Daria/Headscratchers

I've had Daria playing in the background for the past week, so let's get bugging:

• How does Quinn manage to manipulate all those boys? She seems to have an aversion to physical intimacy, so what are these boys getting from her?
  • The art style makes it sort of unclear, but we're meant to understand from context that Quinn is exceptionally pretty. And no small part of it is competition, one imagines; whenever one of them temporarily wins Quinn's affection, they tend to become disillusioned after a little while, only to resume the chase when there are challengers once again.
  • I believe that's called "triangulation".
  • Most of the infatuation focuses the Three J's, who are seemly united by their individual interest in Quinn.
    • Plus, speaking as a former teenager, I can tell you that it doesn't take much for a teenage boy to follow a pretty girl around like a puppy dog. Even if they don't get a bloody thing from her, they're so blinded by the idea that they might that they never seem to notice that they're being used. Luckily (most) guys grow out of this phase, which doesn't bode well for Quinn when the day finally comes when she can't manipulate guys with her looks...
  • Early episodes actually indicated the Quinn was not exactly chaste and innocent. Consider the episode The Big House. Jake says something like, "Burning the midnight oil, huh?" and Quinn immediately responds with a panicky, "We weren't burning anything!" She frequently let slip hints of exactly what she was doing on those dates of hers. Beyond that, it's suggested she had complex systems with which she purposely manipulated her boyfriends. She worked very hard to learn just how to get a boy to do exactly what she wanted. It's no surprise they didn't put up much of a fight. It was only later on that the writers started making Quinn untouchable.
• Jane meets Tom, and runs off with him after five minutes of conversation? And forgets about Daria?
  • You've never had or seen this happen in real life? I know it's Jane, but it's very possible she was interested/infatuated enough in him that she'd just blow off her friend.
    • Besides, it's not exactly something new. Back at "the Invitation", at the party at Britanny's house, she left Daria on her own and took the guy that was looking at her to the "make up room" (the room with the laundry machine, actually). The only difference is that Tom came to stay, and that other guy was droped after the action, leaving no trace in Jane's life... besides a free sock
• Does Jake even have a job, or is he just wandering from client to client?
  • He's an advertising consultant. So... both.
• The Fashion Club has one outfit apiece. Oh, irony!
  • When was the last time you saw a cartoon character change their clothes daily?
    • Kim Possible had a dozen outfits.
      • Well there you go, amazingly and completely refuted for all time. I kid, I kid. Shows where they actually change outfits are so far from the norm it's frequently quoted as a feature when it shows up, so yeah.
        • Well you know, dont ask a question if you dont want an answer...
      • Same with As Told by Ginger. Yeah, it was quoted as a feature because the animators weren't cutting corners - they do this specifically because they don't always animate the season at once and anything that can save time you take. Shame that they don't have the advantage of Asian-based shows where school uniforms are the norm.
  • From time to time, the Club does has different clothes, because otherwise they would be straining credibility as a Fashion Club.
  • Lampshaded in Too Cute where Quinn is called out by Sandi for wearing the same outfit all the time.
• What were the Morgendorffers doing in Highland? It's canon they actually were there in Highland for Beavis and Butthead - it's mentioned in the first episode as they drive to Lawndale.
  • ...Living there? I mean, they had to be somewhere, right? It's sort of implied that they moved to the more upscale Lawndale because Helen's career was going so well.

