The 2023 PEELies Award Presentation Thread

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PEEL is like a tardigrade- it's a tough, indestructible little fucker that can withstand 1000x the radiation dose a human can.  It also survived 2 cancellations and 2 revivals of Futurama. This message board has been here through it all, and some of the members have been here for over 20 years.

What is it that keeps people coming back, even after years of inactivity? What keeps us addicted to this strange little corner of the internet? Is it because we want a one-stop shop for all our Bender/Professor/Zoidberg slash fiction, or is it because of the wholesome little community we've fostered along the way?

Well, instead of new juicy slash, we offer this awards ceremony celebrating the best (and worst) parts of PEEL over the last year (...or 10 years since we last had the PEELies, I guess).

Welcome, one and all, to the 2023 PEELies Award Ceremony.

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On-Topic Awards

All speeches written (and all awards made and presented by) tnuc.

Best Review Thread

So, most of the Hulusodes of Futurama have been similarly polarizing to their Comedy Central counterparts. But the reviews for these episodes on PEEL have been of varied character, much like the original run. Some reviews are short. Some are too long to care about reading. Some contain wonderful insights into the human condition and how Futurama has captured an amazing reflection of this.

And one thread stands out as having been a fucking rollercoaster to ride. With great posts, great posters, great debate, and great insights. We're not talking about that thread though, since it exists in a purely hypothetical universe where PEELers are capable of more than simply mashing their keyboards with grimy fists and demanding more screentime for Bender's ass.

We're awarding this award instead to the best review thread that PEEL has in this universe. Which is: Thoughts on Episode 8ACV04 – Parasites Regained (SPOILERS)



Best Reviewer (Ontopic)

Of  all those who've posted their reviews this year, one PEELer has stood out. They've reviewed not just well, but brilliantly well. They should probably give up their day job and review things for a living instead. And they've gotten us invested. We don't just want to see new episodes because we want our lukewarm fix of reheated Futurama-flavoured reconstituted TV cubes. We want to hear that PEELer's opinions. And we know they're going to have some, and we know they'll be a goddamn doozy.

So we're awarding this award to them as a reward for the rewards they've given us when awarding Futurama episodes with the mixed rewards of their praises and their damnations.

That PEELer is: cyber_turnip



Shippiest Shipper

Ship ship ahoy! Shippers all over PEEL know that there's a real heartbeat to the show, and it's one of the things that keeps them coming back in the face of episodes like The Cryonic Woman or The Futurama Holiday Spectacular. The relationship between Fry and Leela is the major pulse, of course. But there are many other romances that occupy the show's universe. Amy and her Smizmar, Kif. Mom and the irresistibly decrepit and bewrinkled Professor. Zapp and his vajankle.

There's some real love there. And the person we've judged to be the most drunk on love between various characters (and maybe a little drunk in general) is Gorky.

Come and make out with your trophy. You've earned it.



Best Thread (Ontopic)

Ontopic is a special place. And a terrible place. But a place with a place in our hearts (and the reason this place exists, as much as we forget it). And as such, Ontopic is full of very special and very terrible threads. Threads that delight. Threads that inspire. Threads that terrify. Threads that ruin things for you. Threads that make things uncomfortable when your very religious Aunt looks at what you're doing on the internet. That sort of thing.

And of all these threads, the most special and most terrible during this special and terrible year of 2023 has been: This thread is full of ship



Best Game Thread

We play a lot of silly games on PEEL. We're a little like reindeer in that respect. Except our games don't really come with any stakes, and reindeer games are played to the death. There will be blood on the ice, and it might be yours, so stay away! You've been warned. The reindeer are coming!

Does anybody remember that weird game where somebody took a word or phrase from an episode and made it into an anagram that you had to guess? PEELridge Farms remembers.

Anyhow, we've all really enjoyed this game thread in 2023: Morbotron



Worst Thread (Ontopic)

This award doesn't really need an explanation. There's a thread that's caused nothing but misery this year, nothing but frustration, and endless arguments. That thread is:  General Futurama Discussion. But the worst thread is the one that's just been a boring disappointment. It knows what it did:

When Does Disenchantment Take Place in Futurama's Timeline?



Worst Reviewer (Ontopic)

We have some good reviewers here. Some absolutely stellar review threads, which are positively going to be a loss to humanity on the day that PEEL is inevitably deleted from the internet. Some amazing reviews of episodes, and some superbly-crafted critiques that really could have been written by fully functioning human beings, if they hadn't been written by PEELers.

But not this shit sandwich. Not this fucking joke. Not this three-toed grapefruit licker. They are the worst. Naturally, we're talking about: Imy.



Biggest Crackpot

PEEL has its share of crackpots. Whether they're the crackpots talking about sequential universes when clearly the timeline is cyclical, or the crackpots telling everybody that they have a psychic connection to Fry, who really exists, and really will become their real boyfriend one day, or crackpots like the moderators, who still believe that if they do a good enough job maybe one day [-mArc-] will let them out of his basement.

