Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – For more than a week, millions of fan fiction fans have been searching in vain for their favorite stories.
Published on: 07/11/2026 - 15:25 Modified on: 07/11/2026 - 16:28
Victim of a cyberattack, Archive of Our Own, one of the largest libraries of its kind in the world, had to close its virtual doors on October 29.
Those who try to connect to the platform, which its followers call AO3, have since encountered a simple “maintenance” message, and the wait is starting to weigh on us.
“I only see that on my networks. People are missing it,” Johanna Sarriot, author and co-founder of Love Love Books, a Los Angeles bookstore dedicated to romance, tells AFP.
The principle of fan fiction is simple: amateur authors take on the characters and worlds of books, films or series to write their own version.
They change the ending, invent romance stories or finally give supporting roles their moment of glory, before sharing their stories for free online.
Long relegated to the background by the world of publishing, this hobby has become a real springboard for young authors.
“Fifty Shades of Grey” by E.L. James first saw the light of day as “Twilight” fan fiction, while Ali Hazelwood’s best-selling book “The Love Hypothesis” was born from the “Star Wars” universe.
Created in 2008, AO3 has established itself as the parent company of the genre, with more than 11 million subscribers and nearly 18 million works written on its platform.
In 2019, she was even crowned with a Hugo Award, one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction.
“We wanted to offer fans a place to create without commercial goals, without bombarding them with ads, without censoring them, without selling their data, a place that only serves fans,” Rebecca Tushnet, professor of law at Harvard and co-founder of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the parent organization of the platform, explains to AFP.
“AO3 has not disappeared”
Romance lovers are among those most affected by this outage.
“Romance readers read very quickly, and they read a lot,” explains Johanna Sarriot.
For the bookseller, the issue goes far beyond a simple computer failure.
It is on these platforms that many writers practice their pens, and that potential future clients discover new novels.
“Authors who have learned their hand at fan fiction, writing as much as they want, with pleasure and without any constraints, can give birth to very beautiful novels,” she assures.
The OTW aims to provide reassurance regarding account security. The association does not believe that the user database, which contains pseudonyms, email addresses and encrypted passwords, was stolen, although it cannot completely rule it out.
“AO3 has not disappeared! No data has been lost and we look forward to putting the site back online as soon as possible,” promises its founder.
Readers will, however, have to be patient, since the association hopes to reopen within a month.
For web developer Yohan Mebrouk, this delay says a lot about the seriousness of the attack.
It could be explained by limited resources, or by the need to update the entire software, "a huge job" according to him.
He remains optimistic, however, because sites of this size very often keep backups of their databases.
“If they did things right, everyone will get everything back,” he believes.
© 2026 AFP
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