My 27-yo brother watches Daria every now and again, so I brought it up at dinner tonight. My brother made a statement which I didn't know how to take, and so I now bring it to you fine people....
My brother said that Daria is jealous of Quinn, and that Quinn is the one with the upper hand.
This of course startled me, and so I thought about it. I can see where Quinn has upper hand with Helen and Jake, but I think both Daria and Quinn hold more power over their parents than is healthy. However, in the relationship between the Morgendorffer daughters, I can't see how Quinn could have the upper hand. Furthermore, my brother said that Daria's jealousy included Quinn's man-attracting skills.
Is my brother way wrong, or is he seeing something I'm not? -J The Leopard Lady AIM: JillCat42 "Why settle for vanity when you can have pure egotism?"-Jane Lane "The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know."-Pascal "We're practicing for the millenium, making love at the Chelsea Hotel"-Dan Bern
Okie doke. Would LOVE to see what big bro has to say about the big D.
Sure, go right on ahead.
ROTFLMAO. Talk about missing the boat. Your brother was SO missing the boat, he wouldn't be more screwed if he just arrived at the harbor for the Spirit of '76 cruise. I mean, why on Planet Earth (heh) would Daria be jealous of Quinn? Daria couldn't be less attracted to a Quinn-like lifestyle.
I hope you're realizing that this is just your big bro talking and not someone who actually sits down and watches the show regularly.
You're right. Both Daria and Quinn hold so much power over their parents it's almost unreal, at least in comparison with the traditional Hispanic family structure I'm used to. If Helen were anything like my mom, she'd be punishing Daria for her attitude and the messiness of her room, and Quinn for not applying herself to her schoolwork and for the messiness of *her* room. And both Daria and Quinn would have a restriction on how much they would get in an allowance and how much they would be allotted to spend in one week, as well as riders on that allowance (like doing the laundry or vacuuming or mowing the lawn or washing the dishes).
You've obviously got good sight, then. Quinn does NOT "have the upper hand". It may seem like that at the present, but Daria's more apt to go off to college and once that happens the Quinn-based dynamic will most certainly change from "Daria's the weird cousin who just happens to live with my family" to "I'm going to have to work so hard to get out from under Daria's shadow -- where did I go wrong?" I have a feeling Helen's changing attitude about Daria will play a key role in this transformation.
Uh...whatEVER! Like, your brother is WAY off-base. Daria couldn't be LESS jealous of Quinn's "man-attracting skills". Daria's main concern in life right now is her education and the grades she pulls in from this, and since she's doing a bang-up job on that, all other parts of her life are satisfactory. Or...um...really don't want to get too far into it without going into spoiler territory....
Your brother is SO not seeing things correctly. He needs to sit his booty down and watch every single "Daria" ep until he finally gets it. IF he gets it, that is. I really dunno about his ability to do such...
Don't worry, you're the knowledgable one here. If you want to, you can show him this post.
LI (spending a night alone here...which is why I was able to give a totally focused post here)
But don't you think Daria would like to live in a place where she's well liked, and has a number of friends? She may not want to be like Quinn, but she sure as hell would like to be in the situation Quinn is in.
Sure, Daria would "like to live in a place where she's well liked, and has a number of friends." But Quinn isn't really in that situation either. Quinn has no true friends, except maybe Stacy, and most of the people who claim to like Quinn don't even really know her.
She'd like to have more friends, but not Quinn's friends. :-)
I think we all tend to envy traits in others that we don't have ourselves. Daria is very introspective, so I'm sure at times she envies Quinn's ability to be so outgoing and impulsive. That doesn't mean she's jealous of Quinn's lifestyle or wants to be like her. Daria would have no interest in ordering guys to get sodas, but she might like Quinn's ability to feel at ease nearly anywhere.
They touched on this in the ep where they go to get Jane and the band out of jail. They find that they each have traits that the other admires.