But there's one who's a hair crazier than the rest, and doesn't even have a hotel in their foot. We checked. This PEELer has set an impressive bar for being unhinged, and if anybody wants to win this award the next time it's awarded, then they'd better step up their game if they want to beat: cyber_turnip



Best Fanfic

Since nobody posts fanfic here anymore, y'all should have expected this. It's not exactly the Spanish Inquisition. Strap on your stillsuit, enter the spice chamber, and inhale some poop dust for one last chance at precognitating the winner here. We're awarding the Best Fanfic award to Parasites Regained, the Futurama Fanfic / Dune Fanfic that nobody wanted.

You thought your votes mattered? Well, they might have done, had there been any fanfic to vote for.

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Off-topic Awards

Again, all awards presented and all speeches written by tnuc.

Best (Off-topic) Thread

This could only ever be won by PEEL's very own Test Thread. Y'all wasted your time and your votes for this foregone conclusion, and we're not sorry. The Test Thread is the winner. The Test thread will outlast you all. The Test thread is love. The Test thread is life. The Test thread is the warm embrace that will claim you at the end of your life as your living energies are recycled by the cosmos.

But in all seriousness, the Test Thread is close to being the beating heart of PEEL's Offtopic. And although that pulse has slowed, these threads still hit their twentieth page and go to their Carousel ceremony eventually. The only thing that's going to slow them down is, well, the slowdown of PEEL overall. As long as there are PEELers, there will be things that PEELers have to say which don't fit anywhere else.

All hail the Test thread!



Best PEELer

This award was going to be animated, but it's hard and I'm lazy. So instead, it looks like it's been handpainted by a six year old and dipped in pixels. That's just as good, right?

Rap. The best PEELer is the PEELer who's taken on the unenviable task of keeping PEEL up and running. Rrrap. The best PEELer is the PEELer who's interviewed the guy who made that programming language that nobody likes using. Rap. Rap, Rrap. Rraaap. The best PEELer is the PEELer who has a PEEL flag flying on their windmill, and has painted all of their garden gnomes PEEL blue.

Rap.

The best PEELer is Svip. If you thought otherwise, relax. Just breathe in and out for a second. Nothing's going to hurt you, there's no crime in being wrong, and there's no army of ducks mobilizing in Denmark to come break your door down in the dead of night and disappear you.

Rap, rap, rap.

Gorky won the award though. And don't get me wrong. She's a fine PEELer. It's just that now there will be one fewer fine PEELer in the world when that army of ducks hits like a whirlwind of beaks and feathers.

So enjoy the trophy while you can, Gorky. And RIP when the flurry of duck vengeance is over. We'll miss you.



Best Comeback

Xanfor. Nobody expected that one!

Wait, wait, wait, it looks like we actually have a real winner here in the form of coffeeBot. Xanfor didn't stick around past making one post, so I guess it's fair that we give the award to the popular choice. Xanfor, better luck next year!





Best Moderator

ACAB. Seriously guys. That includes all of your favourite PEEL moderators. We don't generally think about this, but anybody enforcing authority is included in ACAB. From Obi-Wan Kenobi to Prismo, all authority figures are either Lawful Evil or they're actually really bad at their jobs. And by not making any effort to fix the system that delegates that authority which has corrupted their souls, they've become awful people.

Even the Paw Patrol. Pure Copaganda, and child indoctrination.

There's only one exception, His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Samuel Vimes. And the second closest to him around here is: Tweek.

Show spoiler

And the only thing worse than a cop? A volunteer cop. Who'd be a fucking class traitor in service to the elite without at least selling their soul? How much of a slimeball do you have to be in order to be a cop without at least being paid for it?

Tweek won this, but we were planning on giving it to Tweek anyway since he's been the only person who isn't a duck who has done any moderating.



Best Administrator


Svip brought the place back from the dead, and Svip's the one paying me to write these. Svip writes the cheques, Svip writes the rules. And Svip... … … wait. I'm not getting paid?

Oh. I see.

Svip's the one generously not breaking my legs today, so Svip wins. Hail Svip!



Worst Administrator

There's only three to choose from and they're all pretty nice (except that cyborg guy. If you see him coming, run). But one of them is a less effective cog in the machine than the other two (probably the one who's not a cyborg or a duck). And obviously, Svip is the best administrator so he wasn't included on the poll. And I get to keep both of my kidneys. Everybody wins!

So you've chosen between them (anonymously, because you're all cowards), and you've come to a group consensus by (fittingly) the least overall effective process: democracy.

And the administrator who's less effective than the entire nation of Belgium is: Svip. Screw it, I don't need two kidneys.



Most Missed PEELer


There's a lot of folks who aren't here anymore. This place used to be busy. This place used to bustle. This place used to be alive. And now, as we look around these dusty halls and see the avatars of the long-departed, there's a certain emptiness that we feel.

PEEL is, these days, a lot less busy than it was. Folks just got bored, wandered off, acquired real lives, jobs, sexual partners, and in some cases, even became happy. And most of them haven't come back.

