Every year, multiple times a year, they convince ppl to fork out thousands of dollars and….literally nothing changes. There’s no doubt in my mind they’re pocketing most of this money lol
Yep
That’s what’s so wild to me. They’ve made exactly 0 changes other than adding the ‘Exclude’ tags and that def doesn’t take 130k.
You know if any of you actually bothered to click the link it’ll take you to their budget update and break down exactly what the spend the money on, over 70% of which is spent on server expenses, monitoring tools and system licences.
They also spent a good amount of the rest of the 30% budget on significant server overhaul costs.
AO3 is literally a service you get for free and the audacity you’d have to not bother reading the very open budget plan they have, but to then bitch and whine about people donating to keep the site running is wild.
Is OP for real? Do you….I mean. Do you have any concept about the cost involved in servers to sustain AO3? Do you understand the work they do to preseve fan works (the archive part of the name is not coincidental) and defend fan rights?
Do you have any idea how lucky you are to have a site like AO3?? Because. We totally are.
Look. Its a voluntary drive. They are not saying, donate or we’ll close your profile. They are literally saying (In an easily collapsible banner, ffs, you can x out) that hey–we need money. You can donate. This is what we’re spending it on. Thanks!
It is the least intrusive drive I see anywhere online. And if you’re so tired of seeing it? X out and enjoy the fandom spaces other people donate time and money to keep running. Or avoid AO3 for a week.
Friends. Friends. *deep breath* no. You do not have to donate. I do, but I am fortunate to be financially able to. No one is judging you for not.
I will judge the hell outta you for entitled uninformed shitty posts like this.
it’s amazing to me that someone thinks the only cost to maintain a website is creating new features lmfao
wow
OP and commenter are probably part of the loonies who think AO3 is “evil” for its non-censorship and should censor works to meet their own particular moral tastes.
Know what I want more of in my fiction? “Nice Guy” villains. “Incel” villains. Villains who exhibit the most toxic aspects of current masculinity and culture and are shamed for it.
Like Tighten from Megamind.
I know it’s years old but this movie is still the best, especially because of the characterization of their villain. He receives a dozen soft no’s from Roxanne (the Lois Lane archetype), it’s suggested he’s been getting them for years, and he still pursues her even to the point of endangering her life. When he finally understands that her “no” is final, he throws a superpowered shit fit and tries to kill her and her actual love interest (Megamind) and televises it in a ploy to get sympathy (”a reminder of the night she ferociously ripped out my heart”). He has no concept of boundaries or consent, and it is shown for the vile behavior that it is.
And the thing is? I can’t remember another villain like him? Not anywhere. You could make an argument that Snape is a Nice Guy, but the narrative doesn’t criticize the behavior. To the contrary, his eternal love obsession with Lily is praised. Every character who comes even close to Tighten, ends up praised by the end. And I’m sick of it.
Get on Megamind’s level, screenwriters.
Hal is an amazingly well written antagonist.
He is the sort of Nice Guy whose arc initially looks like your standard thing–become cool, get the girl. Only that’s not and never was what the girl wanted, and her lack of interest in Hal had nothing to do with him lacking superpowers, but instead that she’s just not into him. She likes him as a friend, but even that gets subverted when Hal angrily accuses her of never getting to know him–like, they’ve worked together for a long time, if she doesn’t actually know him by now, it’s probably because Hal was trying to not let her on to his less desirable traits.
But it is true. She didn’t know him. She thought Hal was her socially awkward friend, not a total creeper who thought he deserved a relationship with her regardless of her feelings, someone who would publicly declare her the reason he’s destroying a city because she didn’t want to date him. So, no, Roxanne didn’t know him, if she had, she’d probably have stopped working with him by now.
