'maters

 ' maters were a long running joke back in the very earliest days of Daria fandom, approximately from 1998 to 2000. (The word is prononunced much like it is spelled, a dialect form of the word tomatoes.)

According to fan Yui Daoren, Daria fan Smoochy-Jane suggested that as a shipper, if people didn't like her Daria/Trent stories they should throw tomatoes at her. This led to Rey Fox throwing a tomato (in prose, of course) on the message board. Supposedly, Smoochy-Jane preferred the ' maters spelling because she didn't know how to spell tomatoes in plural form.

Daria fans would later imbue each form of ' mater with special abilities.

Examples
pink ' mater

Fans hit with a pink ' mater will have the urge to write about Daria and Trent as a couple.

white ' mater

This ' mater neutralizes the effects of other ' maters.

black ' mater

This ' mater gives those hit with it the urge to kill or maim a major character in their writing.

ChewAsha ' mater

This ' mater gives those hit with it a Wookie-like appearance with the grammar to match.

The Killing Frost
Like any in-joke, the use of ' maters slowly dwindled away, leaving only puzzled fans who might read 'mater references in the works of early fans such as Crazy Nutso.

Links
'mater types at the Web Archive