Then you've got the folks who metaphorically wandered off to die. Heck, there have been PEELers who literally died. And some we'll all worry and wonder about forever, because we haven't seen them in a long time and we never got to know them well enough to become friends on Facebook.

And let's not forget gimmick accounts that became inexplicably popular. Like that one guy who distributed Cadbury eggs around Easter. Even developed his own proprietary filling for them. Truly a generous soul.

But today we light a candle for one person who seems to have touched the hearts of many of us; a person we wish would come back and make just one more golden memory for us. Though they may never collect it, this award will sit and gather dust in the forgotten places in memory of: Xanfor.



Come back one day, please.

Worst PEELer


The worst PEELer was in all honesty probably that guy whose username the board won't let you type. But because we can't type it, we can't really give him the roasting he deserves. So prepare your rotten fruit and vegetables, warm up that poker, and head down to the PEEL stocks to give some public unappreciation to our winner for 2023.

The person we like the least, the person whose registration we'd delete if it wouldn't break the place, and the person who's on thinner ice than the Ross shelf right now is: winna.



Please note this is awarded fondly, and with love.

Worst Thread

So we've acknowledged that the most fun PEEL has to offer is the Test thread. But we haven't spoken about the least fun. We've not talked about how shitty some of the threads are that we see on this board. How vile, grimy, greasy, and nasty they are. How much they bring out the worst in people.

But enough about the Politics thread! The worst thread on PEEL is: The Test Thread.

Show spoiler

The original trophy had to be re-done because I wrote "The Teat Thread" on it the first time around.

Moist Missed PEELer

You read that right, and there's only one choice!

This guy.

Most Deranged PEELer

The madness is strong with this one. Reality is warped by their presence. Looking into their eyes may very well send you mad yourself.

This PEELer is being recognized for their sterling efforts at making the world a less sensible place, starting with themselves. Because that's something that, in the end, is a contribution to the great tapestry of humanity whether it's a good contribution or it isn't. And it probably isn't. But we gave an award to the person we hate the most, so we're clearly not just recognizing positive contributions. We're  obviously going through some stuff here. With tentacles, probably. Who doesn't love a good tentacle?

So yeah, we've all got a little of that sweet, sweet warp to our minds.

But not as much as Svip.



PEELer Least Changed by Time

The last PEELies were a decade ago. In that time, the world has changed enormously. We've had the first non-human President of the USA, we've had a deadly worldwide pandemic, we've had the Huluramasodes of the show that welcomed us to the world of tomorrow, and we've had some PEELers who've really changed. Some of them look different, some of them smell different, and some of them... ...well, some of them have stayed exactly the same. Some of them are the same people coming out of the last decade that they were going in.

Whilst we don't quite know how that happens, we can at least salute them for staying true to themselves and not enduring a passing fad like personal growth just for the sake of it.

The PEELer least changed by the passage of time has been (and forever shall be): Tachyon.



PEELer You'd Hate to Fight

There's always somebody you'd hate to fight, wherever you are. It could be that you're the new girl at school and you're being given the stink-eye by your regional equivalent of Regina George. It could be that you're a prison tough guy and now they're putting you in the exercise yard with Bane. It could be that you're just trying to live your life and you're getting weird vibes from the couple at the end of the bar. You're pretty sure they want to fight you, because they're making all kinds of uncalled-for eye contact and keep sending you drinks (obviously to lower your co-ordination and make you easier to beat the shit out of). You get the idea.

Whoever and wherever you are, there's always somebody you don't want to get into a fight with, because you're pretty sure they'd win. They'd mop the floor with you. They'd throw you around like Hulk giving Loki a taste of the floor. They'd wring you out like Scruffy transferring filth from a mop to his beloved washbucket.

And around here, it's the same PEELer for all of us.

Nobody wants to fight Svip. Because he'll ban you, and then unleash the secret army of ducks that definitely aren't coming for the people who didn't vote for him as the Best PEELer.



 The ULTIMATE PEELie

This is a Mega-PEELie.

This is an award that's only possible to give to the guy who both started PEEL, and has saved PEEL three times. The guy who pre-dates that German guy with the borg parts. The original PEELer. PEELer userid 1. PEEL's very own pope of a church you should really ask him about joining, PEEL's very own founder, laziest administrator, and the guy who invented the horse's penis (it's true!)... ... Slimmy.

We thank you. We salute you. We love you. But, if it's all the same, we're not going to touch you.

You'll forever hold a place in the nerdy, greasy, beady hearts of PEEL.

Thanks for everything.

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Closing Remarks, Again courtesy of tnuc:

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay in this subforum too much longer. It's dimensionally unstable and needs to be locked for your protection.

There were better speeches but I lost them. In a volcano. There was better art planned, but I'm a lazy girl who can barely drag herself off the couch to shower. One of these days I'll combine a shower, a couch, my work laptop, and a toilet and never need to move again.

However, there is a brief window during which the subforum will remain open for feedback. So leave a comment (while you can) if you enjoyed the PEELies, and if you didn't like it then keep your shitty opinions to your fucking self.

Thanks to everybody for taking part!