Thomas Mikkelsen

Thomas Mikkelsen was an author of comedic fanfics written in quasi-script form. He was most active in 2000 and 2001.

Biographical Information
Mikkelsen was Danish by nationality, so when he wrote in English, he often employed beta readers to help him with his spelling and grammar.

Fan History
Mikkelsen's work is best known for its scriptfic, on-canon depictions of Daria episodes. In addition, Mikkelsen was probably the best known of the early fanfiction prescriptivists. Mikkelsen believed that, among other things, that Daria fan fiction should be exactly like the show, or as close as possible. This meant that his stories:


 * were generally comedies, as Mikkelsen eschewed drama or melodrama as being atypical of the light comedy style of episodes
 * did not develop the characters beyond what would have been considered acceptable in the series
 * eschewed the use of alternate universes or settings outside of Lawndale
 * had plots generally evocative of the ordinary lives of high school students, or of the well-established relationships between Daria and her friends and family.

Mikkelsen passionately stated that if a story violated any of these general guidelines, it could not be considered Daria fanfiction. His argument was that one could not change what had been established in the episodes to suit one's own needs in writing fanfiction.

While Mikkelsen did not push his prescriptivist viewpoint with the zeal of Daniel Suni, he tended to voice his thoughts bluntly, in ways that were unflattering to various Daria fans. This ruffled some feathers in the fan community, and was one of the reasons Mikkelsen requested that his account on the old Paperpusher's Message Board (1.0) be deleted.

With the conclusion of the series in 2002, Mikkelsen wrote his final work of fanfiction. True to his belief that without the show, there was no point in pursing Daria fandom, Mikkelsen disappeared, and has only rarely reappeared on message boards.

Trivia

 * Thomas Mikkelsen was one of CINCGREEN's favorite authors, which helped bring Mikkelsen to the attention of the overall fandom. In CINCGREEN's opinion, Mikkelsen's canon depictions were the closest one could come to a Daria episode without Glenn Eichler writing it.


 * When Martin Pollard opened his Featured Authors list (later changed to Recommended Authors) to fan nominations, Mikkelsen's work was the first such work nominated.


 * Mikkelsen came up with the idea of a comic-horror series called "Tales from the Burbs" and recruited Milo Minderbender and Kara Wild to help him. Each contributed a story, although at present, Wild has been unable to locate Mikkelsen's tale.


 * Mikkelson held a special contempt for the fan fiction written by Brother Grimace. After the release of It's All About Respect in 2001, Mikkelson made a posting on the Scorched Remnants Message Board in which he said that Brother Grimace should remove all of his works from the Internet and apologize to Daria fans for writing them.


 * Another term used on message boards to decribe Mikkelson was 'canon-obsessive'.

Links
Thomas Mikkelsen's fan fiction, archived at Outpost Daria]