The only people who complain about how much money AO3 needs are people who have no idea how much the alternative fucking sucks https://twitter.com/SucculentBud/status/1380961680771973123

I was a Korean teenager at a time when a lot of fanfiction, especially BL fanfiction, often cowered under the fear that they would be discovered, sued, and/or witch-hunted; fanfic websites were often age-locked, websites were kept secret or password protected

Some of the more draconian ones demanded age-verification (literally sending a photo of your ID showing you were above 18) for entry, while more open and accessible websites could disappear overnight, all the fanfic along with them

Nothing was centralized, nothing felt safe, websites made it very difficult to copy/download/share fanfic, and any BL that got published (usually small batch, independent presses) would get sold out so fast that second-hand copies would reach sky-high prices in online auctions

This is all my exp as a teenager growing up in South Korea. A lot has changed since those days but I still vividly recall coming across AO3 for the first time for X-men fanfic in the early-mid 2010s. I'd never seen anything fucking like it.

I'm sorry but this website literally posts their entire budget, their annual balance sheets, and their tax filings, if you have questions about where they spend their money you can go check for yourself

For the princely sum of 10 dollars you can also become an OTW member and vote in elections and have more of a say in how the website is run. At no point am I suggesting AO3 is perfect. But its very existence to me, personally? Is nothing short of a miracle.

lol also just to give an idea of how much the situation has changed for Korean BL - here's the "BL" tab on the popular Korean ebook website Ridibooks, alongside the other ebook types of "general," "romance," "fantasy," and "manhwa." I get whiplash every time I see it.