The world of fan fiction is bracing for an apocalypse as one the world’s largest repositories of fan-written stories has gone dark—and may not return anytime soon.
The panic began on October 29 when Archive of Our Own (AO3), the online library for fan-created stories ranging from Harry Potter and Heated Rivalry to K-pop and boy band fandoms, announced it would take the site offline for maintenance.
The website housed around 18.8 million stories across thousands of fandoms, and is operated by a nonprofit called the Organization for Transformative Works, run entirely by volunteers.
The original announcement suggested the site would be down for around 12 hours, but a few hours later, an update announced an even longer hiatus.
“We estimate that service restoration for #AO3 will take around 2 weeks but it could be up to 4 weeks,” the update said.
Users were quick to express their frustrations through humor, taking to other platforms like X and Tumblr—another popular platform for fan fiction—to poke fun at the situation.
One user wrote on X: “All of the countries preparing for outages told us to buy water and canned food but we didn’t think of downloading a month’s worth of ao3 for this.”
“Security incident” disclosed
AO3 is using an update page, Tumblr, and Bluesky to communicate with users. A day after it announced the extended timeline for coming back online, it further announced that it had detected a “security incident” on the site.
Specifics on the incident have not been revealed, although the update also said the team was working on determining its scope.
AO3’s update clarified that the website’s data was not deleted, meaning that decades of fan fiction are safe. But user personal data may have been compromised during the incident.
“While we currently don’t believe that the user database was stolen, we are also unable to rule it out. The AO3 database contains account information that may include your username, email address, IP address, and a hashed version of your password,” the update explained, urging users to change their passwords anywhere they reused it.
Coping with AO3’s absence
While the website’s integrity—and the data alongside it—might still be uncertain, users are filling the silence with jokes.
“Day 4 without ao3. It is absolute chaos,” one user joked on X. “I sent a messenger pigeon to ao3, but I fear it, too, may die like the dove.”
Another user added: “What is Mamdani’s plan to bring back AO3.”
Other fan-fiction-friendly platforms have taken notice, too, jumping in to offer their services during the outage.
Tumblr, a defining site of the 2010s known for fostering niche fandoms, took to X to comment on the AO3 situation. “While ao3 is working to get back up and running, we’re here for all of your fanfic needs,” the social media platform’s official X account posted on October 29.
Tumblr’s account added on Monday: “While our spouse ao3 is still resting, drop your fav fanfics and authors to fill the void.”
Wattpad, an AO3 competitor that received backlash earlier this year over a miscommunication related to a guideline update—which led users to believe smut was getting banned—also chimed in.
“We’re here to support you during this difficult time,” Wattpad’s X account wrote on October 29.
Wattpad also launched a guide for AO3 users looking to migrate to their platforms. “We can’t replace the Archive (we definitely can’t compete with the tags you might be used to), but if you’re craving somewhere to read and write in the meantime, this page has everything you need to navigate your new home base,” the guide says.
But as the outage continues, users are starting to speculate on what a future without Archive of Our Own might look like.
“AO3 down for a month, women of the world are gonna start thriving in ways never seen before,” a user wrote on X. “A cure for cancer will be discovered, governments will be overthrown all over the world, now the real revolution begins.”