Cassandra

A minor character present in the same ninth-grade classes at Highland High as Daria Morgendorffer, from the Beavis and Butt-head show on MTV. Technically, Cassandra (last name unknown) is not part of the Daria show's canon, but like everyone else at Highland High, she is grandfathered in here because she was part of Daria's life before she came to Lawndale.

Ninth-grader Cassandra is thin, of average height or taller. She wears a long, shapeless blue dress with a pocket on the left hip, and incongruous heavy boots of medium height. She has a high forehead and long straight brunette hair (brown, not auburn), with looks that could be described as plain but not unattractive. Her glasses have round or oval lenses (the shape changes from scene to scene). Sometimes she sits with her knees far apart as if unaware or uncaring of how she looks to others.

Cassandra is bright but quite unlike Daria in personality. Cassandra is emotional, open, and pleasant, smiles a lot, and has a strong creative streak. Her artwork tends to be symbolic and nature-connected in a hippie sort of way, dealing with issues of life and death. The poetry she writes ("Wall of Youth") is darkly romantic; in one example, she writes a poem about a girl who has an affair with an honors English teacher who drowns in a boating accident, leading the girl to drown herself at the pool where the two lovers met. Cassandra is not sarcastic or cynical, being more like Amanda Lane than either Jane or Daria. Her monotone voice (done by Tracy Grandstaff) is reminiscent of that of Sandi Griffin, but is friendlier.

It appears that Cassandra was intended to parody New Age or modern-day hippie philosophy. She is affable, accepting to a fault, soft-spoken, sensitive, nonjudgmental, caring, cooperative, agreeable, and kind. She is oblivious to the cruder elements of Beavis and Butt-head’s behavior and occasionally even offers them advice. Interestingly, she is never shown communicating with Daria in the Beavis and Butt-head series.

In the B&B episode, “The History of Women,” Cassandra says in a class report that she admires the singer k.d. lang, which has led some viewers to suspect she has lesbian tendencies or else is just so accepting a person she doesn’t care. The latter is more likely true. Her teacher, Mr. Van Driessen, thinks highly of her and believes she will go far in life.

As part of a class project shown in the episode, “Animation Sucks,” Cassandra creates a cartoon of a flower blooming and then dying. Afterward, she remarks that seeing her work brought to live in animated form was “so powerful, so enormous, so brief, just like my father.” This remark is not explained and Mr. Van Driessen, taken aback, moves quickly on to other matters.

Cassandra is also said to appear in the B&B episode, “Wall of Youth,” in which she is oblivious to the advances of Butt-head and talks instead about her art project (see above).



Cassandra in Daria Fanfic
It is very rare to see Cassandra in any Daria fan fiction. It is even rarer to find her with a speaking part, as she appears in several Highland-era fanfics saying nothing. One of the few examples of a speaking Cassandra would be the opening scene of Napalm Kracken’s “Daria Disenfranchised II,” set in Highland during Daria’s freshman year.

Note: Several other characters in Daria fanfiction have been given the name Cassandra, possibly leading to some confusion (see Cassandra (On Guard)). Sandi Griffin is sometimes referred to as Cassandra Griffin in fanfic, "Sandi" being a shortened form of her real name.