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BY María José Gutiérrez Chávez

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The world of fan fiction is bracing for an apocalypse as one the world’s largest repositories of fan-written stories has gone dark—and may not return anytime soon.

The panic began on October 29 when Archive of Our Own (AO3), the online library for fan-created stories ranging from Harry Potter and Heated Rivalr y to K-pop and boy band fandoms, announced it would take the site offline for maintenance.

The website housed around 18.8 million stories across thousands of fandoms, and is operated by a nonprofit called the Organization for Transformative Works, run entirely by volunteers.

The original announcement suggested the site would be down for around 12 hours, but a few hours later, an update announced an even longer hiatus.

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