The Autobiography of Jane Lane

I got the idea from an Iron Chef by mman, where he asks a Daria character to write his or her autobiography.

(* * *)

I regret to inform you of the secret history of the Lane family. You're going to be sorry you read this, because I'm not good at writing.

We are the outcasts of the Lane family in more ways that one. My father's name is Vincent Lane, but Dad is an illegitimate child. He is the son of my grandmother Marietta Lane, who used to live in New York.

It was a big scandal. Marietta went to a home for unwed mothers until Dad was born. My friend Daria looked up the name that my grandmother put on the birth certificate. My granfather's name is "William Patrick Heller".

So we couldn't find out anything about William Patrick Heller. However, Daria signed up for that Mormon online database and we had some more information. Given Mr. Heller's birthdate and place of birth on the birth certificate, we believe that Mr. Heller is actually Mr. William Patrick Hitler. W. P. Hilter is the half-son of Alois Hitler, who is the brother of the other Hitler guy.

Which explains why Dad moves around all the time and why this branch of the Lane family is so weird. I mean, I'm Hitler's great grand-niece. I think the reason Dad isn't at home a lot is because that way, the assassins can't draw a bead on him.

As for my birth, my mother, Amanda Knight, was American royalty, the granddaughter of one of the guys who invented envelopes. He might have just made envelopes. If someone on Mom's family had been a lot smarter, you would have to call envelopes "Lanes" and I'd be living on easy street.

My origins of birth are humble. I was born on December 25th. It was during an Xmas play that Dad was photographing with Mom in West Virginia. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the hospital in time, but Dad got some really great pictures. Mom got her tubes tied after that.

After that, I was shoved back into our ancestral home at Lawndale, with all of our family's genetic output. There was Summer, who was 15 and already planning her escape. Wind was 14 and had moved into the attic. Penny was 13 and already become the famous terror of Lawndale.

After Penny, my parents wisely decided to hold off for a few years. Or Dad had gotten lost on a trip to Tibet, I'm not sure. My older brother Trent was five when I was born and I'm sure you know who he is because he told me about having to write his biography and he got up to the time when he was four before he ran out of paper.

When I got to the time when the Man forced me to go to school, the old rotting house had emptied out. Summer had squeezed out some loinfruit and left. Wind had joined the Navy for six months. I don't know what happened, there's some story about him not being allowed back on the boat, but I can't ask him about it because he starts crying. Penny was one of the few people to cross to border into Mexico illegally, hopping on a bus the minute she graduated from Lawndale High.

So I was raised by my older brother Trent. I think it was like Tarzan raising Cheetah. Or maybe Cheetah raising Tarzan. I don't know which of the two is smarter.

Since we didn't have pencils, or pens, or anything sharp, I found all of Mom's old pottery supplies and began painting up a storm. My first work was called, "Ode to an Empty Refrigerator". I painted it when I was three, using Mom's porcelain paint. It was a white canvas, which I made full use of, turning the kitchen into a magical world of color.

When my Mom saw the mess, she said, "We have a little artist", and my work was displayed proudly in the kitchen for the next ten years. However, the refrigerator gave out four years later and the floor in the kitchen rotted through when I was ten. Two years of contractors later, and most of my original work had disappeared, leaving only fond memories.

After that, I was determined to leave my mark on the world as a suffering and tortured artist. Which is very hard when nobody knows who you are. When Van Gogh cut off his ear, at least everyone knew, hey, that's Van Gogh, what is he doing without an ear? But if no one knows who you are, all you would get is hey, what happened to your ear? Were you in an ear-mangling accident? I tried growing my hair long on one side, but Lawndale Elementary paid for money out of its petty cash fund and I was given a real haircut. Since that moment, I knew that the Man would never let me rest.

And now, I have blossomed into womanhood. What will be the destiny of Jane Lane? Will I stand with my foot on the shores of Europe, with continents ablaze behind me? Or will I just sleep a lot, like Trent? I don't know, but it will be fun finding out.

Sequelitis

I've looked at Daria fandom for about seven years now, and one thing that I've definitely noticed is a surge in popularity of a particular form of storytelling, namely, the series. When looking at new Daria tales, it seems that every single one of them is a series of some sort. By "series" I mean a tale whose end point is deliberately left in doubt. Series can come to an end, but the reader doesn't know when the wrap-up point will come and to a degree, the reader can always depend on more.

I read an interesting article called Why Scifi Book Series Outstay Their Welcomes. Aside from fandom, the place where series have taken hold is the realm of science fiction and fantasy. Part of the reason is because the market is so competitive and the goal is to sell books, and it's much easier for an author to sell a Part II than it is a Part I.

The author of the article gives seven reason why science fiction series reach their failure point. I read the list and tried to compare what I read to Daria fandom.

1. The rules change. This is when the actual premise or plot structure changes, or the balance of suspension of disbelief changes. The example given was Philip Jose Farmer in Riverworld, as Farmer supposedly changed the plot mechanics of how Riverworld worked book by book so that he would have less difficulty contriving new stories. One could claim that Glenn Eichler did this sometime between the end of Season Two and Season Four, where the series changed from Daria Triumphant to Daria-Unsure-Of-Herself.

