coaltide | Don't Stop Coal Now!

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2021

Don't Stop Coal Now!

Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real coal time
I feel alive
And the exchange I'll turn it inside out, yeah
I'm floating around in agony
So, (don't stop me now)
(Don't stop me)
'Cause I'm having a coal time, having a coal time~

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Yeah. "Coal" implies either spite or incompetence. "Well, this was okay, but I didn't like it" is more like underpants. White cotton underpants.

+1

Yeah, I tend to think of coal as "holy shit, that was crap" -- either because the writer went totally against the recipient's wants in a really clear way, or execution that is just ridiculously poor.

I disagree. Over the years I've received plenty of good faith gifts that were coal for me. It doesn't have to have been spiteful or incompetent to make me miserable when I see it there on my Gifts page and remember the disappointment all over again.

Then you're too delicate to participate in exchanges.

+ 0.5

All my worst gifts were probably good faith attempts. But if something makes me miserable to see on my gifts page, I reject without regret (and I would hope that a recipient I inadvertently made unhappy does the same thing).

Wow, I flinched reading this. You do you, but I wouldn't reject a gift unless it was actually offensive, not just something I disliked. It's Yuletide, and you got a present from your hippie aunt who just knew you'd want hand-crocheted yak-fur menstrual pads, and she crocheted them herself. You grimace and thank her and throw them away privately. You do not tell your aunt about how you feel, and that's what the reject button does.

Then tell me, how does one privately get rid the fic so that I never have to look at it again?

It makes them miserable, coalie. Why do you want them to keep it?

(I think it's weird if people "curate" their gifts page so that it only has stuff they REALLY like or can bear other people to think they're into, but this may be a hypothetical evil unicorn situation and possibly no one actually does that.)

I really don't like that AO3 doesn't offer any middle ground between throwing the hand-crocheted llama fur pads in her face, and putting them on display on the mantel. There really should be an option for saying a graceful thank you and then tucking them in the drawer in the guest room closet, never to be seen again. I wish we at least had the option of setting our gifts page private, so people don't have to worry that people will judge them for the gifts they've had.

(I also wish the people who want their gifts page to be a perfect gem-box of only things they love most of all would learn to use bookmarks instead.)

AYRT You are absolutely right.

Ayrt

Comparing real life gifts from family and friends to fic exchange gifts is never very useful. Not only does AO3 have no option to "throw away privately", but the etiquette is also very different. When I get a terrible gift from a relative (or vice versa), we'll talk about it so it won't happen again. "Okay, look, I know you meant well, I love you, but please don't ever gift me the fic equivalent of menstrual pads again, and now let's get drunk and forget about it" is not a thing you can say to your Yuletide author.

If you don't want to reject exchange gifts ever even when you hate them, then you don't have to. But other people feel differently, and that's what the exchange button is for.

+1

You have a pre-existing and ongoing relation with the person giving you the gift, among other reasons this is just not a helpful analogy.

Man I would be way more likely to say that to a fellow fan than to Aunt Babs.

AYRT I'm going to accept that this is a personal cringe of mine. I do wish that there were, as another coalie suggested, a way to hide a fic from your gift list without also sending a "You suck" message to the writer. For me -- and, again, feelings are not facts -- "Reject Gift" is the cut direct of AO3.

In my family, you never, ever tell Aunt Babs you didn't like her gift. The rule is that gifts are expressions of affection, and you accept those, period. It helps that I don't have the sort of family that gives passive-aggressive self-improvement gifts.

Telling family members that their gift is not ideal is probably not helpful in case of passive-aggressive self-improvement gifts anyway, it only helps in case of well-meant but completely misguided gifts. Like if your Aunt Babs thinks you're still into knitting because you had a phase five years ago and now gives you yarn every year, or if she missed that you outgrew the dinosaur kid phrase when you were 12. I always think it's better to be more honest there rather than lie to their face and let them keep giving you terrible gifts until one of you dies, and fortunately all my family has a no nonsense attitude about that where we can discuss these things and share a laugh about it afterwards.

DC

I use AO3 Savior. I thank them for the ugly sweater, add the story title to my block list, and ask the mods of subsequent exchanges not to match us.

I'm glad there's a Refuse Gift option now for your sake! But yeah, if a good faith gift makes you miserable, that's setting you up for a lot of misery.

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