Not only that, but Hal is wrong. He tells himself that Roxanne doesn’t like him because he’s not a muscular dude and is instead a dweeb…and Roxanne falls for non-muscular dweeb of her own volition. This then tears down Hal’s last line of defense, that it’s not how he looks or what he likes…it’s him. Roxanne is not into him.
the one thing I will never forgive infinity war for doing is killing all of thor’s character development from Ragnarok in less than two scenes lmao
first, there’s no sign of Thor’s powers that he learned to harness with Hela in the initial battle with Thanos. Like even if it wouldn’t do that much against Thanos they should have at least illustrated that, but instead they left him defenseless and made it so he had to get a even bigger weapon than his hammer. I mean, the whole point of Ragnarok was that he was he didn’t need his hammer to be Thor. That he was so much more than just a warrior with a fancy weapon. Secondly they gave him his eye back, which defeats its original intention as it was supposed to signify Thor taking over Odin’s place as allfather and accepting his responsibilities to his people. In this essay I will
Let me guess. Your home? It was. And it was beautiful. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Another reason thanos is stupid he could just go back in time to save titan.
Just imagine this dumbass going to the HR department on Titan and suggesting his plan to kill half of the population to solve a food problem.
Thanos was the 1%
comics!Thanos’ motivation was he was in love with Death
it made so much more sense than this
Exactly @tygermama. Especially since the Russos have said the snap eliminated half the plants and animals. Soooo everything is still the same?
lmaooo….so he deleted half the food supply too….Kevin Feige confirmed it.
Thanks Thanos, you did nothing.
They literally had Hela the GODDESS OF DEATH in the movie immediately prior to IW and she didn’t even die-on screen she could have survived the explosion of Asgard bc LITERAL GODDESS, MORE POWERFUL THAN THOR, like
They didn’t miss the opportunity to make Thanos a devotee/lover of Hela they STUBBED THEIR TOE ON IT IN THE DARK ON THE WAY TO THE BATHROOM, GOT MAD, AND KICKED IT DOWN THE STAIRS
Hela: Did you do it?
Hela: What did it cost
Better movie.
THANK YOU FOR AGREEING WITH ME AND ALSO THIS IS AMAZING
Yeah it’s the opposite of sustainability to kill half of the plants and animals too. Like we would all die with that so the Hela ending is soooo much better
This would have shocked the hell out of everybody watching. WHY DIDN’T THEY DO THIS?
it’s the fact that she wanted to go into her isolated car instead of into the public building. going to her car gets her alone, where as going inside the well lit building with other people gets her around people who could protect both of them from the people she’s claiming are after her.
any actual victim will go straight for a well populated area. they may want you to come with them for help, but they would never try and get you away from a populated area and into an isolated car unless the car was the only option, because a dark car late at night is a fantastic way to isolate and capture a mark without anyone’s notice.
other tactics often used include:
1) pretending to be a heavily pregnant woman stuck out in bad weather she’s not dressed for and asking a good samaritan who asked her if she’s ok to buy her some coffee. if the woman refuses money and wants you to go with her specifically, becoming agitated when you don’t agree and only offer her cash, this is a trick. the person who found this out managed to follow a woman doing this and saw her arguing with another woman and two men. the men insisted she needed to be more convincing so people would be more sympathetic, and she watched her tell him to be the one out in the snow in the thin hoodie and fake belly, and she watched her take off a fake baby bump.
(someone taking the money can still be a scam, but it’s a scam for money, and not to traffic you. traffickers want to get you to leave a populated area, so refusing to go with them will upset them, and that’s the biggest reveal of their true intentions.)
2) a woman banging on your door screaming that a man is chasing her and begging you to let her in, saying he’s going to rape her if you don’t let her in. this was brought to everyone’s attention by a teenager who shared his story about it. his mother wanted to help her, but her husband had grown up in a ‘bad part of town’ and wasn’t so trusting. he unlocked the door but not the chain lock and handed her a brick, telling her his family was calling the police and he would stay with her at the door. if the person did show up she could use the brick to defend herself and he would come out with his..I think it was a baseball bat and help her fight him off. she became very angry, asking what was wrong with them and demanding they let her in. his only response was to close and lock the door again. she got quiet and when the police got there, she was gone but the brick was just sitting on one of their steps.
the next night the police were back, as the woman showed up again at someone else’s doorstep doing the exact same thing, only this time an officer was basically already there. that family had let her in, and she in turn let her partner in who proceeded to murder the entire family before being caught by the officer.
