In a major blow to both the terminally online and the criminally horny, the fan fiction website Archive of Our Own (AO3) has temporarily shut down due to a “security incident,” according to an update posted on the site.
On October 29, an admin for AO3 posted that the website was “down for maintenance.” The statement said that it could take up to four weeks for service to be fully restored, though it was possible the site would be back up in a “degraded state” sooner, with some of its features disabled.
Though the original statement did not specify the reasons for the closure, subsequent updates said that a “security incident” had taken place, though “we are still in the early stages of response [and] determining its scope.” While the statement said that AO3 did not believe that its user database had been stolen, it urged users to exercise caution and change their passwords for the site.
Run by the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving fandom communities on the internet, AO3 was founded in 2007 in part due to concerns about censorship and corporate interests overtaking fandom spaces. The website has 11 million users, according to a 2026 press release, and hosts more than 18 million original works. The explosive popularity of the gay hockey romance Heated Rivalry TV series generated a surge of new interest last year, resulting in the publication of tens of thousands of stories featuring the show’s main characters, Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, on the platform.
Those reliant on AO3 for their daily dose of Destiel- or Dramione-inspired smut are not taking the news well. “No ao3 for possibly 4 weeks SOMEONE DO SOMETHING,” one Heated Rivalry fan account posted on X, tagging not just AO3 itself but also the official X accounts for the FBI, the CIA, and, for some reason, Uber Support. Other fans are compiling Google Docs of links to downloaded stories, touting them as “survival guides” for the “AO3 apocalypse” and organizing them by fictional character pairings, or ships. (Be warned, however: One such doc is difficult to load due to “heavy traffic” on the file.)
Others commented on the timing of the outage, pointing out that it coincides with “No Nut November,” the internet-based challenge that encourages people to abstain from masturbation throughout the month. “AO3 taking no nut november a little too seriously,” one person wrote.
A representative for the Organization for Transformative Works did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the chaos inspired by the site’s shutdown underscores the prominence of fan fiction in everyday lives, driving mainstream publishing trends and generating hundreds of millions of views. It also serves as the engine for the burgeoning vertical video industry, with streaming platforms constantly scouring fan fiction websites for works to adapt.
“All life forms dependent on AO3 are literally withering right now,” one fan wrote. “This is our 9/11.”
