#kudos

[bizarrelittlemew]

Are you frustrated you can't leave second kudos on AO3? or third kudos? or whatever-who's-counting kudos?

Well, have I got the html for you!

Plop any of these in a comment (by copy&pasting the code) to make an author's day and show your appreciation!

Second kudos: <img src="https://i.ibb.co/tHMjbb6/second-kudos.png" alt="second kudos">

Third kudos: <img src="https://i.ibb.co/52bggQH/third-kudos.png" alt="third kudos">

nth kudos: <img src="https://i.ibb.co/6y7qGtC/nth-kudos.png" alt="nth kudos">

yet another kudos: <img src="https://i.ibb.co/wKtcj0s/yet-another-kudos.png" alt="yet another kudos">

It will look something like this (and will be transparent with white outline on dark backgrounds):

Feel free to spread and use these as much as you like! (and if you have ideas for other variations, let me know ✌️)

[buckieduckie2]

"yOu hAvE aLrEaDy lEfT kUdOs hErE" BITCH STFU NO I HAVNT YOU WHORE

[wishingformoredogs]

I will not be silenced.

[polutrope]

I had a thought about kudos on AO3. I know fic writers frequently express how much we love comments, and I really do love and cherish comments.

But kudos are also pretty amazing. A kudos means that somebody, more often than not somebody I have no personal connection to at all, found my fic out of thousands of others and chose to spend their time reading it. Bookmarks too are amazing, even the ones that are just marking an intention to read later. Just knowing someone wants to read my fic is flattering!

Even one kudos means that someone took a chance on my writing and spent precious time reading it, and I'm truly grateful for that, and honoured.

[vavandeveresfan]

When someone leaves a nice comment on my fanfic.

Specifically for The Cocoon Splits on AO3.

[handsofred]

Do you ever read a fic, enjoy it greatly and once finished, you press the kudos button, only to find out that you have already left them before but you have no memory of ever reading the fic before?

[safedistancefrombeingsmart]

I personally always leave kudos after reading the entire fic. But I noticed a lot of people already leaving kudos a few chapters into a story or even in a 1st chapter of a new fic.

So yeah, that made me curious.

Please reblog for a bigger reach. 🙂

[ao3-shenanigans]

i wish ao3 was like wattpad in the way of being able to leave kudos on multiple chapters instead of the whole story

i always have to remind myself to leave a nice comment because there is no other way for me to let the author know that particular chapter was nice

For sure! “Second kudos!” Is always a great and easy comment to leave

[sanguinarysanguinity]

To the authors who are unhappy about their hits-to-kudos ratio on AO3: as a kindness to yourselves, please stop. That hit counter doesn’t mean what you think it means.

First, not all those hits are people. A substantial chunk of those hits, as I understand it, are machines, looking to see what the page is. The hits-to-kudos is whack from the hour a story is posted, because a bunch of those hits are machines.

Second, multiple hits can be the same person on their first read of the story. If I open a story in a browser tab to read later, my browser sometimes/often unloads that tab in the interim, resulting in it reloading that tab and creating a new hit when I finally go to read it. If reading it requires multiple sessions, that’s multiple new hits. If I then leave it open for a while to remind myself to leave a comment, my browser will reload it again, generating another new hit, before it lets me write a comment. Altogether, my first read of a story, plus leaving a comment, can easily turn into five or more hits, depending on how hard I’m finding it to find reading and commenting time.

Third, if your story has been up for a while, the people who adore your story are driving up your hit counter with their re-reads. They go away, they come back, they re-read, and they do it again, and they do it again. It’s probably only a small subset of your total readers, but if one of your stories becomes someone’s go-to comfort read for times when they are stressed out (or, if it’s an explicit story, if it becomes their favorite jack-off material), that one person’s devoted re-reading might easily hit your story dozens of times. But most readers feel hella shy about admitting that they treat your story like a fuzzy blanket (or a vibrator); either way, it’s pretty rare for them to tell you about it. (Which I’m sympathetic to! Fuzzy blankets are a very personal thing, and no one wants to feel stared at by the author while they’re having a vulnerable moment.)

Fourth, stories get read by people outside of fandom, people who don’t think of themselves as your friends/neighbors/community-members, and who just... never think to hit kudos, at all, because their social context is so far removed from ours. I’ve got a couple of stories that were linked on TVTropes once upon a time, and their hit-to-kudos ratios are fucking absurd. If your story got linked outside of fandom somewhere, odds are that most of the people coming in from that link will never think to hit kudos, no matter how much they liked it, because they never quite connect that there’s a real live author, breathlessly hoping to be liked and appreciated, standing just behind the screen, and that maybe readers should be polite and say ‘thank you’ to them when they finish the story and leave.

tl;dr Do not assume every hit is new human reader who didn’t like your story and clicked out. Your hit counts will often be ten times greater than your kudos, just for stupid ordinary internet-traffic reasons, and the older a story becomes (and the more times bots and re-readers hit it), the wider the hits-to-kudos gulf will become. Do yourself a kindness and stop calculating that ratio -- and if you can’t stop making yourself crazy about it, go into settings and turn off your hit counter displays. Please be tender to yourselves; being an author is hard enough as it is.

[trlvsn]

to all of my dear ao3 authors: if you are insecure about the hits to kudos/bookmarks/comments ratio, you are interpreting them wrong. notice how on social media, you usually can't see how many people viewed your textpost? on ao3 you can, because it's not a silly shower thought. it's literature. you are writing a piece of art and publishing it; and if it got 300 hits and 50 kudos, that means 300 people bought your book and 50 of them bothered to go leave a review with a thumbs up on the shop's website. it doesn't matter that only 50 people did that: what matters is that 300 got so interested that they read your work, invested their time and energy into it, and, even if they didn't leave a kudos, even if they didn't get to the end, you probably managed to get your message across and a memory of your work is now in their head. isn't that the point of writing? leaving something in people's thoughts. you are doing a great job just by creating something, remember.

but to my dear ao3 readers: do leave kudos when you like something. it's the nice thing to do.

[longlivefeedback]

If you comment on some fanfics and not others, pick an answer that applies most commonly to when you don't comment.

[hanniewinnix]

Gene is me. I am Gene

[nicofitz]

Me: *reads through an incredible fic on Ao3 experiencing every emotion possible in the span of about 5000 words*

*clicks 'Kudos♥️'*

Ao3:

Me:

[starchaserdreams]

A god-tier reader just left FOUR comments on my fanfic, one for each chapter they read. It absolutely made my day.

I heard this called "spam commenting" and I am here to say that it is NOT, it is goated behavior, legend status for all time.

[runawaymarbles]

we sorted your boyfriend by kudos. yeah the best parts of him were chosen based a bit on quality but mostly on luck and now you'll only see those parts again. sorry.

[jaegerisim]

"you already left kudos here" do i look like i fucking care???? i will leave all the goddamn kudos i fucking want. ao3 you can not stop me from letting my writer moots know how much i appreciate their writing.