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Fan Sites Beyond the Double Lunch: Remembering Tara Nocte
"You know I'll follow you anywhere. Across the county, across time, even across hell itself. You're the other half of me," Tara told her.
"I—" Isabel stepped into her arms. "I'm not sure what to say to that."
-excerpt from Chapter 84 of "Isabel and Tara's Melancholy Journey" by fan creators maddtarafan and thepinkphantasm
Beyond the Double Lunch community itself, there were multiple The Pink Opaque fandom archives and websites, often focused on particular characters or romantic pairings from the show. One such site, mentioned frequently in our interviews was Tara Nocte, a website and fanworks archive run by prolific Double Lunch poster maddtarafan, dedicated to "loving and celebrating Tara, the single greatest character in all of television history." The site's owner was also its most prolific contributor and is remembered as the author of several popular Tara-centric works of fanficition, as well as a long-running blog reviewing each episode of TPO during its first five seasons.
"Oh yeah," said Double Lunch poster MrsSprinkly, "Tara Nocte was the Tara site back then. I had some fic archived there and it was always a big deal when your story was accepted. The owner was really picky about who you shipped Tara with, though. Like, Tara/Emmett was banned as a pairing just because of that one time in season three Emmett made a deal with Marco and Polo and got turned into the Evil Mime Lord. Yeah, okay, he tried to kill her and all that, but he got better! And it wasn't like he was the only one of Tara's potential love interests to make a deal with Mr. Melancholy, either. But Tara/Julie was still allowed despite Julie's whole thing with the static energy vampires back in season two. I think because the site owner headcanoned Tara as a lesbian, so people writing Tara/female character pairings got away with almost anything. Which is fine. Whatever. It's just I think that if Tara was going to wind up with a girl, it was always going to be with Isabel."
"Tara Nocte wasn't exactly the most friendly place if you were an Isabel fan, at least not at first," recalled poster PinkSunglassesAtNight83, "because maddtarafan was...well, it's not like they were one of the major Isabel haters, exactly, but they were always calling her 'boring' and 'a little scaredy-cat,' which was a total fundamental misinterpretation of Isabel's character, not to mention completely disrespectful of the Isabel/Tara bond which is the whole basis of the Pink Opaque. Of course, that kind of started to change when thepinkphantasm showed up and 'Melancholy Journey' started."
"Melancholy Journey" refers to "Isabel and Tara's Melancholy Journey" a novel-length work of fanfiction written by maddtarafan and her sometimes collaborator, thepinkphantasm. Clocking in at over two hundred thousand words and never completely finished, it tells the tale of an alternate reality in which Isabel and Tara once more meet up at sleepaway camp and decide, rather than waiting for the next monster to attack, to take the fight to Mr. Melancholy on his own turf. The Midnight Realm as presented in the story bears little resemblance to the one we see in later seasons of TPO. Here, it is a fantastical world where the laws of reality are loosely applied and where Tara and Isabel gain additional powers, including shapeshifting, flight, and enhanced telekinesis. The focus of the story, however, is on the girls' journeys of self-discovery as well as deepening relationship between them, which slowly becomes more intimate as the story progresses. The work was hosted on Tara Nocte—and later also on its short-lived, Isabel-centric "sister site" Beautiful and Powerful—until both disappeared from the Internet following TPO's post-season five cancellation.
"'Melancholy Journey' is one of those seminal Tara/Isabel stories everybody talks about," says IzzyBelle98, "but you have to have downloaded a copy back in the day or know someone who did, because its gone now. I don't even think you can find it on the Wayback Machine. Every once in a while, someone tries reposting the full text online, but it never stays up for more than a day."
"People remember that one as Tara/Isabel, but it could also be read as a friendship fic for most of its chapters," says PinkSunglassesAtNight83. "Anyway, of all the Isabel writers, thepinkphantasm was the one I felt really got the character the most. She wrote so many of the classics: 'Return of the Drain Lords,' 'The Trouble with The Trouble with Tara,' that one about the cursed movie theater, and of course, 'The Ball Pit and the Pendulum.' Those stories really got to the heart of Isabel as someone who had to take a while to find herself and believe in her own power, but when she did, she was unstoppable, y'know? I never met thepinkphatasm IRL [in real life]. Or maddtarafan, either. I don't remember either of them coming to Opaquecon or any of the Pink Parties, but it felt like we all knew them. Like they were my friends. People were pretty sure they were partners or at least roommates offline. They didn't always agree—there was some back-and-forth between them on some of the episode reaction posts that got pretty intense—but they complemented each other and always had the most phenomenally interesting takes on the characters. They both stopped posting after the season five cancellation, though. Which is kind of a shame. I always wanted to ask them what they thought about that kiss."
