#not me obsessing about a show that went off the air 22 years ago skdfreadjfkad

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 3: Daria and Tom Thoughts

Instead of doing anything productive tonight, I went down a rabbit hole of old Daria meta, including this 2003 essay by Kara Wild, about Daria’s feelings for Tom pre-DDMD. As an aside, I miss fandoms like this: primarily made up of adults, super into discussion, almost obscenely organized… even my lurking days didn’t start until at least 2003, probably later, when the show was off the air and in syndication, but man, I’m so glad for the resources that are still online.

Anyway, I basically agree with this essay and I think it puts into words a lot of my instincts watching that arc (Parade through IIFY, basically), as well as providing some additional thoughts for me to consider, like about Daria’s arc in S4. But it’s interesting that all of this had to be explained. I think probably when I watched the episodes for the first time, at 13 or 14 with no context whatsoever and in the most casual way, and only semi-in order, too, I just sort of assumed that Daria had some unspoken feelings for Tom that came to the fore at the end of S4, because that would be the most obvious explanation of why she not only dates him, but dates him for, like, a year. But watching those episodes now as an adult, it seems equally obvious to me, but not confusing, that this was not the case.

I think a lot of this arc was written to make it very, very, very clear that Daria was as innocent as possible in the demise of Tom and Jane’s relationship. I think it was written to make all of them look decently innocent, because all of them were going to continue to be main characters in the next season and they all needed to be sympathetic, and the idea that Daria could be dating Tom and still friends with Jane needed to be plausible. But Daria in particular had to be as squeaky clean as possible because she is the protagonist and if she doesn’t keep the viewers’ sympathy there is no show. And I think that does explain a lot of why the arc is the way it is.

But it also just makes a lot of sense to me, emotionally, on its face and without reference to these meta-considerations. I don’t think Daria has a secret crush on Tom pre-IFFY. I think at most she has deep-buried feelings that she doesn’t acknowledge to herself but even this, for reasons explained in the essay, is maybe a stretch. I think ‘feelings she doesn’t acknowledge to herself’ describes her relationship with Ted way better: there was nothing reciprocated between them but her lesson to learn in that episode was to put herself out there more, even in a very tentative way. You can see a push and pull between what she’s saying and some of her actions (insisting they’re not dating, rejecting the necklace) and what she’s doing (reading up on Goya for him, eventually suggesting they go out). There really isn’t any of that with Tom.

She’s starting from a much more antagonistic place with Tom. In an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers arc, he’s gotten to friends by the end of Partner’s Complaint but she’s still on enemies all the way through the beginning of I Loathe a Parade, imo. She hasn’t had a lot of time to get from the friends to lovers part even under the best of circumstances, but definitely not under these circumstances, which is that she’s never had a boyfriend before and this guy specifically is dating her best friend. It’s totally possible to have feelings for someone you shouldn’t have feelings for, but—and this is hard for me to describe though I understand it very instinctively—I think for Daria to reach a point where she would allow herself to have romantic feelings for Tom would take a lot more time and a lot more reason than we see in Parade by itself or any of the other episodes (there aren’t many) in which they interact between then in IFFY. She first encounters Tom as Jane’s love interest/boyfriend, I think is the critical point. She always knew him through Jane, as ‘Jane’s person.’ Thus it is simply not possible to view him in the light of a potential romantic partner and she never would. Maybe some people would. But not this character. Not in this situation. Not being as close to Jane as she is, and not with Jane’s relationship with Tom being almost immediately as serious as it is. (As the essay puts it, he already has a ‘slot’ in her life. There’s no ambiguity.)

As to why Daria would nevertheless kiss Tom the second time and then pursue a relationship with him… I think the second kiss is probably the weirdest thing and honestly a part of me feels the meta explanation of it is the best: the purpose of this arc going all the way back to 3x13 is to give Daria a boyfriend. It has to be done in a way that’s realistic to her and it has to be done in a way that keeps her sympathetic, but it also has to lead to a Tom/Daria romantic arc. The kiss has to start something, not end something, in other words. So she has to show some level of interest. Not too much because that’s not IC and it also risks having her become unsympathetic to the audience—but some. Daria kissing Tom the second time is really the only indicator we have that she has some level of romantic or possibly romantic feelings for him: it’s a thin string to hang all of IFFY and S5 on but it’s something.

