Hello!

A little bit about me, for the curious:

My name is Mark Allen Davis (a rather plain, boring name). My fan name is Miko, which I lifted from the obscure anime series "Utsu no Miko" (see picture of Miko-sama at top of page). I have an associate's degree from Lower Columbia Community College, and remain about 15 credits shy of my English Literature degree from Seattle Pacific University, maybe forever.

I'm left-handed and was born on 7-7-63 (seven is a lucky number!)

I work as a Synon 2E programmer for a nationwide transportation cooperative. This has little to do with my original plans to be a writer, but it pays the bills. I write and draw in my spare time, as a hobby.

I've been writing in fandom since about fall of 1983, my sophomore year of college, when I defied reason and launched my own Elfquest fanzine. I was heavily involved in Elfquest Fandom From 1983 to about 1990. I was editor and publisher of the fanzine Lone Oak Legends, and we published 27 issues plus a couple of supplements. We made it into the nineteen-nineties before I turned the reins over to a friend, Kristin Fontaine, who combined my Lone Oak Holt with Whitney Ware's Clearwater Holt and published for several more years before she, too, called it quits. Anyway, you might find my early writing or artwork in the fanzines of a lot of old, now dead, holts; I was in something like 25 of them over the years. The good thing about it is I met other writers and artists and I learned how to write.

In 1988 an Elfquest friend, Whitney Ware, spurred our group into launching a fanzine based on a universe we created ourselves. It was science fiction, it borrowed a great deal from C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series, from David Brin's Uplift Wars series, but mostly from the comic Fuzion (and to a lesser extent, Steve Gallacci's Albeedo). It was anthropomorphic space opera. At the time we had no idea what "furry" fandom was, but soon enough it found us. I still write for the Tales Of The Tai-Pan fanzine. We've published 18 issues in ten years, and two supplements, and all issues are available through the mail from us or Ed Zolna Mailbox Books (warning: he sells far more than just our tame antropomorphic stuff).

I am one of the associate editors, while Gene Breshears, a longtime friend who was an associate editor for Lone Oak Holt, is the current Editor-In-Chief of the Tai-Pan (Whitney Ware was our Editor-In-Chief for the first seven issues, but she's moved on to other things). Pick up any issue of our fanzine and you will find a story by Gene Breshears, by Chuck Melville, by Keith Alan Johnson, or by myself. If you like my writing, then you will also like the writing of these other fine gentlemen as well; they are all very talented. Mind you, many other talented writers have seen publication in our fanzine, such as Kristin Fontaine, Edd Vick, Kathy Coleman, David Dailey, Gerald Perkins, Whitney Ware and Julie Rampke. The best part of this whole experience, for me, has been the chance to work with these other talented writers as part of a Seattle writer's group for more than six years. We meet on the third Saturday of every month at Gene's house, and anyone can come, it's not limited to just Tai-Pan writing, although that's the bulk of what we do.

I have been involved in anime fandom to a certain extent since... well, I don't remember the year, but it was just before Ranma 1/2 was brought out in English. Early 1990's sometime. I was on Prodigy at the time, and later I moved over to GEnie, where I read a lot of the fan fiction available at the time. Despite this, I did not begin writing anime fan fiction of my own until June of 1998. I hope you like what I've written so far; I plan to write a lot more.

About that fan name...

It comes from Utsu no Miko, a rather obscure anime that I like. There's a movie, which is full of battles and rather boring, and then there's a 13-episode OAV series that really captured my attention when I first watched it. I still don't know half of what's going on in that show, but in essense, you have Miko, a young boy who is half-god. He has a horn in the center of his head, he plays a flute very beautifully, and he can pound gods and demons into submission with only his flute as a weapon (which makes you wonder... doesn't it get bent? Must be a special "battle flute").

Like Ranma, Miko also transforms... into a powerful flaming demonic giant, in really big battles. I believe it's a part of his kami nature. He looks like some western demon or devil, he doesn't suddenly become evil, just a lot more ferocious of a fighter.

The entire 13 episodes, as far as I can remember, involve Miko trying to rescue the girl he loves, who has been kidnapped by a powerful god and taken to the kami realm. Miko follows after her, along with his four best friends, who are all excellent martial artists but a bit out of their depth going up against immortals. One of them is a girl who, from what I can remember, is also in love with Miko. Somewhere along the way he picks up another ally, a mischevious sprite name Kujimunar who looks like a five-year-old girl but who is deadly dangerous. (She's the one who always calls him "Miko-sama".) Miko also has a flying horse that's utterly loyal to him. They fight gods and demons across the kami plane in their pursuit of his love, and many times they almost succeed, only to be thwarted again and again. It's a very cool story.

