Daria Morgendorffer



For information on the TV series of the same name, see Daria (TV series).

Daria Morgendorffer is a fictional animated character from MTV's animated series' Beavis and Butt-Head and Daria. In 2002, Daria placed at number 41 on the list of the Top 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of all Time by TV Guide for her role in the two shows.TV Guide's 50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time. She was voiced in both incarnations by Tracy Grandstaff.

Beavis and Butt-Head


In Daria's first incarnation as a recurring character on Beavis and Butt-Head, she formed a female, intelligent foil to the two male dunderheads. Often, the two would openly mock her and refer to her as "Diarrhea." Though she is not amused by their antics, she does not have the passionate hatred for them that Principal McVicker and Coach Buzzcut have nor does she really believe there is any hope for them either as Mr. Van Driessen had. At times, she would also make fun of the two for their stupidity. In the episode U.S. History, she turned around to talk to the duos and said they'll never graduate, and she told them that "to graduate" means to be all done with the final year of school. In the Christmas Special, it is stated that Butt-Head had been responsible for giving her a negative outlook on boys. In the final episode of the series when the boys "died," Daria expressed the sentiments that Beavis and Butt-Head did not have very bright futures to look forward to. She was one of the few characters that the duo never managed to drive crazy as they had with many other students and teachers. In the Marvel Comic books, however, the duo did manage to push her closer to the edge than they did in the TV show.

Beavis and Butt-Head took place in a small town called Highland, Texas, where Daria, Beavis, and Butt-head were in the ninth grade at Highland High.

Daria
In her eponymous series, Daria became more angsty; to some, she's the poster child for "teen misfit." Daria is a bespectacled, plain, unfashionably dressed, but highly intellectual and seemingly cynical teenage girl who is portrayed as an icon of sanity in an insane household, with her vacuous, fashion-obsessed sister Quinn and career-obsessed parents Helen and Jake.

Unlike most animated characters, Daria and her counterparts aged during the duration of the series. When the series began, Daria is generally believed to have been 16 years old, a sophomore in high school. (Because she was said to be a Scorpio in a Beavis and Butt-head book, Reading Sucks, it is possible she was 15 when the series started.) When she graduated from high school in the show's final TV movie, she was 18 years old. According to the episode "Lane Miserables," her height is 5'2". Her hair, by general fan agreement based on color matching screen captures, is auburn (red-brown). Her eyes are brown, per an interview with Glenn Eichler and general implications made in "Through a Lens Darkly."

While much of the show is a vehicle for Daria's droll deadpan monotone one-liners, a recurring plot element in early seasons is Daria standing up to misused authority, leading some fans to conclude that her apparent cynicism is only skin deep (or at least that she is only cynical in the classical sense).

An oft-quoted line from "Esteemsters," the first episode of Daria, sets the tone for Daria's attitude: "Don't worry, I don't have low self-esteem. It's a mistake. I have low esteem for everyone else."

Daria's personal views on politics and religion are subject to intense debate. Because she so often speaks with a sarcastic or cynical twist, one cannot always be sure she means what she says.

Series
During the series, Daria attends Lawndale High School, where on her first day she meets Jane Lane, the artist and classmate who will be her first real friend and her best friend through the rest of her high school life. Their strong friendship and mutual endurance of gloomy adolescence was a motif of the series, which survived despite Jane's boyfriend, Tom Sloane, becoming Daria's.

The final two seasons of Daria made a departure from the "static world" that most animation series occupy, giving all of the characters opportunities for growth, and crises to manage.

Movies
The first Daria movie, Is it Fall Yet?, gave the principal characters time apart from one another in parallel narratives which foreshadowed further changes in their relationships.

By the time the finale movie Is It College Yet? arrives, Daria's character has undergone noticeable growth. She graduates from Lawndale High, winning the Dian Fossey Award "for dazzling academic achievements in face of near total misanthropy", and crowning her acceptance speech with the assertion that "...[T]here is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can't be improved with pizza."

Genius Daria
That Daria is quite intelligent is a given, but exactly how intelligent she is has been a subject for intense debate. It is usually the case that she is exactly as intelligent as a fanfic author wants her to be, and in some cases she can be a savant on almost any topic imaginable. Extremes tend to portray Daria as knowledgeable about everything from the proper use of high explosives to calculus. It is not often that Daria admits in fanfic that she doesn't know the answer to a particular problem.

Bitch Daria
In contrast to the standard fanfic portrayal of Daria as a persecuted hero who overcomes the stupidity of others, an increasingly popular fanfic portrayal of Daria is of Daria not as the persecuted, but the persecutor. In such stories, Daria is portrayed not as the only intelligent person in a world given to shallowness, but as a woman of harsh standards applied to others with a judgmental and intolerant attitude. Usually, this intolerance is given as the reason for Daria's social unpopularity; in other words, Daria's outcast status is her own fault, because she sees herself as better than her peers, either knowingly or unknowingly. The amount of blame cast on Daria and her opportunities for redemption vary from writer to writer and story to story. The line between protagonist and antagonist is often blurred in such fics, as Daria can be seen as both or neither, as at least some of her behavior and character is cast in a negative light.

Intimations of this viewpoint can be seen even in some early fics, such as John Takis's "Daria's Christmas Carol and Austin Covello's "Otherwise Known as Quinn the Great," but the genre was first fully developed in Brother Grimace's fics, "The Sun Will Come Out, Tomorrow" and "It's All About Respect." See also The Angst Guy's "Prisoner of Hope."

Violent Daria
In the series, Daria rarely showed an inclination to hit anyone, and then it was only in childhood sibling fights with Quinn (not counting the time Daria punched Quinn at the end of "The New Kid"). Still, her attitude and obvious anger issues have led some fanfic writers to assume Daria is violence-prone and willing to strike out if pushed far enough (or if pushed even a little bit). She has even shown this attitude toward Jane at times, which is rather startling to read. One shocking example of this variation is seen in It's All About Respect, when Daria verbally decimates Trent Lane and Jesse Moreno, and then, in a memorable scene, tears through three rogue bikers who attempt to rape her and steals their valuables afterward. (In a later scene, it is revealed that, among the injuries to the bikers, one of them has lost a testicle that Daria speared with an ink pen.)

Daria the Telepath
Although there are many stories where Daria and her friends are superheroes or possess powers, it seems that there is a subtle bent in fanfic towards Daria possessing psychic abilities (usually telepathy, or some form of mind-control).

Among those stories are:


 * Estrangers, by ostragoth
 * It's All About Respect, by Brother Grimace
 * It's All About The Mission, by psychotol
 * Legion of Lawndale Heroes, by Roentgen and Brother Grimace
 * Hell Hath No Fury, by Danny Bronstien