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[anghraine]

I did a meme awhile back that includes listing your most popular works by kudos, and it's like:

1. Season of Courtship: just over 2000 kudos. Nothing I've written out of my teens will ever compare, apparently. [Dated to 2006 on AO3, but actually written earlier.]

2. But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul In Hell: 1429 kudos. 841 words, so ... okay. [2012]

3. per ardua ad astra: 1354 kudos. Yay, a longfic that I wrote in the comparatively recent past made the list! It definitely benefited from being for what was then a big ship in a megafandom, but I was mostly pretty happy with it despite some issues and continuity errors. [updated 2018]

4. we get dark, only to shine: lol, I knew it'd show up here somewhere. 1301 kudos. It used to be far and away my most popular fic, actually, despite (because of?) centering problematic characters on the problematic train to Problematicville. (The canon sibling incest pairing is but one of the dubious features.) I did put a lot of fairly serious historical research into it, though, which overlapped with my RL research enough to get a paper written and sort of published. *\0/* [updated 2016]

5. tolerably well acquainted: 1141 kudos. And here's one that I'm uncomplicatedly happy about. It's just canon expanded from Pemberley onwards, but I pored over the novel to try and make sure everything fit well enough, and tried to strike some middle ground between a pseudo-Austenian style and my own (which, despite my many Austen fics, I always find fairly difficult). But I'm very, very fond of it and hope to finish it one day. [updated 2020]

Comments

[elperian]

Kudos is always such a random ranking system to me, just barely less random than hits. However, I do love an opportunity to navel-gaze about my fic, so I can't complain too much :P

[anghraine]

Huh, interesting! I actually find kudos one of the better metrics on AO3, since hits can mean anything and comments demand a certain level of investment/activity. That can be its own downside, of course, but IME kudos track more closely with comments and bookmarks than hits.

[elperian]

Hits are so irrelevant to me I don't even register them, lol. They can mean anythiiiing - but to me, so can kudos, i.e. it was enough to leave a kudos to be polite but nothing more, someone leaves kudos everywhere, etc, as with likes on a post. Comments and bookmarks are the sweet spot because of the investment (and because I am from LJ).