Driven Wild Universe: Difference between revisions

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 <i>Daria</i> fans. "That Thing You Say" was one of the few fanfics at the time to have Daria struggling with showing love for a member of her family in a realistic manner.

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.