"This Can't Be How It Ends": The Season Five Cliffhanger and Cancellation
"THIS CAN'T BE HOW IT ENDS!!! The fans deserve to have a proper conclusion, not Luna Juice and separate graves and Mr. Melancholy triumphant! We all have to band together and show the Young Adult Network just how unhappy we are!!!1!"
- Double Lunch poster Juliette27
Citing declining ratings and the increasing costs of producing each episode, The Young Adult Network cancelled The Pink Opaque at the end of its fifth season. What made the cancellation especially unfortunate was that its writers and showrunner Josh Pemberton were given little advance warning, meaning that TPO was not only scheduled to end on a cliffhanger, but on a particularly dark one. Tricked by Mr. Melancholy, Isabel and Tara were forced to drink Luna Juice, then buried in separate graves with their hearts cut out.
The campaign to renew The Pink Opaque began almost immediately, not only on the Double Lunch, but across multiple sites of fannish activity. Fans organized letter writing campaigns and one campaign that involved mailing ice cream cones to the network. Billboards bearing the message "Renew the Pink Opaque" were purchased near the Young Adult Network's offices and one dedicated group of fans hired skywriters. A more detailed oral history of fannish efforts to save TPO is presented in chapter six.
With the network failing to provide a satisfying resolution, many fanfic writers took it upon themselves "fix-it" endings in which Tara and Isabel find their way out of the Midnight Realm and continue their adventures together, either as friends or as a romantic couple, based on the particular writers' interpretation of their relationship.
One such fanwork is "Tara's Escape," the last story ever published by maddtarafan. The solo-authored work chronicles Tara's harrowing and somewhat over-the-top escape from the Midnight Realm. In this final story, it is no longer the mystical fantasy landscape presented in her previous collaborative work, but something much closer to what we glimpse in the final moments of season five, a suburban landscape in a world much like our own. The story contains almost none of the supernatural elements of the TPO canon, instead following Tara through this dark version of the real world as she attempts to find her way back to Isabel and the reality to which she belongs. It ends abruptly on the somewhat lurid scene of Tara being buried alive at her own request by a fan of popular television show The Pink Opaque, dying, and then waking up back at sleepaway camp.
Indeed, multiple stories from this era feature The Pink Opaque as a television show—or in at least one case, a series of popular novels—enjoyed in the Midnight Realm, and fans of the show, often the authors' own self-inserts, become instrumental in helping the girls escape and find their way back to their own world. These fictional tales echo the then-current real-life efforts to save TPO from cancellation and often feature the same cast of characters, with members of the Double Lunch community teaming up with Tara and Isabel to take on Marco, Polo, and Mr. Melancholy in story after story.
Other authors imagined darker endings for the Pink Opaque duo, imagining scenarios where one or both characters never escape the Midnight Realm and often join Mr. Melancholy to rule at his side. The number of so-called "Taracholy" and "Melanbel" stories rose substantially during this time.
Another notable work that came out of the hiatus was "Owen's Story" by jsa24. The Owen in the title is the young boy in Mr. Melancholy's globe, strongly implied to be Isabel's alter ego in the Midnight Realm. This character, never given a name in TPO canon, here gets not only that, but a family and an extensive backstory. Owen grows up and lives an entire life in the Midnight Realm and only gradually—and with a help of a sudden reappearance by Tara—begins to remember a former life as Isabel. The story has an ambiguous ending, one that confused or infuriated some highly vocal readers, but has nevertheless spawned fanworks of its own in the years since its publication, these collectively referred to as the Owenverse.
"I remember being so excited when I realized I could write Isabel a trans woman and have that be completely canon," says IzzyBelle98. "It's right there in the season five finale!"
