beside You", by The Angst Guy
 * "Trent's Lyrics Notebook," by Ruthless Bunny and Medea42
 * "Vengeance", by Nemo Blank