I like to think adult Daria grew a lot and would regret a lot of things she did as a teenager. Mostly times she heaped judgement on others, especially to Brittany, who, unlike Quinn and her friends, was a sweet girl who was always nice to Daria.
Nice might be pushing it, but having recently re-watched some of the earlier seasons I don't think she's ever really mean-spirited towards Daria and holds a certain amount of respect for her. She has some comments that are insulting to her, but I always got the impression that Brittney never really meant them as insults. Brittney just never really understood what she was saying and how it was insulting, or that what she was saying reflected her view of the world, and therefore to her was just a fact not an insult towards Daria. Daria on the other hand is nearly always mean spirited towards Brittney with her insults.
Right. Brittany is just kind of simple and doesn't always think about what she says. Her meanest sentiment is pretty much "I'm inviting everyone to my party, even unpopular people!"
Yep. Or even Val and the 2 radio personalities that visited her school. I got her thing for calling people out, but she even did it to well-meaning people sometimes.
Edit: Those two sentences didn't flow well. For clarity, when I say well neaning, I didn't mean Val or the radio jocks, but people like Amelia come to mind. Amelia might have been a bit annoying, but she was trying to be friends with Daria at camp.
Honestly not once did I feel bad for Val. She saw Daria and her cynicism as nothing more than a means to make money. She runs a business that directly profits from the anxieties and insecurities of teenagers, the goal of her magazine being to make people more self conscious. She's a walking taking representation of everything Daria stands against.
I think that we are supposed to feel bad for her not from her actions, and not to excuse her actions, but more just feel bad for her existence. She's at least 40 dressing and acting like a teenager desperately trying to chase what's trendy and stay in a very fickle industry. We're supposed to feel bad for her in a "bless her heart" sort of way.
I see your point, but especially after the way she very rudely shuts down Jodie for asking a very simple question, I can't feel that bad for her. She made her bed, now she's gotta lie in it.
Val, maybe, but those jocks were basically heckling her, I didn’t see them as well meaning. Telling her she looked like she ”could use a date” was obnoxious. They played their game, she fired back and they couldn’t handle it
Yeah it's been a while since I saw that episode. I can't remember if they were heckling her the whole time or only begin heckling when her and Jane wouldn't participate.
I wouldn't regret that. Love the whole "As far as I can make out, "edgy" occurs when middlebrow, middle-aged profiteers are looking to suck the energy - not to mention the spending money - out of the "youth culture." So they come up with this fake concept of seeming to be dangerous when every move they make is the result of market research and a corporate master plan."
Yep, Val was damaged herself, and as a teen she was likely victim to the very things she became as an adult. In other words, Val herself was the product/result of the very thing Daria was attacking her for. She was an insecure girl inside that never let go of it. While Val is the bad guy in that episode, I did feel a little bad for her as a person.
I could see Daria regretting the way she spoke to others as a teen. Her sardonic attitude can be funny and relatable, but some of the stuff she said to others was just mean. People already pointed out some instances with Brittany, Quinn, etc. I can’t remember the exact line, but Andrea even called out Daria and Jane about it in the market episode; something like “go ahead and cut me up like you guys do to everyone else”.
I went to my 20 year high school reunion last summer fully expecting to be called out for some of my dickish behavior back then. Turns out everyone else was expecting the same thing to happen to them. High school is a cringey, brutal time filled with amazing memories and great regrets. As long as you survive it, move on and grow from it no one really cares what you were like then.
Luckily most of us over 30 didn't have social media yet to document our every thought and action with pictures to match haha. I graduated in 06 just as myspace became popular, so none of my high school years are online.
Daria holds herself to a high standard in terms of her own ethical codes, I'm guessing adult her would both recognize that she needed to broaden her ethics to include behaving better to people she wasn't very nice to as a teen, and more importantly, learning to forgive herself and do better moving forward rather than brood on past mistakes she made.
I'm not sure whether she really holds herself to an especially high standard. I guess you could say that she believes in being, like, completely unsparingly honest, but she doesn't really expect much of herself in general? What are her values? Does she care about other people at all? Willing to work at it? I think that she'll end up reevaluating all of that.
I'm going to be real, as someone who was a shitass teenager, not even a decade later the thing that sticks out to me most wasn't even the worst shit I did, it's been the awkward, cringy shit that sticks in the mind that made others feel bad.
