The Popular Girl

The Popular Girl (or simply Popular Girl) is a gossipy teenager who made her most noteworthy appearance on Daria in "The Invitation," with her only speaking role. She only appeared occasionally through the fifth season of Daria.

History
In "The Invitation," Popular Girl stands with Sandi and Tiffany at Brittany's party, making snide comments about the party guests, such as, "Those three aren't popular at all. I don't know what they're doing here. Maybe some kind of exchange program." According to the shooting script, she was called "Popular Girl One", with Tiffany being called "Popular Girl Two" and Sandi already having her canon name.

After "The Invitation," fans speculated whether Popular Girl remained a student at Lawndale High, or was perhaps the graduating Fashion Club leader, passing the torch on to Sandi. She does, however, appear in the back of classes taken by Quinn Morgendorffer and the Fashion Club, indicating she is in their grade at school. She is also seen in "Too Cute", standing among the group of popular girls admiring Brooke's new nose job.

The "Oh, the Obscurity!" feature on MTV's old Daria website both gives her name as "Popular Girl" and says "she dropped out of sight shortly thereafter [her debut]. (Sandi probably had something to do with it)", giving a tongue-in-cheek reason for why she ceased to be a character.

Notably, she is one of the volleyball players on the team opposing Daria's in the opening scenes of each show.



Fanfiction
Since she had no name in the series, Austin Covello gave her the name Tori Jericho in his spring 1999 fanfic, "Boy Fiend." Austin continued to use this name in other stories (e.g., "Otherwise Known as Quinn the Great"), and the practice has since been widely adopted by other fanfic writers. (Austin even parodied his creation of the name in an AU tale, "Stacy Rowe, Evangelion Pilot.")

Tori's personality has remained stable through most fanfics featuring her: a mildly irksome, shallow, rumor-mongering popularity princess who likes attention and dislikes Daria. She is never depicted as evil, but she has her (high-school level) bad side.

In Brother Grimace's "It's All About Respect," Tori is shown as on-air reporter/anchor for Lion Tales, the LHS in-school news program. It's also commented that she has a predilection for wearing very tight sweaters while on the air. This role, too, has been adopted by other writers (e.g., "Four Play," by Crusading Saint). Canadibrit has included Tori Jericho in many of her The Look-Alike Series stories as Lawndale High's "one-stop gossip shop and popularity gauge on legs."