Peter Guerin

**Peter Guerin** is a former *Daria* fanfic author. He currently posts under the name **Doc Forbin** on PPMB.

## Biographical Information

Born in Bay Shore, New York on September 18, 1968, Peter William Guerin is the

youngest son of Robert W. Guerin, Jr., a concrete worker and the former Diane E. Woodcock, a housewife. Early on in his life, there was suspicions that Guerin was not a normal child, which was confirmed when he was expelled from kindergarten just two weeks into the 1973-74 academic year. Diagnosed with an unspecified behavior problem (which is now suspected to be ADD), Guerin spent the next two years at a specialized school for children with developmental disabilities before he was returned to public schools and placed in Special Education. Admittedly Guerin did not adjust well to the experience, where he was beaten up almost daily by the other students.

In 1981, Guerin's parents divorced. In 1982, his mother was seriously injured in a car crash. Both incidents adversely affected Guerin, who attempted to commit suicide by trying to fling himself down the stairs at junior high, hoping he'd break his neck in the ensuing fall. In 1985, his mother married Walter G. McNeill, a co-worker she met at Vickers Associates of Huntington NY, the stock research firm she was working for at the time. Graduating from Connetquot High School of Bohemia, New York in 1987, Guerin spent one year at SUNY Stony Brook before he dropped out because he was unhappy with college life. The next three years he drifted among odd jobs, including working for his father's concrete company and his mother's stock research company. In 1990, Guerin's mother and stepfather bought a house in Hudson Falls in Upstate New York. Guerin moved with his mother and stepfather shortly thereafter.

Shortly after moving, Guerin enrolled at Adirondack Community College in nearby Queensbury, where he graduated with an associate's degree in business administration in 1994. During the summers Guerin worked at the Great Escape/Splashwater Kingdom (also in Queensbury). Shortly after graduating from ACC, Guerin's mother and stepfather purchased Greenfield Press, a print shop in Hadley, where he has worked ever since.

About late 1997, Guerin first heard of *Daria* when he saw the Season 1 finale "The Misery Chick." Seeing something of himself and the struggles he had to endure when he was in high school, Guerin became a fan of the show and caught up on the entire first season. He soon stumbled onto the #Daria+ IRC chat room, the old Planet Daria, alt.lawndale.com and Lawndale Commons sites and other *Daria*-related chat rooms and sites.

In 1998, Guerin decided to take a stab at writing *Daria* fan fiction. Drawing upon his years of doing comedy skits he'd record on audio cassettes, Guerin wrote *The Misery Senshi Neo-Zero Double Blitzkrieg Debacle*, which was a crossover with the anime series *Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon*. Serialized on alt.lawndale.com, the fic proved to be a cult hit. Guerin later pulled the fic from most websites "due to the post 9/11 climate". (quoted from a post at the PPMB, 2/7/05) This fic is now mostly found in a MSTed version and is considered one of the more infamous examples of MSTing, and is mentioned by name on tvtropes.org. Guerin next wrote *Triumph of the "Retart"*, which was inspired by Guerin's unsuccessful campaign for Student Government President in his junior year at high school. This fic was also given the MST treatment as well. Over the next two years or so, Guerin wrote a substantial body of *Daria* fan fic which he ultimately put under the umbrella title of *Daria: The OAV's Series*. Guerin's fan fiction contained references to other anime shows like *Gunsmith Cats* and *Here is Greenwood* as well as classic American TV shows as *Sanford and Son* and *Adam-12*. However, a combination of burnout from keeping up a steady pace of writing as well as flaming criticism from such people as Hellcop led Guerin to stop writing *Daria* fan fiction in 2000, though he did write fan fiction for other shows like *Ed, Edd n Eddy* and *Cow and Chicken* for a few more years afterward.

From *Sick, Sad Burbank* onwards, Guerin's fan fiction was marketed under the name of his fan fiction "studio" Mark Zero Fan Fiction, Unlimited, which he named after Mark Seven Limited, the production company founded by *Dragnet* creator Jack Webb. Guerin even went as far as satirizing the company logo, where he hit his thumb with the hammer trying to chisel a "computer zero" into a piece of metal.

One hallmark of Guerin's fan fiction has been his references to the Adirondack North Country of Upstate New York where he currently lives, Long Island (where he formerly lived) and certain political figures he's held in disgust, most notably Robert L. Schulz, the head of the All-County Taxpayers Association as well as fellow ACTA member Antonio Cerro. Another hallmark has been the inclusion of "commercial breaks" in his later stories, also seen in early fanfiction by authors such as Kara Wild.

Although he no longer writes *Daria* fan fiction, Guerin continues to be a regular at PPMB and the *Daria* IRC channel, and occasionally pops in at *Daria* AIM chat room. Guerin now regularly writes "position papers" on subjects he feels passionate about, and will frequently mention these on the PPMB. These position papers have yet to be collected on a single page.

In 2008 Guerin had announced that in celebration of the tenth anniversary of when he broke into *Daria* fan fiction he was writing a new story called *To Helen Back 2: The Next Year*, which was to have been a sequel to C. E. Forman's *To Helen Back*. However, on June 10, 2008, his computer "ate" the story, so he decided to abandon it. He has since announced an alternative project to be called *Hoop Schemes*, which is a fan fic he had started six years ago but never finished. The story will be about Brittany joining Lawndale High's girls' basketball team in order to prove to Kevin that she isn't a Johnny One-Note. Guerin hopes to have the story done by early fall 2008. As of July 2009 the story has yet to be published.

In 2010, Guerin made a surprising comeback to *Daria* fan fiction, re-editing and re-issuing *Misery Senshi* and announcing plans for the first new story in the *OAVs* series in ten years called *The Strange Case of the Mystery Girl Patter*, which he hopes to have out by mid-April.

