Every writer has a great work. Bram Stoker had Dracula. J.R.R. Tolkien had Lord of the Rings. Leo Tolstoy had War and Peace. Edgar Allen Poe had The Raven (or A Cask of Amontillado—personally I think that one kicks The Raven’s ass, but I digress). And I know my "great work". Yup, you guessed it, A Day in the Life of Stacy.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to duplicate the success of Stacy, and believe me, I’ve tried. I consider Bouquet of Lilies my best work (despite the fact that it’s shipper fodder), but public opinion seems to prefer Stacy. Fifteen Minutes of Frame was poorly resolved, but is still readable for a laugh or two. Boy Fiend was a good work, but it didn’t have the same impact as Stacy. And My Date with Daria and my Quinn the Brain alternate ending—well, it’s best not to mention those.
But why Stacy? I’ve never considered it to be much better than anything else I wrote. In fact, I have a small confession to make. To me, Stacy is a joke. I didn’t consider it a "real" Daria-fic when I wrote it, mainly because it featured someone who was for all intents and purposes a member of the enemy camp. At the time it was a choice between this and a Mary Jane fic. (Of course, my MJ character would have been very compelling—no really, he would have.) I honestly expected to get flamed for portraying a member of The Fashion Club—albeit one who scared the shit out of Quinn—as a sympathetic protagonist.
Needless to say, the response was one that I didn’t expect. But again, why? I guess when all is said and done, we have all at one time or another felt like Stacy. We have all, on some level, wanted to be accepted so badly that we were willing to sacrifice our identity. Also, we lived in mortal fear of the person who could easily change our belonging to rejection. This is why Stacy fears Sandi Griffin. Sandi has the power to turn Stacy from a somebody to a nobody with a snap of her fingers. This, more than anything else, makes Sandi an effective villain.
This also makes Daria an effective heroine. Daria is someone who has risen above Stacy’s plight. After all, who is Stacy really but someone who yearns to get that monkey off of her back and live life on her own terms the way Daria does? Were Stacy ever forced to wear Daria’s shoes, she’d slowly begin to enjoy the freedom of being her own person.
But even more than that, Stacy is a dying breed in our school systems: the sweetheart. Could you picture Sandi, Quinn, or Tiffany as friends with Ted? No, probably not. But I pictured Ted and Stacy together long before Day in the Life came out. Stacy-types—in regards to making friends with others, no questions asked—are almost as rare as Daria-types, and they’ll probably decrease as time goes by.
I’m not the first one to portray Stacy in a sympathetic light. Pro-Stacy fiction and organizations go back as far as First Season/First Generation fics, with Walter J. Jones’s Daria’s Tears. In it is a sub-plot where Stacy makes herself over as Daria and becomes friends with Jane. Also, C.E. Forman was giving Stacy a mild persona in his fanfics long before I even considered writing. Then there’s also Invisigoth Gypsy’s Brittany and Stacy Supporters Society. The list goes on and on.
But how would Stacy come into her own? The scenario, I portray was written between the second and third seasons, and since I’ve learned more about her, the ideas I have seem unlikely. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to get her out of Lawndale. That way she could start fresh, preferably with some friends that would respect her as a person. Or find a way for her to become President of the Fashion Club by neutralizing Sandi. Either way, she would be in a much healthier position than we see her now.
Stacy is one of the most complex and angst-ridden members of the Daria cast. On the surface, she seems to be a snobby member of Lawndale’s most powerful clique. Yet that only scratches the surface. When you get to know her, you find a sweet and sensitive human being, someone you can relate to. Stacy is someone worth watching, reading, and writing about.