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|firstappearance=[[The Invitation]]
|lastappearance=[[Is It College Yet?]]
|voicedby=[[Alvaro J. Gonzalez]] <br>
|episodecount= 34 (one non-speaking) <br> 2 TV movies
|gender=Male
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}}
'''Trent Lane''' is
{{quote|Could you imagine what Spiral would sound like if we were ''forced'' to practice? Even when we didn't ''want'' to?|Trent, [[Is It College Yet?]]}}
==Appearance==
Appearance-wise Trent is tall and spindly with wild black hair and a goatee. Between Season 1 and 2, the appearance of his goatee changed from 3 stripes of hair to a small triangular "soul patch", and would remain that way for the remainder of the series. He has three ear rings in each ear like Jane and sports a tribal tattoo he got out of a magazine. His speech is laid back and he often coughs when he tries to laugh.
==Personality==
Trent is a narcoleptic slacker who spends most of his time oblivious to the world. Still living at home affords him a carefree life style that allows him to pursue his twin passions of music and sleep. ''Why'' he sleeps so much has never been elaborated upon, whether it be a literal case of narcolepsy or purely the side effect of a rock and roll lifestyle. He can nod off any time or anywhere, which Jane has said is an annoying habit while he’s driving (and in one episode this actually happened). This complete slacker lifestyle also involves the inability to keep a schedule, and he will keep missing the start of rehearsals or gigs; he claims that watches depress him because he's always late, and that's why he never wears them. ▼
▲Trent is
Despite his zoned-out nature, he's proven to be quite capable of identifying when something's wrong with Jane or Daria, and taking action to sort it out. Notably in "[[The Misery Chick]]", after Jane had been avoiding Daria and everyone else, Trent "forgot" that he'd been asked to tell people she was out and said he "thought" Jane might be upstairs.
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==Music==
[[Image:Trentrocks.jpg|
During his non-waking hours he likes to practice. He's been known to practice the opening to Nirvana's "Come As You Are" for hours, and when rehearsing his own songs the volume is cranked to maximum. He can also get distracted by random things, such as the novelty settings and tunes on a keyboard or comparing vinyl to CD (without realising he's listening to the radio instead). He even sleeps with his guitar, which he and Jane joke is counted as practice.
He also spends his time trying to invent lyrics. He can be inspired to start talking in lyrics or writing them, at any time or place. This too is another bad habit he has while driving, and in conversation (he once started doing a song about betrayal right after he'd tried to reassure Daria that she ''hadn't'' betrayed Jane).
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==Daria and Trent==
[[File:DariaTrentPierceMe.jpg|300px|thumb|left|Trent
Despite knowing that he was flaky, Daria had a crush on Trent for a few years in high school (first three seasons of the show). In their first encounters, she could barely ''talk'' when around him and spent half of "[[Road Worrier]]" deliberately holding back on her sarcastic remarks for fear of offending Trent. (It turned out Trent found them amusing.) The idea of embarrassing herself in front of Trent was a great fear of hers, and Jane would several times deliberately leave them together.
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Trent appeared oblivious to her crush for most of its duration, but according to [[Anne D. Bernstein]], Trent had noticed the crush around the time of "[[That Was Then, This is Dumb]]" "but he would never lead her on too much". [http://www.the-wildone.com/dvdaria/anneinterviewsfull.html]. In "[[Through a Lens Darkly]]", he made complimentary comments about Daria's appearance for her benefit, and in "[[Pierce Me]]" he made complimentary comments about her as a person, telling Monique in front of Daria that she was "the coolest high schooler I know". In "[[It Happened One Nut]]", he also deliberately avoided a nut stand because Daria was working there and would clearly be embarrassed if he saw her, and in "Pierce Me" he deliberately waits before entering his house so as not to embarrass Daria.
"Pierce Me" also shows him deliberately using the crush to steer Daria into having a piercing: when she's unsure, he outright flirts with her, telling her she'd "look hot" while giving an interested smirk, when
MTV's [http://www.mtv.com/onair/daria/chapter2/tangle.jhtml "It Takes Two to Tangle"] described the lack of any real action as "a rare example of passive-passive behavior."
In the end, it became clear to Daria in "[[Jane's Addition]]" that it wouldn't work out, after Trent utterly failed to assist her and Jane like he'd promised. They realised they had differing views on things, and Trent implicitly brought up their chances of a relationship while talking about the assignment: "I guess it wasn't such a great idea for us to get together... on this." He did express regret as he'd always thought she'd understood how he felt. After the conversation, he gave her a peck on the cheek.
