Archive Of Our Own Might Be Down For Several Weeks And Fanfic Readers Are (Rightfully) Crashing Out

The fanfic Library of Alexandria will be inaccessible for at least a few weeks. According to the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the non-profit that oversees the administration of Archive of Our Own, a major outage has hit the fanfic repository, and what was once estimated to be an issue that could be resolved in a few hours might now take anywhere from two to four weeks to fix. [update] Identified: We estimate that service restoration for #AO3 will take around 2 weeks but it could be up to 4 weeks. We are hopeful that we will be able to bring the site back up in a degraded state sooner. If that does happen, there may be times when the site has … — AO3 Status (@status.archiveofourown.org) 2026-10-29T17:41:58.609Z Fuck. No seriously. Fuck. Archive of Our Own (also known as AO3) is to fandom communities what Fox News is to your average doddering Republican grandpa: It’s on all the time. It is the best place you can get any kind of literature, catering to every kind of taste, and of every kind of quality. And not just smut (though the smut is choice), but thoughtful treatises on the all the idiosyncrasies of life expressed though the filter of coffee shops and high schools, with characters whose origins range from Warhammer 40,000 to the frickin’ Bible, all maintained by volunteers and accessible to you for the low price of free. It is a load-bearing pillar of the internet and it might be out for weeks. Naturally, the internet is crashing the hell out. My sleep schedule is about to get real healthy pic.twitter.com/MPYiD7v0Fp — sarah ✩ (@carolinaruins) October 29, 2026 thank you for your service team!!!!!!! hoping we won’t have to go that long without ao3 💔 pic.twitter.com/wdpCJ66FpJ — b (@wwxwashere) October 29, 2026 ©Tumblr ©Tumblr AO3 has gone offline before. In 2023, a hacktivist organization claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack that took AO3 down for several hours and allegedly asked for $30,000 in ransom. Kotaku has reached out to OTW for comment on the reason for the extended outage.