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Line 1: '''Kara Wild''' is best known for being the current administrator of the [[Paperpusher's Message Board]], the author of the [[Driven Wild Universe]] fanfic series, and the keeper/blogger of [[DVDaria]]. Wild has been an active member of ''Daria'' fandom since February or March 1999. In addition, Wild has also contributed other works of fanfiction, artwork, numerous essays, and interviews with the creators of the show. Until recently, she also kept a ''Daria'' fansite, the [[Contrarian's Corner]], but time constraints led her to announce inthat ~~early~~July 5, 2007 ~~that~~would ~~she~~be ~~would~~her ~~only~~last update ~~the site once more before closing~~consisting itof tooutside ~~contributions~~material. ==Biographical Information== Wild attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating with a B.A. in English and History. She ~~has since~~later moved to Los Angeles to pursue a professional writing career. Having not found it, she [http://www.thepaperpusher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=19073 announced] in August 2007 that she would be starting law school in the fall. Wild obtained her law degree in May 2010. In November of that year, she passed the California Bar. ==Early Fandom History== Line 15: Between June and November 1999, Wild turned out a new fanfic every 2 to 3 weeks. Each one, written in the same quasi-script format, took the story a little bit further and a little bit more off canon. The real break from canon came when Wild decided to make Quinn president of the Fashion Club and continue to wear glasses on a regular basis (DWU #6 [[Cheered Down]]). 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. Yet as she prepared to write her senior theses at U.C. Berkeley, Wild's writing slowed down, with DWU #12 [[Surreal World]] and #13 [[Erin the Head]] coming out in December and January, respectively. During the time Wild wrote, her feedback increased steadily, until many fans put her in the same group as other popular authors like Forman, Berry, Klein-Hass, and [[Austin Covello]]. In 1999-2000, most of these writers were winding down, with Forman producing his last Lost Seasons fic, [[Fireworks]] in late 1999, Klein-Hass ending her series with "Best Served Cold," and John Berry producing just two more fanfics. Meanwhile, other popular and notable writers were fast emerging, such as Diane Long, Canadibrit, Jon Kilner, ~~John Takis~~Admonisher, [[Milo Minderbinder]], Renfield, and more. Many of these authors preferred to write in prose rather than script, launching many "prose vs. script" debates. While fanfic authors could write year-round, the premium times were during the [[Drought]] between Seasons and the [[Mini-drought]] during each season. By fall, [[Martin J. Pollard]] had established a fanfiction message board at Outpost Daria and authors and their fans interacted on an unprecedented level. Rather than wait until the Outpost Daria update, authors could announce when their stories were finished and use the thread to solicit feedback. Line 44: However, the vacuum created by Outpost Daria's less frequent updating led several fans to send Wild fanfics that she had never read. Rather than turn them away, Wild opened up her site to general contributions. Still, the site never became known as one of the "mega" sites, and Wild never enjoyed spending hours coding new webpages and smoothing out kinks in the HTML fics sent by fans. Time spent making new fanfiction pages meant that her specialty pages went neglected. Wild most preferred to update her own Driven Wild Universe page, including HTML versions alongside the text versions that were sent to other websites. Over time, she would create other pages, such as an SOS! Daria Overboard page that linked to fan efforts to get Daria more widely aired, the Anti-'Shipper Collection, the Abruptly Amy page, Fanfic Author Interviews, and even a page for her anti-competition, known as [[the CRAPPIES]]. The more-frequent gaps of time between Wild's DWU installments led her to create an Updates page, which she used to detail her progress. She also created a new section to house all of her non-DWU fics and various unfinished efforts. Lastly, in 2005, Wild created the [[Driven Wild Universe Primer]], which went into detail about her continuum's characters and history. In early 2007, Wild finally announced that she would do one last update, before closing the Contrarian's Corner to outside fanfiction for good. The date of the final update has not yet been determined. Line 51: [[Image:title_bar.gif\|right\|Outpost Amy logo, designed by Milo Minderbender]] In late summer/fall of 2000, Kara Wild showed the pilot of "Abruptly Amy" to C.E. Forman, who loved it immediately. As the pilot hinted that eight episodes had been filmed, but never aired, Wild and Forman discussed writing these episodes. Soon Wild began to recruit other well-known writers to the [[Abruptly Amy (series)\|series]]. The writers of the first eight would be Kara Wild ("A.A. A.O.K" and "A Very Amy