What are gifts you'd love to recieve?

[caracalled]

Today I was thinking about how when I was a child it must've been easy to give me gifts, some outdoor explorer set and maybe some legos and boom done! Making wishlists also seems very much socially accepted for kids but not for adults.
But nowadays it seems like gifting is a lot more difficult since people have very specific hobbies and unless you know a person well, it can be difficult to find out about these things. On top of that their interests might be the kind where you don't really know what to gift unless you're also very into that thing (e.g. music synthesizers, cameras, etc).
I personally also don't really like clutter/overconsumption and prefer gifts that I can actually use, even if they're really mundane. A lot of the gift giving advice I see out there is also really distant from pretty much anyone's personality (unless you are a man who really likes leather, generic wristwatches and mini whiskey tasting sets).

So, questions to you:
What would be something you would genuinely love to receive as a gift if you could pick anything? How do you feel about gift giving culture as a whole? What have been some good gifts you've received or some really bad ones?

I would really love to receive a big spool of darning thread, since mine always runs out and I can only buy small 15m packets at the local store.
The best gift I've received in recent years was from my current partner, who gave me a miyoo mini handheld for emulation, knowing that I had been looking to play some retro games and get into emulation but also that i would love messing around with it and customizing it by installing a new OS and going through the subreddit/other online communities dedicated to it. I would've never looked for it myself but I love that little thing and I also know he got up at ungodly hours to order it.

[bugfeli]

i have very mixed opinions about gifts, on one hand i love giving and, more importantly, creating gifts for people! i put a lot of time and effort into gifts i make since most of them are crafts or customized things. however i'm not too keen on receiving them because my way of reacting to them isn't very grand, i've never been too good with emotions, and it's hard to properly convey how much i like a gift that isn't just "wow" or "nice". so in the end i always worry people think i hate their gifts when it's really the opposite!

i've gotten some pretty good gifts from friends which are usually some analog media they found at thrift stores or in their attics. although one gift that really stood out to me was my very first DVD player when I was about six or seven, i think that really kickstarted my love for old films at a young age. I still keep it on my shelf even though it's way too broken to be worth more than sentimental value.

anyways a gift i'd adore right now would probably be the original black christmas movie on DVD (or VHS!) since the last time i looked it was upwards of about 90 dollars !? (id probably feel awful someone spent that much money on me though)

[starbreaker]

I've come to hate receiving gifts because so many of them feel like new and unwanted obligations. I'm hiding the most egregious example I can think of in a spoiler block because it involves medical shit.

Spoiler

Case in point: a few years ago my parents gave my wife and me the right to use their timeshare for a week. We could stay at any of a particular chain's hotels in the US. The thing is, I couldn't afford to take a vacation, even though I got paid time off, because my wife had fucking breast cancer and I was burning up my paid time off and "disposable income" taking care of her. (And, frankly, if I was going to go to the hassle of traveling I wanted to get the fuck out of the USA for a little while. Maybe visit a country where I had to try speaking a language other than English, or just take my wife back home to visit her family for a change.)

And every time I spoke to my parents, once we got past "how's $WIFE" it was always, "So, where are you gonna go on vacation?" Not even once was I asked how I was doing, or how I was doing, even though I was doing everything I could to put on a brave front for my wife and not tell her that I was scared shitless that we didn't find the tumor in time or that the treatment wouldn't work or that she'd die on the fucking operating table. Because she was the one who actually had cancer, she was as scared as I was, and she didn't need me falling apart on her.

Of course, my wife's better now. My father's dead (of cancer), and we don't speak to my mother any longer.

[close]

The worst part is that I've also soured on giving gifts because it feels like I'm imposing unwanted obligations on other people. Frankly, I just hate being part of a society and if I wasn't married I'd be content to not have people in my life. Just cats.

[andou]

i can provide both a realistic answer and a non-realistic answer to this

REALISTIC: i genuinely prefer handmade gifts over anything else. one year, for christmas, someone i barely knew at work knitted me a scarf. it was such a sweet gift that i will remember it forever, despite no longer being in contact with the person or ever really getting close to them in the first place...

a really good gift for me is usually commissioning art or drawing art yourself of my OCs! i don't know, i just think handmade gifts leave a bigger impression on me. they feel like they mean something more. they come from the heart! of course i appreciate a purchased gift, but i don't think it leaves a lasting impression like artwork does.

UNREALISTIC: $20,000 motion capture suit. maybe one day i will have a sugar daddy for this one.