"Why can't the freaks on AO3 just go and make a site for all the gross stuff and leave AO3 alone."
Because AO3 is that site. Because AO3 was that site long before you decided AO3 was better than the sites you bullied us off of before, and I can promise you if someone somehow comes up with a fanfic site you like better specifically for the 'gross stuff' you'll try to bully us off that too so you can benefit from it.
AO3's specific core purpose is to preserve fanfiction, yes, but it was also instigated as a host site for the fanfiction that kept getting yeeted off other platforms like Wattpad. Its designed to preserve all fanfiction, not just the fanfiction you, personally, think is 'allowed' to be written.
AO3 is the site for all the gross stuff the freaks make. We've been there just as long as you. We've been funding it just as long as you have. AO3 has specifically said you have a place here. The timeline was literally:
Wattpad/FF.net/LiveJournal purge fanfics > AO3 is born > The people who's fics got purged moved over to AO3 > AO3 gains popularity as the best functioning site > The people who pushed for the fics to be purged off Wattpad move to AO3 > The same people try to push for AO3 to purge fics.
AO3's source coding is open-access. You go make a polished, strict, rigid site where nothing 'icky' is allowed. You go make a site where you can control what is hosted. We already have our space.
“omg you’re so creative. how do you get your ideas” i hallucinate a single scene in the taco bell drive thru and then spend 13 months trying to write it
He is so into you. He's a boy, I'm a boy. If anything, he just enjoys ghosts. You do know two boys can like like each other, right? I have a lot of manga about it. It's really sweet and explicit.
Edwin & Niko - Dead Boy Detectives - The Case of the Devlin House (1x03)
They are still dead, but we unburied them. Their ghosts are now haunting the narrative forever. Yeah they are still being gay and dramatic but they have eternity to figure it out. Literally can not get rid of these gays now. They don't even have bodies to bury. Can't send em to superhell they'll climb right back out.
how is it not one person is talking about the Ghost Post in dead boy detectives. imagine being such a mailman in your life that you continue doing it into the hereafter. no eternal rest while there’s mail to deliver. other ghosts don’t know why or how you do it. you are arcane to even the occult
all day in and out you just show up places and shout MAIL CALL and then say vaguely ominous things like “Mail gets delivered wherever you go” and before disappearing into the built in bookshelf. i want this job so bad
Inside of you there are two wolves and one is a bisexual disaster 80’s ghost and the other is a 1910’s repressed sassy gay ghost and rn they’re staring longingly at eachother long enough for you to get away with whatever shenanigans you want so HURRY