Christmas"), C.E. Forman ("Corona, Corona" and "Double in Paradise"), Crazy Nutso ("Windy City Walkabout"), Mike Quinn ("Raiding the Bar"), ~~John Takis~~Admonisher ("Hot Head, Cold Fetus"), and John Berry ("Disaster Strikes"). The writers sought to write all of the episodes at once so that they could be "aired" once every week for eight weeks. However, delays on John Berry's part meant that there was a few-week gap between the first four and the second four. The last of the eight, "A Very Amy Christmas," premiered December 2000. While Wild served loosely as the head writer/show runner, the writers tended to come up with their own ideas. John Berry ran with an "Evil Tom" plotline. Crazy Nutso dragged in several random "guest" characters. C.E. Forman developed a wicked nemesis for Amy, complete with a campy secret hideaway. Otherwise, all writers tried to stay true to the show's over-the-top, cliche-ridden tone. The lengths of the finished fanfics tended to vary, with Wild's being amongst the longest and Berry's being the shortest. Milo Minderbinder, meanwhile, offered to draw "screen captures" for each episode. Line 64: ==Essays== From the summer of 1999 through May 2000, Wild wrote several short to medium-length essays: "[[On the Subject of Quinn and Rape]]," "[[The Unflappable Jane Lane]]," "[[Amy: Savior or Chimera?]]", "[[The Helen-Jane-Jodie Connection]]," the afore-mentioned "[[The Moderator Is In]]," "[[The Off-Canon Approach]]," and "[[It Happened to Jane]]." Some were basic chacter explorations, like "The Unflappable Jane Lane" and "The Helen-Jane-Jodie Connection," while others addressed controversial issues. "On the Subject of Quinn and Rape" took some fanfic authors to task for treating rape like a vehicle for redemption. (Though compared to later essays on the topic, Wild's was relatively mild.) "Amy: Savior or Chimera?" challenged the widespread belief that Amy only cared about or was a grown-up Daria. "The Off-Canon Approach" was a response to authors like [[Daniel Suni]], who believed that only strictly on-canon fanfics met the standard of true Daria fanfiction. "It Happened to Jane" came about because Wild was tired of fans claiming that Jane's character or the show was ruined because of a clumsy episode plotline ("The 'F' Word"). Wild's main point was that if the writers wrote it, it couldn't be off canon or out of character. Line 81: DVDaria remained dormant for months, until several fans pointed out that the petition was still gaining signatures. When fans started asking whether the site was dead for good, Wild decided to do a mini update to reflect the number of current signatures. She then chose to keep the site going, making her first post nearly a year after Benard's last one. Like Benard, Wild mainly posted news tidbits from official news sources or other fans. For instance, after [[CINCGREEN]] mentioned on his blog Daria's placement on TV Shows on DVD, Wild began to promote the website at DVDaria. ~~(Currently, the show is at No. 3 out of over 1,000.)~~ However, she also did some advocacy of her own. From late 2003 through 2004, Wild offered her support to two different companies seeking to buy the licensing rights to Daria to put the show on DVD. Unfortunately, both times, talks fell through because MTV wanted more money than either company could afford. Wild later took matters into her own hands and tracked down a representative from MTV's video/DVD department. She learned that the department was looking to put its "classic" programs on DVD, rather than sell the licenses to third parties, as in the past. MTV reps were unsure of how to treat Daria, although recent department shake ups suggested that it would have a future on DVD sooner or later. However, as the shake ups continued, Wild wondered just how much later was "later." On January 20, 2005, DVDaria officially became a blog. Inspired by the advocacy blogs that she read on a daily basis, Wild hoped it would make DVDaria a more interactive, engaged site. She further sought to keep fans interested by posting material that was not strictly related to DVDs. On March 16, 2005, Wild posted "Twenty Questions with Glenn Eichler," which addressed questions that fans had long had regarding the show. Wild would go on to post three follow-ups with Eichler, before moving on to Anne D. Bernstein on January 20, 2006. The Bernstein interview had one follow up. Line 87: In March 2006, Wild created a DVDaria and More forum at the PPMB to promote discussion of various projects and innovations. Although fans were initially enthusiastic about launching new projects to get the show on DVD, failure to get organized, coupled with knowledge of the difficult position they were in, led most new ideas to founder. However, a promising idea was launched in the form of the Daria Fans Press Room, brainchild of Martin Sylvester, and the forum remains a place for tracking new developments with the DVD market. From Fall 2007 through Summer 2009, DVDaria lay dormant while Wild went off to law school and there was little news on the release front. However, in