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The <b>Driven Wild Universe</b> is a [[series]] of ''Daria'' stories in [[scriptfic|quasi-script]] form by [[Kara Wild]], forming a detailed [[alternate universe]]. The series currently contains twenty-two "episodes."
==Background==
The Driven Wild Universe (or DWU) is meant to play out several "what ifs?" regarding the
An intriguing AU series, the Driven Wild Universe's main focus is on Quinn's evolution from popular person allergic to school to a glasses-wearing math prodigy who sees a new world opening up before her. (The series proper would later provide its own perspective in
==History==
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Kara Wild was initially skeptical that fanfiction could come close to the show, but finally let curiosity get the better of her. She started reading [[Peter Guerin]]'s fanfiction, before getting hooked on [[John Berry]]'s work, then [[C.E. Forman]]'s. Forman's painstakingly canon-like scripts, in particular, inspired Wild to develop script ideas of her own.
Her dissatisfaction with the first half of Season Three, including "[[Through a Lens Darkly]]" (which, she felt, should have shown Quinn's reaction to Daria in contacts), fueled numerous "what if" scenarios that she was itching to write down. Finally she did, and "Rose-Colored Lenses," the first Driven Wild Universe installment, was posted on Outpost Daria in April 1999. It was accompanied by the ficlet, "[[A Desperately Needed Ending (to "Depth Takes a Holiday")]]." Both stories marked the first time Wild had written scripted dialogue.
Encouraging feedback spurred her to continue writing scripted fics. Wild considered making her next endeavor a lighter story, such as a two-parter called "English Impatient," in which Mr. O'Neill's classes took a trip to England, or an untitled story in which Helen and Quinn both get sick with the flu, but ultimately wrote a darker story, "The Tie That Chokes," in May 1999. The events of "The Tie That Chokes" inspired Wild to write "That Thing You Say," which caused a profound reaction from
Between June and November 1999, Wild turned out a new fanfic every two to three weeks. Each one, written in the same quasi-script format, took the story a little bit further and a little bit more off canon. Wild wrote her first eight fanfics in a notebook, then typed them on the computer. She felt that the dialogue came to her faster that way, but as a result, got tendinitis in her wrist and had to settle for writing on the computer. By the time she wrote her ninth full fanfic, September 1999, her series finally had a name: the Driven Wild Universe. The name came from C.E. Forman, who had written the fanfic "[[Driven Wild]]" for his continuum and jokingly called Wild "Kara 'Driven' Wild." About that time, Wild decided that her continuum would be 22 fanfics long for a "full" season of Daria. All but the last five DWUs were written from 1999 through 2000. After a three-year break, Wild returned to the Driven Wild Universe to write the last two installments, "Into the Fire" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" in May and November 2005 respectively. She officially completed the Driven Wild Universe in the summer of 2007 when she finally completed the fifteenth installment, "The Age of Cynicism."
==Plotlines==
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===Quinn Learns That She is Smart===
[[Image:math_brigade.jpg|thumb|right|Barry, Clarence, and Squiggley by Kara Wild]]
Quinn getting glasses launches the Driven Wild Universe, leading to some of its brightest and darkest moments. At first Quinn wants nothing to do with her glasses, believing correctly that they will hurt her popularity, but finally the lure of being able to see the blackboard proves too great. Quinn wears her glasses continuously from "[[None in the Family]]" to "[[Into the Fire]]," much to the pleasure of her math teacher, [[Alfred Phelps]]. Believing that Quinn possesses great talent in math, Phelps presses her to focus on her studies, first enlisting Jake to watch over her at home ("[[Of Absolute Value]]") before taking over the job himself. As with her glasses, Quinn at first resents Phelps's extra attention. However, as she grows to enjoy math, even going so far as to remain on Lawndale High's mathletics squad ("[[Charge of the Math Brigade]]") in the face of ridicule, she sees Phelps as more of an ally. With her family troubles picking up in the final episodes of the DWU, Quinn views Phelps as a surrogate father, someone upon whom she is dependent for her math success. Quinn's final challenge comes with demonstrating to
Daria has mixed feelings about Quinn's glasses and math fixation. When Quinn first gets glasses, Daria hopes that it will compel her to look beyond looks and popularity. She encourages Quinn to focus on her studies and even dares to hope that a shared vision problem will bring them closer together. However, Quinn's utter denial of her glasses discourages Daria, as does her uninterrupted popularity once she starts wearing them all the time. Yet it is Quinn's demonstrated talent in math that really gets under Daria's skin. Daria tells Jane in "[[Memory Road]]" that while she may not resent the actual talent, she
===Helen Finds Herself===
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==Structure==
Except for
Wild created Commercial Hell because she thought it was standard practice to have commercials in a scripted fanfic, having seen them used by [[C.E. Forman]], [[John Berry]], [[Peter Guerin]], and [[Danny Bronstein]].