<<They touched on this in the ep where they go to get Jane and the band out of jail. They find that they each have traits that the other admires.>>
I think you've got the right idea. Quinn is smarter than she lets on, but she continues to play dumb alot of the time, because of her comfort zone. Her friends are all rather dumb, or conveniently play dumb, and her entire social circle involves being popular and dressing to impress and attract attention. She could easily be near equal to Daria in intellect, but the reason she distances herself from doing so is because it takes her out of her comfort zone, and partly because she respects Daria, and respects her boundaries, just the same as Daria respects Quinn's. It's an unspoken thing. The 'Quinn The Brain' episode proves it. Daria got jealous quickly when Quinn decided to be intellectual, and Quinn got jealous when Daria decided to dress in a more flattering manner. Both ideas took them out of their respective comfort zones, and helped them to understand a little bit more about each other. Of course you'd never get either of the two to admit it, but hey, in a perfect world.....
I think Daria wishes she were able to let go and just enjoy things like Quinn does sometimes, instead of intellectualizing and internalizing everything.
I think Quinn wishes she could be an independent thinker like Daria sometimes, not having to just 'follow the trend'. I also thinks she wishes she didn't have such a need to be accepted so she could let some of her intelligence show on a more regular basis.
Don't get me wrong, I am a Daria fan above all, but I do think that Quinn is alot more intelligent than she often lets on, and she acts the way she does partly because that's what's acceptable within her social circle, and because she has an unspoken appreciation for Daria's boundaries.
On 25 Aug 2000 06:01:32 GMT, [email] (Swimr1996) wrote:
Uhm, I'd venture to say she's probably smarter than Daria. Being called a "brain" in high school is the kiss of death. Quinn is smart enough to keep her light under a bushel. Also Daria wastes all her time learning things that don't matter, like history, whereas Quinn know's "it's not what you know, it's who you know" that's important. Daria still struggles with the false veneer of life while Quinn knows it's a crock and doesn't waste any time on it. :)
"I wonder if she actually had an orgasm in the two years we were married, or did she fake it that night?"
On Tue, 29 Aug 2000 00:23:42 GMT, [email] (Daryl Sawyer) wrote:
Well geez! If you want to fake people out that you're not a brain then do you:
a) use words like "sesquipedalian" b) act like an airhead and concern yourself only with fashion c) join the chess club and the debating team d) perform neurosurgery in the cafeteria during lunch breaks
.. and, yes, this one is a joke. :)
"The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
"Sesquipedalian" is easily one of the funniest words in the English language. It's a multisyllabic word that means either "given to using long words" or "(of a word) having many syllables." In fact, definition 3 (in Webster's College Dictionary) is "a sesquipedalian word." I don't know of many other words that define themselves, do you?
Perhaps the only word(s) that tops this in terms of sheer weirdness is "hapax legomenon." It means "a word or phrase that appears only once in a text, the works of an author, or the written record of a language." It hardly matters what it means though, because obviously it is a great name for a band, or perhaps a new species of plant found only in the Amazonian rainforest.
On Thu, 31 Aug 2000 16:32:00 -0400, Michael Kelly wrote:
Hmmmmmm, non-grammatical jibberish like that I did above should *really* convince those who suspected it that I'm not a brain after all! This damn spell checker should write want I want, not what I type! :)
Very true. If you look at how Helen and Jake already treat their daughters it's obvious that they have much more respect for and trust in Daria than for Quinn (which would be natural even without the personality differences, since Daria's the eldest). In season 4 there were episodes in which both of them essentially treated her as an adult ("Of Human Bonding" and "Dye, Dye my Darling") and spoke very directly and honestly to her; this could be a POV thing but we've never seen them do this to Quinn.
Daria doesn't _want_ to have a group of silly guys following her around and hanging on her every word; nor does she desire to demonstrate her power over men by getting ones she doesn't even like to take her to expensive restaurants; and she's way too moral to just sleep around for the hell of it (which Quinn doesn't do at all, of course). There have, in the whole series, only been two guys that she's seriously been interested in, and both of them were attracted precisely to her _lack_ of deliberate feminine wiles ... and neither of them have a high opinion of Quin :)
Ok ... I think that Daria is jealous of the way in which Quinn gets rewarded by her family, and by everyone, for doing things which everyone takes for granted when Daria does them. OTOH, Daria has already demonstrated that she can "do" Quinn's image ("Quinn the Brain") but just doesn't _want_ to. Most of the guys who Quinn attracts are guys Daria wouldn't want to attract, neither as friends nor as boyfriends. Note that, consistently, everyone who Daria really likes (Jane, Trent, and Tom) regards Quinn as ranging from annoying to just plain silly.
