throw it in the craft bank
A quick lunch time doodle of Haruka and Michiru for a friend <3
More you might like
finding job…. hard…… i’m only a baby…. no experience….. just baby. i am baby. please hire me
“but AO3 *wants* writers on their platform, writers are providing a service for them, that’s how they get content.”
no, they are PROVIDING you a platform. for your content. as a service to you.
please, please, please learn how the internet works.
the companies that WANT you on the platform are the companies that are SELLING YOU TO ADVERTISERS.
*Facebook* wants you on their platform. *Tumblr* wants you on their platform. *FF.net* wants you on their platform. You are Facebook’s product. Facebook is not a service to you. It is an incentive for you to give them eyes and data to sell. And the second your eyes and data stop being profitable they will toss you under the bus.
That’s why fans made AO3. So we had a space that was ours, that wasn’t profiting off of us, so we wouldn’t get sold out.
In general, if you get something for free online, it means you’re not the customer–you’re the product. (That is, as said above, your viewership or data is being sold to third parties.)
AO3 doesn’t fall into that category, however, because it’s a paid service–it’s just that other members of fandom who donate during the donation drives (or outside the donation drives) are paying for non-donating members too/open-access. Because *as a community* we know that we’re greater in larger numbers so we help each other out when we have the capacity to do-so.
AO3 is a paid-service, but it’s a Non-Profit–they’re not *making* any money. Everything they raise goes back into the service itself.
It’s not that AO3 *doesn’t* want writers to provide content–I’m sure they do as that’s the function of the Archive. But as OP said, that’s more about providing *us* with a platform than us providing them with content.
By that thought process we are the product, because the fandom is paying to have access to our works through donation pools. Someone is making money. But not us. We as content creators on the platform are not allowed to monetize ourselves or we get banned from the platform.
…
Would that technically make that exploitation?
I don’t think that it’s exploitation, and here’s why :
First, donations are entirely voluntary. You will never be forced to pay to use ao3 and will never be blocked from accessing its services if you are a free user.
Second, these donations go entirely to maintaining the archive, since this is a non-profit organisation. Meaning no one financially benefits from ao3’s donation drives, or even the existence of ao3 itself.
Third, the reason we can’t monetize works posted on ao3 has nothing to do with ao3 itself.
It’s because since ao3 is a fanwork archive, the only way for them to be allowed is if the fanworks aren’t monetized, and thus respect fair use and are not “stealing” profits away from the franchises these works are derived from. That’s why content creators who monetize the works they put on ao3 get banned. (and FYI, you’re not supposed to make money off of fanworks, according to the law. That’s copyright infringement. The reason people do on Tumblr is that Tumblr doesn’t have the staff to ban the people who do)
Plus ao3 has a legal team that can help the writers on their platforms if they receive cease-and-desist letters from the copyright holders.
So no, it’s not exploitation, in this case. It’s just respecting the copyright law (however dumb it may be in some cases) and protecting fanwriters from lawsuits.
AO3 is a socialist model, not a capitalist one. the purpose of the service is not to generate profit; it’s simply to store and archive fanworks for easy access both now and for posterity. the purpose of the donation drives is not to rack up huge paychecks and bonuses for some faceless executives; it’s to cover basic running costs of the site.
the site continues to run and provide completely free, ad-less access to fan works (no catch, no hidden clauses, no nasty surprises) because some members of the fan community choose to donate to the archive to keep it up and running. those who can afford it and value the service donate funds to keep it running, so that anyone and everyone who wants to read fanworks can do so, for free, without having their data harvested or adverts shoved in their faces.
i.e. it is collectively funded by members of the community so that the entire community can benefit, free-at-the-point-of-access, to a vast collection of fan content. kinda like universal healthcare.
Also please remember that the team behind behind AO3 i s made up of volunteers who donate their time and knowledge and effort for free to produce a highly functional, user-friendly website with a great interface and they keep updating it and adding features -that we might never have thought to ask for- that make our experience there easier and more enjoyable and they give all that to us for free and more importantly Ad-free. And i honestly don’t know how people can go on there and still think they’re exploiting their users!!
Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.
Shout out to people like me who have parents who are loving but are black holes of emotional labor… It took me a long time to realize that it’s okay to have mixed feelings about your parents, about your relationship with them.
Sometimes parents can love you but be somewhat toxic to you and your growth, and that’s a very hard realization to come to if you, like me, grew up extremely close to them.
Sometimes parents can love you genuinely but lack emotional maturity, forcing you to perform disproportionate amounts of emotional labor. Some parents manifest symptoms of their mental illness in ways that are toxic to your mental illness.
Some parents, like mine, try so hard to be good parents but fall back on habits of emotional manipulation because they haven’t processed their own traumas and are modeling behavior they grew up with. That doesn’t make their behavior acceptable, and it’s okay to feel exhausted and hurt when they betray you. You don’t have to forgive every mistake.
I want you to know that it’s okay to protect yourself, to need some space apart from them. The love you have for your parents is still valid, and you are making the right decision.
Placing a safe emotional distance between myself and my parents has been one of the most difficult, heartbreaking processes I’ve ever gone through… it hurts to try to curb the strength of your own natural empathy around people you love. It feels disingenuous to your heart’s natural state.
But I promise you, you are not hard-hearted or ungrateful, and you are not abandoning them. You are making a decision about your own emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
I know what it’s like in that confusing grey area of love mixed with guilt and anxiety, of exhaustion and quasi-manipulation and unreciprocated emotional labor, and I promise you, you are not alone.
Your mixed feelings about your parents are valid.
Thank you thank you thank you bless this post ohmygod thank you