Brother Grimace

Biographical Information[edit]

Brother Grimace attended Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where he was enrolled in the English and Cinema & Photography programs. While at SIU-Carbondale, Brother Grimace was a writing consultant with SPC-TV, one of the two student-run campus television stations on the SIU-C campus.

He also was involved with the SIU-C Strategic Games Society in the early 1990's, where he was known for his Marvel Super Heroes role playing game campaign 'The Marvel Wars' - a popular, high-powered, roleplaying-intensive campaign that ran for two years (1992-1994). Due to the intense nature of 'The Marvel Wars', Brother Grimace gained a reputation in the gaming community as 'the most dangerous GM at SIU-C'. The influence of his time as a gamer can still be seen in his works (as many of his characters have become canon immigrants over to the Daria Multiverse, such as DELPHI, Paula Trainor, and the Gridrunner aircraft.

After leaving SIU-C, Brother Grimace began work in the Media Services Department of PCCEO, Inc., a non-profit, community action agency located in Peoria, Illinois. During his time at PCCEO, Brother Grimace was responsible for day-to-day studio operations and a slate of original community-oriented programming; for producing a multi-part series on community-based health issues, he received an award from the American Red Cross and was nominated for another from the City of Peoria.

Brother Grimace is a fan of barbecue, science fiction (particularly the works of J. Michael Straczynski), soap operas (daytime and prime time), cats, and just being an agent provocateur in general. He also likes peanut butter sandwiches, sweet potato pies, seven-layer salads and very cold water.

He also has a weakness for French fries (particularly 'steak fries', and can't wait to travel to Great Britain for an order of fish and chips), cheap beer, and is teased by his friends about his seeming predilection towards smart blondes, which he seems to usually end up around. ("It's just a series of coincidences - really!" -BG)

Over the past two years, Brother Grimace has been busy working on several spec scripts, in preparation towards his lifelong ambition of working in the entertainment industry (preferably as a television writer/producer').

Fanon and Fan Culture Contributions[edit]

Brother Grimace has won three Daria Fan Fiction Awards - two for The Trouble With Veronica, and one for Crusts Of Pizza. He is also arguably one of the more visible members of the group of Dariafic writers known as the Angst Lords, and also enjoys beta reading the works of other authors.

He is known for using Gou'ald technology (particularly transport rings) on the boards, and for his over-use of adjectives for descriptions in his work (most notably parodied in one of The Angst Guy's works). He also created a Agency operative named 'Guy' in tribute to and in memory of the raptor, who enjoyed annoying him with very funny practical jokes. (He especially enjoyed sneaking things underneath areas BG would sit.)

Brother Grimace is also a huge fan of the Falling Into College post-canon series, and has said on several occasions that Bump is his favorite character. He is also a fan of Invisigoth Gypsy's shipper fics, Doggieboy's "Apocalyptic Daria," and NightGoblyn's round-robin 'Evil Daria Viginettes' (among some of the many excellent Daria works out there, for the reading pleasure of Daria fans everywhere).

In September 2007, Brother Grimace began work on Legion of Lawndale Heroes, after receiving permission to do so. He has plans to complete at least eight chapters of the series, and is currently writing several works leading into Chapter Fourteen (having begun with Chapter Eleven).

He is known to have originated the use of the phrase Wait For It within Daria fandom, as well as the terms 'Schloss Morgendorffer' and 'manstopper glasses' (in reference to Daria's spectacles).

Brother Grimace is an avid and conscientious editor of this wiki.

Annual Thanksgiving fanfic release[edit]

Since he began writing and posting Dariafic in 2001, Brother Grimace has started his own personal tradition of a annual release of Daria fics over the Thanksgiving holiday (either a major release of several fics, the conclusion of a major work (as with the completion of Legion of Lawndale Heroes, Volume Two in 2009), or the release of a single novella- or larger sized fic. He usually posts the fics on the weekend before Thanksgiving; he once joked that he did this so that Daria fans could have something to read after dinner.