• In the Daria! musical episode, Helen, Jake, Quinn and Trent wait out the storm in the breakfast nook. The storm blowing heavy objects around. The nook with the large, plate glass windows. Real smart, folks.
  • Since when were they exactly bright?
• Daria makes such a big deal about being an outcast, yet everyone seems to treat her more or less the same as they treat everyone else, especially Kevin and Brittany. In fact, about the only one who you would expect to treat Daria with respect but doesn't is Quinn (who is such a flaming bitch that she actively disowns her sister and doesn't even try to hide it, but that's another story entirely). Have the writers ever actually been to high school? Because that's sure as hell not the way most of us remember it.
  • We do see the non-named characters treating Jane and Daria poorly on occasion, and Kevin and Brittany do have their moments. They're not bad people, though, and the viewer isn't meant to think of them as such; possibly the only person who's meant to be more or less unlikeable is Sandi. Kevin and Brittany are put in a less sympathetic light than the main characters mostly because they're dumb and shallow and lazy. As to Daria's image, it becomes increasingly obvious that, for all her insisting that she doesn't care what others think of her, the truth is that she does: she specifically wants people to think of her as someone who doesn't care what they think of her. Which is kind of Zen, really. As for high school, I can't speak for you, but mine wasn't that much unlike Lawndale High, at least as far as student interaction went. The jocks and cheerleaders were all perfectly polite people who didn't have any problem making friends with band geeks and whatnot. There was never any celebration of popularity or the illusion thereof.
  • You're lucky. I can't see that ever happening at the high school I went to, and I don't think I was particularly misanthropic or anything.
  • When has there ever been a high-school work that's accurately portrayed high school?
    • Freaks and Geeks
      • Freaks and Geeks was nothing like the high school I went to. Try again - It's always based off of what the writers went to high school and heavily exaggerated and possibly flanderized; because it's quite literally impossible to accurately portray high school - you always got one person in the audience who says, "Wait, have these guys been to high school? It's nothing like the one I went to!"
    • Fiction doesn't accurately high school because there are a lot of different high schools.
  • One of the major points of the last season was that Darias social exile was almost wholly self inflicted - she chose to treat others with disdain because she was smarter than kids her age, and other people simply chose to leave her alone rather than try to connect with someone who clearly doesn't want to talk. Similar to how Quinn is actually intelligent but chose to supress it so she wouldn't alienate the people around her. Both of them could have had a great experience of being both smart and popular, but they simply chose not to.
• Okay, so I'm watching the series...why does Ms. Li always make extra-cirriculars and school events known by going into whatever class Daria is in and announcing it in person? Does she go to like every single class and announce it instead of using the PA?
  • You're completely right - but from the writer's standpoint Daria can't snark at the PA system and have Ms. Lil respond.
  • I always got the feeling that Ms. Li was so self-absorbed and so focused on her job that doing anything such as personally announcing events class by class wouldn't be completely inconceivable. If Lawndale High is her life, then personally announcing such events is tantamount to stroking her own ego.
  • Given that the roof of the library caved in because Ms. Li had embezzeled the money set aside for repairs, odds are that the PA system is old and run down. The times she appears in class to make an announcement are the times that the system is on the fritz because she won't repair/replace it.
• Why didn't the school put Kevin in special education classes? He clearly has a learning disability, and maybe he wouldn't have gotten held back if he wasn't taking courses he wasn't able to understand.
  • Not having personal experience from American education system I can only speculate but wouldn't arranging special classes cost money? As in something Ms. Li would be most unwilling to fork out and thus be very eager to outright deny Kevin's condition. It's already established, that the school hands out passing grades for jocks just for doing good in sports, so it wouldn't come as a great surprise if Kevin's disabilities had been swept under the rug.
    • Most schools in the US have a special program for those with learning disabilities or mental disabilities, but smaller schools from poorer districts might not, especially if no students qualify. These programs do cost money, but mostly in hiring special teachers. Ms. Li might purposely have avoided having these programs, but there are some costly consequences that could come from not having a program when there's clearly a need.
  • Kevin is a jock. Not only a jock, THE jock. The quarterback who apparently plays very well (as indicated by A Tree Grows in Lawndale, where without Kevin, the Lions lose every game). Taking into account Ms. Li's personality should give you the answer. Ms. Li's entire life is consumed by bringing "glory and honor unto Lawndale High" and making as much money off it as she can. She's not going to place Kevin in a special needs class when he's her sports cash cow. All she has to do is see to it that he receives passing grades so he can keep playing, and that's what she's going to do. There's never been an indication that she's particularly concerned how her young charges lives will turn out after high school.
    • Special Education students are allowed to play sports as long as they are physically able to. Not to mention there are plenty of other ways for him to get help with his education like extra time on tests or with teachers, allowed home schooling times, etc that wouldn't involve taking him out of regular classes.
      • Not all schools are particularly invested in how smart the students are. And all the stuff you listed would only work if Kevin was willing to go to them.