2. Cash flow. A series continues entirely for monetary reasons -- it brings in truckloads of money, and one has to bring out the installments to keep the money flowing. I suppose in Daria fandom, the "money" is the ego-boost the author receives. It's very hard to come up with an example here.

3. A trilogy becomes a messy tetralogy. The big example in SF is Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker's Guide series. I read the first three, but I noticed that as the series progressed the humor had less and less punch. I read the fourth one at the library, and it was almost unbearable. I didn't read the fifth one at all.

An analog in Daria fandom could be when a sequel is demanded of a story that the author ended. Several Daria fan fiction writers have unfortunately "sequeled" well ended stories; The Angst Guy is very good at giving stories natural ends and holding calls for sequels at arm's-length.

4. Too much meaning. This happens when the author explains "how the world works" over and over again. With more time to write and expound, the series delves into the metaphysical and epistemological and the series becomes a moral treatise on The Way Things Are In The World.

Some Daria fan fiction series do indeed become author soapboxes. I'm reminded of Daniel Suni's "How Deep it Goes", which becomes positively preachy.

5, The random left turn. This happens when the author pretty much loses the thread and the series becomes about Something Else Entirely. This supposedly happens in Isaac Asimov's followup to his Foundation Trilogy.

6. The miraculous save. An example of "The Miraculous Save" is when a character seems to develop "just-in-time" abilities or capabilities that fit in to whatever the author is writing about. Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue is given as an example.

7. The shrinking protagonist. Either a) the rough edges of the protagonist are smoothed for public consumption (Harry Harrison, Stainless Steel Rat), or a new protagonist throws the original protagonist into the shadows. (Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow.)

Now I can certainly think of Daria series where this happens, but I don't want to make the claim unless I've read those series thoroughly -- I only have first impressions to go on and I'd rather not be rash. A lot of Daria series suffer the problems listed above.

However, the final four entries on the list really around about the specifics of creating books for a science fiction market. The final four entries are examples of bad writing, which can doom anything, series or standalone.

Take #4. The point is not to expound on moral matters too heavily, but to let the reader draw their own conclusions (and not contrive a phony set of false moral alternatives in which to place the protagonist -- trust me, nothing's cheaper than that).

What about #5? That's just bad plotting. As Mark Twain stated that a conversation in literature should stop when the characters have nothing more to say than the reader would be interested in and should stop at a natural stopping point, so should the narrative of a book.

As for #6 -- Sweet Jesu, the examples I could come up with when a character shows "omnicapability". There are a lot of Mary Sues floating around, "omnicapability" is the worst of their sins.

In #7, there's a big temptation to make bad people "nice guys". I'll admit I sort of did this with Sandi Griffin in the Legion of Lawndale Heroes stories, but face it, I've always liked Sandi Griffin and never thought she was really that bad. A writer must avoid the temptation, however, to turn a character into something that can't be justified with an appeal to the Almighty God Canon. Thomas Mikkelsen would claim, "well, you're just writing a different character, and the only thing your character has in common with the Daria character is the name."

No major points to make. Just some observations.

Private Dicks

Since this blog hasn't been updated in a long time, here's a bit of a story....

(* * *)

"So what do you see?"

Sandi looked through the binoculars. Quinn found it annoying that Sandi wouldn't share. Binocular hog!

"Okay...he's getting out of the car....he's with the woman....oh!...he's putting his arm on her shoulder...and...they have entered the hotel."

"That's it," said Quinn with some satisfaction. "We're done."

"Whew."

Sandi put down the binoculars and rested against the seat of the car. Quinn pulled out a small tape recorder.

"At 8:35 pm, Mr. Cedric Fleming entered the Palmer Hilton Hotel with the young woman identified earlier by photographic evidence. We are remaining here in hopes that we can see Mr. Fleming and his partner depart."

It was all that Quinn and Sandi needed. In State Law, evidence of opportunity of adultery was sufficient as evidence in a divorce proceeding. They didn't have to catch Mr. Fleming with his new friend's ankles around his ears. All that had to be proven was that Mr. Fleming was with a woman who was not his wife, and that both of them were in a place that allowed the opportunity. A hotel definitely counted.

Ms. Fleming could further testify that she was unaware of her husband's location -- supposedly, he was going out to dinner with business friends. Quinn knew that the very next day Mr. Fleming would be served his divorce proceedings, and Ms. Fleming would be asking for a handsome sum.

"We still don't know who his girlfriend is," said Sandi. "We know she's 'Becky', but I've just not been able to get that last name." Not that the two hadn't tried. Sandi had come very close to catching Ms. 'Becky' enter a car in an underground parking garage but couldn't get the license plate, and there had to be a thousand gray Honda Accords out there.

"It doesn't have to be perfect, you know."

"Yeah. But I like it to be perfect."

Quinn smiled. When the retainer came in, Sandi would be happy. She could blow her part of it on shopping for some new shoes.

Quinn, however, would be working at Dharma Surf, Inc. the next day as a lowly paid temp worker. Supposedly, someone was stealing Dharma Surf's designs and selling them to Kahuna Boards. It would be Quinn -- and Sandi's -- job to find out who. The shingle in front of "Griffin and Morgendorffer Investigations" didn't pay for itself, you know.