"When people call Isabel the Young Adult Network's first—and to the best of my knowledge, still only—trans lead character based on a few seconds of the finale, I think it's a stretch. And I think it's largely thanks to the Owenverse stories and other stuff created by fans themselves rather than anything directly in the text," says podcaster and former Double Lunch poster Helena Jordan. "Certainly, the premise was there and the opportunity to do some interesting exploration of gender and identity, but in my opinion, the writers didn't take advantage of it, either before the cancellation or after. What can I say? It was network television the nineties and early two thousands. The kiss happened, yeah, but overall even season six was a real letdown."
Escape from the Midnight Realm: Season Six and The Pink Opaque Revival
ISABEL (coughing): You found me.
Tara pulls her from the grave and into an embrace.
TARA: I will always find you.
-excerpt from a leaked script of The Pink Opaque, episode 6x01: Escape from the Midnight Realm, posted anonymously to the Double Lunch community prior to the episode's airdate
"Oh my god, the kiss! The kiss after Tara pulls Isabel out of the grave! The kiss that launched a thousand Isabel/Tara shippers! It wasn't scripted. Did you know that?" says IzzyBelle98. "The actresses improvised it on the set on that day and Josh decided to keep it in. I hear he was ready to fight the network about it and everything, but they never even blinked. It was sign things were going to be different on the Q."
In a twist ending almost nobody expecting The Pink Opaque was saved from cancellation, not by its parent network, but by fledgling network QPN, who brought the rights to the show from the Young Adult Network and began to air it at 7:00 p.m. as part of its new Friday night lineup meant to appeal to younger viewers.
"At first it was great," says MrsSprinkly. "There was celebrating all over the boards. We won! We got our new episodes of TPO. Unfortunately, the fandom was never the same. A lot of people left during the long hiatus. I think I mentioned Tara Nocte went down. And I heard there were a couple of fan sites that got cease and desists from the Young Adult Network in those final days, too. I don't know why. They weren't going to make any more Pink Opaque stuff, so why couldn't we? When it moved to the Q, it became obvious really fast that they didn't care what fans did. In fact, they even kind of encouraged it, but some people were already scared or bored or had moved on to other things. And when it came to season six...well, not even the show itself was the same."
Interviews and a review of archived discussions from the Double Lunch show that multiple fans felt disillusioned with the show's sixth season following Tara and Isabel's escape from the Midnight Realm in the premiere. While many believed the kiss was a sign that Isabel and Tara would become romantically involved, later storylines shied away from this premise, instead sending the girls to separate colleges and focusing on Isabel's difficulty adjusting back into her former life following the relatively longer time she spent experiencing life in the Midnight Realm.
"I think people thought, 'Great! They've finally made Tarabel canon! Now that they've grown up, they can move out of their parents' houses and finally live with each other!' But that didn't happen," says PinkSunglassesAtNight83. "Instead, Tara went away to her dream college—which was never mentioned before in the series, I might add—and the Pink Opaque went from helping each other fight evil across the county to helping each other across the country. And every time they met on the psychic plane, it was either the usual stuff about the monster of the week or Tara helping Isabel try to cope. Don't get me, wrong, I think it's great having mental health struggles depicted in fiction, but some of those episodes were just a little too realistic, y'know? Plus, the whole college thing introduced a whole bunch of new recurring side characters, and that was annoying. It's not that they were all bad. It's that there were so many of them and we didn't know enough about any of them to really care. After a year and a half of no Pink Opaque, we wanted the focus to stay on our girls."
"They promised us an Isabel/Tara relationship in the first episode and it didn't happen," says former Double Lunch poster Smudge. "That's why people were hating on season six. I think the writers thought confirming Marco and Polo as basically gender fluid and in a relationship with each other and also having those two guys in Tara's dorm be gay would make up for it, but it didn't. Especially when half of one queer couple killed half of the other in the midseason finale. I mean, come on! That plotline where the professor turns out to be a were-piranha was also deeply stupid. I did like the musical episode, though."
"I don't know if I loved it, but I didn't hate it," says Jordan. "They took some risks. You've got Isabel basically sleepwalking through her life for half a season while Tara alternates between playing the role of her caretaker and taking increasingly reckless chances in the real world that result in her almost-death at the hands of the Clock Roach. Some of those scenes on the psychic plane are incredible from an acting and character development standpoint, but let's face it, in a show known for its supernatural action sequences, devoting that much screentime to two people sitting together and talking may not have been the most popular choice. The main reason the ratings were down, though, is that a lot fewer people had access to QPN than the Young Adult Network. Between that and the new night and time, people had trouble finding the show. At least through official channels."