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In the [[off-canon canon]] [[Is_It_Fall_Yet%3F#On_Is_It_Fall_Yet.3F|IIFY Post-Movie Chat]], when asked if he had a crush on Daria, Trent simply said "no".
[[Glenn Eichler]] has bluntly said that Trent and Daria would never have gotten together or were intended to ever work as a couple, and that "any viewer who really thought that Daria and Trent could make a go of a relationship was just not watching the show we were making". [http://www.the-wildone.com/dvdaria/glennanswers.html]
Producer Susie Lewis has been equally dismissive: “Having a crush on Trent was something she could not control — she knew it was silly, but she couldn’t help herself. After all, he wasn’t the brightest bulb, so what would they ever talk about? So his songs and his lyrics had to be even more ridiculous with no depth or intellect to them.” [https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/10/youre-standing-on-my-neck-the-life-and-death-of-th.html]
Ironically, [http://www.sh33pie.com/ajg.htm Trent's voice actor] claimed he thought they could make a good couple: "They complimented each other greatly. Trent the dreamer, Daria the realist. I would like to see them get together after Daria graduates college."
Outside of the crush, Daria is still someone whose advice and views Trent respects. He provides advice and assistance to Daria when needed - and after the events of [[The Kiss]], Trent tried to help get Daria and Jane back together as friends again.
==Personal History==
[[Image:trentunclemax.jpg|
His parents [[Vincent Lane|Vincent]] and [[Amanda Lane|Amanda]] allowed Trent, like all their children, to do as he pleased in his youth. A few quirks of his childhood were living in a tent for six months, and having gone through an ‘orange skin phase’. Amanda and Trent remember the tent affair differently: Amanda thinks Trent was just playing around and later lost interest, while Trent was actually waiting for someone to invite him back into the house and sounds upset that nobody ever did.
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At some point, he and Jane shared a room.
The music website [[Reburb]] ([http://web.archive.org/web/20001017140723/http://www.mtv.com/mtv/tubescan/animation/daria/trent_chp/reburb.html an archived MTV website]) reveals that Trent first met [[Jesse Moreno]] at age 12, during the summer. They took hold of Trent's dad's old acoustic guitars (he later explained about tuning) and formed many bands ("'Wax Lypps,' 'Indyan Burn,' and occasionally 'Boa Constryctyr'"), playing "angst-driven power pop and Weird Al Yankovic covers" for family and friends. "They decide to turn electric when they realized that it would be louder."
During his time Lawndale High School, Trent was scheduled for some classes alongside [[Tommy Sherman]], though like the football player he "may have missed a few classes". Reburb says he met Max Tyler at school after advertising for a drummer, and the three played "trance punk" in basements throughout their teen years. He knew [[Timothy O'Neill]] and once wrote "Down With The Man" on the teacher's car. ("[[Lucky Strike]]") According to [[Is It College Yet?]], Trent missed his own graduation.
[[Image:trentroom.jpg|left|frame|200px|Trent's second-floor bedroom at [[Casa Lane]]]]▼
During his school days, Trent once ''had a summer job'' at Lawndale Diner - [http://www.theangstguy.com/sounds/summersucks.WAV he wrote a song about it.]
After high school Trent has continued fronting the Spiral and writing lyrics. With the Spiral he mainly plays brew pubs and grunge clubs though they have been known to play high school house parties for the right price and even a child’s birthday party to get out of a ticket. He’s never known to have been formally employed in a conventional job but once wrote a jingle for [[Happy Herb|Happy Herb's]] used cars in exchange for twenty bucks, an hour of studio time and a set of new tires; this was a deep, dark secret he didn't want anybody knowing. ▼
▲After
He says in [[Pierce Me]] that, for reasons he doesn't ever want to talk about and sounds angry about, he "can't" step foot in a bookstore.
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He accepts that he’ll probably end up a townie playing Doors covers but at least he’s doing what he loves now and that’s all that matters.
===Trent's future===
[[Image:Trent20yl.jpg|thumb|200px|Daria in 2017, by Karen Disher]]
For the show's 20th anniversary, [[Susie Lewis]] explained how she thought the cast had turned out and [[Karen Disher]] drew 2017 versions of them for [http://ew.com/tv/daria-20-years-later/catching-up-with-the-daria-gang/ Entertainment Weekly's] [[Catching Up With The Daria Gang]]:
"While his Mystik Spiral days are over, Trent has found, well, not success exactly, but... a functioning band in [[Trent Lane and the Mystikal Explosion]]. He lives with his four bandmates in Queens. Trent had some financial success with Mystik Spiral's one-hit wonder, "Freakin' Friends," but since then has been making ends meet as a bartender. He and Jane still spend a lot of time together, and Daria often joins in. (See? It's not weird anymore, guys.)"
