Here it is. To make everyone feel better, I'll review "Trent's Girl" by Minkychan over at fanfiction.net. This might be the same "Minkychan" from DeviantArt.com and possibly could be the person posting as "JennaUserName".

So is it my task to afflict the comfortable? Or comfort the afflicted? Should I give this story from a fanfiction.net amateur a good old-fashioned, CINCGREEN thrashing?

Answer: no. The story does not deserve a thrashing. What saves it from being a pedestrian relationshipper is that the story is told from the POV of Monique, Trent Lane's on-again, off-again girlfriend who, in the first three seasons of "Daria", serves as one of the barriers to Daria and Trent getting together, just one barrier among many.

It's always interesting, if only for a little while, to see how a writer approaches a Class C character like Monique -- one of those characters who makes infrequent apparances and about whom you don't know much. In the beginning of her long career as Daria fanfic fodder, she was (informally) known as "Evil Monique", because it was so tempting to give the bare outline of Monique some flesh by making her the evil impediment to Daria AND TRENT HOOKING UP 4 EVAH!!! (Sorry. As Wavy Gravy said at Woodstock, "Don't read from the brown fanfic.")

It has only been recently than anyone tried to give Monique some real motivation. The Angst Guy wrote some background for Miss M. in "Smoking Mirror", and I felt he good job, so good that it might have precluded any new approaches. (Did I get that title right? So much fanfic, so little conscious memory of any of it.)

Minkychan adds a new twist. When given a character like Monique, we're not left with much to work with. In those cases, we use the vocal cues of the voice actor and try to build a personality out of five seconds of vocal straw. Most of the portrayals of Monique have been of this strong, confident teen. (She sings! She writes music! She looks punk and has a piercing! And she likes Trent, so she obviously has good taste. So sayeth the relationshipper.)

Instead, for whatever reasons, Minkychan writes Monique as a character who dreams that someday, she can be Mrs. Monique Lane. She is actually very content with having Trent as a boyfriend, who no matter what, has always come back to her. In this brief snippet, Monique dreams of the future.

When we're famous, we won't have to worry about gossip magazines pairing us up with random artists we work with.

"The Lanes are deeply in love," the tabloids will say, "Hollywood has never seen such a loving, faithful couple in show business before!"

It makes Monique sound more like a young woman with young woman dreams than some sort of perfect, poised rock musician, which was a rather charming read for a change.

However, Monique might not keep her peace of mind for long. To find out more, go read it. Trust me, type fanfiction.net and you'll find it there somewhere.

As for critique, one thing Minkychan needs to know how to do is to write a real paragraph. Remember, a paragraph is a set of statements loosely bound together by a common theme, like cats trapped in a lasso. Instead of paragraphs, we have a bunch of sentences wandering off by themselves, and looking quite alone. She's asking for a beta reader.

Get to it. But first, ask for fan art. We like fan art around here. Preferably nude art (or, in some cases, nude penguin art). But failing that, any old "Daria" art will do.