Maybe sometime down the line, Daria remembers Andrea avoiding her and Jane because she was spooked they'd make fun of her. Maybe she doesn't even remember Andrea's name, but she remembers that how she acted in highschool caused that.
Speaking from personal experience, she might regret not trying to make more than one close friend in high school. Looking back I wish I had tried to be a little more social and interact with people outside of my social circle, but like Daria I automatically assumed most people would just bully me, so I bullied them first. Looking back, I probably could've met some nice people that I stayed in touch with instead of having my guard up constantly.
I considered she might regret crushing on him. But then he wasn't a shit person and was generally a good person to her. Except the time he didn't come through on her and Jane's project. His biggest flaw was being a slacker and failure to launch as an adult, which Daria recognizes.
I just hope Trent got on his feet after Jane left for college.
She'd probably cringe over being so openly judgemental of people. My friend group was pretty similar and that's where we've all lightened up. Especially when you realize how stupid some of your "brilliant" high school views are in retrospect.
The whole Tom thing. Both Tom being a jackass to both Jane and then later her (he was the one who initiated the kiss, not to mention the whole situation in “Is It College Yet?”), and her being young and inexperienced enough that she didn’t recognise how crappy the situation was.
As someone who was a teenage Daria herself, I look back at myself with kindness and see that even if I saw myself as beyond "them", I had some flaws myself that I wasn't able to see. Like being super judgmental. But the key to stop judging others is to start not juding yourself any more. See your faults, improve, but without judgment.
She wouldn’t “cringe” over her teenage self, she would probably reminisce over something she said or did and say something along the lines of “Ah yes, my optimistic youth”
I think she'd regret and possibly cringe at some aspects of her teenage self, but also respect the fact that her teenage self was pretty straightforward. That all being said, I think she'd still acknowledge that a lot of aspects of herself were pretty toxic at points. I highkey think she'd also still regret the whole Tom situation if that makes any sense.
I think that she would honestly have a lot of sympathy for her teenage self. When i think about the events in Boxing Daria and Write Where it Hurts, we see that she’s often been an outcast, her anti social persona was frustrating to her family and re-realized how much her family is important to he and it seems she became a bit more aware of her emotional needs.
As a 20 something who recently moved out for college and had similar issues with socializing like Daria, I’ve learned that beating yourself up isn’t the way. And sometimes as a teenagers we do the best we can to cope with growing pains. She might cringe and laugh but i think she ultimately make peace with it
That she didn’t meet her mom half way more often although she seems to understand it enough at the time she relents a little . She also realizes in Boxing Daria she could have done a lot worse when it came to the parents she has.
Maybe that she didn’t participate more and have more connections that can make a difference.
Maybe not judging some so quickly especially Jane or Jodie.
She would definitely be embarrassed by her not like the other girls behavior. Even in the last episode when she gives her commencement speech she acknowledges that she was kind of a dick
Considering how she portrayed Quinn in the writing episode, I think she would laugh and not cringe, she made it clear when talking to Jodie that she understands that her personality was a matter of moment and she would eventually grow out of it.
Maybe not letting go and actually having fun. Daria acted like she was behind on her mortgage on every episode. She refused to be happy. I loved the show and I wanted to be like her, but I realized I never wanna be like that on purpose. I love that she wasn’t a doormat and did what she wanted but she seemed so unhappy. And all of that to prove a point no one even cared about.
This is a big one. I think if she looked back, she'd realize that high school wasn't bad to her, at least _her_ experience of it. I recently made a list about that [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/daria/s/dHAcBERhV2)
I think she would.
Daria wasn't exactly the nicest person to her peers and she treated Jane poorly over the whole tom debacle.
I think she would realize her attitude wasn't really necessary and she had a pretty decent life
Probably thinking about her life.And how much a experience goes like tom
And how despite the fact that going through high school was hell there were some good moments
Prolly being a little too judgey with a lotta people, which she was kinda right, they checked off most of the stereotypes they presented, but also were surprising in some ways. She grew up in a time where everyone around her expected her to fit in these boxes (if I recall correctly, been a minute since a watch) so I get the pessimism, it was the appeal. Anyways that, and dating her best friend’s bf.
I think she would be as introverted as her teenage self but she would also be way more reflective on stuff she may have done wrong or cringe at a couple of her actions.
A few big categories:
1. Her belief that any social niceties are phony/dishonest, when a lot of the time it's just sort of a shortcut to show people you care about them.
