Misted by Matt Blackwell, Tyler Dion, Douglas Gale, Brendan Herlihy, Bill Livingston, Eric Schepers, Harold Tessmann III, Rebo Valence, and Valeria

Take me to this MSTing NOW!

The subtitle dubs this a "Daira-Sailor Moon Crossover".  Not "Daria".  "Daira".  Joy. 

Ami, whose alter ego Sailor Mercury acts as the brains of the Sailor Senshi (she knows where to buy the hair care products), asks her e-mail friend from America, MTV's Daria Morgendorfer, to replace her on the Sailor Squad while Ami goes to medical school in Germany.  This is a cue for not one but THREE separate terrorist organizations to attack: a Japanese group (NIRAA) led by Amazana Yoriko (a.k.a. Yerko) steals Japan's new "Neo-Zero" high-tech jet fighter prototype and starts bombing the hell out of Tokyo; the Islamic Jihad hijack the plane Ami takes to Germany so they can re-route it to Lawndale and explode a nuclear bomb (wouldn't it have been simpler to steal a flight GOING to Lawndale?); and finally, an American militia group led by Anthony Corlew plot to take over Daria's hometown during the "great Lawndale-Highland football game".  Oh, and Beavis and Butthead are in town to watch the game, for some reason. 

OK.  So, in Story A, a brand new superhero, the oddly talking Solar Warrior (a.k.a. The Sun Jerk) comes to Tokyo to drive the Neo-Zero away, after only a few thousand dead civilians- but no time to dwell on THEM!  It's off to Story B!  Where Ami as Sailor Mercury fights the vicious terrorist Allah Akbar (easily the most racist character name this side of Steppen Fetchit).  Their struggle gets interrupted three or four times by Story C, where the great Lawndale-Highland football game will take place right after Trent Lane and Mystic Spiral sing the National Anthem for a few hours. 

Back to B!  Ami freezes Akbar and throws him off the plane and he falls in the ocean and a shark eats him and the atomic bomb explodes harmlessly inside it, just like she planned.  Huh?

C!  The game starts.  But B!  Ami can't control the plane and it crashes into the stadium!  C!  The militia seize the moment and start shooting people!  D!  Beavis and Butthead grab Quinn Morgendorfer and take her back to Highland kicking and screaming.

B!  Ami survives the plane crash, and teams up with Mr. DeMartino, who has a secret stash of semi-automatic weapons to hand out to his students to defend the town, creating a new story, B-slash-C, or C-slash-B if you're so inclined.

A!  The Neo Zero shoots about a pound and a half of high-grade lead into Sailor Moon!  Daria, upset, runs after the plane, only to be captured by NIRAA agents!  D!  Quinn escapes Beavis and Butthead, and Ami freezes the ribald miscreants!

A!  In the most interminable scene of a most interminable story, the evil Hitler doctor who runs NIRAA tells Daria his origin story, even though WE COULDN'T CARE LESS.

B!  Or C!  Or something!  The militia sentences the mayor of Lawndale to death by firing squad!  Which brings us to A!  Where Daria is in FRONT of a firing squad!  But Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Neptune save her and run away!  Cut to A!  Which is the same story, but anyway!  Sailor Moon almost dies, but the Solar Warrior saves her with his "solar healing disc"!  He then begins the SECOND most interminable part of the fanfic, the Solar Warrior's origin story!

B, C, D!  Beavis and Butthead escape the police, and return to rape Quinn- but A!  Daria and Sailor Moon teleport in to save Quinn by kicking Beavis and Butthead approximately- what, a hundred forty-eight times in the crotch?  After which everyone joins the student resistance and defeats the militia.  In an out-of-character action typical of this story, Trent kills Corlew by throwing a knife into his heart.

So everyone (and I mean everyone) goes back to Japan.  A couple of'em confront the evil Hitler Doctor, who was immortal but drops his last immortality pill and crumbles to dust before their eyes.  Daria and Ami do battle with the Neo-Zero in a dangerously obsolete WWII surplus plane, but defying all odds (and logic), they shoot it down. 

BUT, Yerko parachutes to safety, OD's on immortality pills and becomes a sixty-foot ogre.  Suddenly two Shinto gods materialize to save Japan (deus ex machina, anyone?).  Everyone dogpiles on Yerko, and it ain't pretty.  Sailor Moon finishes her off.  Finally, everyone is safe, Japan is free, and all receive their just desserts. 

So of course the story goes on for *another twenty pages!*  And then there's an epilogue.  And in a twist so demoralizing you want to cry, there's an APPENDIX, which goes on for SEVERAL HUNDRED PAGES about anything and everything and yet about nothing.  And then the author explains his "jokes".  And you're quite ready to slather yourself in butter and pop your head under the broiler.  You're done.

Fan fiction runs the gamut from good to very very very bad, but there's nothing sadder than an author who takes the characters of a show he purports to like, and screws them over.  There is no Daria in this Daria crossover.  There is an obnoxious, slow-witted smart-aleck with Daria's name, who hates everybody and everything and says "Up yours!" a lot, but it's not Daria.  In fact, of the thirty-some characters pulled from other shows for Devil's Island-like sentences in this story, only the Sailor Scouts act anything like themselves (i.e., annoying).

When I signed on for the team MSTing, I thought the size of it (over 400 pages) wasn't that big a deal.  That's like agreeing to watch your neighbor's Saint Bernard before discovering its bladder control problem.  This fic hurt.  It hurt bad.  And then it hurt some more.  And then, eight months later, you hit the Appendix.  Ergh.

In the last segment of the MSTing, as Mike and the bots recite some of the story's problems, Crow gives a long, disturbing "diss" to the Appendix (see Segment Twenty).  It's pretty much the full text of an e-mail I sent to editor Matt Blackwell when he asked how the work was coming. 

I'm much better now.

Still, Matt was so great to work with that I'm glad I did it.  Plus I got to riff with Bill Livingston, just about the funniest MSTer I've ever read.  *And*, I got to write: "My apathy has become so palpable I should adopt it as a pet."  Not a bad year at the office, all around.