Peter Guerin
Peter Guerin is a former Daria fanfic author. He currently posts under the name Doc Forbin on PPMB.
Introduction to Daria[edit]
Guerin first heard of Daria when he saw the Season 1 finale "The Misery Chick." Seeing something of himself and the struggles he had to endure when he was in high school, Guerin became a fan of the show and caught up on the entire first season. He soon stumbled onto the #Daria+ IRC chat room, the old Planet Daria, alt.lawndale.com and Lawndale Commons sites and other Daria-related chat rooms and sites.
Fanfics[edit]
In 1998, Guerin decided to take a stab at writing Daria fan fiction. Drawing upon his years of doing comedy skits he'd record on audio cassettes, Guerin wrote The Misery Senshi Neo-Zero Double Blitzkrieg Debacle, which was a crossover with the anime series Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon. Serialized on alt.lawndale.com, the fic proved to be a cult hit. Guerin later pulled the fic from most websites "due to the post 9/11 climate". (quoted from a post at the PPMB, 2/7/05) This fic is now mostly found in a MSTed version and is considered one of the more infamous examples of MSTing, and is mentioned by name on tvtropes.org. Guerin next wrote Triumph of the "Retart", which was inspired by Guerin's unsuccessful campaign for Student Government President in his junior year at high school. This fic was also given the MST treatment as well. Over the next two years or so, Guerin wrote a substantial body of Daria fan fic which he ultimately put under the umbrella title of Daria: The OAV's Series. Guerin's fan fiction contained references to other anime shows like Gunsmith Cats and Here is Greenwood as well as classic American TV shows as Sanford and Son and Adam-12. However, a combination of burnout from keeping up a steady pace of writing as well as flaming criticism from such people as Hellcop led Guerin to stop writing Daria fan fiction in 2000, though he did write fan fiction for other shows like Ed, Edd n Eddy and Cow and Chicken for a few more years afterward.
From Sick, Sad Burbank onwards, Guerin's fan fiction was marketed under the name of his fan fiction "studio" Mark Zero Fan Fiction, Unlimited, which he named after Mark Seven Limited, the production company founded by Dragnet creator Jack Webb. Guerin even went as far as satirizing the company logo, where he hit his thumb with the hammer trying to chisel a "computer zero" into a piece of metal.
One hallmark of Guerin's fan fiction has been his references to the Adirondack North Country of Upstate New York where he currently lives, Long Island (where he formerly lived) and certain political figures he's held in disgust, most notably Robert L. Schulz, the head of the All-County Taxpayers Association as well as fellow ACTA member Antonio Cerro. Another hallmark has been the inclusion of "commercial breaks" in his later stories, also seen in early fanfiction by authors such as Kara Wild.
Although he no longer writes Daria fan fiction, Guerin continues to be a regular at PPMB and the Daria IRC channel, and occasionally pops in at Daria AIM chat room. Guerin now regularly writes "position papers" on subjects he feels passionate about, and will frequently mention these on the PPMB. These position papers have yet to be collected on a single page.
In 2008 Guerin had announced that in celebration of the tenth anniversary of when he broke into Daria fan fiction he was writing a new story called To Helen Back 2: The Next Year, which was to have been a sequel to C. E. Forman's To Helen Back. However, on June 10, 2008, his computer "ate" the story, so he decided to abandon it. He has since announced an alternative project to be called Hoop Schemes, which is a fan fic he had started six years ago but never finished. The story will be about Brittany joining Lawndale High's girls' basketball team in order to prove to Kevin that she isn't a Johnny One-Note. Guerin hopes to have the story done by early fall 2008. As of June 2010, the story has yet to be published.
In 2010, Guerin made a comeback to Daria fan fiction, re-editing and re-issuing Misery Senshi and announcing plans for the first new story in the OAVs series in ten years called The Strange Case of the Mystery Girl Patter, which he hopes to have out by mid-April.
Contributions[edit]
Guerin coined the middle name "Louise" for Quinn for the story The Dinner Date from Hell; several fan fiction writers followed suit. (Guerin was inspired by how C.E. Forman coined the middle name "Marie" for Daria in his story To Helen Back; currently, 'Marie' or 'Ann/Anne' are favored by the majority of Daria fandom for use as Daria's middle name.)
A trademark of Guerin's fan fiction is that Daria always kicks male characters in the testicles. Guerin was inspired to have her do this when he read the Women's Wear Daily article about Daria where she said "My boots send a clear message: 'I can kick you.'"
Bibliography of Major Works[edit]
The Official Daria: The OAV's Canon[edit]
The Misery Senshi Neo-Zero Double Blitzkrieg Debacle (crossover with Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon)
Triumph of the "Retart"
One Man's Trash... (crossover with Sanford and Son)
Sick, Sad Burbank (crossover with Animaniacs)
The Prepaid Phone Card Call of Tommy Sherman (ccrossover with The Real Ghostbusters)
The Dinner Date from Hell
Return of the Lawndale Militia (Crossover with Gunsmith Cats and Here is Greenwood) (MST version can be found at http://home.netcom.com/~mblackwl/rlm.txt
Dari-Boo (crossover]] with Animaniacs; based on an idea by Jonathan Sweet, a/k/a Dr. Belch)
Strange Reunions
No Nudes is Good Nudes
"A Girl Like Me" (poem)
Karen Carpenter Blues
Outbitched
My Stupid Date with Destiny (collaboration with C.E. Forman)
Booted!
This is Spinal Crap
Marathon Woman
The Quinn's Cousin Incident
Daria's Slapshot
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cynic
Lukewarm Metal
The Strange Case of the Mystery Girl Patter
Other Stories[edit]
Death Be Not Stacy
What if Daria and Tom Did It? (crossover with the Marvel Comics series What If?; written under the pseudonym Apollo C. Vermouth)
The Winds of Change
The Worst Daria Fan Fiction Story Ever Written!!!!!!!!!! (written under the pseudonym John Q. Public)
Hoop Schemes (tenth anniversary fan fiction story; scheduled to be released Fall 2008)
External links[edit]
- Mark Zero Fan Fiction, Unlimited (destroyed by GeoCities Shutdown of 2009, recovered by WayBack Machine; many links still function; also recovered by Reocities; new version created March 2010 and now hosted by Bravenet)