Archive of Our Own (AO3) is down again, leaving countless fan fiction fans bereft of their much-needed escapism for the second time in two days. They are handling it as well as can be expected.
Reports that popular fan fiction platform AO3 was suffering an outage previously poured in on Sunday evening, as thousands of readers suddenly found themselves cut off from their favourite slow burn enemies to lovers coffee shop AUs. Crowdsourced outage tracker Down Detector (which has the same parent company as Mashable) began receiving reports of the outage from around 5.30 p.m. EST / 2.30 p.m. PST.
AO3 soon acknowledged the outage on its official status update X account, stating that they were “looking into some issues that are causing 503 errors for some folks.” The issue was resolved within the hour— though not before many readers have took to social media to yearn for their fics, wondering when their beloved AO3 would return from the war.
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Now AO3 has gone down yet again, stranding fan fiction fans in bitter reality once more. Reports of the second outage began pouring in to Down Detector from around 7 p.m. EST / 4 p.m. PST today. AO3 hasn’t yet acknowledged the outage, though fans have turned to social media for a communal freak out.
Fortunately, it seems that Monday’s AO3 outage may also be fixed within the hour, with several users since reporting that their stories have now returned to them.
No other fan fiction platform offers quite the same experience as AO3. However, if you need a quick fan fiction fix to tide you over whenever the popular platform goes down, there are a few other options.
UPDATE: Nov. 19, 2024, 11:46 a.m. AEDT This article has been updated to note that Monday’s outage appears to have since been fixed.