The Lenore Thomson Exegesis Wiki
Daria Morgendorfer is a character from the Beavis and Butthead and Daria cartoons.
Daria epitomizes the sarcastic "way out" of dealing with the world for INTJs. Her favorite TV show is "Sick, Sad World." Whatever happens around her, it's always more evidence that the world is filled with troglodytes and unworthy of her. The only use she's found for the world is to declare it tawdry and "moronic". Her only friend is Jane Lane, an ISTP who makes irrational art and shares her attitude of sitting on the sidelines smugly deriding social activities that both of them spend most of their time watching.
Introverted intuition shows up in Daria's self-understanding as an outsider who sees the social world around her from (it seems to her) a vastly broader perspective, informed by reading lots of books, and by her attitude that everything that is worth saying cannot be said. Daria never really says anything, never really does anything, never really is. Seen from her Ni universe, anything that could be said or done would not do justice to some ineffable beyond. Anything tangible, real, or relevant would be somehow less than what it ought to be. Irony is her preferred way of talking: saying things that the dimwitted person she's talking to will misinterpret, and can only be understood for their real humor by people who "have a clue".
Extraverted thinking shows up in a very restricted way: Daria acquires knowledge of a kind that enables her to pass exams. Daria can't think of anything constructive to accomplish and can't negotiate with anyone around her, but she can absorb and apply rules that enable her to pass tests of other people's devising. She accumulates procedural knowledge of a sort that could be useful. For example, she knew how to change a tire (unlike Beavis and Butthead), how to do class assignments (unlike her classmates), etc. Te has found her a narrow but very defined world within which to be successful in terms that other people can recognize.
Tertiary introverted feeling shows up in Daria's view of other people as having rotten souls, and her concern with keeping her own soul pure. Every experience she has, she turns into evidence that other people are intrinsically bad, stupid, worthless things--things whose very needs and aspirations brand them as troglodytes. She keeps herself clean, separate, pure, lest anything taint her superiority. The more the world of sensory engagement makes her look stiff and lifeless in comparison, the more she retreats into this obsession with holding herself apart, pure, and superior.
Extraverted sensing is the main theme of the Daria show. It's her (and Jane Lane's) primary obsession in life: the world of appearances, shared action and shared pleasure--dances, parties, fashion, popularity, hipness, the never-ending waves of new social manias joyfully accepted and soon forgotten. Despite her supposed braininess, she keeps showing up, keeps paying attention, keeps watching. She is obsessed. But her Ni-based self-image prevents her from ever seeing that she wants to be liked, to be popular, to be seen as pretty, to be able to tear loose and let the wild part of herself out to play. Nothing could be more frightening than that last prospect, though.
The Daria program itself is written from this same perspective of self-distanced obsession with the Se world. All characters other than Daria and Jane Lane are portrayed as soulless, superficial idiots. The intent is to show that humanity is mostly dimwits except for us few bermenschen who "get it", but really the program reveals the narrowness of the worldview of its authors and fans. It unwittingly reveals their obsession with a world where they feel helpless and irrelevant. The real world is not the way the show portrays it. Real people are complex, and even (real) mentally retarded people are vastly more intelligent than the people portrayed on the show. It's only by looking through the narrow lens of "how can I see more proof that I'm superior" that you can miss so much of what's really going on. The program is actually testimony of its authors' and fans' stuckness in the adolescent urges and foolishness that they think they're parodying.
A Lenore-ish idea is that Daria has already, unwittingly, been creating a path for herself to become relevant and a genuine participant. She's learned real, do-able things, and she's learned how to pick up new real, do-able methods and strategies very quickly. She already has everything she needs to participate in the social world in a way that plays to her strengths. The only thing missing is a change in attitude: to see herself as a responsible participant rather than an unconcerned outsider.