3) similarly, men have been known to use a recording of a baby crying playing at womens’ doorsteps in order to entice them into opening the door, this giveaway being that A) it’s recorded and that’s usually fairly obvious, but also that after a little while, the sound will move, typically under windows around the front of the house, something an actual baby clearly can’t do on its own, and is clearly someone attempting to get closer to the presumed sleeping women in the hopes of getting her attention, since she seemingly can’t hear it from the front door.
this was caught when a woman noticed this ‘baby’ moving and the cry looping and called the police. again an officer was nearby and found two men hiding in bushes around her house.
4)more of an example of something very common, a young woman shared a story of when she was little many years ago. she and a friend were going to some sort of event (she was into something. she was ether part of a sports team or dance team or something to that affect, something done by her school as she was around 6-7 at the time) her mother stopped off at a grocery store real quick and left her and her sleeping friend in the car. another little girl looking to be about 4 was in a car nearby with what this girl assumed was his father. he too got out of the car and left her there, going into the store. the girl was all smiles with him, even waving to our storyteller and smiling, until the man left. once he was inside suddenly she looked scared, and was acting like she wanted her to get out of the car and come to her. she tried waking her sleeping friend to tell her about this, thinking now the man wasn’t her father but someone who was a danger to her, but her friend gave her the dirtiest look, demanded she shut up and let her sleep, and rolled over. she looked back up at the 4 year old who was now looking at the store. she too looked over and saw the man just standing right at the window smiling and encouraging her. she smiled at him and then looked back to our storyteller, with her face instantly dropping back into that scared look on her face. she refused to get out of her car, and when the 4 year old looked back at the store, the man came back out, without having bought anything, gave the girl a smile and a pat and driving off, with the little girl waving at her as he drove away. after seeing this, she was convinced he was coaching her and using her to lure other children out to abduct them.
5)another example of something very common, a woman who was moving to another state and was by herself, as her fiance had gone ahead a month earlier to get things set up in the new place while she tied up the loose ends at the old one. on her way back to her car, she was stopped by a man in his truck, his passenger side between them, and asked her if she knew where a grocery store was. she said she didn’t know, as she was just stopping through on her way to a new place. he then said something along the lines that this was a nice place to stop on a trip with the family, and she admitted she was alone. it was then when he said it was nice to meet her and reached out his hand to shake hers, but did nothing to lean out, meaning she would have to reach in the car to reach him. it was here where she realized his questions confirmed that she was alone, far from home, and unfamiliar with the area, meaning if she vanished no one would know when she vanished or where on her long trip alone, and it would be a good while before anyone expected to see her, meaning by the time anyone realized she was gone she’d be long gone.
she refused to shake his hand, stating that she was going to go, and he sped off, far too fast for her to read the license plate.
the one thing all these stories have in common, the thing that’s kept people alive, was their refusal to give in to social expectations and protecting themselves as well as the person supposedly in need. by refusing to get into her car, the op story woman saved herself from being abducted and trafficked, as did my last story’s woman, by refusing to be polite and shaking the stranger’s hand.
Op’s woman still attempted to help her, so you absolutely can still help someone in need, but you have to do so safely and logically, without putting yourself at risk, which is exactly what these people need you to do. while it’s true a real potential victim could be screaming at your door for help or a real baby left on your doorstep that’s crying, you still have to be cautious because traffickers have no morals. there is no low they won’t stoop to if it means catching another person.
I know it can be hard to believe a woman would do something like this to other women, and not using such chances to get away themselves, but that’s what brainwashing, Stockholm syndrome, and abusive manipulation will do to someone’s mind. we all want to trust other women and believe in that solidarity against our mutual oppression, but it doesn’t always work out like that. girl code and solidarity is important, but we also have to watch our for ourselves, because not everyone cares about that code.
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