When the internet’s biggest fanfiction repository vanishes from reach, there’s one thing you can still count on: a network of fellow fans.Just ask the massive community of Archive of Our Own readers, who in the past fews days have gone from panic to ingenuity after their beloved fanfic haven went dark.A03 is home to more than 18 million works, including many sexually explicit stories (affectionally referred to as “smut”), and writing inspired by popular IP, such as “Harry Potter,” “Twilight” and “Heated Rivalry.” But last week, the Organization for Transformative Works, the nonprofit behind A03, announced the site would be down for two to four weeks, citing a “security incident.” The prospect of weeks without A03 sent shockwaves through a community devoted to the platform’s uncensored storytelling and meticulous tagging system.Some went as far as likening the outage to life in prehistoric times or descending into madness.
But their desperation also gave way to solidarity, with readers sharing tips with each other on how they can still get their fan fiction fix.In the r/AO3 community on Reddit, moderators have set up megathreads for the purpose of helping members find and share copies of their favorite stories.
Some AO3 writers are uploading new chapters of their fanfiction stories to their Tumblr blogs.Others are creating shared Google folders.“There are always debates, different opinions, and occasional fights within and between fandoms.
But during the outage, I have seen people from completely different fandoms and backgrounds helping one another and working toward shared solutions,” said Ashmita, a 23-year-old A03 reader and fanction writer from India who built a web tool to make it easier for users to connect Google Drive folders and navigate the hundreds or thousands of files inside.“It has been a beautiful reminder of how much these communities care about each other,” Ashmita, who requested to be identified by first name...