Archive of Our Own is down so if you were in the middle of a 100,000 word anime fanfic you can go touch grass or something equally unexciting

• Archive of Our Own, the world's biggest site for fanfiction, is down. 
• The site was hit by a DDoS attack on Monday. 
• My sympathies to anyone who was in the middle of a 100,000 word piece of saucy fanfiction.

So, Archive of Our Own went down, and is still down. If you listened carefully on Monday, you might have heard the primal howl of an unsatisfied reader being locked out of Archive of Our Own, mid-scroll.

The site, the world's primary repository of all things fanfiction, went down early on Monday morning. It was confusing and wildly disorienting for this writer, seeing they were partway through a particularly saucy chapter of a Shadowgast fanwork courtesy of the "Critical Role" fandom, with several other tabs fired up with new "Jujutsu Kaisen" fics.

Then the site stopped loading. 

At the time, AO3 said on Twitter it was "experiencing some issues," and that volunteers were being galvanized to work out "server hiccups." 

Several hours later, AO3 said it was down because of a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, where nefarious individuals overwhelm a site with Internet traffic. Individuals who, apparently, hate the idea of people having fun or writing their latest Mark Zuckerberg-slash-Elon Musk (Zlon?) songfic. 

AO3 announced on Monday evening that "a group presenting themselves as a collective of religiously and politically motivated hackers has claimed responsibility for the attack." 

"Experts do not believe they are honest about their motivation, so we urge caution in believing any reasoning they provide for targeting AO3," the organization's representatives tweeted. 

It's unclear when AO3 will be back online, but in the meantime, this writer will not suffer alone. 

We have jokes: 

—Nepti_ (@NeptiSayStuff) July 10, 2023

We have copium: 

—kale ????✩°｡⋆⸜ (@s71gnthxlr) July 10, 2023

And we have chaos: 

—loner (@drowsiditz) July 11, 2023

Touch grass? Never heard of her. 

—???????????????????????? ☁️ (@djarinkylos) July 10, 2023

Come back, AO3. We miss you already.