==Trent and Fanfiction==
[[Image:Trentshipping.jpg|right|frame|A full 20% of all Daria fanfics ("[[Lane Miserables]]")]]
Despite what Glenn Eichler and the others writers intended, Trent/Daria [[shipper]] fanfiction ''abounds'' in fandom. The production rate of shipper fics used to be quite intensive during the first few years of the show, both fics that showed them getting together and fics that played up the crush ([[C.E. Forman]]'s "Lost Stories" fics). The number have gone down since then, and [[anti-'shipper]] fics have turned up to poke holes in the pairing, like "[[I've Waited Here for You]]" by [[Kristen Bealer]]. New Trent/Daria fics are still a frequent sight ([http://thepaperpusher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=31873 Life As We View It] / [http://thepaperpusher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=31913 Second Glance] by [[GingerLove84]], however, as are fics that have the pairing in the background ("[[Drive (TAG story)|Drive]]" by [[TAG]]). ▼
▲Despite what Glenn Eichler and the others writers intended, Trent/Daria [[shipper]] fanfiction ''abounds'' in fandom. The production rate of shipper fics used to be quite intensive during the first few years of the show, both fics that showed them getting together (especially [[Michelle Klein-Hass]] in the early days, and [[Ruthless Bunny]]'s "[[Bed and Breakfast Man]]") and fics that played up the crush ([[C.E. Forman]]'s "Lost Stories" fics). The number have gone down since then, and [[anti-'shipper]] fics have turned up to poke holes in the pairing, like "[[I've Waited Here for You]]" by [[Kristen Bealer]]. New Trent/Daria fics are still a frequent sight, however -
The main depiction of Trent in fanfiction is either a similar role to canon - a helpful, decent (but lazy) ally of Daria and Jane.
A minority of fanfics take a deliberately negative view of Trent, such as [[The Angst Guy]]'s "[[Darkness]]" where an older Trent is a physically and emotionally abusive man, and [[Smileyfax]]'s [http://thepaperpusher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=32379 "My Best Friend"] where Trent (in a deliberate [[alternate universe|twisting of canon]]) has always been an abusive psychotic. ▼
Some fanfics will play up Trent's worse attributes and his obvious lack of a future for dramatic purposes, like [[E. A. Smith]]'s "[[Nowhere Man]]".
▲A minority of fanfics take a deliberately negative view of Trent, such as [[The Angst Guy]]'s "[[Darkness]]" where an older Trent is a physically and emotionally abusive man, and [[Smileyfax]]'s "[[
A large number of fics present a Trent who makes it as a musician: either Mystic Spiral or Trent on his own have become a successful band. Several fics by [[Nemo Blank]] take this path, as did the now-deleted but influential works by Klein-Hass. Trent is treated as someone who can make it as a proper musician. This has often been linked with shipping, making Trent a good musician who can date Daria and thus they can have a stable home life.
Trent as a success became less prominent as fandom went on until Susie Lewis wrote "Catching Up with the Daria Gang" and presented Trent as a working rock musician. Post-canon fics will now often show Trent and his new band. [[LinnOfTheWoods]]'s [[LinnOfTheWoods Continuum|Continuum]] fics use this as a springboard, with Trent hooking up with original character [[Rose Norstein]] - this reveals the bar he works at is run by an older [[Upchuck]]!
In [[Fashion Club Entertainment]] by [[tommyXmaserati]], Trent teaches Quinn guitar and Sandi vocal lessons when they decide to become an indie rock band.
==Misc. Trivia==
* In the Latin American dubbing, he was voiced by Alfonso Obregón.
==External Links==
[http://web.archive.org/web/20010311011638/http://www.mtv.com/mtv/tubescan/animation/daria/trent_chp/index.html An essay by Trent (MTV via Wayback)] - may have to click Stop as soon as it loads
====Trent-centric Fanfiction====
* [http://www.theangstguy.com/fanfics/alwaysbesideyou.htm "Always Beside You"], by [[The Angst Guy]]
* [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2280826/1/Nowhere_Man "Nowhere Man"], by [[E. A. Smith]]
* [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/154981/1/Trents_lyrics_notebook "Trent's Lyrics Notebook,"] by [[Ruthless Bunny]] and [[Medea42]]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20110519152117/http://outpost-daria.com/fanfic/vengeance.html "Vengeance"], by [[Nemo Blank]]
[[Category: Canon Characters|Lane, Trent]]
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