Whammy Awards

Award
Name:	The Whammy Awards, Whammys
Date(s):	1997 - 1999
Frequency:	annual
Format:
Type:
Associated Community:
Fandom:	The X-Files
URL:	Wayback, 1997 Winners
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The Whammy Awards were given to X-Files net slash writers from 1997 - 1999 by the "Whammy Committee" (in 1999: Iain-Padraic Jackson, Rosalita, & Gelati.)

The awards' mission statement claims, "It is the Whammy goal to improve the writing, illuminate the talents, and support the creativity of XF fanfic writers on the Web."

The awards excluded non-con fan fiction, something which proved to be disappointing to many Mulder/Krycek fan readers and writers since noncon was a particular favorite trope in that pairing.

1999 Commentary

In March 1999, CiCi Lean wrote one of their Acid Desk commentaries on these awards. Below is an excerpt from a MUCH longer post:

Ah, Award Season. The smell of boiling blood is in the air and hot, sweaty jealous glances are being strewn about with measured carelessness and itchy trigger fingers are poised over those "send e-mail" buttons with intentions both good and evil. Stuffers and pranksters, ulcer-ridden authors and gung-ho readers, egomaniacs and sobbing newbie hopefuls, every one of them shoving, pushing, KILLING for their chance to become a player in the ultimate game of Fanfic Chess -- becoming the Queen of FOREVER via an actual award!

Doncha just LOVE it?

I'm not going to talk about the ATXC Spooky Awards today, mainly because they are deserving of their very own Special Edition. (Lucky, lucky them! *cough*)

Instead, I'm going to talk about a much smaller, lesser known award, one that went off surprisingly well in its first year of creation.

Yes, I'm talking about The Whammys.

Ah, the poor, innocent Whammys, the annual XFFanfic Slash Awards. An award that quietly imploded upon itself during the very last days of voting and has now disappeared into that sad and overcrowded bin labeled "Ideas We Thought Would Be Fun."

It's a crying shame really, because the Whammys were created by very nice people with the excellent intentions of promoting a genre that is *not* beloved by the other awards in our fandom, but has a quality of writing and a stable of talent that doesn't deserved to be so roundly and casually ignored by all the other awards, big and small.

From my observations, the Whammy committee consisted of three honest, sensitive, idealistic people, who decided to take a large chunk of time out of their busy real life schedules, while also abandoning many of their more pleasurable on-line activities to run this award and their intentions were, *gasp* -- good.

They really believed that they'd be presenting the best that slash had to offer in a relaxed and fun environment and that everyone would be so happy that the genre was finally getting a fair shake, that they'd actually behave themselves. It would be a gay, educational time for all involved and with any luck, an award like this would give a much needed shot of legitimacy to a genre that's been called everything from "garbage" to "trash" to "canonless porn" by the ignorant masses over in GenLand.

Unfortunately, what the poor Whammy committee *didn't* realize that in fact what they were offering was as far removed from a public service as one could get even if they were presenting a "Do It Yourself" suicide booth at a mental health clinic.

That unbeknownst to them, they were facilitating the presentation of one of the most fearsome, the most violent, the most shameless, the most TERRIFYING of all the green-eyed psychodramas that could ever plague the narrow confines of this universe or any other...

An ego contest between amateur writers.

Dear God in Heaven! What could -possibly- be worse?

(All right, a production of "CATS" directed by the House Impeachment Managers, featuring Rep. Henry Hyde singing from a giant litter box *does* come to mind, but let's not go there, okay?)

Anyway, everything appeared okay at first, as the nominations went off with relatively few hitches with the most serious being the huge, nearly impossible-to-download listings page and some minor scuffles over eligibility. Most folks voted for their favorites without too many complaints and, for a while, everything seemed just ducky.

(Just to keep the record straight, I didn't vote in the nominations, I *did* get nominated in two categories, "Best Other" and "Best Humor" and I did vote in the final round. Yes, and I voted for myself. I mean, duh. {grin})

But, gosh, that last round. It seems so odd to me that the nominations are always so peaceful, but when it comes to that final announcement, that "ultimate" crowning of ONE fic to lord over all the rest, people just seem to lose their minds.

So, yes, there was stuffing and cheating and screaming and misery during the final round of this year's Whammy Awards and a lot of it.

(According to one member of the administration, it wasn't the authors who were doing or encouraging the cheating, but groups of overzealous friends and readers of various authors and certain factions of trolls who were trying to get certain authors disqualified for humiliation purposes. Most of these folks were caught via their IPs and fake AOL addys, but a lot weren't. In the end, everyone was basically suspect and the award disintegrated under pressure to the committee.)

The final result? All the nominees were declared winners and the poor, tired Whammy committee took off, bruised and battered, never to run another award again.

Now, is this a shame? Yes, especially for this particular genre.

Was it unexpected? No, not really.

1997 Whammy Awards

1997 Winners

• Rogaine I - Rogaine, Rats, and Baseball Bats by Ethan Nelson

Award: 1997 Whammy for Best Short Fiction

• Paradox Club, The by Cody Nelson

Award: 1997 Whammy for Best Use of Props

• Walking the Line by XF Stew

Award: 1997 Whammy for Best Scully Slash

• Battered Krycek Blues by torch

Award: 1997 Whammy for Best Mini Fiction

• In a Dark Time: Sleepless by A. Leigh-Anne Childe

Award: 1997 Whammy for Best Sex Scene.

• Something Wicked by torch

Award: 1997 Whammy for Best Other Fanfic.

• Denny's Cycle by Ethan Nelson

Awards: 1997 Whammy for Best Mulder/Skinner Fanfic, Most Unusual Location and Best Humour FanFic.

• The Same Everywhere (I) and The Hand We Were Dealt (II) by Jane Mortimer

Award: 1997 Whammy for Best Series Fanfic.

• Ghosts by torch

Awards: 1997 Whammy for Best Angst Fanfic, Best Long Fanfic and Best Mulder/Krycek FanFic.

• torch

Award: 1997 Whammy for Best Author.

• Brenda Antrim

Award: The Big O - 1997 Whammy for Greatest Contribution to X-Files Slash Fanfic.

1998 Whammy Awards

1998 Official Headquarters

By 1998, the number of stories eligible for the Whammy Awards climbed from 350 in 1997 to over 600.

• Hostage by Xanthe

Award: 1998 Whammy for Best Angst (joint first place)

• Subterfuge by Xanthe

Awards: 1998 Whammy for Best Sex Scene (joint winner), Best Series (joint winner).

• Addictions by Viridian5

Awards: 1998 Whammy joint winner for Best Slash Short fanfic (10K to 50K)

See also

• EMXC Awards
• Lisa e Krysa Awards
• Morley Awards
• Silver Sutures Awards
• Spooky Awards
• Starbuck Awards
• UUFFAA (Unofficial USENET Fan-Fic Achievement Awards)