For those who don't know what the "Crappies" are, I point you to this link . I've never quite wrapped my mind about what the "Crappies" are supposed to be about, but I assume that they are supposed to be some sort of Dean Martin Celebrity Roast for Daria fan fiction.

Former DFB co-author Greybird posted a message at the PPMB (the thread is located here ) that explained why he thought that Kara Wild's "Crappie" awards were, well...crap. Quoting from his original message:

Why should hard-working fanfic authors be subject to any sort of ridicule? Even "gentle roasting" (to quote the "Crappies" page)? Is any different, flamboyant, or unexpected approach to such writing thus to be made a target? That's one clear route to creative sterility.

The clear expectation is that those thus "honored" are supposed to suck up the abuse and take it, lest they be seen as some sort of bad sports. I always found that barbaric. Those at a genuine "roast" agree to be there and to take the satirizing openly. This is anonymous and hit-and-run.

Whereupon there began much Greybird-bashing.

Kara Wild had this to say:

The CRAPPIES experience some of the same problems. They obviously won't reach everyone in fandom, and to an extent they've become a popularity contest. I think that's why Cincgreen doesn't care for them -- he doesn't think the awards are harsh enough. But if they were extremely harsh, pulverizing the worst of the worst fanfics, I feel that they would be giving far more attention to the terrible authors than they deserve. The CRAPPIES are meant to be fun, yet humbling. We all know that fanfic excesses and cliches exist, even within the most celebrated works. You can laugh as you receive one, and either shrug it off, or consider it an opportunity to work on your writing. I received some CRAPPIE nominations last year and I think I won a category or two, yet I didn't fall apart. I wouldn't fall apart if my stuff from 2005 were nominated -- though I would HOPE that if it were, it was because the person honestly felt that my work deserved it and not because the person wanted to punish me for holding the CRAPPIES in the first place.

There are lots of reasons to dislike the CRAPPIES aside from Greybird's well-stated reasons.

I believe that the point Greybird was trying to make (and he can correct me if I'm wrong) was that, at some level, nominations are quite involuntary. The CRAPPIES consist of a set of jokey categories to which any work can be nominated. Daria fans send in their nominations for works to be nominated, and therein lies the problem.

There might indeed be some fans who don't think a nomination to a "Worst Fan Fiction" awards is a laughing matter. (Trust me, I know all about the perils of giving honest criticism.) When they wake up some Sunday morn and find that their story is on a list titled, say "Best Use of Stacy as a Dishrag", they are put in a bind vis-a-vis their position in the fan "community".

They have two options:

a) go out of their way to say, "I prefer not to be nominated". Their work is nominated one minute, and not nominated the next, which leads to questions as to "why did so-and-so's work disappear from the list"? This leaves the impression in the community that these people are...oversensitive. Unable to take a joke. You know...killjoys. Probably prudes, too. Not only does a person have to go to some trouble not to be nominated, their reputation ends up sullied as a result of having a nomination revoked, because in 21st Century post-modern life, there is no worse slander than to be accused of not having a sense of humor. You might as well be accused of child molestation.

b) just sit there and take it. Laughing with the jokes, accepting the nomination in "good humor" while at the same time dying a little inside. Yeah, they're laughing on the outside, but at the same time, they withdraw a little. The "community" is damaged somewhat.

But my criticism of the CRAPPIES is not the same as Greybird's. It not that I think that the CRAPPIES are "not harsh enough", rather, that the original intent of the awards has been perverted into something a bit more disturbing than a "gentle roast".

If you take a look at works that are nominated for CRAPPIES, you will find out that those works generally speaking aren't crap at all. Let's take a look at some of the CRAPPIE winners from 2005 (link is here ). "Next Time, This Time", "Smoking Mirror", "The Idiocy", "Estrangesters", "Gone", Alien Pond", "The Winters of Those Gone Before".

If those works are somehow "crap"...well, I think we're straining at gnats here, looking at a work with a microscope in a desperate attempt to find something wrong with it. These works are some of the most popular and higher quality Daria fanfiction written. Which is undoubtedly NOT why these works were nominated.

My guess? These works were nominated because someone wanted to tease someone else. "Hey, Joe, I'm going to nominate your work, tee hee!" "Well, go ahead (chuckle)!" And of course, the people who ended up getting nominated were the people for whom the concept of earning a CRAPPIE was patently ridiculous. These tended to be the best writers, the writers who would be most immune to such gnat-straining, the writers for whom a "worst" nomination would be the most difficult to justify, mitigating the possibility of hurt feelings. The awards became a contest in absurdity -- good writers getting bad fanfic awards.

If this was the end-all of the CRAPPIES -- a popularity contest turned upside down, as if a bunch of Miss America contestants were in competition for Wallflower of the Year -- it wouldn't be much of burden (but it would deserve a lot of eye-rolling). What bothers me more and more about the CRAPPIES is that people joke about nominating their own works.

It's in bad taste. And it's not that they realize that their own work has faults. Rather, the CRAPPIES is becoming a "me too! me too!!" type of contest, a bunch of fan fiction writers so incredibly desperate for attention that they'll pick any platform for it.

We'll stretch the analogy of the Dean Martin roast further. It was supposed to be an honor to be roasted by Dean Martin -- it sort of meant that your achievements in entertainment were so noteworthy and so unassailable that you could stand to sit there for an hour while other luminaries in entertainment -- your equals in achievement -- could make you a figure of sport, magnifying your idiosynchracies for the enjoyment of all involved. Now imagine some celebrity actually CAMPAIGNING for such a honor. "Pick me, Dean-o! Pick me! Make fun of me!" I'm sure Dean would have turned away in disgust and headed to the nearest bar.

If you look at last year's CRAPPIE winners, they all share one thing in common -- they don't need the notoriety. Their works didn't need it, and they didn't need it. Their works and their reputations stood proudly on their own feet.

If there's a hierarchy of sins in Daria fandom, it would probably go like this. The worst sin would probably be the outright plagiarization of someone else's work. The second worst sin would be to lift characters or entire plot concepts from an outside source, the akin of passing off "Memento" as your original idea and not a homage to someone else's.

But for me, the third worst sin would probably be attention-grubbing, desperately trying to hype your own work, calling attention to it at every conceivable moment, even nominating it for attention in a "worst of" awards. I can name two Daria fans who were notorious for attempts to pimp their own works. One unfortunately still writes (this was the person who put up the poll saying "which of my works did you like best?") and the other no longer writes Daria fanfiction.

Gentlebeings, if I can ask one thing of Daria fandom, it would be this...please, please, please, PLEASE do not pimp your own work. And the CRAPPIES are becoming a pimpfest. Which is why I hate them, and I feel I have good reason to hate them. I've been bitching about people pimping their own work for six years now.

If you want to call attention to someone's overlooked work, then don't make it a CRAPPIES contest. Add another category to the Booties ("Favorite Overlooked Work") or start a thread on PPMB where the works that really NEED attention can get some of it.

As for those good writers who feel they need to pimp work, which, frankly, is so damn good that people actually wait for it in anticipation, I can only quote Helen Morgendorffer: "We tell you over and over again that you're wonderful and you just...don't...get it! What's wrong with you?"