Xiaq on A03. EL Massey for published work.
Anyone who thinks em dashes are a sign of AI is welcome to go look at my decade plus of AO3 history.
i actually never ever want AO3 to be censored bc nothing is more fun than reading the tags on a fic and going “huh. didn’t know there was a market for that.”
squinting at a tag and trying to decide how badly I want to learn a new word
peering at the incognito window between my fingers like
Getting a new work notification from one of your favorite Ao3 authors, excitedly opening the fic, only to read the tags like
Anonymous asked:
Pretty bold of you to put your AO3 handle in your Instagram bio. Especially when you’ve been writing there for 10+ years. I would never. lol.
xiaq answered:
Skill issue.
I have no guilt in my pleasures and no shame in my progress.
anon. anon do you know who xiaq is. do you understand how many people followed her FROM fandom. if a person has the self-assurance to write fic, rewrite and publish it as original work, and then write and post fic OF THAT PUBLISHED WORK on the same platform do you really think she's going to fall for that shame-trip. skill issue indeed. xiaq is living the life most of us can only dream.
It took a good long while for my therapist to get me to a place where I was like, “yeah, my old writing sucks but it’s supposed to. I should constantly be improving and seeing evidence of that progress is a good thing.” Let’s all try to be a little healthier about the way we view the fruits of our creative labors over time, yeah?
Anonymous asked:
Pretty bold of you to put your AO3 handle in your Instagram bio. Especially when you’ve been writing there for 10+ years. I would never. lol.
Skill issue.
I have no guilt in my pleasures and no shame in my progress.
I’m ready. Are you?
I feel like there are 3 categories of writers that I subscribe to on AO3.
There are those that will jump to a new fandom and I’ll get the email alert and be looking at the character tags like
“…nah. I’ll skip this one.”
There are those who jump to a new fandom and I’ll be like, “Oh, interesting. I know nothing about this world or these people, but if X is writing it I’ll probably enjoy it.”
But then.
Then there are those who jump to a new fandom and I get the email and I say, “Fuck.”
Because I already know that I will read it. I will adore it. I will fall terribly in love with their version of this world and these characters. And then I will spend weeks if not months backtracking to consume the original content and then combing through other fic fruitlessly chasing the high of that original, perfect, gateway fic, never again quite reaching the initial euphoria that set me down this path.
B would like you all to know that this is what I look like when I read fic at night. Very flattering, I know.
In today’s edition of stupid ass comments to leave on a fic.
i was talking about this with a friend a few days ago and since then i've seen multiple posts of various sorts that have just made me think about it more, so. here is me breaking down a disconnect i see particularly with younger members of the marauders fandom (i say marauders specifically just bc that's the only one i'm plugged into):
Hey folks. I know AHTU is gone on AO3. I’m working on it. And while it’s definitely the most frustrating interaction I’ve had with support, it’s the only frustrating interaction I’ve had with support over 10 yrs and I definitely do NOT want anyone sending messages/causing angst for other volunteers just because of one situation. I’m doing my best to get it resolved and while I appreciate the offers, messages on my behalf would be….harassment. And not actually help.
It’s rare I get truly batshit comments, but when I do they really go big or go home.
Hey friends! I’ve started getting royalties for LRPD (and frankly sales are way better than I anticipated which is really, really cool). Since I’m actually (finally) in a good place financially with my full-time job, I want to give a certain percentage of it back to fandom in some way, since LRPD wouldn’t have happened without AO3 and Tumblr. I’m thinking of just donating to AO3 but I thought I’d check and see if folks had other suggestions as well.
So. Any suggestions?
Yknow what while I’m here I know we as a website agreed to oppress the business majors but all the bullshit that comes around every April over ao3’s business practices makes me think we should’ve kept at least one to explain to people how nonprofits, despite their name, still need money to function and do not in fact run on rainbows and dreams alone
Woo! It’s a good thing y’all didnt oppress accounting majors because we understand this stuff better than business majors. (We were around before capitalism and we’re already set up for after capitalism.)
First things first - I dont regularly use or donate to AO3 but I have made an account to see what the fuss was about. Fanfiction just isnt my thing but I see why people like it.
AO3 is a 501©(3) organization. What that means - No Profit for owners or investors. What that does NOT mean - no cash at year end or not paying employees a livable wage/salary. If you’re contrivance with a non-profit is that they allow their employees to survive under capitalism, then you need to rethink your priorities.
That being said, AO3 has no employees. All work is volunteer based. ABSOLUTELY ZERO people are making money from this site. (Outside of contractors and professionals who are vendors and not affiliated with AO3.)
I’m going to break down the 2019 Audited Financials because that’s the most recent. And compare them to the budget and notes:
The auditor’s opinion is “unmodified.” That means these are as accurate as they get.
Their assets: $1.3M in cash. $197k in the value of the servers. (That’s the price they bought the servers minus depreciation. Depreciation is a tool we use to slowly devalue fixed assets over time. Without it, companies would recognize huge losses at year end when they sell old assets. That’s not reliable information when you’re trying to analyze the financials.) Why would a non-profit need a million dollars in cash? Partly to fund the next year’s work - it looks like they’re trying to bring on new servers which can cost upwards of $400k each time. They also have a history of protecting fans from people like Anne Rice who wants to sue them into debt and oblivion. We’ll talk about the legal stuff later. But in the case they would lose an expensive case, they need funds on hand to pay that out.
Revenues - this is the money in. They received $733k in donations and the like. Their expenses are about 37% of these. Which tells me, they are focused on managing their cash balance, and doing well. Again. No organization would survive if they had no cash at year end.
You might see the “In-Kind Revenue” and not know what that means. $190k is a big amount. But if you look at their expense statement on page (4) you’ll see “In-Kind Expenses” for the same $190k. In-kind means services in kind of cash. Or services instead of cash. So they had $190k of pro-bono (donated) legal work in 2019. They mention it in the budget and later in the audit footnotes. There are other “professional fees” for about $28k. That’s also legal/audit work but they had to pay cash for. It wasn’t donated.
Cash expenses:
Server fees = $79k (these are higher than 2018 because they installed a new server.)
Transaction fees = $27k (these are charges from your banks/credit cards/paypal to process donations. They are roughly 3% of donations which is about correct.)
Contractor fees = $15k (the budget noted they paid for a security test - this is actually a pretty low cost for something like this.)
Supplies = $14k (I couldn’t find notes on this but it’s similar to 2018, so it’s probably just normal business things.)
Postage = $12k (This is high compared to 2018, but I hazard a guess it’s related to sending out promotional items for donations.)
Advertising = $10k (looks like a new cost this year, but is related to fundraising efforts. And might be related to those promo items.)
Other non-cash expenses:
In-kind = $190k (those donated lawyer fees we talked about earlier.)
Depreciation = $74k (again this is an accounting process that every company with fixed assets does.)
The cash flows statement just confirms which expenses were and weren’t cash. And it shows us that they have $1.3M available for the next year. Glancing at the 2020 budget they planned on spending a third of that to upgrade servers. And they have another $400k budgeted for 2021. Honestly to me, the cash looks low considering some years (2018 in particular,) their legal work was valued at half a million. There is a risk that they would have to pay that amount out of pocket the same year they plan to bring on a new server upgrade.
So all in all, if you want to donate to AO3, this looks like a reliable organization to donate to. There is no evidence in the financials that they don’t deserve the donations. (And if you do donate, remember it is a tax credit!) I also don’t see any verifiable reasons not to donate. If you have other places you would rather place your donation, that’s fine! Do that! But there doesn’t seem to be a reason to campaign against their fundraising efforts.
