HI

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.

It was built around "we need to own the servers" so we wouldn't have to deal with anyone else's judgment calls about what was acceptable in fanfic: Not corporate sponsors, not evangelical religious groups, not "save the children" activists... and not other fans who think that The Gross Stuff should be banned from public view, only shared via private email after you've sent in a request heavily laden with special keywords.

Some of the founders remembered when slash fanfic was kept under the table at the dealer's room, distributed with brown paper wrappers only to people who knew to ask for it specifically.

And they said: Fuck that. Our art is not a crime and we're not going to be ashamed of it. If you are ashamed to have your art next to it - there's a whole wide internet that's ready to host your G-rated genfic.

Woman’s Gown

c. 1775-1780

silk, liseré satin, bobbin lace

Hooded Cape

1780 - 1810

Norway

If the stock price crashes, banks will ask for their money back.

Dress, 1884-85

• Ball Gown.

Date: ca. 1867

Designer/Maker: Emile Pingat (Paris, France)

Scaled pattern at 1/8" scale

Graded pattern for the bodice for 21"-41" waists

We dressed up as pirates and went bowling.

We dressed as vikings and went to the grocery store. The security guard told us we had to move our longship because it was illegally parked.

We dressed as Romans and went to Blockbuster. The staff chanted, "toga! Toga! Toga!" at us.

“Näcken”

Day 10 - Black Lagoon

They’re not saying “wow that’s such a small amount to win.” Cause yeah to every normal person $434M is a life time of money to have.

It is Precisely just because they prey on fish! A fish is a highly active vertebrate that evolved for lightning fast movement and reflexes through deep, heavy water, so more than half of a fish’s body is a dense hunk of proportionately high-powered, dense muscle all the way through! Look how little space is devoted to organs in even just an anchovy, muscle and bone fills ALL the remaining space:

That’s muscle for escaping sharks and dolphins! Muscle that can fight currents stronger than hurricane winds! But a jellyfish evolved for an extreme conservation of resources: just barely enough tissue to hold it together, which allows it to grow and multiply on barely a sliver the resources it takes to make a vertebrate, a high efficiency approach to building, growing, and multiplying a living body that has allowed jellyfish to keep thriving in the harshest conditions and through global extinction events.