Morbane's coal

[coalcube]

In quantum wankchanics, Morbane's coal is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, of quantum wankerposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical gift may be considered simultaneously both the fic of your dreams (TFOYD) and coal, while it is unread state, as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.

The Coaltide interpretation implies that, after a while, the gift is simultaneously TFOYD and coal. Yet, when a coalie clicks on their gift, the coalie sees the gift either TFOYD or coal, not both TFOYD and coal. This poses the question of when exactly quantum wankerposition ends and reality resolves into one possibility or the other.

Madness Opens: Tuesday 26 December
Author Reveals: Monday 1 January


Yuletide Discord for Hippos & Exchanges After Dark Discords for Namespace drama 18+ discussion. Google Group for PHs.

yuletide | yuletide_admin | App
2023 Collection | Tagset

Flat / Recent | Top-Level (Last) | FAQ | Search

Comments

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

How is rejection and not commenting any different from not commenting? It sounds like you want to be excused from the social contract (of saying thank you for a bad gift) while not being accountable for your behavior (removing your name from the gift via rejection).

Sorry, but that is in fact the kind of behavior that, if most people did it, would make exchanges impossible. Which is why it is rude.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

How is rejection and not commenting any different from not commenting?

Noncommenters suck because they don't acknowledge the gift and leave you in limbo. Do they hate it? Do they love it and are too anxious to comment? Did something terrible happen to them? Did they never get the gift notification? There is no way of knowing, no closure.

Rejection might sting, but at least it's a reaction and you know where you stand.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

But AO3's rejection button was designed for extreme cases of DNW breaking, harassment, or other scenarios where the gifter might know what they "did". Because of this, the feature design doesn't notify the gifter of rejection. You're assuming people who get their gifts rejected are checking the gift over and over and noticing that it's been rejected. I'm saying I think that's a reach.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

You don't even need to check the gift itself, you can already see it on your profile. If you never go to either the gift or your profile again after you posted that gift, then it's probably a non-issue anyway lol.

Maybe rejecting a gift after two weeks or two months will fly under the radar. Insta-rejecting a gift rarely does.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

...do people typically have their assignment count memorized? Do people typically browse their own fic profiles and actually notice the details? This is not consistent with my experience.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

Most people will notice if a work they just gifted someone and are eagerly waiting for comments and kudos on suddenly isn't gifted to that person anymore.

A couple months later? Maybe not, if you really must reject a gift and you wait a couple months to do it probably nobody will notice. But in the anon period they almost definitely will.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

I think you are assuming a level of surveillance and investment that is inconsistent with many exchange participants'.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

I really don't think they are.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

What are you even talking about? Rejection doesn't change your assignment count, so memorizing it isn't relevant. If you look on your profile or the fandom page or the ship page or literally anywhere where your fic appears, it says "[title] for [recipient]". When the recip rejects, the "for [recipient]" is gone. You'd have to be incredibly unobservant not to notice that about a fic that only just revealed.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

Nonny, I can count on one hand the number of times I have looked at headers of my own work after posting. I scroll right to the bottom. Half the time I don't even remember which things I've posted are gifts. This is what I'm saying, you are relying on a feature that isn't intended for this use and making wild assumptions about what other people will do or notice that I am dubious actually play out how you expect IRL, all so you can avoid having to either explicitly communicate distaste or suck it up and tell a white lie for the sake of the group activity.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

You don't have to look at the header, you don't even have to open the work at all. It shows directly on your dashboard and on your works page.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I don't spend much time at all on my dashboard. Why would I?

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

Half the time I don't even remember which things I've posted are gifts

Well, if you're so casual about it, then who cares? You won't notice anyway, so why are you going on about how rude it is?

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

Again you're acting like people reject gifts at random. Ah, Aquarius in rising, I'll reject this exchange gift. It's not how it works.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

DA read this as "Aquatics is rising" and was very confused for a moment.

(But +1 on what you actually said!)

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

No, I'm saying that this weird idea that you can game away from people whose work you hate by rejecting a gift only works if a small minority of people do this. If everyone is rejecting any time they dislike a gift, exchanges become impossible to run.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

They don't, actually, because most people aren't persistent trolls who dislike every gift they receive but keep doing exchanges anyway because they get their jollies off of harassing people.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

...what does that have to do with what I said?

If an exchange has 500 participants, and 1% of gifts are rejected (this is based on nonny rejecting 3-5 gifts out of a "mid three figure" number) then you'll have 5 rejections and pinch hits (if the exchange does that) each round. Can you not see how that becomes unwieldy with time?

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

Who gives pinch hits based on rejections? I've never seen any exchange do that. Can you quit making shit up and go back to FFA so you can get frozen?

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

No, you're right, I was thinking of Yuletide rejections for rule breaking. Still, though, you're looking at a sizeable number of people with DNMs, explicit (if the exchange allows) or implicit (by way of tagset gaming). The issues this kind of behavior create are literally why exchange etiquette has historically encouraged people to be gracious and move on, and I don't find the arguments that rejection is clearer than either communicating the issue or sucking it up and leaving a nice comment persuasive.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

Being gracious and lying about your gift is going to cause more DNMs, not fewer, for reasons that have already been explained to you.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

rejection is clearer than either communicating the issue

No one said this. Of course actually telling people "I really hated this, please never write for me again" would be *clearer*. But the clearest approach is not always the most feasible and I don't blame people for not being willing to be that openly confrontational in namespace.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure more than 1% of gifts get rejected overall.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

I was lowballing the number because the higher the number, the bigger a PITA for exchange mods, which supports my argument but feels dishonest given the rejection rate (for their own gifts over the years) nonny reported.

Re: Potentially Fresh Wank?

[(Anonymous)]

Rejected gifts don't matter at all to the mods though. I mod things, I literally could not tell you if or how many gifts are rejected after the fact because it doesn't matter.

Every single person in one of my exchanges could reject their gift and as long as none of them were eligible for an EPH I might not even notice until FFA started wanking about it.