("Sure, _Daria's Sister_.") :)
I really don't think that Daria would want to have The Three J's following her around doing her bidding. Convenient as it might be if she wanted a soda :)
On 12 Aug 2000 01:39:04 GMT, [email] (Jill Friedman) wrote:
<snip>>
It's entirely possible that there is some hidden, un-aknowledged envy. It is probably small, and shrinking, but I am willing to bet it *flared* when she was in junior high, perhaps younger.
I don't think this is the primary aspect of their relationship, at least, not any more. I also don't think Quinn has "the upper hand" since it is shown in "Monster" that Quinn has a small amount of envy toward Daria (or at least can fake it) in regards to what she and Jane are "good at." That sometimes she'd like to be good at something with a bit more worth.
Then again, that's not saying Daria has the upper hand, either.
If he thinks that Daria can't attract a man, I've got three words for him: "Quinn the Brain." She's even more attractive than Quinn, and that proves it.
We have conclusive evidence of one of them, the other I would not say so much as attracted no matter what shipper writers would have us believe. Yes he likes her in as much as the coolest highschooler he knows, but apaer from one jokingly said throw away comment in Lane Miz, I don't think there has been any *ahem* "hard" eveidence to sujest anything more.....
<Butthead>uhuhuhuh I said 'Hard' uhuhuhuhhuhu</Butthead>
Also check out the episode where Daria gets contacts.
While you're looking at that one, look at Aunt Amy. When she appeared in the wedding episode, she struck me as what Daria could be in her late 20s. Smart AND sexy.
JL
Men who never make passes At women who wear glasses Are asses. Rita Rudner
Actually, I like Daria's look with OR without glasses. I don't see why people think she's unattractive; she certainly is.
I think most of us already recognize that Daria is sorta like a teen "Aunt Amy", although whether she would be drooling over a Ralph Fiennes-like actor at that period is up to speculation. At any length, this could only be good news for her as Aunt Amy seems to have a full, satisfying life with everything under control.
Dammit, I wanna be an Aunt Amy.
ROTFLMAO! I LOVE this quote; it's so priceless! Rita Rudner is one of my fave comedians, and lines like these is one of the reasons why. Where did you get this one?
I'll be damned if I can remember! I thought I'd seen it in a book of quotes called "The third--and possibly the best--637 best things anybody ever said" by Robert Byrne. But I've just gone through the book and can't find it. I do know I read it. If I stumble upon it, I'll let you know.
Speaking of glasses.....proposed storyline idea. Tom & Daria are fogging up the windows, she takes her glasses off (as you should do when kissing, it's etiquette, and besides, it allows you to get more into it ;) ), she keeps them in her hand, lets go of them, they shift positions, someone steps on them, CRUNCH!!
Would that be her book, "Naked Beneath My Clothes?" I distinctly recall picking it up in a bookstore, and having to stifle my laughter so I wouldn't get looks.
MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
make GEORYN disappear to reply
"The only completely consistent people are dead" --Aldous Huxley
N.P.:"Knock Knock Who's There"- M a r y H o p k i n
Daria may be jealous of Quinn in some ways, but not in the ways that your brother was thinking about. I think it was all spelled out on the episode (I forget the name off-hand) when Daria had to create a story for a special assignment. After struggling and struggling, she finally came up with a story set in the future: a rare event of explaining how she actually feels about her family, and especially how she feels about Quinn. Daria doesn't want her sister to be so superficial, let alone be that superficial herself.
Does every guy think that women live only to attract men? Please. Daria certainly doesn't want to attract the type of guys that Quinn does. She sees the popularity game as a joke and does not want to be a part of it.
He needs to watch more of the show before making any more conclusions.
I think your talking about "Write Where It Hurts", where Daria writes about the things she would *want* to see happen in the far future with her family. Quinn sees what she used to be, Helen and Jake are more calmer, too. You're welcome.