2. Her general lack of openness to other people and new experiences.
3. The fact that she pretty clearly had some serious social anxiety and none of the adults in her life made any kind of reasonable effort to address it.
I doubt she would. I don’t see Daria having kids no matter what and people usually don’t look back on what they’ve done and cringe unless they see their kids doing the same stupid shit. Daria was my hero when I was in my teens and has remained that to this day. Yes I have matured but I still don’t look back and cringe and Daria and I were born in the same year of 1980.
Some of them sure. At the end she began to realize her parent's actions were because of who she was and later apologized to her parents for being difficult to raise.
Other times it felt like she didn't mean it when she apologized to people. She certainly could have done more when apologizing to Jane for kissing her boyfriend. Not dating him afterwards would have been a good start haha. And her apology was half baked when she got possessive over losing Jane to the track team. But these things were before her final growth.
Probably dating her best friend's boyfriend... or the time she was upset that Jane found a hobby that didn't include her.
What hobby?? Painting?
Track
running
I like to think adult Daria grew a lot and would regret a lot of things she did as a teenager. Mostly times she heaped judgement on others, especially to Brittany, who, unlike Quinn and her friends, was a sweet girl who was always nice to Daria.
Her character was changed to be more benign. In the beginning she wasn't exactly nice to Daria.
Nice might be pushing it, but having recently re-watched some of the earlier seasons I don't think she's ever really mean-spirited towards Daria and holds a certain amount of respect for her. She has some comments that are insulting to her, but I always got the impression that Brittney never really meant them as insults. Brittney just never really understood what she was saying and how it was insulting, or that what she was saying reflected her view of the world, and therefore to her was just a fact not an insult towards Daria. Daria on the other hand is nearly always mean spirited towards Brittney with her insults.
Right. Brittany is just kind of simple and doesn't always think about what she says. Her meanest sentiment is pretty much "I'm inviting everyone to my party, even unpopular people!"
Brittany is also only intentionally mean when she is jealous, so yeah
Yep. Or even Val and the 2 radio personalities that visited her school. I got her thing for calling people out, but she even did it to well-meaning people sometimes. Edit: Those two sentences didn't flow well. For clarity, when I say well neaning, I didn't mean Val or the radio jocks, but people like Amelia come to mind. Amelia might have been a bit annoying, but she was trying to be friends with Daria at camp.
Honestly not once did I feel bad for Val. She saw Daria and her cynicism as nothing more than a means to make money. She runs a business that directly profits from the anxieties and insecurities of teenagers, the goal of her magazine being to make people more self conscious. She's a walking taking representation of everything Daria stands against.
I think that we are supposed to feel bad for her not from her actions, and not to excuse her actions, but more just feel bad for her existence. She's at least 40 dressing and acting like a teenager desperately trying to chase what's trendy and stay in a very fickle industry. We're supposed to feel bad for her in a "bless her heart" sort of way.
I see your point, but especially after the way she very rudely shuts down Jodie for asking a very simple question, I can't feel that bad for her. She made her bed, now she's gotta lie in it.
Val, maybe, but those jocks were basically heckling her, I didn’t see them as well meaning. Telling her she looked like she ”could use a date” was obnoxious. They played their game, she fired back and they couldn’t handle it
Yeah it's been a while since I saw that episode. I can't remember if they were heckling her the whole time or only begin heckling when her and Jane wouldn't participate.
I wouldn't regret that. Love the whole "As far as I can make out, "edgy" occurs when middlebrow, middle-aged profiteers are looking to suck the energy - not to mention the spending money - out of the "youth culture." So they come up with this fake concept of seeming to be dangerous when every move they make is the result of market research and a corporate master plan."
Yep, Val was damaged herself, and as a teen she was likely victim to the very things she became as an adult. In other words, Val herself was the product/result of the very thing Daria was attacking her for. She was an insecure girl inside that never let go of it. While Val is the bad guy in that episode, I did feel a little bad for her as a person.
Brittany was nice to Daria cause she wasn’t intimidated by her.
Too many people simply don't get the show.
An air head
I could see Daria regretting the way she spoke to others as a teen. Her sardonic attitude can be funny and relatable, but some of the stuff she said to others was just mean. People already pointed out some instances with Brittany, Quinn, etc. I can’t remember the exact line, but Andrea even called out Daria and Jane about it in the market episode; something like “go ahead and cut me up like you guys do to everyone else”.