"I think season six needed to happen for season seven to have the impact that it did, and for that I'll always love it a little," says former poster Ghostie42. "For that and the kiss. And the final episode where Isabel finds Tara and brings her home. Overall, it's not my favorite season to rewatch, but I can respect it for what it was."
"It's Just That It's Ours Now": Season Seven, A Homecoming, and An Ending
"If TPO has to end : ( ... well, I guess this is an ending I'll accept"
- Double Lunch poster yap_attack
The Pink Opaque's second season on QPN was its last. This time, the issue was believed to be less the problem of declining ratings, and more that both lead actors and the showrunner were ready to move on.
"There were some attempts at another save our show campaign, but I think even among those in the community there was this sense that TPO's era was coming to its natural end and that it was okay," says MrsSprinkly. "The network gave them the chance to do a proper final season and they took it and ran with it."
"They way they brought back every surviving villain and all those kids from Isabel and Tara's schools, the way they answered questions that had been unresolved since season one," says Smudge. "It could have been really stupid, but I think they actually pulled it off."
"I wasn't sure what to think when I found out that Isabel and Tara were going to be spending most of season seven together in person," says Ghostie42. "I know I probably flailed about it to everybody I know, even to people who had never seen an episode. The fact that they never meet in person was just so much a part of the show for so long, and now here they were finally not only letting them meet, but letting them stay together for the whole of the last big battle."
"I loved it," says PinkSunglassesAtNight83. "Isabel and Tara not only coming further into their own power, but learning how to relate to each other as physical beings occupying the same place after years of building up their relationship on the psychic plane. I think anybody who's ever been in a long-term LDR [long-distance relationship] can relate. Even if most real-world LDRs don't usually involve fighting monsters together."
"I'll admit I'm primarily a Tara stan all the way," adds MrsSprinkly, "but in season seven, Isabel is kind of my favorite. The way she takes charge. How she figures out how to share the power and connection of the Pink Opaque with everyone in the county who wants in. And that dress she wears during the final showdown with Mr. Melancholy! What can I say, but 'Wow!'"
"Are Isabel and Tara canonically together in a romantic sense at the end of the series? Who can say?" says Juliette27. "I think there was only so far the network was willing to go in confirming that. But they're together in all the ways that matter."
"Oh yeah. They're a couple. I think it's pretty obvious when they lock arms and walk through the door to their own house at the end," says IzzyBelle98.
"I like to think they're living there still," says PinkSunglassesAtNight83, "in that little neon pink house in the middle of the county. Finally together. Mr. Melancholy finally defeated. I like to think they're growing older, having the quiet, normal life they earned. Or at least as quiet and normal as the two of them could stand and still be happy given that they are Isabel and Tara."
"The old Double Lunch community didn't last much longer beyond the end of the series. There wasn't as much to discuss anymore when there wasn't a show to save or new episodes coming out every week," says MrsSprinkly, "and people were departing for newer platforms and, let's face it, newer shows. But I'm still friends with some of the people I met there. We still meet at Opaquecon and show off our TPO tattoos. Would I have liked TPO to last fifteen seasons like certain other shows from the old Q Friday Night block? Yeah, maybe. But I think maybe it's better it ended when it did, before Josh Pemberton and the writers ran out of idea and started recycling old plotlines or whatever. The world they made still exists, it's just that it's ours now. The fans'. Tara and Isabel live on in our hearts and in many thousands of words of queer fanfiction.
"Oh, I almost forgot!" she adds, just as we're about to conclude our interview. "Remember that poster I was telling you about, maddtarafan? Who ran the Tara site and then disappeared? It's the weirdest thing, but one of the very last posts on the Double Lunch ever was from them. Well, from their account at least, although I suppose after all those years, it might have been hacked. Anyway, it was one last message, signed by maddtarafan and thepinkphantasm. Kind of spooky, really."
What did it say? I ask.
"Thanks," she replies. "Just 'Thanks.'"