Each episode also contains a "prologue" in which Wild states what number it is in the series and lists the the DWU installments that came before it, a practice dating back to when her fanfics were not grouped together at [[Outpost Daria]]. Wild would then give the episode an S rating representing the number of sittings it would take to read. Long episodes were given a 3S, or even a 5S. Wild might then make some comments about the episode to come before stating, "Enjoy!"
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Following the style of many early fanfics, Wild wrote her DWUs in Courier text. After writing "[[None in the Family]]," Wild accepted [[C.L. Basso]]'s generous offer to redo her installments in HTML. Whereas the text versions contain the entire fanfic on one page, the HTML versions list one act per page. In recent years, Wild has had some difficulty with the HTML versions, as she has gone back and reedited some of her text fanfics, only to have the old text live on in the HTML versions. Wild coded "Into the Fire" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" herself, using C.L. Basso's template.
Other elements that Wild adopted from early scripted fics were scene directions such as "cut to" and "
==Themes==
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===There Are No Happily Ever Afters===
Related to the "Life is Never Easy" theme is the idea that life is a continuous struggle that you have to be willing to engage in so as to get the best out of it. Even "redeemed" characters are neither perfect nor permanently redeemed. One obvious example is the coupling of Amy and Joel; although they appear to be closer by the end of "Memory Road," it would be a mistake to assume that they are headed for an untroubled life. In the unfinished novella,
===It's Not
Just as Wild finds happy endings to be unrealistic, she is also not fond of excessive angst and, with a few exceptions, avoided applying it too thickly in the Driven Wild Universe. Wild holds what might be considered a "pragmatist's" or "realist's" view of the world that when even in the darkest situation, it was possible to take the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus Sisyphus] approach and make the best of it, or at least try to find a way out of it. That does not mean that a character cannot express his or her anger, but Wild believes that characters who
==Controversies==
Initially, Wild's premise that Quinn was an intelligent person proved controversial. At the time,
Wild's decision to take the characters in a direction that did not fit neatly within the confines of the series proper was also controversial. She wrote three-fourths of the DWU during a time (1999-2000) when canon versus off-canon battles were fierce, and many like [[Daniel Suni]] held that the best fanfics were scripted and did not deviate in any way from situations on the show. While Wild was spared the scorn heaped on writers like [[Canadibrit]] for [[The Look Alike Series]], her work was also not held up as a gold standard like the [[The Lost Seasons|fanfics]] of [[C.E. Forman]].
Kara Wild was also vocal about her dislike of Jake, at a time when many fans viewed him as a sympathetic figure, a broken man who would be a better father to Daria and Quinn if only Helen gave him a chance. Wild pointed out that Jake had several chances throughout the series to prove his worth, yet time after time, he either quit too soon or avoided getting involved altogether. Her view of Jake (especially his behavior in
==Influences==
In addition to influencing her stories' structure, Wild credits C.E. Forman and John Berry with helping the Driven Wild Universe stick to a lighter tone, at least in the beginning, with their emphasis on mining a situation for humor. The events of the Driven Wild Universe were strongly influenced by episodes in
In turn, the Driven Wild Universe is credited with creating perhaps the first nuanced portrayal of Amy, which influenced how future writers such as [[The Angst Guy]] would portray her in their fanfics. The DWU's complex portrayal of Quinn and Helen also influenced other authors (such as [[Crusading Saint]], in the case of Helen) to write them in a less one-dimensional manner, although the series proper's softer portrayal of both characters had an obvious effect as well. Before
==Installments==
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*[[Erin the Head]]
*[[Primarily Color]]
*[[The Age of Cynicism]]
*[[Charge of the Math Brigade]]
*[[An Uneasy Marriage]]
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* [http://www.theangstguy.com/fanfics/thong.htm "The Thong Remains the Same"] A sex-farce fanfic by [[The Angst Guy]] that parodies the characters and events in the DWU.
[[Category: 1999 in fanfiction]]
[[Category: 2000 in fanfiction]]
[[Category: 2005 in fanfiction]]
[[Category: 2007 in fanfiction]]
[[Category: Series]]
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