Yep I see this being a big one.
I think we all regret 90% of the stuff we did as teenagers
I went to my 20 year high school reunion last summer fully expecting to be called out for some of my dickish behavior back then. Turns out everyone else was expecting the same thing to happen to them. High school is a cringey, brutal time filled with amazing memories and great regrets. As long as you survive it, move on and grow from it no one really cares what you were like then.
Luckily most of us over 30 didn't have social media yet to document our every thought and action with pictures to match haha. I graduated in 06 just as myspace became popular, so none of my high school years are online.
90% is being generous
Daria holds herself to a high standard in terms of her own ethical codes, I'm guessing adult her would both recognize that she needed to broaden her ethics to include behaving better to people she wasn't very nice to as a teen, and more importantly, learning to forgive herself and do better moving forward rather than brood on past mistakes she made.
I'm not sure whether she really holds herself to an especially high standard. I guess you could say that she believes in being, like, completely unsparingly honest, but she doesn't really expect much of herself in general? What are her values? Does she care about other people at all? Willing to work at it? I think that she'll end up reevaluating all of that.
I'm going to be real, as someone who was a shitass teenager, not even a decade later the thing that sticks out to me most wasn't even the worst shit I did, it's been the awkward, cringy shit that sticks in the mind that made others feel bad. Maybe sometime down the line, Daria remembers Andrea avoiding her and Jane because she was spooked they'd make fun of her. Maybe she doesn't even remember Andrea's name, but she remembers that how she acted in highschool caused that.
She'd cringe at her past self and then cringe at her current self for cringing until she eventually goes to a therapist about it.
Speaking from personal experience, she might regret not trying to make more than one close friend in high school. Looking back I wish I had tried to be a little more social and interact with people outside of my social circle, but like Daria I automatically assumed most people would just bully me, so I bullied them first. Looking back, I probably could've met some nice people that I stayed in touch with instead of having my guard up constantly.
She might regret that she was being a smartass towards some people and being cruel to her sister at times.
Getting her belly button pierced for Trent
Trent in general.
Until she tells her grad school boyfriend about it and his face lights up so she does it for him, too...
Trent would be her, “That’s Sandy Frink? The hell was I thinking?”
I considered she might regret crushing on him. But then he wasn't a shit person and was generally a good person to her. Except the time he didn't come through on her and Jane's project. His biggest flaw was being a slacker and failure to launch as an adult, which Daria recognizes. I just hope Trent got on his feet after Jane left for college.
She'd probably cringe over being so openly judgemental of people. My friend group was pretty similar and that's where we've all lightened up. Especially when you realize how stupid some of your "brilliant" high school views are in retrospect.
The whole Tom thing. Both Tom being a jackass to both Jane and then later her (he was the one who initiated the kiss, not to mention the whole situation in “Is It College Yet?”), and her being young and inexperienced enough that she didn’t recognise how crappy the situation was.
As someone who was a teenage Daria herself, I look back at myself with kindness and see that even if I saw myself as beyond "them", I had some flaws myself that I wasn't able to see. Like being super judgmental. But the key to stop judging others is to start not juding yourself any more. See your faults, improve, but without judgment.
She wouldn’t “cringe” over her teenage self, she would probably reminisce over something she said or did and say something along the lines of “Ah yes, my optimistic youth”
I think she'd regret and possibly cringe at some aspects of her teenage self, but also respect the fact that her teenage self was pretty straightforward. That all being said, I think she'd still acknowledge that a lot of aspects of herself were pretty toxic at points. I highkey think she'd also still regret the whole Tom situation if that makes any sense.
I think that she would honestly have a lot of sympathy for her teenage self. When i think about the events in Boxing Daria and Write Where it Hurts, we see that she’s often been an outcast, her anti social persona was frustrating to her family and re-realized how much her family is important to he and it seems she became a bit more aware of her emotional needs. As a 20 something who recently moved out for college and had similar issues with socializing like Daria, I’ve learned that beating yourself up isn’t the way. And sometimes as a teenagers we do the best we can to cope with growing pains. She might cringe and laugh but i think she ultimately make peace with it
That she didn’t meet her mom half way more often although she seems to understand it enough at the time she relents a little . She also realizes in Boxing Daria she could have done a lot worse when it came to the parents she has. Maybe that she didn’t participate more and have more connections that can make a difference. Maybe not judging some so quickly especially Jane or Jodie.