July 2009, Wild learned from several fans that an image for "Daria: Coming to DVD 2010" appeared on the MTV release of "The State." After further confirmation from Michelle Klein-Hass and Glenn Eichler, she promptly started updating the DVDaria site. On November 19, 2009, Wild was contacted via e-mail by executives at MTV to discuss the upcoming DVD release. Wild held a phone meeting with them on November 20th, where she learned, amongst other things, that the DVDs <i>would</i> come out in 2010, that the series would likely be released at once, that there would be extras, and that most of the music would be changed. Wild knew about the release date for ''[[Daria: The Complete Animated Series]]'', but was not authorized to disclose the information until it was made public. Now that the release announcement has been made, Wild is mulling over the future of the successful DVDaria campaign. ~~Currently, Wild is following the Joost/Viacom/You Tube proceedings with interest. She hopes in the near future to get back in touch with her MTV source and renew the push to get the show onto DVD.~~ ==Paperpusher's Message Board Administrator== From 2004 onward, as the Paperpusher spent less time interacting with Daria fandom, Wild increased her moderator duties on the [[PPMB]]. This arrangement seldom led to problems, until late 2004/early 2005, when the board suffered an increasing number of outages. Finally, in early 2005, the PPMB collapsed completely, giving an error message whenever anyone tried to get on. Regular users streamed over to the [[SFMB]] and posted anxiously about PPMB's future. With Paperpusher's official e-mail long since defunct, Wild did not know how to get in touch with him, until she unearthed his cell phone number on her computer hard drive. It was still current, and Wild informed Paperpusher of the events, later learning that the server company had suffered a terrible crash and was rushing to rebuild. PPMB finally re-emerged, but with more than a month's worth of posts permanently destroyed. Paperpusher then made the decision to move the PPMB to a new server and turn ownership of the board over to Wild. Wild chose Gamer to be the host of the message board, as he was generally attentive and reliable as SFMB's host. This would draw criticism that if the server went down, both boards went down, so one couldn't serve as a refuge from the other's problems. Regardless, the board was officially moved to its new server in April 2005. As the new owner, Wild made some changes, including appointing new moderators, adding a couple of new forums, altering the purpose of some current forums, and posting the message board rules in plain site. Otherwise, she sought to maintain message board continuity. Gamer updated the phpBB and added new features like an image attachments option and a spellcheck. While the PPMB has not been glitch-free, and even suffered a ~~far~~few milder server ~~crash~~crashes since the move, it has not faced the same level of problems, in spite of the unprecedented number of posts and users. In June 2007, [[Gamer]] moved the PPMB to a far more advanced platform, leading some people to urge Wild to give PPMB 2.0 a new version number. Wild chose PPMB 2.5 because the board was not completely changed, just higher functioning. On August 5, 2007, Wild announced that in anticipation of the demands of law school, she would stop actively moderating/administering the PPMB (although she would maintain ownership). ==Completing the Driven Wild Universe== Line 101 ⟶ 105: Into the Fire" was posted in May 2005, three weeks later. The final DWU was a longer time coming, mainly because Wild kept expanding the number of Acts to satisfy the sprawling, complicated plot. Originally meant to be four acts (like a real hour-long drama), Wild finally expanded it to six, and was going to release it as such, but she was too dissatisfied with the way the plotline was resolved. After doing additional research, she wound up rewriting and expanding scenes in Act Six, so that it was necessary to create an Act Seven. Finally, in November 2005, Wild released "Tomorrow Never Knows" in eight installments to the general public. The Driven Wild Universe series, which premiered April 18, 1999, was declared officially ended on November 27, 2005, even though one installment, "[[The Age of Cynicism]]," ~~remains~~remained unfinished. until ~~Wild~~August ~~hopes~~2007, tonearly ~~finish~~two ityears ~~sometime soon~~later. ~~She~~Wild is less optimistic ~~that she will ever~~about ~~finish~~finishing the sequels "Working Girl" and "The Winter Chill," both of which were begun before Wild wrote the final two DWU installments. The Driven Wild Universe remains Wild's longest and most complex project to date. ==Other Projects== Wild would be involved in a number of other projects, both large and small. Some of these projects were intended to spark controversy and reflection, while others were just for fun. In early 2002, she joined [[Milo Minderbinder]] and [[Thomas Mikkelsen]] in writing the <b>[[Tales from the Burbs]]</b> series, which