I took Miko's name as my own, back when I first got into anime fandom. It seemed a much better thing than becoming one of the legions of Ranmas or Ryogas or Keichis or (insert popular anime character here). What I did not realize at the time is that Miko is mostly a (rather popular) girl's name. "-ko" means "child", and is a popular ending for girl's names in Japan. "Miko" usually means "beautiful child" (the "mi" portion being the root kanji of the verb for "to see").

In Europe, Miko is a (somewhat) common first name in several different countries. It's usually a name for guys, and is sometimes a nickname for people named Michael. (Michael was going to be my name, right up until I was born, then my parents decided on Mark).

There are several Mikos in anime, including (apparently) the heroine(?) of La Blue Girl herself. It is also the name for a certain type of priestess, so that you get fans who declare themselves (for example) "Shrine no Shinji no Miko" or "The Priestess of the Shrine to Shinji".

In Miko-sama's case, his name is spelled with different kanji, and as nearly as I can tell it means "young prince" or "child prince". Utsu no Miko means "Miko of the Heavens".

Who or what is Miko? Well, let me tell you...
	Miko is a handsome half-god warrior. Miko-Sama from Utsunomiko.		Miko is a sex ninja who is trying to get laid by a normal human male. Miko from La Blue Girl. I still haven't watched this, but a friend has tried to assure me it's "fun" hentai rather than "sick" hentai....
	Miko is a priestess! Suzano no Miko, alias Miaka, Priestess of Suzano, from Fushugi Yugi. Largely because of this show, there are now Mikos to various anime characters all over the web! ^_^		Miko is what I call myself in fan circles. I am a writer for the Tales Of The Tai-Pan fanzine, which involves science fiction and anthropomorphics; I am an anime fan fiction writer and a member of the FFML; I am a sometime-cartoonist and will hopefully, at some point, start doing my Mick & Dana comic strip again and maybe even put it on the web; and I used to draw a lot more and was active in Elfquest fandom. In my professional life, I am a Synon2E programmer.
	Miko is my raccoon alter-ego! I actually drew this picture before I got into anime and started calling myself Miko, so he was my alter-ego before he had a name. I've never written any stories about him -- he's not really a character of mine, just a furry representation of me, so his personality is my personality -- but I've placed him in a few cartoons where he was a stand-in for myself.		Meeko is a clever raccoon sidekick/mascot. Imagine my surprise when, long after I'd started calling myself Miko and tagged my raccoon image with that name, Disney released a movie with a raccoon named Meeko! This is Meeko from Pocahantas, and he's a very cool character. Friends have given me a Meeko key chain, a plastic Meeko drinking cup, a Meeko koosh ball, and I bought myself a little Meeko plastic figurine that sits on my desk at work. (Although I have to admit, I bought it at St. Vincent de Paul for 50 cents!)
	Miko is an under-appreciated child actor on the rise! Miko Hughes, already a veteran of many films, including Pet Cemetery, Kindergarten Cop, Apollo 13, Spawn, and Mercury Rising. He is a Chickasaw Indian, and his name means "Chief."		Miko is a dog with her own web domain! Actually, I was hoping to discover that there was a well-known Japanese actress or idol singer with the name Miko (you'd think there would be, wouldn't you?), as a sort of balance for Miko Hughes. Instead, I discovered Miko Saki, a long-haired Aki, who has an entire domain to herself: www.mikosaki.com. Really.
	Miko is fun to watch and tastes really good! The Miko Masters is a young person's skating event in France, sponsored by Miko, the French ice cream company (yum!). My French Kzin friend, Zrath-Smiley, told me about this company. He said they had a raccoon mascot (neat!), but later he realized that he was confusing them with a different company that had a raccoon mascot. Le sigh! ^_^		Miko is a computer company! Actually, Miko is a lot of computer companies! The top logo is from a computer technology company in Denmark, the middle is the logo for a company in Pila, which is apparently somewhere in Eastern Europe, and on the bottom we have the logo for Miko the Swedish company that is a representative for Samsung. There is also a Phillipines-based Miko Computer Company, a Greek Miko company that has something to do with bathroom fixtures/tiles, a Japanese Miko Games company, and a Japanese "Miko.org" site, which is really at miko.net and claims to be "the ultimate site for Miko fetishists"! Wow! I don't know whether to be honoured, or afraid. ^_^

If you plan to attend Project A-Kon in June of 1999, my friends Tom Hayes, Jeffrey Cornish, Sky Rigdon, and I will be there. Hope to see you there!
We will also apparently be at AnimeFEST, also in Dallas/Ft. Worth. where I guess I'll be part of the fan fiction panel. ^_^ I'll get to meet Krista Perry, aren't you jealous? You can still come too, of course....

Miko, April 17, 1999