## Fanon and Fan Culture Contributions

Guerin coined the middle name "Louise" for Quinn for the story *The Dinner Date from Hell*; several fan fiction writers followed suit. (Guerin was inspired by how C.E. Forman coined the middle name "Marie" for Daria in his story *To Helen Back*; currently, 'Marie' or 'Ann/Anne' are favored by the majority of *Daria* fandom for use as Daria's middle name.)

A trademark of Guerin's fan fiction is that sometimes Daria kicks certain male characters in the testicles. Guerin was inspired to have her do this when he read the *Women's Wear Daily* article about Daria where she said "My boots send a clear message: 'I can kick you.'"

## Laptop the Cat

Laptop the Cat is the cat owned by Guerin and has been mentioned at the Paperpusher's Message Board quite frequently.

Presumably born in late 2002 somewhere in Hadley, New York, Laptop was abandoned as a kitten by his previous owner. For weeks Laptop presumably wandered around the area until June 24, 2003, when on a cold, wet morning, he was at the parking lot of the print shop Guerin's mother and stepfather owned when the stepfather's blue Oldsmobile pulled into the parking lot. Laptop leaped into the car and sat on the stepfather's lap. The stepfather kicked him out of the car but Laptop kept hanging around the parking lot. When the stepfather noticed that a big black cat was chasing Laptop, he decided to take him into the shop. The rest is history.

Admittedly Guerin's mother was not too thrilled about having a cat at first, but she has since warmed up to him. She didn't like the fact that Laptop was covered with fleas, so many of them that she said, "He's not carrying them, they're carrying him." The fleas were eventually gotten rid of, though. When it came time to name him, Guerin's stepfather chose Laptop since he had leaped onto his lap when he got into the Olds.

Laptop was taken to a nearby vet a few weeks later and neutered. Laptop got fat as a result of the neutering and being well fed. In March 2005 Laptop came down with a urinary tract infection. Since that time, Laptop is prohibited from eating anything that has fish in it.

Laptop is white with a black splotch on his head, a black back and tail, pink nose and big, bulging yellow eyes. He likes Fancy Feast Beef in Gravy and Friskies dry cat food as well as his collection of cloth mousies.

Laptop has several nicknames, among the most used are "Cougar Kitty" (since Guerin's convinced he's the reincarnation of the Lincoln-Mercury Cougar since he likes to attack Guerin and his parents), "Cuddle Kitty" (since Guerin likes to pick him up and cuddle him) and "Puddin'-Head".

In June 2007 Guerin posted four videos featuring Laptop on YouTube. Also, Laptop was one of the candidates in PPMB's "Who Stole the Sexy? (Men)" poll. At one time he had the lead in the vote until Guerin found out about Laptop being nominated for the poll and stated that Laptop asked him to remove him from consideration. Despite being withdrawn from the poll, Laptop wound up finishing second to winner Deref. Guerin then stated that he was refusing even that for Laptop.

Recently Laptop has been having fantasies of being a flying cat after Guerin mistakenly told him that in the future after humanity's gone that cats would develop extra folds of skin like flying squirrels have so they'd glide between girders of crumbling buildings to get mice like he saw on the History Channel special *Life After People*. He's been practicing dive-bombing on Guerin, his mother and stepfather ever since. Furthermore, he did not like the February 6, 2008 edition of John McPherson's comic strip *Close to Home* which depicted melting cats a/la/Salvador Dali. Laptop is very sensitive about feline rights issues. It is unknown how Peter is able to communicate with Laptop.

In 2010, Laptop made a cameo appearance in one of the "commercials" in Guerin's first new story in his Daria: The OAV's series in ten years *The Strange Case of the Mystery Girl Patter*.

## Bibliography of Major Works

#### **The Official Daria: The OAVs Canon**

*The Misery Senshi Neo-Zero Double Blitzkrieg Debacle* (crossover with *Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon*)

*Triumph of the "Retart"*

*One Man's Trash...* (crossover with *Sanford and Son*)

*Sick, Sad Burbank* (crossover with *Animaniacs*)

*The Prepaid Phone Card Call of Tommy Sherman* (ccrossover with *The Real Ghostbusters*)

*The Dinner Date from Hell*

*Return of the Lawndale Militia* (Crossover with *Gunsmith Cats* and *Here is Greenwood*) (MST version can be found at http://home.netcom.com/~mblackwl/rlm.txt

*Dari-Boo* (crossover]] with *Animaniacs*; based on an idea by Jonathan Sweet, a/k/a Dr. Belch)

*Strange Reunions*

*No Nudes is Good Nudes*

"A Girl Like Me" (poem)

*Karen Carpenter Blues*

*Outbitched*

*My Stupid Date with Destiny* (collaboration with C.E. Forman)

*Booted!*

*This is Spinal Crap*

*Marathon Woman*

*The Quinn's Cousin Incident*

*Daria's Slapshot*

*Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cynic*

*Lukewarm Metal*

*The Strange Case of the Mystery Girl Patter*

#### **Other Stories**

*Death Be Not Stacy*

*What if Daria and Tom Did It?* (crossover with the Marvel Comics series *What If?*; written under the pseudonym Apollo C. Vermouth)

*The Winds of Change*

*The Worst Daria Fan Fiction Story Ever Written!!!!!!!!!!* (written under the pseudonym John Q. Public)

*Hoop Schemes* (tenth anniversary fan fiction story; scheduled to be released Fall 2008)

## External Links

* Mark Zero Fan Fiction, Unlimited (destroyed by GeoCities Shutdown of 2009, recovered by WayBack Machine; many links still function; also recovered by Reocities; new version created March 2010 and now hosted by Bravenet)