Daria and the Event and Lawndale

(Loop Number: 87653828798572976857628730587718098778534321386321986409865432345659789376254456189)

Lawndale, the town in the strange space where up could be down, the place that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. The town in several states simultaneously, such as Texas, Delaware and that place with the endless amount of corn.

It made Daria wish that they had moved anywhere else, like Angel Grove with all the monster attacks, or Porkbelly where the twin teenage mad scientists lived and performed experiments that threatened the existence of the world on a weekly basis, or perhaps South Park where the walls of reality and fantasy were nearly non-existent, or Sunnydale where Vampires and Werewolves helped Slayers fight off the end of the world on a weekly basis.

Hell, Daria would take Kawndaleim, the cheap-crappy knockoff of Lawndale. At least the name Kawndaleim invoked something African.

Or maybe she could visit Innsmouth where the undersea abominations came to mate with mankind to make more hybrid abominations, or have a stint at Arkham Asylum, she heard that the Joker made for an interesting roommate.

Granted he wasn't the safest of fellows to bunk with, but at least he'd make her horrible, agonizing death fascinating, she'd even take the boredom of Springfield or Quahog or O-Town compared to Lawndale.

Sure there was some surreal things happening, the interdimensional portal at the Chinese place was a highlight, but beyond that Lawndale only featured a basic sort of suburban madness that you could find in all sorts of places in the United States that had been affected by 'The Event'.

Daria had vague memories of her grandfather Mad Dog speaking of 'The Event', that strange time in the 1950's when several towns in America began to have bizarre and unexplainable supernatural and superscience events happen on a weekly basis to a select few people designated as 'Protagonists'. Towns and locations such as Springwood, Roswell, Crystal Lake, Miskatonic County, Mayberry, Peaksville, and a few other places that grew and grew in number as the decades passed. In the end not even cities such as Gotham and Metropolis were immune, even the return of Rapture, R'lyeh, Atlantis, and the continent of Mu had proven immune to the effect.

While at first everyone was horrified by what was happening, as Mad Dog noted the human capacity to adjust to changing circumstances was stunning in it's ability to absorb even the most eldritch of events. Even that town in Kansas where the children all had names from the Old Testament and murdered adults in the name of a Corn God.

Sadly her parents were too smart to move there, instead they had come to this place, Lawndale, which was in several states at once, but despite having become part of the Event, was extremely unremarkable for it.

Even having looped back from Senior year to the first day she arrived in the town for the thousandth time wasn't really THAT impressive compared to places where dolls were sentient and would murder you if you didn't love them, or that place in New Jersey with the talking fast food rejects, or the fact that now entire nations were personified in the mass of a single person a piece (with some WEIRD exceptions, such as Italy which had TWO personifications, both lame), and America was apparently a nice looking guy in a bomber jacket with an obsession with hamburgers and being the HERO!

And here it came, her meeting Jane in the Esteem course AGAIN! And O'Neill droning on and on and on and on and on and on about worthless prattle.

Daria was tempted to start murdering people again.

The first three cycles where she had turned into a serial killer had been fun, she had even gone to Miami and met a fellow named Dexter for tips... and sex... and he killed her that one time when she slipped up and he found out what she was up too.

Ok, that loop had been painful in the end, but it had been a fascinating experience being the victim for once.

However ordinary murder had gotten boring, and the seven loops where she had turned to sexual hedonism had burnt her out on that score, and she had even attempted to replicate the ORIGINAL loop in which she had first truly come to Lawndale, but she knew that she had missed a few critical phrases that had resulted in Jeffy coming out before graduation and the Gupty's (or maybe the Sloanes, it was hard to recall) burning alive in a 4 alarm fire...

Oh wait, it was the Gupty's, Tad's screams had been quite loud and for once she wasn't the arsonist, burning stuff had gotten boring about the 576th loop.

She was passed that as well, she had gone through total and absolute madness, and come back out to a strange sort of super-sanity.

Did it count as Zen?

Well... As she recited her lines and began to become friends with Jane again, Daria decided that she'd just play along as best she could this time. This go around she had every single turn of phrase and body posture and idea and general sense of where she was as a person at the time down pat.

This time she was truly going to be Daria Morgendorffer, just like in the first loop.

It's not like she had anymore lesson's to learn, she had tried that angle and becoming a better person hadn't gotten her out of the loop, and becoming a worse person hadn't worked either.

Even that time she had the affair with O'Neill AND Edwards hadn't been enough to break the Event's power over her.

So maybe this time by just being Daria perfectly would break it.

Or maybe not.

It didn't matter.

Or maybe it did.

It's not like she didn't have time to figure out the answer.

She had millions and millions and millions and billions and billions and zillions and zillions and trillions and septillions of years to solve the problem.