Kudos are a consolation prize. I like discussion and conversation. I'm interested in which buttons got pushed, what worked, what didn't. This writer works for tips--throw a dollar in the comment box on your way out. Kudos are a dime or a quarter at best.

Yeah, but I'm not going to have a conversation in the comments, y'know? Throws off the ratio, and seems like a weird place to have it. I like discussion and conversation, but... honestly, not on AO3, and I'm actually, by the time I'm done with something, sick of talking about it.

Kudos are AWESOME! I don't have to reply to them! I can do sort of general trend metrics! I can tell when a bunch of people are getting into an obscure fandom based on sudden surges in Yuletide!

I think you're also, if you're into that, going to see more of what worked/didn't work, on any bookmarks of your story where the bookmarker has added commentary, because that's their space so they don't feel as hampered. Which I like, personally, because if I don't want to see it, I don't have to!

I used to check and see what people had bookmarked of mine, and what tags they used, back in the Delicious era, but I just kind of don't want to know now. It's out there, it's out there. Released into the wild and unchanging, hopefully having gone through a beta so I've already had the works/doesn't work discussion.

But... I also write mostly for me now, outside of Yuletide. I mean, even the Stupid Huge Enormous Thing that's technically for Victoria is something I am writing because I want it. (Sometimes, Yuletide intersects nicely with what I want, especially in fandoms where I think I've got one story in me and I'm done, like Broadchurch, or where my id wants it and I've just been too lazy to write it, like Don't Trust the B* in Apt. 23 and The IT Crowd. Other times, not so much.)

Sometimes I want to share with the class (honestly, there's a HUGE part of me that wants to share the current drawerfic with the class because there are parts I really really like, but it's not just Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, it's Decomposing Dove: Do Not Go Near, and no matter how many notes, disclaimers, and warnings I would stick on it, I'm pretty sure I'd get a lot of shit for even thinking about it, let alone writing several thousand words of it, because it's worse than the one thing that had people here saying, "JESUS, DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN!"), and sometimes not so much (some things are just embarrassing, okay?), but the actual writing and working is for me.

Generous poster is taking exception to a minor character quirk that popped up as a comic grace note, and she's protesting my idea of how Fox News would react to the announcement that Hydra had reappeared. She thinks Fox would be all on board with exposing Hydra and that CNN would be trying to hide it behind "calls for reason" etc. Not so much wanting to have her fic babies any more.

Bah. Comma vomit up there.

I mean, I hang on FFA, and the comments vs. kudos thing is discussed all the time there, so I have a fairly good idea as to the motivations of a lot of people who are leaving kudos, and it's usually positive. I'd say that the people leaving them because they feel the story was good enough for a kudos, not good enough for a comment, or just indicating "I read the thing!" (this is a concern I've seen brought up a lot there), is a pretty small percentage of kudosers.

They're different, but I don't see them as cheaper, just different. (And, honestly, I rarely leave comments unless I'm on a re-read and I'm informed I've already left kudos. If I am reading something that often, I should probably mention it.)

My motivations are all over the place: I leave kudos on really well-written stories; sometimes ones that are not so well-written, SPAG all over the place, but very well plotted and great characterization; stories that are just plain fun to read and fly past and make you forget the time.

I tend to leave comments on stories that either totally blow me away (and I'll also give them kudos, I never only comment) or I know the author from other online interactions, even if it's a story I wouldn't have normally commented on.

I will occasionally spurn leaving kudos for an otherwise well-written story if I feel the author is a real schmuck from other online interactions. Yeah, it's like borrowing a book from a friend so the author doesn't get the royalties. Neener.

And maybe one other thing will prompt me to forgo the kudo (but then I'll just quit reading their stories anyway out of boredom): when every single story is a rehash of the same damn episode of a TV show or the same movie, continually trying to fix that one thing they think is wrong about it (which is usually their OTP gets shot down by canon--can we say Johnlock and Spock/Uhura?) While I may write in a fandom of a single movie (and have an OTP, an OT3 and a spare TP floating around, just like the stock market, the payoff is bigger if you diversify), all my stories change it up considerably in many ways. Even though I ship Sherlock/John, the only story I've written in the Sherlock fandom was Sherlock/Irene/Molly/Janine. So there, Johnlock conspiracy theorists.

And maybe one other thing will prompt me to forgo the kudo (but then I'll just quit reading their stories anyway out of boredom): when every single story is a rehash of the same damn episode of a TV show or the same movie, continually trying to fix that one thing they think is wrong about it (which is usually their OTP gets shot down by canon--can we say Johnlock and Spock/Uhura?) While I may write in a fandom of a single movie (and have an OTP, an OT3 and a spare TP floating around, just like the stock market, the payoff is bigger if you diversify), all my stories change it up considerably in many ways. Even though I ship Sherlock/John, the only story I've written in the Sherlock fandom was Sherlock/Irene/Molly/Janine. So there, Johnlock conspiracy theorists.

Heh. Yeah. A lot of strong OTP stuff does that. Drives me nuts.

I'm totally Ship All the Things in most of my fandoms, or at least Ship Most Permutations of the Things.

I think I have, like, two fandoms where I have a strong shipping preference, but even in those, I'll still ship occasional side pairings.

I'll give kudos to stories that I later regret kudoing. I tend to comment more than I kudo because comments are much more flexible. I've had several conversations in the comments sections.

If I didn't want reader-writer interaction, I'd be writing profic.

I don't *not* want it, I just find it isn't my primary motivation anymore.

I think it was once. Well, sort of. My original primary motivation was, in fact, "Gosh, these Buffistas keep writing things and I keep enjoying them, so I must give them things, and maybe they will enjoy them!" Which is related, I think? But not the same?

I have no desire to write profic, because those aren't the stories I want to tell: I'm pretty firmly a fan of playing in someone else's garden, and expanding and spinning off our existing sources, filling in world-building blanks. I just started doing it for me when I was unable to write and post because of my brain being horrible to me and me being fannish about a text without a critical mass of cofans (nothing's ever gonna be like SPN was for that shining time, ever), and then I never stopped, even when I was hitting a point where I was ready to post outside of Yuletide again.

Which... probably explains the novel-length obscure fandom crap, plus the "if you don't talk me out of it, I think I am going to write it!" Fright Night 2011 threesome WIP, plus my inability to let go of bad ideas.

I'm a lot more interested talking about the writing parts than the story parts, because it's so neat to me to see how a story morphs and grows, and how other people's stories morph and grow.

I'm a kudoser, mostly because I'm usually reading AO3 on my tablet, and typing on that thing is more headache than it's worth. If I'm on my phone or computer, I try to leave a comment if I liked the story enough to word about it, even if it's just "I really liked this" (which, honestly, it usually is).