The largest online portal for fanfiction is offline due to a hack and will remain so for at least two more weeks. The authors now have time to finish the latest chapter and then put it online for the new live launch. But to keep the readers busy, we have five alternatives for you.
The world’s largest fanfiction platform is offline for two to maybe even four full weeks. However, so you don’t have to miss out on fan-written stories, we have five websites that you can alternatively visit. Why AO3 is down and what it actually is, read here.
Navigate with the table of contents to the website that interests you:
She first read other people’s fanfiction back in the day on the now-defunct Quizilla! and Fanfiction.net, later on Tumblr and the German site Animexx, and currently, among other places, on AO3.
If you want to know more about AO3 and the current outage, check out the following blocks:
What is Archive of Our Own/AO3?
Archive of Our Own, also abbreviated as AO3
, is a non-profit and open-source platform where texts, images, and more can be published. The platform is primarily used by fanfiction authors to publish their works.
Fanfiction are stories written by fans based on existing series, films, games, books, or real people. They can be about almost anything, for example, couples that never made it into the official story. There are also many stories set in alternative universes: Fifty Shades of Grey was originally a fanfiction of the Twilight books. The recently released film The Theoretical Impossibility of Love
is based on a book of the same name, which was originally a Star Wars fanfiction.
AO3 is very open: content is not pre-screened. Instead, authors are supposed to tag their works with appropriate tags, warnings, and age ratings. Readers, in turn, are responsible for checking the tags before reading and deciding if they want to read the content. As a result, the archive is one of the most permissive platforms for authors and artists, but it is also not free of problematic and sometimes even illegal content.
Why is Archive of Our Own not accessible?
On October 29, 2026, the largest website for fanfiction went offline, and according to the management, the emergency maintenance will last between two and four weeks. Normally, the site is unavailable for a maximum of three days.
The background, according to the official status page otwstatus.org, is a security incident, the cause of which they cannot disclose in detail. The team is currently working on a solution; until one is found, AO3 remains offline. Here are the facts:
- All works, bookmarks, kudos (likes), and more are safe – nothing has been deleted
- The AO3 team believes that the accounts are safe and that nothing has been stolen from the database, but they cannot confirm this yet.
- Usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and encrypted versions of passwords could be affected
Although the post states they hope to go live again with a rudimentary version of the site earlier than just after two weeks, that is also not certain. This is a very long time for a website with more than 612.24 million visits per month, which usually only goes offline for a few days.
To ensure that you don’t have to miss out on fanfiction until AO3 returns, we have compiled five alternative websites for you sorted alphabetically. Let’s start with Animexx, a German site.
Alternatives to AO3: Fanfiction.net – The old man amongst the sites
Fanfiction.net was one of the first websites dedicated to fan fiction, although in the English-speaking world. There is no thematic specialization, allowing for everything related to any fandom to be published.
Here, you do not necessarily need an account if you just want to read. Unlike AO3, many tags and categories are predefined and there is a distinction between mono-thematic and crossover fics. Crossover essentially means that different universes interact with each other – such as the infamous Doctor Who, Supernatural, and Sherlock stories.
It is especially important to note that explicit adult content is available here. However, this is not marked as Mature
or 18 and up
. The tag that indicates such content is still quite traditional here: Lemon
.
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