The Tiffany Case

Tiffany Blum-Deckler as a Fanfic Character

Not much to work with here. I've mulled over several ideas for, um, showcasing Tiffany (that sort of came out right), but what I have for character notes, cobbled from Outpost Daria, Sick Sad World, and Glitter Berries, isn't much.

She comes across as well dressed, well mannered but very passive, intellectually slow to the point that you notice it (low-average or high borderline IQ, whatever you want to call it, IQ 80-85), and slow in speech with a Valley drawl. I think her speech patterns changed midway through the series (I am willing to bet, having been on creative teams before) because of a creative team decision that the Fashion Clubbers were too much alike and needed more individual character, so she's not the victim of a degenerative neurological disease--an interesting but depressing (incurable) one-shot fanfic idea. She's also rather narcissistic, has no known athletic abilities, and avoids stress by taking up any viewpoint those around her take up (safety and calm in sameness, though it doesn't explain why she has the job of fashion coordinator for the FC--but here she has long-established routine to provide safety and calm). She's not excitable for the most part. Her home is probably quite affluent, judging from descriptions I've seen of her highly decorated room (shown in "Fat Like Me"), meaning her parents are very well off. Her joined last name might come from her parents agreeing to use a hypenated name on their marriage. Given her slow mental state, her parents could not avoid being unaware of it, and they may have long ago put her through various programs to bring her up to "normal" day-to-day functioning as far as she can possibly be taken, so she can get a reasonable job once she graduates high school. Her home life, like her room, might be quite structured, though everyone would be used to it and generally be unaware of it. Outsiders might wonder why meals are always served on the hour, why there are so many family rituals, etc.

Questions: Is there anything else at all known about her family, home, interests, etc.? Or is she pretty much a, um, blank slate?

Any interesting hidden talents she might have? Photographic memory? (too easy)

Well, my best guess is she might be good at actual photography. She's handled a camera several times in the series ("I Loathe a Parade", e.g.). In a new fanfic series I've started (about the senior year of Stacy and the rest of the old FC) I've put Tiffany on the photography staff of the yearbook, and I don't think it takes too much reading between the lines to see that I'm going to go further with that little storyline ...

M Man

Photography... What movie was that in which this photographer accidentally captured a murder in progress, being unaware of it until he developed his film in his lab and enlarged the scenes? Oh, that would require Tiffany to.... oh, well.

Still, she could wander through Lawndale one day, taking pictures of the town, and capture the license plate of a getaway car, the face of a wanted criminal, proof that a rare species of bird existed, an accident in progress, proof that someone is cheating on someone else, a very unflattering picture of someone famous, Elvis alive, etc.--and she wouldn't even know it. If she's got one of those infrared cameras and shoots indoor shots, she might accidentally get photos in which the subjects' body heat comes through their clothing, causing their clothing to appear invisible on photographs. (These cameras were created and then banned in Japan.) She could also just shoot pictures that turn out to be extremely popular for greeting card companies ("The little squirrels were sooo cuuute.") or win critical artistic acclaim, causing Jane much anguish. Fun idea to play with.

I agree with your thoughts on her speech changing - probably just a crative decision made by Glenn. But one of the joys of fanfic is trying to find explanations for this sort of thing... I've always supposed that she deliberately started talking that way because she thought it sounded sexy and mysterious.

She did score the lowest of all the FC girls on the P-STATs, but not by much - only 20 points on a scale that went up to at least 1200 (the SATs go to 1600, and that's probably what they were copying). So she's not significantly less "intelligent" than her friends.

There are times when she seems utterly clueless to an extreme that rivals Kevin, but she is smart enough to be manipulative. I'd suggest that her most notable acts of oblivion are probably a front. She is faced with a conflict or situation she doesn't want to deal with, and it's easier to pretend she's too dumb to even notice it.

She is obsessed with herself to an extent that stands out even in the Fashion Club. There are poster-sized pictures of herself all over her bedroom. It's become a fanfic cliche that she is obsessed with her weight - this is true in the sense that she is obsessed with all her attributes. A logical extension of this is her attitude that everyone likes her, even when she is clearly getting on their nerves (this happened in "It Happened One Nut" when she was doing peer counseling with Daria, and "Is It Fall Yet" when she chased off David by applying makeup at inappropriate times).

One telling point about her home life is that she chose to hire a model to be her mother in the mother/daughter fashion show. Is it possible that there's some overriding reason why she wouldn't want to appear with her real mother? Is her mother dead? Are her parents divorced, and she lives with her father? Is her mother fat (thus Tiffany's obsession with weight)? Is her mother, as has been suggested by one fanfic author, Ms. Li?

No, we don't know much about her. But that's what makes her fun to write about - there's so much left to the imagination, we can do almost anything we want with her!

• Mike Yamiolkoski

Tiffany probably didn't want to have her real mother with her because . . . Tiffany is a teenager. And Mom looked sort of unfashionable (and was just a little bit dumpy). And having an unfashionable Mom would make Tiffany unfashionable at the show.

However, no, Mr. Li could not be Tiffany's mother, or it would have come up before. [rolls eyes] One or two kids at school have probably suggested this, but if Tiffany or the other FC ever heard, there would be hell to pay. I recall hearing that Tiffany, in "Art Burn," was asking around for someone to break the fingers of a sketch artist who made the FC look silly. 8)

Tiffany is also my prime candidate for a fanfic.

[email] (Mike Y.) wrote in news:[email]:

Yeah, I noticed that too. She's not really THAT stupid. If Tiffany was really retarded, she would either be in a special school or in some "mainstreamed" special ed program at Lawndale High. But in the latter case, there's NO WAY she would be in Fashion Club no matter how good she looked.

That's a possibility. Another one---I don't recall who first brought this up---is that she's some kind of drug addict. No, she's not a pothead, although the idea of Tiffany "burning one" with the Mystic Spiral dudes strikes me as screamingly funny. Somebody in this newsgroup said she might be a "pill popper." That got me thinking she might be addicted to some fat- blocking diet pill, which causes slurred speech, muddled thoughts, and sluggishness, and which is also habit-forming. Tiffany can't quit the pills because she goes into withdrawal.

Her "cluelessness" may be the result of short attention span due to the diet pills.

BTW, I don't know of any diet pill on the market that actually does this.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Why isn't her name Tiffany Li? Did Ms. Li put her up for adoption? Now there's an idea I can get behind. The Caucasian (maybe even Jewish) sounding hyphenated last name implies she's adopted.

Steve Cross