consisted of three horror-comedy tales. Wild's contribution was [[Revision]]. In fall of 2002, as a joke, Wild wrote a fake fanfic, [[DariaNTrent For-EVER!!!!]] and a fake author name (Darialuvstrent) with a fake e-mail address, which she then submitted to Fanfiction.net. Her goal was to see whether this attrociously written 'shipper fanfic, just 408 words long, got more feedback than longer, more thoughtful fanfics. Within hours of posting it, Wild saw that someone had posted a link on PPMB. Responses rushed in, both on Fanfiction.net and the PPMB itself. Some fans thought it was fake, while others thought it was real, written by someone who was obviously very young or mentally deficient. Wild finally revealed herself to be the author, provoking appreciation from some and anger from others. Because Wild mentioned in her reveal that the idea came to her after she had posted her Driven Wild Universe fanfics on Fanfiction.net, critics accused her of deceiving them just because she was bitter over not getting more feedback. Wild countered that she had posted her DWU fics in early summer, but did not actually follow through with the spoof fanfic idea until several months later, when she just wanted a little fun after an intense period of script writing. Besides, what if the author had been real? Were the often brutal comments the fanfic received any kinder? In any event, Wild's point was proven. While the better fanfics that surrounded it received maybe 10 comments, "DariaNTrent For-EVER!!!!" snared close to 50. It still exists at [[SUSU]]'s [[Lawndale Leftovers]]. In spring of 2004, Wild accepted a challenging to create the craziest sci-fi fanfic possible, while challenging authors known for being very off-canon to write something "realistic." Wild's challenge turned into a 21-part fanfic called "[[They Came from Planet Xulfanex]]", about Quinn and Daria discovering that they are half alien. The name "Xulfanex" came from someone Wild knew named Zulfan. It was the first and only full-length fanfic she had written entirely in prose. Oddly enough, it served as a sort of alternate universe outcome of the relationship between Quinn and Phelps, which had not yet been resolved in the Driven Wild Universe itself. [[Image:CRAPPIES.jpg\|left\|CRAPPIES logo]] Seeking to shine a light on the nature of fanfiction writing and critiquing, Wild created [[the CRAPPIES]] anti-awards for fanfiction, which were held in early 2005 and 2006. The CRAPPIES encountered a lot of criticism on both sides, with some fans saying it went too far, while others saying that it did not go far enough. Because Wild meant for the CRAPPIES to shine a light on the excesses of fanfics that were widely considered "good," fans like CINCGREEN felt that she was just giving already popular writers more exposure, while ignoring the truly bad ones. Wild countered that truly bad fanfic authors deserved no exposure, good or bad, and that the CRAPPIE awards were meant to instill humility in fanfic authors. Wild oversaw the 2004 CRAPPIE awards, while [[RLobinske]] and [[Quiverwing]] (then nmorgendorffer) oversaw the 2005 CRAPPIES, with Wild's input. By early 2007, however, Wild realized that she had read little fanfic from 2006 and was too busy to hold the anti-awards, and decided to discontinue them. Wild's current project with [[S.C.]] and [[RedlegRick]] is a full-length animated Daria episode. Wild and S.C. collaborated to write the script in late 2006 and early 2007. ~~All~~The ~~are~~project ~~hopeful~~has ~~that~~been delayed due to difficulties with finding the ~~project~~right ~~will~~voices and the bevoice ~~complete~~actors' inlimited ~~another~~time ~~year~~to orrecord sodialogue. ==Fanon and Fan Culture Contributions== Line 145 ⟶ 149: * [[The Other Side of the Kiss\|The Other Side of the Kiss]] * [[Anatomy of a Tom Hater\|Anatomy of a Tom Hater]] ==Daria Fanworks Awards== [[1st Daria Fanworks Awards]] * Favourite Quinn Story for ''Kadhimiya'' (with [[Guy “Deceleraptor” Payne]]) [[4th Daria Fanworks Awards]] * Favorite Helen Story (tie) for ''Driven Wild Universe #15: The Age of Cynicism'' ==The CRAPPIES Awards== * Most Unbelievable Alternate Dariaverse Situation for "They Came from Planet Xulfanex" Visual Most Likely to Cause the Reader to Gouge His/Her Eyes Out for "They Came from Planet Xulfanex" ==External Links== Line 150 ⟶ 165: * [http://www.the-wildone.com/dvdaria/ DVDaria] * [http://www.the-wildone.com/AA/ Outpost Amy] * [http://~~www.~~glitterberries.freehostia.com/author_karawild.html Fanfics on Glitter Berries] * [http://~~www~~web.archive.org/web/20110519143506/http://outpost-daria.com/fanfic_series_tdwu.html Fanfics on Outpost Daria] (via Wayback Machine) * [http://ssw.ssw.net/fansub/fanfic/tz/wild/wild.htm Fanfics on Sick, Sad World] [[Category:Authors\|Wild, Kara]] [[Category: Daria Fanworks Awards winners\|Wild, Kara]] [[Category:Fan ~~Community~~community ~~Figures~~figures\|Wild, Kara]] [[Category:Essayists\|Wild, Kara]] [[Category:CRAPPIES Awards winners\|Wild, Kara]] [[Category:Fans from the United States\|Wild, Kara]]