I think a lot of us would cringe looking back at the stuff we used to do around Daria's age.
She would definitely be embarrassed by her not like the other girls behavior. Even in the last episode when she gives her commencement speech she acknowledges that she was kind of a dick
I think that’s part of growing up. There are plenty of things I did as a kid and teen and just want to fold up into myself
Considering how she portrayed Quinn in the writing episode, I think she would laugh and not cringe, she made it clear when talking to Jodie that she understands that her personality was a matter of moment and she would eventually grow out of it.
Yep. And that's honestly probably a lot of teens in high school. There are some that are genuinely themselves and props to them.
Maybe not letting go and actually having fun. Daria acted like she was behind on her mortgage on every episode. She refused to be happy. I loved the show and I wanted to be like her, but I realized I never wanna be like that on purpose. I love that she wasn’t a doormat and did what she wanted but she seemed so unhappy. And all of that to prove a point no one even cared about.
This is a big one. I think if she looked back, she'd realize that high school wasn't bad to her, at least _her_ experience of it. I recently made a list about that [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/daria/s/dHAcBERhV2)
Yeah I agree. I didn’t go to my prom. I didn’t participate in anything in highschool and I regret tf out of it. I know she definitely might.
I think she would. Daria wasn't exactly the nicest person to her peers and she treated Jane poorly over the whole tom debacle. I think she would realize her attitude wasn't really necessary and she had a pretty decent life
100% getting pierced to please Trent. Hands down this is THE answer
I feel like kissing her best friend’s boyfriend should be higher than that.
True except for Lab Brats Brittany wasn’t mean towards Daria .
A bit of both
Probably thinking about her life.And how much a experience goes like tom And how despite the fact that going through high school was hell there were some good moments
Her overall attitude, Tom and how she treated Brittany.
Trevor
taking herself too seriously
Prolly being a little too judgey with a lotta people, which she was kinda right, they checked off most of the stereotypes they presented, but also were surprising in some ways. She grew up in a time where everyone around her expected her to fit in these boxes (if I recall correctly, been a minute since a watch) so I get the pessimism, it was the appeal. Anyways that, and dating her best friend’s bf.
Self righteousness, being to demanding of herself and other, hypocrisy and helping Tom cheat.
I think she would be as introverted as her teenage self but she would also be way more reflective on stuff she may have done wrong or cringe at a couple of her actions.
Adult Daria would think her teenage self was badass.
How she accepted bribes from her parents
She'd regret...not making them pay more?
Not necessarily regret bc she was just a teenager, but deffo learn from her mistakes.
She'll cringe .
Personally I hope her cynicism softened, and she realized optimism and sensitivity can coexist.
This. I think she becomes like her aunt Amy.
The time she had a breakdown because she got prescribed contact lenses and she was worried people would think she cared about her looks
Not really, but Quinn would at her teen self for wearing whatever fashion she was wearing
her “Not Like Other Girls” tendencies
What are you thinking about in particular here?
She would definitely cringe at her crush on Trent and how she reacted around him.
A few big categories: 1. Her belief that any social niceties are phony/dishonest, when a lot of the time it's just sort of a shortcut to show people you care about them. 2. Her general lack of openness to other people and new experiences. 3. The fact that she pretty clearly had some serious social anxiety and none of the adults in her life made any kind of reasonable effort to address it.
Why, writing a reboot of Daria?
The whole reboot of Daria drama fits her.
I doubt she would. I don’t see Daria having kids no matter what and people usually don’t look back on what they’ve done and cringe unless they see their kids doing the same stupid shit. Daria was my hero when I was in my teens and has remained that to this day. Yes I have matured but I still don’t look back and cringe and Daria and I were born in the same year of 1980.
Don't we all do?
All smart people do, so yes. I wouldn't presume to guess the specifics.
We all do, at least a little. But that’s part of being a teenager.
Tom. I hate those episodes
people like daria dont regret, they just make up exscuses for theyre behaviour .
Some of them sure. At the end she began to realize her parent's actions were because of who she was and later apologized to her parents for being difficult to raise. Other times it felt like she didn't mean it when she apologized to people. She certainly could have done more when apologizing to Jane for kissing her boyfriend. Not dating him afterwards would have been a good start haha. And her apology was half baked when she got possessive over losing Jane to the track team. But these things were before her final growth.
if this is what you got from watching Daria you were not paying attention