hey ao3 can you like give the extra $38k you made from this month’s funds drive to charity
You know it legally is a charity, right?
If x charity aims for £10, but gets £15, would you expect then to give back the extra five or give it then to another charity? No. Any extra costs go into the “rainy day” fund; sometimes servers crash or break, sometimes false reports are made that require the legal team, sometimes you need to hire coders or what not to implement new features or fix bugs or deal with broken code …
The money they aimed for is the bare minimum, which goes towards things like basic server costs and domain names and legal advice and so forth, but they don’t just “pocket” the rest (as people claim). It’s not a business. It has no advertisements. It needs some “rainy day” cash to function.
You can’t ask a charity to give money to another charity.
They don’t “pocket” excess money. They have a
publicly accessible budget – waaaay more info than most charities, in
fact. In it, you can clearly see where each dollar goes. (Also, you are
vastly underestimating either how much traffic AO3 gets or how much
servers/hosting costs.)
In my experience, people who don’t work in web design and hosting just have no concept of how heavy a load something like AO3 would have. Not only is the traffic absolutely buck wild, but the quantity of data that archive needs to store is fuckoff crazy.
I’m talking “more than the library of congress” crazy. The only reason
it doesn’t require Netflix levels of data serving is that it’s text
based rather than video.
AO3 is in the top 300 websites in the world, and the top 100 in the US. It is the number 2 literature website.
Number 2 in the entire world. JSTOR is 20.
It sees about 6 million people a day.
About 250k an hour. Each of those people is loading multiple pages, many are running
searches that execute on literally hundreds of potential variables per
search. The demands involved are astronomical.
JSTOR, btw, makes 85 million dollars a year.
It’s 18 ranks below AO3′s traffic, and takes in 650 times the amount of money.
But let’s say you think that’s an unfair comparison. Would you say that the Project Gutenberg Literature Archival Group- another text based archive that handles literature operating outside traditional copyright requirements- is more similar?
Because it sees all of 4% of the traffic that AO3 handles.
Care to guess its budget?
Double that of AO3.
AO3 is doing shit on the kind of shoestring budget that I fully, 100% cannot comprehend. And that’s just the archival service.
The 130k also pays for the OTW’s legal team, which they use to defend the right of fandom to fucking exist.
It’s
absolutely batshit fucked up that people are fighting to have the OTW
defunded and AO3 shut down. They are the only organized group that
actually stands directly between fandom- all the art and the fics and
the vids and the music and the chats and the memes and everything we
love about interactive, transformative work- and an incalculable amount of lawsuits.
The number of people on this blue hellsite who apparently do not understand how nonprofits work is mind-boggling (pro tip: by definition, THEY DON’T MAKE A PROFIT), as is the number of people with no idea about the cost of running something that gets that much traffic.
The rain had been
falling for hours by the time Akira stepped out of the door to
Leblanc with his umbrella in hand. He slipped his hand into his
pocket to pull his phone out and check for any new messages. He had
one.
Wating at
Shibuya for you. Bring an umbrella, as I forgot mine at home.
“Of course you did,” Akira chuckled as he popped his umbrella
open and pocketed his phone again. He pulled his jacket a bit closer
to him as he stepped out from under the awning and began walking
towards the nearby train station. As he walked, his thoughts drifted
off to the events of the last few weeks.
Akechi had joined their group in an effort to catch whoever had been
causing the mental shutdowns recently. Akira commended his sense of
justice and determination, and also commended just how damn good of a
liar Akechi could be. They hadn’t realized just what Akechi wanted to
actually happen, but when they had Akira’s heart had broken.
Akira had run into Akechi more than a few times before actually
finally joining the other Thieves in their endeavors. When Akechi had
begun to show up at Leblanc, Akira had finally sat down and decided
to get to know the detective better. What had started as simple
chatter had eventually evolved into deep-meaning conversations about
the ethics of the Phantom Thieves and the theories surrounding the
mental shutdowns. After that, their conversations drifted to hobbies
and foods and before Akira knew it he had kissed Akechi one afternoon
in his room with a flushed face and his heart hammering in his chest.