From a within-the-universe perspective, I explain it honestly as curiosity and momentum. I think we might be intended to read Tom’s “I liked it too” line after Kiss 1 at face value but there’s not really any sense that Daria did like it. I mean I think he was trying to say ‘you’re reacting with chagrin because you liked something you shouldn’t have liked and if you didn’t like it, you would be yelling at me and not yourself’ which is probably true… but in the context of the rest of the episode, the arc, and Daria’s character, and keeping in mind that that kiss was her first and lasted all of two seconds, I think she’s probably just surprised and shocked. Something rather big has happened in her life—a first kiss—but it’s also something terrible, because she’s done exactly what Jane had feared she would do. And she got into that car to talk about JANE. Before, after, and at every time other than during the second kiss herself, she was focused on Jane. That’s a bad place she’s in, in other words, and I don’t think ‘wow I liked that kiss’ is really the foremost thought on her mind, no matter what Tom would like to believe. Maybe ‘that kiss wasn’t as repulsive as I would have wanted it to be,’ but that’s a little different.

So from there, the second kiss might be an attempt to take agency of that moment that was sort of taken from her, to make her first kiss her first kiss, or it might have been curiosity, given that the first one was so short, sudden, and confusing. It might have just been the wave of the moment. The whole conversation, from when she gets in the car to when she gets out, is REALLY short, after all. My guess is that she wouldn’t have known why herself.

Overall I just don’t feel like Daria EVER had any sort of burning passion for Tom, from Parade through DDMD and IFFY all the way to IICY. It’s true that the show isn’t a romance and no one has a really in-depth romantic arc, but Daria is the main character, she dates Tom for over a season (movies inclusive), and there are instances of couples and romantic feelings being at least a little more developed. I mean, honestly, Daria’s unrequited crush on Trent had more of a spark than her relationship with Tom (“little… silver... hoop”). Tom and Daria have old married couple vibes from IFFY. Even Jane and Tom were shown making out once lol.

I agree that Daria might never have spoken to Tom again after he and Jane break up if he hadn’t talked to her first. It’s… a thought process for another time what even Tom thought would happen, because the situation is really messy. And I appreciate the mess not only because it’s more interesting but because they’re 17 and probably honestly not thinking things through so well. But if even Tom doesn’t outright assume he’s going to date Daria (per his conversation with Jane on the swings) then certainly Daria never thought as much. From the moment she steps out of the car, she’s concerned about the fallout with Jane. She approaches Tom—last ditch, after striking out in contacting Jane AND Helen—only to talk about Jane. She was not lying on her bed wishing she could date him at the end of DDMD, that is very obvious to me.

So why does she date him? This to me is also not that hard to understand—even, again, ignoring the meta-reason that she dates him because the whole purpose of the storyline up to now was to get them to date. I think she dates him out of curiosity. She’s never dated anyone before; she’s never kissed anyone but him just those two times in his car. I’ve done more from curiosity, ngl. No one’s ever shown interest in her like this either. That’s flattering. And again I know from experience that sometimes another person’s interest is all it takes to spark one’s own interest.

I also think it’s critical that her last conversation with Jane prior to Tom’s call involved Jane telling her ‘I can’t stand the sight of you’ and ‘I don’t know if we’re still friends.’ Daria is extremely dependent on Jane and extremely possessive of her (See Jane Run, Jane’s Addition/Partner’s Complaint). She’s not had a lot of evidence that she can find another friend if she loses Jane. Some, true: she and Jodie get along well and could have probably been better friends than they were; get rid of Tom’s lusting and they could have had a good friendship, too. But I don’t think she’d fully acknowledge these other friend opportunities; she’s been too conditioned for too long to see herself as someone who just can’t connect with other people; she feels like a “misfit who everybody hates” (Café Disaffecto). And she’s probably right that she would have a very, very hard time finding another friend like JANE specifically. Even the show ended with them going to college in Boston together; even Susie Lewis posits them as BFF twenty years in the future. They belong together, in some sense, canonically.

So, yes, when Daria has to consider the very real and very close possibility that she’s lost Jane, and she might be alone now, she might be so deeply scared that she would take a lifeline out of that loneliness without too much hesitation at all. She’s feeling pretty low and pretty bad about herself: she betrayed her friend and her friend has left. But here’s someone who doesn’t think she’s a terrible person. Not even SHE can say that about herself. And he’s offering her something she’s never had before: a romantic relationship. I think that would be deeply fascinating to her. In DDMD, when Jane asks if she and Tom have made out, she says, “Can you imagine me making out with anyone? Ever?” I just don’t think she’d thought about herself before as a potential object of anyone’s affections or physical interest, ever. That’s for other people. She might want it, but it’s not for her. Again, she’s never had any indication to the contrary. She’s never let herself see it even when it might be there. She’s actively protected herself from it by having a crush on, for example, Trent, with whom she has no romantic chance at all for many reasons starting with his age. Of course this is interesting to her. Of course it’s intriguing. And at this point, she’s already lost what she has to lose.

Anyway, this is mostly just me repeating points from the original essay lol. I actually have more potential thoughts about Jane in this arc, which may even be less unoriginal, or maybe not but… not for now.