So what's this Disco 3:16 thing all about anyway?

I'm sure there are some people out there who don't know much about me. I mean, assuming there are people out there, of course. You could be a random visitor who happened by just to see what I had to say. Maybe you're part of the Daria fandom and hadn't heard of me more than a year ago. Maybe you're some other acquantance I ran into somewhere online and figured I was interesting enough to google up. Whatever the case, I'd like to take a blog or two or five and discuss how I became the internet lack-of-personality Disco 3:16.

I've been online in one form or another since the mid-90's, when my Dad logged onto AOL's dialup because that was all that was available in our neck of the woods (our neck of the woods being Tomahawk, Wisconsin). My first internet alias was PuceSage. This was due to a poster on the first message board I was a part of, the Magic: the Gathering Computer Game board from back before it was released, having the signature "Rider of the Purple Sage". Thus, I became the Rider of the Puce Sage, and later just the Puce Sage. Why puce? Because nobody's favorite color is puce.

When I moved to college, I decided to get a new email address because A) my pucesage address was a local ISP, and B) people kept misspelling it. At the time, I loved Disco music. I still like it, though I like a lot of different types, but at the time I liked it because it seemed like everyone hated it. (You may be sensing a pattern.) I also loved WCW wrestling, partially because of the wrestler, Disco Inferno. At the same time, the big thing in wrestling was Austin 3:16 (which says, "I just whooped your ass"). My friend ran a website DDP 3:16, at the time one of the few fan websites for Diamond Dallas Page. So, naturally, I became Disco316.

A couple months later, my friends were all part of a fantasy wrestling federation or E-Fed called first the IWO, and later the SWF (Supreme Wrestling Federation, not Single White Female). I decided to join, and made my character Disco 3:16. I pretty much made him a mashup of Disco Inferno, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Chris Jericho, my other favorite wrestler at the time. He was pretty much what I'd now call a Mary Sue or Marty Stu, since it was basically me if I was born a couple years earlier, had more confidence, worked out, and actually landed the girl I had a crush on through High School and College. (She became Kay-Cee, the Disco Doll, a bit stolen from DDP's wife Kimberly, who was the Diamond Doll.) I fleshed out the character, including what Disco 3:16 stood for ("It's time to Boogie Oogie Oogie 'til ya just can't boogie no more!"), over the years. I've experienced highs and lows, from surgically removing a title belt from a wrestler that had it surgically attached (had I lost, my character would have had to wear a dress and sing showtunes. That guy was kind of odd.) to losing a match for a major title because I had to stay up all night writing a speech and couldn't stay awake to write a roleplay.

As WCW shut down and WWF became unwatchable (and WWE), I moved on to Everquest. My character there, Ocsid Onrefni (so clever!) was a Dark Elf Warrior. That ate up a good chunk of the next 5 years or so and led me to declare I would never play WOW because it would take up even more time. At the same time, I visited other boards, such as the Magic: the Gathering unofficial boards, where I led a stirring campaign to elect Brown Ouphe president.

Last year, I moved away from the friends I'd lived with for five years. I also moved to the opposite side of the state, where the only people I knew were my sister, whom I moved with, and a few cousins. Therefore, when I got here, I had a lot of free time on my hands and not many people to spend it with. With that in mind, I started immersing myself in the Daria fandom.

I'd first been exposed to Daria in college. I don't recall whether we had MTV in my hometown when I was in high school. I remember watching a few episodes in college, and I distinctly recall watching Is It College Yet? when it debuted. I remember specifically because A) I remember the ads with Garbage, one of my favorite bands, and B) I remember bitching that after that aired there wasn't any Daria scheduled for months. I understood the run was over, but come on, reruns anyone?

A few years later, I started obtaining the episodes. I honestly don't remember what spurred me, but I was bored, I had bandwidth, I didn't need any more porn or music, so what the hell? I found Outpost Daria one day when I was looking to verify some information. Not sure what, probably a line or episode order or something. I kept it bookmarked even after it was scheduled to be discontinued. I started reading fanfic on the site, just for fun. To give the proper context, I was spending a lot of time then with a couple lesbian friends, including one that I had a kinda-sorta relationship with and who kept hinting that she wanted to give me another shot. Thus, I perused the shippers first, looking for the slash. Actually, I was mainly looking for shippers that weren't Daria/Trent, since they seemed so boring. I ended up reading two that pretty much hooked me: "The Two of Them" by The Angst Guy and "The Beauty and the Brain" by Ronin. At the time, I didn't really care that Ronin's story made little sense in context, was rather out of character, and frankly could have stood a date with a spellchecker. It was just a neat little story, and fit the pattern of what I was looking for in a story at the time. (TAG's story requires no such justification.)

So, when I moved down to Milwaukee, I looked for more Daria stuff to check out, since my other fandoms (Wrestling, Magic, MST3K, Pet Shop Boys) didn't really have the same possibilities. I found the Daria Wiki, which led me to the message boards. I signed up and started posting. Eventually, I started writing stories, which people liked well enough to be nominated for, and even win, several Daria Fandom Awards ("Booties").

Well, I think I'll stop rambling there for now, but hopefully in a future post, I'll talk about why I write what and how I write (and why I don't what I don't). Maybe I'll even put in a few peeks at stories I never posted. Until next time.