Normally so calm and collected, Akira had begun stuttering and
sputtered in embarrassment before Akechi had silenced him with
another kiss.
They had been dating for roughly a month when Akechi had finally
joined them. Akira wished he could have felt excitement at finally
being able to openly introduce Akechi as his lover, but a nagging
feeling brought on by his conversation with Morgana only filled his
stomach with a sense of dread and foreboding. Hell, he’d even argued
with Morgana that no way in hell could Akechi be responsible
for anything. He didn’t have a violent bone in his body. All Akira
had seen had been soft-spoken, sweet Akechi who would sooner stuff
his face with pancakes and coffee than hurt anyone.
When Akira had found out about Akechi’s plans, about the planned
faked suicide, Akira refused to believe it. Even after hearing the
audio files for himself he couldn’t. He had asked Futaba and Morgana
to leave him alone and had simply crawled onto his bed to cry for the
next few hours. In fact he had ended up crying himself to sleep with
a pounding headache and sore eyes. The next morning he had trudged
downstairs with a heavy heart and red eyes. Even Sojiro had noticed
how upset Akira seemed. He chugged down three cups of coffee before
leaving for school. His phone buzzed the entire time, and when he
finally checked his messages he almost felt sick.
I was wondering
if you wanted to meet up for a date today after school. There’s a
wonderful new diner that I’ve found and hoped you would accompany me?
Akira dear, are
you still asleep? You should be awake by now.
Love, did
something happen in the Metaverse yesterday while we were separated?
Please let me know you’re alright. I’m worried.
Akira almost didn’t answer him, but his heart wouldn’t let him.
I’m fine. Sorry.
Had a long night and didn’t sleep well. I don’t have anything to do
tonight, so we can have a date night.
Good! I have
something to take care of just after school ends, so you’ll have time
to go home to Leblanc and change. Wear something nice?
Like I don’t
always dress nice.
Akira stopped in Shibuya square to stare up at the overcast skies
dropping frigid rain down onto the city. His whole world had fallen
down around him, and the pieces had scattered everywhere. He didn’t
know where to begin in picking them all up. He wondered if maybe
Akechi had planned to make Akira fall for him from the beginning, use
that relationship to his advantage and shift the blame off of him.
Given the fact that Akira would be dead soon, he couldn’t help but
feel that had been what Akechi wanted. And that hurt.
A low rumble of thunder pulled him out of his thoughts and reminded
him that he had a purpose at Shibuyaa. He stepped inside and went to
shut his umbrella, but a hand on his stopped him.
“I was beginning to wonder if you were taking your sweet time just
to mess with me,” a voice said, sending shivers down Akira’s spine.
“I hope I didn’t make you wait too long.”
“Nah, I just got here. Don’t worry,” Akira said, bringing a hand
down to lace his fingers with Akechi’s as they began walking down the
street. The rain had started coming down harder now, and Akechi
pressed himself against Akira’s side for extra warmth. They came to a
stop in front of a diner that Akira had seen with an “Opening Soon!” sign in its door for what felt like ages.
“This is it. Hopefully it lives up to the hype. I would feel awful
dragging you out here for a sub-par date with mediocre food.” Akira
chuckled and brought the umbrella down just a tad to cover their
faces from any passersby that might get curious.
“Any date with you is a good date,” he said and leaned in close
for a sweet kiss. If Akira didn’t know any better he would think he
felt a knife in his back and a wicked smile against his lips. He
squeezed Akechi’s hand tightly to keep himself from breaking his
facade and screaming. He didn’t know what his plan would be going
forward, or how he would address his relationship, but he knew he
wouldn’t be able to ignore it much longer.
He hoped and prayed that maybe, just maybe, Akechi would change his
mind and work with them to help change Sae’s heart without it killing
Akira. But Akira wouldn’t hold his breath on that.
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