"Daria Mental-Torture Fics"[edit]

The first Daria author to fully visualize the fanfic characterization known as Bitch Daria in his works, Brother Grimace began his fan fiction with the first of his 'Visitations' fics, The Sun Will Come Out, Tomorrow. His writing efforts have been noted by Daria fan TerraEsperZ as actually being in a separate sub-section of angst-driven works in the Daria fan fiction universe, which he has dubbed "Daria mental-torture fics." In these fics, Daria is featured as not only being responsible for her own problems, but seemingly deserving of the negative effects brought forth because of her attitude and unwillingness to change or even compromise - even when it is obviously in her best interests. In these fics, Daria also seems to go through a great deal of inner turmoil and torment, leading her to act out in graphically non-canon fashion on occasion at others around her; another mark of these fics is the interior examination of other characters (primarily Sandi Griffin), which leads to betterment of the character. (This character trait has come to be known as Redeemed Sandi.) There was some belief at one time that this tendency towards a negative depiction of the character may have been among the reasons that Brother Grimace has never been selected for a spot on the "Recommended Authors" list at Outpost Daria.

(TSWCOT was, as mentioned in a CINCGREEN review, the first attempt to view Daria in such a manner, and at the time "The Sun Will Come Out, Tomorrow" first appeared on Daria web sites, shippers were the current popular trend. To be fair, it should be noted that half of the authors listed as Angst Lords have NOT been selected to the RA - formerly the 'Featured Authors' - list.)

At the time of TSWCOT's initial release, in June 2000, such a view of Daria and her world was considered almost heretical, and many fans maintained a slight resentment towards the author because of these works that is still slightly present in the fandom. This could be considered ironic, as Brother Grimace's works almost always contain sequences where characters within, including Daria, undergo near-religious moments that allow them to experience relevant and positive insights and changes, as well as surprisingly positive themes and upbeat endings. Examples include "Victory Lane," where Jane fully embraces her sense of freedom after meeting a Daria seemingly entombed within her own enforced desire to be perceived as "one of the crowd."

Brother Grimace's fics tend towards prose, and are considerably longer than the average Daria fanfic. At present, two of his works - the unfinished "It's All About Respect" and a Dariarotica work " - are among the largest stand-alone works in Daria fan fiction history. (Steven Galloway's epics, "Revelations" and "Visitation," are the largest stand-alone works.) He also tends to use very descriptive prose (most famously parodied by TAG in The Original Underground Government-Suppressed Version of Brother Grimace’s Classic Daria Fanfic, "The Sun Will Come Out, Tomorrow" ), and uses a great deal of background information on his characters, as well as much internal dialogue.

'Over-The-Top?'[edit]

Some Daria fans see Brother Grimace's writing style as 'over-the-top' - that is, primarily skewed towards melodrama, generally unrealistic premises and story lines, and that most of his fics are written that way. (In one notable instance, Kara Wild held an Iron Chef challenge in which she challenged him to write a 'down-to-earth' fic while she wrote an 'over-the-top' fic. The fics written were A Slice Of Pizza and They Came from Planet Xulfanex.) While a number of his fics do fit in that mold (most famously Another Stupid Daria Internship Fic and a number of his entries in the Evil Daria Viginettes), the majority do not.

A New Take on Veronica?[edit]

In "The Trouble With Veronica," Brother Grimace developed Robert Nowall's original character of Veronica into a character beyond a mixing of Quinn and Daria's physical, mental and social traits. This character later morphed into her own independent character, Evelyn Veronica Morgendorffer.

In this fic, 'Evie' is an incoming senior at Grove Hills, and one of the most intelligent students ever to study there. (Daria mentions that Veronica's IQ is rated somewhere in the 190's.) Evie has several traits that are unique to her but not unknown in her family: she has a highly-ranked talent for music (like Jake, but Evie is actually a VERY good singer), is a voracious reader (unlike Daria, her tastes are more broad-spectrum), and shows a talent for fashion (like Quinn). She also has the same eye problems as Daria and wears similar glasses, but prefers contact lenses (which she has no problems with) or prescription sunglasses. Unlike her sisters, Evie hasn't shown any interest in dating - yet - and it was the fear of her awakening sexuality that had prompted Helen to try to remove her from Grove Hills and enroll her at Lawndale High. An upcoming fic shows that Evie was allowed to stay at Grove Hills, where she was awarded a full scholarship and serves as a School Ambassador.

Kyle Armalin[edit]

See full article on Kyle Armalin.

The Ringbearers Saga[edit]

In March of 2008, after reading a number of zombie fiction (including such works as Doggieboy's A Little Vacation and The Zombie Survival Guide), Brother Grimace created the concept of the Defender Rings and the Ringbearers - individuals in the vein of the Green Lantern Corps and Rom and the Spaceknights of Galador who were moving through the Multiverse as a force to fight supernatural threats.

The concept has spread to a number of fics and two multi-author series dealing with the exploits and adventures of the Ringbearers and associated characters.